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The United Kingdom will train Ukrainian fighter pilots and provide long-range weapons to Kiev forces, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a statement on February 8, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in London on a visit.

“I am proud that today we will expand that training from soldiers to marines and fighter jet pilots,” Sunak said.

According to a statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office, Ukrainian pilots will develop skills that will allow them to be able to “fly sophisticated NATO-standard fighter jets in the future.”

The office didn’t clarify on which fighter jets Ukrainian pilots will be trained. The Royal Air Force is currently mainly made of Eurofighter Typhoon jets.

London intends to coordinate efforts in this area with its allies in order to “meet Ukraine’s defense needs.” Earlier, the Prime Minister’s Office noted that the shortest jet pilot training course lasts 36 months.

“[Sunak] will also offer to begin an immediate training programme for marines. That training will be in addition to the recruit training programme already running in the UK, which has seen 10,000 Ukrainian troops brought to battle readiness in the last six months, and which will upskill a further 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers this year,” the Prime Minister’s Office said, adding that the program will be additionally expanded this year.

“The Prime Minister will also offer to provide Ukraine with longer range capabilities,” the statement reads. The main goal of this step is to “disrupt Russia’s ability” to target Ukrainian facilities, as well as to “help relieve pressure on Ukraine’s frontlines.”

The exact type of the long-range weapons in question was not revealed. One of the UK’s main long-range systems is the Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missile, which can hit ground targets as far as 560 kilometers away from its launch point.

The UK was one of few countries that began shipping weapons to Kiev forces even before the start of the Russian special military operation last year.

Under the leadership of Sunak, the UK continues to push for more armament for Ukraine. Last month, London pledged to supply 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Kiev forces, which opened the way for other Western countries to provide similar modern tanks. Now, it is apparently trying to promote the rehabilitation of the Ukrainian Air Force.

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Featured image: A Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4 flies past the audience during the 2019 Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford, England, July 20, 2019. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Jennifer Zima)

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

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According to Colonel Markus Reisner, the military strategist of the Austrian Ministry of Defence, Ukraine does not need NATO soldiers, as they are already there on the frontlines as mercenaries.

In a video posted on the Intel republic Telegram channel, the Austrian can be seen and heard giving his view on the situation. Reisner’s remark came in response to a question posed during a press conference at the AIES Institute. One of the journalists asked him who would be managing the proposed transfer of tanks to Ukraine – NATO servicemen or Ukrainians.

Reisner replied that if the military from Austria or NATO countries retired from service and became mercenaries, then they could no longer be considered representatives of the armies of their states.

He explained that the serviceman takes off his uniform, signs a contract and goes to Ukraine – now he is not a soldier, for example, of the Austrian armed forces, but a contract mercenary. In his opinion, there are a large number of mercenaries on the territory of Ukraine and not soldiers of the alliance.

According to him, most of the conversations recorded by intelligence networks were in English with various dialects, along with some in the German, French, Italian and Polish languages.

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Featured image: Image of Russian troops in Ukraine. Credit: Ukraine MoD/Facebook

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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***

Those images from the December blizzard engulfing Buffalo in upstate New York were shocking. Hard to grasp the reality. That ghostliness was not only from the icy, white shroud covering everything. There were also the deaths of citizens who ventured outside, or who simply couldn’t get back home.

That calamity was especially unsettling for those of us who live hardly four hours’ drive from there. By contrast. Here in Delaware and Sullivan counties we were covered by an appealing two-inch layer of snow. Whatever cold reached us from Buffalo was discomfitingly bearable. We carried on with our daily affairs, simply taking care to cover up with an extra layer of wool and ensuring we had a good supply of heating oil.

Yet, we were aware that, notwithstanding the unpredictability of global climate changes, our Catskill winter had hardly begun. We faced another two months with below zero temperatures, high fuel bills, frozen pavements, the toil of clearing our driveways.

About this weekend freeze, luckily we’d been forewarned. Media and utility companies sent out bulletins: stock up on needs; keep faucets open; remain indoors. As the temperature began to drop, even the ubiquitous pickup trucks with their sturdy snowplows in front were stilled.

My vigil began in the assumed safety of indoors. It was hard to relax; while regularly feeding the wood stove, I peered warily into the night. The then layer of snow from last week’s light fall glistened in the sharp rays of moonlight.

Then, from the north west, the wind arrived in a sudden whoosh. It was forecast to last for 24 hours! That’s unusually long, I thought. If it were to rain, we’d be transformed into that spectral Buffalo scene.

The temperature continued to drop, the wind to increase. At times, throughout the evening I heard a loud clap outside. In the sky. If some tree had fallen close to the house, I wasn’t about to check. A long, aching crack of a falling, frozen tree rose in the nearby woods, echoing into the dark. I waited for the crash, but was distracted by another sound, a whistling across the walls of my house. Was the wind finding slivers of space to force that cold inside? And then what?

The walls around me groaned as the storm beat at them. I went from room to room inspecting for cracked windows, wondering how I might seal anything found broken. Another clap exploded somewhere above the house! Had something fallen on the roof, maybe smashed the car.

Although I knew the forecast warned the temperature would continue dropping for another 24 hours, I repeatedly checked my phone’s weather app– -19 C, -20 C, -24 C. It didn’t subside in the morning nor throughout Friday! Such fierce wind combined with these temperatures was new for me, even after a childhood in snowbound, cold Canadian winters.

My main worry was a power cut. Not unusual in winter, and common in such high winds. I readied three flashlights and charged up my phone.

I would not sleep soundly because of that wind, also because I set my alarm every two hours to replenish the wood stove. (I had calculated that it would need sixteen good-sized logs, one for every hour until I could venture out to the woodpile.)

Morning light finally arrived, but the temperature still stood at minus 24 C. It seemed an act of mercy that the wind hadn’t downed any electric lines. Not yet! By 10 a.m. the sun offered a hint of warmth, flowing through windows onto the carpets. The wind continued howling. The road beyond Beaverkill was empty. But the forecast announced the storm would ease after six hours.

Late afternoon, I spotted two pickups speeding along the road on the far side of the valley. Closer to the house, wild turkeys poked at the gravel. It seems we’d turned a corner.

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Barbara Nimri Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon. 

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

“Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”

By Barbara Nimri Aziz

A century ago Yogmaya and Durga Devi, two women champions of justice, emerged from a remote corner of rural Nepal to offer solutions to their nation’s social and political ills. Then they were forgotten.

Years after their demise, in 1980 veteran anthropologist Barbara Nimri Aziz first uncovered their suppressed histories in her comprehensive and accessible biographies. Revelations from her decade of research led to the resurrection of these women and their entry into contemporary Nepali consciousness.

This book captures the daring political campaigns of these rebel women; at the same time it asks us to acknowledge their impact on contemporary feminist thinking. Like many revolutionaries who were vilified in their lifetimes, we learn about the true nature of these leaders’ intelligence, sacrifices, and vision during an era of social and economic oppression in this part of Asia.

After Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a fledgling democracy and history re-evaluated these pioneers, Dr. Aziz explores their legacies in this book.

Psychologically provocative and astonishingly moving, “Yogmaya and Durga Devi” is a seminal contribution to women’s history.

Click here to order.

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Liberal billionaire George Soros is tied to at least a staggering 253 media organizations around the world, according to a new study conducted by MRC Business. 

MRC Business, part of the conservative Media Research Center, found that Soros uses his charities to build relationships with news outlets and “activists media” organizations.

“The journalism groups Soros supports have the ability to mold public opinion on practically every continent and in many languages. They also insulate him from inquiry because reporters see him as an ally, not a target for investigation,” MRC Business analysts Joseph Vazquez and Daniel Schneider wrote.

“The 92-year-old philanthropist’s multimillion-dollar efforts promoting his bizarre ‘open society’ agenda encompass some of the most radical leftist ideas on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism,” they continued. “In the United States, Soros is known for his massive involvement backing liberal policies and politicians. Since the 2016 election, he has spent at least $200 million backing political candidates, which includes $29 million for local prosecutors and district attorneys.”

Soros was the largest donor to Democrats during the midterm elections but MRC Business says that’s “just a drop in the bucket compared to the over $32 billion he pumped into his Open Society Foundations (OSF) since 1984 to shape politics to his liking on a global scale.”

Soros is tied to The Marshall Project, the Biden administration’s since-dismantled Disinformation Governance Board, Project Syndicate, openDemocracy (based in the United Kingdom), the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network, NPR, ProPublica, Free Press, a “litany of left-wing activist groups,” and a plethora of other outlets. Many of the outlets Soros helps bankroll are relied on by Big Tech and other journalists as sources of information, while others simply echo left-wing talking points.

Click here to read the full article on Fox News.

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Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

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Matt Taibbi joins CN Live! to discuss the implications of his Twitter Files revelations, including his latest on Hamilton 68 and its fatal blow to the Russiagate narrative. With Chris Hedges and John Kiriakou. Watch the replay.

In the latest installment of the blockbuster Twitter Files, reporter Matt Taibbi has revealed that probably the most important source behind the maniacal media output on the Russiagate story was a lie.

Hundreds of articles and television segments in the major U.S. Media, which kept the Russiagate fiasco front and center in American political life for several years, was fueled by a website called Hamilton 68.

The name comes from Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Papers No. 68, in which he writes about the danger of foreign interference in U.S. elections. Hamilton 68 was launched in August 2017, less than a year after Hillary Clinton’s defeat to Donald Trump and just as Democrats increasingly blamed alleged Russian interference for Clinton’s defeat.

As the hysteria over unproven allegations of Russia’s role gathered steam, Hamilton 68 appeared. It became a go-to source for corporate media by saying it had a list, which it refused to make public, of Twitter accounts it was monitoring. There are conflicting statements from Hamilton about whether these were bots or real people, and whether they were direct agents of Russia or unwitting dupes.

Taibbi writes:

“The two founders of Hamilton 68, the blue-and-red team of former counselor to Marco Rubio Jamie Fly and Hillary for America Foreign Policy Advisor Laura Rosenberger, told Politico they couldn’t reveal the names of the accounts because “the Russians will simply shut them down.”

Twitter, the files Taibbi discovered say, did not buy Hamilton’s story and privately pushed back. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s trust and safety chief at the time, said in one internal email: “I think we need to just call this out on the bullshit it is.” He also threatened to give Hamilton an ultimatum, either they release the list, or Twitter would.

Twitter only obtained the list by reverse engineering data requests made by Hamilton back in 2017.

Taibbi’s reporting indicated these were real people indeed. Only about 30 Twitter accounts on the list were Russian, the rest real Americans, Britons and Canadians.

Most were Trump supporters, with Twitter handles like @TrumpDyke. But some were not, such as myself before I became editor-in-chief of Consortium News, when I was only a writer for the site, publishing several articles debunking Russiagate in 2017.

On Hamilton’s advisory council sits former senior U.S. officials, several with intelligence backgrounds, such as Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security chief; former acting C.I.A. director Michael Morell; Rick Ledgett, a former NSA deputy director; Clint Watts, a former F.B.I. counter-intelligence officer; Mike Rogers, a former F.B.I. Agent and member of the U.S. House intelligence committee; former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul; former Estonian President Toomas Ilves and thrown in for good measure: John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton campaign and arch-neoconservative Bill Kristol.

Hamilton 68 has blamed the media for misinterpreting its data and ignoring its appeals to correct their stories.

Hamilton 68 was rebranded Hamilton 2.0 in December and its secret list has now been replaced by a public list that only names government officials and media from Russia, China and Iran.

We asked someone from the Alliance for Securing Democracy to appear on this show and received no reply.

This troubling story underscores the gross failure of corporate media, like CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post, and even fact-checking sites like PolitFact and Snopes, to be skeptical of intelligence sources, whether active or retired. It also exposes the failure of members of Congress to not let the facts get in the way of a story that serves their political interests, as Senators Diane Feinstein and Mark Warner became reliant on Hamilton 68. Academia was also taken in.

Taibbi’s revelations add to a litany of facts that have repeatedly debunked the Russiagate tale: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report that found no connection between Russia and the Trump campaign; the president of CrowdStrike’s admission under oath to Congress of finding no evidence of any hack of the DNC servers; an NYU study showing minimal impact of Russian Facebook posts and the Clinton campaign paying for both CrowdStrike, and former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s fabulous opposition research on Trump.

The Hamilton Twitter File may at last be the final nail in the Russiagate coffin.

Our special guest tonight is independent journalist Matt Taibbi, a former reporter for Rolling StoneMagazine and author. His latest book is Hate, Inc. Matt also runs Racket, a Substack publication where his Hamilton 68 story was published.

We are also joined by former New York Times correspondent and author Chris Hedges, whose latest book is The Greatest Evil is War. And by John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer, author of The Reluctant Spy, and the man who blew the whistle on the agency’s torture program.

Hosts: Elizabeth Vos and Joe Lauria. Producer: Cathy Vogan.

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Featured image is from The Intercept

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Last week, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports sharply critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians living in the 1967 occupied territories. On February 1, Amnesty called on Israel to “dismantle the system of apartheid which is causing so much suffering and bloodshed”. Amnesty argued that since the British-based organisation launched its “major campaign against apartheid one year ago, Israeli forces have killed 220 Palestinians, including 35 in January 2023 alone. Unlawful killings help maintain Israel’s apartheid system and constitute crimes against humanity, as do other serious and ongoing violations by Israeli authorities such as administrative detention and forcible transfer”.

Amnesty called for Israel to be held accountable by the international community. The organisation’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard made the point that the failure to do so “has given Israelis] free rein to segregate, control and oppress Palestinians on a daily basis, and helps perpetuate daily violence. Apartheid is a crime against humanity, and it is frankly chilling to see the perpetrators evade justice year after year”.

Callamard accused Israel of attempting to “silence findings of apartheid with targeted Smear campaigns, and [argued] the international community allows itself to be cowed by these tactics”.

Amnesty reported, “Under apartheid, Israeli authorities control every aspect of Palestinians’ lives and subject them to daily oppression and discrimination through territorial fragmentation and legal segregation. Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories [OPT] are segregated into separate enclaves, with those living in the Gaza Strip isolated from the rest of the world through Israel’s illegal blockade, which has caused a humanitarian crisis.”

In addition to enforcing apartheid on Palestinians, Amnesty listed other war crimes Israel is committing in the occupied territories: planting Israeli colonists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, forcing Palestinians to leave their home areas (to make way for colonies or military zones), and demolishing Palestinian homes and entire villages.

On February 2, Human Rights Watch (HRW) castigated Israel for its use of “collective punishment against Palestinians” by sealing and demolishing homes of Palestinians who attack Israelis. HRW accused the Israeli army of “unlawfully” mounting raids on Palestinian cities and refugee camps and Israeli colonists of attacking “Palestinians and their property [but] rarely face punishment for these crimes.”

While HRW local representative Omar Shakir said Palestinian attacks on Israel civilians were “reprehensible crimes,.. such attacks cannot justify Israeli authorities intentionally punishing the families of Palestinian suspects by demolishing their homes and throwing [their families] out on the street”. Home demolitions and “sweeping movement restrictions” are glaring examples of unlawful collective punishment.

HRW wrote, “International Humanitarian law, including the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibits collective punishment, including the relatives of those accused of committing crimes, in all circumstances. Courts around the world have treated collective punishment as a war crime” although this is rejected by Israel’s Supreme Court.

Although the release of these damning reports coincided with the arrival in Jerusalem of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he expressed his condolences to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the “horrific terrorist attack” by a young Palestinian who killed six Israelis and a Ukrainian outside a building used as a synagogue in the illegal Nevi Yacov colony on the edge of Jerusalem. Blinken said nothing in public about 10 Palestinian deaths during Israel’s army raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank and two Palestinian fatalities on the eve of his arrival. Instead, he mouthed US support for the “two state solution” involving the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (plus Gaza) although he is well aware Israeli colonisation has made this impossible and the US is at fault for refusing to halt this enterprise before it became too late.

Blinken called on “all sides now to take urgent steps to restore calm, to de-escalate” with the aim of creating a sense of security for both Israelis and Palestinians.” Blinken is blinkered to the harsh fact that there can be no security for either Israelis or Palestinians as long as Israel continues to create and expand colonies, impose apartheid on Palestinians, conduct armed raids into Palestinian urban areas, and commit collective punishment against Palestinians. Instead of exerting pressure on Netanyahu to halt these illegal activities, Blinken reiterated the mantra that the US commitment to Israel is “iron clad”. Unless the US changes its approach, the cycle of violence will continue, waxing at times of unending Israeli provocations which heighten Palestinian feelings of hopelessness and make youngsters lash out.

To make matters worse, Israel’s peaceniks have been sidelined by the rightward shift of the country to the point that Netanyahu’s new government is the most hard-line, chauvinist, and expansionist ever. It is committed to expanding colonisation, cracking down on Palestinian resistance, and promoting both ultra-nationalism and religious orthodoxy.

Instead of taking a firm line with Netanyahu on his plan to reduce the powers of the Supreme Court, Blinken weakly urged Netanyahu to build a consensus about his intentions.

Blinken ignored the hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to protest against Netanyahu’s plan to undermine Israeli democracy by overhauling the court. These demonstrations have been the largest ever unrelated to the occupation and Israel’s forever wars. Since the emergence of the state almost 75 years ago, the court’s role to rein in excesses and illegalities has been increasingly important because Israel has no constitution to use as guidance.

Netanyahu, who is currently on trial for corruption and breach of trust, seeks to subvert the court to evade legal cases against sitting politicians, like himself and his choice for health and interior minister, Arie Deri, the leader of the Sephardi Shas party which has 11 seats in the Knesset and could bring down the current government by pulling out of the coalition.

Deri served nearly two years in prison in 2000-2002 for accepting bribes. In 2011, he resumed his leadership of the party, was re-elected to the Knesset but in 2018 was indicted for fraud, breach of trust, interfering in court proceedings, money laundering, and tax dodging. In 2021 most charges were dropped except tax evasion on condition he would not serve in public office for several years. Despite this deal, he was given two portfolios by Netanyahu when he formed his cabinet last December. The Supreme Court ruled last month he could not serve and was replaced by two Shas legislators chosen by Deri who remains as influential as ever.

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Featured image is from PressTV

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The U.S. Government is ratcheting up its attempt to control Russia and China and to impose America’s undefined “rules-based international order” to replace the U.N.’s existing, and far more clearly defined, international laws (which are produced not by any one nation, but instead by all member-nations of the U.N. and in accord with the structure and procedures set forth within the U.N.’s Constitution, the U.N. Charter).

America is seeking to replace the U.N.’s weak but existing international democracy among nations and impose, in place of it, a strong international dictatorship that the U.S. Government intends to impose by means of America’s 900 foreign military bases and of whatever consent which that imperial Government can obtain from its ‘allies’ or vassal-nations or colonies (over which the U.S. Government holds considerable sway by virtue of its dollar being the international reserve currency and its control over the IMF and World Bank and by other international agencies that likewise are effectively under the control of the U.S. Government).

By contrast: Russia, China, Iran, and many other countries, are fully committed to build upon and strengthen the U.N.’s international democracy, and would need to be militarily defeated by the U.S. and its ‘allies’ in order for them to yield to the dictatorship that the U.S. Government demands.

There is no way, other than via a World War Three (which would destroy the entire world), that the dictates by the U.S. Government and its ‘allies’ will be complied with, by them — the countries that insist upon preserving their own sovereignty over their own land.

America’s international sanctions that haven’t received the approval of the U.N. are the cause of most international conflicts in today’s world, and are examples of U.S. laws which the U.S. Government demands that the world’s other Governments must comply with in order for those other Governments and their citizens to avoid being punished by “secondary sanctions” that those American laws authorize for the American Government to apply against any nation or person that refuses to comply with America’s primary-sanction laws, which primary sanctions are directed against the Governments that the U.S. Government most wants to control (i.e., to add to the U.S. Government’s existing empire), such as Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, and Cuba.

Because Cuba is virtually bordering on the United States, there is objective reason for the U.S. to be concerned lest another major world power would place forces there against America (such as was the issue in 1962), but none of the other countries is at all a legitimate national-security concern to Americans — yet the U.S. Government pretends otherwise. ONLY imperialism is America’s actual reason for its having 900 military base in foreign lands.

The U.S. Government is now expanding its NATO military alliance against Russia so as to make NATO become also a military alliance against China, effectively to globalize its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and turn it into the entire world’s militarized police force coercing all non-U.S. Governments, and thus becoming the dictator to the entire world.

On 4 February 2023, the Wall Street Journal headlined “China Aids Russia’s War in Ukraine, Trade Data Shows: Despite sanctions, Moscow equips its jet fighters, submarines and soldiers with help of Chinese companies”, and opened:

China is providing technology that Moscow’s military needs to prosecute the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine despite an international cordon of sanctions and export controls, according to a Wall Street Journal review of Russian customs data.

The customs records show Chinese state-owned defense companies shipping navigation equipment, jamming technology and jet-fighter parts to sanctioned Russian government-owned defense companies.

Those are but a handful of tens of thousands of shipments of dual-use goods — products that have both commercial and military applications — that Russia imported following its invasion last year, according to the customs records provided to the Journal by C4ADS, a Washington-based nonprofit that specializes in identifying national-security threats.

C4ADS is a ‘charity’ for ‘peace’ that is staffed largely by retired American military experts, and its arguments are founded upon the view that any nation which disobeys the U.S. Government is a ‘threat’ to American national security; in other words, it is solidly neoconservative or U.S.-imperialistic, “You’re either with us or you’re against us”; and they won’t be satisfied (i.e., they assume that there won’t be ‘peace’) until America’s empire includes each and every nation. For them, ‘peace’ can exist only upon the basis of force; everything in international relations is a zero-sum game.

Victory should always go to the strongest. Might makes right. That’s basically the source the WSJ is citing as its authority here. This doesn’t mean the source (C4ADS) is necessarily lying, but that it is arguing for the U.S. to control Russia. Its argument favors continuation of the control over Ukraine on Russia’s border, that the U.S. Government had won in February 2014 in a coup that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected Government.

This might-makes-right view is popular in America.

Polls (such as this one published on 6 February 2023) show that the American public overwhelmingly favor the result of that coup, which started the war in Ukraine, but don’t know that it had been a coup at all (far less one that was run by U.S. President Obama’s people), which was called by one American expert “the most blatant coup in history.” It was hidden from the American public by the U.S.-and-allied news-media, just like the fact in 2002 had been hidden from them that there no longer were any WMD in Iraq — America and its ‘allies’ invaded there only on the basis of lies. (And even to this day, Americans don’t know that fact.)

The WSJ article continues:

Customs and corporate records show Russia is still able to import … technology through countries that haven’t joined the U.S.-led efforts to cut off Moscow from global markets. Many of the export-controlled products are still flowing through nations such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, whose governments are accused by Western officials of flouting the sanctions and controls. Turkish officials have said the sanctions are ineffective and that Ankara is playing an important role as an interlocutor with Russia. Under pressure from the U.S., Turkey has moved to halt some financial and business ties.

Notice the WSJ’s sly clause there, “whose governments are accused by Western officials of flouting the sanctions and controls,” implanting in the reader the false idea that those “sanctions and controls” were by international law instead of by imperialistic dictat, and were also implanting the false idea that “Western officials” there represented international law instead of their own U.S.-and-allied international tyranny.

America is now blatantly demanding other nations to comply with laws that the U.S. Government imposes that have no international validity under existing U.N.-authorized international law.

In effect, the U.S. Government is now openly at war against the U.N. itself and trying to replace it by brute force, not only militarily, but via the IMF and other U.N.-authorized organizations, so as to turn them all against the U.N. itself.

America has conquered its ‘allies’ (including — since February 2014 — Ukraine), and is at war against all other nations — its economic “competitors” — all of which it equates (in its implicitly zero-sum way) with being its diplomatic and military ‘enemies’.

If a person defines “evil” as the adjective that refers to any person who prefers zero-sum games to positive-sum games — prefers coercion to cooperation — then is the U.S. Government the most evil force in the world today? That is the question which should be debated and discussed the most, nowadays. Because: a person’s answer to it affects that person’s entire outlook and behavior toward society. The ramifications of this issue are immense.

For example: perhaps America is the world’s most competitive (zero-sum) nation and China is the most cooperative (positive-sum) nation, and perhaps this is the main reason why America especially craves to defeat China. Is that just a difference in ideology, or is it also a difference in ethics: a contest between evil and good?

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Global Times

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

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***

“I know only one thing: that I know nothing.” –Socrates

I’ve been reading “The Science Delusion” by Rupert Sheldrake, a timely treatise on fallible humans’ hubris.

It ought to be required reading for all public school children, so that they may understand how little the authorities actually know about life on Earth, how it works, and what it means (if anything.)

Knowledge is provisional. It’s multi-pronged. It’s contingent on the observer. And it’s complicated.

Exhibit A is the infamous double-slit experiment of quantum mechanics fame, which defies the laws of physics previously considered absolute fact.

The double-slit dilemma stretches the limits of my understanding of physics. I understand it shows light behaving like a wave and a particle at the same time, and the same particle on dual paths simultaneously. These are substantial things for physicists to have been wrong about for hundreds of years.

What discovery tomorrow will similarly undermine basic tenets of 2023 scientific knowledge?

This is the problem with orthodoxy of any kind. It’s a major flaw in conservative thinking in general. By “conservative,” I don’t mean the right-wing political ideology but the unwillingness to embrace new ideas in favor of old ones for no other reason than they are already established.

Whereas the high priest class once dominated the social hierarchy, sciencism is the trendy new religion of the intellectual elite – equally dogmatic in its epistemological approach to studying the natural world.

God died (metaphorically) unceremoniously about 200 years ago. But because there’s good evidence humans actually require someone or something to revere and to center culture around as a source of meaning, the bearded, robed God of the Bible was replaced with technocratic Science™, and scientists, as the object of worship in industrialized society.

But man, no matter how well-credentialed, doesn’t know very much more now than he did 200 years ago relative to the vast undocumented Great Beyond, which is still largely a mystery.

95% of the world is dark matter, as Sheldrake notes in his book, among multiple other illustrations of the limits of human knowledge.

No one has ever even objectively observed dark matter; we’re still as a collective species totally in the dark, metaphorically, on what dark matter actually is or how it works or how it interacts with light matter. It’s a total proverbial black box.

Given that 95% of the universe is locked in a black hole, untouched by human consciousness, you would expect some humility from the so-called “experts.”

For all the impressive achievements over the past several hundred years, they understand literally nothing about 95% of the matter in the universe. Their knowledge, in the best-case scenario, represents an infinitesimally small fraction of all the knowable knowledge out there in the ether.

Instead of humility, we’re treated to the weasel  Anthony Fauci, seated on the throne at the apex of the institutional hierarchy, declaring himself The Science™ with a straight face on national television, to a cacophony of uncritical applause by the neoliberal ruling class.

Hallelujah!

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This article was originally published on The Daily Bell.

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose and/or Substack, Locals, Gab, and Twitter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Now and then, even the most seasoned politician happens to slip up and accidently speak the truth. This is what occurred during a recent debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, when the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock openly stated that “we are fighting a war against Russia”. The German government was quick to say her words had been “misinterpreted”, but the truth is that she did nothing more than say it how it is.

Almost a year into the conflict, the narrative of Western intervention in Ukraine — that “Nato is not at war with Russia” and that “the equipment we’re providing is purely defensive” — is being revealed for what it always was: a fiction. Last month, at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, another kernel of truth slipped through the cracks at a briefing by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. Austin and Miller stated in no uncertain terms that the US was committed to going “on the offensive to liberate Russian-occupied Ukraine” — which, according to the United States, includes both the entire Donbas and Crimea.

The admission that the weapons being provided by the US and Nato are of an offensive, not defensive, character marks a significant U-turn for the Biden administration. In March last year, Biden promised the public that the US would not send “offensive equipment” and “planes and tanks” to Ukraine, because this would trigger “World War III”. Indeed, just a few months ago, the provision of tanks to Ukraine was still deemed unthinkable.

Yet in the coming months, the US is planning to deliver 31 Abrams tanks, and even Germany, after weeks of reluctance, has caved in to the immense pressure coming from Washington and other allies. The German government has agreed to send 14 of its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, and has also given the go-ahead to a number of other European countries which want to send their own German-made Leopard 2 tanks. Meanwhile, the UK has committed 14 of its own tanks. In total, Ukraine is set to receive around 100 tanks, but the number is likely to go up (Zelensky has asked for 300-500).

This is simply the latest in a long list of red lines that the US and Nato have crossed since the start of the conflict. At the start of the war, the New York Times cautioned that the overt supply of even small arms and light weaponry — initial provisions were limited to rocket launchers and anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles — “risks encouraging a wider war and possible retaliation” from Russia, while US officials ruled out more advanced weaponry as too escalatory. Just two months later, the Biden administration backtracked and announced that it would in fact be sending Mi-17 helicopters, 155-mm Howitzer cannons and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones.

At that point, a new red line was drawn: despite Kyiv’s requests, the US said it would not provide Ukraine with long-range rocket systems capable of striking inside Russian territory (the M270 MLRS and the M142 HIMARS) due to concerns in Washington that this “could be seen as an escalation by the Kremlin”. It took the administration just two weeks to change its mind, on the condition that Ukraine would not use them against targets on Russian territory — until, in December, that line was crossed as well, when Ukraine hit airfields hundreds of kilometres into Russia (with the US’s approval). The about-face over the shipment of battle tanks was just as quick, as we’ve seen.

In this apparently never-ending escalation, the only question is: what’s next? Ukraine is now pushing for Western fourth-generation fighter jets, such as the US F-16s. Biden and Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have ruled this out, but there’s no reason to believe they won’t backpedal on the F-16s as well, just as they’ve done on every other self-imposed red line. The Ukrainians, for their part, seem pretty confident. As the Ukrainian Defense Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, recently stated: “When I was in DC in November [2021], before the invasion, and asked for Stingers, they told me it was impossible. Now it’s possible. When I asked for 155-millimeter guns, the answer was no. HIMARS, no. HARM [missiles], no. Now all of that is a yes. Therefore, I’m certain that tomorrow there will be…F-16s.”

We can, therefore, expect fighter jets to be on the agenda at the Nato meeting next week. Several European countries, including France, have already signalled their openness to sending fighter jets to Ukraine and, according to Politico, Ukrainian pilots could soon start training on the F-16s in the United States. In the meantime, Lockheed Martin — one of the many US defence companies making a killing thanks to the conflict — has announced that it is going to ramp up production to meet the extra demand.

Jet fighters aside, however, we need to acknowledge that we are alreadyat war with Russia, as the German Foreign Minister inadvertently admitted. The fact that there has been no formal declaration of war is beside the point: the United States has not officially declared war since the Second World War, but this has not stopped it from intervening militarily in dozens of countries. The presence of actual American or Nato soldiers on the ground (though there have been reports of the presence of US special operations forces in Ukraine) is also, ultimately, of secondary importance. By providing increasingly powerful military equipment as well as financial, technical, logistical and training support to one of the warring factions, including for offensive operations (even within Russian territory), the West is engaged in a de facto military confrontation with Russia, regardless of what our leaders may claim.

Western citizens deserve to be told what is going on in Ukraine — and what the stakes are. Perhaps the wildest claim being made is that “if we deliver all the weapons Ukraine needs, they can win”, as former Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently asserted. For Rasmussen, and other Western hawks, this includes retaking Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 and which it considers of the utmost strategic importance. Many Western allies still consider this an uncrossable red line. But for how long? Just last month, the New York Times reported that the Biden administration is warming up to the idea of backing a Ukrainian offensive on Crimea.

This strategy is based on the assumption that Russia will accept a military defeat and the loss of the territories it controls without resorting to the unthinkable — the use of nuclear weapons. But this is a massive assumption on which to gamble the future of humanity, especially coming from the very Western strategists who disastrously botched every major military forecast over the past 20 years, from Iraq to Afghanistan. The truth is that, from Russia’s perspective, it is fighting against what it perceives to be an existential threat in Ukraine, and there is no reason to believe that, with its back against the wall, it won’t go to extreme measures to guarantee its survival. As Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, put it: “The loss of a nuclear power in a conventional war can provoke the outbreak of a nuclear war. Nuclear powers do not lose major conflicts on which their fate depends.”

During the Cold War, this was widely understood by Western leaders. But today, by constantly escalating their support for Ukraine’s military, the United States and Nato appear to have forgotten it, and are instead inching closer to a catastrophic scenario. As Douglas Macgregor, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, has written: “Neither we nor our allies are prepared to fight all-out war with Russia, regionally or globally. The point is, if war breaks out between Russia and the United States, Americans should not be surprised. The Biden administration and its bipartisan supporters in Washington are doing all they possibly can to make it happen.” According to a number of experts, a Ukrainian offensive on Crimea is one of the most likely ways this conflict could lead to nuclear warfare. Excluding a such extreme outcome, and barring a peaceful resolution to the conflict, the most likely scenario is the “Afghanistanisation” of Ukraine: a protracted conflict that could potentially last years, given that it is just as unlikely that Nato will allow Ukraine to be militarily defeated — whatever that would entail.

The simple truth, then, is that no one can “win” this war. Meanwhile, a protracted war only increases the likelihood of a direct conflict between Russia and Nato. This is now even acknowledged by the RAND corporation, the very influential and ultra-hawkish US military think tank. In a new report titled Avoiding a Long War, the authors warn against the risk of a “protracted conflict”, saying that this would lead to “a prolonged elevated risk of Russian nuclear use and a Nato-Russia war” that would seriously jeopardise US interests. “Avoiding these two forms of escalation”, they argue, is therefore “the paramount US priority” — also higher than “weakening Russia” or “facilitating significantly more Ukrainian territorial control”. This means that US interests would be best served by focusing on reaching “a political settlement” that might deliver a “durable peace”, for example by “condition[ing] future military aid on a Ukrainian commitment to negotiations”.

Ultimately, catastrophic scenarios aside, this is the most likely way in which the war will end — with a deal in which neither side loses or wins. Delaying this inevitable outcome simply means imposing more unnecessary death and destruction on Ukraine — and more economic suffering on a continent that is fast reaching breaking point.

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Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.

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Important Report by Michael Klare.

Preface and Executive summary below. Link to Complete Report

Preface

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Emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, lethal autonomous weapons systems, and hypersonic missiles pose a potentially existential threat that underscores the imperative of arms control measures to slow the pace of weaponization, according to a new report published Tuesday.

The Arms Control Association report—entitled Assessing the Dangers: Emerging Military Technologies and Nuclear (In)Stability—”unpacks the concept of ’emerging technologies’ and summarizes the debate over their utilization for military purposes and their impact on strategic stability.”

The publication notes that the world’s military powers “have sought to exploit advanced technologies—artificial intelligence, autonomy, cyber, and hypersonics, among others—to gain battlefield advantages” but warns too little has been said about the dangers these weapons represent.

“Some officials and analysts posit that such emerging technologies will revolutionize warfare, making obsolete the weapons and strategies of the past,” the report states. “Yet, before the major powers move quickly ahead with the weaponization of these technologies, there is a great need for policymakers, defense officials, diplomats, journalists, educators, and members of the public to better understand the unintended and hazardous outcomes of these technologies.”

A new @ArmsControlNow report assesses the extent to which military use of emerging tech could result in an accidental use of nuclear weapons in a crisis, and provides a framework for curtailing the indiscriminate weaponization of such tech.

Available at https://t.co/gPyDbcaOcd pic.twitter.com/fw55Gczx23

— Arms Control Assoc (@ArmsControlNow) February 7, 2023

Lethal autonomous weapons systems—defined by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots as armaments that operate independent of “meaningful human control”—are being developed by nations including China, Israel, Russia, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The U.S. Air Force’s sci-fi-sounding Skyborg Autonomous Control System, currently under development, is, according to the report, “intended to control multiple drone aircraft simultaneously and allow them to operate in ‘swarms,’ coordinating their actions with one another with minimum oversight by human pilots.”

“Although the rapid deployment of such systems appears highly desirable to many military officials, their development has generated considerable alarm among diplomats, human rights campaigners, arms control advocates, and others who fear that deploying fully autonomous weapons in battle would severely reduce human oversight of combat operations, possibly resulting in violations of international law, and could weaken barriers that restrain escalation from conventional to nuclear war,” the report notes.

The latter half of the 20th century witnessed numerous nuclear close calls, many based on misinterpretations, limitations, or outright failures of technology. While technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are often touted as immune to human fallibility, the research suggests that such claims and hubris could have deadly and unforeseen consequences.

“An increased reliance on AI could lead to new types of catastrophic mistakes,” a 2018 report by the Rand Corporation warned. “There may be pressure to use it before it is technologically mature; it may be susceptible to adversarial subversion; or adversaries may believe that the AI is more capable than it is, leading them to make catastrophic mistakes.”

While the Pentagon in 2020 adopted five principles for what it calls the “ethical” use of AI, many ethicists argue the only safe course of action is a total ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems.

Hypersonic missiles, which can travel at speeds of Mach 5—five times the speed of sound—or faster, are now part of at least the U.S., Chinese, and Russian arsenals. Last year, Russian officials acknowledged deploying Kinzhal hypersonic missiles three times during the country’s invasion of Ukraine in what is believed to be the first-ever use of such weapons in combat. In recent years, China has tested multiple hypersonic missile variants using specially designed high-altitude balloons. Countries including Australia, France, India, Japan, Germany, Iran, and North Korea are also developing hypersonic weapons.

DARPA’s HAWC program is a wrap…concluding with a successful @LockheedMartin #hypersonic missile flying more than 300 nautical miles and lots of data for the @usairforce. More: https://t.co/Yqq2Xl50jn pic.twitter.com/ilNN4xz0z4

— DARPA (@DARPA) January 30, 2023

The report also warns of the escalatory potential of cyberwarfare and automated battlefield decision-making.

“As was the case during World Wars I and II, the major powers are rushing ahead with the weaponization of advanced technologies before they have fully considered—let alone attempted to mitigate—the consequences of doing so, including the risk of significant civilian casualties and the accidental or inadvertent escalation of conflict,” Michael Klare, a board member at the Arms Control Association and the report’s lead author, said in a statement.

“While the media and the U.S. Congress have devoted much attention to the purported benefits of exploiting cutting-edge technologies for military use, far less has been said about the risks involved,” he added.

The report asserts that bilateral and multilateral agreements between countries that “appreciate the escalatory risks posed by the weaponization of emerging technologies” are critical to minimizing those dangers.

“As an example of a useful first step, the leaders of the major nuclear powers could jointly pledge to eschew cyberattacks” against each other’s command, control, communications, and information (C3I) systems, the report states. A code of conduct governing the military use of artificial intelligence based on the Pentagon’s AI ethics principles is also recommended.

“If the major powers are prepared to discuss binding restrictions on the military use of destabilizing technologies, certain priorities take precedence,” the paper argues. “The first would be an agreement or agreements prohibiting attacks on the nuclear C3I systems of another state by cyberspace means or via missile strikes, especially hypersonic strikes.”

“Another top priority would be measures aimed at preventing swarm attacks by autonomous weapons on another state’s missile submarines, mobile ICBMs, and other second-strike retaliatory systems,” the report continues, referring to intercontinental ballistic missiles. “Strict limitations should be imposed on the use of automated decision-support systems with the capacity to inform or initiate major battlefield decisions, including a requirement that humans exercise ultimate control over such devices.”

“Without the adoption of measures such as these, cutting-edge technologies will be converted into military systems at an ever-increasing tempo, and the dangers to world security will grow apace,” the publication concluded. “A more thorough understanding of the distinctive threats to strategic stability posed by these technologies and the imposition of restraints on their military use would go a long way toward reducing the risks of Armageddon.”

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

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Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Featured image: U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jacob Puente secures a Lockheed Martin AGM-183A to a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bomber at Edwards Air Force Base in Kern County, California on August 8, 2020. (Photo: Giancarlo Casem/USAF)

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The head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Khaled Hboubati, demanded on Tuesday, February 7, that Western countries, specifically the US and its allies, lift their siege and sanctions on Syria so that rescue and relief work can proceed unimpeded, after the country was devastated by a powerful earthquake on Monday.

“We need heavy equipment, ambulances and fire fighting vehicles to continue to rescue and remove the rubble, and this entails lifting sanctions on Syria as soon as possible,” Hboubati said at a press conference on Tuesday, as reported by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

A powerful earthquake registering a magnitude of 7.8 struck Turkey and Syria on Monday. Over 5,000 people have been reported dead so far. In Syria alone the death toll was 1,602 on Monday. These numbers are only expected to rise as a large number of people are suspected to be still buried under the debris of houses that collapsed in the earthquake and its aftershocks.

Kahramanmaraş, a city in Turkey, was reported to be the epicenter of the earthquake, and the nearby city of Gaziantep—home to millions of Syrian refugees—was reportedly hit the hardest. Relief and rescue operations in Turkey have been affected by bad weather as several of the affected areas have received heavy rain and snowfall on Monday and Tuesday.

Syria’s northern provinces such as Idlib, Latakia, Hama, and Aleppo have also been badly affected by the earthquake. Some of the affected areas in Idlib and Aleppo are under rebel control and densely populated by refugees from other parts of the country.

Though several countries including the US and its allies have extended their support to Turkey in its relief and rescue work, they have refused to extend similar assistance to Syria. The US State Department made it clear on Monday that it was only willing to support some work carried out in Syria by NGOs, but that it would have no dealings with the Bashar al-Assad government. “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,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said, as quoted by Al Jazeera.

On Monday, the Syrian government had issued an appeal to the international community asking for help. Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad is quoted in Al-Mayadeen as having said that his government was willing “to provide all the required facilities to international organizations so they can give Syrians humanitarian aid.”

Sanctions hamper relief and rescue work

Claiming that “Current US sanctions severely restrict aid assistance to millions of Syrians,” the American Arab anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) asked the US government on Monday to lift its sanctions. While it said that the NGOs working on the ground were doing a commendable job, it also said that the “lifting of the sanctions will open the doors for additional and supplemental aid that will provide immediate relief to those in need.”

The US Congress had adopted the so-called Caesar Act in 2020, according to which any group or company doing business with the Syrian government faces sanctions. The act extends the scope of the previously existing sanctions on Syria, imposed by the US and its European allies since the beginning of the war in the country in 2011.

The impact of sanctions on Syria’s health and other social sectors and its overall economic recovery have been criticized by the UN on several occasions in the past. The UN has also demanded that all unilateral punitive measures against Syria be lifted.

Meanwhile, countries such as China, Iran, Russia, Cuba, Algeria, and the UAE, among others, have expressed their willingness to provide necessary support to Syria, and have sent relief materials already.

Al-Mayadeen has however reported that the delivery of international aid, as well as the speed of relief and rescue work in Syria, continue to be impeded as the Damascus international airport is not fully operational at the moment. The airport was hit by an Israeli missile on January 2 and repair work is not yet complete.

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Featured image: The Syrian Arab Red Crescent demanded Western countries to lift sanctions on Syria to help with rescue and relief work, February 7, 2023. (Photo: SANA)

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There is no question that the circumstances surrounding the “balloon affair” between the United States and China are dodgy. Burlesque does not belong to China’s diplomatic toolbox. China never used balloons to browbeat adversaries. 

Unsurprisingly, expert opinion largely tends to go along with the Chinese contention, which implies that Beijing had no need to resort to such outmoded and difficult-to-control means such as a gas-filled balloon hoisted at 60000 feet above ground propelled by the winds to conduct surveillance over America’s super secret nuclear weapon sites when it has as sophisticated means as Americans would have to spy other countries through satellites. That seems a credible rationale, isn’t it? 

The big question is, can the balloon affair be the work of Vayu, the Hindu god of the winds, who in Indian mythology also is believed to act at times as the divine messenger of the gods? 

Seriously, Beijing insists that a Chinese company’s weather test balloon “with limited self-steering capability” deviated far from its planned course and was blown by winds across North America sometime early last week. 

From available details, Pentagon was all along tracking that wayward balloon and, in fact, President Biden was kept informed, who had promptly ordered it to be shot down, but inexplicably, nothing was done for days until on Saturday, as it drifted off the US’ east coast heading toward the vast Atlantic Ocean, it was brought down in a blaze of media publicity. 

However, a day earlier, on Friday, the White House abruptly announced the postponement of a major two-day visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken (during which he was expected to meet President Xi Jinping.) 

Biden took these extreme steps despite China’s plea that this was “entirely an unexpected situation caused by force majeure and the facts are very clear” and Beijing, in fact, even expressed “regret” (which is tantamount to an amende honorable, as the French would say.) 

Furthermore, there was even a conversation on Friday between Blinken and Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China Central Committee. Beijing’s readout noted that the two top officials “communicated with each other on how to deal with a chance occurrence in a calm and professional manner.” 

The initial Chinese Foreign Ministry press releases (here and here) were in a manifestly  conciliatory spirit. But Blinken chose to do some grandstanding and took a tough posturing calling it “an irresponsible act and a clear violation of US sovereignty and international law that undermined the purpose” of his forthcoming trip to Beijing. 

According to a Xinhua news agency report, the Chinese Foreign Ministry since expressed “strong dissatisfaction and opposition towards the US use of force to attack China’s civilian unmanned airship” and flagged that the “Chinese side had clearly asked the US side to properly handle the matter in a calm, professional and restrained manner.” 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry added, “Under such circumstances, the US use of force is a clear overreaction and a serious violation of international practice. China will resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the company concerned, and reserve the right to make further responses if necessary.”  

All in all, to borrow the Biblical metaphor, “the cloud as small as a man’s hand rising out of the sea” turned out to be a torrent on the way. That’s where the real danger lies. The Biden Administration is already “over-militarising” the US-China relationship, as pointed out thoughtfully by Harlan Ullman, a noted author and senior advisor at the Atlantic Council, recently. (Is the US over-militarising its China strategy?)  

The Biden Administration estimates that it has garnered a valuable chip by putting China on the wrong foot and ratcheting up tensions. In the language of gambling, Biden considered himself an “advantage player” who can choose to do nothing, or play the chip and run. 

The balloon affair is not without potential to be inflated to trigger a confrontation with China, but Biden might prefer to use it to intimidate Beijing and to create the backdrop for the impending landing of the NATO in the Asia-Pacific region. 

In the first ever Asian tour by the alliance’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg sharply criticised China on Tuesday, from Tokyo, for “bullying its neighbours and threatening Taiwan” and forewarning that “transatlantic and Indo-Pacific security is deeply interconnected.”

Equally, it just cannot be a coincidence that out of the blue, the Wall Street Journal in an exclusive report on Sunday, seemingly unrelated to the balloon affair, alleged that China “is providing technology that Moscow’s military needs to prosecute the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine despite an international cordon of sanctions and export controls.” 

The report claims that available “customs data show Chinese state-owned defence companies shipping navigation equipment, jamming technology and fighter-jet parts to sanctioned Russian government-owned defence companies.” 

The Journal based its report entirely on customs data provided by C4ADS, “a Washington-based nonprofit that specializes in identifying national-security threats“, which is of course distinguishable as a proxy of the US intelligence. 

Rivals and partners 

Simply put, Beijing is being threatened from all sides that Biden would now have the nuclear option to rally the entire “collective West” and start piling sanctions against China even if Xi Jinping keeps the strategic restraint not to invade Taiwan.

An editorial today in China Daily, the official newspaper, on Stoltenberg’s Asian trip takes note that his thesis of transatlantic and Indo-Pacific security being Siamese twins and the proposition that Russia and China form an evil axis threatening the rules-based international order “is something strategists in Washington are trying hard to peddle around the world.” 

To cap it all, the Stoltenberg visit, the balloon affair and the ensuing media build-up, and, most important, the Blinken trip to China (where he was reportedly to meet President Xi Jinping in what was touted by the Biden Administration as an effort to build a “floor for the relationship”) — all these also coincide with an important round of consultation in Moscow on Friday by Ma Zhaoxu who was recently promoted to a full ministerial position to oversee the daily affairs of the Chinese foreign ministry.   

The Foreign Ministry readout in Moscow (in Russian) on Ma’s consultations in Moscow stated that the two sides “carefully considered” their bilateral cooperation in the UN area — Ma is a former UN envoy —  and went on to say that he and his Russian counterpart deputy foreign minister Sergey Vershinin “paid special attention to persistent attempts by representatives of some countries to undermine the authority of the UN by using its platform to put pressure on sovereign states, as well as creating alternative and inclusive mechanisms outside the framework of the Organization in line with the concept of a ‘rules-based world order.’ ” 

Another meeting by Ambassador Ma with Russian DFM Andrey Rudenko “highly assessed” the Sino-Russian relations, confirmed “the mutual commitment to their gradual development” and discussed the “prospects for expanding bilateral ties in 2023.” (here)

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also received Ma Zhaoxu. Notably, the Russian Foreign Ministry press release highlighted that “They noted their rejection of confrontational policies, as well as attempts by individual countries to interfere in the internal affairs of other states, or to restrain their development by imposing sanctions and other illegitimate methods. The officials reaffirmed their intention to reliably defend the sovereignty, security, and development interests of the two countries, and to build together a more just and democratic multipolar world order.” 

Evidently, the Biden Administration realised that one main objective of Blinken’s trip to Beijing — ie., to weaken the Sino-Russian axis — was going to be a non-starter. The US’ sustained efforts to turn the Ukraine conflict as a tool to sabotage China-Russia relations have failed spectacularly. The economic and military ties between Beijing and Moscow are only  growing stronger. President Xi Jinping’s expected visit to Russia in spring heralds the steady upward trajectory of in the “no limits” partnership. 

Lavrov captured the verve of the Russian-Chinese partnership when he said in a TV interview on Friday that “although we do not create a military alliance, our relations are of a higher quality than military alliances in their classic sense, and they have no bounds or limits. And there are no taboo topics either. They are indeed the best in the history of both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, and the Russian Federation.” 

In reality, Russia and China are optimally acting out of their national interests. Thus, Russia sees the US as an “enemy” that (foolishly) seeks its destruction and dismemberment, while the US, for China, is but a rival and potential opponent. A Moscow pundit Dmitri Trenin caught the subtle nuances recently when he wrote, 

“This is not enough to form a military alliance between Moscow and Beijing. China naturally values its economic interests in US and European markets, and Beijing may change its mind in favour of a military alliance only if Washington becomes its enemy. For the sake of Russia alone, China is not willing to take this step.” 

The balloon affair can be regarded as a defining moment. It exposes that while China was approaching Blinken’s visit in good faith with the purpose of finding constructive ways forward, Washington didn’t view things the same way. That said, Beijing was under no illusions, either. A CGTN video clipping Friday was titled Blinken’s visit to China: A candid talk or political tactics? 

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***

Although US President Joe Biden’s policy on Russia is guided by the interests of the American military industrial complex and his son’s business activities in Ukraine, the US also has other special interests in the Eastern European country, especially relating to titanium.

Newsweek magazine revealed that the US and its NATO allies have an interest in Ukraine’s large titanium reserves. This is because Ukraine is one of seven countries that produces titanium sponge, the basis for making titanium plates. China, which represents 57% of global ore production, and Russia, with 13%, are also part of the select group.

The location of these reserves adds a geographic factor for the US to contend with and puts the country in a delicate situation as it imports more than 90% of titanium for its aviation, technology, and weapons industry. The volatility is only heightened because Washington is waging a trade war against Moscow and Beijing through sanctions.

Furthermore, the US no longer has titanium sponge in its national defence stockpile and the last domestic producer closed in 2020. Washington made this decision despite the fact that titanium is among the 35 minerals of great importance to its economy and national security.

From a more practical point of view, titanium is a critically important metal as it is extremely resistant. Just as importantly, it is 45% lighter than other resistant materials, such as steel. For these reasons it has been widely used for producing military equipment, such as planes, war helicopters, ships, tanks and even long-range missiles.

“[Titanium] is a key vulnerability. We’re talking about our ability to produce more planes, we’re talking about our ability to produce munitions. They all rely on titanium, and we’ve allowed ourselves to grow reliant on foreign suppliers for these things. Russia has previously been one of those primary suppliers,” a source close to the US defence industry told Newsweek.

This is one of the major reasons for the US’ interest in Ukraine. This is especially the case as it forms a part of the American strategy to become less dependent on countries it considers an adversary. For this reason, Washington wants to prioritize trade relations with Ukraine in this field.

It is worth noting that there are other Ukrainian resources that may be of interest to the US, such as corn, wheat and grains. However, the US is also interested in Ukraine’s oil, natural gas, steel, nickel, palladium and copper.

“Ukraine has really significant deposits of rare earth minerals, and if we play our cards right could actually be a really attractive alternative to Russian and Chinese sources, which is where a lot of dependency currently is,” one congressional staffer told Newsweek.

Washington found an ally in post-2014 coup Ukraine. The current Zelensky government has proposed to be a close partner of the US and the European Union, just like his predecessors since Maidan, and has actively sought to establish closer trade relations with the two actors.

According to Newsweek, “winning improved access to Ukrainian titanium will help the US in its simmering conflict with China, which policymakers expect to dominate the 21st century.”

However, for all the US’ hope surrounding Ukrainian titanium, the outcome of the war remains a major issue. According to the Kiev-based GMK Center in an article titled ‘Ukrainian titanium: the export of titanium ores from Ukraine decreased by 42% y/y in 2022’, the war in Ukraine “also affected the titanium industry, in particular, the mining of titanium ores and the production of titanium products.”

“Last year, the export volume of titanium ores decreased by more than 40%. In addition, the sanctions policy and the return to state ownership of titanium assets can lead to a redistribution of the market,” the author’s article added.

It is clear that the war has significantly affected the Ukrainian titanium industry and companies have not disclosed their production figures. According to market estimates though, production has significantly decreased. This should not be considered surprising when we know, in one example, that the Velta company was operating at only 50% of its capacity due to a decrease in electricity supplies.

The war has indefinitely postponed Ukraine’s strategic plans with the US in the titanium industry. Although Ukraine is one of the seven countries that produces titanium sponge and occupies a leading position in the global production and reserves of ilmenite ores, which is of huge interest to Washington, the war has uncertain outcomes and thus makes strategic planning in this industry difficult.

For example, Ukraine could lose all its Black Sea ports and most of its titanium reserves and industries to Russian forces. In such a scenario, it would be questionable whether the US would have the same enthusiasm for Ukrainian titanium.

What is evident is that the US has huge interests in Ukrainian titanium and was one of many reasons why Washington emboldened Ukraine to war with Russia. However, it is seemingly unlikely that Ukraine can be the titanium partner that Washington hopes, especially in the pursuit of replacing Russia and China.

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

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***

The United States Justice Department (DOJ) will fight a lawsuit intended to force President Joe Biden and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to release records on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

On October 19, 2022, prior to the release of thousands of documents in December, the Mary Ferrell Foundation sued [PDF] Biden and NARA for allegedly failing to fulfill their duties under the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

The complaint suggested that the “clear and convincing evidence” standard for postponing the release of records was not followed. Instead, a number of records were withheld yet again due to flimsy claims of “anticipated harm.”

Biden was also accused of failing to go record-by-record to identify the particular harm that would occur if an assassination record was made public.

According to the foundation, Biden declined to provide dates for records when it would be “reasonably anticipated that continued postponement would no longer be necessary.” Plus, dates for reviewing the records again were not set.

Jefferson Morley, journalist and vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, reported in his JFK Facts newsletter that DOJ attorneys had moved to dismiss the foundation’s lawsuit.

In their request for dismissal [PDF], the government insists that Biden followed the criteria in the JFK Records Act for postponing the release of records.

“Nothing in the JFK Act authorizes federal courts to second-guess the President’s determinations in that regard,” the motion for dismissal declares.

It adds, “If the President does decide to postpone the deadline [for disclosure of records], the underlying basis for the decision is also left entirely to the President’s discretion.”

The government maintains that the JFK Records Act does not limit Biden’s authority to “postpone the 25-year deadline for disclosing all assassination records.”

Biden Hasn’t Followed The Process He Outlined For JFK Assassination Records

By October 26, 2017, twenty-five years after the passage of the JFK Records Act, the secrecy surrounding the “decades-long effort” to release all JFK assassination records was supposed to come to an end.

Despite the deadline, on April 26, 2018, President Donald Trump postponed the disclosure of an “unspecified number of unidentified assassination records” for three and a half years.

Biden delayed the release yet again in 2021, claiming the National Archives needed more time to further review assassination records. A date for disclosure was set in December 2022.

Notably, the memo that Biden issued laid out a process for a one-year review and instructed agencies to draft an unclassified letter that included written descriptions of the “types of information for which the agency” proposed “continued postponement” and reasons for the postponement. It called for an unclassified index and a “specific proposed date” when agencies believed each withheld record could be released.

Though explanations for keeping each record secret were supposed to appear in the federal register (a centralized system for executive branch publications), none have been published.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation asserts that explaining to the public why certain assassination records can still not be released was required under the JFK Records Act, and that would seem to be reflected in Biden’s 2021 memo.

Justice Department attorneys, on the other hand, defend Biden, even though he has failed to follow the process outlined in his own memo.

Furthermore, it is unclear what proposed redactions from the DOJ, Defense Department, State Department, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were accepted or challenged by NARA.

More Than 10,000 Records Kept From The Public

It is estimated that more than 10,000 records are still secret due to opposition from within the CIA and various other executive branch agencies.

Following the release of records in December, CNN reported that researchers were frustrated. “The vast majority of the almost 1,500 documents released by the National Archives as new appear to be duplicates of previously released documents with only a few redacted words now revealed, often the name of a CIA case officer or the location of an overseas agency station that investigators had already pieced together. Some have no changes whatsoever.”

The Mary Ferrell Foundation is one group of researchers that were deeply disappointed. For many years, they have managed the “largest searchable electronic collection of materials related to the JFK assassination” in order to further the pursuit of the truth of how Kennedy was murdered.

Judge John Tunheim, who served as the chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) established by the JFK Records Act, previously said, “It’s time to release all the files.”

Tunheim described the standard for keeping records secret because they may name or involve informants. Agencies are expected to provide evidence that the informant is still alive and that there would be concrete harm if their name was disclosed.

He recalled that the ARRB had previously approved the postponement of a file that contained “evidence of a country’s president’s cooperation with the CIA.” Since that political party is no longer in control and has not been in power for a “long time,” there is “little risk of a government going down because of the release of that information.” Material of that nature should be public.

“There may be some hiccups in the agencies about releasing files, but these same sorts of things happened 30 years ago,” Tunheim concluded. “In the interests of transparency and honesty, everything should be released so that we [can] say that nothing is being hidden anymore.”

Lawrence Schnapf, the attorney representing the Mary Ferrell Foundation in their lawsuit, highlighted the fact that not all the records are in the control of the executive branch. For example, the Robert F. Kennedy Trust had JFK assassination records.

“[Attorney General] Robert F. Kennedy had his own Mar-a-Lago event. An hour after the president was killed, Robert F. Kennedy seized the records in the Oval Office, took them, and eventually they were deposited in the JFK Library.”

“We believe those records probably involve Cuba, maybe some embarrassing stuff. But they’re still being withheld,” Schnapf added.

This example is why they sued the National Archives, along with Biden. Schnapf and the Mary Ferrell Foundation believe NARA has not completed “outstanding search requests” and new searches for assassination records “known to exist but that are not part of the JFK collection.”

Another set of records still being kept secret include CIA files on George Joannides, who was the “chief of covert action at the CIA station in Miami and served as case officer for a New Orleans-based CIA-funded exile group that had a series of encounters with Lee Oswald in 1963.”

The Assassination Records Review Board’s final report in 1998 noted that the “CIA, FBI, Secret Service, and other organizations intentionally destroyed documents.” No meaningful action has ever been taken to deal with this serious matter.

As the lawsuit recalls, the JFK Records Act was passed in response to public pressure to end the secrecy around JFK assassination documents, which stemmed from executive branch agencies preventing their “timely disclosure.”

It is incredible that over 30 years later—and more than five years after a key deadline—the Justice Department asserts that under the JFK Records Act executive branch agencies are fully within their right to keep denying the public records without providing any sort of reasoning. That goes entirely against the statute.

In 2021, Biden acknowledged, “Almost 30 years since the [JFK Records] Act, the profound national tragedy of President Kennedy’s assassination continues to resonate in American history and in the memories of so many Americans who were alive on that terrible day; meanwhile, the need to protect records concerning the assassination has only grown weaker with the passage of time.”

If the Justice Department and the various executive branch agencies have their way, when officials finally release the last batch of assassination records there will no longer be any Americans alive who lived through the tragedy.

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***

Concerted efforts have been made to remove Prof. Frances Widdowson from her faculty position at the Mount Royal University in Calgary. One view of her status is that Prof. Widdowson has been “fired” even though her tenured status has not been properly terminated according to widely-recognized university codes of conduct.

Seeking to make way for its institution-wide program of “indigenization,” the administration of Mount Royal University sought to push aside her prominently-published critique of what she refers to as the “Aboriginal Rights Industry.” Her politically incorrect analysis extends to the legacy of Indian residential schools, federally-funded and church-run institutions that dominated Indian education in Canada until the late 1960s.

Building from this base, the prolific scholar of contemporary controversy in the academy has been widening her analytic approach to encompass the subject of “wokism,” the pedagogy presently in the ascendancy at most universities. The term, “woke” was first coined to identify the misguided extremism of many professors and their students.

In this time of Trudeau and Biden, the woke tribe is pushing forward deformed versions of their left-leaning attitudes with the support of many governments, Wall Street and numerous giant corporations. Among the goals of wokism seems to be the construction of radically transformed models of society that will undermine traditional families, national sovereignty, parliamentary institutions, religious freedom, and individual human rights including free speech, bodily autonomy and the property rights of middle class people.

There are some aspects of Prof. Widdowson’s commentary on the so-called Aboriginal Rights Industry and on the legacy of Indian residential schools that I find to be overstated or, occasionally, just plain wrong. Over two decades of academic work in the antecedents of today’s “Indigenous Studies” departments, I developed interpretations that sometimes run against the grain of Prof. Widdowson’s analytic framework.

That being said, however, Prof. Widdowson’s thoughtful reading of a wide array of pertinent primary and secondary sources leads the prolific scholar to many conclusions that deserve consideration as the basis for deeper reflections as well as possible revisions in interpretation. Especially in these times when overemphatic zealotry so dominates public discourse, it is especially important that teachers at all levels do their utmost in their pedagogy to highlight different opinions, perspectives and voices.

I took this approach when I was in the saddle as Associate Professor of Native American Studies at the University of Lethbridge. In this capacity I sometimes invited my intellectual foe, Prof. Tom Flanagan of the University of Calgary, to address my students. Prof. Flanagan’s students include former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, current Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, and Rebel News firebrand Ezra Levant. Where Prof. Flanagan’s critique of a wide constitutional interpretation of “Aboriginal and Treaty Rights” came from the right-wing of politics, Prof. Widdowson’s revisionism is more inspired by left-leaning thinkers.

Mob Rule at Alberta’s University of Lethbridge?

See this.

Prof. Widdowson was invited by Philosophy Prof. Paul Viminitz to make a presentation at the University of Lethbridge on Feb. 1. This invitation was at first embraced by the University’s administration. Its President, Dr. Mike Mahon, then changed the University’s position two days before the talk was scheduled to take place. Dr. Mahon was subjected to concerted pressure by some students, faculty members and Native organizations that objected to allowing space for a politically incorrect interpretation of the boarding schools’ legacies.

The reversal caught the attention of the Alberta Minister of Advanced Education, Demetrios Nicolaides, who responded to Dr. Mahon’s effort at cancellation by announcing the following, “I believe it is important for our universities and colleges to foster a strong culture of free speech and diverse viewpoints, even when those viewpoints are deemed controversial, or even offensive, barring speech intended to incite hatred or violence of course.”

 Former Premier Rachel Notley, still the NDP Leader in Alberta. then responded. Notley will be facing off against current Premier Danielle Smith in a hotly contested provincial election in May. Notley replied to Nicolaides as follows: “The idea of having someone come and speak at the university, to a student body that consists of many Indigenous students, about how they somehow benefited from residential schools is deeply troubling to me.”

See this.

 Rather than submit to the dictates of the powerful interests that had decided to cancel her talk, Prof. Widdowson decided she would attend the U of L as originally planned. She would share her presentation in the public space of the U of L’s Atrium. Her host, Prof. Viminitz, concurred with this decision and helped facilitate the presenter’s attendance.

The University’s fiddling with the on-off switch on this public presentation helped arouse polarized responses in the community. Several hundred community members attended. Students largely from the Education Faculty, The Liberal Education Faculty, and the Indigenous Studies Department played an important role in drumming and chanting to prevent Prof. Widdowson from being heard.

Another component of the attendees had come specifically to hear what the controversial professor had to say. Then there were those who were drawn by curiosity. They wanted to listen to the presenter and her detractors to better understand what all the fuss was about.

After returning home from the event a Lethbridge colleague of mine sent me the letter of Prof. Mark Mercer, President of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship. This letter, condemning Dr. Mahon for his failure to respect and defend academic freedom, is published below.

Clearly Dr. Mahon was not interested in dealing with such a critique. Instead he congratulated those who drowned out the words of their nemesis with loud drumming, chants and also by amplifying a discordant electric guitar playing heavy metal. After the event the outgoing U of L President justified his cancellation of  Prof. Widdowson’s talk by indicating “It is clear that the harm associated with this talk is an impediment to meaningful reconciliation.” In the words of the Toronto Sun editorialist, Lorne Gunther, Dr. Mahon “totally and cravenly reversed himself.” He gave into the “pitchforks-and-torches brigate” as he “cowered behind political correctness and victimhood bafflegab.”

See this.

After the event Dr. Mahon praised the event as “a reflection of the values of the University of Lethbridge.” He added, “I would like to express my sincere appreciation to our community members for conducting themselves in such a peaceful and powerful manner.”

See this.

Many of those I talked to in attendance profoundly disagreed that the militant drumming down of legitimate public discourse was a peaceful strategy and a honourable display of university values. Many remarked on the irony of hearing the phrase, “no room for hate” emanating from such emotionally-charged zealots intent on drowning out the basis for any public discourse at all.

In spite of it all Prof. Widdowson moved from the Atrium space into a long wide hallway where she did manage some short exchanges with a few interested parties who had come to the U of L to hear her talk on how Wokism is destroying academic freedom.

After about 90 minutes of chaotic activity the head of the University’s security division announced from a podium that the situation had become so dangerous that the event would have to be shut down. He did so after securing an agreement from Prof. Widdowson that she would leave the building via an underground passageway while accompanied by a squad of protective security guards.

Open Response from the President of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship

“Cancelling Dr Widdowson’s talk is an outrage that will stain the University of Lethbridge for years.”

31 January 2023
Michael J. Mahon PhD
President and Vice-Chancellor
The University of Lethbridge
4401 University Drive
Lethbridge, AB T1L 3M4 

Dear President Mahon,

I am writing as president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS), an organization of university faculty members and others dedicated to the defense of academic freedom and the merit principle in higher education. 

Your statement on Monday 26 January 2023, “Statement from the President – – Controversial Guest Speaker Appearance,” violated the important principle of institutional neutrality by describing Frances Widdowson’s  view as “in conflict with a number of values held by the University” and by (falsely) suggesting that Dr. Widdowson “seeks to minimize the significant and detrimental impact of Canada’s residential schools system.”  A university performs its social mission by enabling competing interpretations and views to be heard and debated.  When the university itself states a position on a matter of controversy, it renders itself inhospitable to robust and candid debate.  The university must remain neutral so that scholars, students and all other interested parties can discuss matters freely and openly in their search for truth.

Nonetheless, in your 26 January statement, you properly and firmly rejected calls to cancel Dr Widdowson’s talk, “How `Wokeism” Threatens Academic Freedom,” a talk organized by University of Lethbridge philosophy professor Paul Viminitz. In that statement, you affirmed the “commitment” of the University of Lethbridge “to protect free inquiry and scholarship [and] facilitate access to scholarly resources.”  You added the “Guest speakers … are afforded the same commitment to freedom of expression as members of our campus community.” 

Those who object to Dr Widdowson’s views may voice their disagreement, “but they may not obstruct or interfere with others’ freedom of expression.  Debate or deliberation on campus may not be suppressed because the ideas put forward are thought by some, or even most, to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or misguided.”

Despite the violation of the principle of institutional neutrality in the 26 January statement, you and the University of Lethbridge would have acted well and commendably were that the end of the matter. In ensuring that Dr. Widdowson may speak on campus and explaining the University of Lethbridge’s commitment to academic values and its academic mission, you would have performed your duties as a university president well.

Unfortunately, on 30 January, you updated your statement by retracting it and cancelling Dr. Widdowson’s scheduled talk.

In doing so, you have expressed disdain for discussion and debate and violated Dr. Viminitz’s right, as a professor at the University of Lethbridge, to fair use of university resources.  (Both Dr Widdowson and Dr Viminitz are on the Board of Directors of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship.  They have recused themselves from SAFS’ involvement in this case.)

Nothing that you mention in your 30 January statement justifies your action.  That some members of the University of Lethbridge community were upset that Dr Widdowson was scheduled to speak should have been held by you to be irrelevant to the university’s mission to promote inquiry and discussion.  You noted in your 26 January statement that the university may restrict “expression that violates the law, defames an individual, or constitutes a threat or harassment.  Dr Widdowson’s talk would have done none of these and in your 30 January statement you give no reason for thinking it would.

As a professor at Lethbridge, Dr Viminitz may invite speakers to campus and organize public talks featuring guests of the university.  Cancelling Dr Widdowson’s talk is tantamount to violating Dr. Viminitz’s academic freedom.  It is also to deny the many members of the university community who wished to hear Dr. Widdowson speak on campus the opportunity to do so. 

You mention “harm associated with this talk,’ harm independent of defamation, threat or harassment.  In doing so you stretch the concept of harm so thin and wide that just about anything is covered by it.  Anyone who wishes to shut down a talk in the future need only mention harm and you will be unable to find a principle to which to allow the talk to proceed.

That, as you claim, “this talk is an impediment to meaningful reconciliation” is not only false but dangerous, for it militates against openness and candor in discussions of reconciliation. 

Reconciliation, which, admirable as it may be, is not an academic value, must respect freedom of expression and academic freedom if it is to be mutual and lasting.

Cancelling Dr Widdowson’s talk is an outrage that will stain the University of Lethbridge for years.

We respectfully request that you respond to our letter. With your permission, we will post your response along with this letter on our website.

Sincerely,

Mark Mercer, PhD.
President, Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS)
1801 Chestnut Street
Halifax, NS  V3H 3T7
President@safs/ca
http://www.safs.ca
Facebook : https//www.facebook.com/safs.ca/ 

Professor of Philosophy
Halifax, Nova Scotia
[email protected]
http://professormarkmercer.ca/

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Dr. Anthony Hall is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.

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

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***

Step away from the blinders that partisan politics uses to distract, divide and conquer, and you will find that we are drowning in a cesspool of problems that individually and collectively threaten our lives, liberties, prosperity and happiness.

These are not problems the politicians want to talk about, let alone address, yet we cannot afford to ignore them much longer.

Foreign interests are buying up our farmland and holding our national debt. As of 2021, foreign persons and entities owned 40.8 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, 47% of which was forestland, 29% in cropland, and 22% in pastureland. Foreign land holdings have increased by an average of 2.2 million acres per year since 2015. Foreign countries also own $7.4 trillion worth of U.S. national debt, with Japan and China ranked as our two largest foreign holders of our debt.

Corporate and governmental censorship have created digital dictators. While the “Twitter files” revealed the lengths to which the FBI has gone to monitor and censor social media content, the government has been colluding with the tech sector for some time now in order to silence its critics and target “dangerous” speech in the name of fighting so-called disinformation. The threat of being labelled “disinformation” is being used to undermine anyone who asks questions, challenges the status quo, and engages in critical thinking.

Middle- and lower-income Americans are barely keeping up. Rising costs of housing, food, gas and other necessities are presenting nearly insurmountable hurdles towards financial independence for the majority of households who are scrambling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, mounting layoffs in the tens of thousands are adding to the fiscal pain.

The government is attempting to weaponize mental health care. Increasingly, in communities across the nation, police are being empowered to forcibly detain individuals they believe might be mentally ill, even if they pose no danger to others. While these programs are ostensibly aimed at getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with the government’s ongoing efforts to predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), the specter of mental health round-ups begins to sound less far-fetched.

The military’s global occupation is spreading our resources thin and endangering us at home.America’s war spending and commitment to policing the rest of the world are bankrupting the nation and spreading our troops dangerously thin. In 2022 alone, the U.S. approved more than $50 billion in aid for Ukraine, half of which went towards military spending, with more on the way. The U.S. also maintains some 750 military bases in 80 countries around the world.

Deepfakes, AI and virtual reality are blurring the line between reality and a computer-generated illusion. Powered by AI software, deepfake audio and video move us into an age where it is almost impossible to discern what is real, especially as it relates to truth and disinformation. At the same time, the technology sector continues to use virtual reality to develop a digital universe—the metaverse—that is envisioned as being the next step in our evolutionary transformation from a human-driven society to a technological one.

Advances in technology are outstripping our ability to protect ourselves from its menacing side, both in times of rights, humanity and workforce. In the absence of constitutional protections in place to guard against encroachments on our rights in the electronic realm, we desperately need an Electronic Bill of Rights that protects “we the people” from predatory surveillance and data-mining business practices.

The courts have aligned themselves with the police state. In one ruling after another, the courts have used the doctrine of qualified immunity to shield police officers from accountability for misconduct, tacitly giving them a green light to act as judge, jury and executioner on the populace. All the while, police violence, the result of training that emphasizes brute force over constitutional restraints, continues to endanger the public.

The nation’s dependence on foreign imports has fueled a $1 trillion trade deficit. While analysts have pointed to the burgeoning trade deficit as a sign that the U.S. economy is growing, it underscores the extent to which very little is actually made in America anymore.

World governments, including the U.S., continue to use national crises such as COVID-19 to expand their emergency powers. None are willing to relinquish these powers when the crisis passes. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the U.S. government still has 42 declared national emergencies in effect, allowing it to sidestep constitutional protocols that maintain a system of checks and balances. For instance, the emergency declared after the 9/11 has yet to be withdrawn.

The nation’s infrastructure is rapidly falling apart. Many of the country’s roads, bridges, airports, dams, levees and water systems are woefully outdated and in dire need of overhauling, and have fallen behind that of other developed countries in recent years. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that crumbling infrastructure costs every American household $3,300 in hidden costs a year due to lost time, increased fuel consumption while sitting in traffic jams, and extra car repairs due to poor road conditions.

The nation is about to hit a healthcare crisis. Despite the fact that the U.S. spends more on health care than any other high-income country, it has the worst health outcomes than its peer nations. Experts are also predicting a collapse in the U.S. health care system as the medical community deals with growing staff shortages and shuttered facilities.

These are just a small sampling of the many looming problems that threaten to overwhelm us in the near future.

Thus far, Americans seem inclined to just switch the channel, tune out what they don’t want to hear, and tune into their own personal echo chambers.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, no amount of escapism can shield us from the harsh reality that the danger in our midst is posed by an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution, Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

*

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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.

Prediction of a Disenchanted World “Inside the Iron Cage”

By Edward Curtin, February 08, 2023

This is one of those stories hard to believe.  When I first heard it, I thought it was a joke, some sort of parable, and my friend who was telling it to me had had too much to drink or was just pulling my leg.  I’m not sure.  Like so much in today’s world, the difference between fiction and fact has become very blurry.

How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline

By Seymour M. Hersh, February 09, 2023

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, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

From Progress to Bans: How Close Are Human Microchip Implants?

By Daniel J. Lohrmann, February 08, 2023

Many state governments are passing laws to prevent forced microchip implants on employees and others. For example, Wyoming just passed such a bill. According The Hill, “to date, at least 10 state legislatures in the United States have passed statutes to ban employers from requiring employees to receive human microchip implants.”

French Unions Stage Third Day of General Strikes Against Pension Reform

By Abayomi Azikiwe, February 08, 2023

President Emmanuel Macron of France has introduced a bill within the National Assembly which would make significant changes to the pension system established as a result of working class struggles over the decades.

Pfizer COVID/Vaxx Campaign is a Fraud: Criminal Charges against President of Switzerland

By Pascal Najadi, Todd Callender, and Alexandra Bruce, February 08, 2023

Pascal Najadi, a retired banker from Switzerland is at the center of a potentially huge sea change in the legal fight against the Globalist COVID financial fraud/bioterrorism campaign. Pascal has filed criminal charges of Abuse of Office under Article 310 of the Swiss Criminal Code against Swiss President Alain Berset, who is also that country’s former Minister of Health.

Russia-Ukraine war 2.0: First Tanks, Then F16s… Where Does this End?

By Jonathan Cook, February 08, 2023

Almost as soon as major Nato countries, led by the US, promised to supply Ukraine with battle tanks, the cry went up warning that tanks alone would be unlikely to turn the war’s tide against Russia.  The subtext – the one western leaders hope their publics will not notice – is that Ukraine is struggling to hold the line as Russia builds up its troop numbers and pounds Ukrainian defences.

Truth About Tanks: How NATO Lied Its Way to Disaster in Ukraine. Scott Ritter

By Scott Ritter, February 08, 2023

Tank warfare has evolved. The large force-on-force armored battles that were the hallmark of much of WWII, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, which served as the foundation of operational doctrine for both NATO and the Soviet Union (and which was implemented in full by the United States during Operation Desert Storm in 1991), has run its course.

Ballooning Paranoia: The China Threat Hits the Skies

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, February 08, 2023

On January 28, a device reported to be a “high-altitude surveillance balloon” entered US airspace in Alaska.  It then had a brief spell in Canadian airspace before returning to the US via Idaho on January 31.  On February 4, with the balloon moving off the coast of South Carolina, a decision was made by the US military to shoot it down using a F-22 Raptor from the 1^st Fighter Wing based at Langley Air Force Base.  The Pentagon has revealed that the collecting of debris is underway.

Vietnam Sees a Shared Future with China

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, February 08, 2023

The resignation of Vietnam’s President Nguyen Xuan Phuc a fortnight ago had an inevitability about it. The media was rife with speculation for weeks implicating Phuc’s close family members in corruption scandals. 

Open Letter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia re Dr. Charles Hoffe, February 6, 2023

By Elizabeth Woodworth, February 07, 2023

Dr. Charles Hoffe has been a physician in the Lytton community of British Columbia for nearly 30 years, looking after a largely native community after having gained his medical schooling from the University of Witwatersrand, the second ranked clinical medical university in South Africa.

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When I started campaigning to kick the military and defence sector off UK university campuses in 2017, little did I know that the organisation I would go on to co-found, Demilitarise Education, would discover these partnerships are worth over £1bn.

These are lucrative relationships, with money flowing between parties in the form of academic and research partnerships and investments. But £1bn is still far below the total we eventually expect to uncover.

What is the precise nature of these relationships, and how did the arms trade so closely enmesh itself in higher education?

In our findings so far, research partnerships account for £576m, or roughly 55% of the total figure. This is university research funded by weapons-producing companies and/or government bodies for military technology, aeronautics or other arms-related projects.

It often involves arms companies like BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce or QinetiQ directly as ‘industry partners’.

Accounting for £495m, or roughly 45% of the total, are monetary investments. These are made by universities either directly in arms companies themselves, or indirectly through third-party investments or fund managers like Barclays, Lloyds or BlackRock holding shares in arms companies.

A small proportion of the figure (<0.1%) comes from consultancy fees, where private arms companies pay universities for their expert input into research, development, and business operations.

A further aspect is academic partnerships which, while forming only a small proportion of the monetary value of partnerships overall, are perhaps the most visible to students.

Academic partnerships include the development of learning and career opportunities between universities and the arms industry/defence sector, such as sponsored academic awards, careers fairs and graduate schemes.

From our research so far, the universities with the largest involvement in the arms trade are Bristol and Birmingham whose partnerships value above £50m.

King’s College London, the University of Sheffield and the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine are at around £40m, with the universities of Nottingham, Glasgow, Cambridge and University College London close behind.

The £1bn figure is just the tip of the iceberg – with many universities refusing to be transparent. By September 2023, we will have compiled research on every university in the country. This data will drive the campaign for total demilitarisation.

Taking over universities

How did we get here? The arms trade takeover of universities can be partly explained in financial terms. In a commercialised, marketised context, universities have become increasingly driven by profit motives, by their bottom line.

The deep pockets of the arms industry give ample opportunity for them to exploit universities for weapons research and development.

This commercialisation process has changed how universities view their role and how knowledge is produced, as university research and education activities have been turned into a market into which arms companies can bid for space.

Take for instance, the University of Sheffield. It launched the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) two decades ago with support from aerospace giant Boeing, with the Centre now boasting partnerships with the likes of BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce.

Doctoral researchers and engineering students in the AMRC work on projects like using robotics to enhance the manufacturing capacities of BAE Systems – a company for which arms account for 97% of total sales.

Or take the University of Bristol, which has partnered with the likes of Leonardo, QinetiQ and Rolls-Royce to offer a Master’s course in Aerial Robotics – essentially drone development.

These kinds of partnerships change the way that education is oriented. But they have not arisen solely through commercial, market processes, but have been spurred on by successive governments’ militarisation agendas.

Militarisation

The UK government sees major advantage in hosting weapons-related research in universities, and historically fostered such research ties when privatising publicly-owned research laboratories.

Government research bodies such as the Defence and Science Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) regularly co-sponsor research programmes backed by weapons companies and the Ministry of Defence (MoD), supporting projects with public funds to bring military technology programmes into universities.

And while these bodies are classified as non-military, they commit enormous amounts of funds and energy towards building “national defence capability”. For instance, a £4.5m EPSRC and DSTL-sponsored research project on autonomous aircraft has been undertaken in collaboration with ‘industry partners’ including BAE Systems, Thales and QinetiQ.

These commercialisation and militarisation processes have been described as the instrumentalisation of education. Arms companies and military bodies treat universities as sites to further their profit or defence motives, undermining universities’ value-free and social-benefit model of knowledge production.

Corporate profit

There is ample evidence of the ways in which the UK military and arms companies treat universities as key to achieving their corporate objectives.

Take, for instance, Physics and Astronomy Doctoral Training at the University of Exeter being designed in line with MoD priorities in the field of electromagnetic materials. This Doctoral Training is then run in partnership with the US Air Force, Thales and QinetiQ.

Or take the £12m accepted by the University of Bristol for research projects, titles of which are withheld, from BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, GKN and Northrop Grumman between 2017/18 and 2020/21. Over this period, Bristol accepted over £500,000 from the same companies for “consultancy” services rendered.

This is an urgent issue since arms-sponsored research agendas, particularly in engineering departments, undermine or distract from the ability of universities to create knowledge and innovation for the public good.

The military sector and arms industry make their profits from resource exploitation, conflict and the building-up of weapons reserves: the exact things generating instability. Research which could fuel peaceful, sustainable innovation can easily be crowded out, particularly given that defence research has more links to security policy making than research on human security.

Undermining values

When, back in 2018, I put it to Dame Nancy Rothwell, Vice Chancellor of the University of Manchester, that its research collaborations with BAE Systems undermined the values that the university should represent, her response was telling.

Rothwell suggested that while our government does it, why wouldn’t they?

But it is not only that the government does it, it is that they actively encourage and co-sponsor companies like BAE in university research. The state, our educational institutions, private entities in the arms trade – they are all party to this military-industrial-academic complex.

The concerns of a Yemeni student at the University of Manchester, whose relatives may have been killed by BAE-produced weaponry, appear to matter not: the national agenda of securitisation and militarisation mean that British defence manufacturing is being promoted  even when it is complicit in serious human rights breaches.

Young minds from primary school all the way through to universities, are being manipulated into believing that war is normal and that British military operations actually help people.

The truth is, our security relies on the health of the planet and people, not on the health of our militaries, and military spending is not based on a sound analysis of national security.

Tip of the iceberg

The way we document these partnerships is through our university and arms trade database, which profiles every brick and mortar university in the country.

The first thing we track is whether a university has a stated policy regarding their relationship to the military and defence sector, before digging deeper into their partnerships to see if their ethical commitments hold up.

Along with student activists in our community, we use Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to try to pry open university files and find out about their specific partnerships: financial and investment ties, research projects, consultancy services, sponsorships, and academic or careers links.

But this is often not straightforward: information on university-arms trade research is often contractually protected, and universities withhold information on their investments to protect their “commercial interests”.

For instance, while the University of Glasgow publishes its investment information under its ‘Socially Responsible Investment’ commitments (its £2.5m investment in the arms trade not apparently violating its social responsibility), others like the University of Cambridge keep this information hidden, withholding it on the basis of commercial sensitivity.

Beyond FoI disclosures, the database is also populated by information drawn from our partners, such as Stop Killer Robots in their excellent report on university involvement in autonomous weapons system development, and from information published by the likes of the EPSRC.

Partial demilitarisation

Some universities, for example Bedfordshire, Wrexham Glyndŵr and University of the Arts London, have made the first steps towards ending their partnerships with the arms trade.

But what we’ve seen so far has been partial demilitarisation – in either investments or careers – with exclusions for some companies based on criteria like where their arms are sold or the type of weapons produced.

Because of that, we created the Demilitarise Education Treaty, a document which acts as a guide to change and comprehensive demilitarisation. Presenting university leaders with this evidence, from the dED database paired with the Treaty, is a powerful step within student demilitarisation movements.

The joint aim is the creation of a global precedent where it is unacceptable for universities to partner with the defence sector.

To create a more peaceful world, our universities should support and develop innovations to help us face modern-day security challenges – rather than investing in ones that negatively contribute to the increasing threats we face.

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Jinsella is the Co-Founder & Executive Director of Demilitarise Education. You can support the Demilitarise Education petition by going here.

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Mere days after the United States pompously announced that it has soundly defeated an adrift weather balloon, another absurdity has taken the headlines in the mainstream media. Apparently, China somehow managed to overtake America in the number of ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) launchers. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal on February 7, citing the Senate’s and House’s Armed Services Committees. According to WSJ, the commander of the US Strategic Command, which oversees America’s nuclear forces, notified the US Congress about the supposed Chinese advantage.

“The number of land-based fixed and mobile ICBM launchers in China exceeds the number of ICBM launchers in the United States,” the commander stated.

The author of the WSJ article himself admitted that the US is currently modernizing its entire nuclear triad (land, sea and air-launched nuclear weapons) and that “it has a much larger nuclear force than China”. The Strategic Command also notified US lawmakers that America still has more land-based ICBMs than China, as well as several times more thermonuclear warheads mounted on those missiles. Worse yet, the report doesn’t even include SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles) and strategic bombers that make the US dominance even more pronounced.

But US officials and experts are claiming that “many of China’s land-based launchers still consist of empty silos”, meaning that Beijing “potentially has more launch options”. The lawmakers cited these launchers as “a portent of the scale of China’s longer-range ambitions and are urging the US to expand its own nuclear forces to counter the Russian and Chinese forces”. According to Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, “China is rapidly approaching parity with the United States”.

“We cannot allow that to happen. The time for us to adjust our force posture and increase capabilities to meet this threat is now,” Rogers stated.

He then criticized America’s compliance with the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), claiming this is “inhibiting the US from building up its arsenal to deter Russia and China”. And while China isn’t included in the treaty (set to expire in 2026), Russia is, meaning that Moscow is also “inhibited” by it, making the assertion all the more illogical. On the other hand, many US experts are now claiming that it’s in the US interest to preserve treaty limits with Russia and to also attempt to draw Beijing into it, while still continuing with constant modernization of America’s nuclear arsenal.

Rose Gottemoeller, a US arms control expert who took part in negotiating the New START, stated: “It’s in our national interest to keep the Russians under the New START limits. We need to complete our nuclear modernization according to plan, not pile on new requirements.”

The WSJ report posits that the US is now trying to deal with Russia and China by using a mix of arms control treaties and upgraded nuclear forces. The Pentagon’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review identified both superpowers as strategic rivals, stating that “by the 2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries.”

However, while claiming that it wants to preserve the New START, the troubled Biden administration seems to be working towards eliminating it. Just last week, the US accused Russia of violating the treaty by refusing to allow on-site inspections, although the US itself is doing the same, meaning Moscow is simply responding in kind. Such actions indicate that Washington DC might be trying to sabotage the New START because it’s frustrated that China isn’t included in it.

The Pentagon claims that Beijing will increase its current arsenal of 400 warheads to 1,500 by 2035. At present, China’s nuclear arsenal includes an unspecified number of mobile ICBM launchers, while the US military claims that the Asian giant also operates approximately 20 liquid-fueled, silo-based ICBMs, but that it’s also building three ICBM silo fields intended to house approximately 300 modern solid-fueled missiles. For comparison, the US fields 5,428 warheads, with at least 400 land-based ICBMs. In other words, the current American nuclear arsenal is over 13 times larger than China’s, while its land-based ICBMs outnumber Beijing’s by more than 20 times.

US experts are often debating what China plans to do with the aforementioned silos it’s now allegedly building. Some claim that, while Beijing currently doesn’t have enough nuclear-tipped ICBMs to fill all silos, it might leave some empty or install conventionally armed missiles. Still, the sheer magnitude of the mental gymnastics used by the US political establishment to present itself as the “party in jeopardy” in this case is ludicrous for anyone familiar with the size of America’s nuclear arsenal. Even with the assertion that China will have 1,500 nuclear weapons in 2035, including 400 land-based ICBMs, the US would still have a 3:1 advantage, making the accusations against Beijing a moot point.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

Things are getting psychotic. As you listen to EU leaders, all parroting identical ‘good news’ speaking points, they nonetheless radiate basal disquietude – presumably a reflection of the psychic stress from, on the one hand, repeating ‘Ukraine is winning: Russia’s defeat is coming’, when, on the other, they know the exact opposite to be true: That ‘no way’ can Europe defeat a large Russian army on the landmass of Eurasia.

Even the colossus of Washington confines the use of American military power to conflicts that Americans could afford to lose – wars lost to weak opponents that no one could gainsay whether the outcome was no loss, but somehow ‘victory’.

Yet, war with Russia (whether financial or military) is substantially different from fighting small poorly equipped and dispersed insurgent movements, or collapsing the economies of fragile states, such as Lebanon.

Initial U.S. braggadocio has imploded. Russia neither collapsed internally to Washington’s financial assault, nor fell into chaotic regime change as predicted by western officials. Washington underestimated Russia’s societal cohesion, its latent military potential, and its relative immunity to Western economic sanctions.

The question worrying the West is what the Russians now will do next: Continue to attrit the Ukrainian army, whilst simultaneously de-stocking NATO’s weapons inventory? Or roll out the gathering Russian offensive forces across Ukraine?

The point, simply put, is that the very ambiguity between the threat of the offensive and implementation is part of the Russian strategy to keep the West off-balance and second-guessing. These are the psychological warfare tactics for which General Gerasimov is renown. Will it come; from whence, and where will it go? We do not know.

Russia’s timing will not be shaped by the western political calendar; but when, and if, an offensive becomes propitiate to Russian interests. Furthermore, Moscow has its eye on two fronts: the financial war (which may argue for a slower military roll out to allow levels of economic pain to accrete) and the military situation (which may, or may not, favour the slow incremental, extirpation of the Ukrainian capacity to fight at all). Former Senior Adviser to the U.S. Defence Secretary, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, sees a big force roll out – and soonish. He may be right.

This latter consideration must be set against the bigger picture: Russia primarily is engaged in the roll-back of U.S. hegemony, and pushing NATO out from the Asian ‘Heartland’. Russians have known for some time that the ‘Global Order system’ is not sustainable (post-WWII structures are already clearly visible in the rear-view mirror). And both Russia and China appreciatethat there is no graceful – or short cut – way to undo such a large system.

The latter know that the West cannot be trusted and is destined to fall. For some years, Russia and China have been restructuring their economies and building their militaries – preparing for the inevitable collapse of the U.S. empire (whilst keeping fingers crossed that the ‘fall’ will not entail Apocalypse).

In practice, both Russia and China have been at pains to moderate that collapse, as far as possible. No one benefits from an uncontrolled implosion of the U.S. However, the U.S. is taking steps too far with its Ukraine project, and Russia is going to use this conflict to facilitate the end of the U.S. empire – there is really no other option.

As Kelley Beaucar Vlahos in the American Conservative underlines, U.S. factions have been preparing Russia’s ‘burial’ for many years. Indeed, one of most damaging facts to emerge from Matt Taibbi’s ‘Twitter Files’ exposé has been: “how aggressive congressional lawmakers and federal agency officials were – in pushing a cynical narrative that brought the social media giant to heel whilst setting up the Russian bogeyman that haunts U.S. foreign policy and posturing in the Ukraine war today”.

That concocted story of Russia trying to destroy U.S. democracy brought public buy-in for a new war with Russia.

This existential fight can’t stop now: It might be argued that the Europeans and Americans are in a bubble of everything is optics and ‘all’ is PR immediacy and theatre – and we all need to play this game. They may well also be projecting the same zeitgeist onto the Russians and the Chinese, believing that they must think similarly: No values, no belief in anything, except whatever plays best on MSM.

Looked at from this perspective, it truly is a cultural clash – one reflecting the western incapacity for empathy. The West genuinely may think that Putin’s attention is focussed above all on ratings – just as it is for Macron, Scholz and Biden – and that when hostilities end, it will be business as usual. They may genuinely not understand that this is not how the rest of the world thinks.

Within this mindset exists, ‘‘War is business’ … Tanks a lot, Now Give Us F-16s!’ No sooner had the U.S., Germany and other NATO powers announced the major release of main battlefield tanks for Ukraine, than Kiev immediately started demanding the supply of F-16 warplanes. Indeed, Ukrainian defence official Yuriy Sak brazenly commented about the relative ease of the “next big hurdle” of acquiring F-16s fighter jets:

“They didn’t want to give us heavy artillery, then they did. They didn’t want to give us HIMARS [missiles], then they did. They didn’t want to give us tanks, now they’re giving us tanks. Apart from nuclear weapons, there is nothing left that we will not get.”

This is a prime example of ‘war as business’ syndrome – and politics is about amassing money. That means F-16s are up next, and that means Poland – F-16s would not be based at an airbase in Ukraine. And extending the battlespace to Poland, inevitably would lead to more ‘war as business’: Tanks, APCs and F-16s. The Military Complex will be rubbing its hands in glee.

Predictably, the war-zealots’ frustration with the collective West’s failure to stem the tide of Ukrainian defeat is growing, and has been further compounded by the Rand Corporation(Pentagon-funded) report last week which amounted to a forensic rebuttal of the justifying rationale for the war in Ukraine. Emphasising that, though Ukrainians are doing the fighting, their flattened cities and decimated economy does not comport with Ukrainian interests.

The Report warns that the U.S. should avoid ‘a protracted conflict’, declaring Ukrainian victory as ‘improbable’ and ‘unlikely’ – and significantly warns of the conflict bleeding into Poland. The contingency that the U.S. risks inadvertently sliding towards nuclear war over several ‘issues’ is also highlighted.

On this last point, the Rand Report is prescient: The head of the Russian delegation to the OSCE this week has publicly warned that should western armour-piercing depleted uranium, or beryllium projectiles be deployed in Ukraine – as were used by the U.S. in Iraq and Yugoslavia with devastating consequences – Russia would view a such deployment as constituting the use of dirty nuclear bombs against Russia, with ensuing consequences.

If there were any doubts about Russian ‘Red Lines’, and where they lie, there can be none now. Just to be clear, ‘consequences’ equals a possible Russian nuclear response. The West has been warned.

If frustration at the failing Ukrainian military project be ‘the cause’, desperation is the sequel.

“Like you, I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea”, Victoria Nuland opined last week. This statement shows impotence, more than anythingelse (translated, Nuland is saying, OK folks, we are not impotent as – wink, wink – we still managed to destroy the gas pipeline for the EU).

The whole PR campaign for more tanks looks more like an attempt to give extra morale to Ukrainians and their supporters in Europe (given that the tanks will not change the course of war) – a ‘going through the motions’, effectively nothing more significant. Ditto for the political proposals put forward by Secretary of State, Blinken, and Victoria Nuland last week. They look to have been drafted knowing they would be rejected in Moscow – and they were.

Yet to give the Blinken-Nuland combination their due, if neo-cons are hopeless at the execution of their war projects – which almost invariably end disastrously – they are brilliant at manipulating States into becoming their accomplices – contrary to their own national interests.

Where the neocons have been given free-range is on destroying Europe, politically, economically and militarily. The U.S. itself (and the wider world) must be absolutely astonished at the degree of European subservience, and the absolute control of EU leadership that these neo-cons have exercised.

NATO’s members were never strongly united behind Washington’s crusade to fatally weaken Russia. The EU (especially French and German) populace has no stomach for body bags. But the neo-cons correctly espied the European Achilles Heel: It was Poland, Lithuania, the other Baltic Republics and the Czech Republic. The U.S. neo-cons allied themselves with this radical Russophobic faction who want Russia dismembered and pacified, and to seize the levers of EU foreign policy away from France and Germany. The latter sat silent and impotent at Bucharest in 2008, when the NATO ‘door’ was thrown open to Georgia and Ukraine. Why did they not then express their reservations which they say they had at the time?

Weak leadership has lifted the lid on the European Pandora’s box, for all the old ghost European animosities, jealousies and naked ambitions to waft out as dark vapours. Is there anyone who can close its lid now?

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***

Pope Francis‘ unprecedented message during his African tour early February relates sustainable peace and unity, economic development and citizenry welfare. The messages also touch on social questions especially how to forge an illuminating future devoid of ethnic rivalries, corruption and distrust that have fueled so many bloody conflicts in Africa. The 86-year-old pope brilliant words were received with resonating applause, especially crowds consisting the youth, down-trodden and marginalized citizens during his tour to Africa.

Pope Francis was urged conflict-ridden African countries to work towards peace and reconciliation. For decades, many African countries still bear the scars of civil war. The political differences and horrific atrocities have affected much-needed Africa’s unity. It has further contributed to weak institutions, slowed down development, and the under-development consequently provides grounds for new conflicts. Across Africa, most of the civil wars leave thousands of people dead, million displaced, and deeply impoverished.

The Pope underlined the fact that lands in the great African continent have suffered greatly from lengthy conflicts, and these conflicts were driven by greed for resources at the expense of innocent victims, and denounced “economic colonialism” in the continent. Pope Francis demanded that foreign powers stop plundering Africa’s natural resources, and the multinational extraction industries. He recalled how many people arrive in north Africa hoping to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, only to find themselves “taken to camps, and suffering there. Let us pray for all those people.”

Across Africa, during political campaigns, almost all the potential candidates eyeing for the presidential position make skyline promises and pledges to uproot corruption. Military also use corruption as one of the reasons for overthrowing constitutionally elected governments. The practical reality is that corruption has become part and particle of African political culture, and politicians are always getting involved in flagrant violations of constitutions.

Transparency International, a Berlin-based global NGO that focuses on reducing graft, these past years, has attempted researching and documenting reports on corruption. It says corruption, in practice, is worldwide. It ran a survey in sub-Saharan Africa in 2022 to attempt to measure the level of corruption.

The latest survey report says only a few countries, though, stood out as remarkably clean across Africa. Its report for 2022, indicated that there is a seated corruption in the majority of African countries, except few countries such as Botswana, Seychelles and Cape Verde. The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) reveals that 124 countries have stagnant corruption levels, while the number of countries in decline is increasing. This has the most serious consequences, as global peace is deteriorating and corruption is both a key cause and result of this.

It also show that corruption and conflict feed each other and threaten durable peace. On one hand, conflict creates a breeding ground for corruption. Political instability, increased pressure on resources and weakened oversight bodies create opportunities for crimes, such as bribery and embezzlement. Unsurprisingly, most countries at the bottom of the CPI are currently experiencing armed conflict or have recently done so.

On the other hand, even in peaceful societies, corruption and impunity can spill over into violence by fuelling social grievances. And siphoning off resources needed by security agencies leaves countries unable to protect the public and uphold the rule of law. Consequently, countries with higher levels of corruption are more likely to also exhibit higher levels of organized crime and increased security threats.

Corruption is also a threat to global security, and countries with high CPI scores play a role in this. For decades, they have welcomed dirty money from abroad, allowing kleptocrats to increase their wealth, power and geopolitical ambitions. The catastrophic consequences of the advanced economies’ complicity in transnational corruption became painfully clear following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In this complex environment, fighting corruption, promoting transparency and strengthening institutions are critical to avoid further conflict and sustain peace.

“Leaders can fight corruption and promote peace all at once. Governments must open up space to include the public in decision-making – from activists and business owners to marginalized communities and young people. In democratic societies, the people can raise their voices to help root out corruption and demand a safer world for us all,” explained Daniel Eriksson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Transparency International.

Under the presidency of Jacob Zuma, who ruled South Africa from 2009 to 2018, corruption was at its highest. Zuma participated in anti-apartheid struggle until South Africa finally attained its independence in 27 April 1994. He held various positions in ruling African National Congress (ANC) until he was elected president of South Africa. Before that, he was the deputy to President Thabo Mbeki, but was dismissed of corruption over arm deals. There were multiple graft scandals, that he was forced to step down in February 2018, and currently spends time in prison, and faces corruption allegations in court.

In January 2018, as elected president of the African National Congress, Cyril Ramaphosa has raised hopes that he will stamp out corruption.

“Corruption must be fought with the same intensity and purpose that we fight poverty, unemployment and inequality. We must also act fearlessly against alleged corruption and abuse of office within our ranks,” Ramaphosa declared in his maiden speech after his election. “We must investigate without fear or favor the so-called ‘accounting irregularities’ that caused turmoil in the markets and wiped billions off the investments of ordinary South Africans,” he added.

Last May 2021, the South African commission investigating corruption and graft, Ramaphosa acknowledged that the ruling ANC party did little to prevent corruption, including by his predecessor Jacob Zuma.

“State capture and corruption have taken a great toll on our society and indeed on our economy as well,” Ramaphosa said. “They have eroded the values of our constitution and undermined the rule of law. If allowed to continue they would threaten the achievement of growth, development and transformation of our country.”

South Africa is not an isolated case. It’s neighboring southern States including Mozambique and Angola have similar horrible cases. After 38 years of rule, in 2017 President dos Santos stepped down from MPLA leadership. in efforts to fight corruption, Angolan leader João Lourenço removed many of the country’s top politicians including Isabel dos Santos who were seriously corrupt under Jose Eduardo Dos Santos.

From the Maghreb coastline to Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia are all engulfed with corruption. Sudan, located in northeast Africa, has economic crisis, social problems despite its huge natural resources. Apparently, Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled the country for 30 years, did little for native country, his motherland, monopolized political power and ran deeply corrupt government. The New York Times wrote that Sudan’s economy was largely shattered due to political tyranny, deep-seated corruption and poor policies.

Peter Fabricius, Research Consultant from the South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies (ISS), cited corruption, poor policies and strategies quite recently in his article headlined – African Coups Are Making A Come Back – as some of the factors affecting sustainable development in Africa.

Nigeria has also experienced the worst and the highest levels of corruption. In an interview, Ambassador Uche Ajulu-Okeke with thirty-year achievements in the Nigerian Foreign Service spoke about the present-day Federal Republic of Nigeria, located in West Africa. Several years after its independence, the leaders have not succeeded in rebuilding the state institutions enough to reflect all-inclusive ethnic diversity, let alone in adopting Western-style democracy that takes cognizance of different public opinions on development issues in the country. The struggle for and misuse of power have brought the country into a stalemate, disrupting any efforts to overcome the deepening economic and multiple social crisis.

She further pointed to nepotism at all levels and institutions of government. Morbid corruption. Endemic kleptocracy. Ethnic cleansing and persecution of Christians and ethnic capture of the military and security apparatus of the state. Massive corruption and widespread kleptocracy with indigenous ethnicities in power making strenuous effort to capture state resources to the exclusion of other ethnic groups.

Still in West Africa on the Atlantic coast, Guinea said it would prosecute former president Alpha Conde, who was toppled in a military coup last September, for mismanagement, misuse of power and corruption, for murder and other crimes committed during his time in office. Conde will be among 27 former senior officials to face prosecution.

Mineral-rich but deeply poor and saddled with a reputation for corruption, Guinea has enjoyed few periods of stability since gaining independence from France in 1958. Many Guineans initially welcomed the coup but there is growing discontent in the nation of 13 million people.

Reports documented extravagant lifestyles of a small elite class in Africa. Such lifestyles are not separately linked to corruption and misuse of siphoned funds. The case of the following: British Broadcasting Corporation reported last September 2021, quoted an official statement that “wherever possible, kleptocrats will not be allowed to retain the benefits of corruption” and that was the case relating to the Justice Department of the United States decision to seize $26.6m (£20m) from Equatorial Guinea’s Vice-President Teodorin Nguema Obiang Mangue.

He is popularly known for his unquestionable lavish lifestyle, he has been the subject of a number of international criminal charges and sanctions for alleged embezzlement and corruption. He has a fleet of branded cars and a number of houses, and two houses alone in South Africa.

Teodorin Nguema has often drawn criticisms in the international media for lavish spending, while majority of the estimated 1.5 million population wallows in abject poverty. Subsistence farming predominates, with shabby infrastructure in the country. Equatorial Guinea consists of two parts, an insular and a mainland region. Meanwhile, Equatorial Guinea is the third-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa.

In Mozambique, Armando Ndambi Guebuza, the oldest son of of the former President Armando Guebuza has been targeted and accused of allegedly receiving the biggest share of the money embezzled from the loans mobilized with State guarantees, having pocketed US$33 million (equivalent €28 million). With the money, Armando Ndambi Guebuza bought top-of-the-range cars, some of which he gave to friends, and in addition purchased real estate inside and outside the country and paid for super high-class leisure trips. Armando Ndambi Guebuza used his influence with his father to make business schemes possible and to take advantage of his wealth for himself and his associates.

Still in southern Africa, and back to Angola which has its own corruption tales. As known, it is a country on the west coast of southern Africa. It is the second largest Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) country in both total land space and by population (behind Brazil), and is the seventh largest country, endowed with natural resources, in Africa.

Understandably, this is just one isolated case here. Isabel dos Santos amassed an empire worth more than $2 billion as the daughter of the former president. Dos Santos has come under scrutiny after a number of media outlets, including the New York Times, the BBC and The Guardian published articles based on the “Luanda Leaks” – a cache of some 700,000 documents related to her allegedly corrupt business dealings that were released to the International Consortium of Investigation Journalists (ICIJ).

Dos Santos was appointed to head Angola’s state oil company Sonangol in 2016 when her father was still the president of the country. (He finally retired in 2017 after ruling Angola for 38 years.) Growing revenue from resources including oil has created opportunities for corruption, an estimated $32 billion disappeared from government under Dos Santos administration, according a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço asserted in his many speeches, promised to scale up the fight against systemic corruption, at least, a new narrative for Angolans and the entire Africa. Arguably, he has the mandate to discharge that responsibility for the benefits of his people. Whether João Lourenço will deliver his dedication in tackling corruption head-on and reducing economic graft in his country, time will definite tell. The society is watching.

Angola, Mozambique and South Africa are members of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). Notwithstanding so many problems that hinder Africa’s development, the postcolonial period has seen quite an array of oppressive systems. The so-called democratic but dictatorial regimes, many previous military dictatorships have primarily failed to develop the economic, leaving dilapidated structures. Siphoning state coffers through dubious and opaque means is still the order of the day.

While African politicians continue blaming foreign actors and external factors for their economic woes. The statist economic systems of the past fifty years miserably failed to create free and prosperous African societies, even while they have been incredibly beneficial to Africa’s ruling elites and people who are politically connected.

William Gumede, an Honorary Associate Professor, Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand; and author of the recently released bestselling ‘Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times’ wrote a briefing paper for the Foreign Policy Centre in which he criticized Western countries for protecting their allies by turning a blind-eye to official corruption by ruling parties and leaders in the name of the so-called ‘war on terror’ or craftily overlooked corruption in order to secure mineral or oil rights as well as lucrative contracts.

“Civil society in Western countries and new emerging powers entering Africa should also hold their governments and businesses to account to ensure they are not overseeing corrupt and opaque operations. Corrupt governments, businesses and individuals – from Western as well as new emerging powers must be named and shamed in order to feel the reputable effects of corrupt activities,” he suggested in the policy paper.

Corruption in business is often not seen in a serious light by business leaders either globally or locally. The global financial crisis was essentially caused by corrupt and greedy bankers, traders and those working in the corporate sector. Yet, many of these business leaders and companies now flourish in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, as if they are blameless. Companies should be compelled to adhere to a set of integrity standards (in which they would foreswear corrupt activities) when trading in government contracts.

African public officials often dismiss international organizations’ corruption reports on Africa, saying these reports are infused by Western bias. African critics claim that such analysis overlooks corruption in Western countries and only focuses on developing countries. This is of course true, but only to some extent. The hypocrisy issue is a valid but separate debate and should not downplay the real seriousness of corruption at home.

Alternatively, Western countries look the other way when corrupt African governments are their allies, this has in fact encouraged corruption. Western business organizations also exacerbate corruption by colluding in corrupt practices. China, as a new emerging power on the block, has continued these age old practices in return for investment opportunities.

The organs of the state, that is the executive, the legislature and judiciary and the fourth estate (media must necessarily do more effective investigative journalism to uncover wrongdoing) must engage in “checks and balances” – this to a considerable extent, will scale back corruption in society. The political leader and the executive must periodically account for certain decisions in parliament.

In the long-term, the best antidote to corruption is to foster values (fairness, transparency, public accountability) across the continent which reward honesty and discourage dishonesty. Besides setting up anti-corruption committees and commissions, civil society organizations at the grassroots should step up public campaigns across Africa against corruption. The masses must know the extent of corruption, the impact it has on public service delivery, and how to monitor as well as report it, and the importance of holding their elected leaders and public servants more vigorously to account.

In final conclusion, it is worthy, at least, to keep in mind the suggestion made by the Republic of Ghana’s Vice President, Mahamudu Bawumia, who in May 2022 stated: “Building strong institutions means putting in place the right systems and practices that ensure transparency and brings about efficiency. As the saying goes, the biggest disease is corruption and the vaccine is transparency. The fact is that corrupt people hate transparency and public accountability.”

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A headline from The Hill in January 2023 proclaimed “Human microchip implants take center stage.”

Here’s how that article begins:

“The novelty of replacing one’s ‘home key’ with a microchip implant is gaining worldwide interest, but there’s another more compelling story under the surface. Why is this technology — an integrated circuit the size of a grain of rice — reviled by some and celebrated by self-proclaimed human cyborgs?

“Arguably, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet offers the most elegant explanation: ‘Nothing is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.’ However, it would be prudent to tell Prince Hamlet that not all microchip implants are designed alike, and understanding the technological design enables one to better evaluate the competing viewpoints. Today, more than 50,000 people have elected to have a subdermal chip surgically inserted between the thumb and index finger, serve as their new swipe key, or credit card. In Germany, for example, more than 2,000 Germans have opted to receive these implants; one man even used it to store a link to his last will and testament. As chip storage capacity increases, perhaps users could even link to the complete works of Shakespeare.”

The article goes on to provide an update of many advances and concerns in the practice of inserting microchips into humans, and this blog is referenced several times.

Indeed, I have written about microchip implants from a cybersecurity and privacy perspective three times before, and it is clear to me that inquiring minds still want to know: What is the future of microchip implants?

Why do I say that with confidence? Because blogs on this topic of microchip implants still receive very high page views and lots of interest from global readers. For your reference, here are those three blogs:

• July 2017: “Where Next for Microchip Implants?”
• November 2018: “Chip Implants: The Next Big Privacy Debate”
• January 2022: “Chip Implants: Opportunities, Concerns and What Could Be Next”

Microchip implant stories from the past year

Back in March of last year, Wired magazine offered this video on “The Science Behind Elon Musk’s Neuralink Brain Chip”:

And in April 2022, the BBC published this story on microchip implants that let you pay with your hand. Here’s an excerpt:

“Patrick Paumen causes a stir whenever he pays for something in a shop or restaurant.

“This is because the 37-year-old doesn’t need to use a bank card or his mobile phone to pay. Instead, he simply places his left hand near the contactless card reader, and the payment goes through.

“‘The reactions I get from cashiers are priceless!’ says Mr. Paumen, a security guard from the Netherlands.

“He is able to pay using his hand because back in 2019 he had a contactless payment microchip injected under his skin.”

But last December, another article asked if microchip implants in the human brain are still too dangerous. The article does a great job in covering the many benefits and drawbacks of the microchip implants, from curing diseases to complications in getting Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.

Meanwhile, many state governments are passing laws to prevent forced microchip implants on employees and others. For example, Wyoming just passed such a bill.

According The Hill, “to date, at least 10 state legislatures in the United States have passed statutes to ban employers from requiring employees to receive human microchip implants.”

Final thoughts

Back in 2018, I listed a number of key questions that I think need to be answered as this human chip implant practice moves forward. I still think these are the right questions (and some are starting to get answered):

• What are the benefits of implanting the chip(s)?
• Is implanting chips physically and emotionally safe?
• Who owns the data on the chip?
• Who has access to the data — and when?
• Do the chips communicate, somehow, with outside networks?
• How are chips updated when flaws are found?
• Can the chips be hacked? Assuming yes, what security is in place to stop unauthorized access to data and manipulation of data?
• Do religious beliefs forbid the practice?
• Is implanting the microchip truly voluntary? Will it still be voluntary tomorrow or in 10 or 20 years?
• Is the practice medically necessary?
• Are incentives offered to those who participate?
• Are penalties coming for those who don’t participate?
• Will being chipped start as an exception and become the rule?
• Will ethical and moral processes and procedures be breached by hackers? (No way to stop the bad actors once you begin.)
• What laws are put in place on this implanted chip topic?
• What company policies are affected?

On a wider scale, since the Internet is an accelerator for good and evil at the same time, what good or evil outcomes will we see from this implanted chip trend?

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Daniel J. Lohrmann is an internationally recognized cybersecurity leader, technologist, keynote speaker and author.

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Washington’s political establishment says China was spying on US sovereign territory with what China has called their ‘weather balloon.  China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry Spokesperson issued a statement:

The airship is from China. It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course. The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace due to force majeure. The Chinese side will continue communicating with the US side and properly handle this unexpected situation caused by force majeure

However, the Western mainstream-media has been non-stop with the hysteria on China’s “spy balloon” invading US sovereign territory, but when it comes to the US government and its Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) who has consistently invaded the airspace of many sovereign countries, it is barely mentioned and forgotten.  The bottom line is that the China balloon story is all about war propaganda.  The US and its allies are setting the stage for another war, this time against China.

The Associated Press (AP)

‘China balloon: Many questions about suspected spy in the sky’ reported on what the Pentagon has claimed regarding China’s spy balloon, “The Pentagon says the balloon, which is carrying sensors and surveillance equipment, is maneuverable and has shown it can change course. It has loitered over sensitive areas of Montana where nuclear warheads are siloed, leading the military to take actions to prevent it from collecting intelligence.”  Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s press secretary said, “the balloon was not a military or physical threat” and that “once the balloon was detected, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.”

CNN also jumped in on the propaganda bandwagon and published ‘What is a suspected Chinese spy balloon doing above the US?’, and surprisingly asked a legit question, “Don’t spies use satellites now?”

But CNN switched back to  its propaganda mode when they reported on what Peter Layton, a fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute in Australia and former Royal Australian Air Force officer had said, “Using balloons as spy platforms goes back to the early days of the Cold War. Since then, the US has used hundreds of them to monitor its adversaries.”

So, the US has used these types of balloons in the past, “But with the advent of modern satellite technology enabling the gathering of overflight intelligence data from space, the use of surveillance balloons had been going out of fashion.  Or at least until now.” 

They mention the advancement of “miniaturization of electronics” which complements the idea of “floating intelligence platforms.”  Layton said that “Balloon payloads can now weigh less and so the balloons can be smaller, cheaper and easier to launch.”  An article published by The Washington Post ‘How do stratospheric Balloons Work? Here’s a Visual Guide’ said that “Experts in national security and aerospace said the craft appears to share characteristics with high-altitudes balloons used by developed countries around the world for weather forecasting, telecommunications and scientific research.”   

The Democrats and Republicans are united against a common adversary and that is China.  They say how dare the Chinese Communist Party release a surveillance balloon on our sovereign territory and defy international law.  Well, it is true that a foreign object that invades a sovereign country’s airspace  does violate international law, but for decades, the US has invaded the sovereign airspace of many countries around the world including Nicaragua, Venezuela, Iran, and others.

So let’s go back to November 11th, 1984, the United Press International (UPI) headlined with ‘Nicaragua said U.S. spy planes Sunday broke the sound…’ reported that “Nicaragua said U.S. spy planes Sunday broke the sound barrier twice over the country, causing minor damages and fueling the leftist Sandinista government’s fears of an American invasion.”

The SR-71 or its more accurate name, “The SR-71 “Blackbird” is used for “strategic reconnaissance” or in other words, to spy on its adversaries.  The SR-71 Blackbird is manufactured by Lockheed Martin, a heavyweight in the MIC was identified by the Sandinistas during the time of the Iran-Contra affair “Within two hours of each other, what the Nicaraguans identified as a U.S. SR-71 ‘Blackbird’ jets flew over Managua and other cities, breaking the sound barrier with a loud boom.”

Another incident happened on December 5^th, 2011, this time in Iran. Lockheed Martin’s RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was noticed in the city of Kashmar, located in northeastern Iran and was seized by a cyberwarfare unit from Iranian forces.  The Cyberwarfare unit gained control of the UAV spy drone and landed the plane although the western media reported that the spy plane was shot down.  The Obama regime initially denied Iran’s claims but later admitted that the aircraft that was supposedly shot down, was a US drone.  Iran did file a complaint to the United Nations over the US violating its airspace shortly after.  The RQ-170 Sentinel Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is described in Airforce-technology.com as

“a high altitude and long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed and manufactured by Skunk Works, a division of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the United States Air Force (USAF)”

and that “The UAV can capture real-time imagery of the battlefield and transfer the data to the ground control station (GCS) through a line of sight (LOS) communication data link.”

It was also used against various countries, “The low-observable design enables the aircraft to fly on the borders of Iran, China, India and Pakistan for capturing real-time information regarding missile tests, telemetry and multispectral intelligence.”

On July 21^st, 2019, Venezuela’s airspace was also violated by the US military as Reuter’s headlined with ‘U.S. says Venezuelan plane aggressively shadowed a U.S. military aircraft’ not mentioning that it was a spy plane, “The U.S. military on Sunday accused a Venezuelan fighter aircraft of “aggressively” shadowing a U.S. Navy EP-3 Aries II plane over international airspace, in yet another sign of the increasing hostility between the two nations.”  Keep in mind that that Obama had imposed sanctions against Venezuela, “The encounter between the U.S. and Venezuelan planes occurred on Friday, the same day that the Trump administration announced it was sanctioning four top officials in Venezuela’s military counterintelligence agency.”  The US military had issued a statement about the incident and said that “it had determined the “Russian-made fighter aggressively shadowed the EP-3 at an unsafe distance in international airspace for a prolonged period of time, endangering the safety of the crew and jeopardizing the EP-3 mission.”

So, what was that mission?  To spy on Venezuela’s oil fields?  This was during the time when the Trump regime’s hostilities towards the Maduro government was at an all-time high,  “U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has repeatedly used sanctions in an effort to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose 2018 re-election has been deemed illegitimate by the United States and most Western nations.”  The EP-3 stems from the P-3 Orion.  The P-3 Orion is an anti-submarine and surveillance aircraft also developed by Lockheed Martin in the 1960’s for the US Navy.  The EP-3 known as ARIES (Airborne Reconnaissance Integrated Electronic System) has specific capabilities that can intercept various signals.  It is an aircraft that is operated by naval personnel with specific skills that includes cryptographers, technicians and even linguists to translate intercepted messages in foreign languages.

Online news website ‘The Drive’ is one of the internet’s main sources for news, features and guides about modern automotive culture and other technologies has a section called ‘The War Zone’ published an article titled ‘The U.S. Army’s Newest Spy Plane in Action in Africa and Latin America’ admits that “After almost getting canned in 2012, the enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System is now snooping abroad.”  “Rules for thee, and not for me” is the US model, so “snooping abroad” is I guess justified.  According to The Drive:

The first version of the U.S. Army’s newest spy plane is in action in Africa and Latin America. At the same time, the service is finishing tests of three additional sub-variants in Arizona.  On March 12, 2017, Scout Warrior first reported these overseas deployments. The War Zone subsequently learned only some of the four signals intelligence-focused versions of the Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System (EMARSS-S) were snooping abroad.

In an Email, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Sean Smith confirmed this particular model was supporting U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) operations. “There are no other EMARSS variants fielded or deployed at this time,” he added.  Despite its name, the EMARSS-S has a suite of signal-snooping gear to track and listen in on enemy communications, as well as the ability to record full-motion video during the day or at night. Each aircraft also has work stations connected to the controversial Distributed Common Ground System – Army (DCGS-A) intelligence data network, which is supposed to help collect, compile, and distribute information rapidly across units

Not only do they openly admit that the US has spy planes in Africa and Latin America, to them it makes perfect sense!

Sending the aircraft to work with AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM makes perfect sense for early deployments. The regions these commands work are relatively low threat environments for American aircraft, but offer no shortage of work tracking drug smugglers, terrorists, and insurgents in remote areas

Let me get this straight, they are using spy planes “to track drug smugglers, terrorists, and insurgents”?  Call me cynical but “tracking drug smugglers, terrorists and insurgents” is only a half-truth.  Maybe in a small number of cases they have tracked real drug smugglers and others, but the US government has been involved in drug smuggling operations in the past, just ask the CIA.  As for tracking terrorists, the US government and the intelligence community has supported terrorists in the Middle East and Latin America for decades and as for tracking insurgencies of let’s say, in Iraq, it is usually against US and NATO occupiers, so who are they fooling?

In Central and South America and Africa, Army spy planes such as the RC-12X Guardrail Common Sensor (GRCS) and EO-5C Airborne Reconnaissance Low – Multisensor (ARL-M) already fly routine missions, in cooperation with other aircraft and personnel from the U.S. Air Force, American law enforcement agencies, local security forces, and private contractors. After 9/11, the Pentagon found renewed interest in monitoring terrorist groups and potential hotspots in Africa with a similar mix of assets

To the US establishment, any form of spying on its territory is considered a declaration of war, but any violation of airspace of their perceived enemies anywhere in the Global South is justified because the US government can do whatever they want and bypass international law.  The Chinese spy balloon story is to create fear that an enemy is collecting data on its nuclear missile sites and on the American people.  Now they are accusing China of spying on Latin America with another balloon which asks the obvious question, why?  China has a good relationship with most of Latin America.  The US establishment, the MIC and the mainstream media are all pushing for a new war with a nuclear power that has a formidable military that would fight any foreign invasion on its territory.  China is not interested in becoming a global empire, it is the US who wants to remain a global empire.  It’s all war propaganda, nothing more, and nothing less.

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

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President Emmanuel Macron of France has introduced a bill within the National Assembly which would make significant changes to the pension system established as a result of working class struggles over the decades.

Macron and his neoliberal political party presented itself during the 2022 elections as a viable alternative to the ultra-right wing National Front headed by Marine Le Pen.

Despite the fact that many workers viewed Macron as a lesser threat to the gains made by the French unions, one of the first pieces of legislation introduced in the second administration of the incumbent has been the attack on pensions. The plan is to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 while imposing higher contributions from the workers themselves by mandating that people be employed for 43 years to collect full pension benefits.

A broad coalition of French workers and youth have answered Macron’s policies with a series of general strikes and mass mobilizations. On February 11, another day of demonstrations will be held aimed at filling the streets of Paris and other major cities throughout the country.

Transportation systems are being halted, employees in the oil and energy industries have impeded fuel deliveries and access to electric power, schools are being closed as teachers and students join other workers to oppose the Macron agenda. These periodic general strikes are highlighting the potential political power of organized labor and their allies among the youth and other sectors of the population.

On January 19, the 31st and February 7, 2.8 million workers and hundreds of thousands of youth responding to the call of the National Student Union, participated in walkouts and marches. These manifestations have been largely peaceful although there were some clashes with police and property damage in Paris and other municipalities.

In light of the one-day general strikes during January and early February, the unions are contemplating even more militant initiatives against the pension reforms. These work stoppages are taking place amid higher rates of inflations not experienced in the western capitalist states since the 1970s and 1980s.

Unions representing the railway workers said they would continue their strike into Wednesday (Feb. 8) in order to emphasize the seriousness of the crisis. Oil workers also pledged to extend their stay away by another day.

Neoliberalism and the Plight of the Working Class

Despite the outpouring of unions and students over the recent period and the 2022 oil worker’s strike, the Macron forces appeared to be firmly committed to their neoliberal agenda which places greater burdens on the very class which are most impacted by inflation. French-based multinational energy firms remain largely unscathed by the government’s policy imperatives as Macron seeks to replace the decline in natural gas resources from Russia by negotiating new deals with Algeria and other states.

Although Macron was re-elected in June for another term of office, his political party failed to win a majority within the National Assembly. The French Senate is already dominated by the Republican conservatives and therefore the Renaissance Party of Macron, formerly known as the La Republique En Marche, will have to draw support for its pension reforms from the right-wing opposition.

Therefore, it is incumbent upon the unions and students to advance a broader economic program which provides specific alternatives to the ruling class parties which dominate French politics during this period. A coalition of Left forces in the National Assembly are attempting to sharpen the debate surrounding the pension reforms. The outcomes of this political debate will undoubtedly be influenced by the independent actions of the working class.

It will take militant and revolutionary initiatives of the workers and youth to defeat the neoliberal policies of Macron. Absent persistent agitation and organizing, the ruling class will prevail, setting the stage for even more draconian attacks on the wages and social benefits of the masses of people.

According to the Associated Press:

“French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne defended the government plan Tuesday (Feb. 7) but suggested there was room for adjustments. ‘I’m convinced there are points of agreement to be found. I’m convinced that we can improve this text together. It will be through debate, confronting ideas and, of course, respect,’ she said, noting graffiti that appeared on the meeting place of the National Assembly, including a door marked with 60. If nothing is done, Borne said, taxes and social charges will increase, along with unemployment and lower purchasing power. That would cost retirees with modest pensions and ‘all those who worked all their lives, and certainly not the big bosses,’ she said.” See this.

The Russian special military operation in Ukraine has prompted sanctions by the European Union (EU) member-states and the United States against Moscow. These sanctions and the imperialist-engineered failure to negotiate an accord between Kiev and Moscow, have worsened the economic situation in Western Europe and other geopolitical regions of the world.

Simultaneously in Britain, unions representing railway, healthcare, educational and other workers have engaged in one-day strike actions as well. The Conservative Party government of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has imposed an austerity budget on the workers employed in the public sectors of the country.

There is much at stake in the recent manifestations of the class struggles which are unfolding in France and Britain. Workers and oppressed peoples in North America should follow these developments in Europe in order to gain lessons for the ongoing assaults on their wages and living standards in the world’s leading capitalist and imperialist state.

Consequently, the social plight of the working class in France and other European states are igniting industrial actions as witnessed in Britain since the beginning of 2023. The working class is becoming poorer while the energy firms and financial institutions are reaping huge profits.

A report on the actions of the trade union federations says that:

“Speaking at the protest, head of the CGT, one of France’s main unions, Philippe Martinez called for ‘tougher, more, and more massive’ strikes, while Laurent Berger, general secretary of the CFDT, said: ‘We will try to be even stronger this Saturday [when more protests are planned)’. Mr Martinez said: ‘The government cannot remain deaf to the immense majority of workers [who oppose reforms]. It continues to be stubborn despite protests, so yes, we must go up a gear with more marked, longer, tougher, more numerous, more massive and extended strikes.’”

Numerous union leaders and opponents of the pension reforms see no other alternative to withholding their labor in protests against the policy changes. Through their actions the workers and youth are attempting to influence the National Assembly debate to reject the pension reforms.

The same above-mentioned article conveys the sentiment of the workers: “Virginie Gonzales, general secretary of the UGICT-CGT told BFMTV: ‘I fear that without blocking the economy, we will not be heard; or at least, not listened to.’ Ecologist MP Sandrine Rousseau added: ‘I’m very angry that the government is asking people who are already doing a lot of work to take longer to get to retirement. Their bodies are in pain, they are exposed to psycho-social risks, burnouts, and a loss of meaning.  ‘Retirement is the reward for this work. I would say that a ‘right to laziness’ from the age of 60 is legitimate, and even before, perhaps.’ She added that the reforms would also ‘worsen’ women’s position at work.”

The Capitalist Economic Crisis and the Role of the Working Class

A recent study by the French governmental statistical agency is predicting that the second largest EU economy will experience marginal growth during 2023. The forecast for far less than one percent growth is taking into account the industrial actions of the workers and youth.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned of the potential of a global recession by the concluding months of this year. Although the rise in inflation has somewhat eased, there are indicators which can impact employment and wages which are not keeping up with the rate of price hikes.

Food and energy prices in Europe are absorbing larger amounts of the salaries of workers. These realities are bound to prompt demonstrations and industrial actions in defense of the gains made during the labor struggles of the second half of the 20th century.

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

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Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who claimed he acted as an intermediary between Russia and Ukraine at the start of the special operation, said in a video that Russian President Vladimir Putin assured him that he would not kill his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. This revelation comes as Benjamin Netanyahu is back in power and is driving Israel even closer to Ukraine and further away from Russia.

“He gave me two great concessions,” Bennett said on February 4 of his March 5, 2022 meeting with Putin. It is recalled that Bennet flew to Moscow in an effort to mediate only weeks after the special military operation began in February 2022. “I knew Zelensky was under threat, in a bunker… I said to [Putin], ‘Do you intend to kill Zelensky?’ He said, ‘I won’t kill Zelensky’.”

The former Israeli Prime Minister said he immediately contacted the Ukrainian president after this revelation and told him, “I’ve just come out of a meeting — [Putin] is not going to kill you.

“[Zelensky] asked me, ‘Are you sure?’ I said 100 percent. [Putin’s] not going to kill you.”

Bennett recalled:

“Two hours later, Zelensky went to his office, and did a video selfie in the office, [in which the Ukrainian president said,] ‘I’m not afraid.’”

According to Bennett, Putin agreed not to demand the disarming of Ukraine. In fact, that same weekend, Zelensky dropped Ukraine’s demand to become a NATO member. However, as recalled, Zelensky once again demanded for Ukraine to be fast-tracked into NATO after Russia announced the inclusion of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson oblasts into the Russian Federation in September 2022.

Bennett also said that “everything I did [in the mediation effort] was coordinated with the US.”

This is an unsurprising detail since Kiev refuses to negotiate with Moscow because of Zelensky’s desire to carry out orders from Washington and London. The Anglo alliance effectively controls Kiev, proving that Zelensky is not a political actor but a puppet. Despite this, the West still continues to allude that Russia is refusing to negotiate.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the argument that Russia refuses to negotiate on the Ukraine issue is a lie, which Moscow will continue to refute.

“Our diplomacy has a job to do, on a daily basis, to explain what’s going on, to expose the lies, especially the current lies about our denial to negotiate,” he said.

Although Bennet attempted to portray himself as a mediator that is balancing between Kiev and Moscow, his actions have led to direct military support for Ukraine, and this policy will certainly not relax under Netanyahu.

Axios revealed on February 1 that the new Israeli government is conducting a policy review on its position on the Ukraine War. The report said, citing three unnamed Israeli officials, that Netanyahu ordered the policy review after returning to office in late December and discussed the matter with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken when they met in Jerusalem on January 30.

Netanyahu reportedly stressed to Blinken that Israel will not reduce humanitarian aid and support for Ukraine, with a senior Israeli official claiming that the Biden administration knows that Jerusalem will not shift Israel’s position closer to Moscow.

Blinken none-the-less urged Israel to provide more support for Kiev, saying that “Russia’s ongoing atrocities only underscore the importance of providing support for all of Ukraine’s needs – humanitarian, economic, and security.”

When meeting with Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, Blinken said: “We appreciate Israel’s humanitarian assistance,” adding that “we look forward to discussing what more can we do.”

Confirming the Axios report, Netanyahu hinted at a policy shift in an interview with CNN on January 31, saying he was “looking into” providing Kiev with “other kinds of aid” besides humanitarian.

Russia warned Israel against arming Ukraine following the CNN interview.

“We say that all countries that supply weapons [to Ukraine] should understand that we will consider these [weapons] to be legitimate targets for Russia’s armed forces,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned.

“Any attempts — implemented or even unrealized but announced for the supply of additional, new or some other weapons — will lead to an escalation of this crisis. And everyone should be aware of this,” she added.

Although Israeli officials and media have attempted to downplay their country’s support for Ukraine, stressing that it does not extend beyond humanitarian support, The New York Times reported last month that the US military was shipping hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to Ukraine from a massive stockpile in Israel.

Senior European officials told Haaretz last month that “Israel agreed to underwrite the purchase of millions of dollars of ‘strategic materials’ for Ukraine” because of American pressure. The materials were transferred via a NATO country and Jerusalem allowed the transfer of Israeli-made weapons, including electro-optical and fire-control systems, by NATO countries to Ukraine.

In addition, it was revealed by Haaretz that Israel has stepped up its intelligence assistance to Ukraine in recent weeks by providing intel on Iranian drones.

In this way, Israel is playing a major role in attempting to limit the success of the Russian military operation in Ukraine despite continuous claims that it is balancing its interests and relations between the two warring parties. Israel, for its part, now faces the risk of Russia no longer tolerating its uncontested airstrikes in Syria and could deepen its military and intelligence ties with Iran.

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

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***

A new peer-reviewed study found a positive statistical correlation between infant mortality rates (IMRs) and the number of vaccine doses received by babies — confirming findings made by the same researchers a decade ago.

In “Reaffirming a Positive Correlation Between Number of Vaccine Doses and Infant Mortality Rates: A Response to Critics,” published Feb. 2 in Cureus, authors Gary S. Goldman, Ph.D., an independent computer scientist, and Neil Z. Miller, a medical researcher, examined this potential correlation.

Their findings indicate a “positive correlation between the number of vaccine doses and IMRs is detectable in the most highly developed nations” — which, on average, administer the most vaccine doses to infants.

The authors replicated the results of a 2011 statistical analysis they conducted, and refuted the results of a recent paper that questioned those findings.

Miller spoke to The Defender about the study and its implications for infant and childhood vaccination schedules.

The more doses, the higher the infant mortality rate

In 2011, Miller and Goldman published a peer-reviewed study in Human and Experimental Toxicology, which first identified a positive statistical correlation between IMRs and number of vaccine doses.

The researchers wrote:

“The infant mortality rate (IMR) is one of the most important indicators of the socio-economic well-being and public health conditions of a country. The U.S. childhood immunization schedule specifies 26 vaccine doses for infants aged less than 1 year — the most in the world — yet 33 nations have lower IMRs.

“Using linear regression, the immunization schedules of these 34 nations were examined and a correlation coefficient of r = 0.70 (p < 0.0001) was found between IMRs and the number of vaccine doses routinely given to infants.”

In the above figures, “r” refers to the correlation coefficient, a number that ranges from -1 to 1. Any figure above zero is understood as a positive correlation, with figures between 0.6 and 0.79 considered a “strong” positive correlation, and 0.8 and above a “very strong” positive correlation.

The “p-value” indicates the extent to which the predictor’s value, in a linear regression analysis, is related to changes in the response variable.

A p-value of 0.05 or below is considered statistically significant, and indicative that the predictor and the response variable are related to each other and move in the same direction.

In the same 2011 study, which used 2009 data, the researchers found the highest positive correlation in countries that administered the most vaccine doses to infants (between 21 and 26 months old).

“Linear regression analysis of unweighted mean IMRs showed a high statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates, with r = 0.992 (p = 0.0009),” the researchers wrote.

Miller told The Defender:

“In 2011, we published a study that found a counterintuitive, positive correlation, r = 0.70 (p < .0001), demonstrating that among the most highly developed nations (n = 30), those that require more vaccines for their infants tend to have higher infant mortality rates (IMRs).”

However, “critics of the paper recently claimed that this finding is due to ‘inappropriate data exclusion,’ i.e., the failure to analyze the ‘full dataset’ of all 185 nations.”

According to Miller:

“A team of researchers recently read our study and found it ‘troublesome’ that it’s in the top 5% of all research outputs. They wrote a rebuttal to our paper to ‘correct past misinformation’ and to reduce the impact of vaccine hesitancy.

“Their paper has not been published but it was posted on a preprint server.”

Miller said he and Goldman “wrote our current paper to examine the various claims made by these critics, to assess the validity of their scientific methods and to perform new investigations to assess the reliability of our original findings.”

The original paper studied the U.S. and 29 other countries with better IMRs “to explore a potential association between the number of vaccine doses … and their IMRs,” finding a strong positive correlation.

The 10 researchers — Elizabeth G. Bailey, Ph.D., a biology assistant professor at Brigham Young University, and several students associated with her Bioinformatics Capstone course who wrote the rebuttal to Goldman and Miller’s 2011 analysis — combined “185 developed and Third World nations that have varying rates of vaccination and socioeconomic disparities” in their analysis.

“One stated rationale behind Bailey’s reanalysis (and additional new investigations) is to reduce the impact of vaccine hesitancy, which ‘has intensified due to the rapid development and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine,’” Goldman and Miller said. “They also appear to be targeting our study for a potential retraction.”

Miller explained the methodology Bailey’s team used:

“The critics select[ed] 185 nations and use linear regression to report a correlation between the number of vaccine doses and IMRs.

“They also perform[ed] multiple linear regression analyses of the Human Development Index(HDI) vs. IMR with additional predictors and investigate IMR vs. percentage vaccination rates for eight different vaccines.”

According to Miller, “Despite the presence of inherent confounding variables in their paper, a small, statistically significant positive correlation (r = 0.16, p < .03) is reported that corroborates the positive trend in our study (r = 0.70, p < .0001).”

In other words, there is still a positive correlation between the IMR and the number of vaccine doses, albeit weaker, among the 185 countries Miller’s critics studied.

However, this positive correlation is “attenuated in the background noise of nations with heterogeneous socioeconomic variables that contribute to high rates of infant mortality, such as malnutrition, poverty, and substandard health care” — meaning that there are confounding factors in poorer nations that significantly contribute to their higher IMRs.

Miller explained the difference in methodologies:

“We both used linear regression to analyze a potential correlation between the number of vaccine doses and IMRs. However, we analyzed the 30 most highly developed nations with high vaccination rates (consistently above 90%) and uniformity of socioeconomic factors.

“In contrast, our critics analyzed 185 nations with variable vaccination rates (ranging from less than 40% to greater than 90%) and heterogeneous socioeconomic factors.

“By mixing highly developed and Third World nations in their analysis, our critics inadvertently introduced numerous confounders. For example, malnutrition, poverty, and substandard healthcare all contribute to infant mortality, confounding the data and rendering the results unreliable.”

Miller and Goldman also conducted three other types of statistical analysis: odds radio, sensitivity and replication analyses. These tests confirmed their findings, as they wrote in their new paper:

“Our odds ratio analysis conducted on the original dataset controlled for several variables. None of these variables lowered the correlation below 0.62, thus robustly confirming our findings.

“Our sensitivity analysis reported statistically significant positive correlations between the number of vaccine doses and IMR when we expanded our original analysis from the top 30 to the 46 nations with the best IMRs.

“Additionally, a replication of our original study using updated 2019 data corroborated the trend we found in our first paper (r = 0.45, p = .002).”

Put differently, the new study, which used 2019 data, found a somewhat weaker positive correlation of .045, but nevertheless confirmed a connection between the number of infant vaccine doses and IMRs.

Miller explained that, unlike the critics’ dataset of 185 countries, no adjustments for vaccination rates were necessary for his dataset, as “Vaccination rates in the countries that we analyzed generally ranged from 90-99%.”

He added that the odds ratio analysis considered 11 variables, including child poverty, and, “None of these variables lowered the correlation below 0.62.”

Similarly, said Miller, “In our sensitivity analysis, where we successively analyzed nations with worse IMRs than the United States, an additional 16 nations could have been included in the linear regression of IMRs versus the number of vaccine doses, and the findings would still have yielded a statistically significant positive correlation coefficient.”

Miller told The Defender the positive correlation he and Goldman identified grew stronger when the data were limited to highly developed countries, which tend to require a larger number of doses:

“When we replicated our 2009 study using 2019 data, we once again found a statistically significant positive correlation between the number of vaccine doses and IMRs. Although the correlation was less robust (r = 0.45, p = .002) than our original finding, it corroborated the direction of the trend initially reported.

“When our 2019 linear regression analysis was limited to the top 20 nations, the correlation coefficient increased (r = 0.73, p < .0003), revealing a strong direct relationship between number of vaccine doses and IMRs.”

Miller noted that his critics’ paper based its conclusions on results it found for “high” and “very high developed nations” as categorized by HDI.

Their paper stated, “A re-analysis of only highly or very highly developed countries similarly shows that human development index (HDI) explains the variability in IMR, and more recommended vaccine doses does not predict more infant death.”

However, Goldman and Miller, in their new paper, challenged the use of HDI as a predictor of overall health in a country, noting that HDI looks only at “educational levels, income per capita, and life expectancy” and that multiple scholars have identified “severe misclassification in the categorization of low, medium, high, or very high human development countries.”

“As we discuss in our paper, up to 34% of HDI-classified nations are misclassified due to three sources of error, so it is unreliable,” Miller told The Defender. “Although our critics reported a strong correlation between HDI and IMR, this reveals no specific health measures that might be positively or negatively influencing IMR.”

Miller also noted, “An alternative index, the Human Life Indicator (HLI) was created to address HDI shortcomings. While Denmark was recently ranked fifth in the world by HDI, it fell to 27th place with HLI; the U.S. was recently ranked tenth by HDI while HLI ranked it 32nd.”

In summarizing the shortcomings of his critics’ study, Miller said:

“It was inappropriate for our critics to combine data from nations with highly variable vaccination rates and heterogeneous socioeconomic factors.

“In Third World nations, several factors contribute to a high infant mortality rate, thus when all 185 nations are analyzed (rather than limiting the analysis to the most highly developed homogenous nations), a positive correlation between number of vaccine doses and IMRs is attenuated or lost in the background noise of these other factors.”

Infant deaths spike in days following vaccination, data show

Miller previously studied the association between pediatric vaccines and sudden infant death, in a 2021 paper titled “Vaccines and sudden infant death: An analysis of the VAERS database 1990–2019 and review of the medical literature.”

Commenting on the findings of that research, Miller said:

“Of the 2,605 infant deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) from 1990 through 2019, 58% clustered within three days post-vaccination, and 78% occurred within seven days post-vaccination, confirming that infant deaths tend to occur in temporal proximity to vaccine administration.

“The excess of deaths during these early post-vaccination periods was statistically significant (p < 0.00001).”

Combined with the findings of his most recent paper, Miller argued that “Vaccines are not always safe and effective. Vaccine-related morbidity and mortality are more extensive than publicly acknowledged.”

He added:

“In all nations, a causal relationship between vaccines and sudden infant deaths is rarely acknowledged. Yet, physiological studies have shown that infant vaccines can produce fever and inhibit the activity of 5-HT [serotonin] neurons in the medulla, causing prolonged apneas and interfering with auto-resuscitation.”

Miller also highlighted the sequence in which vaccines are administered as a potential factor contributing to IMRs. He told The Defender:

“Global health officials do not test the sequence of recommended vaccines nor their non-specific effects to confirm they provide the intended effects on child survival. More studies on this topic are necessary to determine the full impact of vaccinations on all-cause mortality.

“In Third World nations, numerous studies indicate that DTP and inactivated polio (IPV) vaccines have an inverse safety profile, especially when administered out of sequence. Multiple vaccines administered concurrently have also been shown to increase mortality.”

Miller said that based on his latest study, “We do not know whether it is the vaccinated or unvaccinated infants who are dying at higher rates.” However, he noted most nations in his sample “had 90-99% national vaccination coverage rates.”

“In our paper, we provide plausible biological evidence that the observed correlation between IMRs and the number of vaccine doses routinely given to infants might be causal,” Miller said.

As a result, argued Miller, “more investigations regarding health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations … would be beneficial,” adding that “Health authorities in all nations have an obligation to determine whether their vaccination schedules are achieving desired goals.”

“Much more research needs to be done in this field, but more studies will only achieve limited positive change until more individuals and families begin to make the connection between vaccines and adverse events,” Miller said.

“Also, legislators and health authorities must permit people to accept or reject vaccines without intimidation or negative consequences.”

*

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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.”

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***

“No one knows who will live in this [iron] cage in the future….” – Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

I would prefer not to relay the following very strange story given to me by a fellow sociologist, but he had done me a number of favors, and since he asked me to do him a favor in return, I feel obligated.  I don’t know what to make of the whole thing.  Following this brief introduction, you will find the manuscript he handed me. I realize you are getting this third hand, but there’s nothing I can do about that.  I don’t know his friend.  When he asked me to print it for him, I told him I would prefer not to, but then guilt got the best of me, so here it is.

This is one of those stories hard to believe.  When I first heard it, I thought it was a joke, some sort of parable, and my friend who was telling it to me had had too much to drink or was just pulling my leg.  I’m not sure.  Like so much in today’s world, the difference between fiction and fact has become very blurry.

Let me call him Sean, since these days holding a strong dissenting opinion can cost you your job.  He is a professor who, like the character David in John Fowles’ story, “The Ebony Tower,” teaches art history.  And like Fowles’ character he is a very frustrated academic.  In Sean’s case, he has had to contend with the transformation of his college from a place of learning to a place where “Woke” ideology stifles dissent.  Perhaps more importantly, he has suffered from extreme writer’s block.  He had just been telling me how, after years of writing copiously in his private journals, he had grown nauseated by it because it seemed so self-involved, concerning self and family stuff he was sick of.  He wanted to write articles and books, yet when he tried, he couldn’t.  All his energy had been going into his futile daily journals, where he felt trapped by family matters.  Until one recent day at the bar where we regularly meet, he heard this strange story.  It jolted him.

Here is what he told me over beer at the tavern.  I am paraphrasing, but because his tale was so startling, I know I have the essentials right.  He said:

“It was late in the afternoon last Wednesday when I came in here for a beer.  I was feeling very tired that day, though depressed would be more accurate.  The teaching routine seemed absurd to me.  I wasn’t writing.  I felt at a dead end.  I guess I was.  Anyway, you know that guy Tom whom we’ve talked to here before?  Well, he was here and we got talking.  The place was empty.  It turns out his last name is Finn – Tom Finn.  His father was Russell Finn, the famous painter, you know, the one the mainstream media gush over.  A realistic sentimentalist is the way I’ve heard him described, although I would say he was a sick fabulist trying to repaint history for Hallmark Cards.  Anyway, so this Tom Finn had had a few beers, and as he got talking, the both of us had a few more.  It became obvious that he was obsessed with his father.  He didn’t say that exactly, but I could guess it from the snide remarks about him he’d laugh out of the side of his mouth.  I asked him about a big traveling exhibit of his father’s paintings which I had recently read about in the newspapers; had he seen it?  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t go to that kind of crap.  That’s his bag of marbles.’  Things like that.

“It turns out the son is also a painter, but he said nothing about his own work, just that he painted.  He talked all about his father’s work, how his father stole ideas, wasn’t very good, etc.  I told him I agreed that his father’s work was overhyped and mediocre, but that my experience studying art taught me that was true for every era.  I was trying to be nice, something I tend to overdo.  I got the impression he turned to painting by default, it being some kind of knee-jerk reaction to his father, some kind of Oedipal contest.

“It turns out his real obsession is toys, no shit, and he got very animated as he talked about them.  He wanted me to come over to his house to see his vast toy collection.  The invitation was so weird, and with the beer’s effects, I couldn’t refuse.  It was nearly dinner time, so I called Sara and told her I’d be late.  I was actually interested in what made him tick.  I mean, why would a grown man – I’d say he is in his mid-forties – collect fucking toys?  And weirder still, he said his specialty was tiny plastic figures of all sorts.  Of these he had more than 25,000 – for some reason he emphasized that number – that he’d periodically put on display at local libraries.

“So I followed him over to his house which is on that street adjoining the university where a number of art history professors live.  Oak Terrace, I think it is.  I couldn’t help laughing when I saw all those abstract sculptures decorating their lawns.  It was getting dark and they were spotlighted.  What a juxtaposition – so perfect – so-called realism and cerebral abstraction side-by-side.  And both utter bullshit.  I was reminded of a description of Russell Finn’s paintings that I once read: Cute wallpaper for readers of Reader’s Digest.

“Actually, Finn’s house is quite cute itself.  When we were going in, I had to restrain myself from saying to him, ‘Life’s cute, isn’t it?’  I don’t think he would have appreciated that, although it’s very possible that he wouldn’t have known what the hell I was getting at.  He’s a toy collector after all and what’s cuter than that.

“I’ll tell you this.  I wasn’t prepared for what he showed me.  He took me down to his finished basement, which he called ‘the laboratory.’  When he switched on the lights the room was empty except for the walls.  They were covered with shelves about six inches apart that ran from wall to wall and ceiling to floor.  It gave the large room this incredibly bizarre look as though it were a prison cell.  There were even spotlights that illuminated the shelves, upon which, right along the outer edges looking out, he had lined up his collection of little figures.  As we stood in the middle of the room, it was as though thousands of little people were staring at us, the giants. I felt as though I was hallucinating. Finn just chuckled when I said, ‘Pretty fucking amazing!”  Then he said, ‘I like the perspective, don’t you?’   I knew he didn’t expect an answer and I could only chuckle in response, even as I felt a chill on the back of my neck.  It was so eerie that I had to contain a shudder.  For a brief moment I had the feeling that the door we had entered was going to shut and be bolted and that something terrifying was about to unfold.

“But at that moment he gestured to me to follow him to another door, over which a sign read, ‘The Family Fun Room.’  ‘This is my favorite,’ he said with a smile.

“In the middle of this pink painted room there was a cage that extended from floor to ceiling, and in the cage, sitting on stools, were two life-sized and very realistic figures of a man and a woman.  They were both dressed in those black and white stripped prison uniforms you’ve seen in old movies.  The woman was facing away from the man.  I couldn’t tell who the woman was, but I immediately recognized the man.  It was Finn’s father, down to the most realistic detail.  He was holding a small toy figurine and was looking into its face.  The door to the cell was padlocked shut.  ‘That’s to make sure they can’t escape,’ Finn said with a straight face.  ‘Now that I got them where I want them, I can’t take any chances.  They’re dangerous and can cause me a lot of grief.’

“He then closed the door and we went upstairs.  Neither of us said a word.  He offered me a beer, but I declined.  I felt spooked, some dreadful feeling in my gut.  I told him I had to be leaving, which I did.  On the way out I noticed a framed photograph in the foyer.  It was a picture of Finn at about the age of nine or ten with his parents and sister.  They are sitting together on a couch, the two kids caught between the parents.  No one is smiling.  Behind them on the wall is the father’s famous painting of a family of four sitting on a couch.  In that one, everyone is smiling and the father in the painting is Finn’s father.  As you probably know, that was one of his father’s favorite techniques – to put himself in his paintings.  Such a cute double-message: I did it, of course, but how could I have done it when I’m in it.  You’re left wondering: who really did it?  Who executed the painting of these happy people. But since it’s all supposed to be so amusing, you’re left to chuckle, to think, how cute, how tricky.  You’re supposed to smile.  But no one was smiling in the picture on the wall.  It seemed like a house of smoke and mirrors and I was damn glad to leave.

“As I drove home, I sure as hell wasn’t smiling.  There was something terribly disturbing about it all.  I felt nauseated, disgusted, really disturbed.  Maybe it seems obvious, but I felt there was a connection between this weird experience and myself.  A double connection, actually.  I won’t go into all the details now, and you know about my writer’s block, but this bizarre experience has left me with a new sense of freedom, some kind of opening to a new way to write that at the time I couldn’t put my finger on.  I’ve come to think of it as writing beyond a cage of categories.

“I thought about all the stuff we talk about, the political propaganda about everything, the loss of a sense of reality, the illusions and delusions with the digital technology, the warmongering by the U.S against Russian, the covid bullshit, all of it, all the stuff we share over beers.  Especially the disconnect between the private and the public and the two-faced nature of a way of living that is so fucking phony.  I realized why I had been hiding in my notebooks, how they had become my cage.

“To top it all off, when I got home and told Sara about my experiences with Tom Finn, the cage and all, she didn’t believe me.  She accused me of having drunk too much, which I had to admit I did.  She said I was scaring her with such a ridiculous tale and that I was sounding like a deluded conspiracy nut.

“Anyway, I’ve told no one else about Finn.  I’m afraid they wouldn’t believe me either.   You’re a sociologist and know all about Max Weber’s prediction of a coming disenchanted world with its iron cage.  Shit, I feel like I had a small glimpse of it.  Do you think anyone would believe me if I told this story?

“Do you?”

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts.  He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

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***

Construction will reportedly soon begin on a mine that’s expected to become the United States’ largest source of lithium. This mine is viewed as critical to Joe Biden’s $2 trillion clean energy plan by powering the nation’s increased production of electric vehicles.

On Monday, a US district judge denied the majority of legal challenges raised by environmentalists, ranchers, and indigenous tribes, upholding that the federal government’s decision to approve the Thacker Pass mine in 2020 was largely not made in error. However, chief judge Miranda Du did agree with one of the protesters’ claims, ordering the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to complete a fresh review to determine if Lithium Americas Corp has the right to deposit waste rock on 1,300 acres of public land that the mining project wants to use as a waste site.

Because this waste site may not contain valuable minerals, there’s a possibility that this land may not be validly claimed as a waste site under current US mining laws, Du wrote in the order. A mining law from 1872 requires that mining projects must validate all claims to public lands before gaining federal approval, and that means Lithium Americas must now provide evidence that valuable minerals have been found on the proposed Thacker Pass waste site to resume the project.

Although this review may set back the project’s major construction timeline by as much as six months, that doesn’t seem to be a big concern for Lithium Americas. Reuters reported that the company met with BLM today to begin the review. The company’s chief executive, Jon Evans, told Reuters that because lithium has previously been found throughout the project area, Lithium Americas considers Du’s order to conduct a review an “easy fix.”

Calling it a win for the mining project, Evans confirmed that preparations for the mine site would promptly begin, projecting that heavy construction would be underway by this summer.

In the order, Du rejected claims that the project could disturb wildlife, degrade air quality and groundwater sources, or overlook the cultural significance of Thacker Pass to local tribes, determining that BLM adequately weighed environmental and cultural impacts before approving the project.

Ars could not immediately reach BLM for comment. Lithium Americas linked Ars to a statement the company posted today, saying that it would be working closely with BLM to review the waste site and saw no reason to further delay construction.

“The favorable ruling by the Federal Court confirms the permitting process for Thacker Pass was conducted thoroughly and responsibly, and results in there being no impediment to commencing construction,” Lithium Americas wrote in the statement.

*

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Ashley Belanger is the senior tech policy reporter at Ars Technica, writing news and feature stories on tech policy and innovation. She is based in Chicago.

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***

The catastrophic 7.8 magnitude earthquake, which has left thousands of people dead in Turkey and northwest Syria, has also destroyed several of the region’s historical monuments that had survived for centuries.

The earthquake, which has claimed the lives of at least 4,000 people in both countries, devastated sites in the Turkish regions of Gaziantep and Malatya and the Syrian province of Aleppo.

After Monday’s initial earthquake, the 2,000 year-old Gaziantep castle was heavily damaged, with many of its walls and watch towers reduced to rubble.

Known locally as Gaziantep Kalesi, the historic stone castle was first constructed as an observation point by the Hittite Empire during the second millennium BC.

The castle was expanded into a major fortification and then used in the second and third century AD by the Roman Empire.

Photos shared online showed the castle with its iron railings collapsed, meanwhile the walls and minaret of the 17th century Sirvani Mosque, which sits beside the castle, were levelled.

Yeni Mosque

Several of the walls of the 17th century Yeni Camii (New Mosque), located in Turkey’s southeastern city of Malatya, collapsed after the initial quake on Monday.

The mosque, which was made of stone and built in traditional Ottoman style, was restored last year and open for regular worship.

As the earthquake struck at 04:17 local time, it is unclear if anyone was in the building at the time of the quake.

The mosque was damaged in previous earthquakes and was flattened in March 1894 before being reconstructed. It was then damaged again in the 1964 Manyas earthquake.

Latin Catholic Church

The Latin Catholic Church, located in the Iskenderun district of Hatay province, was heavily damaged according to photos shared on social media.

Only the arches and walls of the church were left standing, while buildings nearby were reduced to rubble.

Only the arches and walls of The Latin Catholic Church in Iskenderun district of Hatay province, Turkey, were left standing (Screengrab/Twitter)

The church was particularly important for the local Catholic community, who marked Holy Week at the place of worship every Easter.

According to official records, it was built between 1858-71, and reconstructed in 1901 after sustaining fire damage.

Aleppo’s ancient citadel

Syria’s ancient Aleppo citadel, considered to be one of the oldest and largest castles in the region, was heavily damaged in Monday’s initial quake.

The entrance to the fort was heavily damaged while high walls which make up the medieval castle were reduced to rubble.

Parts of the dome of the Ayyubid mosque inside the citadel also fell off.

Thought to have been built around the 3rd millennium BC, the citadel was repaired and conserved in the early 2000s, and was a key tourist landmark.

The citadel is part of the Ancient City of Aleppo, which has been listed as a Unesco World Heritage site.

The Margat castle, also known as the al Marqab castle in Arabic, located in Baniyas, northwest Syria, was also impacted by the quake.

The castle was a Crusader fortress, and tremors have caused its circular towers to crumble.

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Featured image: Many of the walls of the 17th century Yeni Camii Mosque in Malatya, Turkey, collapsed after the initial quake on Monday  (Daily Sabah/DHA Photo)

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***

Pascal Najadi, a retired banker from Switzerland is at the center of a potentially huge sea change in the legal fight against the Globalist COVID financial fraud/bioterrorism campaign. Pascal has filed criminal charges of Abuse of Office under Article 310 of the Swiss Criminal Code against Swiss President Alain Berset, who is also that country’s former Minister of Health.

To everyone’s surprise, the Attorney General of Switzerland has decided to launch an investigation into the President – the first, of a sitting head of state – over their “vaccine” policies.

Pascal joins Todd Callender and Sean on the SGT Report, to describe the simple inconsistencies in the official narrative that he noted, that proved to him that the whole COVID/Vaxx campaign was a fraud – such as that time that Pfizer’s President of International Markets, Janine Small admitted before an EU special COVID-19 committee hearing that the jab was not tested during clinical trials for its ability to prevent transmission before it entered the international market – leading Croatian MEP, Mislav Kolakusic to declare that the European Union’s purchase of 4.5 billion doses of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines amounted to the “biggest corruption scandal in the history of mankind.”

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***

Almost as soon as major Nato countries, led by the US, promised to supply Ukraine with battle tanks, the cry went up warning that tanks alone would be unlikely to turn the war’s tide against Russia. 

The subtext – the one western leaders hope their publics will not notice – is that Ukraine is struggling to hold the line as Russia builds up its troop numbers and pounds Ukrainian defences.

A permanent partition of Ukraine into two opposed blocs – one more pro-Russian, the other more pro-Nato- is looking ever more likely.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has not been shy in telling the West what he expects next: fighter jets, especially US-made F16s.

Kyiv is keen to break what western media have termed a “taboo” by getting Nato aircraft directly involved in the Ukraine war. There is a good reason for that taboo: the use of such jets would let Ukraine expand the battlefield into Russian skies, and implicate Europe and the US in its offensive.

But why assume the West’s taboo on supplying combat jets is really any stronger than its former taboo on sending Nato battle tanks to Ukraine? As one European official observed in a Politico article: “Fighters are completely unconceivable today, but we might have this discussion in two, three weeks.”

And sure enough, within days, Zelensky’s office said there had been “positive signals” from Poland about supplying Ukraine with F16s. French President Emmanuel Macron also refused to rule out the possibility of contributing combat jets.

Upping the stakes

There is a logic to how Nato is operating. Step by step, it gets more deeply immersed in the war. It started with sanctions, followed by the supply of defensive arms. Nato then moved to issuing more offensive weapons, in aid so far totalling some $100bn from the US alone. Nato is now supplying the main weapons for a land war. Why should it not join the battle for air supremacy next?

Or as Nato’s head, Jens Stoltenberg, recently observed, echoing George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984: “Weapons are the way to peace.”

But the reverse is more likely to be true. With each additional step they take, the more the parties involved risk losing if they back down. The longer they refuse to sit and talk, the greater the pressure to keep fighting.

That no longer applies just to Russia and Ukraine. Now, Europe and Washington also have plenty of skin directly in the game.

Late last month, in what sounded like a Freudian slip, Germany’s foreign minister, Anna Baerbock, stated at a Council of Europe meeting in Strasbourg: “We are fighting a war against Russia.” Days earlier, Ukraine’s defence minister made much the same point: “We [Ukraine] are carrying out Nato’s mission today, without the loss of their blood.”

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***

In what Austin journalist Christopher Hooks has called “one of the stupidest news cycles in living memory,” the entire American political/media class is having an existential meltdown over what the Pentagon claims is a Chinese spy balloon detected in US airspace on Thursday.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancelled his scheduled diplomatic visit to China after the detection of the balloon. The mass media have been covering the story with breathless excitement. China hawk pundits have been pounding the war drums all day on any platform they can get to and accusing the Biden administration of not responding aggressively enough to the incident.

“The important thing that the American people need to understand, and what we are going to try to expose in a bipartisan fashion on this committee, is that the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party is not just a distant threat in East Asia, or a threat to Taiwan,” House China Select Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher told Fox News on Friday. “It is a threat right here at home. It is a threat to American sovereignty, and it is a threat to the Midwest — in places like those that I live in.”

“A big Chinese balloon in the sky and millions of Chinese TikTok balloons on our phones,” tweeted Senator Mitt Romney. “Let’s shut them all down.”

Amid Concerns Over a Balloon, US Cancels High-Level Meeting with China
Beijing said it regrets that one of its weather balloons drifted into American skies.
by Kyle Anzalone@KyleAnzalone_ #China #chineseballoon #Blinken https://t.co/3PlvwpEQuD pic.twitter.com/pvWNwBbft7

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) February 3, 2023

China’s foreign ministry says the balloon is indeed from China but is “civilian in nature, used for meteorological and other scientific research,” and was simply blown far off course. This could of course be untrue — all major governments spy on each other constantly and China is no exception — but the Pentagon’s own assessment is that the balloon “does not create significant value added over and above what the PRC is likely able to collect through things like satellites in Low Earth Orbit.”

So everyone’s losing their minds over a balloon that in all probability would be mostly worthless for spying, even while everyone knows the US spies on China at every possible opportunity. US officials have complained to the press that American spies are having a much harder time conducting operations and recruiting assets in China than they used to because of measures the Chinese government has taken to thwart them, and in 2001 a US spy plane caused a major international incident when it collided with a Chinese military jet on China’s coastline, killing the pilot.

The US considers it its sovereign right to spy on any nation it chooses, and the average American tends more or less to see it the same way. This is highlighted in controversies around domestic versus foreign surveillance, for example; Americans were outraged over the Edward Snowden revelations not because spy agencies were conducting surveillance, but because they were conducting surveillance on American citizens. It’s just taken as a given that spying on foreigners is fine, so it’s a bit silly to react melodramatically when foreigners return the favor.

As Jake Werner explains for Responsible Statecraft:

Foreign surveillance of sensitive U.S. sites is not a new phenomenon. “It’s been a fact of life since the dawn of the nuclear age, and with the advent of satellite surveillance systems, it long ago became an everyday occurrence,” as my colleague and former CIA analyst George Beebe puts it.

U.S. surveillance of foreign countries is likewise quite common. Indeed, great powers gathering intelligence on each other is one of the more banal and universal facts of international relations. Major countries even spy on their own allies, as when U.S. intelligence bugged the cellphone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Typically, even when such surveillance is directed against the United States by a rival power, it does not threaten the safety of Americans and it poses manageable risks to sites where secrecy is of the utmost importance. However — in the context of rapidly increasing U.S.–China tensions — foreseeable incidents like these can quickly balloon into dangerous confrontations.

US secures deal on Philippines bases to complete arc around China https://t.co/Xs4DQaCVfz

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) February 2, 2023

Now let’s contrast all this with another news story that’s getting a lot less attention.

In an article titled “US secures deal on Philippines bases to complete arc around China,” the BBC reports that the empire will be adding even more installations to the already impressive military noose it has been constructing around the PRC.

“The US has secured access to four additional military bases in the Philippines – a key bit of real estate which would offer a front seat to monitor the Chinese in the South China Sea and around Taiwan,” writes the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes. “With the deal, Washington has stitched the gap in the arc of US alliances stretching from South Korea and Japan in the north to Australia in the south. The missing link had been the Philippines, which borders two of the biggest potential flashpoints – Taiwan and the South China Sea.”

“The US hasn’t said where the new bases are but three of them could be on Luzon, an island on the northern edge of the Philippines, the only large piece of land close to Taiwan – if you don’t count China,” writes Wingfield-Hayes.

The BBC provides a helpful illustration to show how the US is completing its military encirclement, courtesy of the Armed Forces of the Philippines:

The US empire has been surrounding China with military bases and war machinery for many years, in ways Washington would never tolerate China doing in the nations and waters surrounding the United States. There is no question that the US is the aggressor in this increasingly hostile standoff between major powers. Yet we’re all meant to be freaking out about a balloon.

Ask me to show you how the US has been aggressing against China I can show you all the well-documented ways in which the US is encircling China with weapons of war. Ask an empire apologist to show you how China is aggressing against the US and they’ll start babbling about TikTok and balloons.

These things are not equal. Maybe Americans should stop watching out for hostile foreign threats and start looking a little closer to home.

*

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***

A few weeks ago, the world’s power brokers — politicians, CEOs, millionaires, billionaires — met in Davos, the mountainous Swiss resort town, for the 2023 World Economic Forum. In an annual ritual that reads ever more like Orwellian farce, the global elite gathered — their private jets lined up like gleaming sardines at a nearby private airport — to discuss the most pressing issues of our time, many of which they are chiefly responsible for creating.

The 2023 meeting was organized around the theme of “Cooperation in a Fragmented World” and the topics up for debate were all worthy choices: climate change, Covid-19, inflation, war, and the looming threat of recession. Glaringly missing, however, was any honest investigation of the deeper context behind such an epic set of crises — namely, the reality of worldwide poverty and the extreme inequality that separates the poor from the rich on this planet.

Every year, Oxfam, a global organization that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice, uses the occasion of Davos to release its latest rundown on global inequality. This year’s report, “Survival of the Richest,” offered a striking vision of global poverty from the trenches of the pandemic years. Imagine this as a start: in the last two of those years, the world’s richest 1% captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth, or twice that of the bottom 99%. Put another way, this planet’s billionaires have collectively “earned” (and yes, that’s in quotation marks for obvious reasons) $2.7 billion every one of the last 730 days. Meanwhile, in 2021 alone, at least 115 million people fell into “extreme poverty,” with billions more hanging on by a tenuous thread. By 2030, Oxfam reports, the world could be facing the “largest setback in addressing global poverty since World War II.”

The grim realities laid out in the report left me wondering: What kind of cooperation were they talking about at Davos? Did they mean a collaboration among all global communities? (Not likely!) Or did they mean the continued partnership of economic elites intent, above all else, on protecting their own wealth? And what of fragmentation? Amid increasing warfare and beneath the ongoing fracturing of democracies (including our own, thanks in part to a billionaire whose name I hardly need mention), nations, and long-held international arrangements, do they recognize the deepest fragmentation of all, that caused by so much needless suffering and inexcusable gluttony?

Poverty Amid Plenty

Here in the United States, it’s the same story: untold wealth and shocking want, even as House Republicans are threatening to slash programs like Medicare and Social Security just weeks into a new congressional session. Today, in one of the richest nations in the world, nearly half the population is either poor or a single $400 emergency away from poverty. The moral and cognitive dissonance of such a reality can be difficult to fathom, as can the numbers. At a time when the U.S. economy is valued at nearly $25 trillion and the wealth of the three richest Americans exceeds $300 billion, at least 140 million people strain to meet their basic needs and face the daily threat of economic ruin thanks to one pay cut, layoff, accident, extreme storm, or bad medical diagnosis.

Over the last 50 years, CEOs have taken ever bigger chunks out of the paychecks of their workers, so much so that the average CEO now makes 670 times more than his or her employees. It tells you how far we’ve come that, in 1965, that number was “just” 20 times more. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour, or about $15,000 a year) has remained remarkably low, hurting not only those who earn it, but millions of other workers whose employers use it as the floor for their own pay scales. Bear in mind that if the minimum wage had kept up with the economy’s overall productivity over the last half-century, it would now be $22 an hour, or close to $50,000 a year.

All of this has occurred in an era of policymaking intensely antagonistic to the poor and all too favorable to the rich. In the early 1970s, wages began to level off as the economy was riven by rising unemployment, low growth, and inflation, otherwise known as “stagflation.” This was also a period of labor militancy. As economic geographer David Harvey has pointed out, for the U.S. economic elite, these conditions posed a two-fold threat — politically, to their ability to hold sway within the highest reaches of the government and, economically, to their ability to maintain and build their wealth.

America’s CEOs found relief in the theories of an insurgent wave of neoclassical economists pioneering a model of capitalism that came to be known as “neoliberalism.” What emerged was a political project aimed at restoring the full-throated power of the wealthy, whose playbook included: decreased public spending, greater privatization, increased deregulation of banking and financial markets, slashed taxes, and pulverizing attacks on organized labor.

Since then, our economy has indeed been reshaped. At the bottom, growing parts of the workforce are now non-unionized, low-wage, often part-time, and regularly without benefits like health care, paid sick leave, or retirement plans. This labor crisis has been accompanied by an unprecedented $15 trillion-plus in personal (including mounting medical and student) debt. As a result (as I wrote in 2021 with Astra Taylor), “millions of Americans aren’t just poor; they have less than nothing. The American dream is no longer owning a house with a white picket fence; it is getting out of debt. In one of the richest countries in the world, millions of people now aspire to have zero dollars.”

The view looks very different from the top. The first two years of the pandemic marked the most unequal recession in modern American history, with the wealth of the country’s 651 billionaires actually increasing by more than $1 trillion to a total of about $4 trillion. At the start of 2020, Jeff Bezos was the only American with a net worth of more than $100 billion. By the end of that year, he was joined by Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. At Amazon, where the median pay in 2020 was about $35,000 a year, Bezos could have distributed the $71.4 billion he made that year to his own endangered workers and would still have had well over $100 billion left.

As an anti-poverty organizer, I’m regularly asked if we can afford to end poverty, even as politicians and economists cite the specter of scarcity to justify inaction or even outright anti-poor policies. Look at the debate over the debt ceiling taking place in Congress right now and you’ll see Republicans putting social programs on the chopping block in an attempt to both delegitimize and defund the government. If, however, you were to focus on the abundance unequally circulating around us, it’s clear that scarcity is a lie, a political invention, used to cover up vast reservoirs of capital that could be marshaled to meet the needs of everyone in this country and the world.

Don’t be fooled. We’re not living in a time of insufficiency, but in a golden age of plenty amid grotesque poverty, of abundance amid unbearable forms of abandonment.

To Tackle Poverty, Tackle Wealth

Despite the capacity to wipe out poverty altogether, antipoverty advocacy generally operates within two interdependent philosophical frameworks: mitigation and charity. The first assumes that poverty is indeed a permanent feature of our economy best alleviated by job-training programs, fatherhood initiatives, and work requirements, but never to be abolished outright. The second approaches poverty as a sad social condition that exists on the margins of society and treats poor people as, at best, pitiable and, at worst, pathological. Together, those two frameworks funnel billions of dollars in charitable and philanthropic giving to explicitly apolitical measures directed downstream from the source of poverty.

While such giving does indeed help many impoverished people meet immediate needs, it does very little to confront poverty in its fullness or why it exists in the first place — and in most cases, the help is inadequate given the need. No wonder the wealthy tend to be the biggest proponents of mitigating poverty through charity, because to fundamentally address the problem would also mean addressing the unequal distribution of political power in our world.

Oxfam’s new report is a good place to explore this, since it not only critiques inequality, but offers possible solutions to the nightmares such a situation creates, above all increasing tax rates on the wealthy, which right now are mind-numbingly low. Consider this statistic: “Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, paid a ‘true tax rate’ of about 3% between 2014 and 2018. Aber Christine, a flour vendor in Uganda, makes $80 a month and pays a tax rate of 40%.”

To counter this, Oxfam proposes that worldwide taxes on the income of the richest 1% be raised to at least 60% (with even higher rates for multimillionaires and billionaires). They also suggest that taxes on the wealthy be levied in such a way that their number would be dramatically reduced and their wealth redistributed to meet the needs of the poor.

Gabriela Bucher, Oxfam’s executive director, explained it this way:

“Taxing the super-rich is the strategic precondition to reducing inequality and resuscitating democracy. We need to do this for innovation. For stronger public services. For happier and healthier societies. And to tackle the climate crisis, by investing in the solutions that counter the insane emissions of the very richest.”

A New and Unsettling Force

People often ask me for a plan to end poverty. Usually that means they want to know what policy positions and prescriptions to advocate for, a line of inquiry on which I have plenty of thoughts. As a start, I refer them to the fulsome agenda of the Poor People’s Campaign (that I co-chair), including our demands for fair tax policy. But long ago, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., suggested an approach to lifting the load of poverty that goes far beyond any single program or policy.

Some months before the launch of the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968, having been endlessly asked for an itemized list of demands, King answered this way:

“When a people are mired in oppression, they realize deliverance when they have accumulated the power to enforce change. When they have amassed such strength, the writing of a program becomes almost an administrative detail. It is immaterial who presents the program. What is material is the presence of an ability to make events happen… The call to prepare programs distracts us excessively from our basic and primary tasks… We are, in fact, being counseled to put the cart before the horse… Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power so that government cannot elude our demands. We must develop, from strength, a situation in which government finds it wise and prudent to collaborate with us.”

The 1968 Poor People’s Campaign emerged on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement’s biggest legislative victories. At the time, King pointed out that, beneath the legal scaffolding of Jim Crow and institutionalized racism, areas in which they had made significant gains, millions of Black people remained locked in poverty in the South, as well as across the country, as did so many others from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. King himself was surprised to learn that poor white people actually outnumbered poor Black people nationally. Taking that into consideration, he counseled that the movement had to make an evolutionary leap from “civil rights to human rights” and from “reform to revolution.”

This may not be the King whom the nation chooses to remember every mid-January in glitzy speeches by politicians who vehemently oppose the very positions for which he gave his life. In fact, this year, on that very commemorative day, I couldn’t help but think of the words of poet Carl Hines:

“Now that he is safely dead, let us praise him, build monuments to his glory, sing hosannas to his name. Dead men make such convenient heroes. They cannot rise to challenge the images we would fashion from their lives. And besides, it is easier to build monuments than to make a better world.”

But the truth is that, right up to his last breath, King was deeply concerned about a nation, weighed down by war, racism, and poverty, that was quickly approaching the irreversible fate of “spiritual death.” Years of experience, and the guidance of others, had convinced him that the next chapter of the struggle required a mass movement of a breadth and depth not yet awakened. As he came to see it, strategically speaking, the unity of the poor would be the Achilles heel of a society desperately in need of restructuring. If poor people could unite to form a new political alliance across the lines that historically divided them, they would be uniquely positioned to lead a broad and powerful human-rights movement that confronted militarism, racism, and economic exploitation together.

The same is no less true today. To end poverty, our smartest and most innovative ideas have to be brought to the table. The right analysis alone, however, won’t end poverty. That will only happen through a movement or movements transforming the hurt and pain of millions into, as King once put it, a “new and unsettling force” carrying this nation to higher and more stable ground.

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Liz Theoharis, a TomDispatch regular, is a theologian, ordained minister, and anti-poverty activist. Co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, she is the author of Always With Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor and We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People’s Campaign. Follow her on Twitter at @liztheo.

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***

Tank warfare has evolved. The large force-on-force armored battles that were the hallmark of much of WWII, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, which served as the foundation of operational doctrine for both NATO and the Soviet Union (and which was implemented in full by the United States during Operation Desert Storm in 1991), has run its course.

Like most military technological innovations, the ability to make a modern main battle tank survivable has been outstripped by the fielding of defensive systems designed to overcome such defenses. If a modern military force attempted to launch a large-scale tank-dominated attack against a well-equipped peer-level opponent armed with modern anti-tank missiles, the result would be a decisive defeat for the attacking party marked by the smoking hulks of burned-out tanks.

Don’t get me wrong: tanks still have a vital role to play on the modern battlefield. Their status as a mobile bunker is invaluable in the kind of meat-grinder conflicts of attrition that have come to define the current stage of large-scale ground combat. Speed and armor still contribute to survivability, and the main gun of a tank remains one of the deadliest weapons on the modern battlefield.

But the modern tank performs best as part of a combined arms team, supported by infantry (mounted and unmounted) and copious amounts of supporting arms (artillery and close air support.) As part of such a team, especially one that is well-trained in the art of close combat, the tank remains an essential weapon of war. However, if operated in isolation, a tank is simply an expensive mobile coffin.

Much has been made about the recent decision made by NATO and allied nations to provide Western main battle tanks to Ukraine. The politics of this decision is its own separate topic. This article will address the operational practicalities of this decision, namely has the military capability of Ukraine been enhanced through the provision of these new weapons systems.

To answer this question, one needs to examine three basic issues: training, logistical sustainability, and operational employment.

Training

It takes 22 weeks to train a basic American M1 Abrams crewmember. That training just gives the soldier the very basic skill set to be functional. Actual operational expertise is only achieved through months, if not years, of additional training in not just the system itself, but employing it as part of a similarly trained combine arms team. Simply put, even a Ukrainian tank crew experienced in the operation of Soviet-era T-72 or T-64 tanks will not be able to immediately transition to a Western-style main battle tank.

First and foremost, the crew size of a Soviet-era tank is three, reflecting the reality that the Soviet tanks make use of an automatic loading mechanism. Western tanks have four crew members because the loading of the main tank gun is done manually. Adapting to these dynamics takes time, and requires extensive training.

Training is expensive. NATO is currently providing Ukraine with three types of Western main battle tank: the British Challenger 2, the German Leopard 2, and the American M1A2. There is no unified training course—each tank requires its own unique training prospectus that is not directly transferable to another system.

The decentralized training processes created by such a diverse approach promotes inefficiencies and generates discrepancies in outcome—one crew will not be like another, which in combat, where units are supposed to be interchangeable to promote predictable outcomes if all other circumstances remain the same, is usually fatal.

Moreover, these problems will only be enhanced by the emphasis that will be placed on rapid outcomes. The reality is whatever training programs that are developed and delivered by the nations providing the tanks will be insufficient to the task, resulting in poorly trained crews taking extremely complicated weapons systems into the most dangerous environment in the world for a tank—the teeth of a Russian Army designed and equipped to kill these very same tanks.

Logistical Sustainability

Tanks are among the most technically challenging weapons systems on a modern battlefield. They are constantly breaking down, especially if not properly maintained. For the M1 Abrams, for every hour a tank is in the field, there are three hours of maintenance time required. This problem only becomes magnified in combat.

Normally an armor unit is equipped with highly specialized organic maintenance crews that can repair most of the minor issues that can sideline a tank. Given the training requirements to produce this level of high-quality mechanic, it is unlikely Ukraine will be provided with this kind of maintenance support.

This means that the tanks that are being provided to Ukraine will need to be returned to NATO nations for any significant repairs of equipment that is damaged through simple usage or actual combat. In short, it is highly likely that a Western main battle tank in Ukrainian hands will break down at some point during its operational use by Ukraine, meaning that the total number of tanks available to Ukraine will be far less than the number of tanks provided.

Operational Employment

Ukraine’s commander in chief of the Armed Forces, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, told The Economist last month that he needed 300 tanks, 500 infantry fighting vehicles, and 500 artillery pieces, if he were going to have any chance of defeating [Russia].

Following the January 20 meeting of the Ramstein Contact Group, and subsequent follow-on discussions about the provision of tanks, NATO and its allied partners have agreed to provide less than 50% of the number of tanks requested, less than 50% of the number of infantry fighting vehicles requested, and less than 20% of the artillery requested.

Moreover, the timetable for delivery of this equipment is staggered incoherently over a period that stretches out for many months, and in some cases extends into the next year. Not only does this complicate training and logistical sustainability issues that are already unfavorably inclined for Ukraine, but it makes any meaningful effort to integrate this material into a cohesive operational employment plan all but impossible. In short, Ukraine will be compelled to commit the equipment provided—especially the tanks—into combat in piecemeal fashion.

The truth about tanks is that NATO and its allied nations are making Ukraine weaker, not stronger, by providing them with military systems that are overly complicated to operate, extraordinarily difficult to maintain, and impossible to survive unless employed in a cogent manner while supported by extensive combined arms partners.

The decision to provide Ukraine with Western main battle tanks is, literally, a suicide pact, something those who claim they are looking out for the best interests of Ukraine should consider before it is too late.

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Featured image is from Indian Punchline

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During a time when species are going extinct faster than any period in human history, the survival of species and persistence of healthy ecosystems requires science-based decisions. A new analysis by NatureServe addresses five essential questions about biodiversity–the variety of life on Earth–that need to be answered if we are going to effectively conserve nature: 1) How many species and ecosystems are at risk? 2) Are species and ecosystems adequately protected? 3) What are the major threats to biodiversity? 4) Where is imperiled biodiversity concentrated? 5) Where do we go from here?  

In the first report of its kind, Biodiversity in Focus: United States Edition reveals an alarming conclusion: 34% of plants and 40% of animals are at risk of extinction, and 41% of ecosystems are at risk of range-wide collapse. Because many protected areas prioritize geological features or landscapes of cultural significance instead of targeting threatened biodiversity, most at-risk species and ecosystems are insufficiently protected to prevent further decline.

Biodiversity in Focus leverages nearly 50 years of intensive data collection by NatureServe and the NatureServe Network, a collaborative of more than 60 programs that work together to develop, curate, analyze, and share information that can offer novel, actionable insights into biodiversity conservation. A major takeaway of the report is that to truly protect imperiled biodiversity, a range of on-the-ground data and analyses, including calculations of spatial overlap between individual species and specific threats, should be used to guide conservation decisions.

“For fifty years, the NatureServe Network has been collecting the information necessary to understand biodiversity imperilment in the United States. This new analysis of that data, a first in 20 years, makes crystal clear the urgency of that work,” stated Regan Smyth, Vice President for Data and Methods at NatureServe. She continued, “Two-fifths of our ecosystems are in trouble. Freshwater invertebrates and many pollinators, the foundation of a healthy, functional planet, are in precipitous decline. Understanding and addressing these risks is critical if we are to forestall devastating consequences for the biodiversity that humanity needs to survive.”

Because the data are collected in a standardized way and by local partners such as state authorities, the authors of the report were able to examine detailed patterns relevant to where at-risk biodiversity is found and why it is threatened across the United States. They found that habitat degradation, invasive species, dams, and climate change are among the primary threats to biodiversity in the United States. At-risk species are concentrated where threats are greatest, but species face different types and levels of threats in different regions of the country. For example, among pollinators, bees are particularly threatened, with 37% of assessed species classified as at risk. Bees in the West are more threatened than bees in the East.

By combining our data on the location of imperiled species with a map of protected areas, NatureServe has identified currently unprotected areas where conservation actions will most benefit biodiversity. These areas, marked in red on the map, indicate where on-the-ground conservation actions can most effectively prevent the extinction of the nation’s most imperiled species.

The authors also examined risks to ecosystems, documenting the impacts of centuries of land conversion and identifying ecosystem types at greatest risk. America’s once vast grasslands and diverse, life-sustaining wetlands are highlighted as being in particular need of conservation attention.

Biodiversity in Focus shines a light on species and ecosystems in peril, allowing us to make plans to protect these precious resources. The analyses presented in the report inform how to effectively and efficiently use our financial resources to make the best conservation decisions. The 30×30 global initiative calls for the conservation of 30% of the planet’s land and water by 2030. Meeting this goal requires investments in land acquisition and management to maximize value for biodiversity conservation. Those investments need to be targeted where they can have the greatest impact, and this report helps spotlight the species, ecosystems, and locations where resources are most needed. Strategies that protect the full diversity of natural ecosystems can be complemented by strategies that address the needs of individual species at risk of extinction.

“We are currently experiencing and causing the Sixth Extinction—the mass extinction of species across the planet. NatureServe’s data highlight where the threats are right here at home,” stated Dr. Sean T. O’Brien, President and CEO of NatureServe. He continued, “The plants, animals, and ecosystems found in our state, tribal, and federal lands are key components of our cultural and natural heritage. We should be proud of the biodiversity in our backyard and should prioritize protecting what is here, now.”

To access the full Biodiversity in Focus, U.S. Edition report visit: www.natureserve.org/bif

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US Central Command announced last week that it was involved in 43 operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria in the month of January. Task & Purpose reported the monthly average for US operations against ISIS in 2022 was 26 per month, signaling that the US military is stepping up its assaults against the terror group.

While ISIS no longer controls any territory, there are remnants of the group in remote regions of Syria and Iraq. CENTCOM said each raid in January was conducted with partner forces, the government in Iraq, and the Kurdish-led SDF in Syria.

“We rely heavily on the Syrian Democratic Forces for the fight against ISIS,” CENTCOM chief Gen. Michael Kurilla said. “Meanwhile, our Iraqi Security Forces have been aggressively taking the fight to ISIS in Iraq.”

The command said that in the operations in both countries, 11 suspected ISIS operatives were killed, and 227 were detained. CENTCOM did not offer any information about possible civilian casualties.

The Pentagon is notorious for undercounting or simply lying about civilian casualties. CENTCOM’s report for 2022 said 682 suspected ISIS fighters were killed that year and also did not mention the potential harm to civilians despite reports that children were killed in US-assisted operations, including in a major battle at a prison holding ISIS fighters and civilians.

While on paper, the US presence in Syria is about fighting ISIS, the occupation is part of the US economic campaign against Damascus. By backing the SDF and keeping about 1,000 troops in eastern Syria, the US is able to control about one-third of the country, an area where most of Syria’s oil resources are located. The US maintains crippling economic sanctions on Syria specifically to prevent the country’s reconstruction.

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

Featured image is from South Front

by Michel Chossudovsky

ISBN Number: 9780973714715

List Price: $24.95

click here to order

Special Price: $18.00

In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

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***

The U.S. got more than it bargained for after instigating the Ukrainian conflict. The Biden foreign policy team grows more desperate and their plans become more dangerous as they reckon with the unintended consequences of their actions.

“Senator Cruz, like you I am and I think the administration is very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.” — Victoria Nuland

Victoria Nuland is Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. The mouthful of a title doesn’t begin to describe what she actually does on behalf of the U.S. Perhaps Under Secretary for Destabilizing the World would be more accurate. Nuland is one of those persons who is always in the revolving door of foreign policy, destined to return when an election puts her clique back in office. She may be best known for passing out cookies to the mobs in Kiev’s Maidan Square when they overthrew the elected Ukrainian president in 2014. It was clear that the Obama administration had a hand in the coup, but Nuland disabused anyone of doubt when she gabbed on an unsecured phone and discussed who the next president of Ukraine ought to be. In declaring Ukraine’s new reality as a de facto U.S. colony she famously or rather infamously said, “Fu*k the EU!”

Of course she is back with the Biden administration and is the leader of the proxy war against Russia that is taking place in Ukraine. Her most recent infamous remark about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which would have carried natural gas to Germany, should be seen as an admission of guilt. The September 26, 2022 explosion remains mysterious but only because US vassals like Sweden have not made their investigation findings public. Nuland also said of Nord Stream in January 2022, “We will work with Germany to ensure it does not move forward.” The U.S. is the prime suspect yet again.

Nuland’s bravado is yet another sign of the mess that the Biden administration made for itself in instigating the conflict with Russia. Nothing has gone according to its plans. Biden said that sanctions would, “Turn the ruble to rubble.”  Russia has survived relatively unscathed and the only people suffering from U.S. interference are the EU nations who are supposed to be allies but who are in fact underlings who will never step out of line, even in favor of their own interests.

After nearly a year of conflict, European nations have literally given their all militarily, with very little left in the way of materiel to provide to Ukraine. They have given up cheap Russian natural gas and now purchase US liquified natural gas, which costs more and creates more environmental damage. Now even the Rand Corporation, which is funded by the military industrial complex and fossil fuel companies, and pushed for war with Russia in 2019, is waving red flags about the overreach. In an article entitled Avoiding a Long War, Rand concludes, “In short, the consequences of a long war – ranging from persistent elevated escalation risks to economic damage – far outweigh the possible benefits.” Rand is no peacemaker, believing that challenging China should be the focus and not the Ukraine stalemate. Warnings from a friendly party show that the best laid plans for hegemonic regime change have gone wrong once again.

The U.S. has pumped more than $113 billion into Ukraine, that is to say into the hands of the defense contractors who run Washington. Russian forces continue to advance, and the Ukrainian people who everyone claims to want to help are suffering, as middle aged men are dragooned from their homes, trained for a few weeks, and then sent to the front lines where they face death from well armed Russian forces.

Now tanks are on everyone’s lips, from Leopards in Germany to Abrams in the U.S. Tanks require manpower, highly trained manpower who need months to learn how to use this complicated equipment. Ukraine has neither enough men nor time necessary to make tanks useful to them in battle. Of course, Russia also has tanks and soldiers who already know how to use them. The latest alleged game changer won’t amount to much in the way of assistance for the beatified Ukrainians.

Victoria Nuland and her boss Antony Blinken and his boss Joe Biden are caught in a bind of their own making. They really believed they could wreck Russia’s economy, or get Vladimir Putin out of office, or break that country up into smaller parts ripe for the picking. But fantasy foreign policy is just that. The only thing that makes sense is to talk to the target nation directly. Yet if the past is any indication of future behavior they will probably do something reckless instead.

The Nord Stream explosion points to the danger that the U.S. poses to the whole world. The sabotage was an act of desperation as they sought to make sure that their lap dogs didn’t get any big ideas about acting independently, and so they escalated. In the process they create more dangers to Europe and to the whole world as they amateurishly play a game of chicken with another nuclear power.

Ukraine is losing, dependent upon an unending supply of money from Washington, and suffering after many casualties. President Zelensky will do what Washington tells him and the Biden administration is the wildcard. If they would blow up Nord Stream they would do something else equally foolish and they have plenty of company.

Having had Ukraine blow up in their faces they have turned their attention to China. An Air Force general wrote a memo predicting war by 2025, and exhorted his subordinates to “fire a clip into a 7-meter target with the full understanding that unrepentant lethality matters most. Aim for the head.” Members of congress are still provoking China with visits to Taiwan. The goal is the same as the failed policy in Ukraine. Provoke some sort of incident and then sanction China, or come up with a rationale to sanction China without an incident. The Biden administration turns the old saying on its head. “If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again.”

Of course the people lose. They have lost $113 billion while their needs go unmet. But a state that is devoted to creating a proxy war with a nuclear power has no interest in helping its people anyway. Humanity is a hindrance to their grand schemes. They see the welfare state as something to be subverted.

The NATO Secretary General said without any irony, “Weapons are in fact the way to peace.” Of course, only peace is the way to peace. Wars can end with negotiation, but peace is antithetical to their grand plans. Ukraine is not working out the way they hoped. But any change in course is not on their agenda.

They see forever wars as success, or baiting Russia and China as success, regardless of the outcome of their actions. They don’t see the world the way sane people do. They have made the Ukraine conflict an existential crisis, and then decide they have no choice but to engage in dangerous actions. The world is a zero-sum game to them. If Russia and China are independent actors, they believe they lose. The idea of peaceful coexistence is anathema to Nuland, Biden, and Blinken. Blown up pipelines are seen as proof of victory to people who thought they could make dangerous and irrational obsessions come true.

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Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley(at)blackagendareport.com.

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***

Hysteria over balloons is a strange thing.  Hot air balloons made their appearance during the Napoleonic era, where they served as delivery weapons for bombs and undertook surveillance tasks.  High altitude balloons were also used by, of all powers, the United States during the 1950s, for reasons of gathering intelligence, though these were shot down by the irritated Soviets.  Somehow, the US imperium and its noisy choristers have managed to get worked up over a solitary Chinese balloon that traversed the United States for over a week before it was shot down by the US Air Force.

On January 28, a device reported to be a “high-altitude surveillance balloon” entered US airspace in Alaska.  It then had a brief spell in Canadian airspace before returning to the US via Idaho on January 31.  On February 4, with the balloon moving off the coast of South Carolina, a decision was made by the US military to shoot it down using a F-22 Raptor from the 1^st Fighter Wing based at Langley Air Force Base.  The Pentagon has revealed that the collecting of debris is underway.

In response, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a stern note of disapproval, protesting “the US attack on a civilian unmanned airship by force.”  This was “a clear overreaction and a serious violation of international practice.”  Beijing also issued a note of apology, regretting “the unintended entry of the ship into US airspace due to force majeure.”

A US State Department official, while noting the statement of regret, felt compelled to designate “the presence of this balloon in our airspace [as] a clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law”.

Rumours of a second Chinese balloon flying across Latin America were also confirmed by a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry on February 6, who described it as being “of a civilian nature and is used for flight tests.”  The instrument had been impaired by weather in its direction, having “limited self-control capabilities”.

The Pentagon’s press secretary, Brigadier General Pat Ryder, also confirmed the existence of the second balloon, reaching the predictably opposite conclusion to his Chinese counterparts.  “We are seeing reports of a balloon transiting Latin America.  We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon.”

This overegged saga has seen much airtime and column space dedicated to those in the pay of the military-defence complex.  Little thought was given about the purpose of such a seemingly crude way of collecting military intelligence.  Timothy Heath of the Rand Corporation went so far as to extol the merits of such cheeky devices.  For one thing, they were hard to detect, making them somehow reliable.

General Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and US Northern Command, made reference to a number of Chinese spy balloons that supposedly operated with impunity during the Trump administration.  “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats.”  This had resulted in a “domain awareness gap that we have to figure out.”  At this writing, the begging bowl for even larger defence budgets is being pushed around the corridors of power.

Lawyers of international law have also had their say, reaching for their manuals, and shaking their heads gravely.  Donald Rothwell of the Australian National University thought that “the incursion of the Chinese balloon tested the boundaries of international law.”

Thankfully, one or two sober notes of reflection have prevailed, even from within the military-intelligence fraternity.  The Center for Strategic and International Studies has issued a few self-evident truths.  “Balloons are not an ideal platform for spying,” writes James Andrew Lewis.  “They are big and hard to hide.  They go where the winds take them”.  Such instruments “would be a strange choice for a technologically advanced and sophisticated opponent.”

This absurd spectacle has become the stuff of political bricks and straw for a Biden administration keen to push its stuttering election cart. Embroiled in his own classified documents scandal, President Joe Biden was put off his stroke about focusing on any announcement about running for a second term.  Burnishing the China Threat was just the ticket.

In his State of the Union Address, Biden paved the way for a number of rhetorical salvos against the Great Yellow Hordes he finds so threatening to the awesome majesty of US power.  “Today, we’re in the strongest position in decades to compete with China or anyone else in the world.”  In passing reference to the balloon, the president proved entertainingly, if absurdly belligerent: “as we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country.  And we did.”  Such a response, and such a threat.

The Chinese explanation has been scoffed at and derisively dismissed.  Yet balloons are an almost quotidian feature of scientific and meteorological work, whatever the official explanation offered by Beijing might be.  NASA’s own Scientific Balloon Program, for instance, has been most engaged of late.  The organisation was keen to tout its fall 2022 campaign involving six scientific, engineering and student balloon flights in support of 17 missions.

The scale of any one mission can be sizeable.  “Our balloon platforms,” came the description from NASA’s Scientific Balloon chief Debbie Fairbrother, “can lift several thousand pounds to the edge of space, allowing for multiple, various scientific instruments, technologies, and education payloads to fly together in one balloon flight.”

The disproportionate nature of Washington’s reaction to Beijing over such balloons also looks rather odd in the face of vast surveillance technologies it deploys against adversaries and friends.  But politics is not merely the art of the possible but an opportunity for the absurd to find form and voice.  On this score, the mouse has clearly terrified the elephant.

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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 Kurt Nimmo

How the Super-Rich Destroy Our Minds

By Emanuel Pastreich, February 06, 2023

The tools they use to pursue this war against the citizens of the Earth are technology, propaganda and disinformation campaigns, threats against individuals who display leadership skills and massive bribes for the leaders who are allowed to be covered in the media to represent the conservative and the progressive causes.

US Declares War on Turkish Tourism Economy. Ankara Retorts: “Take Your Dirty Hands off Turkey”

By Steven Sahiounie, February 06, 2023

On February 3, the Turkish interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, blasted the US Ambassador to Turkey, Jeffry L. Flake, saying, “Take your dirty hands off of Turkey.” The outrage was prompted after Washington and eight European countries issued travel warnings over possible terror attacks in Turkey.

Video: “Never Again Is Now Global”. Here We Go Again on Steroids. Part 1

By Vera Sharav and Children’s Health Defense, February 06, 2023

“Never Again Is Now Global,” a five-part docuseries highlighting the parallels between Nazi Germany and global pandemic policies. Each one-hour episode focuses on recent testimonies by Holocaust survivors and their descendants who discuss comparisons between the early repressive stages under the Nazi regime that culminated in the Holocaust and global COVID-19 policies.

What Is Anarcho-Tyranny and Are We Living in It?

By Ben Bartee, February 06, 2023

How does one best explain the brutal crackdown on COVID-19 protesters worldwide for the sake of Public Health™ while, at the same time, Black Lives Matter was permitted to run hog-wild on America’s streets? How are elected Democrat leaders allowed to literally incite race riots while those same leaders pearl-clutch about January 6 in never-ending televised witch trials?

Ukraine — The Inevitable War

By Chay Bowes, February 06, 2023

During a recent interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, former Chancellor and European political heavyweight Angela Merkel revealed that the Minsk accords, a comprehensive 2015 diplomatic treaty, agreed by the EU, United States, Russia, and Kyiv to end the civil war in eastern Ukraine, was essentially subverted by the Ukrainians in an attempt to buy time to expand its military capabilities.

America’s Balloon Obsession Is an Attempt to Prevent Detente with China

By Drago Bosnic, February 06, 2023

For the last several days, the mainstream propaganda machine diverted its attention from the mandatory “evil Russia” narrative and focused on 24/7 coverage of a weather balloon. Although the media frenzy was part of the “evil China” narrative, this one is not as omnipresent as that about Russia, at least not yet.

China’s Response to the Balloon Incident. Derailing the Sino-American New Detente

By Andrew Korybko, February 06, 2023

The balloon incident is shaping up to be the most decisive moment in the New Cold War since the start of Russia’s special operation a year ago. The Sino-American New Détente was unexpectedly derailed due to the subversive intervention of their hardline factions that were both opposed to this potentially game-changing rapprochement.

US Sends Long-range Missiles to Ukraine

By Andre Damon, February 07, 2023

The White House announced Friday that it would send long-range missiles capable of striking nearly 100 miles into Russian territory to Ukraine, in one of the most significant escalations of US involvement in the war with Russia to date.

U.S. Act of War Against the European Union: President Biden Ordered the Terror Attack Against Nord Stream. High Treason Against the People of Europe

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 07, 2023

In recent developments, German Prosecutor General Peter Frank confirmed “there is no evidence to blame Russia for the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines”. No evidence of foreign sabotage of an act which has created social havoc and hardship in the European Union, with rising energy prices? People are freezing, unable to pay their heating bills.

Is the Trip of the Secretary General of NATO Aimed to Instigate the Creation of the Asian Version of NATO?

By Kim Hoon, February 06, 2023

South Korea and Japan trying to attend to their own business by inviting unbidden guests to the region should be well aware that they are getting closer to the extreme security crisis, far from defusing security uneasiness. It was reported that the secretary general of NATO embarked upon his trip to South Korea and Japan.

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***

Note the following sentence in a New York Times news story yesterday by Michael Schwirtz and Anton Troianovski about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “Mr. Putin’s attempt to put a veneer of nobility on an unprovoked invasion that has killed thousands of civilians and turned millions more into refugees was made in the Russian city once known as Stalingrad, on the 80th anniversary of a victory there against Nazi Germany that changed the course of World War II.” (Italics added.)

The operative word is “unprovoked.” 

First of all, it’s a strange word for news reporters to be using because it’s more in the nature of a commentary or editorial. News reporters are supposed to report the news, and the editorial department of a newspaper is supposed to render opinions and commentary on the news. Schwirtz and Troianovski do both in their news article. 

Second, and more important, for the life of me, I cannot understand how Schwirtz and Troianovski are unable to see that Russia’s invasion was provoked. It was provoked knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately.

Now, one could argue that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine wasn’t justified. That’s a different word from “unprovoked.” An invasion can be “provoked” and “unjustified” at the same time. My hunch is that Schwirtz and Troianovski meant to use the word “unjustified” rather than the word “unprovoked.”

When the Berlin Wall came crashing down in 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Eastern Europe, the Warsaw Pact was terminated, and the Soviet Union was dismantled. As far was Russia was concerned, the Cold War was over.

Not so, however, for the United States and, specifically, for the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. The Cold War had been very beneficial to the U.S. national-security establishment in terms of ever-increasing power within the federal governmental structure and ever-increasing taxpayer-funded largesse to finance America’s Cold War military machine, including its vast army of voracious “defense” contractors who had become dependent on feeding at the public trough. 

Thus, while Russia was ready to move on, the U.S. national-security establishment was not. It was determined to not let go of its Cold War racket.

NATO had been brought into existence after World War II to ostensibly protect Western Europe from an invasion by the Soviet Union. But the notion of such an invasion was ludicrous from the start. Russia had been devastated by the war. As many as 27 million Soviet citizens were killed as a result of the war. That’s 27 million people! That’s a lot of people. Moreover, the entire industrial might of the country had been decimated. 

The Soviets knew that if they started a war with their former World War II partners and allies, the United States would immediately come to their assistance. The United States had not suffered any damage to its industrial capacity and was still fully capable of fielding a massive army. Moreover, the United States had a monopoly on nuclear bombs and had displayed a willingness to use them against people living in populated cities. Thus, there was never any realistic possibility whatsoever that the Soviet Union was going to invade Western Europe. NATO served no purpose whatsoever. 

Recall that one of the major reasons for all the death and destruction that Russia had experienced during the war was Germany’s surprise invasion of the Soviet Union, an invasion that almost resulted in the German conquest of Russia. German troops made it all the way to Stalingrad before they met with defeat, owing to the tenacity of the Russian people and the brutality of the Russian winter. 

Make no mistake about it: Germany’s near-conquest of their country — and the massive death and destruction wreaked by Germany on their country — was seared into the collective conscience of the Russian people. No Russian generation will ever forget it. Thus, when Germany decides to send tanks to Ukraine in the hopes that Ukraine ultimately joins NATO, which would enable German tanks, troops, and missiles to be aligned on Russia’s border, one should be able to at least understand why the Russian people might feel a bit uneasy about that.

In fact, Schwirtz’s and Troianovski’s news article mocked Russian president Vladimir Putin for using the 80th anniversary of Russia’s victory at Stalingrad to deliver a speech about the war in Ukraine. In their mockery, Schwirtz and Troianovski are clearly unable to draw the link between Germany’s near conquest of Russia and Germany’s current thirst to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, which would enable Germany to put its tanks, missiles, and troops along Russia’s border. 

Once the Cold War was over, NATO had fulfilled its ostensible mission. There was no longer any threat of the Soviet Union invading Western Europe. Thus, this old Cold War dinosaur clearly should have gone extinct.

Instead, the Pentagon decided to keep NATO in existence and, even worse, began using NATO to absorb former members of the Warsaw Pact, which was enabling the United States and Germany to move their troops, missiles, bases, and armaments eastward, i.e., ever closer to Russia’s border. 

Throughout this process, Russia was, not surprisingly, vehemently objecting. Russia continuously asked: If the Cold War was really over, then what was the point of doing this? NATO’s answer was that there was nothing to be concerned about. The United States and Germany were both peace-loving nations that would never aggress against Russia. 

That, of course, is a ridiculous notion. For its part, Germany had already aggressed against the Soviet Union in World War II, which had resulted in 27 million Russian deaths, the total destruction of the country, and the near-conquest of Russia. For its part, the United States was, in the words of Martin Luther King, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” 

How could anyone not understand why Russia would be concerned about NATO’s expansion toward Russia’s border, especially when there was no good reason to do so?

As Russia continuously objected to NATO’s expansion, Russia made it clear that there was one “red line” that would finally provoke a Russian reaction — the threat to absorb Ukraine into NATO. That would enable Germany and the United States to place their tanks, nuclear missiles, bases, armaments, and troops on Russia’s border. Given Germany’s prior invasion of the Soviet Union and the U.S. propensity for violence, that was unacceptable to Russia.

The United States and Germany, operating through NATO, knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately crossed that “red line,” knowing full well that it was a “red line” for Russia. By threatening to absorb Ukraine into NATO, they knew that Russia would respond because Russian had said that it would respond. 

Thus, when President Biden claimed that his “intelligence” had learned that Russia would invade Ukraine, he was being disingenuous. He knew Russia would invade because Russia had been saying it would invade if the United States, Germany, and other NATO powers crossed its “red line” by threatening to absorb Ukraine into NATO.

Thus, there is no doubt that the Pentagon, operating through NATO, did provoke Russia into invading Ukraine. Again, one can argue that the Pentagon’s action did not justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but one cannot rationally say that Russia’s invasion was “unprovoked,” as Schwirtz and Troianovski did yesterday in their news story in the New York Times.

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Open Letter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia Regarding a Fine British Columbia Physician:  Dr. Charles Douglas Hoffe

Dr. Charles Hoffe has been a physician in the Lytton community of British Columbia for nearly 30 years, looking after a largely native community after having gained his medical schooling from the University of Witwatersrand, the second ranked clinical medical university in South Africa.

A citation has been issued by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia against Dr. Hoffe for (allegedly) publicly spreading misleading information by:

a)    recommending Ivermectin for Covid-19

b)    saying Covid vaccines can cause microscopic blood clots, and

c)    saying that vaccinated persons can cause harm to unvaccinated persons.

I, Elizabeth Woodworth, a retired health sciences librarian who delivered medical literature to the BC Ministry of Health for 25 years, including the Provincial Health Officer and all the regional health officers and the public health nurses, mental health professionals, nutritionists, dental staff and others, wish to point out some of the peer-reviewed literature that has been tragically overlooked by many public health agencies during this pandemic.  Dr. Hoffe, on the other hand, is aware of this literature.

First, although there has been a sustained Big Pharma and media campaign against Ivermectin, the wonderful multi-faceted anti-viral drug that was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2015, and is on the WHO list of essential medicines, there are currently 95 published studies from 1,023 scientists attesting to its efficacy with regard to Covid-19.

Some 20 countries have included Ivermectin in their COVID-19 management strategies.  It is available over-the-counter in South American countries, and as of now, also in Tennessee.

Seldom if ever mentioned in the media is that the FDA cannot legally grant an Emergency Use Authorization for an experimental drug or vaccine if an “adequate, approved, and available alternative” already exists.

Second, it is now well established in the medical literature that blood clots are caused in some mRNA-injected people for Covid-19.

Third, regarding the question of the vaccinated causing harm, since the mRNA injections do not stop transmission of Covid-19, the vaccinated frequently infect the unvaccinated.

Dr. Hoffe has received thirty-two 5-star ratings from his patients online at

https://www.ratemds.com/doctor-ratings/40188/Dr-Charles-Hoffe-Lytton-BC.html/

Finally, regarding the big money behind some of the Covid-19 strategies, epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch, emeritus Prof. of Medicine and Public Health at Yale University, long-time on the editorial board of the Amer. J. Epid., and who has no financial connections to Big Pharma, has written extensively in WSJ, Newsweek, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, and many others about the corruption of the CDC and FDA, who along with the now-corrupted WHO, have led the Covid-19 response.

Elizabeth Woodworth
Head Librarian
B.C. Ministry of Health (1978-2002)
Victoria, BC

*

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According to Donbass authorities, Russian forces were attacked with chemical compounds by Ukrainian enemies. The denunciation comes as further evidence of the terrorist, illegal and anti-humanitarian practices of the neo-Nazi regime. In addition, Western involvement needs to be investigated, considering that it is possible that the weapons used in the attacks were supplied by Kiev’s NATO allies.

The report was made on February 6 by Denis Pushilin, the acting governor of the Donetsk People’s Republic, during an interview to a Russian TV channel. He said his office has been receiving constant reports of chemical attacks “for at least two weeks”. The weapons are said to be being used by neo-Nazi troops specifically in the Donetsk region and would be making the affected Russian soldiers severely sick.

“According to the statements of our forces, and commanders who came forward with such information, there are facts of the use of chemical compounds causing sickness among our servicemen not only in the Artyomovsk [Bakhmut] direction but also in the Ugledar direction (…) They are dropping [chemical weapons] from drones on the locations of our forces (…) We currently seek to equip our units [with chemical protection suits]. Then again, we have some of the things that we need but it’s not always comfortable to constantly wear chemical protection suits while in position. Certainly, it makes it harder for our forces to perform their missions so we are looking for additional ways to protect our troops (…) They [the affected soldiers] trigger coughing, followed by watery eyes and general discomfort”, the DPR head said.

Other Russian officials declined to comment on the case, just saying that investigations are still ongoing. Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for the Kremlin, however, made it clear that reports on possible incidents would be passed on to the appropriate authorities at the Ministry of Defense. In this sense, it is likely that investigations will be concluded soon, and official statement will be made in the coming weeks.

In fact, rumors of chemical warfare have been rising since at least mid-January. Many soldiers and civilians in Donbass reported evidence that toxic compounds are being used in the region through specific air-dropped munitions. Although there is still no precise information and investigations continue to take place, it is a fact that in this period in which the rumors have been spreading, many Russian soldiers have shown health symptoms that indicate contamination by toxic compounds, which makes the suspicion very plausible.

In addition, a video is circulating on the internet showing Ukrainian soldiers assembling drones to carry some unknown ammunitions. The shells are shown in the video being removed from a refrigerator. Some experts have assumed that these could be chemical weapons. Although there is still no concrete information about the case, the video has increased suspicion about the use of this type of weapon, in addition to showing a scene consistent with reports by residents of Donbass about air-dropped ammunition, considering the drones.

It is important to remember that chemical warfare is prohibited under international law, in the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) – a treaty established in 1997 and to which both Moscow and Kiev are signatories. The document forbids the use of all types of weapons equipped with toxic chemical compounds, including non-lethal ones. However, constant violations of international norms have already become commonplace among Ukrainian forces, which is why the use of these weapons would not be surprising.

In parallel, it is important to investigate the possible Western participation in this Ukrainian crime. The US is the only country in the world to publicly maintain stockpiles of chemical weapons. On the same day as the Pushilin’s interview, there was a joint statement by the Foreign Ministers of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, and Syria, Dr. Faisal Al-Miqdad, where they condemned Western unsubstantiated accusations that Syria used chemical weapons in the city of Douma in 2018. They recalled the fact that only the US currently has these weapons, which is why the possible incident in Douma appears to be a foreign provocation.

In the same sense, if chemical weapons are being used by Kiev, it is necessary to investigate whether they are provided by international allies of the neo-Nazi regime. Even if the chemical compounds are not imported from NATO countries, the entire military technological chain involved in the alleged attacks needs to be investigated. Considering that the compounds are allegedly being dropped from the air, then it is necessary to find out whether the drones used in these illegal maneuvers are supplied by NATO.

In fact, it is unacceptable that in the face of so much evidence of crimes and violations of international law, the West continues its irresponsible policy of supporting Kiev. With the use of chemical weapons, the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime reaches new levels of anti-humanitarian practices. Measures are urgently needed to stop Kiev from continuing to promote such practices – and halt the Western sending of arms.

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One might actually be willing to consider that there might be some value in the “rules based international order” being promoted by the Joe Biden Administration if such a thing actually existed and was applied equally to all transgressors. Of course, in reality, the “rules” being referred to are neither agreed upon nor driven by any broad international consensus and are merely a trick that is exploited to further the interests of the United States and its closest allies. In fact, the “rules”, such as they are, are most frequently ignored to give a pass to the bad behavior being exhibited by the US and its friends.

If the “rules” were actually intended to place limits on violent interactions among nations, consider for a moment the actual record of the United States in that regard. Recent opinion polls demonstrate that the US by a large margin is considered by other nations to be the most dangerous country in the world. That judgement is based not only on historic memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also the Vietnam War and the overthrowing of alleged “leftist” regimes in places like Iran, Chile and Guatemala. Armed interventions on a greater or lesser scale have been a regular features of US initiatives throughout the Caribbean and Latin America ever since the Spanish-American War.

More recently there has been the global war on terror, unleashed on the entire world based on US condemnation of countries that were not perceived to be toeing Washington’s red line on what constitutes terrorism. This has led to pointless and ultimately failed interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Somalia in which, by some estimates millions of civilians have died directly or indirectly, and the US itself has sustained the war-making through the printing of trillions of dollars in essentially fiat currency and running up enormous debts, a chicken that will come home to roost before too long. In Afghanistan, and also in Yemen and Iraq, the US has engaged in targeted assassinations as well as profile killings of civilians using drones.

The most troublesome aspect of all the violence that the US has initiated is that there are no actual rules in sight, apart from the Blinken-Biden-Austin clowns in Washington citing unsubstantiated threats coming from countries incapable of actually doing any harm like Iran or countries like Russia and China that had previously no intention of confronting the American military colossus.

So Washington is the beating heart of policies that have created turmoil worldwide while also moving the Doomsday clock closer to the finality that might well come with a nuclear war. And all the posturing is literally for nothing, for a bad cause supporting a corrupt, autocratic regime in a country that is no democracy with no visible off ramp. The hypocrisy of those in the White House and in Congress, as well as in the media, who are so reckless with the lives and fortunes of their fellow citizens literally defies belief.

If Washington is the first of the three cities that I am considering, Moscow must certainly be number two as it is on the receiving end of the US hypocrisy, being accused of having deviated from the “rules based” international order by invading Ukraine one year ago. Russia, however, sees things differently. The Kremlin has argued that it has repeatedly sought to negotiate a settlement with Ukraine based on two fundamental issues that it plausibly claims threaten its own national security and identity. First is the failure of Ukraine to comply with the Minsk Accords of 2014-5 which conceded a large measure of autonomy to the Donbas region, an area indisputably inhabited by ethnic Russians, as is Crimea.

Recently former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has let slip that there was never any intention to comply with the Minsk Agreement, implying that it was all a charade to enable strengthening Ukraine to join NATO and, if necessary, fight Russia. In fact, the Accords were ignored right from the beginning, with Ukrainian militias and other armed elements using artillery to shell the Donbas, killing an estimated 15,000 mostly ethnic Russian residents, a number which appears to be confirmed by independent sources.

The second vital national security issue for Moscow was over plans to offer NATO membership to Ukraine, which would place a possibly superior hostile military alliance at its doorstep. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly observed that the issues were both negotiable and that Zelensky only had to agree to maintain his country as “neutral,” i.e. not linked to any military alliance, and to honor some reasonable autonomy for Donbas. Reportedly it was the United States and Britain that pushed Ukraine into rejecting any and all of the Russian demands in a bid to initiate a war of attrition using Ukrainian lives to destabilize Putin’s government and reduce its ability to oppose US and Western dominance.

And there is of course the back story, that the United States had long been meddling in Eastern Europe in spite of a pledge not to take advantage of the break-up of the Soviet Union to expand NATO eastwards. The US had brought about “regime change” in Ukraine in 2014 to remove a government friendly to Moscow. But in this case, the increasing involvement of the US and NATO in the fighting has been an extremely dangerous development because it has escalated the conflict and turned it into what might become a devastating nuclear exchange. One would like to see an immediate truce initiated to stop the fighting followed by serious negotiations to come to a settlement of the territorial dispute. But, of course, the United States, which has provided Zelensky with more than $100 billion in aid, has made it clear that it is not interested in a negotiated settlement unless Putin is willing as a confidence building first step to withdraw from all occupied Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. In other words, he must surrender.

So whether Moscow has broken with the “rules based international order” depends very much on how one defines threats. Certainly, at a minimum, Washington has behaved far worse than Russia over the past twenty years, which rather confirms that the “rules” are essentially a convenient fiction. And finally, my third city to consider is Jerusalem, the claimed capital of the state of Israel. As the Jewish state is arguably either Washington’s closest ally or, as many believe, the tail that actually wags the White House dog, it is instructive to look at its behavior to examine whether the US applies a uniform standard to friend and foe alike when it doles out punishment to accused rule breakers.

If the United States is considered by the world community to be the most dangerous “superpower” country, Israel has to be considered the leading pariah among smaller, more regionally focused nations. And its control over the White House, the Congress and the national media in the US is such that it is never held to account for anything. Most recently, there was an attack by Israeli soldiers on a Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin on the West Bank in which ten Arabs were killed. In retaliation, a Palestinian gunman subsequently shot dead seven Israelis in Jerusalem before being killed himself. Speaking from the Oval Office, President Biden only saw fit to mention the Palestinian counter-attack, saying merely that “This was an attack against the civilized world.” The initial Israeli attack which killed ten was not even cited, suggesting that Israeli atrocities killing Palestinians do not bother the civilized world that the Bidens live in.

In another White House demonstration of where its priorities lie, last year’s shooting dead by an Israeli soldier of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh led eventually to a milk-toast call for an inquiry by the White House, even though Biden and company openly bought into the Israeli government lie that it was an accident, likely triggered by a lot of Palestinian terrorist shooting in the area, which was not true. And don’t expect any real pushback against Israel’s policy of shoot-first from Congress, which only last week removed Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee because she was “antisemitic” due to her criticism of Israel’s behavior.

The Israeli Defense ministry indicated that it would not cooperate with any inquiry into its behavior and the Abu Akleh story has since disappeared. Israel has also killed other American citizens without any consequences, including Rachel Corrie and 34 sailors on board the USS Liberty naval vessel in 1967. Never before has a government killed Americans only to be rewarded with a $3.8 billion gift from the US taxpayers every year. The Jewish state’s government has also recently indicated that its free-fire policy against Palestinian civilians and their foreign supporters will not be modified. 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 Israeli control over major parts of the US federal government appears to be tightening. In a press conference last week, the United States State Department refused to confirm that Israel is in illegal occupation of large parts of Palestine, nor will it acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear arsenal.

Israel’s track record vis-à-vis its neighbors is somewhat similar to the American pattern of rules enforcement, though it rarely even bothers to excuse its behavior. It even started a major war, having attacked all its neighbors, after complaining falsely that they were “threatening,” in 1967, after which it illegally seized and occupied their territory. It is currently bombing Syria on a regular basis and has also attacked Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinians in Gaza. It has assassinated Iranian scientists and technicians.

Israel has invaded and occupied southern Lebanon and facilitated a massacre of Palestinians settled in camps there. Neither Syria nor Iran has ever attacked Israel or even threatened to do so, but Israel persists in claiming that it is threatened and is trying to convince Biden to join it in attacking the Iranians. The new, extreme racist right-wing government of Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu is in particular stepping up the pressure on Palestinians through actions that are illegal under international law without a squeak coming out of the White House. Home demolitions, property seizures, checkpoints and other round the clock harassment of Palestinians also are increasing in frequency as the Israelis expand their occupation of the West Bank. And Israel even sponsors actual terrorists in the form of the weaponized settlers who beat and destroy Palestinians at will with no consequences even when they kill an unarmed Arab or a child.

And some Israelis are also thinking of something grander, in the form of genocide, when it comes to their Palestinian neighbors. A prominent right wing Israeli member of parliament has perhaps suggested what he and many of his colleagues would like to see done to the remaining Palestinians. Zvika Fogel, a member of the governing coalition has called for a “final war” against the Palestinians to “subdue them once and for all”, following international condemnation of security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s incursion into Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, an additional illegal move intended to assert total control over access to Muslim holy sites. Fogel responded to the criticism, 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…”

So, it is a tale of three cities. Moscow is engaged in a war that at least has a rationale, even as one should and must oppose armed interventions between two neighboring countries. The Russian operation has been opposed by the United States, which has heedlessly escalated the war and produced a situation that can be devastating for all life on the planet. Washington is also the grand hypocrite in the game in that it has behaved far worse than Moscow over the past twenty years. And then there is Jerusalem, or if one prefers, Tel Aviv. A monstrous Israel is preeminent in how it wins the prize for being the absolute worst in its inhumanity and war crimes, without a rebuke from Washington or Joe Biden ever about “rules based international order” violations.

***

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].

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***

There is a strong possibility of Moldova becoming a conflict hotspot so that the West can maintain maximum pressure on Russia’s periphery and bog the country down in more war. This comes as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the media that the West now has its “eyes” on Moldova and that Moldovan President Maia Sandu is ready to act on any instructions that she receives.

The possibility of Moldova becoming a major European flashpoint has always existed because the Transnistrian conflict has been frozen since July 1992.

If Moldova, in the eyes of officials, becomes even more pro-Western and integrated into Romania, the more likely is that Transnistrians will resolve their right for sovereignty by force. This would turn Moldova into the “next Ukraine”, which will surely see indirect international intervention, and perhaps a direct Russian intervention. Moscow has the ability to support Transnistria, including with financial, diplomatic and military methods to resolve the conflict, and will not hesitate to do so if new provocations emanate from Moldova.

Transnistria, where 60% of the inhabitants are Russian and Ukrainian, had sought to secede from Moldova even before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, fearing that Moldova would join Romania in the face of post-communist nationalism. In 1992, after the Moldovan government failed to resolve the issue by force, Transnistria became an unrecognised territory outside of Chisinau’s control.

Peace in the Transnistrian conflict zone is maintained by a joint peacekeeping force, consisting of 402 Russian servicemen, 492 Transnistrian servicemen and 355 Moldovan servicemen, as well as ten military observers from Ukraine. Peacekeeping forces serve at 15 fixed checkpoints and other checkpoints located in key areas of the security zone.

It is recalled that in late December, Moldova’s Ministry of Defence had to deny claims about a Russian missile being launched in the direction of their country. Several Moldovan media outlets reported that Ukrainian Telegram channels made claims about an alleged Russian missile heading towards Moldova.

“Amid information appearing in the media about a missile that is believed to have flown towards Moldova due to shelling in Ukraine this morning , we announce that the air surveillance systems of the National Army did not record illegal flights in the airspace of the republic,” noted the press service of Moldova’s defence ministry.

This scenario was concocted as part of Kiev’s efforts to draw more countries into the conflict. Moldova is particularly vulnerable considering it is a poor country contending with an internal ideological struggle between Western liberalism and Moldovan sovereignty. Ever since Sandu came to power, Moldova has been integrating deeper into NATO, the European Union and Romania.

“First of all, because they were able to put a president at the head of the country through quite specific methods, far from being freely democratic, who, quite simply, is willing to enter NATO, has Romanian citizenship, is ready to unite with Romania and, in general, is ready for almost anything,” Lavrov explained on February 2.

“I won’t go into details, but this is one of the next countries that the West wants to turn anti-Russia,” Lavrov added.

For his part, Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu denied Lavrov’s charges, claiming that

“We categorically reject such insinuations. Such a tone is entirely out of place in a proper relationship between two states. And at the same time, it is absolutely clear what the population of the Republic of Moldova wants. The citizens of the Republic of Moldova want a democratic, prosperous, European country, where corruption is eliminated and which joins the European Union.”

In the same statement, Popescu denied his country’s obvious and open anti-Russia actions, but also claimed that the ruling government is fighting corruption. However, despite Sandu coming to power in 2020, Statista’s “Corruption perception index score of Moldova from 2012 to 2022” found that the “composite indicator that includes data on the perception of corruption in areas such as bribery of public officials, kickbacks in public procurement, embezzlement of state funds, and effectiveness of governments’ anti-corruption efforts” actually worsened in 2021 and 2022.

Therefore, despite the claims by Popescu that Sandu and her government are dealing with corruption, Moldovan perceptions is that corruption has actually deepened under the current pro-Western government.

In fact, even more damning for Popescu’s claims is that on February 3, WatchDog MD announced that a recent survey in Moldova found Russian President Vladimir Putin to have the highest approval rating out of all foreign leaders in the country, with 38% of the vote.

This was followed by Romanian leader Klaus Iohannis in second place with 36.6%, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with 35.3%, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko with 35%, French President Emmanuel Macron with 34%, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with 30.3%, US President Joe Biden with 25.2%, and Chinese President Xi Jinping with 22%.

In this way, the actions of the Moldovan government are actually in opposition to most citizens, despite what Popescu might claim. Although they might deny Lavrov’s charges, it cannot be overlooked that the Moldovan Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration met with the US ambassador in Chisinau on February 3 to discuss the situation in Transnistria. It can be safely assumed that Washington’s interest is not for a successful mediation between Moldova and separatists in Transnistria, but rather to try and create a new flashpoint to distract and waste Moscow’s attention and resources.

Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher

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“By an act of April 16, 1862, which abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, Congress made an appropriation of $100,000 for voluntary Negro emigrants at an expense of $100 each; and later, July 16, an additional appropriation of $500,000 was made at Lincoln’s request. The President was authorized ‘to make provision for transportation, colonization, and settlement, in some tropical country beyond the limits of the United States, of such persons of the African race, made free by the provisions of this act, as may be willing to emigrate, having first obtained the consent of the government of said country to their protection and settlement within the same, with all the rights and privileges of freemen.’”

Tenant Agriculture and Racial Terror

Flight as a Form of Resistance to National Oppression

During the period of the 1880s to the early decades of the 20th century, many African Americans migrated to the western states of Kansas and Oklahoma. Nonetheless, the most notable outmigration from the South came with the rapid growth of industrial capitalist production largely centered in Northern cities during the first half of the 20th century.

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***

Palestine cannot survive without foreign aid. For several years the EU has been the main donor. However, funding conditions are becoming ever more stringent and are steadily squeezing the Palestinian society to death. Meanwhile, the right to self-determination for Palestine and the Palestinian people is being buried deep underground.

Black Lists and Secret Files

Once again, on the 22^th of October 2021, the solidarity movement with Palestine and the Palestinian people was put into a state of alert. The Israeli Minister of Defense, Benny Gatz, had decided by military decree that another six Palestinian human rights organizations would be added to the list of terrorist organizations. Some European donors decided to temporarily suspend their financial support or simply stopped funding. The Belgian Minister for Development Cooperation, Meryame Kitir, kept cool and decided to wait for the results of further investigation.

It would take nine months, till July 2022, for nine European Member States to agree upon a joint, but brief, press release declaring that Israel failed to sustain the allegations with hard evidence, hence there was no reason not to resume financial support or to end it right away.

The response of Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Palestine, was much more courageous. He took immediate action and needed only two days to unite other human rights experts in an explicit condemnation of Israel’s decision together with a fierce reminder that counter-terrorism measures cannot be misused to silence human rights organizations.

Earlier upon that same year, in May 2021, the Belgian parliamentary Commission for Foreign Affairs had already summoned Minister Kitir. She had to justify her decision to allocate 8 million euro for humanitarian aid to the Gaza. For eleven days Israel had been serving the Gazans on one of the severest bombings ever.

The reason of the unrest among some of the commission members were not so much the 256 dead nor the 1,700 wounded, nor the 100,000 internally displaced, nor the thousands of homeless people. Their alarm went off because of a “secret file” that the Israeli security services had deposited on the desks of the European embassies in Tel Aviv.

Supposedly the file contained proof of Western funding for development aid that would have been channeled through European donors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to Palestinian terrorist organizations. Minister Kitir had already ordered an internal inquiry. Just like her colleague in the Netherlands, who had immediately suspended all funding as a matter of precaution, she would come to the conclusion that the evidence submitted by Israel was not convincing.

The Game of the Cat and the Mouse

For years EU aid for Palestine has been snapped on and off like a flash light. Whenever Israel shows up with “incriminating” evidence, aid to Palestinian organizations is being cut or suspended. This was also the experience of the Palestinian Authority.

The EU Directorate-General for Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations (NEAR) is the main EU financing instrument for humanitarian aid to Palestine and support to the Palestinian Authority (PA), including the Ministry of Education. Olivér Várhelyi, the EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, was not pleased by the content of 156 textbooks and 16 teacher manuals for primary and secondary schools.

He demanded a thorough screening of the text materials. The final report of some 200 pages caused worldwide commotion. It did not contain recommendations, only conclusions. These were interpreted either as very positive, or, on the contrary, as devastating, depending on the political preferences of the reader. Várhelyi belongs to the latter and decided to withhold the remaining funding for 2021 until all anti-Semitic paragraphs were adapted or removed.

The consequences of this measure did not pass unnoticed. The Palestinian Authority was forced to look for budgets elsewhere for paying the salaries and pensions of some 140,000 PA employees, including teachers and health staff, who lost 20% of their income. The hospitals in occupied East-Jerusalem were unable to find the financial resources needed for initiating the cancer treatment of 500 Palestinian patients. Some 115,000 vulnerable families, who try to cope with a monthly income of 231 US dollar or less, did no longer receive additional financial support.

Eventually Várhelyi had to give in. On the 14^th of June 2022 the EU committed to unlocking the remaining 224.8 million euro of the year 2021. The conditionality to change the content of the text books was removed, but no apologies were given for the human suffering inflicted.

The Israeli Master Plan

Ever since 2013 Israel has been continuously reinforcing its campaigns targeting Western donors, and more particularly the EU, against Palestinian organizations from, what Israel calls, “the extreme left”. The European Parliament and the EU Member States are systematically being approached and put under pressure to review their financial support to “the bad civil society”, meaning those NGOs that denounce the Israeli policy with regard to Palestine and hereby “promote violence” and “glorify terrorism”. In doing so Israel focuses particularly, but not exclusively on those organizations that support the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Campaigns are being launched at a steady space: The Money Trail 1 (2018), The Money Trail 2 (2019) and Terrorists in Suits (2019). The Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs (MSA) plays a key-role and uses NGO Monitor as one of its basic tools.

NGO Monitor was created in the year 2002 as a conservative Israeli think tank. Its activities build on the premise that the occupation of Palestine is an Israeli “internal affair”. On its website some 250 Israeli, Palestinian, European and international organizations are blacklisted, allegedly because they constitute a threat for Israel as a sovereign state.

An investigation conducted by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) revealed that NGO Monitor presents its reports as if they were the result of thorough research but lacks all transparency regarding the methods used. NGO Monitor claims to be independent but is actually completely dependent on external funding, particularly from the USA. NGO Monitor also has close ties with the Israeli government, to such an extent even that its reports are published by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs as official documents to which NGO Monitor can refer afterwards as a legitimate and credible source of information.

The way in which the MSA operates definitely bears fruits. Donors are terrified by the idea of being associated with terrorism. In the year 2017 the donor consortium consisting of Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark, took its hands of from the Palestinian Human Rights/International Humanitarian Law Secretariat. The secretariat was created with the aim to strengthen the human rights organizations in Palestine with the support of the University of Bir Zeit. The reason for the closure of the secretariat was the latest NGO Monitor Report entitled “Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat: Abusing Public Funds to Perpetuate Conflict.”

The MSA has also fiercely targeted financial institutions in Europe and North-America. Showing supposedly “hard evidence” it has succeeded in blocking some 50 bank accounts. Even digital platforms such as GoFundMe, PayPal and Venmo, cramped and keep their portals closed.

To Bend or to Break

The system of “secret files”, “black lists” and “official reports” does not fail to achieve its purpose. European donors are getting nervous and keep on imposing a growing number of administrative and financial monitoring and controlling measures. For some years now, Palestinian organizations that are interested to apply for European governmental or non-governmental aid, have been facing another major hurdle, i.e. the notorious Article 1.5 bis, one more trophy that the MSA proudly claims.

In the year 2019 the EU added Article 1.5 bis to its grant contracts. It is a counter-terrorism clause providing that all organizations granted or contracted by the EU must give proof that they have no links whatsoever with individuals or organizations on the lists of the EU “restrictive measures”.

Not only staff and board members must be screened for potential terrorist relations or sympathies, but also sub-contractors, persons attending activities organized within the framework of the aid programs, people benefiting from financial support and recipients of financial support to third parties. This obligation goes for both development programs and humanitarian aid programs.

The EU defines terrorist offences as acts committed “with the aim to seriously intimidate a population” and/or “to unduly compel a government or international organization to perform or abstain from performing any act” and/or “to seriously destabilize or destroy the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organization”. For the definition of an offence the EU relies on the national legislation of the respective country where the acts are committed. In practice this means that, in the case of Palestine, it is up to Israel to determine what is right and what is wrong. Just for clarification: there is no such thing as an universally agreed definition of terrorism.

It needs no further explanation that a mention on the NGO Monitor list, however fraudulent it may be, is not an advantage. What is worrying the Palestinians even more, though, is that this new condition is the start of a process to gradually exclude all Palestinians who are politically and socially active from foreign aid.

Considering the fact that the EU Member States are increasingly more operating as One Team Europe and that there is a growing tendency within the EU to delegate the execution of its programs to the Member States, this kind of measures gradually grows into a silent killer intoxicating the development cooperation policies of the respective States.

The EU got the inspiration for this clause with the US Agency for International Development, USAID, which had already introduced a partner vetting system in Palestine in the year 2003. The USAID version is even more intrusive. The vetting and screening is not limited to the USAID funded programs. It must be done for all of the grantee’s global sphere of action. On top, USAID demands a retroactive vetting and screening going back ten years in time.

The USAID counter-terrorism obligations also apply to the UN agencies. The USA refuses to rely on the UN counter-terrorism measures and imposes its own rules and regulations.  In July 2021 this became once more evident when the USA decided to resume its aid to UNRWA, the UN agency that was specifically created back in 1949 with the aim to organize the aid to the Palestinian refugees.

Palestine on the Decline

The EU together with the respective EU Member States, Norway and Switzerland is the main donor of Palestine and the Palestinian. The average annual budget amounts to 1.24 billion euro, or 2/3 of the official development aid (ODA) worldwide for Palestine. At the same time, though, there has also been a steep decline in the global budget support of the Palestinian Authority, which since has decreased with 85% from 1.24 billion euro in the year 2008 to a disastrous 191 million euro in the year 2020.

For quite some time the Palestinian authorities are no longer a privileged partner as donor distrust prevails. To a certain extent the Palestinian authorities are still being informed or consulted but donors prefer to maximally assign the execution of the programs to non-Palestinian non-governmental organizations, UN agencies and expensive consultancy bureaus, which have their liaison offices in Brussels, Washington, New York and Geneva where they co-decide on the development agenda.

Palestinian NGOs are increasingly used as mere executors of programs that have been conceived at embassies’ and consulates’ desks or elsewhere in the world. Structural, long-term funding that allowed them to develop their own programs based upon their own priorities, has been replaced by short-term projects with a duration of only a few months and loads of administrative work.

Moreover, this way of operating generates a cascade of both visible and hidden overhead costs. Each organization in the aid-pyramid can charge office, management, administration and logistics costs. These can amount to several dozens of percentages of the total budget, sometimes even up to more than half of it, hereby reducing even further  the amount of resources available for the ultimate beneficiaries, i.e. the Palestinian people.

The Moral Bankruptcy of International Aid to Palestine

All of this is happening against the background of an unscrupulous military occupation and colonization. Some 400 Palestinian organizations are blacklisted. More than 4,000 Palestinian people are detained in Israeli prisons for political reasons. For decades the Gaza has been turned into the biggest open air prison in the world. Eighty percent of the 2 million Gazans are dependent on foreign aid.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were deported from their homes in occupied East-Jerusalem to “behind the Wall”, a monstrous construction with a total length of 712 kilometers enclosing the West Bank. Over time the West Bank has been split up in 165 separate enclaves, which are under continuous military control through 593 road blocks and checkpoints. And all of this is supposedly meant to protect 700,000 Israeli settlers who moved into 300 “legal” and “illegal” settlements all over the West Bank. Poverty among the Palestinian population has never been so appalling.

The “European Joint strategy In Support of Palestine 2021-2024” acknowledges that the situation in Palestine has never been worse. The EU even expresses its concerns about the “de-development” of Palestine and, indeed, recognizes that to a certain extent this is due to the Israeli occupation.

Officially the EU still claims to support the Two State Solution, but a critical reading of the strategy learns that this path was abandoned many years ago. In its strategy 2017-2020 the EU had already moved away from the right to self-determination to replace it by “the quest for self-determination”.

In support of this “quest” the EU focuses on the strengthening the “agency” of the Palestinian civil society. This agency is basically meant to counter radicalization.(1) Respect for and protection of human rights are a main pillar, but the focus is restricted to the role of the Palestinian authorities. It is not about denouncing the role of Israel.

The title of the EU strategy could not be more cynical: “Towards a Democratic, Accountable and Sustainable Palestinian State”. Palestine cannot survive without international support. The Palestinians are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, between resigning and not complaining or keeping their head high up and drowning.

Marleen Bosmans is a political scientist and has been working as a human rights expert in different areas of the Belgian international cooperation (non-governmental, governmental, multilateral and university cooperation) for more than 40 year. She visited Palestine on various occasions as a researcher, an electoral observer and technical expert in charge of the formulation of human rights programmes. This article is the result of her experiences in the field and underpinned by publicly accessible documents.

Translated from Dutch by the author

Original text: Marleen Bosmans. De Wereld Morgen, September 27, 2022. EU-ontwikkelingshulp rampzalig voor Palestina. https://www.dewereldmorgen.be/artikel/2022/09/27/eu-ontwikkelingshulp-rampzalig-voor-palestina/.

(1) The terminology “agency” is used to indicate that the Palestinian grantees are responsible for the execution of the programs and the activities and bear the ultimate responsibility in case of failure.

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***

Incisive Report by Market Mania

The Bank of Canada is lying to you.

There is an ugly recession coming and they know it. In this live stream,

I am going to show you using their own words how they know a recession is coming and don’t care one bit.

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***

After the Russiagate Hoax, the Covid hoax, and the Insurrection hoax, We now Have the Chinese Spy Balloon Hoax

According to Washington and the media, China sent a balloon that the Pentagon said “could” be loaded with explosives to spy on America.  A top general said that similar balloons have entered US airspace undetected before.  The balloon is huge–200 feet tall weighing in excess of a couple thousand pounds.  So if such a large object can enter our airspace undetected, does this mean far smaller ICBMs can also? 

Do understand that what is going on here is the purposeful creation of an incident for propaganda purposes to stoke up more animosity against China, and to spend more money on defense in Asia.  We don’t have a Malaysian airliner to blame on China, but we do have a weather balloon.

After receiving a brainwashing by a Pentagon briefing, Rep. Jim Himes (D,Conn.) says that US officials will “learn a lot” from the pieces of the “Chinese spy craft” that was shot down.

Two other House members, one a Republican, one a Democrat declare the blown-off-course weather balloon “a violation of American sovereignty.”  

The Chinese explanation is the only one that makes any sense: 

“It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course.  The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace due to an unforeseen and unintended outcome. The Chinese side will continue communicating with the US side and properly handle this unexpected situation caused by wind and limited steering capability.” (A translation uses the term “force majeure,” an unforeseen event.)

But the spy story continues.  It is needed in order to worsen relations with China, the second nuclear power that Washington is doing everything it possibly can to antagonize.  Keep in mind that in these days spying is done by satellites, not by weather balloons.  If China is using balloons to spy on the US, why did China send a balloon over Columbia.  Why is China spying on South America?  

The Columbian military determined that the balloon posed no threat to national security, defense, or air safety.  Washington lacks the capability of the Columbian military, because Washington is in the business of creating a hoax issue.

Try to think of something the government has told the truth about.  Tonkin Gulf?  Ruby Ridge?  Waco? Oklahoma City Bombing? 9/11? Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction?  Assad’s use of chemical weapons? Gaddafi?  Russiagate?  January 6 insurrection?  Covid?  Covid vaccine?  Ukraine?  Malaysian airliner?   Find one thing that was true.

All the government’s lies, parroted by the press-titutes, are designed to advance secret agendas.  The people are brainwashed with lies so that they go along with the agendas.  That is the way the US government functions.  There is no longer an American media.  Just an indoctrination ministry.  Only official narratives please.  All else is misinformation.

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***

From inventing the need for mass-scale baby formula leading to the deaths of infants, to redirecting much needed water from impoverished areas to bottle and sell back to the same communities, to exploiting child labor and slavery, Nestlé will stoop to any moral low to make a buck.

This article inaugurates Ms. Gjovik’s new column for CovertAction Magazine spotlighting the abuses of U.S. multinational corporations worldwide.—CAQ Editors

***

Corporations like Nestlé are essentially doomsday machines: man-made creations that will ultimately destroy humanity if allowed to continue as they are. Multinational corporations are required by law to place the financial interests of shareholders above all other matters, even if that requires them to prioritize the bottom line above the common good. In this nightmare of our own creation, if it is more cost-effective for corporations to commit mass atrocities and pay a fine, than to not commit atrocities, the corporation is compelled to commit atrocities to ensure shareholder returns.

Further, this maximization of profit through unhinged business practices and investment tactics creates a cycle of destruction further fed by governments and institutions relaxing rules to entice companies to do business in ways that financially benefit that government. This enables the businesses to create more profit by cutting corners around labor rights, safety protections, and environmental standards. As negligence is further normalized, governments must entice businesses with more concessions, which encourages even worse behavior from corporations. Governments and business then race each other to the bottom in a destructive spiral that harms everyone.

In the Unites States, corporations claim a legal status as if they were human beings. While this is a fictional concept, if the corporation Nestlé were a person—Nestlé would be the worst kind of person, someone you would never want to be in the same room with. Nestlé is the American Psycho of corporations.

Yet, a company like Nestlé only exists because of the acquiescence and facilitation of its gross misconduct by governments and society. This case study on Nestlé’s business practices highlights some of the most egregious behavior by corporations.

[Source: nstle.cz]

A Corporation Called Nestlé

Founded in 1866 by Henri Nestlé, today the Nestlé corporation owns more than 2,000 brands.^[1] Nestlé is the world’s largest food company and is one of the most multinational of companies, with more than 450 manufacturing facilities in more than 79 countries, sales in 186 countries, and employment of 276,000 workers. In 2021, Nestlé reported $87 billion in sales and $22 billion in global profit. Around 30% of Nestlé’s total sales came from the United States, where Nestlé reported $26 billion in sales. ^[2]

Henri Nestlé [Source: nestle.cz]

The Nestlé name is widely associated with a controversy. Nestlé’s success is arguably due to its incredible brutality—from inventing the need for mass-scale baby formula leading to the deaths of infants, or redirecting much needed water from impoverished areas to bottle and sell back to the same communities, to exploiting child labor and slavery to gather ingredients for consumer products it admits have no nutritional value—Nestlé is an incredibly unethical company.

1911 Nestlé ad in Good Housekeeping magazine. [Source: zmscience.com]

Yet, most of us probably regularly purchase Nestlé products, even if we think we avoid doing so. Nestlé’s owns an impressively extensive list of popular brand names including: Acqua Panna, Alpo, Beneful, Blue Bottle Coffee, Boost, Buitoni, Carnation, Cheerios, Coffee Mate, DiGiorno, Dreyer’s, Fancy Feast, Garden of Life, Gerber, Haagen Dazs, Hot Pockets, Kit Kat, Lean Cuisine, Nature’s Bounty, Nescafe, Nespresso, Nesquik, Ovaltine, Perrier, Purina, Pure Life, Stouffers, Starbucks Coffee at Home, Sweet Earth, San Pellegrino and Tombstone Pizza.^[3]

Nestlé is also a major shareholder in L’Oréal, the multinational cosmetics conglomerate, which Nestlé reports as an “associate” on its financial reports.^[4] L’Oréal itself owns many popular personal care brands like Lancôme, Garnier, Maybelline, Essie, Redkin, NYX, CeraVe, Urban Decay, and Kiehl’s.^[5]

[Source: zmescience.com]

“Nestlé Kills Babies”

Nestlé’s most infamous scandal is around its baby formula products.

If mothers are able to breastfeed their babies, they are advised to provide their babies only breast milk for the first six months of life.^[6] However, in the 1970s, Nestlé began sending representatives dressed as nurses to hospitals in impoverished countries to promote the company’s baby formula as replacement for breast milk, including sending families home with one free can. In these areas, the water that must be used to mix up the formula and clean the bottles was not safe.^[7] Nestlé convinced these mothers to reject their own breast milk in favor of its infant formula.^[8] Then, the mothers could not switch back to breastfeeding because, after one can, it was too late in the lactation cycle.

[Source: theboycottbook.com]

The result was an estimated one million dead babies every year from malnutrition or diseases contracted from dirty water or bottles.^[9] In 1974, a report was published in Switzerland titled “Nestlé Kills Babies.”^[10] All of this led to massive boycotts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Nestlé insisted that the real problem was only access to water, while at the same time beginning to seize public waters for bottling and polluting the water that remained.^[11]

Protests in 1970s against Nestlé. [Source: listverse.com]

In May 2007, an investigation found evidence Nestlé was still engaging in questionable infant-formula marketing practices in Bangladesh.^[12] Then in 2011, Nestlé was investigated for bribery in the Chinese baby formula market—including bribing medical staff to promote its infant formula to new mothers.^[13]

Undeterred, in April 2012, Nestlé deepened its involvement in the market by purchasing Pfizer’s baby formula business (SMA) for more than $11 billion.^[14] In 2019, Nestléʼs own report still found at least 107 instances of non-compliance with international baby milk marketing rules.^[15]

Last year, the World Health Organization and UNICEF issued a report finding ongoing “extensive and aggressive marketing practices used by the formula milk industry to target new and prospective parents” which “exploit emotions, the fears and the ambitions of women and families at a time they’re potentially most vulnerable.”^[16] Nestléʼs baby formula practices are a stunning example of free-market murder over decades.

Bottling the Commons

In poor regions, Nestlé and others have been taking water from aquifers, springs, rivers and lakes—and putting it in plastic bottles or turning it into flavored and sugary drinks—then dumping their used and dirty water back into water sources. Locals are then not able to drink tap water and end up paying extortionate prices to the European and U.S. corporations for bottled versions of their own previously uncontaminated tap water.^[17] In 2020, Nestlé reported $6.4B in bottled water sales.^[18]

For years, activists have accused Nestlé of lining its own pockets through back-door privatization of public water supplies. Access to water is a human right.

Corporate privatization of the commons seizes a public resource and converts it to a private good, and Nestlé has been implicated in this for decades. In fact, the source of America’s corporate water crisis can be traced back to 1976 when Perrier opened an office in New York.^[19] The firm partnered with a U.S. executive who had recently left Levi Strauss, and they built a marketing campaign to convince Americans to pay for water.^[20]

Source: Council of Canadians (pinterest.com

Nestlé acquired Perrier in 1992 for $2.6B.^[21] At that time, Perrier had issued a recall due to reports of benzene in the bottled water and also faced a fine in New York for false advertising.^[22] Perrier was apparently a culture fit for Nestlé.

By 2016, bottled water sales had surpassed soda as the largest U.S. beverage category, with Americans consuming 12.8B gallons that year.^[23] In addition to seizing public waters, Nestlé’s manufacturing process uses far more water than the output provides (only about 70%). Meanwhile, Nestlé also dumps a significant amount of now polluted water back into water basins and aquifers.^[24]

While other companies moved their operations out of drought-ridden California, Nestlé’s CEO said he would pump more out of the San Bernardino National Forest if he could. Nobody actually knows how much Nestlé extracts from this source—which it has been doing without a permit since 1988—paying only $524 a year to bypass the requirement.^[25] In 2021, California’s Water Resources Control Board asked Nestlé to stop the unauthorized water diversions after a probe revealed multiple violations and depleted resources.^[26]

Nestlé has shown no shame or contrition for any of this. In fact, former Nestlé chief executive and chairman Peter Brabeck called water a “grocery product” that should “have a market value.” He later amended that, arguing water can be a human right, but only 25 liters a day.^[27] Today, Nestlé’s website continues to argue that “non-essential” use of water is not a human right and should “carry a cost.”^[28]

Slavery-made

Nestlé’s unlawful business practices are not limited to fatally unethical marketing. Nestlé has also been implicated in child labor.

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that more than 1.5 million children work in the cocoa industry in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, which produce 60% of the world’s annual cocoa harvest. More than 40% of those children are exposed to dangerous working conditions, including chemical usage, burning fields, swinging machetes, and heavy lifting—activities that international authorities consider the “worst forms of child labor.”^[29]

Nestlé child laborer in the Ivory Coast. [Source: change.org]

In Nestlé USA v. Doe (2021), former child slaves who were trafficked into Côte d’Ivoire to work on cocoa farms filed suit under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) against Nestlé USA.^[30]They accused the corporation of aiding and abetting the illegal enslavement of thousands of children on cocoa farms in Nestlé’s supply chains.^[31]

Nestlé USA effectively controls much of the cocoa production in the Ivory Coast and operates “with the unilateral goal of finding the cheapest source of cocoa in the Ivory Coast,” resulting in a “system built on child slavery to depress labor costs.”^[32] Nestlé knowingly profited from the illegal work of children and Nestlé’s contracted suppliers were able to provide lower prices than if they had employed adult workers with proper protective equipment.^[33]

In Nestlé’s Petition for Certiorari, Nestlé’s lawyers did not deny there was slavery in its supply chain but instead argued, among other things, that corporations cannot be liable for violations of customary international law or human rights violations.^[34] Nestlé lawyers extensively referenced the Nuremberg Trials in their argument for impunity, desperately pleading that even the corporation that supplied Zyklon B gas, which the Nazis used to kill millions, was not convicted during that trial.^[35]

During oral arguments, the U.S. Justice Department, on behalf of the U.S. government, supported Nestlé. Deputy Solicitor General Curtis E. Gannon contended that a new act of Congress would be needed to create liability for domestic corporations under the ATS (liability which the lawyer described as corporations being “discriminated against”).^[36]Gannon, on behalf of the United States, said the case against Nestlé alleging child slavery could “threaten foreign affairs interests” for the U.S. government.^[37]

Upon inquiry from Chief Justice John Roberts as to whether the U.S. government believes a corporation could ever be liable for setting up a U.S. corporation and sending U.S. employees to the Ivory Coast for the express purpose of setting up a cocoa farm that uses child slavery, Gannon responded, “Well, I think that it—it depends on how much conduct happens in the United States and how much conduct happens overseas.” ^[38]

Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon, the U.S. government’s lawyer, famously authored the Justice Department memorandum approving President Trump’s “Muslim Ban” (Executive Order 13769) in 2017, when he was Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel. Before joining the Justice Department, Gannon worked at the infamous union-busting firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.^[39] 

Nestlé USA v. Doe was dismissed in favor of Nestlé.

The decision was the latest in a series of U.S. rulings imposing strict limits on lawsuits brought in federal court based on human rights abuses abroad.^[40] To make matters worse, which is only possible with the depravity of a corporation like Nestlé, the company was also alleged to have orchestrated a chocolate price-fixing conspiracy, violating antitrust laws in the sales of its products manufactured with child slave labor.^[41]

Nestlé’s human slavery supply chain is not exclusive to chocolate. In 2020, a documentary exposed Nespresso’s supply chain use of child labor on Guatemalan farms.^[42] The documentary visited seven farms linked to Nespresso and found children working eight hours a day, six days a week, and who looked as young as eight years old.^[43]

Earlier, investigations also found migrants were lured by false promises to work in Thailand’s seafood sector, then kept in debt bondage and degrading conditions. When workers died on the job, it said the bodies were simply “thrown into the water.” In 2014, Nestlé confirmed the forced labor was part of its supply chain in Thailand.^[44]

Waste… All the Way Down

Nestlé’s misconduct also includes degradation of the environment and a direct role in causing the current climate crisis.

Nestlé’s plastic packaging is produced from plastic resin created by petrochemical companies like Exxon, Total, Aramco and Shell. The process of manufacturing plastic, as well as the extraction of the raw materials for it, releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, approximately 108M metric tons per year.^[45]

Plastic also enters into the product. Concentrations of microplastic in bottles of Nestlé Pure Life water were as high as 10,000 pieces of plastic per liter of water, the highest of any brand tested.^[46] Some of the microplastics the researchers found in Nestlé’s water included polypropylene, nylon, and polyethylene terephthalate.^[47] Nestlé was sued in 2018 over the high levels of microplastics, with plaintiffs alleging Nestlé “intentionally, negligently and recklessly concealed and omitted the truth” about the plastic contamination.^[48]

Nestlé released a statement saying that it had “ambitions” for its packaging to be 100% recyclable or reusable by 2025. However, environmental groups and other critics pointed out that Nestlé had not released clear targets or a timeline to accompany its ambitions, nor made additional efforts to help facilitate recycling by consumers. ^[49] Greenpeace released a statement saying,

“Nestlé’s statement on plastic packaging includes more of the same greenwashing baby steps to tackle a crisis it helped to create. It will not actually move the needle toward the reduction of single-use plastics in a meaningful way, and sets an incredibly low standard as the largest food and beverage company in the world.”^[50]

In the organization “Break Free From Plastic”’s 2020 report, Nestlé was named one of the world’s top plastic polluters for the third year in a row.^[51] Nestlé even admitted that most of its bottles are not recycled, even while Nestlé concurrently flooded the market with misleading advertisements claiming the opposite. Only about 31% of plastic bottles end up getting recycled, creating millions of tons of garbage every year, much of which ends up in landfills or the ocean.^[52]

A single plastic bottle can take anywhere from 450 to 1,000 years to decompose in a landfill.^[53]

After so much controversy, Nestlé largely divested from its North American water-bottling hustle, selling most of the business in 2021.^[54] While Nestlé is no longer the face of the U.S. bottled water problem, it is still responsible for the damage to the environment and the terrible systems it put in place.

[Source: boucherie-abolition.com]

Nestlé was also caught purchasing palm oil from mills with reckless means of production, including chopping down millions of hectares of forests and removing Indigenous peoples from their lands.^[55] In 2010, Greenpeace campaigned for Nestlé to end deforestation in its supply chain.

Nestlé promised to do so by 2015, but in 2017 Nestlé noted 47% of its palm oil still came from problematic plantations.^[56] Then in 2019, Nestlé was also accused of sourcing palm oil from producers linked to the forest fires in Indonesia.^[57] A recent Global Witness report documented the still ongoing harm, terror and impoverishment of communities due to corporate pursuit of palm oil, including by Nestlé.^[58] Rest assured, Nestlé still claims to be “working hard” on the issue.^[59]

[Source: palmoildetectives.com]

Further, a former Nespresso executive warned in 2016 that Nespresso pods create extensive waste. Made from a combination of plastics and aluminum, the coffee pods are not biodegradable. It can take between 150 to 500 years for the aluminum and plastic capsules to break down in a landfill. In order to recycle the pods, the aluminum capsules have to be shredded, the coffee has to be taken away with water, the varnish has to be burned and the aluminum has to be re-smelted.^[60]

Nespresso capsules are not pure aluminum due to Nestlé’s intellectual property and anti-competitive interests: The capsules contain silicon as part of a patent which was used to prevent rivals from making their own pods that could work in Nespresso machines.^[61] As of 2019, 70% of Nespresso pods were assumed to be headed to landfills.^[62]

L’Oréal has its own shameful history, starting with the company’s founder, known Nazi sympathizer Eugène Schueller.^[63]

L’Oréal faced protests and boycotts due to testing cosmetics on animals,^[64] suspected use of child labor to obtain mica for cosmetics,^[65] deceptive advertising,^[66]and high levels of lead in lipstick products.^[67]

L’Oréal also allegedly uses carcinogenic and endocrine-disrupting chemicals in its beauty products, including: formaldehyde, PFOAs, carbon black, titanium dioxide, BHA and others.^[68] L’Oréal is currently facing numerous lawsuits over PFAS contents in its beauty products.^[69].  [Source: whathappensinthechairstaysinthechair.blogspot.com]

Nestlé’s food products have also been found to contain not just toxic chemicals, but also low-quality filler products, including a “horsemeat” scandal in one of its pasta brands in 2013.^[70]

A Friend of Paramilitaries

Nestlé apparently does not care who it harms with its supply chain or marketing, so why would labor rights be any different?

In the U.S., the National Labor Relations Board’s public database shows 169 Unfair Labor Practice charges filed against Nestlé (though there may be more under the names of other subsidiaries).^[71]

In one recent case, the NLRB found against Nestlé USA in 2020, issuing an order against the corporation for unfair labor practices at a Wisconsin facility that produces DiGiorno pizza.^[72]

[Source: wpr.org]

The NLRB ordered Nestlé USA to cease and desist from, among other things: coercively interrogating employees about their protected concerted activities, and suspending or discharging employees because they engage in protected concerted activities.” ^[73] The Board ordered Nestlé to post a notice to employees admitting it violated federal labor laws and promising to follow federal labor laws going forward. ^[74]

The year before, a report by AFL-CIO alleged that Nestlé had been involved in several workers’ rights abuses, that Nestlé USA management had continually interfered with workers’ organizing rights, and Nestlé was involved in anti-union campaigning.^[75]

Nestlé’s union busting is deadly in South America. A Colombian trade unionist, Luciano Romero, campaigned for the rights of workers at Nestlé’s factory in Colombia for years, including documenting violations of human rights at the factory. Before his murder, Romero was repeatedly falsely branded as a guerrilla fighter by the local representatives of Nestlé. He was also accused, without grounds, of being responsible for a bombing on the factory premises in 1999. In Colombia, a defamation of this kind can effectively amount to a death sentence.^[76]

In September 2005, Luciano Romero was stabbed 50 times in a murder by paramilitaries.^[77]

In 2006, Nestlé and the paramilitary members were sued for the murder of Romero, as the company had a long-standing relationship with the paramilitary forces and Romero’s widow alleged the murder was in retaliation for his blowing the whistle on Nestlé’s use of expired milk in its popular Milo brand drink.^[78]

[Source: lawanddisorder.org]

In 2007, Romero’s killers were convicted and, while passing sentence, the judge also ordered an investigation into the role of management at the Nestlé subsidiary where Romero worked.^[79] A criminal complaint was filed against Nestlé in Swiss courts in 2012, but then dismissed in 2013 due to the statute of limitations having expired.^[80] The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights then submitted a complaint calling on the European Court of Human Rights to examine the judiciary that dismissed the complaint, which was also promptly dismissed.^[81]

In 2012, a flyer was left at the home of Rafael Esquivel, another Nestlé labor union leader, with a death threat stating “you will have to be exterminated, you have until first December to disappear from Valle, otherwise you will see blood running on second December.”^[82] In 2013, more death threats were sent to dozens of trade union members and human rights defenders, including other members of a Nestlé labor union.^[83]

In 2013, the same trade union Romero had worked with accused Nestlé of ordering the murder of Oscar López Trevino, who had worked for the company for 25 years. Trevino was shot and killed by paramilitaries that year, following the initiation of a hunger strike campaign by workers against Nestlé over unfulfilled labor agreements.^[84]

Oscar López Trevino [Source: teamsternation.blogspot.com]

Today, Nestlé has a page on its website entitled “Does Nestlé allow labor unions?” which Nestlé answers: “Nestlé supports collective dialogue and negotiations with employee unions…wherever local legislation applies…Nestlé suppliers should allow Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining, unless government policies or other norms prevent them from doing so.”

Nestlé’s own website says it does not believe suppliers need to allow for human rights if it is contrary to local “norms.”^[85]

Spying on Critics

Nestlé is just as bad with its critics. In 2003, Nestlé used a private security company to infiltrate the anti-globalization group ATTAC. Nestlé planted a spy who joined ATTAC’s editorial board and monitored ATTAC’s research and drafting of a book criticizing Nestlé’s practices that was published in 2004 (“Attac Contre L’Empire Nestlé”).^[86] The spy even attended workgroup meetings at members’ homes.^[87]

The spy was employed by a company called Securitas and run by a former MI6 officer working for Nestlé. ATTAC took legal action over the breach and expressed concern that trade unionists at Nestlé sites in Colombia who have been targeted by paramilitaries may have been put in danger.^[88] Nestlé was found liable for the spying and a Swiss court ordered Nestlé and its security company to pay compensation .^[89]

Just this year, Nestlé was caught offering “quid pro quos” to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, an influential U.S. policy group.^[90] Nestlé was identified as a top “contributor,” sending the policy group hundreds of thousands of dollars.^[91]

Boycott Nestlé poster from 1978. [Source: zmscience.com]

Taking Until There Is Nothing Left

There appears to be no line that Nestlé is unwilling to cross, with a key example being Ethiopia.

Following 30 years of wars and famines, the people of Ethiopia were suffering terribly in the 1990s.^[92] Nestlé acquired a company whose subsidiary was nationalized by the Ethiopian government in 1975 (decades prior) and then sold in 1998.^[93]

In 2001, despite the struggles in Ethiopia, Nestlé filed a claim for $6 million from the Ethiopian government, “as a matter of principle.”^[94] $6 million is only 0.01% of Nestléʼs annual sales, but would be a devastating loss to an already struggling country.^[95] Nestlé eventually reduced the request to $1.5M following public outrage.^[96]

Conclusion

Nestlé’s rebuttal to most accusations of misconduct is essentially to claim it is an ethical, caring and child-friendly teddy-bear of a transnational corporation which just does not know what goes on in its supply chain and always wants to do better, but is constantly harassed by hateful critics. When caught red-handed, Nestlé is then willing to point to IG Farben and use the legal precedent from the Holocaust to argue why it should be granted impunity for egregious human rights abuses.

Since 2000, only considering the United States, Nestlé and its subsidiaries were cited for more than a hundred legal violations, facing $27 million in fines.^[97] One must ask: Is all of this misconduct and devastation contributing to anything actually beneficial to society? No. Nestlé, a food company, has recently acknowledged that more than 60% of its food and drink products do not meet a “recognized definition of health” and that some products “will never be healthy.”^[98] Nestlé does not even sell food with nutritional value. Nestlé sells terrible ideas and filler, produced through human rights violations, but which drive billions in profit for the soulless corporation.

However, as terrible as Nestlé is, it is only one head of the corporate hydra. There are many others. We can talk about protests and boycotts—we can write exposés and file lawsuits—but this only attempts to hold the line. To actually stop the downward spiral, we must abolish the atrocity of capitalism and globalization that is the multinational corporation.

While claiming corporations have the rights of a human, yet also requiring these corporations to only prioritize shareholder profit and pleasure, we have created a demented Dionysian monster that happily views fiscal opportunity in the destruction of humanity.

We cannot sit back and hope the United States will intervene for the benefit of the common good. When the democratically elected government of Guatemala decided to impose obligations on real estate owned by the United Fruit Company, the U.S. violently overthrew that government. When Chile elected a socialist president who wanted to nationalize copper mines, that democratic government was destroyed by the U.S. and replaced with a dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet.^[99] The U.S. has a long history of siding with corporate interests at all costs.

With Nestlé, the United States has already worked to fight lawsuits and dismiss charges attempting to hold Nestlé accountable for horrendous human rights violations. The U.S. is apparently happy to race to the bottom, hand-in-hand with these monstrous corporations. The corporation and the state have already become one institution, with extensive centralized economic power, and increasingly destructive behavior.

We need a global awakening and revolution by the people. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said in 1809: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

We are not free and together we are our only hope to stop this downward spiral of environmental degradation and human rights abuses.

1. “The Case Against Nestlé,” Lakota People’s Law Project, June 14, 2018, https://lakotalaw.org/news/2018-06-13/the-case-against-Nestlé ↑
2. Nestlé,“Corporate Governance Report 2021; Compensation Report 2021; Financial Statements 2021” (“Corporate Governance Report 2021”), 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20230106174601/https://www.nestle.com/sites/default/files/2022-03/2021-corp-governance-compensation-financial-statements-en.pdf ↑
3. “Brands,” Nestlé, https://www.Nestle.com/brands; “Brands,” Nestlé USA, https://www.Nestléusa.com/brands ↑
4. Nestlé, “Corporate Governance Report 2021.”. ↑
5. L’Oréal, “Our Global Brands,” https://web.archive.org/web/20230106174728/https://www.loreal.com/en/our-global-brands-portfolio/ ↑
6. World Health Organizattion, “Breastfeeding,” https://www.who.int/health-topics/breastfeeding ↑
7. Stephen Solomon, “The Controversy Over Infant Formula,” The New York Times Magazine, December 6, 1981, https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/06/magazine/the-controversy-over-infant-formula.html ↑
8. Martha Rosenberg, “Big Food Wants You To Believe Obesity is Caused by Lack of Exercise not Junk Food and the Spin Is Working,” CounterPunch, August 24, 2018, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/24/big-food-wants-you-to-believe-obesity-is-caused-by-lack-of-exercise-not-junk-food-and-the-spin-is-working/↑
9. Solomon, “The Controversy Over Infant Formula.” ↑
10. “The Build Up to the Nestlé Boycott,” The Boycott Book, http://www.theboycottbook.com/thebuildup.pdf ↑
11. Solomon, “The Controversy Over Infant Formula.” ↑
12. Joanna Moorhead, “Milking It,” The Guardian, May 15, 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/may/15/medicineandhealth.lifeandhealth ↑
13. Chris Zhang, “Where Is China’s Corruption Crackdown,” The Diplomat, July 21, 2017, https://thediplomat.com/2017/07/where-is-chinas-corruption-crackdown/ ↑
14. Nestlé, “Nestlé completes acquisition of Pfizer Nutrition, enhancing its position in global infant nutrition,” December 1, 2012, https://web.archive.org/web/20230106174831/https://www.nestle.com/media/pressreleases/allpressreleases/pfizer-nutrition-closing ↑
15. Nestlé, ““Leading the Way: Responsible Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes, 2019 Report,” 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20230106174835/https://www.nestle.com/sites/default/files/2020-08/who-code-compliance-annual-report-2019.pdf ↑
16. World Health Organization, “Ending exploitative marketing of formula milk,” February 23, 2022, https://www.who.int/teams/maternal-newborn-child-adolescent-health-and-ageing/formula-milk-industry; Swissinfo, “WHO Slams Baby Milk Industry,” https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/who-slams-baby-milk-industry-for-rampant–manipulative–marketing/47369706 ↑
17. Tamara Pearson, “The Horrific Scam That Water Billionaires Are Running on Poor Countries,” CounterPunch, March 21, 2022, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/21/the-horrific-scam-that-water-billionaires-are-running-on-poor-countries/ ↑
18. Nestlé, “Corporate Governance Report 2021.” ↑
19. Tom Perkins, “The Fight to stop Nestlé from taking America’s water to sell in plastic bottles,” The Guardian, October 29, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/the-fight-over-water-how-nestle-dries-up-us-creeks-to-sell-water-in-plastic-bottles ↑
20. Elizabeth Whitman, “The Ad Campaign that Convinced Americans to Pay for Water,” Priceonomics, June 10, 2016, https://priceonomics.com/the-ad-campaign-that-convinced-americans-to-pay/ ↑
21. George White,“$2.6-Billion Nestle Bid Ends Battle for Perrier,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1992, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-03-25-fi-4379-story.html ↑
22. George James, “Perrier Recalls Its Water in U.S. After Benzene Is Found in Bottles,” TheNew York Times, February 10, 1990, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/10/us/perrier-recalls-its-water-in-us-after-benzene-is-found-in-bottles.html; “Perrier Pays New York $40,000 in Labeling Inquiry,” The New York Times, August 21, 1991, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/21/garden/perrier-pays-new-york-40000-in-labeling-inquiry.html ↑
23. Perkins, “The Fight to stop Nestlé from taking America’s water to sell in plastic bottles .” ↑
24. Pearson, “The Horrific Scam That Water Billionaires Are Running on Poor Countries” ↑
25. Mohammed Hanif, “Let Them Drink Bottled Water,” The New York Times, November 23, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/opinion/pakistan-water-contamination-bottled.html ↑
26. “Nestle asked to stop spring water diversions in San Bernardino,” Reuters, April 23, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/nestle-asked-stop-spring-water-diversions-san-bernardino-2021-04-23/ ↑
27. Perkins, “The Fight to stop Nestlé from taking America’s water to sell in plastic bottles.” ↑
28. Nestlé, “Does Peter Brabeck-Letmathe believe that water is a human right?” https://www.Nestlé.com/ask-Nestlé/human-rights/answers/Nestlé-chairman-peter-brabeck-letmathe-believes-water-is-a-human-right ↑
29. Lela Tolajian, “Your Halloween chocolate may have been harvested by children forced to work in Africa,” USA Today, October 29, 2022, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2022/10/29/halloween-candy-chocolate-may-tainted-forced-child-labor/7896991001/ ; Peter Whoriskey and Rachel Siegel, “Cocoa’s child laborers,” The Washington Post, June 5, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershey-nestle-mars-chocolate-child-labor-west-africa/ ↑
30. “U.S. Supreme Court Holds Claims Against U.S. Corporations for Aiding and Abetting Child Slavery Impermissibly Extraterritorial, Declines to Resolve Domestic Corporate Liability,” American Journal of International Law, 2021, Vol. 115 Issue 4, pp. 739-44. ↑
31. Oliver Balch, “Mars, Nestlé and Hershey to face child slavery lawsuit in US,” The Guardian, February 12, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/mars-Nestle-and-hershey-to-face-landmark-child-slavery-lawsuit-in-us ↑
32. “Nestlé USA v. Doe,” Oyez, 2020, https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/19-416 ↑
33. Oliver Balch, “Mars, Nestlé and Hershey to face child slavery lawsuit in US.” ↑
34. Nestlé USA v. Doe, On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (2015). ↑
35. Peter Whoriskey, “Supreme Court weighs child-slavery case against Nestlé USA, Cargill,” The Washington Post, December 1, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/01/cocoa-supreme-court-child-labor/; Nestlé USA v. Doe, On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (2015). ↑
36. Nestlé USA v. Doe, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 19-416, Oral Arguments, December 1, 2020, https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2020/19-416_dc8f.pdf ↑
37. Nestlé USA v. Doe, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 19-416, Oral Arguments, December 1, 2020. ↑
38. Nestlé USA v. Doe, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 19-416, Oral Arguments, December 1, 2020. ↑
39. Ryan J. Reilly, “DOJ Releases Legal Memo That Approved Trump’s Refugee Ban,” HuffPost, February 2, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olc-memo-refugee-ban_n_5893ac35e4b09bd304ba74d9 ↑
40. Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Limits Human Rights Suits Against Corporations,” The New York Times, June 17, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/us/supreme-court-human-rights-nestle.html ↑
41. Jeff Gray, “Former Nestlé Canada CEO may face chocolate price-fixing charge ‘shortly,’” Globe and Mail, December 5, 2012, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/the-law-page/former-nestle-canada-ceo-may-face-chocolate-price-fixing-charge-shortly/article6013249/ ↑
42. Nestlé, “What is the response to allegations from the Dispatches TV documentary of child labor on Nespresso-associated farms in Guatemala?” https://web.archive.org/web/20230106180444/https://www.nestle.com/ask-nestle/human-rights/answers/channel-4-dispatches-guatemala-child-labor-allegations-nespresso ↑
43. Jamie Doward, “Children as young as eight picked coffee beans on farms supplying Starbuck,” The Guardian, March 1, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/01/children-work-for-pittance-to-pick-coffee-beans-used-by-starbucks-and-nespresso ↑
44. Katie Nguyen, “Campaigners hope others follow Nestle in admitting and acting on slave labour in its products,” Reuters, November 24, 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/nestle-seafood-idUSL8N13J3YV20151124; Annie Kelly, “Nestlé admits slavery in Thailand while fighting child labour lawsuit in Ivory Coast,” The Guardian, February 1, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/feb/01/nestle-slavery-thailand-fighting-child-labour-lawsuit-ivory-coast; Kate Hodal, Chris Kelly, and Felicity Lawrence, “Revealed: Asian slave labour producing prawns for supermarkets in US, UK,” The Guardian, June 10, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jun/10/supermarket-prawns-thailand-produced-slave-labour ↑
45. SumOfUs, “Nestlé : the 3rd biggest polluter on the planet,” 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20230106180854/https://actions.sumofus.org/a/nestle-the-4th-biggest-polluter-on-the-planet; Break Free From Plastic, “Branded: Brand Audit Report 2021,” https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/BRAND-AUDIT-REPORT-2021.pdf; Center for International Environmental Law, “Plastic & Climate: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet,” May 2019, https://www.ciel.org/reports/plastic-health-the-hidden-costs-of-a-plastic-planet-may-2019/ ↑
46. Graham Readfearn, “WHO launches health review after microplastics found in 90% of bottled water,” The Guardian, March 14, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/15/microplastics-found-in-more-than-90-of-bottled-water-study-says ↑
47. Martin Macias, Jr., “Nestle’s ‘Pure Life’ Water Filled With Plastic, Class Says,” Courthouse News, April 13, 2018, https://www.courthousenews.com/nestles-pure-life-water-filled-with-plastic-class-says/ ↑
48. Macias, “Nestle’s ‘Pure Life’ Water Filled with Plastic, Class Says.” ↑
49. Deena Robinson, “10 Companies Called Out For Greenwashing,” Earth, July 17, 2022, https://earth.org/greenwashing-companies-corporations/ ↑
50. Perry Wheeler, “Nestlé misses the mark with statement on tackling its single-use plastics problem,” Greenpeace, April 10, 2018, https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/nestle-aiming-at-100-recyclable-or-reusable-packaging-by-2025/ ↑
51. Break Free From Plastic, “Branded: Global Audit Report.” ↑
52. Bruce Watson, “The troubling evolution of corporate greenwashing,” The Guardian, August 20, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/aug/20/greenwashing-environmentalism-lies-companies ↑
53. Heather Kohlmann, “‘Environmentally friendly’ bottled water? No such thing,” This, May 15, 2009, https://this.org/2009/05/15/environment-water-bottle/ ↑
54. “Groups Challenge Nestlé’s Bottled Water ‘Greenwashing,’” Polaris Institute, December 2, 2008, https://web.archive.org/web/20141022031038/http:/www.polarisinstitute.org/groups_challenge_nestl%C3%A9%E2%80%99s_bottled_water_greenwashing [NOTE: I couldn’t find this under “Polaris Institute” although I did find it under “web.archive” source. However, the “web archive” source is dated 2014 while the original article, which I found under “Common Dreams,” is dated December 2, 2008. I would use the following source rather than “web archive, etc.”: https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2008/12/01/groups-challenge-nestles-bottled-water-greenwashing ] ↑
55. “The Case Against Nestlé,” Lakota People’s Law Project. ↑
56. Arthur Neslen,“Nestlé, Hershey and Mars ‘breaking promises over palm oil use,’” The Guardian, October 28, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/27/nestle-mars-and-hershey-breaking-promises-over-palm-oil-use-say-campaigners ↑
57. “The true price of palm oil,” Global Witness, June 14, 2022, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/forests/true-price-palm-oil/ ↑
58. Idem. ↑
59. Nestlé, “Human rights issues in palm oil,” https://web.archive.org/web/20230106181912/https://www.nestle.com/ask-nestle/human-rights/answers/amnesty-international-report-labour-abuses-palm-oil-supply-chain ↑
60. Zoe Ferguson and Margot O’Neill, “Former Nespresso boss warns coffee pods are killing environment,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), August 24, 2016. ↑
61. Katia Moskvitch, “Turns out coffee pods are actually pretty good for the environment,” WIRED, May 3, 2019, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coffee-pods-nespresso-recycling↑
62. Ferguson and O’Neill, “Former Nespresso boss warns coffee pods are killing environment.” ↑
63. “Father’s Past Haunts French Billionaire,” Forbes, March 18, 2005, https://www.forbes.com/2005/03/18/cz_sh_0318oreal_bill05.html ↑
64. “Nestle SA,” Ethical Consumer, https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/company-profile/Nestlé-sa ↑
65. Nicole Mowbray, “‘We saw young children clambering out of mines’: The human cost of ‘glowy’ make-up,” The Telegraph, November 19, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/beauty/make-up/dark-truth-really-inside-make-up/; Doris Rajakumari John, “L’Oréal: On a Mission for Ethical Mica Mining? Case Centre, 2017, https://www.thecasecentre.org/products/view?id=143347 ↑
66. “LOréal Settles FTC Charges Alleging Deceptive Advertising for Anti-Aging Cosmetics,” Federal Trade Commission, June 30, 2014, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2014/06/loreal-settles-ftc-charges-alleging-deceptive-advertising-anti-aging-cosmetics; Jonathan Stempel, “U.S. lawsuit claims L’Oreal makes up products to appear being from France,” Reuters, February 18, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/us-lawsuit-claims-loreal-makes-up-products-appear-being-france-2022-02-18/ ↑
67. “Limiting Lead in Lipstick and Other Cosmetics,” Food and Drug Administration (FDA), https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetic-products/limiting-lead-lipstick-and-other-cosmetics; Dina ElBoghdady, “400 lipsticks found to contain lead, FDA says,” The Washington Post, February 14, 2012, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/400-lipstick-brands-contain-lead-fda-says/2012/02/14/gIQAhOyeDR_story.html ↑
68. “L’Oreal: No More Cancer Chemicals in Cosmetics,” Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, https://www.bcpp.org/resource/loreal-no-cancer-chemicals-cosmetics/ ↑
69. John Gardella, “L’Oreal PFAS Lawsuit Shows the Danger of ESG Marketing,” National Law Review, March 14, 2022, https://www.natlawreview.com/article/l-oreal-pfas-lawsuit-shows-danger-esg-marketing ↑
70. “Nestle withdraws pasta meals as horsemeat scandal spreads,” Reuters, February 18, 2013, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-nestle-horsemeat/nestle-withdraws-pasta-meals-as-horsemeat-scandal-spreads-idUKBRE91H0R920130219 ↑
71. National Labor Relations Board, https://www.nlrb.gov/search/all/Nestlé?f[0]=case_type:C ↑
72. Nestlé USA Inc and Tou Vang, NLRB, Case Number: 18-CA-231008, Decision and Order, March 11, 2020. ↑
73. Idem. ↑
74. Idem. ↑
75. “Nestle SA,” Ethical Consumer. ↑
76. “Special Newsletter on the Criminal Complaint Against Nestlé in the Case of the Murdered Colombian Trade Unionist Luciano Romero,” European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, https://media.business-humanrights.org/media/documents/files/media/ecchr_-_nestle_special_newsletter.pdf ↑
77. Idem. ↑
78. “ILRF sues Nestle for Complicity in Colombian Union Murders,” International Labor Rights Forum, October 26, 2006, https://laborrights.org/releases/ilrf-sues-Nestlé-complicity-colombian-union-murders ↑
79. Brent Patterson, “Groups Seek Prosecution Of Nestle For Murder Of Colombian Trade Unionist,” The Canadians, May 20, 2013, https://canadians.org/analysis/update-groups-seek-prosecution-nestle-murder-colombian-trade-unionist/ ↑
80. “Nestlé lawsuit (re Colombia),” Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, March 5, 2012, https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/nestl%C3%A9-lawsuit-re-colombia/ ↑
81. “Nestlé precedent case: Murder of trade unionist Romero in Colombia,” ECCHR, https://www.ecchr.eu/en/case/Nestlé-precedent-case-murder-of-trade-unionist-romero-in-colombia/ ↑
82. “Urgent Action: Trade Unionists Receive More Death Threats,” Amnesty International, November 12, 2012, https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/amr230432012en.pdf ↑
83. “Idem. ↑
84. “Three unionised Nestle workers murdered in Valle del Cauca,” Justice for Colombia, May 29, 2018, https://justiceforcolombia.org/news/three-unionised-nestle-workers-murdered-in-valle-del-cauca/ ↑
85. Nestlé, “Does Nestlé allow labor unions?” https://web.archive.org/web/20230106183253/https://www.nestle.com/ask-nestle/human-rights/answers/labour-unions-operations ↑
86. “Swiss food giant Nestlé fined for infiltrating activist group,” Independent, January 31, 2013, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/swiss-food-giant-nestle-fined-for-infiltrating-activist-group-8474189.html ↑
87. James Shotter and Louise Lucas, “Nestlé found liable over spying on NGO,” CNN, January 30, 2013, https://www.cnn.com/2013/01/30/business/swizterland-nestle-spying-civil-case/index.html ↑
88. “Baby Milk Action Update,” Baby Milk Action, Issue 41, November 2008, http://archive.babymilkaction.org/pdfs/update41.pdf ↑
89. James Shotter and Louise Lucas, “Nestlé found liable over spying on NGO,” Financial Times, 2013. ↑
90. Tom Perkins, “Revealed: group shaping US nutrition receives millions from big food industry,” The Guardian, December 9, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/09/academy-nutrition-financial-ties-processed-food-companies-contributions ↑
91. Carriedo, A., Pinsky, I., Crosbie, E., Ruskin, G., & Mialon, M., “The corporate capture of the nutrition profession in the USA: the case of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,” Public Health Nutrition, 25(12), 2022, 3568-3582. doi:10.1017/S1368980022001835 ↑
92. “Evil Days: 30 Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia,” Africa Watch, A Division of Human Rights Watch, September 1991, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/Ethiopia919.pdf ↑
93. Nestlé, “Nestlé And Ethiopian Government Reach Settlement,” January 24, 2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20230106184353/https://www.nestle.com/media/pressreleases/allpressreleases/ethiopiangovernmentsettlement-24jan03 ↑
94. Kevin Begley, “The Tale of Nestle and a Nation in Famine,” CounterPunch, December 24, 2002, https://www.counterpunch.org/2002/12/24/the-tale-of-nestle-and-a-nation-in-famine ↑
95. Idem. ↑
96. “Nestle $6 Million Claim Against Ethiopia Provokes Controversy,” Voice of America, December 21, 2002, https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-a-2002-12-21-8-Nestlé-67414107/383607.html; Nestlé, “Nestlé And Ethiopian Government Reach Settlement,” January 24, 2003; Nestlé, “Nestlé and Ethiopia. A Statement by Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck,” December 23, 2002, https://web.archive.org/web/20230106184353/https://www.nestle.com/media/pressreleases/allpressreleases/ethiopiastatementbrabeckceo-23dec02; Nestlé, “Nestlé and Ethiopia. A Statement by Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck,” December 23, 2002, https://web.archive.org/web/20230106184353/https://www.nestle.com/media/pressreleases/allpressreleases/ethiopiastatementbrabeckceo-23dec02 ↑
97. “Violation Tracker: Nestlé,” Good Jobs First, https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?parent=Nestlé ↑
98. Judith Evans, “Nestlé document says Majority of its food portfolio is unhealthy,” Financial Times, May 31, 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/4c98d410-38b1-4be8-95b2-d029e054f492 ↑

99. Michael Diamond, “Ending Corporate Tyranny: Solutions to the Plague that Afflicts Us All,” CovertAction Magazine, February 18, 2021, https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/02/18/ending-corporate-tyranny-solutions-to-the-plague-that-afflicts-us-all/ ↑

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***

There is a fierce war waging in Ukraine. A war instigated by NATO, as is well known. Nonetheless, a serious and deadly war in which once more the US of A, too cowardly to confront Russia’s military directly, has chosen a proxy partner, the Ukraine whose population is devastated and their infrastructure as well as their lives destroyed.

And to be clear, the infrastructure destruction and killing of Ukraine’s own people was largely done by the Ukraine military, so they may claim Russia for the deaths and devastation. This is well known to western media. But they do not report on it, to the contrary, they support Zelenskyy’s lies.

The colossal corporate “financial cult – some call it the Deep State – has a specific agenda which is not new, fracture and destroy Russia. Before it was destroying the Soviet Union because Russia is by far the world’s largest and resources richest country on the planet. 

Their planned One World Order cannot tolerate the forces of Russia and / or China as independent sovereign nations. And much less so, as an ever-stronger alliance, what they have become during the past decade or so. The diabolical OWO, they believe, will also be much more efficient in running the worldly universe with a massively reduced population.

This war, while dead serious, is largely used by the west to deviate people’s attention worldwide from the diabolical plan being prepared for execution behind the black curtains – see below.

Let’s start with the delivery of German Leopards to Ukraine. What was made to believe a “hard” decision for Chancellor Scholz was, of course, ordered by Washington a couple of weeks ago: deliver 14 German made Leopard II tanks to Ukraine to fight Russia on the ground.

These tanks will have to be delivered by road and rail, most likely through Poland. Any clear-thinking mind would wonder – how stupid! As soon as they are on Ukraine territory, they will be wiped out by Russian precision missiles. And that before Zelenskyy could even start thinking where to begin using them.

Indeed, in a recent interview (video 51 min) with General Douglas MacGregor on the overall interesting topic, “Russia’s Deliberate and Methodical Conquest of Ukraine”, the General explains at 00:25:00 how Russia will destroy the arriving tanks as soon as they enter Ukraine territory. Russia has high-technology precision missiles – so, no problem.

However, according to General MacGregor, Russia will NOT do anything while the tanks are in transit through Poland or any other country. See full video below.

At the same time, Joe Biden promised to deliver 31 M1 Abrams tanks, say, within the next  6 to 8 weeks – see this.

Notwithstanding this generosity, according to CNN, Western allies envisage supplying altogether 321 tanks to Ukraine within the coming few months. See this.

The Russian army better stock up on precision missiles.

*

But now comes the little talked-about hammer and wanted confusion. Shortly after Chancellor Scholz’s “decision” on the 12 Leopards II, the German Ministry of Defense decided to replace the latest technology Leopard II by the older and mostly obsolete Leopard I. According to The Guardian, Germany would deliver a “package” of 29 largely discarded Leopard I. See this.

Ammunition might be a problem because they were not sure whether the shells for the Two model would also be adequate for the One model. What a nonsensical problem being highlighted by the western media! For what? More confusion? More mind-trickery? It’s so obvious that the last deep-sleeper must wake up.

Contradicting or completing The Guardian, Politico reports Germany will send 88 obsolete Leopard I tanks to Ukraine after “repairing” them for about 100 million euros… see this.

The tank story becomes ever more confusing. On purpose, of course.

Deviating people’s attention from more important things because, make no mistake, these tanks will be destroyed almost instantly as soon as they enter the Ukraine. 

Of course, Germany knows that any tanks arriving by land on the territory of Ukraine will be wiped out. That’s probably the reason why they decided shipping the outdated Leopard I’s. It is a cheap way of demolishing and getting rid of them on foreign territory.

In the meantime, the French Ministry of Defense sends signals that President Macron “is not ruling out” “the idea of sending fighter jets to Ukraine”, as Kiev ramps up its campaign to pressure the West into donating combat aircraft to its military. See this.

So, what’s the story? Will French deliver fighter jets or not? And if they do, how long will they be in the air before being “neutralized” by the Russian Air Force?

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The “Chinese Spy Balloon”

Seemingly unrelated with a huge brouhaha, the US shoots down an alleged Chinese spy balloon which enters the US from the Pacific on the West Coast, crosses the entire US of A from west to east then in North Carolina entering the Atlantic. That’s when it’s finally safe to shoot the balloon down. And this with a fighter jet-launched precision missile under jeering of spectators.

Never mind, whether it was really a Chinese spy balloon or not. We may never know the truth. Because whatever may be the official version may be the biggest lie.

As former CIA Director, William J. Casey, said, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

Nothing is coincidence, and everything is connected.

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Now you may ask yourself, what is this all about?

A Chinese spy balloon over the US of A; maybe French fighter jets for Ukraine, for sure lots-of-lots-of tanks for Ukraine. Where is the logic?

A deviation game for mind-controlling people by BS, à la Tavistock, while in the deep dark back the real diabolical Reset / Agenda 2030 is being advanced without being noticed?

For example, based on a Press Conference journalist Katherine Watt attended on 24 January 2023, she reveals how the US military has subcontracted to the banksters to carry out a ‘global genocide” (see video below)

She sets out how long this has been going on, and all the steps involved up to the present moment.

She says this is not over – this is only the beginning.  But she concludes they will not achieve their criminal objectives as western people and state and country legislators are waking up.

The press conference discussed the ongoing emergency use rollout of bioweapons being marketed as Covid vaccines.

Katherine discussed the legal framework for which this is happening.

She describes the unholy alliance between WHO, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basle, also called the Central Bank of all Central Banks, and the US Department of Defense (DOD); their intent on undermining nations and people’s sovereignty.

Public Health worldwide has been militarized, creating “Kill Zones” for Global Depopulation and Control.

See full video (16 min).

The January 24, 2023 Press Conference seems to indicate that given the ever faster evolving people’s alertness, the Reset and Agenda 2030 plans are being accelerated.

The bulldozer rolls on despite all the awakening. Depopulation must advance. At the same time, new western legislation in the US and European countries are introduced, pressing their sovereignty as nations and for the people.

The race between the tyranny of globalists and the newly perceived and implemented national autonomies and people’s sovereignties, will be won by the People for the People.

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

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

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***

GR Editor’s Note

Is this initiative to undermine Turkey’s tourism industry in any way related to the fact that Turkey, which is a “NATO heavyweight” is also a firm ally of the Russian Federation, who is “sleeping with the enemy”. Sounds contradictory. 

Turkey has opted in favor of Russia’s “State of the Art” S-400. That acquisition of Russian military technology is part of a concurrent military cooperation agreement as well an alliance between Turkey and Russia established in the immediate aftermath of the failed July 2016 US sponsored coup d’Etat directed against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Is the destabilization of the tourist industry a preamble to US interference in Turkey’s May elections? 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, February 6, 2023

 ***

On February 3, the Turkish interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, blasted the US Ambassador to Turkey, Jeffry L. Flake, saying, “Take your dirty hands off of Turkey.”

The outrage was prompted after Washington and eight European countries issued travel warnings over possible terror attacks in Turkey. The US and its western allies have attempted to connect a recent Quran burning in Sweden with travel danger inside Turkey. Muslim countries worldwide have denounced the burning as hate speech, not free speech, but this has no apparent connection to travel safety issues inside Turkey.

The US travel warning is tantamount to a declaration of economic war on Turkey who is in an economic downturn of its tourism sector, which was 11 % of the GDP in 2019, representing $78.2 billion, and rose to $17.95 billion in the third quarter of 2022, of which 85.7 percent came from foreign visitors.  In 2018, tourism directly accounted for 7.7% of total employment in Turkey.

“Every American ambassador wonders how they can hurt Turkey. This has been one of Turkey’s greatest misfortunes over the years. It gathers other ambassadors and tries to give them advice. They are doing the same thing in Europe, the American embassy is running Europe,” said Soylu.

Soylu has criticized the US and blames Washington for the 2016 Turkish regime change attempt, and has accused the US of ruling Europe. In foreign policies, the EU follows US directives implicitly.

“I’m being very clear. I very well know how you would like to create strife in Turkey. Take your grinning face off from Turkey,” said Soylu.

Ankara warned its citizens abroad to be aware of possible anti-Islamic attacks in the US and Europe following the burning of the Quran in Sweden. Turkey later summoned the nine ambassadors, including Flake, for talks over the warnings.

Soylu condemned the European consulate closures in Turkey as an attempt to meddle in campaigning for Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for May 14.

Soylu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have suggested that the western states had issued the security warnings in order to pressure Turkey to tone down its criticism of the Quran burning and resolve the NATO dispute in which Erdogan has voiced opposition to Sweden joining the bloc.

After a right-wing Swedish Radical Christian burned the Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, Erdogan threatened that he would never consent to Swedish accession.

Sweden previously has refused to extradite the 120 terrorists Turkey has demanded, and the US Senate has made it clear that if Turkey does not approve Swedish accession, arms sales to Turkey, specifically F-16s, will not be authorized.

Turkish elections

Turkish elections are scheduled for May 14, and will be the toughest reelection fight of Erdogan’s career, and he and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) may lose the election.

The six-party opposition coalition, composed of two larger and four smaller parties, has managed to present a unified front. The opposition to Erdogan support the restoration of Turkey’s parliamentary system and the curtailment of presidential powers.

Erdogan’s fear has grown so strong that he used the courts to ban a leading potential opposition candidate, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, from running for the CHP.  However, polls suggest that Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavas, could beat Erdogan.

The state has more overtly targeted some political parties, especially the pro-Kurdish, People’s Democracy Party (HDP). This left-leaning party was not invited into the opposition coalition, but HDP supporters will vote against Erdogan.

Biden supports opposition to Erdogan

US President Joe Biden hosted an emergency meeting on Nov. 16 in Bali, Indonesia, with NATO and EU leaders to discuss a response to a missile blast in Poland, but Turkey was not invited.  The meeting was held during the Group of 20 summit, and Turkey was present, but Biden snubbed them from the emergency meeting.

Turkey has been a full-fledged member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 1952, commands its second-largest military and has protected the southern flank of the alliance for 70 years.

Erdogan was again snubbed by Biden in December 2021 at the US hosted virtual ‘Summit for Democracy’. In a New York Times interview published in 2020, the then candidate Biden called Erdogan an “autocrat.”

“What I think we should be doing is taking a very different approach to him now, making it clear that we support opposition leadership,” Biden said.

“He has to pay a price,” Biden said, adding that Washington should embolden Turkish opposition leaders “to be able to take on and defeat Erdogan. Not by a coup, not by a coup, but by the electoral process.”

Turkey recognized a clear attack by Biden using election meddling as a tool.

“The days of ordering Turkey around are over. But if you still think you can try, be our guest. You will pay the price.” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted.

The analysis of Turkey by @JoeBiden is based on pure ignorance, arrogance and hypocrisy.

The days of ordering Turkey around are over.

But if you still think you can try, be our guest.

You will pay the price.

— İbrahim Kalın (@ikalin1) August 16, 2020

The main opposition CHP party quickly distanced themselves from Biden’s remarks of election meddling, calling for “respect for the sovereignty of Turkey”.

Turkey’s six-party opposition will select its candidate to run against Erdogan on February 13, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu said.

Obama and Erdogan

When President Obama conceived of his attack in Syria for regime change in 2011, using Radical Islamic terrorists as his foot soldiers, he called upon Erdogan to play a crucial role.  Turkey hosted the CIA office which ran the Timber Sycamore program which trained and provided weapons for the Free Syrian Army.  Erdogan also took in over 3 million Syria refugees fleeing the violence.  Erdogan authorized his security forces to transport weapons to the terrorists in Syria.

Erdogan was a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood who provided the political ideology for the Free Syrian Army (FSA), who were terrorists attacking unarmed civilians, but were reported by the US and western media as ‘rebels’.

However, the FSA disbanded due to lack of public support in Syria, and Al Qaeda stepped in the take its place, and finally ISIS emerged as the toughest terrorist group.

In 2017, President Trump cut off the CIA program in Turkey, and supporting of the Al Qaeda branch in Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was left to Erdogan. The US-NATO attack on Syria failed to produce regime change, but the country was partly destroyed in the process.  Now, Erdogan proposes a reset in relations with Damascus, and is on track to establish business and diplomatic ties once more.

The US State Department has issued warnings and threats to Erdogan if he follows through on his plan to have a neighborly relationship with Syria.  Erdogan needs to make peace with Syria to return the 3.6 million Syrian refugees back home, and revive exports to Syria which will be a huge boost to the Turkish economy. If he accomplishes this soon, he has a good chance at winning reelection in May.

Kurds-PKK-YPG

A deadly terrorist bombing of a shopping district in Istanbul last November was carried out by a Syrian Kurd. The message was directed at Erdogan: don’t attack the YPG in north east Syria, or else. Those Kurds are supported by the US military illegally occupying parts of Syria.

The US partnered with the YPG to fight the ISIS, and both Erdogan and the opposition view that as a betrayal of a fellow NATO member, and US ally. The YPG is directly linked with the PKK, an internationally designated terrorist organization and a threat to Turkey’s national security.

Erdogan has threatened a new military operation in Syria to disarm the YPG regardless of their US partnership. The Syrian special enjoy under Trump, James Jeffrey, advised the Kurds to repair their relationship with Damascus, as the US was not going to fight any war to defend them.  The Kurd’s usefulness to the US was over. Recently, the Turkish air force has been bombing them, with shells falling a few hundred feet from US personnel stationed there.

Erdogan has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for a green light to attack the Kurds in Syria, but was cautioned against it.  However, the time might be ripe for a Turkish attack on the Kurds, which would disarm them and probably would lead to a withdrawal of the 200 American troops.

Turkey removed M4 outpost

On February 2, Turkish troops in Syria evacuated a military outpost near the M4 highway that connects the cities of Aleppo and Latakia. The former Al Qaeda branch in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), occupy Idlib, the last terrorist controlled area in Syria.

Turkey had been defending the HTS from attacks from Syrian Arab Army, and the Russian military. However, Erdogan has decided to drop his support of the armed opposition as he repairs his relationship with Syria.

On January 31, Ankara informed the HTS leadership of its plan to conduct patrols on the HTS-controlled portion of the M4 (Aleppo-Latakia) road, which “may be followed by joint patrols with Russia, and eventually with Syria.”

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

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***

“Never Again Is Now Global,” a five-part docuseries highlighting the parallels between Nazi Germany and global pandemic policies.

Each one-hour episode focuses on recent testimonies by Holocaust survivors and their descendants who discuss comparisons between the early repressive stages under the Nazi regime that culminated in the Holocaust and global COVID-19 policies.

Watch the trailer of part 1 below. And click here to watch the full episode.

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***

Question: How does one best explain the brutal crackdown on COVID-19 protesters worldwide for the sake of Public Health™ while, at the same time, Black Lives Matter was permitted to run hog-wild on America’s streets?

How are elected Democrat leaders allowed to literally incite race riots while those same leaders pearl-clutch about January 6 in never-ending televised witch trials?

Answer: Anarcho-tyranny

The term anarcho-tyranny, on its face, is an oxymoron, a glaring contradiction. Indeed, it’s the biggest possible contradiction of political system descriptors, as anarchy and tyranny occupy diametrically opposite ends of the government force continuum.

So it’s obvious nonsense, right? Well, if we lived in a politically coherent environment, governed by rule of law, it would be. But in a Kafkaesque world of arbitrary exercise of government power, it becomes much more descriptive.

Samuel Francis first coined the term “anarcho-tyranny” in a 1994 essay titled Anarcho-Tyranny, U.S.A., summarized as:

“A concept where the state is more interested in controlling citizens so that they don’t oppose managerial class, rather than tending to real criminals. Laws are argued to be enforced selectively depending on what is beneficial to the ruling elite.”

It essentially describes a situation in which the government has the necessary tools and capabilities to wield oppressive power over its subjects, and does so to further its own interests.

On the other hand, the government actors themselves — and, importantly, their footsoldiers (like Antifa and BLM in the modern American context) — act with impunity, immune from legal consequences.

Exhibit A: the recent hullabaloo over classified documents. When Trump was discovered to have stashed them in his private residence, the full weight of the state fell upon his estate in the dead of night.

“Why [would] anyone be that irresponsible?” an exasperated Biden quipped, his sentiments echoed over and over and over in corporate media.

CNN was suspiciously on the scene with a camera fixed on Trump’s residence, waiting to nab riveting exclusive footage of the FBI raid on the ex-president’s house in the dewy early morning hours before daybreak.

When Biden, the favored son of the corporate state, committed essentially the same offense, no such law enforcement raid commenced, and the corporate press ran to his defense.

There is no substantial difference between the cases. Both men were sheltering classified documents that they were not authorized to possess on private property. But they received different treatment based on the actor, not the actions.

Moving back a little further in recent political history, let’s look at the COVID lockdowns.

They were brutally enforced in the US against all manner of public gatherings – including church ceremonies – until the death of George Floyd. Suddenly, all restrictions went out the window as BLM ravaged cities from coast to coast with carte blanche endorsement by the state.

Suddenly, the BLM rioters became heroes “braving” the coronavirus risk, rather than domestic terrorists targeting grandmothers for euthanization.

There is obviously no legitimate public health rationale to allow street riots involving thousands of people in close quarters while California beaches remain closed and patrolled by agents of the state.

Contradiction is the point, because there are contradictory legal standards of behavior, depending on whether the actor is favored by the political establishment.

Under anarcho-tyranny, inconsistency in the application of the law is the feature, not the bug. And, as Francis further explains, it’s a tool to propagate a never-ending state of “permanent emergency”:

“Under anarcho-tyranny, the state creates a problem, declares an emergency or crisis – the drug war, the carjacking crisis, Islamic fundamentalism – and then exploits that problem as an instrument by which it continues to enhance its power, though neither the fake problem it exploits nor the real problem that exists is affected.”

Fixing COVID isn’t the goal; using it as the pretext to enforce arbitrary social control measures against opponents of the state is. In fact, the SARS-Cov-2 virus itself is a gift to be treasured rather than a problem to be remedied. The powers that be would release a new virus every day of the week if they thought they could get away with it and believed it would further their interests.

Ditto with the War of Terror, which birthed the modern national security state that currently has “domestic terrorists” in its sights, climate change, and virtually every permanent emergency that the social engineers either invent out of whole cloth or exploit.

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This article was originally published on The Daily Bell.

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose and/or Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

During a recent interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, former Chancellor and European political heavyweight Angela Merkel revealed that the Minsk accords, a comprehensive 2015 diplomatic treaty, agreed by the EU, United States, Russia, and Kyiv to end the civil war in eastern Ukraine, was essentially subverted by the Ukrainians in an attempt to buy time to expand its military capabilities.

The fact that the accords, which were widely regarded as a truly workable solution to the conflict, were not prioritized by the U.S. for implementation, speaks volumes when assessing the sincerity of the U.S. position. Just prior to Merkel’s stunning revelations, Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was also covertly recorded admitting that the process was abused by Ukraine and used to prepare for war with Russia.

Given the high level of interface between NATO and Ukraine during this period, it is difficult to imagine that this manipulation of the peace process was not carried out with the full knowledge, and probable assistance, of NATO and the U.S. It is now abundantly clear, at least to all objective observers, that the U.S. never seriously intended to prevent the current conflict in Ukraine. On the contrary, any cursory assessment of their past and contemporary covert and overt involvement in the region suggests they have been working to destabilize Russia via Ukraine for decades.

Facts such as their encouragement, and material assistance, in the building of a huge 250,000-man, NATO-trained and equipped army facing Russia’s border, illustrate the reality of what the U.S. project in Ukraine was about, regardless of their diplomatic pronouncements.

Despite decades of Russian warnings on NATO expansion, and despite the sincere attempts of some European countries, NATO and its U.S. kingpins forged ahead along a path to what would become an inevitable war. Considering this, can any of the numerous U.S./NATO statements suggesting they “exhausted all diplomatic efforts” to prevent this conflict be taken seriously? The facts suggest not.

Source: businessinsider.com

As the second phase of the conflict in Ukraine grinds toward its first bloody anniversary, the first being the post-Maidan civil war which erupted in 2014, the grim realities of this conflict, both economic and human, are now indelibly burned into the global consciousness not only of the Ukrainian and Russian populations, but also the pro-war political aristocracy in the U.S. and their client EU/NATO allies.

In recent weeks, whispers of peace have emerged, uncharacteristically, from the eternally hawkish, “absolute victory” brigade in Washington. It is undeniable that these war hawks wield a disproportionate influence on Zelensky’s government, with many dissenting analysts suggesting it is they who essentially operate the levers of power in his Kyiv palace.

Before accepting this dubious kite flying for peace as genuine, observers would be advised to research the long, determined and cynical march into this inevitable conflict, a clash long predicted by scholars like Mearsheimer and Chomsky, who have persistently highlighted the central role that the United States and its proxies in the EU had in willfully manufacturing its inevitability. Conflicts between great powers tend not to occur overnight, and with this being such a high-stakes game, where the very balance of global power is potentially shifting, nothing happens unless it is supposed to happen. Essentially, when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine, the power bloc that emerges victorious will potentially dominate a new global order; in other words “this game is for all the marbles.”

This conflict has evolved into one unlike any other, the weaponization of social media, of culture, and the revision of history itself, have become second fronts, central to the anti-Russian, pro-Atlanticist narrative at the center of the EU/NATO pro-war rationale. It is critical that the Western public, who have been bombarded 24/7 by a propaganda Leviathan of previously unseen proportions and resources, explore the factual realities of how the “scaffold” that this conflict now burns on was deliberately built, not over a matter of months or years but over a matter of decades.

Source: greenvillepost.com

Of course, having any opinion other than the prescribed Western view is portrayed as dangerous and subversive. Any view, other than the stock mainstream narrative, which alleges that a maniacal imperialist Russia, wishing to regain tracts of previously conquered territory, is cast as Russian propaganda. This authoritarian and dangerous. corporate position has led to people such as your author being labeled as pro-Putin advocates, and paid propagandists for an authoritarian, genocidal and hateful state.

Of course, the opposite is quite true. Your author and many others like me are essentially anti-war advocates, who earnestly seek to challenge the profit-fueled neo-liberal hegemony that has led Europe, blindly, to the brink of a third world war.

The reality that I, and many others have long held these anti-imperialist views, is discarded along with all objectivity, independence and balance. It is now undeniable that the pan-Atlanticist perpetual war cult has gone “all in” on Ukraine. Turning a blind eye to Nazism, gross corruption and human rights abuses, while gleefully depriving American and European populations of their right to dissent, their right to disagree and their right to challenge the rationale for this terrible conflict.

The reality that is consistently hidden is that the only winner, if there is one, is the military industrial complex which is profiting grotesquely from the human misery that abounds in the ditches and trenches of Ukraine today.

It is incumbent on the United States to question the veracity and sincerity of U.S. diplomacy, given that any initial hopes of a negotiated peace in the east, which had erupted into a brutal civil war in 2014, were dashed by the persistent failures of U.S. ally Petro Poroshenko’s government to act on central parts of the Minsk deal, most notably the federalization of Donbas within Ukraine and the preservation of rights for millions of ethnic Russians in the east of Ukraine who had rejected the pro-EU Maidan coup.

Today, an increasingly fractious NATO/EU Washington-led alliance seems determined to compound its continuing foreign policy failures by deeming Russia a “Terrorist State.” It seems that the irony—that recently released U.S. data confirm that America has killed more than 900,000 people in dozens of countries in the past 20 years alone—is seemingly lost on the U.S. State Department.

This escalatory move demonstrates that any semblance of the grudging but mutual respect between U.S. and Russian diplomats during the Cold War is now sadly a romantic memory. It is worth recalling that these official and unofficial diplomatic channels not only steered the U.S. away from nuclear Armageddon, but they also fostered, and indeed encouraged, pragmatism on both sides, with the idea that a deal could be done and had to be done thankfully prevailing. Today, however, diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States are at their lowest point since their establishment in 1933, and that is bad news for almost everyone.

When examining the background to today’s conflict, it is important to interrogate the abject failure of Western diplomacy, firstly to de-escalate the 2014 post-coup civil conflict in eastern Ukraine, and more recently to defuse the standoff which culminated with the Russian military intervention in February. How could such a potentially catastrophic conflict between an increasingly boxed-in Russia and a hawkish NATO/Ukraine have come to this? Surely the many voices of geopolitical realism and restraint were being heard?

If not, maybe the persistent and increasingly resolute warnings of “red lines being crossed” by a concerned Moscow? No? Well then, shouldn’t the U.S./NATO at least have respected the democratic wishes of 73% of the Ukrainian people? After all, they voted Zelensky into power on his promise to “end the war”? It seems none of these crucial realities registered with the ever expanding “freedom machine” that is NATO, most interestingly the mandate of the Ukrainian people for peace in the east was conveniently ignored.

When Moscow deployed its troops to the Ukrainian border in the closing months of 2021, it was seen by many (including your author) as elaborate sabre-rattling to demonstrate the seriousness with which the Russians viewed the situation; of course, it turned out to be quite the opposite.

As the Russian Army crossed the Ukrainian border in the early hours of February 24^th, not only did it spell the end of decades of Russian warnings about NATO’s eastward expansion onto its borders, it may also have marked the end of a global world order dominated by the U.S. and its dollar. When objectively evaluating the global impact of this crisis and the potential spoils to the victor, it becomes increasingly likely that the widely publicized last-minute attempts for peace were mere PR outings, box-ticking for future deniability.

When did the U.S. “project” in Ukraine begin?

When Western narrators insert the now seemingly obligatory phrase “unprovoked invasion of Ukraine” when writing on the crisis, it would be useful to point out that it is undeniable, but not widely known, that the United States has been agitating to wrestle Ukraine away from the influence of Russia since the end of World War II.

Despite the complex demographic and geopolitical realities of the region, and in spite of the deep and ancient social, linguistic, and historical ties between Russia and Ukraine, Uncle Sam has had his eye on Kyiv for a very long time. As far back as 1949 the relatively young Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was a priority target for initially the OSS and then the newly formed CIA, which aimed to exploit the complex ethnic and historic differences in the region to undermine the Soviets.

The long-term U.S. strategy involved overt and covert actions to influence and fund various Ukrainian nationalist and paramilitary organizations. As with innumerable other CIA-led regime-change operations, the morality or political persuasion of their partners mattered not, and they included the openly Nazi collaborators of the ultranationalist OUN and UPA led by recognized mass murderers like Stepan Bandera, a man now widely and openly deified in Zelensky’s Ukraine by recently instituted national holidays and countless statues.

An examination of the recent activities of CIA cut-outs such as the “National Endowment for Democracy,” “Freedom House,” the “National Democratic Institute,” the “International Republican Institute” and the “Eurasia Foundation” confirms the deep-seated persistence of U.S. intelligence-backed subversion in Ukraine. These organizations like to describe their “mission” as “assisting the building of Ukrainian civil society” but, in reality, their multimillion-dollar task is part of a broader U.S. strategy to remove “unfriendly” governments as per the CIA regime-change playbook.

The successful U.S.-sponsored coup d’état against the legitimately elected government of Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 was the culmination of those decades of efforts to install and propagate a pro-Western, anti-Russian, pro-EU government in Kyiv, much as it had worked to do in many post-Soviet republics like Belarus. It was now glaringly apparent that, rather than respecting the very democracy that it selectively supports, the U.S. has preferred an “à la carte” approach to the democracy and freedom it purports to represent: If it is pro-U.S.A., defend it; if it is not, destroy it.

“Maidan” an unmissable opportunity  

The depth of U.S. interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs has been truly astounding. It has also been intentionally overlooked by mainstream media and their client analysts when evaluating the apparent failure of diplomatic attempts to avert today’s conflict in Ukraine.

Instead of accepting the democratic mandate of the imperfect Yanukovych government, the U.S. and its EU allies openly supported the Maidan coup. The U.S. and its European allies even went so far as to brazenly suggest that, if Yanukovych performed an “about face” and accepted the agreement to move closer to the EU economically, he might be permitted to remain in power.

Inevitably, the usual suspects began to queue up to support the nascent “Euromaidan” movement. When the perennially hawkish and boorish Republican Senator John McCain arrived in Kyiv to “show his support” he proceeded to openly wine and dine unsavory key players in the Euromaidan movement. McCain’s newly found friends included the known racist and ultra-fascist Oleg Tyagnibok, leader of the far-right Svoboda party.

McCain even thought it would be a good idea to stand brazenly with Tyagnibok on a stage in Maidan Square, proclaiming to thousands of protesters that “the free world is with you, America is with you, I am with you.”

Incredibly, the United States senator made this speech while the democratically elected government of Yanukovych and the millions of Ukrainians who had legitimately given him their votes looked on in dismay. In the Donbas, millions of ethnic Russians looked on fearfully as the U.S. lit a touch-paper that would ultimately end in a brutal civil war.

If  McCain’s theatrical “freedom-loving war-hero” routine was seen as brazen by the Kremlin, along admittedly by some less hawkish EU observers, it was a model of diplomatic restraint compared to the conduct of Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and high priestess of American neo-liberal hegemonic foreign policy.

As Ukraine’s political crisis deepened, Nuland and her subordinates became increasingly aggressive in favoring the anti-​Yanukovych demonstrators. Nuland proclaimed in a speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation in December 2013 that she had gone to Ukraine three times in the period following the start of the Maidan demonstrations. On December 5, she handed out cookies to those assembled and doubled down on her support for their cause.

The granular level of the Obama administration’s interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs was indeed incredible. This was confirmed in a crucial phone call intercept by Russia’s FSB security service that was then widely distributed to foreign news services. During the call Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoff Pyatt discuss, in great detail, their preferred leadership choices in a post-​Yanukovych administration. The U.S. plumped for Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who indeed became prime minister once the democratically elected Yanukovych was chased from office.

During the astounding call, Nuland says enthusiastically that “Yats is the guy” who would do the best job. The current Mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko is also featured in the bizarre discussion but is bounced out of the running by Nuland.

Another interesting element of Nuland’s conspiratorial call with Pyatt is her suggestion that Vice President Joe Biden should be dispatched to Kyiv to “get it over the line.” This again illustrates the high-level knowledge, and support within the Obama administration, for this potentially illegal agitation against a democratically elected and sovereign government.

It is critical to point out that Nuland and Pyatt, two senior American government officials, were engaged in such detailed planning to overthrow a legitimate government at a time when Yanukovych was still Ukraine’s lawfully elected president. This is irrefutable evidence, if evidence were required, that the country that persistently lectures the global village on the sacrosanct nature of sovereignty and democracy, was yet again riding roughshod over both. Use of the term “diplomacy” is almost embarrassingly inappropriate to describe the covert, regime-change scheming of Pyatt and Nuland.

It is also important to remember that all of the above took place with the full support and knowledge of those at the highest levels of the U.S. government and the White House, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, now of course President, funder and admirer-in-chief of Volodymyr Zelensky.

America’s behavior not only constitutes interference, but it also constitutes the micromanagement of an anti-democratic coup d’état, regardless of your political opinions about the obviously flawed government of Viktor Yanukovych. That fact is inescapable.

Given the widely documented manipulations and infiltrations of 2014, all sanctioned at the highest levels of the American state, those with any doubt as to the current influence of the U.S. government on the Zelensky regime in Ukraine today should seriously reconsider their view. While a very generous observer might suggest that, despite the level of interference outlined above, the U.S. was at least ostensibly, on the outside pulling the strings during Maidan, today it is undeniably on the inside, steering the Ukrainian ship both militarily and economically. While the conflict may have begun with NATO supporting Ukraine, today the sad reality is that it is Ukraine supporting NATO in a proxy war against its nuclear-armed neighbor.

It is worth considering whether the “diplomacy” which the United States declared to be one of its central pillars of influence for peace in Ukraine prior to the current crisis is the same brand of “diplomacy” it was engaged in prior to the Maidan coup? No objective analysis of this period could, with any seriousness, absolve the United States of a central role in destabilizing and overthrowing the legitimate government of a sovereign state and a democracy to boot.

Can the narrative widely peddled by Western power brokers—that it was Russia and not the West that stymied diplomatic efforts to avert war in 2022—be taken as sincere? Given the Machiavellian machinations of the U.S. security state prior to, during and after the Maidan coup, it is a very hard ask to believe they were sincere during the 11^th hour negotiations to avert this conflict. The dismal reality of this terrible and seemingly inevitable conflict in Ukraine is that it has not dulled the appetite of hawkish perpetual-war advocates in the U.S., and to a lesser extent in Europe.

Ursula von der Leyen, the archetypal bureaucrat and queen of Europe’s woke Eurostocracy, has emerged to epitomize the total victory cult that evangelizes an “absolute truth” regarding Russia. Von der Leyen routinely peddles a factually flimsy and theatrical narrative about an alleged Russian desire to conquer Europe, enslave its peoples and vaporize those who refuse to bend their knees.

Von der Leyen has become a caricature of reverse Euro-racism, turning a blind eye to gross Russophobia, violence and the revision of European history, particularly regarding the reality of the incalculable Soviet sacrifice in the struggle to defeat Nazism. There is also a renewed attempt to diminish the central role Russia has played in the global economic and cultural ecosystem. The EU, and particularly its smaller member states, have enthusiastically made a bonfire of our rights to dissent from their narrative on Russia, banning TV channels, sanctioning journalists and growing increasingly authoritarian in pursuit of their failing econo-cultural war on Russia.

I would suggest that all who value balanced debate, freedom of speech and their right to disagree consider who built the scaffold upon which this war is now blazing? What military-industrial complex stands to benefit from its perpetuation? And how could any diplomatic process that ran alongside the creation of a de facto NATO army in Ukraine be taken as sincere?

Regardless of the above, the potential for catastrophic escalation remains dangerously high, but then again, so do the profits of major American defense contractors and energy companies. Given the dystopian reality we find ourselves in, where truth is an “à la carte” commodity, and mainstream assigned narratives becoming akin to pseudo religious obligations, a battlefield resolution to this conflict sadly seems more and more likely.

In this burgeoning war of attrition, all objective observers and those interested in non-aligned analysis of how this conflict will end should be asking themselves this single, simple question: Which side can in reality afford to lose this conflict in Ukraine, America or Russia? The answer, while obviously eluding ill-advised EU and State Department hawks, is, in my humble view, abundantly clear.

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Chay Bowes is a campaigner, for independent journalism, entrepreneur and writer from Ireland. Chay is interested in geopolitics and history and has a masters degree in strategic studies. Chay can be reached at [email protected].

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For the last several days, the mainstream propaganda machine diverted its attention from the mandatory “evil Russia” narrative and focused on 24/7 coverage of a weather balloon. Although the media frenzy was part of the “evil China” narrative, this one is not as omnipresent as that about Russia, at least not yet. The rather bizarre overfocus on such a trivial matter still has its propaganda purpose, as the “spy balloon”, while insignificant at a glance, fulfilled an important geopolitical goal for the United States.

First, the idea that a superpower such as China needs weather balloons to effectively spy on the US is quite laughable, as the Asian giant has more than enough surveillance satellites for that purpose, both military and civilian, to say nothing of its intelligence services and other means of collecting information. Second, weather balloons are simply too obvious and, thus, too (geo)politically sensitive to be used for that purpose, not to mention they’re not exactly the most steerable aircraft and are also quite slow, meaning they take quite a lot of time to reach the desired location.

Eventually, the US Air Force sent its much-touted F-22 fighter jets to shoot down the balloon. The coverage of the shootdown was quite embarrassing, to say the least, as the F-22 “Raptor” is an extremely expensive aircraft and it made no sense to use it for such a trivial matter. The jet that costs $334 million apiece and nearly $70,000 per flight hour fired a nearly half a million dollar missile to down a weather balloon, but the media presented it as if the target was no less than an alien spacecraft invading the US. There are now even photos of an F-22 with the balloon painted on it as its first air-to-air kill.

The balloon was also presented as some pinnacle of Chinese technology, despite the fact that Beijing operates satellites, hypersonic surveillance drones and other truly high-end technologies, some of which even the US itself lacks. Additionally, according to the US, China suddenly decided to send a weather balloon to spy on America’s “Minuteman 3” ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) silos right after it invited the US Secretary of States Anthony Blinken to visit Beijing. Worse yet, it supposedly did so on the eve of the visit, despite China’s insistence that Blinken also meets President Xi Jinping.

Such diplomatic and (geo)political absurdity can hardly be expected from China, as it simply makes no sense for Beijing to try and make yet another peaceful overture toward the US only to sabotage its own efforts by sending a “spy balloon” over the most obvious spy target in the continental US. Even the Pentagon confirmed that “it had been tracking the balloon for quite some time” and that “it wasn’t the first time such an incident occurred”. So, again, the question is, why did the US military decide to go public with the “spy balloon” story at this exact moment? The fact that Anthony Blinken announced he is postponing his visit to China is quite indicative of America’s goal in this case.

China insists that the weather balloon is indeed just that – a weather balloon that has drifted too far from its course and ended up in US airspace. The Washington Post quoted national security experts who confirmed this and stated that “the craft appears to share characteristics with high-altitude balloons used by developed countries around the world for weather forecasting.” The Pentagon itself also confirmed this and stated that “the payload wouldn’t offer much in the way of surveillance that China couldn’t collect through spy satellites” and that “the balloon posed no serious physical or intelligence threat”.

Again, this begs the question as to why the Pentagon even made the public announcement and why the US corporate and state-run media decided to go for such bizarre coverage. It’s simply impossible not to connect the story to the deteriorating US-China relations and the fact that Washington DC is doing everything in its power (bar direct war, for now, at least) to make sure the relationship between the two global powers stays on the collision course. Blinken’s visit, as previously mentioned initiated by Beijing, could have been a crucial step toward some form of detente between the US and China.

However, with an “evil Chinese spy balloon flying over American ICBM silos” Washington DC has a “perfect” (in reality, ludicrous) excuse to continue its incessant escalation with the Asian giant. The continuous US belligerence can only be explained by the fact that Washington DC is simply afraid to let China develop peacefully, since American political elites are perfectly aware that they are falling behind the Asian giant in virtually every metric, be it economy, technology, military, etc. It’s the only viable explanation for such a sudden obsession with a weather balloon.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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