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***

As the death toll rises, a dark shadow has been cast over Britain.

Official data reveals that since April 2022, 407,910 deaths have occurred, with 47,379 excess deaths against the 2015-2019 five-year average.

As the investigation deepens, it has become increasingly clear that the Covid-19 vaccines are the most likely cause of the unprecedented loss of life in Britain. The evidence is damning, with a startling correlation between the rollout of the vaccines and the spike in deaths.

We were told the vaccines would bring hope and healing in the midst of an alleged global pandemic. But now, it seems that they have instead brought even more devastation and pain.

The Office for National Statistics has released weekly figures on deaths registered in England and Wales, and the most recent data reveals a troubling increase.

In the week ending on December 11th, there were 11,694 deaths, with 687 excess deaths against the 2016-2019 + 2021 five-year average and 999 excess deaths against the 2015-2019 five-year average.

While Covid-19 is often blamed for such increases, this time the numbers tell a different story. Out of all the deaths, only 326 were attributed to the alleged disease – a mere 2.8%.

So what is causing this surge in fatalities?

Source

Meanwhile, according to Public Health Scotland (PHS), Scotland suffered 1,257 deaths in the week ending 27th November, resulting in 127 excess deaths.

Source

According to the Office for National Statistics, excess deaths have been occurring in England and Wales on a weekly basis since April 2022. To uncover the full extent of this tragedy, we dug into the data, analyzing the weekly number of deaths over the past six months and comparing them to the five-year average. What we discovered was a disturbing trend, as the chart below reveals.

As we delve deeper into the mystery of the excess deaths occurring in England and Wales, a disturbing possibility comes to light: the Covid-19 vaccines may be to blame.

According to the Office for National Statistics, excess deaths have been occurring on a weekly basis since April 2022, and while the data initially seemed to point to other causes, closer examination reveals a startling correlation between the rollout of the 2021 winter “Booster” shot and the spike in fatalities.

To uncover the full extent of this tragedy, we dug into the data, analysing the weekly number of deaths over the past eight months and comparing them to the 2015-2019 five-year average.

Source

The chart reveals a disturbing trend, with excess deaths occurring in all but two weeks since April 2022. These two exceptions, it turns out, coincide with the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and funeral, which would have caused delays in death registrations due to the bank holidays.

But even taking these weeks into account, the data shows an average of 1,268 excess deaths every single week.

The following chart is taken from Public Health Scotland’s Covid-19 Dashboard, and it shows the weekly number of deaths compared to the 2015-2019 five-year average –

Source

Because the chart doesn’t reveal the true picture, we downloaded the death data from the Public Health Scotland Covid-19 Dashboard, which you can also do so here, and calculated the total number of deaths between week 16 and week 47 of 2022.

According to the data, there were 34,316 deaths during this period in the 2015-2019 five-year average and 38,611 deaths during this period in 2022.

This means Scotland has suffered 4,264 excess deaths against the five-year average over the past 34 weeks.

The following chart shows the overall number of deaths and excess deaths in England, Wales & Scotland –

The five-year average number of deaths in Britain over these 8 months equates to 360,531. Meanwhile, the total number of deaths in 2022 in Britain over these 8 months equates to 407,910. Therefore, Britain has suffered 47,379 excess deaths since the middle of April 2022.

Could it be that the Covid-19 vaccines, which we were told would bring hope and healing, are instead causing unimaginable tragedy?

Well, as our investigation into the excess deaths in the UK deepened, a disturbing pattern emerged.

An analysis of official ONS data reveals that approximately five months after each dose of the Covid-19 vaccine is administered, the mortality rates among the vaccinated rise significantly compared to the unvaccinated in each age group.

The following charts were created using data extracted from table 1 of the Office for National Statistics dataset on ‘Deaths by vaccination status (Jan 21 to March 22)’ which can be accessed on the ONS website here, and downloaded here.

The first chart shows the age-standardised mortality rates per 100,000 person-years by vaccination status between the 1st January 2021 and the 30th April 2021 –

Source Data

As you can see, mortality rates were highest among the unvaccinated each month. However, by the end of April 2021, five months after the first Covid-19 injection was administered in the UK, things started to even out among each vaccination group and the unvaccinated.

But look what happened in the following four months.

The first chart shows the age-standardised mortality rates per 100,000 person-years by vaccination status between the 1st May 2021 and the 30th August 2021 –

Source Data

The mortality rate among the vaccinated began to surpass the mortality rate among the unvaccinated significantly. By the end of August 2022, the mortality rate per 100,000 among the unvaccinated was the second lowest among each vaccination group.

Unfortunately, a follow-up report published by the ONS on 6th July 2022, proves that things did not improve for the vaccinated population.

In fact, things got so bad that by the end of May 2022, mortality rates were lowest among the unvaccinated in every age group in England, and highest among those who received one, two, or three doses of the vaccine.

A more detailed analysis of the data contained in the above charts can be read here,

But the pattern doesn’t stop there. The data shows that not only does this pattern persist in all-cause deaths, but each dose of the vaccine also causes a significant increase in Covid-19 deaths.

Between March and July 2021, the vaccinated accounted for the majority of Covid-19 deaths in England, with the one-dose vaccinated accounting for 66% of those deaths.

Source Data

The pattern repeated itself over the next five months, with deaths nearly tripling, and the two-dose vaccinated accounting for the majority of deaths at 83%.

Source Data

And in the five months between January and May 2022, deaths again increased, with the triple vaccinated accounting for the majority at 82%.

Source Data

The evidence is clear and undeniable: the vaccines have been and are still killing people, with the deadly consequences being fully realised approximately five months after each vaccination.

This is a tragedy of epic proportions.

*

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Joseph Ratzinger passed away at the age of 95. He is best known as the former pope, but his most important achievements can be found during his time as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Catholic Church. In that position he was the architect of one of the most large-scale ideological and anti-leftist campaigns in post-war history, the so-called Restoration.

Neoconservatism

In 1978, Karol Wojtyla is appointed leader of the largest religious community in the world. He finds a post-conciliar[i] church in deep crisis: sharp decline in mass attendance and vocations, high divorce rate among Catholics, rejection of papal authority on birth control, a world full of heresies, …

He wants a radical turnaround. No more risks, no more experiments, done with participation and consultation. The texts of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) are preserved, but the spirit is buried. The pope is preparing for a centralist and orthodox church policy, accompanied by a spiritual and moral rearmament.

He cleverly responds to the political climate of that moment, which, incidentally, shows many similarities with today. In the mid-1970s, a severe economic crisis begins. The optimistic spiritual climate of the 1960s is changing and is characterized by the pursuit of certainty and security, the call to – preferably charismatic – authorities, a renewed ethical revival, the flight into the private sphere or into the irrational, etc.

It is against this background that “neoconservatism” arises. This new conservatism is no longer defensive, but is itself launching a political and ideological offensive. This movement is supported by ‘strong’ individuals such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

Skillfully capitalizing on the mass media, they express a worldwide missionary urge propagating simplistic worldviews, radiating certainty and optimism, etc.

God’s rottweiler

Another major concern for the pope is the emergence of a thriving progressive popular church in Latin America. Wojtyla is a Pole and an anti-communist through and through. Fighting Marxism and Communism in the world is one of his life goals.

Because the influence of Marxism in the grassroots church and in liberation theology is undeniable, he will do everything he can to restore order to the continent.

He counts on Ratzinger, who in 1981 is appointed Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s ministry of ideology and information. He will hold that office for a quarter of a century, and he will make full use of it to make his mark on world affairs.

Ratzinger becomes the architect of a large-scale ecclesiastical and pastoral offensive, which he himself calls “Restoration.” The aim is to strengthen the central administrative apparatus and to eliminate any form of dissent within the church. Ratzinger quickly emerges as a true grand inquisitor, which will earn him the nickname ‘rottweiler of god’.

The entire Catholic Church is targeted, but the main arrows are directed at Latin America, where the political impact is by far the greatest. We therefore restrict ourselves to this continent in what follows.

The Destruction of the people’s church and liberation theology

The first thing that happens is the creation of databases of Latin American episcopal conferences, liberation theologians, progressive religious, suspicious pastoral projects, etc. Ultra-conservative and outspoken right-wing bishops and cardinals are appointed in almost all ecclesiastical provinces.

In Brazil alone, about fifty conservative bishops are appointed. At the end of the 1980s, 5 of Peru’s 51 bishops are members of Opus Dei. Chile and Colombia are going the same way. Dissident bishops are put under pressure: some receive warning letters, others receive travel bans or are summoned.

This appointment policy is all the worse because the episcopate plays a very important role in this continent. It is in many cases the only possible opposition to military repression, to torture, etc. If the bishops in Brazil and Chile had remained silent as they did in Argentina, the number of victims of the repression would have been much higher.

A great clean-up is also done on the lower levels. The formation of priests is effected by pressuring, reorienting, or closing seminaries or theological institutes. Efforts are being made to better control the religious orders who are often protagonists of the liberation church. Special attention is paid to theologians. They are henceforth kept in line by making them swear the new ‘oath of allegiance’.

In 1984, Ratzinger writes the ‘Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation.’ It is a frontal attack against liberation theologians, especially those from Latin America. A year later, Leonardo Boff, one of the figureheads of Liberation Theology, is even banned from speaking. The grip on Catholic magazines is being increased: where it is deemed necessary, they are censored, the editorial board is replaced, or they are put under financial pressure.

Progressive pastoral projects are curtailed or even stopped altogether. In 1989, recognition of the international Young Christian Workers (YCW), which was considered far too progressive, was withdrawn by the Vatican. It must make way for the anti-leftist and confessional International Co-ordination of Young Christian Worker Movements (ICYCW).

Besides the destruction of all that is progressive in the Church (?), huge reorientation projects are set up to put the believers back on the right track. Evangelization 2000 and Lumen 2000 are large-scale media evangelization projects aimed at Latin America, which together have no less than three satellites at their disposal.

The projects are set up by right-wing and ultra-conservative individuals and groups: Communione e Liberazione, Maria Action, Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and others. The employees of these media giants compare their work to a kind of new “air force.”

Those who can read are bombarded with cheaply published religious books. Large-scale retreats are financed for priests and religious orders. For these projects, the top of the Catholic Church can always count on the financial support of the business world.

Anti-Communist Crusade

Nothing is left to chance. One by one, all the pillars of the people’s church in Latin America are undermined. Observers refer to this as a “dismantling of a church.” What we are dealing with here is one of the largest ideological and political campaigns in post-war history.

This campaign is part of the anti-communist crusade of the Cold War. It can also be seen as a US revenge campaign for the lost power in the preceding period.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the countries of the Third World strengthen their position on the world market. They force higher prices for raw materials and so increase their purchasing power on the world market. This peaks during the 1973 oil crisis.

In 1975, Vietnam inflicts an ignominious defeat on the US. Shortly thereafter, the White House is humiliated twice: first by the Sandinista revolution in their ‘backyard’ (1979) and then by the hostage drama in Iran (1980). When he takes office, Reagan also feels threatened by an overly independent economic attitude of important countries such as Mexico and Brazil.

The White House does not give in and launches a counteroffensive on several fronts. Liberation theology is one of its main targets. As early as the late 1960s, liberation theology, still in its embryonic stage at that time, is seen as a threat to US geostrategic interests, as evidenced by the Rockefeller report.[ii]

In the 1970s, theological centers are established to engage in ideological combat with liberation theology. However, it is mainly from the 1980s that this counter-offensive reaches cruising speed. The US spends billions of dollars supporting the counter-revolution in Latin America.

This dirty war claims tens of thousands of victims. Death squads, paramilitary groups, but also the regular army does the dirty work. Many martyrs fall in the ranks of the Christian liberation movements. The most famous are Bishop Romero and the six Jesuits in El Salvador.

To combat liberation theology on its own turf, Protestant sects are employed. They receive heavy financial support from the US. By means of cheap slogans and sentimental messages, they try to attract the believers in order to withdraw them from the ‘pernicious’ influence of liberation theology. Expensive electronic means are used.

Religion appears here as the opium of the people in its purest form. The military is also involved in this ‘religious war.’ Top officers of the armies of Latin America draft a document to give more shape to the “theological arm of the armed forces.”

Mission accomplished

The joint efforts of Ratzinger and the White House pay off. In the 1990s, the grassroots church of Latin America is dealt a very severe blow. Many grassroots groups cease to exist or are barely able to function for lack of support from the official church, for fear of repression, because they no longer believe in the hoped-for breakthrough, or simply because they are physically liquidated.

The optimism and activism of the 1970s and 1980s give way to despair and contemplation. Social analysis loses significance in favor of culture, ethics, and spirituality, perfectly tailored to Ratzinger.

Overall, the emphasis shifts from liberation to denunciation, from resistance to comfort, from analysis to utopia, from subversion to survival. The Book of Exodus is traded for the Apocalypse and Ecclesiastes.

By the end of the 1990s, at least, the base church no longer poses a threat to the establishment. Both the Vatican, the Pentagon, and the local elites of Latin America have one less concern at that point. That reassurance quickly turns around, however, with the election of Chávez as president of Venezuela, but that is another story.

In 2005, Ratzinger is rewarded for his successful ‘Restoration’ and elected head of the Catholic Church. But as a manager he shines much less than as an inquisitor. All in all, he is a weak pope.

He leaves behind a weakened institution, plagued by a shortage of priests and empty churches in the West, and ongoing sex scandals. He fails to put things in order in the Vatican. That may be the main reason why he resigns in 2013.

Ratzinger will go down in history primarily as the man who successfully implemented the Restoration in the Catholic Church and defused the people’s church in Latin America. These are no small ‘earnings’.

*

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Marc Vandepitte is a Belgian economist and philosopher. He writes on North-South relations, Latin America, Cuba, and China. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[i] The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, also known as Vatican II, was held from October 11, 1962 to December 8, 1965. It was a church meeting that aimed to modernize the Catholic Church.

[ii] ‘The Rockefeller Report’, a report of the Rockefeller Foundation (1969) identified liberation theology as a threat to the national security of the United States. The Reagan administration heeded the advice.

Featured image: Benedict XVI during the canonization mass (Licensed under GFDL 1.2)

 

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***

According to General Vitalii Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s dwindling armed forces, “God himself” is on the side of the ultranationalist crazies.

Ukraine's eminent commander-in-chief General Vitalii Zaluzhny has it just right:
"A nation is born through war."
"We did not chose war. But we took the fight. And God himself is on our side."https://t.co/0Kc4uNB8Ua

— Anders Åslund (@anders_aslund) December 30, 2022

In other words, God is a neo-Nazi, an ultranationalist with a visceral, violent hatred of everything Russian (and Polish, Roma, and Jewish).

Before dismissing the above headline as hyperbole, consider the following: Vitalii Zaluzhny’s adviser is Dmytro Yarosh, the commander of Right Sector’s Ukrainian Volunteer Corps.

“Right Sector is essentially the extremist Banderite cousin of the contemporary OUN-B, having been created by an OUN-B splinter group,” writes Moss Robeson on Substack’s Bandera Lobby Blog. “Basically, if you meshed the IRA and Nazi Germany together, sprinkled a little old fashioned Mussolini fascism and racism on it, and slapped a Ukrainian flag on it, you would have the OUN,” adds Elizabeth The Punisher Dove, a Substack newsletter.

The BBC put it rather mildly:

Dmytro Yarosh calls himself a follower of Stepan Bandera, a nationalist leader who fought Polish and Soviet rule in the 1930s and 1940s but is seen in Russia and eastern Ukraine as a Nazi collaborator.

There is nothing subjective about the historical fact Bandera was a Nazi collaborator.

Of course, the average person knows little of this, if anything at all. The tidal wave of anti-Russian, pro-war propaganda is pervasive. It is now virtually impossible to learn the truth without dedicated research, which is becoming more difficult as corporate-government censorship increases.

The situation is genuinely bizarre. Zelenskyy, a former comedian notorious for playing the piano with his unmentionable, is now a global-reach beggar for Europe’s poorest, most corrupt country. He is surrounded by neo-Nazi OUN-minded ultranats like Yarosh, the sort of people dedicated to ethnically cleansing Russians. This, of course, is now rarely mentioned. Instead, Russia is portrayed as an aggressor, and its SMO is mischaracterized, and usually ignored altogether.

Following the USG-orchestrated coup, the ultranats stepped up a campaign of disappearances, torture, assassination, street beatings, and assaults, the sort of behavior one might attribute to Hitler’s brownshirts in pre-Nazi Germany. Prior to 2014, these violent folks were occasionally criticized, primarily in the leftist “alternative” media. Now there is silence or muted reaction at best. There are notable exceptions, of course—for instance, Consortium News.

It is tragic and dangerous so many people believe supporting Ukraine is a just and noble cause. It’s no such thing. Ukraine is a corrupt post-Soviet hellhole run by ruthless oligarchs and greedy politicians. It allows violent neo-Nazi paramilitaries to roam free, often in concert with Ukraine’s SBU secret police.

The CIA has worked with the ultranats for decades, first during the Cold War, and now in a concerted effort to “weaken” and destroy Russia. NATO has cynically pushed closer to Russia’s borders, despite Clinton and others promising not to do so. It has been known for some time Ukraine’s coveted NATO membership is a bright neon red line for Russia, a serious threat to its national security.

Russia’s recent decision to react to years of provocations has resulted in some of the most transparently obvious USG propaganda in recent history, second only to Bush’s criminal lies about Iraq and WMDs.

In such a polluted climate, it is relatively easy for a guy like General Vitalii Zaluzhny to claim God is on the side of Right Sector, OUN, and genocide. Maybe Zaluzhny and Yarosh are interested in a rewrite of the Old Testament with Stepan Bandera as a Saint.

*

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

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

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***

Hrvoje Morić: Joining me now is author Mark Taliano, who combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes mainstream media narratives on Syria, any comments on other global issues as well. He’s the author of Voices from Syria, which I highly recommend. I’ve got a copy myself. You can find them at marktaliano.net. Welcome to TNT Radio, Mark.

Mark Taliano: Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Hrvoje Morić: Thanks for taking the time. And if you could maybe just tell us a bit about yourself and the work you’ve been focusing on over the years.

Mark Taliano: Okay. Well, I taught high school for quite a while. I lose track now. I retired early at age 50. I started teaching young. And then I started branching out and I went to… So I have a background in research, and I went to Syria three times during the war. And as you know, I wrote that book. But I also did a second edition with Basma Qaddour. And so, it’s a revised second edition, and that’s on PDF at the same site, Global Research. And also Kindle, but I prefer the Global Research version, it’s got a lot of nice pictures. But there’s a lot of continuity in this. If people, for example, can understand what did happen and what is happening in Syria, then they will be better equipped to understand what did happen and what is happening in Ukraine because there are extraordinary similarities. I’ll find that-

Hrvoje Morić: Yeah, I would totally…

Mark Taliano: Go ahead.

Hrvoje Morić: No, no, sorry. You go ahead.

Mark Taliano: So yeah, there’s striking similarities between the two. So it becomes a question of historical literacy and how that can… So if you understand one war that Empire is waging, you can understand other wars. If you understand Syria, which many people do not, even though basically everything was admitted by Western sources. But you have to dig a bit deep for it. But anyway, if you understand Syria, you can understand Ukraine. Right now, people in this country, a lot of them do not have an understanding of what is really happening in Ukraine. And it’s a continuum of Empire’s devastation of the world in the name of humanitarian warfare. And of course, there’s no such thing. It doesn’t exist. It’s a big lie. What the politicians are parroting is a lie. And we’ll go into some of those lies, no doubt. But they’re using the same tactics that they use in Syria, and they’re still using them in Syria, and they’re using those same tactics in Ukraine. And what’s happening, vast numbers of people are being slaughtered unnecessarily. Didn’t need to happen.

Hrvoje Morić: Yeah, just going to say, I have the second edition of your book I purchased. [inaudible 00:03:31]

Mark Taliano: Yeah, that’s a good one. Well, they’re both good, but I just… Yeah, it’s an expanded… Yeah.

Hrvoje Morić: I was going to mention as well, I’m a former high school teacher just like you as well. I taught history and politics and I taught this stuff as well. And I totally, I think it’s an important point that you brought up. If you understand the blueprint, the framework of Empire and history and all of this, everything else, then just it is easy to grasp. Well, once you understand, as you said, Syria, then you get create everything else. And let’s get into Syria because it is not something I’ve touched on that often on my show. And so I’ve had on my podcast the former British ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, I think is his name, a couple years back, I’ve interviewed him. So yeah, he’s good.

I’m a big proponent of sovereignty in a fair world order, just like I believe I should love my neighbors and not break into their home and steal their things and make them subject to me. If anything, I want to serve them. And so I don’t believe any nation or Empire has the right, like the US, to seek to overthrow a country like Syria, as you said, kill the people of Syria. Now they’re stealing 80% of their oil wealth and so forth. And maybe I don’t like my neighbor, let’s just say for example. [inaudible 00:04:46] But I would seek peace with him rather than conspire against him. And so Mark, you’re more of an expert on Syria than me. You’ve been there many times. And I think also in the news cycle, Syria, it has been neglected. And so, where would you begin? I know we have that, I think, CIA declassified memo from 1957 that for many decades the US has been trying to get at Syria. So what’s the story here?

Mark Taliano: Okay, so I was thinking about this today. Now, if we were to use a metaphor about Empire, and Canada’s part of it, but Washington led Empire, it would be if it were distilled into one person, that person would be a mass murdering, drug dealing outlaw. The rules be… And making his or her own rules to suit oligarch interest. So, this rules-based order is absolute nonsense. It’s Empire saying, well, we can do what we want. And what Empire wants to do… And they lie. And Empire is lying to its own people also, because it is impoverishing its own people. What Empire wants to do is just lie about everything so that it can loot and pillage then. So they like to use the word brutal dictator. Every time Empire wants to destroy a prey country so that they can loot and pillage, it presents this image of the leader as a brutal dictator.

I was talking to someone the other day and he said, “Oh, Putin’s a brutal dictator.” I knew for a fact that that person obviously doesn’t understand what’s going on in terms of imperialism. Well, how can we dispel that notion? Well, let’s use a Western source, and I’ll just read it here, NATO in 6th June, 2013, and the war started more or less in 2011. NATO reveals… A NATO survey. Now just read it. It says, NATO reveals 70% of Syrians support  Bashar al-Assad, and that’s from Voltaire Network. Okay, so there goes a story about brutal dictator. Now I met him, and he is not a brutal dictator. He’s very well-spoken, sophisticated. He’s actually an eye doctor. And he has widespread support from Syrian people. And we saw this at the time of the elections.

Eva Bartlett did some videos, and they were in Douma, which previously was terrorist occupied, but now liberated. And the support was palpable. And the media, of course, doesn’t… It gives distorted views of anti-Assad protests prior to the war. But there were people protesting, as they do in any country, that’s what you’re supposed to be able to do. But they were peaceful. But unfortunately… And on the other side, there were pro-Assad rallies, which were huge. But the peaceful protestors were displaced by Empire’s proxies, which wanted to draw  fire from police, and did. Until President Assad said to the police, “Well, you can’t go to these protests anymore armed.” So they were sitting ducks and they were slaughtered. Well, that’s not in the news.

Hrvoje Morić: Yeah Mark, we’re going to have to jump to a break. I just did want to mention, you mentioned Voltaire Network. I love their work. I have interviewed Thierry Meyssan, I think last year on my podcast. Now, I wanted to cite my former professor, you probably know him as well, Alfred de Zayas. He was my dear professor in Geneva. He recently tweeted, “A rules-based international order is yet another scam to meet Western rules, Western imperialism, neocolonialism, hegemony.” And so, I think you and I would agree.

Mark Taliano: Yeah, absolutely.

Hrvoje Morić: So you were talking about Assad, and of course I’ve never believed the stories of Assad being a butcher. He seems reasonable. And I’ve listened to many of his interviews. And he has told more truth in an hour-long interview about the West and the world than what I’ve heard all of my life as a Westerner. And so, he reveals a lot when he speaks. And how was the meeting with him? What was it like? I’m just curious.

Mark Taliano: Well, there were a bunch of us, and we were there in a group and I was able to shake his hand and meet him very briefly. And then actually, Max Blumenthal was there too. And then, okay, so I got a picture of that. And he’s very, he looks in the eye. And sometimes you can tell a person just by meeting them briefly, well, although I’ve known his background for a long time, but he’s very genial. You can tell in the interviews. He is very well spoken, very intelligent. And then we went to a meeting in a large conference room. But I found, I think probably what you found, which you just described, and it was kind of shocking to me, is that he tells the truth. I’m not accustomed to that in Canada where (politicians are lying).

It’s just, it’s disingenuous. But he is telling the truth. And one of the reasons for that is because it’s still a sovereign country. He’s not a part of these transnational globalist alliances or coalitions where you have to go by the party line and the people are left knowing nothing. And yet they call that democracy. And we could tie that into COVID too. So he’s very personable, very intelligent. And this would explain why a NATO survey says 70% of Syrian support him. The number is probably much higher, and I’ll tell you another reason for that. Another reason why he has support by the vast majority of people is that the opposition that Washington wants to install is basically Al-Qaeda/ ISIS. And the Syrians do not want that.

Hrvoje Morić: That was my next-

Mark Taliano: If we… Go ahead.

Hrvoje Morić: That was my next question. And I think this is a key point. And in my decade of teaching history, international relations at the high school level and undergraduate level. I would bang on about this because I thought this was so important, and I would provide declassified documents. Basically, I think one of the key strategies of the Western Empire. And it’s everywhere, you name it, Al-Qaeda, in Afghanistan in the ’80s, they do it in Libya. They do it all over the place. So the West financing, arming and training terrorists,  Salafists, Wahhabists, Al-Qaeda, ISIS. You’ve got that 2012 DIA memo from Michael Flynn. And over the years I’ve collected all of this information from mainstream sources.

Mark Taliano: Good for you. Good for you.

Hrvoje Morić: Yeah. And you see world leaders attest to this. Putin at a UN speech, I think, between the lines talked about this, the former Afghan prime minister, Pakistani officials. I remember reading an article from an Iraqi commander saying that… An Iraqi commander literally said, “If the West stopped financing ISIS tomorrow, there would be no ISIS.”

Mark Taliano: Absolutely.

Hrvoje Morić: And by the West, I understand it’s the United States, it’s various European countries, the GCC, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, probably. And in your book I read a… You say the ISIS Daesh brigades in both Syria and Iraq are integrated by Western special forces and military advisors. So, if you want to tell us more about how the West supports these jihadi mercenaries all over the world.

Image is from Twitter/The Cradle

Mark Taliano: Yeah, well, it’s true. As you said, it is fully admitted by Western sources. Even Tulsi Gabbard  admitted it. And I could read something that she said, as soon as I find it. But anyway, so it’s a military intelligence operation. In other words, the Empire tries to disguise what it’s doing. So all that nonsense about moderate rebels that they were apparently blabbing about on TV, I don’t watch mainstream anymore, but that was the deal. They said, oh yeah, we’re just arming moderate rebels. Nonsense. There are none. And then Timber Sycamore was very clear and Jeff Sack acknowledged it, you’re giving these weapons to terrorists, Al-Qaeda, ISIS. Okay. So I went to… And here’s another example of the civilization of the Syria versus the barbarism of the West. So my first trip there, we met the Minister of Reconciliation. And his story is similar to many others, and that his son was assassinated.

So, this is absolute barbarism. This is what the West and its proxies do. They try to destroy resistance by destroying powerful people in prey countries. And they also murdered the Grand Mufti’s son. And I met him too, they murdered his son. So a lot of people are not aware of the brutality that our governments are financing and training and supporting. But he (Minister of Reconciliation) said this to us, one of the things he says, well yeah, sure, you give weapons to one group, but the next day they’re in the hands of the other group. So that’s one way in which the West tries to disguise its hand. They call some moderate and some not moderate, even as they support both groups. And the one group will deliver weapons to the other group. Well, that’s just one way. So even Vladimir Putin and every… I know everyone’s vilified him. Personally, I think Russia is lucky to have him. He also… You made reference to that.

He acknowledges that they’re mercenaries. They go where there’s money. And guess who’s got the money? Saudi Arabia. And guess who works for Washington, is Saudi Arabia. And there’s admissions from these sources. Now, where was I going after that? Oh yeah. So one way they… Well okay, so when ISIS was operating and occupying oil fields, where did the oil go? Well, it went to Turkey. Okay? So Turkey, which is a member of NATO, and that’s where all the terrorists came through because it was a big porous border. They came right through Turkey. One journalist was murdered (Serena Shim) because she figured that out. So Turkey’s buying the oil. So, well, if you have a purchaser for ISIS oil, you are supporting ISIS. So that’s one way. Sometimes the support for these terrorist groups is overt. For example, I probably pronounced it wrong, but Prof Tim Anderson, you may have heard of him. He wrote a wonderful book too, a couple books on this. And he went and interviewed a military figure in al-Tharda Mountains.

And he describes in detail how Western military war planes directly supported ISIS, slaughtered Syrian soldiers who were trying to defeat ISIS. And then the ISIS proxies immediately occupied the territory, thanks to the West’s overt support. So sometimes the support is overt, sometimes the support is covert. Always what you’re reading in the mainstream media is a lie. And I’ll get into that in a minute too. So another way that this military intelligence operation works is ISIS will occupy an area, and let’s call them place sitters. And then when they move on, the area is not liberated. And it may be SDF, for example.. It’s not liberated, they’re just taking the place. They’re reoccupying it. Or when ISIS was allowed into Mosul in Iraq, the Empire got to destroy that city, which was part of the plan. But they also got to funnel ISIS out to go to Deir ez-Zor. So they use these terrorists in absolutely vile ways, and that impacts people because the terrorists are… They’re sectarian. Okay? So we’ll get to that in a minute too.

Image: Terrorist damage to Syria’s industrial base, Aleppo, Syria

But I went also to Aleppo into this industrial park. Okay? It was in the [inaudible 00:19:16] of Aleppo. And I hope I don’t make mistakes here, but if I do, I do. Anyway, we went to this industrial park and it was totally destroyed. And we sat down with some business people. And it was totally destroyed. And what happened was the terrorists, Western-supported terrorists, went in there and they stole… Everything that they could steal, they did steal and it ended up in Turkey, and everything else they destroyed. So the goal here is to help Empire destroy infrastructure, destroy the country, to weaken the country. And they’re still doing it. Now Empire’s openly stealing the oil. Trump said, yeah, I like oil. And they’re openly stealing the oil. So Syria is a oil-rich country, but now with the sanctions, they have maybe one or two hours of electricity a day. Most of them, 80 or 90% are living in poverty, and they don’t have enough oil resources. Why? Because it’s being stolen. Why? Because Empire has imposed these unilateral, coercive measures called sanctions, they are criminal, that amount to collective punishment.

Hrvoje Morić: Just on that point-

Mark Taliano: So, another anecdote to tie in with that is the hospitalization. So prior to the war, they had a lot of things that we don’t have. They had free healthcare, free schooling. And now, and this is all by design, they can’t get replacement parts for a lot of the health equipment, for a lot of the advanced medical equipment. So what is the direct result of that? A lot of people died. So this gets back to the psychopath mass murderer, metaphorically this is what Empire is. It’s equivalent to a psychopathic mass murderer making its own rules. Because this is what happens to prey countries. So they bomb infrastructure, they steal, they steal Empire, they steal resources, they destroy water resources through their proxies indirectly. And the proxies are… they’re expendable. Okay? So you might hear stories about, oh, they just killed this ISIS guy. Well, first of all, we don’t know if they did or not. Second of all, well, maybe he was expendable.

Hrvoje Morić: Mark, I’m just going to have to pause you. We’re going to have to jump a break. I just want to read another quote from your book where you write, “The life of a Syrian soldier is so hard. A terrorist paid by the US or Saudi or Qatar makes about three to $400 a month. The Syrian soldier receives one 10th of that.” And on the oil, I’ve been reading reports from The Cradle and from the Syrian SANA, the Syrian agency-

Mark Taliano: The Cradle’s very good.

Hrvoje Morić: And that 80% of Syrian oil is being taken. We got US forces illegally in the northeast of Syria taking 80% of oil, which is insane. Mark, what would you say are the latest developments in Syria? From my vantage point, it seems like there’s a war of attrition. That Syria is between a rock and a hard place. They don’t have enough leverage to do anything. They don’t have enough power themselves, nor from their allies at the moment. So it’s sort of like this waiting game. I did see the, I don’t know, it was a minister or the head of the UAE visit Syria recently. It seems like the UAE maybe is wanting to reconcile with Syria. And I did see just this week that The Cradle reported the Assad refused to meet with that slippery snake, Erdogan. And so what are your thoughts on where we’re currently at with Syria?

Mark Taliano: Well, chaos. But, the legitimate government is still in power so that’s a victory in and of itself. All of the people are suffering from this war being waged on it, this terror war, which is why the war on terror is the opposite. We are not waging war on terror, we are supporting the terrorists. So Erdogan is NATO, but there’s sometimes cross-cutting alliances. He wants land so Bashar is right to reject him. It’s like, how can you make agreements with other countries when they have a proven record of not abiding by agreements? That applies to Washington and Canada as well. So, Russia has played a big factor. The terrorists were increasing continuously until Russia came in.

And then Russia was able to put a stop to it. But as you say, Washington is still occupying oil fields. Washington is still stealing oil fields. The imperial goal is still to partition and hence destroy. But it’s also an information war, because I think that if more people were aware of what’s going on that… Well, there are a lot of people aware of it. So your question is, where are they going now? The sanctions need to be lifted. They’re entirely based upon a fake pretext. The Caesar photos were from Western sources. All the source information that we get is from Western sources. For example, the White Helmets are a propaganda construct. And we get information from Al-Qaeda because White Helmets are Al-Qaeda. And people say, ooh, that can’t be. Well, Tulsi Gabbard admitted it. Do we have time? How much more time do we have?

Hrvoje Morić: We have about eight or nine minutes.

Mark Taliano: Okay. So can I read you briefly what Tulsi said?

Hrvoje Morić: Sure.

Mark Taliano: Because I’m getting back to the notion that everything has been admitted by the West. I mean, John Kirby was caught on tape saying, Well, we were waiting for ISIS to push and maybe ISIS could put pressure on Assad. Well, this is what Tulsi said publicly: “We were all lied to. This is the betrayal, this is the betrayal to the American people, to me, to my fellow service members. We were all lied to, told Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was working with Al-Qaeda and posed a threat to the American people. I enlisted after 9/11 to protect our country, to go after those who attacked us on that fateful day.” That’s another story, 9/11. “And took the lives of thousands of Americans. The problem is that this current president is continuing to betray us.

We were supposed to be going after Al-Qaeda. But over the years, not only have we not gone after Al-Qaeda, who is stronger now today than 9/11, our president is supporting Al-Qaeda.” And I have many other quotes from Western sources. So if people were to understand that Empire uses proxies to prosecute its wars, and that would be a big step forward. And then they could tie it into Ukraine because Empire is using Nazis in Ukraine. Just as they use Isis in Al-Qaeda, in Syria and beyond, Iraq, Libya, wherever they need proxies, the database, they’re using Nazis in Ukraine. And that’s a longstanding CIA project since after the war to foster Nazism. Where there’s a national day to revere Stefan Bandera, who was a villain, a Nazi collaborator, participated in the Holocaust atrocities, as many others did. But that’s a different story, isn’t it?

Hrvoje Morić: Yeah.

Mark Taliano: Go ahead. Go ahead.

Hrvoje Morić: I was going to say, I talked about that with Thierry Meyssan a while back. He was talking about how a third of the military Ukrainian forces are Nazi as of… And I did just want to mention, Francis Boyle, he does good work on the Middle East. I was actually using his book, Destroying Libya and World Order as partial assigned reading in my courses. And in that book, I really like that he details how… I think he’s met Gaddafi. But why Russia, through Libya to the Dogs in 2011. And we had that, I think it was the UN… Was it 1973, the resolution to allow NATO to go in and bomb Libya because Russia back from the-

Mark Taliano: Yeah, with limitations.

Hrvoje Morić: Right. And that Russia was not, and China, in 2011 they were not strong enough. Russia was too weak. They could not do anything. And so they just had to let Libya go. But as you say, by a few years later, Russia was able to build itself up, and look where we are now. And so I thought that was interesting. And you mentioned as well the plan. There’s a 1979 Bernard Lewis plan. He was Council Foreign Relations. He published this map of a dismembered Syria. And there was a NATO war game map from 2004, Ralph Peterson. Also, it shows like Iraq dismembered, Sudan in two parts, Iran Balkanized. And then you’ve got the Clinton emails.

People can go read the declassified from the State Department talking about Libya, how they were discussing in Hillary Clinton’s emails Gaddafi’s wealth, massive oil, his massive gold and silver that they wanted to take. But just, this is from what I’m recalling from memory, but the propaganda, just your thought on that because it’s so bad. [inaudible 00:29:48] I just had a really bad experience. I’ve been attacked by American Christians, they’ve attacked me. And I’m also an American Christian. And these American Christians have called me an anti-American conspiracy theorist for attempting, like in your book, you talk about to defend Syrian Christians. In your book, you tell US-sponsored Jihadis were attempting to kill Syrian Christians. So the propaganda and the information war, it’s so bad.

Mark Taliano: Okay, wakey-wakey Christians. Bashar al-Assad saved Christianity in Syria. Our proxies behead and slaughter Christians. Okay? I went to St Takla, I saw all the damage. They slaughter Christians as policy. They’re sectarian terrorists. And the Christians in Syria wonder why they’re not getting more support from their fellow Christians. And I can guarantee you if President Assad, and this includes most Syrians who support Christianity, it’s not a sectarian country. It’s a very pluralist, democratically- oriented country, which is supportive of all religions. Unlike the opposing terrorists supported by the West, off with their heads, Alawaites to the grave Christians to Beirut. Okay, so the Christians… Sorry, that’s the story. I mean, the West supports sectarian terrorists. ISIS, Al-Qaeda, they slaughter Christians. They have other ethnic groups they slaughter.

They want to clear the land for while they’re working on behalf of Empire, even though some of them probably don’t even realize it. But they’re the worst of the worst. And this is what our countries are supporting beneath this smokescreen of war propaganda, which also is criminal. As it should be. But mainstream is just regurgitating lies that it gets from Al Qaeda because the White Helmets are embedded with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Whenever a place is liberated, the White Helmets go with the terrorists. They don’t stay with the government. They’re there to spin narratives, but they’re also terrorists. They’re carrying guns and so on. But they’re there to spin narratives, war criminal, war propaganda narrative. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, their primary source of information is Al-Qaeda, White Helmets. Okay? White Helmets also engage in military operations with equipment provided by Canada to detect when planes are coming over. So these people need to understand they’re sectarian terrorists, just like they need to understand there are Nazis in Ukraine, which they don’t understand that.

Hrvoje Morić: And Mark-

Mark Taliano: So you have for… Yeah?

Hrvoje Morić: Just to say we’ve got about a minute and a half left.

Mark Taliano: Okay.

Hrvoje Morić: So if you want to just give us any final thought and then remind us again best places to find your work, to subscribe to your channel and so forth.

Mark Taliano: So you can get the first edition off of Global Research, and also the second edition. But that’s only in PDF, but it’s also in Arabic. If you speak Arabic, you can get it from the co-author, Basma Qaddour. It’s also in German (hard copy). You can get it there. It’s in the German language. The first edition is in German and English. The second edition is in English PDF, and hard copy in Arabic. And one thing is, I talked to a soldier and, we’re wondering how this could ever happen, with the slaughtering of Christians and our governments (Western governments) are supporting it. And he said, and I think he’s right, “We have to teach the children the truth because they’re not getting the truth.” And all this warfare, permanent warfare is also coming back to us in terms of that’s where our money is going. And now more and more, we ourselves are being oppressed and impoverished.

Hrvoje Morić: Yeah, that’s a great…

Mark Taliano: Yeah, we need to teach the children the truth and stop this impoverishing, dysfunctional foreign policy.

Hrvoje Morić: A great final thought. Thank you, Mark, Voices from Syria marktaliano.net. I’m signing off. Keep staying tuned here on TNT.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this interview was originally published.

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***

I have pointed out previously that the reason I consider Russian reports on the Ukraine conflict to be more reliable than US media is that I have conducted tests, by reading US forecasts suggesting that Russia will lose in Ukraine because of its “weakness,” and then waiting a few months for the Russian forecasts to come true – which they invariably do.  

I have done this numerous times and the Russians have proven each time that they were telling the truth and the US reports were false.  

Yet, the brain-dead West keeps using this threadbare method of “reporting,” simply making up the stories to suit the official narrative showing that the US is superior and Russia is an unworthy adversary or simply regurgitating the narratives coming out of Kiev. Clearly, if Americans could bring themselves to admit the truth, this childish charade would stop. Further, the Pentagon and all elected officials would be unable to make political hay out of the fakes.  

And if politicians were forced to tell the truth, they would lose elections. In fact, if the US grassroots were half-way intelligent, they would stop believing the BS.  

The best example is the narrative from last March that Russia was “running out of missiles.” I personally believe this story may have been concocted by the CIA or other “intelligence” agency, which have long abandoned their respectable role as intel gatherers and now see their role in support of the desired narrative.  

And sure enough, on October 10, over a half-year later, after the appointment of Gen. Sergey Surovikin, Russia began a massive air strike campaign on Ukrainian power infrastructure and military facilities.  

Obviously, the March narrative that Russia was running out of missiles was a false narrative that could not have been based on any real evidence. Meanwhile, Russia has never issued false statements about US weapons. In fact, when Putin announced on March 1, 2018 in his State of the Nation address to the General Assembly, that Russia now possessed untrackable hypersonic weapons, Western journalists howled that the videos he showed to illustrate this lecture were just silly children’s cartoons. They made it clear they didn’t believe this story and in so doing misled the politicians and Pentagon, and even the NATO brass to treat Russia as a second-rate power.  

If US and European officials had known the truth, they never would have provoked Russia invading Ukraine. They would have pressured Kiev to halt the shelling of Donbass and they would have taken steps to reduce the threatening and provocative actions of NATO at the Russian border. Hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved.  

A glaring example of a lie from Western-backed Kiev was the story that the missile that struck and killed 2 Polish farm workers, which Zelensky immediately blamed on Russia. Shortly thereafter, Biden admitted that the missiles came from Ukraine, and then Polish President Andrzei Duda also admitted this, followed by NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg. Despite this, Zelensky stuck to the story that the missile was fired by the Russians.  

Thus the inveterate habit of journalists, of simply lying about Russian power or adopting the tall tales from Kiev, has prolonged the war and killed thousands of soldiers on both sides and amounted to a crime against humanity.  

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Don Hank is a professional translator and Russian speaker living now in Panama who studied Russian language and literature at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and studied at Leningrad University in the early 1970s. Don can be reached at [email protected].

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***

On New Year’s Eve, December 31st, Dylan Carter of the Brussels Times reported, Volodymyr Kudrytsky, Chairman of the Management Board of Ukraine’s electricity transmission system operator Ukrenergo, said that

“There is no thermal or hydropower plant that has not been damaged. There is no big important substation that is operated by Ukrenergo that was not damaged. Such a massive scale of destruction means that Ukraine severely needs equipment to replace the damaged equipment.”

Carter reported that “Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy says that it is in desperate need of material support from Western nations to repair this damage.”

The next day, on January 1st, Chris King of Euro Weekly News headlined “Latest wave of Russian attacks caused ‘unprecedented’ damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure”, and reported that Kudrytsky said today, Sunday, January 1, that Russia’s latest wave of attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure had reached an unprecedented level.

Speaking with the Rada TV channel, he told them:

“The level of damage is unprecedented. It is clear that a fairly large part of the facilities was either damaged or destroyed. And we are talking here not only about Ukrenergo substations but also power plants – thermal, hydroelectric, and thermal power plants”.

He added: “The damage is significant, and it could take months, if not years, to fully restore the energy system”.

Russia is attacking the electrical system in order to slow up the trains that are supplying American and other NATO-supplied weapons to Ukraine’s forces, because almost all of Ukraine’s trains run on electricity; so, this is a way for Russia to soften up Ukraine’s forces for an expected major Russian offensive, which has long been expected to come at some time during the early months of this new year, 2023.

The U.S. and its allies have made clear to Ukraine’s Government that if Ukraine accepts any of Russia’s demands — such as never to restore Donbass and Crimea to Ukraine — then The West will not provide financial resources for Ukraine’s reconstruction after the war, and will abandon all of its assistance to Ukraine. In other words: either Ukraine will defeat Russia 100%, or else Ukraine will be abandoned by The West. There is a wide expectation that if Ukraine becomes abandoned by The West, then its President, Volodmyr Zelensky, will be overthrown and quite possibly even assassinated. In short: Ukraine is waging The West’s war against Russia; and, if Ukraine fails to win The West’s war, then nothing will protect Mr. Zelensky.

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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.

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***

Climate change and protection of biodiversity are sloganized propaganda expressions that are infiltrated in almost every conversation, news cast, public discussion. They must be omni-present to be made “true”. 

Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, said, “if a lie is repeated enough, it becomes the truth.” And we truly lived this omen of lies for truth for many decades and very intensely throughout the last 3 years.

The climate change and biodiversity loss lies are penetrating our brains, as is the diabolical QR code – a key instrument for our enslavement through total control. Most people, still, seem to be so blinded as to scanning with their smart phones almost any QR code they come across – thereby giving away more and more of their most intimate personal details.

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It is amazing that a majority of people of our beloved Mother Earth still haven’t noticed that we are living in an ever-growing tyranny since the beginning of 2020. A dictatorship that has been planned for many decades, if not longer. And it started around the globe, in all 193 UN member countries (194 WHO members) at midnight of December 31, 2019.

The transition from 2019 to 2020 – the ringing-in of the New Year, was also the beginning of UN Agenda 2030, earlier called Agenda 21 – WHO’s “Decade of Vaccination”, meaning also a decade of massive population reduction, of a well-planned and orchestrated mass genocide; of the Great Reset, supposedly leading in 10 years to Klaus Schwab’s infamous slogan – “You will own nothing but will be happy”.

The year 2020 is the beginning of a crime that has no name. Its gravity behooves an expression way beyond “atrocity”. Mind you, it was prepared by a long hand.

Those who have not been touched by it, cannot imagine.

Those who are suffering from it, many of them cannot speak or express themselves anymore.

And many who would like to speak out are censored, or otherwise silenced.

That’s the extent of the monstrosity descended on us – humanity.

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The surviving population may be either chipped by the end of ten years (2030), or otherwise transhumanized, mind manipulable – most likely through the massive introduction of 5G ultra-shortwaves, in combination with the vaxx-injected graphene oxide or other highly magnetic and often deadly concoctions.

That’s the Plan. But, always remember – We, the People, can stop it.

The worldwide 5G network is also a key instrument to develop and advance Klaus Schwab’s 4^th Industrial Revolution, the digitization of everything, including our brains, every record of our most intimated details of our lives, and our money – all, especially the latter, is already in process in most of Europe and to some extent also in the US.

Digitized money is devoid of cash. You will no longer be in control of your money. The plan is to replace “cash” by Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) which will be managed and surveyed, first by national Central Banks, later by a globalized Central Bank, according to the One World Order – with regional subsidiaries.

In which case, our money can be turned on and off, or made to expire, or programmed for purchasing special goods or services, as the Dark Cult feels fit, or as they believe you may deserve it, according your “good” or “bad” behavior.

That’s the direction we are going, if We, the People, do not stop it NOW. There is no time to lose.

For those who are not yet on the bandwagon of awakened people, these are not conspiracy theories but a die-hard reality.

Becoming actively involved in steering the vessel into the direction of light and awareness is urgent.

Call for Resistance

One of the purposes of this article or warning is a call to jump on the train of enlightenment and grow in togetherness into a critical mass to resist this sledgehammer tyranny.

As these lines are written, “their” – the diabolical Clan’s – intent is to enslave and control us all with a full digital identity containing all our medical and other most intimate data. The QR code, already widely in use and activated, is a perfect vehicle for an all-inclusive digital ID.

A digital ID will allow the tyrants to trace your every step, as well as your environmental footprint. If your “e-footprint” is considered too large, you may be warned, and eventually punished – your digital bank account may be turned off, or reduced or blocked. Whatever the “authorities” choose to do to make you submissive.

WHO is also preparing, in a non-transparent onslaught of World Health Assembly Meetings, a so-called Pandemic Treaty – which, if approved, will take control worldwide of all matters concerning “health” – over and above sovereign nations’ Constitutions. We may be force-vaxxed, if WHO so decides – and country governments would have no choice, but going along.

Mind you, the financial powers behind WHO are foremost the pharma-industry and Gates Foundation. WHO, a so-called UN agency, is the epitome of corruption.

The WHO member-governments’ choice is NOW – during the World Health Assembly high-pressure meetings. They could and should, humanely they MUST say NO, to this deadly treaty, of which one of the goals is massive population reduction – from what we have seen in the past three years – WHO is poised to commit a crime and crimes of proportions that have no name.

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And there is the ever agenda of climate change and biodiversity .

The climate change hoax and depopulation agenda has a long history. It started with the Club of Rome which was created in 1968, basically as a Rockefeller idea, by this trio Aurelio Peccei, Alexander King, and David Rockefeller.

In 1972 – 50 years ago – The Club of Rome published the book, Limits to Growth. The book warned that the Earth’s resources would not be able to support the exponential rates of economic and population growth and would collapse before the end of this century.

Having said this, the last century has come and gone – and the world has not collapsed. Nevertheless, the same people and their successors keep saying today, in 2022, that the message of this book still holds. They pretend that the earth’s interlocking resources – the global system of nature in which we all live – probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth much beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology.

Hardly anybody who lives today will be alive in 2100 to testify whether they are right or wrong. But as past records indicate – they will be dead wrong… and We, the People, have to be aware of the built-in lie, of whatever comes out of the Club or Rome climate and depopulation predictions. Mind you and be aware, such forecasts serve the elite of the rich and powerful.

Such statements are clearly setting the stage for justifying a massive depopulation genocide, the beginning of which we are experiencing since the start of the Decade 2020. Depopulation and massive deindustrialization were the motives for a false pandemic, into which the world has been plunged.

The result is a wave of massive bankruptcies, unemployment misery and death – as well as death from an intense campaign of coercive “vaccination”; not from covid, but from injections that have nothing to do with disease prevention. This, in the meantime, is even admitted by the perpetrators, including the pharma industry which extracted, or stole, billions and billions of dollars from public treasuries for vaxxes that kill.

Amazingly, so far, they have gotten away with it. An extensive world-wide criminal trial à la Nuremberg 2.0 is overdue.

Starting with the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the ‘Earth Summit‘, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Climate Change hoax began actively to be propagated, and that repeated almost on an annual basis by the so-called Conferences of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or simply called COP.

Image: Venue of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh. (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

In November 2022, COP27 took place in Sham El-Sheik, Egypt, with similar results of all the previous ones, zero concrete or binding agreements. Some 35,000 participants flew in from around the globe, many heads of Government or other high-level political, business, or other oligarchy pundits. Hundreds, if not thousands in their fuel-guzzling private jets, for two weeks of wining and dining, leaving behind an environmental footprint, worse than what most medium-sized countries could produce in a year.

Mind you, these monster meetings are for environmental protection. They are to tell the world that our excess energy consumption will lead us soon into Armageddon – unless, we the common people will drastically reduce our standard of living.

Be sure, these life and comfort limitations, never concern the oligarchs and elite industrialists – and always excluded and never to be mentioned is the military, by far the largest single user of hydrocarbons and producer of CO2, so that the war machine can and must roll on, undisturbed.

Again, this points to massive depopulation, to an eugenist agenda, and to a gigantic transfer of resources from the bottom and the middle to the top.

Since more and more people are waking up, as they are smelling the lies, deceptions and cheats behind it all, drastic measures were decided behind closed doors at COP27, to be imposed upon the world as surprises, to make sure there is no escaping.

Climate Change Lockdowns is one of them. Can you imagine? – This follows the Plandemic precedent of 2020, when people were intimidated and locked down with fear, so they would obey – for their own good, of course – all the subsequent orders and mandates, notably being vaxxed with deadly poison injection – trials of DNI-modifying mRNA-jabs, with massive side effects, many of them fatal. The death count will increase, as time goes by. See also several statements to this effect by Michael Yeadon, former VP and Chief Science at Pfizer.

See this, this and this (or watch below).

The climate lockdowns have already started. In the UK, residents of Oxfordshire may soon need a special permit to go from one “zone” of the city to another. Under this “15-minute city” agenda, to travel to another district, requires a special permit. But the permit allows to go from one zone to another only for 100 days a year. If this plan goes through – and We, the People, can stop it – the districts main roads will be equipped with myriads of electronic gates, registering car license plates or other compulsory electronic devises installed on vehicles.

In the same vein, France, literally with the “permission” of Brussels EU dictatorship, has decided to completely ban certain short-haul flights in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. Such restrictions may soon come to other countries.

We, the common people should take the train rather than the plane – giving a blind eye to all the execs jetting with their private jets from meeting to meeting around the globe. – It is amazing that the French people haven’t stood up yet to protest, for example, to boycott French airlines altogether.

An outright horror scenario is brewing.

But it mustn’t happen, because We, the People can stop it. If in masses we stand up confronting the power, we are more powerful than the dictatorial authorities.

Biodiversity – a parallel and back-up measure of repression

The next step is preventing the human destruction of biodiversity by “excess” emissions of CO2. “The Greens”, who have become the neo-fascists, attempt to make us believe that we are producing so much CO2 that not only changes the climate, but much worse, we are destroying Mother Earth’s biodiversity. We are responsible for the death of millions and millions of plants, insect and animal species.

But nobody tells you that in the same space of time, millions and millions of new species, plants, insects and animals emerge. It’s a constant cycle. Also called the cycle of life. It never stops. It has nothing to do with CO2 – and less so with man-made CO2, which amounts to less than 0.05% of all CO2 generated, mostly by the planet’s oceans and rain forests. Be aware – CO2 is essential for life. Without it, life could not exist.

Our planet Earth is part of the Cycle of Life. Climate is influenced almost exclusively by sun activities. When they stop or slow down, the climate cools down. Most references to this effect were readily available on internet, but in the recent wave of censuring the truth, they have been “fact-checked” away.

The goal is “zero-sum CO2 emissions”. Whatever that means, it is totally senseless. But, again, 24×7 propaganda has people bend over, feel guilty, scared – and ready to obey any oppressive mandates in order to save the planet.

What the Green fascist agenda is actually promoting is exactly the contrary of what they say. Since CO2 is a vital chemical compound for life on earth, eliminating it, is eliminating biodiversity.

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Time is running fast.

We, the People, have to act fast, in unison, in a critical mass, to stop this ever-stronger emerging tyranny.

We can do it, by starting small again, at the commune level, expanding progressively into groups of communes, trading with each other – and, thus growing slowly, but healthily and freely.

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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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***

The United States — as announced last month[1] — began to send new B61-12 nuclear bombs to Italy and other European countries. A U.S. Air Force Department official document confirms this.

The document establishes “safety rules for C-17 airlift operations transporting B61-12 weapons in the U.S. European Command area of responsibility.” That area, in the Pentagon’s geography, includes not only Europe but the entire Russian Federation.

The document specifies which nuclear weapons are carried on C -17 Globe-masters, the largest U.S. military transport aircraft.  The airplane carries the B61-12 nuclear bombs from the United States to Europe and from Europe to the United States the bombs replacing the B61-3, B61-4, and B61-7. In fact, a single B61-12 has four power options depending on the target to be hit. The C-17 Globemasters – the document again specifies – also carry other nuclear weapons: the B61-11, W78, W80-1, B83-1, and W87-0.

The safety standards listed in the document confirm the dangerous nature of loading, transporting, and unloading nuclear weapons. There may be “the likelihood of fire from an aircraft with nuclear weapons on board” and a failure of the aircraft while in. flight that forces “an emergency landing” or the “release of nuclear weapons”.

The deployment on our national territory of the new U.S. nuclear bombs – first-strike weapons with precision guidance and anti-bunker capabilities, with which F-35 fighter jets, in particular, will be equipped – exposes Italy to the front lines of the increasingly dangerous confrontation between NATO and Russia. In doing so, Italy violates the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, ratified in 1975, which states, “Each of the militarily non-nuclear states undertakes not to receive from anyone nuclear weapons, directly or indirectly.”

The episode closes with an interview with Vladimir Kozin, one of Russia’s leading experts on politico-military issues, and historian Franco Cardini on the silence of the Italian government and parliament and the historical phase we are living through.

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This article was originally published on byoblu.

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

Note

[1] View  November 4 Grandangolo https://www.byoblu.com/2022/11/04/sotto-lalbero-di-natalela-nuova-bomba-nucleare-usa-b61-12-grandangolo-pangea/

New Year in London: Mass Poverty Is Deeply Rooted. Ongoing Praise for NATO Militarization Ukraine

By Kurt Nimmo, January 02, 2023

The traditional London New Year fireworks display last night was dedicated to a dead queen and neo-Nazis on the endangered list in Ukraine. Let’s call it what it is—a perverse acclamation for a dead monarch and genocidal maniacs in Ukraine.

Vivienne Westwood: Activism and the Godmother of Punk

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, January 02, 2023

For Westwood, fashion was always meant to be a spear for change.  But as she noted in her autobiography, one jointly aided by the pen of Ian Kelly, “When I turned around, on the barricades, there was no one there.  That was how it felt.  They were just pogoing.  So I lost interest.” The kids, in other words, just wanted the gear without manifesting any grand idea; this was the confrontation of fashion without any enduring consequences.

New Israeli Government: Far-right or Racist?

By Jamal Kanj, January 02, 2023

Hanukkah 2022 would be remembered as the holiday when Israeli voters snuffed the Menorah candles and welcomed darkness by electing a refurbished Jewish version of the Taliban government. Tel Aviv mayor, Ron Huldai, characterized it as being a shift “from a (Jewish) democracy to a theocracy.”

From Sri Lanka to Salinas

By Thomas Buckley, January 02, 2023

Ah, Sri Lanka. In 2020: a beautiful, agriculturally self-sufficient island nation full of tea and tourists and holder of the highest “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) investor rating in the world.

Africa in Review 2022: Mounting Challenges Require Long Term Solutions

By Abayomi Azikiwe, January 02, 2023

A report in the Voice of America, the public international news service for the United States State Department, said that there were troop movements by the State of Eritrea from areas in the Tigray province of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia where a war has been waged over the last two years.

Truth, Truths and Consequences: A Happier New Year in the Offing

By Dr. Emanuel Garcia, January 02, 2023

As a new year dawns, these past three years of Covidian deception weigh heavily, and the cumulative weight of this deception is staggering. What have we learned? What have we suffered? What good can come out of this assault upon our rights to our own bodies and mobility and freedom of expression, undertaken globally? What truth – or truths – have emerged from so many lies?

Seventy Years of U.S. Destabilisation in China. U.S. Sponsored Uyghur Insurgency in Xinjiang

By Shane Quinn, January 02, 2023

China’s exit in October 1949, from the sphere of US control, was perhaps the heaviest blow to strike American post-World War II global hegemony. China’s successful drive for independence had been anticipated in Washington for many months.

The 64th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution: An Unprecedented Chapter in World History

By Dr. Birsen Filip, January 02, 2023

Today, Cubans are commemorating the 64th  anniversary of their independence. On this day in 1959, the Cuban Revolution was successfully conducted by Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement and became an enduring symbol of resistance to neo-colonialism, capitalism, and hegemony. As a result, Cuba’s corrupt and brutal dictator, Fulgencio Batista (1901-1973), who had the full backing of the US government, left the island and escaped to the Dominican Republic, along with some of his loyal supporters.

Russia Consolidates in East Mediterranean

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, January 01, 2023

The curtain is coming down on the brutal 11-year old Syrian conflict, which former US President and Nobel Laureate Barack Obama initiated, as the Arab Spring swept through West Asia two decades ago. The United States has suffered yet another big setback in West Asia as the year 2022 draws to a close. The unfolding Turkish-Syrian reconciliation process under Russian mediation is to be seen as a saga of betrayal and vengeance. 

Extremist Christian Militia in Lebanon May Ignite a New Civil War

By Steven Sahiounie, January 01, 2023

In Ashrafieh, the wealthy Christian neighborhood in east Beirut, there is a group of 300 young, muscular, and bearded men patrolling the streets from 6 pm. to 6 am. as part of Neighborhood Watch, but they have an extremist Christian ideology which many have termed neo-fascist. They call the group the Soldiers of God, and its members refer to themselves as the Guardian Angels.

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***

 

 

There was the punk scene, Malcolm McLaren, their racy clothes shop at 430 King’s Road that started out as Let it Rock, the creation of a look, and the gathering of the earth rumbling Sex Pistols.  In fact, the late Dame Vivienne Westwood was already a proven stirrer, suggesting that she, not Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon, a.k.a Johnny Rotten, came up with the title for the barnstorming “Anarchy in the UK”.  Boldly, she claimed that prior to McLaren and herself, there was no punk.

The Westwood look became ubiquitous with enthusiastic teens of the late 1970s, the use of studs, clothes replete with antisocial indignation, and the jarring, spiky hair to match.  In the opinion of Dame Zandra Rhodes, “We’d had flower power… then suddenly you had this very-hard hitting punk.”

In her 2014 memoir, Viv Albertine of Slits fame offered a striking description of aspects of Westwood costumery: “mohair jumpers, knitted on big needles, so loosely that you can see all the way through them, T-shirts slashed and written on by hand, seams and labels on the outside, showing the construction of the piece.”

For Westwood, fashion was always meant to be a spear for change.  But as she noted in her autobiography, one jointly aided by the pen of Ian Kelly, “When I turned around, on the barricades, there was no one there.  That was how it felt.  They were just pogoing.  So I lost interest.” The kids, in other words, just wanted the gear without manifesting any grand idea; this was the confrontation of fashion without any enduring consequences.

Such a pattern would follow through the decades. The activist and designer were not always seen as one.  Instead, Westwood was anointed as a cultural engenderer of daring haute couture rather than activist grenade thrower.  But she made it clear that she was in fashion for only one reason: “to destroy the word ‘conformity’.”  Far from being a mere designer of fashion, she “wished to confront the rotten status quo” via that medium.

The official website draws upon a busy life beyond design, speaking about activism over two decades in support of “hundreds of causes, NGOs, grassroot charities and campaigns, including Amnesty International, War Child and Liberty” in addition to launching the campaigning movement Climate Revolution.

Westwood’s environmental edge impressed PETA’s founder, Ingrid Newkirk.  “She was an early adopter of PETA’s fur-free ethos, choosing to donate her brand’s remaining rabbit fur bags to a wildlife sanctuary, and shed exotic things from her collections years ago.”

In 2013, she told The Daily Mail that she could not talk about fashion.  “I’m too preoccupied with using it as a vehicle for talking about climate change, which is an incredible danger.  Everybody who’s eco-conscious is fighting the revolution and of course we need to get more people involved, to pressure the governments, to sort this out, because we have to sort this out.”

In 2018, on receiving the Excellence Award at the Ischia Film & Music Global Fest, Westwood declared that fashion, in her mind, had ceased being as important as the issue of the day.  At the very least, she was bored with it.  “We have an enormous global problem: our politicians are not listening to our scientists.  We have barely 20 years to stop things, otherwise we shall reach a tipping point and we can draw a line across the earth and everywhere below Paris will be uninhabitable.  By the end of this century we will be only one billion people.”

While eco-guerrilla activism was foremost in her mind, Westwood’s activist tent proved capacious.  WikiLeaks and Assange can certainly express some gratitude for Westwood’s fire-breathing dedication.  After his 40^th birthday celebrations, she would make regular cycle visits to the Ecuadorian embassy, where the WikiLeaks founder remained an asylee tenant for seven years.  As with her other causes, she managed to combine heavy-accented symbolism with a fashion statement, the catwalk repurposed for radical transparency.  In 2012, she created a unisex “I’m Julian Assange” T-shirt, available for purchase for £40.

As extradition proceedings mounted by the United States became ever more serious for Assange, Westwood was again on the scene.  In 2020, during trial proceedings, she spent part of a day suspended in a cage outside the Old Bailey in London, kitted up in a yellow suit to signify the canary in the coalmine.  “If the canary died, they all got out. Julian Assange is in a cage and he needs to get out.  Don’t extradite to America.”

Westwood protests against the extradition of Julian Assange to the US, outside London’s Old Bailey Court in 2020. CREDIT:AP

Little wonder that Assange is now seeking leave from the authorities in Belmarsh Prison to attend her funeral.  Given the practice of UK institutions, specifically regarding Assange, this dispensation is unlikely to be granted.

Westwood also left a touching tribute to Assange’s wife, Stella: a wedding dress.  In of itself, it was a striking statement of fashion and the act of naughty defiance and constant mischief: the publisher’s partner dressed in the activist’s genius.

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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: Vivienne Westwood (Source: Flickr)

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***

In a fair world, Aruna Rodrigues would be heralded as an incredible individual for her ongoing struggle to protect the socio-economic and environmental integrity of India. So says respected environmentalist, author and campaigner Leo Saldanha.

He adds:

“Since 2005, she has tirelessly pursued a public interest litigation before the Supreme Court of India, in which she has made a case why India should not yield to pressures from mega agri-transnational corporations and certain sections of the Indian agricultural sector who are keen on promoting genetically modified organisms in farming.”

India’s apex regulatory body, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, recently sanctioned genetically modified (GM) mustard for cultivation. This would be India’s first GM food crop, despite a public interest litigation (PIL) before the Supreme Court to prevent cultivation as well as the widespread rejection of GM mustard by farmers’ organisations.

Aruna Rodrigues, the lead petitioner of the PIL, has exposed in her various submissions to court that claims about yield increases through GM mustard to be completely baseless. She indicates how data has been rigged and manipulated and protocols have been severely compromised, and that the government and its regulators are parroting the false claims of the crop developers.

Thanks to the PIL, the Supreme Court stayed the commercial release of GM Mustard on 3 November 2022.

Independent experts who have looked at the biosafety data submitted by the crop developer at Delhi University have clearly pointed out that GM mustard has not been tested rigorously and adequately.

India is a centre for diversity for mustard and several high-level official committees have recommended against transgenic technologies in crops for which the country is the centre of origin or centre of diversity.

Various high-level reports have also advised against introducing GM food crops to India per se. These reports conclude that GM crops are unsuitable for India and that biosafety and regulatory procedures are wholly inadequate.

Rodrigues also played a leading role in preventing commercial cultivation of GM brinjal more than a decade ago. Her tireless efforts have been a thorn in the side of global agritech corporations and seriously compromised regulatory officials who have for the best part of two decades been trying to get GM food crops cultivated in India.

There is much at stake.

India has a lot to lose, not least its food and seed sovereignty and contamination of its crops as well as the risks genetically modified organisms (GMOs) pose to human health.

The industry has much to gain.

Global biotech corporations like Bayer and Corteva are seeking to increase their control over the future of food and farming by extensively patenting plants and developing a new generation of GMOs.

They seek to claim all plants with those genetic traits as their ‘invention’.  Such patents on plants would restrict farmers’ access to seeds and impede breeders from developing new plants as both would have to ask for consent and pay fees to the biotech companies.

According to an October 2022 report, the global GM crop and seed market is projected to reach $46 billion by 2027. That is up from an estimated US$30.6 billion in 2020. The US market is estimated at $8.4 billion, while China is forecast to reach a projected market size of US$10 billion by the year 2027.

Key global players include AgReliant Genetics LLC, BASF SE, Bayer Crop Science, Canterra Seeds Holdings, DLF Seeds & Science and Corteva (Dow/DuPont).

If India succumbs to pressure, that figure of $46 billion by 2027 could be much larger. With 1.4 billion people, India represents a massive financially lucrative cash cow.

For instance, Goldstein Research pushes pro-GM industry talking points and laments about resistance to GM food seeds as it is hindering the growth of India’s GM seed market. Even so, it forecasts that the Indian GM seed market is set to reach US$13.1 billion by 2025 (cotton is the only legally sanctioned GM crop in India at this time).

GM mustard is regarded as a pioneering food crop in India – it would open the floodgates for many other GM food crops that are in the pipeline under a veil of secrecy, including wheat, rice, brinjal and chickpea.

But – it seems – genuine science stands in the way. GM mustard is unwanted, unneeded and fails to stand up to scientific rigour.

Maybe that is why, in December 2020, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) prevented serving and former public officials from expressing any opinion or writing any article on the approval to release GM mustard. This is a ‘gag order’ and an attempt to close down debate on the matter and to keep the public in the dark on the issue.

Trade and agriculture policy specialist Devinder Sharma says that silencing scientific voices indicates there is more to hide than reveal. He says that every claim that the ICAR makes about GM mustard can be challenged. And it has been – in court. Sharma adds that the US is placing tremendous pressure on India to embrace GM crops.

In finishing, let us turn to where this article began – with Aruna Rodrigues.

Leo Saldanha, who is mentioned at the start of this article, is forthright on the Change.org website in condemning a recent attack on Rodrigues.

Due to Rodrigues, Saldanha says the Supreme Court has time and again questioned the enthusiasm with which the Indian government and several public institutions have collaborated, questionably and controversially, in promoting GM foods and crops.

Just before Christmas, however, Aruna Rodrigues was unexpectedly forcibly evicted from her ancestral home by the Indian army. The Defence Estate Office is the custodian of all military properties of India and is required to secure such properties by following the due process of law.

Saldanha notes that Rodrigues’ home has been with her family from 1892 – legally secured via proper sale deeds. But about 27 years ago, the Defence Estate Office made a claim on the house. This claim was challenged, and the matter has been in court since then. Consequently, any action against the occupant should be only through due process of law.

On 20 December 2022, a court ruled that Aruna Rodrigues has occupation rights to the house. Yet the Defence Estate Officer moved into the house with army personnel – without any court directive – and physically removed her and threw the contents of the house onto the street. Within hours, a court ruled in Rodrigues favour. By then, however, the damage had been done.

As Saldanha says, we can only wonder whether any of this is connected to Rodrigues’ case before the Supreme Court. Given the billions of dollars at stake for the global agritech companies, it would indeed be wise to wonder.

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal.

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Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Click here to read.

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***

Hanukkah 2022 would be remembered as the holiday when Israeli voters snuffed the Menorah candles and welcomed darkness by electing a refurbished Jewish version of the Taliban government. Tel Aviv mayor, Ron Huldai, characterized it as being a shift “from a (Jewish) democracy to a theocracy.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, indicted on bribery and fraud, coalesced with established corrupt politicians to form the most overt Jewish nationalist government.

To win his premiership, Netanyahu had to literary custom design ministerial portfolios to satisfy the insatiable demands of competing eccentric coalition members. On December 27, the Israeli Knesset passed several legislative amendments allowing convicted criminals to serve in the government, and bifurcated the ministry of defense into three offices.

One amendment granted Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism party―and in addition to his finance ministry― the post of second minister in the defense ministry with administrative role over the expansion of “Jewish only” colonies in the occupied West Bank.

Second, a basic law amendment modified the defense ministry bestowing border police oversight to national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir of the Jewish Power party, Otzma Yehudit.

Then, the “Deri law” allowed Aryeh Deri of Shas party to become interior and health minister despite criminal conviction records. Deri spent 22 months at Ma’asiyahu prison out of a three-year sentence for tax fraud and taking bribes while serving as interior minister in a previous Israeli government.

Throughout history corrupt political demagogues succeed by overindulging self-pride, paranoia, and scapegoating the “other.” The rise of Trumpism in the US was an exemplary illustration of the power of lies to germinate racial division and herd mentality. Narcissist leaders master the concoction of dissatisfaction, racial exceptionalism, constructed tribal insecurity, and blaming the perceived outsider to justify injustice and oppression.

Like Trumpism, from the border wall to sullying Mexicans, blacks and Muslims, the Israeli election was centered on siege mentality galvanizing the crowd’s worst human instinct. Political Israeli pundits competed on a parochial platform to validate their Zionist’s credentials by promising to exact the most hardship on Palestinians and relegate them irrelevant.

For example, the alternating prime minister of the “less” ex-rightwing Israeli government, Naftali Bennett boasted during election campaigns on killing “lots” of Palestinians, and bragging that “there is absolutely no problem with that.“

The outgoing Israeli government of Yair Lapid/Bennet according to a UN report on December 15, 2022, had presided over “the deadliest” year of “settler violence and excessive use of force by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.”

A murdering wave crowned by the assassination of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and more than 200 Palestinians, including approximately 50 children.

Nonetheless, Israeli voters opted for the promise of more brazen Zionist credentials instantiated by Netanyahu’s customized coalition.

Lamenting his election loss, Lapid, castigated the new Israeli government as “the most corrupt ever,” accusing the new national security minister, Ben Gvir, as “a violent criminal with 53 indictments and 8 convictions for serious offenses,” and Avi Moaz as “a dark racist, a man who . . . has blacklists of LGBTQ people and activists in women’s organizations.”

Moaz the leader of Noam party, a Jewish version of ISIS, is an admitted homophobe and misogynist who believes woman’s place is at home. Smotrich, like Moaz, is a “Jewish” flip side of diehard white racists, he opposes mixed marriage or selling homes to non-Jew. Ben Gvir, the Jewish Power party and the law minister, espouses analogical racial bigotry embraced by “white power” supremacists in the West.

Despite their flagrant racist platforms, Western media is unwilling to ascribe proper racist adjectives to describe the Israeli government, and instead use euphemistic terms like “far-right,” in an apparent attempt to rehabilitate Israeli racism.

Chuck Tod of NBC Meet the Press, inaugurated Netanyahu’s anticipated US media round on December 4, providing him a stage to explain his new coalition, and deftly avoiding to challenge Netanyahu as he does when he interviews rightwing Republicans.

On December 28, the Wall Street Journal offered its pages to professed “proud homophobe,” Smotrich, to whitewash his bigotry just one day before he was sworn in to be Israeli finance minister.

Western progressives don’t hesitate condemning racist forces in their own governments. Yet, many vacillate when it comes to speaking out against Israeli racism. Most choose to be silenced rather than risking the misused antisemite label. Apologists for bigoted Israeli governments in the US, like AIPAC, ADL et al., should not be allowed to define antisemitism, much as white supremacists could not define racism.

The challenge remains for major American Jewish civil rights organizations to either bluntly accept Israeli racism as a necessary evil for the survival of the only “Jewish” nation, or decouple Jewish values from self-professed misogynists, declared racists, Islamophobes and homophobes. Whereas ADL condemns white supremacism when Jews are in the minority, the same should not be condoned when Zionist parties are in power.

It’s worth noting that the current governing Israeli coalition, which would be labeled racist by any Western standards, embodies the founding principles of political Zionism and the tenets of the Zionist doctrines, not an exception.

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A version of this article was first published on Middle East Monitor.

Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) an author who had written weekly newspaper columns and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America. His recent co-authored book “Bride of the Sea” was published in Germany and Poland. 

Featured image is from Big News Network

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***

The traditional London New Year fireworks display last night was dedicated to a dead queen and neo-Nazis on the endangered list in Ukraine.

A huge moment – Ukraine’s winning song Stefania featured in the London firework display. 👏 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/Q5L2qRSFuj

— ESC Conor ☘️ (@ESCConor) January 1, 2023

Let’s call it what it is—a perverse acclamation for a dead monarch and genocidal maniacs in Ukraine.

No word how much this gaudy tribute of support for mass murder and war crimes will cost the average Briton. The state is focused on spending stacks of money on bombs and bullets to be sent to psychopaths in Ukraine. It is far less concerned with the welfare of its own citizens.

“Poverty is deeply rooted in the UK, with a decade of cuts meaning millions of families across the country are struggling through financial hardship,” reports Big Issue. “Many more are being pushed below the breadline as the cost of living crisis hits low-income households the hardest.”

Over 14 and a half million people—more than one in five—live in poverty in the UK, including 4.3 million children, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The cost of living crisis will worsen poverty rates, with more than one million people set to be plunged into poverty this winter. Many will struggle to afford the basics to live and rely on food banks, and the newly established warm banks, to survive as temperatures plummet.

In May, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised “the dispatch of an additional £300 million of military equipment. Within days that has been increased by a further billion pounds to £1.3 billion,” the World Socialist Web Site reports.

By November, that figure had increased to 7.09 billion euros, only overshadowed by the free-wheeling dispensation of truckloads of borrowed fiat currency by the USG and “EU institutions,” according to Statista.

As Russia began its SMO to rid the threat posed by neo-Nazi psychopaths and terminate NATO’s plan to emplace missile batteries and other offensive military equipment on a shared border, the British Ministry of Defense (sic) “announced that it plans to invest 238 billion euros ($270 billion) in state-of-the-art military equipment and necessary support services,” according to TheDefensePost.

“We have entered a new ‘competitive age’ of resurgent authoritarian states and diversifying threats,” UK Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace explained.

“As the threat changes, we must adapt, remaining clear-eyed about what capabilities we need, retire those that are less relevant, and invest in areas that will give us a strategic advantage.”

However, the threat of British subjects enduring malnutrition and freezing to death in the winter does not seem to be a concern for Rishi Sunak, the new Prime Minister, a former Goldman Sachs banker, and Chancellor of the Exchequer (tax enforcement and appropriation).

Sunak is known as the “hedge fund prime minister.” He is worth nearly a billion dollars and is the richest man to hold the office of Prime Minister. He is a cherished member of the financial elite, and as such believes the little people must suffer while the state diverts billions to the purchase of death machinery for Zelenskyy and his neo-Nazis henchmen.

Much of the war materiel sent by Britain, the US, and European “partners,” is targeted and destroyed by Russia before it can reach the front. Additionally, a large percentage ends up in the hands of miscreants in Africa and elsewhere, as Ukraine is run by money-grubbing oligarchs more than willing to steal and sell weapons to terrorists.

As for the fate of the average Briton, The Globalist reports,

But as with all Goldman Sachs-trained bankers, Sunak believes in austerity. He is a continuation of Boris Johnson who believes in cutting public investment and public support for health and poorer areas, while protecting the better off. (Emphasis added.)

In other words, the UK, like the USG, is primarily dedicated to pushing the neoliberal project forward, despite the cost to the majority of the population, which is kept in blinkered ignorance.

Brits continue to vote for and expect to be taken care of by self-serving careerist politicians, many of them professional liars, cheats, and sociopaths. The appointment of a Goldman Sachs banker to act as Prime Minister should be a wake-up call for all British subjects.

Millions of Britons may miss a meal or two while shivering in the cold, unable to pay to heat their homes, but Zelenskyy and his genocidal-minded neo-Nazis will get their blood-stained hands on more missiles, main battle tanks, self-propelled artillery, armored personnel carriers, fighting vehicles, etc., all of it destined to be blown to smithereens by the Russians.

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Ah, Sri Lanka.

In 2020: a beautiful, agriculturally self-sufficient island nation full of tea and tourists and holder of the highest “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) investor rating in the world.

And then, as part of the larger “green” effort spurred on by international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), woke capital, and, seemingly, a desire to sit at the big table at the various and sundry global initiative conferences, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa banned the use of manufactured fertilizer in order to create a more climate-friendly sustainable farming sector.  In April, 2021, the country went all-organic overnight.

What could possibly go wrong?

prices for food (especially rice) and fuel and other daily basics skyrocketed, the tea crop – and the hundreds of millions it earns in international trade – was decimated.  The nation defaulted on its foreign debt, had rolling power blackouts, the tourists are staying away in droves, and Sri Lanka,  already wracked by corruption and COVID, spiraled out of control.

The public’s response?  Even though the fertilizer ban had already been partially rolled back, just last month Rajapaksa’s presidential palace was stormed by thousands of everyday Sri Lankans and he had to flee the country – last word was that he was holed up in Singapore.

(Side note to Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney – this is what an actual insurrection looks like:)

 

It seems Kermit was right – it ain’t easy being green.

But, considering the state’s claim to be the global leader in fighting climate change, can California – with its extremely powerful “climate lobby” that was able to ban the future sales of new gas-powered vehicles, a concept that would have been unthinkable a very few years ago –  be far behind?

California’s commitment to confronting climate change cannot be underestimated., as proven by the 86 different climate partnerships, or “bilateral and multilateral agreements with national and subnational leaders” the state as entered into.  (The list can be found here)

Additionally, a quick tour of state department websites finds numerous examples of “green,” “sustainability,” and “climate” pages and plans; even the state’s prisons get into the act with its climate change plan: see this.

It should be stressed that California is not above shooting itself in the foot when it comes to climate issues. Thursday, the legislature passed a bill mandating 3,200-foot “buffer zones” around all – new and existing – oil and gas wells, a move which would practically eliminate the industry – and its 13,000 jobs – in the state.

And last week, the plan to completely ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 was approved by the state’s Air Resources Board.  Yesterday, with the already strained power grid facing massive heat-related shortfalls, Californians were asked, among other things, to not charge their electric cars (about 11 percent of the cars in the state) when they got home from work.

A fertilizer ban could have similar severe knock-on impacts, and massive unemployment and other serious disruptions akin to those Sri Lanka experienced could follow.

While there is no specific proposed legislation currently, Governor Gavin Newsom often touts his climate bona fides which could leave the door open to future efforts.  “No challenge poses a greater threat to our way of life, prosperity, and future as a state than climate change,” said Newsom on Earth Day in April, more than a year into the Sri Lanka debacle.  “With our rich natural heritage on the front lines of this crisis, California is building on our global climate leadership with bold strategies that harness the power of nature to fight climate change and protect our communities and ecosystems.”

Considering the state’s political landscape, it appears the unthinkable could already starting to be thought.

For background, the push to ban or restrict the use of manufactured fertilizers (in other words, not compost or manure) was formerly mostly tied to waterway protection (as the former Mayor of Lake Elsinore, Cal. I can personally attest to the kind of rapid growth – in our case sadly algae – nitrogen and phosphorus can spur in plants.  PS – since the city and other agencies started large-scale remediation efforts, the lake has been wonderfully clear).

The current push, however, revolves around climate change and is based on the claim that nitrogen is a greenhouse gas so farmers should stop putting it on their plants.  While this claim is misleading – defining nitrogen as a greenhouse gas is rather new and shaky itself, the overwhelming majority of nitrogen in fertilizers is captured by the plant itself or the soil, and modern farming techniques have greatly reduced the problem of “over fertilizing” –  it has not stopped climate change activists from pushing massive restrictions and, in Sri Lanka’s case, outright bans.

It is true, however, that nitrous dioxide – it’s not that stuff you inhale at the dentist’s office – is considered a greenhouse gas and that it can be produced by fertilizer application.  However, since the crops and soil capture so much, it only is produced in significant quantity if far too much fertilizer is used, a practice the majority of farmers eschew because it is usually unnecessary and always more expensive – fertilizer isn’t free and can add up to about 5 percent of a farm’s expenses.  Here is a graph showing the impacts of over-fertilization and the minimal emissions (essentially indistinguishable from the “background noise”) when used typically and properly:

(From the University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources and can be found here).

In the Netherlands, farmers have taken to the streets to protest planned government (and European Union) mandated nitrogen use cuts of up to 70 percent.  Such cuts would devastate the agricultural sector, which currently makes the tiny country the second largest exporter of farm products in the world (only the United States exports more food).  Due to the impact on livestock feed costs and availability, it is estimated that – in addition to massive crop losses – about 30 percent of Dutch farm animals would have to be killed to meet the climate change target.

Canada is also proposing nationwide nitrogen cuts of up to 30 percent, leaving farmers there worried about their futures and the continued assurance of the nation’s food supply.

The impact nitrogen fertilizers have on the atmosphere – which is already about 78 percent nitrogen – is so small it cannot be accurately measured (see graph above), said Dr. Jay Lehr, environmental scientist and agricultural economist.

“I can see why certain politicians are attracted to the idea, but it’s just too crazy,” Lehr said, adding that if the United States and/or California were to mimic Sri Lanka it would lead to “starvation and desperation” and the bankrupting of the majority of farmers.  “This movement is trying to roll-back the green revolution.”

The green revolution Lehr referred to has nothing to do with the current political meaning of the term “green,” but the post-World War II movement to increase yields through improved crops, fertilizer use, technological enhancements, irrigation, and scientifically-sound farming practices.  The movement is credited with literally saving more than a billion lives around the globe in the past 70 years and led to one of its chief architects, Norman Borlaug – who famously said “You can’t build a peaceful world on empty stomachs” – to being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Borlaug’s revolution is a very specific target of many climate activists and the various international government agencies and NGOs that support them.

In its position paper entitled “Strengthening agroecology for a fundamental Transformation of agri-food systems,” the World Future Council – a German-based NGO/think tank –  states: “The message has now gotten through: the negative effects of industrial agriculture have long been clear; they include water shortages, species extinction, high greenhouse-gas emissions, soil degradation, and land grabbing. They cause social, economic and ecological damage that harms the livelihoods of peasants.”   (You can visit the website here)

Borlaug may have passed away in 2009, but his quote regarding such groups seems apropos:

“Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They’ve never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.”

Another international group, the Global Green Growth Initiative (the GGGI, a treaty-based organization that works with the UN where it has “Observer” status, like the Red Cross) praised Sri Lanka two years before its ban went into place for its three-year climate change plan.  To quote the GGGI:

“GGGI welcomed the Government of Sri Lanka as its thirtieth Member in January 2019, committing to support the country as it asserts its commitment to achieving its sustainable development and NDC goals. As Sri Lanka’s delivery partner for the 3-year GCF-National Adaptation Planning (NAP) Readiness Support Program, GGGI will support Sri Lanka’s NDC on adaptation by further strengthening its adaptation planning process and capacity to implement NAP.  It also aims to enhance the country’s access to climate finance for the implementation of its national adaptation plan. Working towards 6 sub-outcomes through 20 key outputs, the project’s target impact is a built resilience of the most vulnerable sectors and communities in Sri Lanka to adverse effects of Climate Change through Sri Lanka’s strengthened capacity to implement National Adaptation Planning.” (note – this quote is repeated in its entirety to give the reader a better flavor of the incomprehensible “citizen of the world/corporate speak” most of these endeavors evince.  For more on the GGGI, you can read its “gender and inclusive development” policy statement here).

The GGGI, like many other NGOs and government agencies – and some very major financial players like BlackRock (the $10 trillion asset management fund) – see “sustainability” and its related ESG rating (like a bond rating except for non-financial aspects of a company or country) as integral components of investing strategies, grant and credit worthiness, and the like.  This pressure to please the international money (and government) people is a significant driver of initiatives such as Sri Lanka undertook and the Netherlands and Canada are currently considering.

‘If the goal is to kill California agriculture, ESG is a very effective way to do it,” said James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute.

Despite the obvious catastrophe, even Sri Lankan activists are not giving up.  The Green Movement of Sri Lanka – supported internationally by the European Union, etc. – seems to embody much of movement’s zeitgeist and remains committed to the cause, with the website reading, in part:  “Friends, sustainability is complex and requires a fundamental kindness and empathy among its proponents. Therefore, let us not work with the stupidity of industrial age mindsets in our ongoing effort to shift to sustainability.  We do not have to agree but at the very least, let us agree not to disagree.”  This debate-shuttering “agreeing to not disagree” idea is a sentiment shared by much of the activist movement, no matter the country.  (note – you can find out more here)

Back in the United States, American Farm Bureau Federation Chief Economist Dr. Roger Cryan estimates that a Sri Lank-style move would cut domestic grain crop production by about 50 percent within two to four years of implementation, leading to massive price hikes and acute shortages of basic commodities.

“Feeding the world is not an easy thing to do,” Cryan said.  “Sri Lanka was clearly a failure.”

After re-iterating the fact that, given its uptake into plants and the soil “nitrogen and phosphorus do not represent a greenhouse gas problem, Cryan also noted that if Sri Lanka’s overnight organic model were followed that  there is simply “not enough manure and compost on the planet” to make up the difference to keep crop yields steady.

“I’d hate to see something done if they don’t do the math,” Cryan said.  “We shouldn’t be talking about farming less – it can’t be a trade-off.”

The impact in California, home to $50 billion agricultural industry and about 12 percent of the nation’s entire farming output, would be devastating.

A.G. Kawamura, an Orange County farmer, former Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and co-chair of Solutions From the Land, an international, UN-backed group dedicated to “increasing agricultural productivity (including ecosystem services and societal benefits) and incomes; adapting and building resilience; and reducing and removing greenhouse gas emissions” expressed doubt that many climate activists truly comprehend the complexities of farming.

“It’s the nightmare of the good intentions of the activists who don’t understand how the food supply system works,” Kawamura said.  “They either can’t understand or will not understand because it doesn’t play with the people who pay them.”

Eliminating manufactured fertilizers from the agriculture equation removes a “tool to keep the system robust and when you start taking away tools it becomes challenging if not impractical to continue,” Kawamura said.

With the world’s eight billionth person expected to be born in November, Kawamura strongly believes that protecting the capacity to feed people is paramount.

“Abundance allows for choices,” said Kawamura.  “It allows for organic farming, it allows for ‘laboratory meat,’ it creates the space to innovate.”  But scarcity leads to a mere state of survival, effectively closing off those avenues, he warned.

Kawamura added that a fertilizer ban would  “collapse the production curve” in California within about three years of implementation.

As for the possibility of the enactment of severe restrictions, while Lehr believes California farmers are likely politically powerful enough (unlike Sri Lankan farmers) to forestall such a move, Kawamura is less sanguine.

“The legislature and this governor do not appear to prioritize agriculture,” Kawamura said.  “For years, farmers haven’t been negotiating (in Sacramento) to get more, but just to lose less.”

California growers harvest more than 400 different types of crops – many what are referred to as specialty – that each have differing fertilizer needs and protocols so the impacts of its loss would vary widely, though a flat statewide ban would be catastrophic no matter the crop.  Farmers in other states that concentrate on grain and other staple crops would face yield losses of up to 60 percent across the board if draconian fertilizer restrictions or bans were put in place.

The dream of an organic-only farming world is a chimera anyway, said Bjorn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus (a group that acknowledges anthropogenic climate change but believes the approaches being currently taken to combat it are misguided) and Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

“Long simply a fashionable trend for the world’s 1%, environmental activists have increasingly peddled the beguiling idea that organic farming can solve hunger,” Lomborg said.  “However, research conclusively shows that organic farming produces much less food than conventional farming per hectare. Moreover, organic farming requires farmers to rotate soil out of production for pasture, fallow or cover crops, reducing its effectiveness. In total, organic approaches produce between a quarter and half less food than conventional, scientific-driven agriculture.”

Lomborg added that these facts “not only makes organic food more expensive, but it means that organic farmers would need much more land to feed the same number of people as today – possibly almost twice the area. Given that agriculture currently uses 40% of Earth’s ice-free land, switching to organics would mean destroying large swathes of nature for less effective production.”

Should California – or the nation –  take the path of most destruction and implement restrictions or even fertilizer bans, the social and economic impacts would be catastrophic and could hearken back to the conditions during the Great Depression of the 1930s – except this time there wouldn’t be any bread lines because there wouldn’t be any bread.

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Read Part I and II:

Africa in Review 2022: Regional Dynamics and Continental Security

By Abayomi Azikiwe, December 29, 2022

Africa in Review 2022, II: Peacekeeping and the World Economic Crisis

By Abayomi Azikiwe, December 30, 2022

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A report in the Voice of America, the public international news service for the United States State Department, said that there were troop movements by the State of Eritrea from areas in the Tigray province of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia where a war has been waged over the last two years. 

However, claims of the presence of Eritrean soldiers engaged in the territorial defense of Ethiopia has never been the source of the complete breakdown of relations between the current government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which between 1991 and 2018 ruled the Horn of Africa state through the framework of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

The EPRDF regime collapsed under the political weight of a national rebellion which brought Abiy to power in April 2018. His administration has faced numerous challenges particularly in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, regional differences with Egypt and Sudan as well as an overall downturn stemming from the impact of the world capitalist crisis spawned by the Russian-Ukraine war in Eastern Europe.

During November, the peace talks which resulted in a landmark accord to demilitarize the Tigray province and reestablish central Ethiopian authority over the northern areas of the country of 122 million people, was brokered by envoys empowered by the African Union (AU) based in Addis Ababa. The first round of the discussions was facilitated by the host Republic of South Africa in Pretoria, under Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Dr. Naledi Pandor, while elder statesmen and former President Olusegun Obasanjo of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Republic of Kenya recently outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta utilized their diplomatic standing and political experience to secure the agreement.

Later in Nairobi, other aspects were discussed related to the process of military disengagement and the reintegration of Tigray back into the national infrastructure of Ethiopia. In the concluding weeks of 2022 there was the reconnection of phone services and the deployment of police from the federal government into Mekelle, the provincial capital. Flights have resumed between Addis Ababa and Mekelle.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden would have much preferred the overthrow of the Abiy government in Addis Ababa and the replacement of the ruling Prosperity Party with a TPLF-led regime. Even prior to the removal of former President Donald Trump in 2020, the war had erupted on November 4, 2020, around the time of the contentious elections which aggravated a deeply divided political culture in the world’s leading capitalist and imperialist state.

Nonetheless, when the Biden administration came to power in January 2021 the same antagonistic posture towards Ethiopia continued. It would take a mass campaign led by Ethiopian and Eritrean Americans to defeat a sanctions bill aimed at crippling the economy of two Horn of Africa states. This bill which remains stalled in Congress was drafted over and above the suspension of Ethiopia from the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade program which was initiated under the administration of former President Bill Clinton in 2000.

The peace accord if fully implemented will not completely resolve the question of national unity in Ethiopia. Large scale displacement and fighting continues in the southern Oromo province where clashes are taking place on a daily basis. People within the Afar and Amhara provinces and communities were drawn into the war against the TPLF. Over the border with Sudan, there are refugees in need of resettlement inside Ethiopia.

Despite these ongoing monumental problems, the peace accord in Ethiopia and the role of the AU has been hailed as a major achievement in line with the need to find African solutions to African problems. Such an approach could serve as a model for efforts to resolve the national and regional crises of relations which are in large measure prompted by the legacy of imperialism.

COP27: Egypt Provided Platform for African Proposals to Address Climate Change

Another series of extreme weather events in Africa have reemphasized the worsening threat of environmental degradation. In the KwaZulu-Natal region of the Republic of South Africa floods struck the urban areas around the strategic port city of Durban leaving thousands homeless.

Erratic rains and prolonged periods of drought are causing havoc within the agricultural production sector along with manufacturing impacted by  power cuts and the dislocation of work forces. Somalia in the Horn of Africa has been on the verge of famine since the early months of 2022. Disruptions in the agricultural supply chains due to the war in Ukraine and the unprecedented draconian sanctions against the Russian Federation by numerous imperialist states has hampered the importation of grain along with inputs such as fertilizers on the African continent.

Therefore, when the United Nations Climate Conference (COP27) was scheduled to be held at the Egyptian resort area of Sharm-el-Sheikh, this historic site and event fostered the belief among many that the African condition would receive a proper hearing. There were several preliminary meetings which led up to the actual summit.

Nevertheless, the large-scale presence of U.S. diplomatic and corporate representatives placed a damper on the overall tenor of the deliberations. Even though there was momentum for some form of a breakthrough in regard to acknowledging the obligations of the western industrialized capitalist states for the proliferation of greenhouse gas emissions, the resistance from the imperialists was formidable.

Towards the end of the conference there was the announcement of some type of fund which would address the impact of multinational corporations and their governments for environmental damage. However, the details remain murky while many can remember previous promises of compensation within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework a decade or more ago. The character of international finance capital operates within its own self-serving logic. A sharp increase in profits for the oil and natural gas firms based in the industrialized countries coupled with the economic and military conflagration involving the Russian Federation has intensified the scramble for energy resources on a global scale.

Therefore, the focus on halting further environmental degradation caused by climate change represents a major aspect of the struggle between the imperialist states and the majority populations and nations within the Global South. The future of the world will be determined by the outcome of the inevitable clash of the wealthy capitalist and imperialists against the workers, farmers and youth of the world.

African CDC Holds Second Public Health Summit in Kigali

Emerging from the almost exclusive pandemic virtual mode of conferences since early 2020, the Conference on Public Health in Africa held its second gathering in Rwanda in early December 2022. The summit highlighted the work of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an affiliate of the AU located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (See this)

This meeting mobilized African youth, scientists and medical workers to discuss the public health status within the AU member-states. At present the coronavirus pandemic appears to be lessening although new concerns have arisen in Uganda with the outbreak of the Sudan variant of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). Mpox, which had largely been an infectious disease seen in several West and Central African states, during 2022 made its appearance as a public health concern for people in the Western countries.

The African CDC holds internationally broadcast weekly briefings where data is presented on the number of recorded cases of Covid, Ebola, Mpox, cholera and a host of other diseases which threaten the continent and the international community. Statistics on the number of coronavirus vaccines administered by AU member-states are reported along with the efforts to enhance collaboration among scientists and healthcare professionals.

These briefings are open to members of various media agencies across Africa and throughout the world. Questions are often asked about the effectiveness of data collection and the progress being made in regard to the development of vaccines and other medicinal manufacturing on the continent.

The construction of continent-wide public health infrastructure institutions is vital in the realization of Pan-Africanism in the 21st century. As the population of Africa extends beyond its present 1.4 billion, the need for larger numbers of trained healthcare workers and researchers will grow exponentially. Retaining the workers within the AU member-states is of equal importance in light of the so-called “brain drain” from the continent to the imperialist states which can in many instances offer higher salaries and better employment conditions.

This does not mean that the migration of African technical workers even in the much-demanded healthcare sectors remain absent of difficulties. Inside the U.S. and the United Kingdom, there is much discontent among doctors and nurses who were severely impacted by health  problems and labor distress during the height of the pandemic. Strikes in both the U.S. and UK by healthcare workers illustrates the heightening contradictions manifested by the escalating class struggle.

Africa must rapidly move towards political and economic unification under socialism in order to effectively tackle the problems of inter-continental cooperation, environmental degradation and public health. The role of the people of the continent will inevitably make an enormous contribution to the broader struggle for the achievement of self-determination, economic justice and social emancipation.

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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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Read Part I:

Extremist Christian Militia in Lebanon May Ignite a New Civil War

By Steven Sahiounie, January 01, 2023

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This is part two of an examination of the current state of Lebanon. In part one, we looked at the Soldiers of God, an extremist Christian militia that pose a threat to the security of Lebanon and could ignite a new civil war.

Lebanon needs up to $15 billion to rise from its present economic collapse which was decades in the making and can be blamed on the corrupt ruling elite who lined their pockets at the expense of the citizens, driving the country into financial ruin and deadly social turmoil.

Despite elections in May, still, no President has been appointed, as various political parties and factions can’t form a consensus on a person to fill the key position.  The post of Prime Minister is filled with a caretaker, Najib Mikati.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported this month, that Lebanon’s national government and the World Bank should take urgent action to implement a social protection system to address the rising extreme poverty which has led to hunger. Lebanon has no welfare system similar to the US and UK.

The economic crisis brought street protests in 2019 calling for the corrupt ruling elite to leave. In the meantime, four out of five households had a member who had lost their job. The devaluation of the Lebanese currency means older people on pensions are now among the extremely poor and are not eating well.  Even those who have a job, have seen salaries cut by the government and private employers.

Lebanon has no free public hospital. Routinely, patients have died outside the door of private hospitals. Many Lebanese have in the past traveled across the border to Syria to obtain free medical services.

Electricity is non-existent in many households, cooking gas is unavailable or too expensive to buy, and medicines in the pharmacies are slowly going out as merchants are unable to pay for imports due to the lack of US dollars at the Central Bank of Lebanon.

Riad Salameh, the Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon, is under the protection of the US Embassy.  There was a previous arrest warrant issued against Salameh, but he remains free, and owning to his high level of foreign protection, it appears no one can get him out of office. He has been accused by several European countries of money laundering and illegal transactions.  It is generally accepted by financial experts on the case that he has absconded with billions of public funds.

According to the HWR report,

“The median household monthly income reported was just US$122 and inflation has continued to dramatically rise since the survey was taken. The average household size is four people including one child under 18. The share of those households living on extremely low incomes was high: Nationwide, 40 percent of households earned approximately $100 or less per month and 90 percent of households earned less than $377 per month.”

The United Nations estimated in 2020 that by taxing the wealthiest 10 percent in Lebanon the number of those in extreme poverty would be alleviated. But, this action was never taken by the Lebanese government and its wealthy ruling elite. The right to social security is enshrined in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

The ruling elite was supported by foreign governments that allowed their corrupt practices to continue for decades. The current poverty and desperation in Lebanon today can be traced back in part to western democratic countries that opposed Hezbollah and supported Israel.

Foreign intervention

The US

For decades, the Lebanese government has been run by policies written by the US Ambassador to Lebanon.  These policies are against Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria, and are pro-Israeli.

In November, the US warned Lebanon that they could fall under US sanctions if they were to accept the gift of fuel from Iran.  Lebanon is a failed state, and electricity is non-existent because there is no fuel to create electricity in the power stations. Lebanon does not have the money to make a fuel purchase, and gasoline stations were drying up.  Iran stepped forward with an offer of charity to benefit the Lebanese people; however, the US threatened Lebanon to not accept the free offer.

Hamed Mousavi, in the Journal of Politics and Law, 2008, wrote “The Israel-Lebanon War of 2006 and the Failure of US Foreign Policy”. Mousavi explains that the US encouraged Israel to attack Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Thousands were killed, maimed, and displaced after Israel carried out airstrikes over all sections of Lebanon. US President Bush wanted to create a new Middle East, but Israel was defeated in the war, and Hezbollah was strengthened.

France

On December 23, French President Emmanuel Macron said “The problem with Lebanon is that we must solve people’s problems and get rid of those who cannot do it.” He added, “Lebanon must change its leadership.”

His statements appear to be a public admission of promoting regime change in a foreign country. However, his sentiments are echoed by the Lebanese people, who took to the streets in 2019 demanding that the corrupt ruling elite leave and make way for fresh faces who are willing to work for the good of the nation. France hosted an international donor conference and raised $370 million for Lebanon.  Macron is keen to organize and promote another conference to help the tiny country which is now called a ‘failed state’.

“I care about Lebanese men and women, not those living off their backs,” Macron said referring to the ruling elite who refuse to step aside.  They have collectively made billions off of corrupt practices which became institutionalized.

Saudi Arabia

Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese Forces (LF) is seen as the politician most connected with Saudi Arabia.

Earlier this month, Geagea said, “Saudi Arabia plays a major strategic role in Lebanon.”  He added, “The KSA has openly declared that if a new head of state, who does not inspire confidence, came to power, it would no longer contribute to providing aid to Lebanon”

In September, Geagea met with the Saudi Ambassador to Beirut, Walid Al-Bukhari, and wrote on Twitter that the only salvation for Lebanon is its “Arab depth”, and “adhering to the constitution”. Geagea referred to the need for support from Arab countries, instead of always relying on western countries to come to the aid of Lebanon.

“I noticed that the leadership in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is ready and willing to help Lebanon, but with the presence of a trustworthy president and government. We have the ingredients to raise Lebanon, but these ingredients need someone to implement them,” he added.

Earlier in April, some officials were skeptical of restoring ties with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states after Hezbollah and its allies hold a great deal of political power. In the past, Saudi Arabia had invested billions of dollars in Lebanon and its upscale tourism economy.

Iran

Macron is in favor of including Iran in discussions concerning the rehabilitation of Lebanon.  This would be opposed by the US which has a hostile relationship with Iran. However, Iran is powerful in both Lebanon and Syria and is a country with resources that Lebanon could benefit from.

Iran supports Hezbollah because they are a resistance movement against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Syria, and the Shebaa Farms region in the south of Lebanon.

Lebanese mass migration

Many of the young professionals who took to the streets and social media in 2019 have by now left the country in a mass migration looking for a job,  a life with electricity 24/7, gasoline to fill a car, and without corrupt leaders who are isolated in their palaces.  The streets in Lebanon are silent now because the energetic youth have moved on and the country is stagnant.

The Israeli occupation of Lebanon

In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and reached Beirut, but eventually retreated to the southern region which they occupied until 2000. The south was a mixture of Christian and Muslim communities living in small towns and villages with a population estimated at 180,000.  Israel found a willing partner in the Christian militia, the South Lebanon Army (SLA).

Thousands of civilians were imprisoned, tortured, or killed in the Khaim Prison, which was turned into a museum after the liberation.  In the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon, Khaim was destroyed by a targeted airstrike by Israeli jets.

On May 24, 2000, the Israeli troops and officers withdrew from Lebanon. However, a border area known as Shebaa Farms remains under Israeli occupation.  Several resistance groups in Lebanon demand the return of Shebaa Farms, such as the Syrian Social National Party founded in 1938.  Hezbollah is the strongest of the resistance groups.  Hezbollah is a political party as well and has won parliamentary elections. The US and Israel are against Hezbollah, but there is no other armed group today that has the capability of protecting Lebanon from a future invasion by Israel. It was their asset as a military force that allowed former President Michel Aoun to ally with them.

Lebanon is at the breaking point economically, and socially it is sitting on a tender box of sectarian issues such as the extremist Christian militia, the Soldiers of God.  Foreign countries, including Israel, may be able to use the vulnerabilities of Lebanon to push their agenda, even if it sets the country on the path to a new civil war.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

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***

As a new year dawns, these past three years of Covidian deception weigh heavily, and the cumulative weight of this deception is staggering. What have we learned? What have we suffered? What good can come out of this assault upon our rights to our own bodies and mobility and freedom of expression, undertaken globally? What truth – or truths – have emerged from so many lies?

“Truth” has an interesting etymological lineage, connoting that which is firm, steadfast, strong and accurate, and connected in fact with the word “tree”.  And as I look back over these years and prepare for one which I hope will be an improvement, the single and most significant truth of them all is that those whom we have regarded as having the public welfare at heart – governments, institutions, media, statesmen, healthcare personnel – have betrayed us. They have, in fact, lied through their collective teeth and they have used every means at their disposal to promote their lies,  to foster fear and to pursue their petty goals of control, surveillance and outright murder.

Their campaign has been effective thus far. The majority of the people I know have accepted their absurdities, have tolerated a diminution of their innate rights, have blinded themselves to stark evidence about the fraudulence of the lethality of the Covid virus, about the dangers of the so-called vaccines, about the uselessness of face masks, about the perils of locking people down and grinding the world’s economies to a halt, and about the efficacy of prevention and treatment.

The majority of these people within my ken know next to nothing about the Great Reset and the machinations of the World Economic Forum and its political tentacles around the globe. The attitude of this majority has been monstrously callous towards those who have lost jobs, and monstrously ignorant even in the face of loss of life. They have become experts in the field of  complex medical causality whenever an inconvenient jab-related death crosses their path.

They accept – or profess to accept – a normalization of sudden child deaths, and sudden young athlete deaths and sudden middle-aged deaths, and myocarditis and blood clots and ferocious malignancies; and they refuse to participate in an open debate that would allow a questioning of their assumptions.

Emily Dickinson once cautioned, in one of her memorable poems, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant –/Success in Circuit lies”.

But time is running out: how much caution can we afford when the Powers and Principalities that have orchestrated the genocidal mess we are in keep their foot on the accelerator?  It seems that every time we get a breather, yet another menacing pandemic looms, and the drumbeat of fear starts a new crescendo, and the lapse into the absurd commences yet again.  While shopping recently I chanced to see a former colleague, an experienced psychiatrist, meander through the supermarket with his mask firmly in place, no doubt to render protection against the new waves of Covid that are sweeping through Wellington, New Zealand among the double, triple and quadruple-jabbed.

Elsewhere I have written about the nature of Power, and here I wish to emphasize again that Power invariably seeks to exploit anything it can to enhance its capabilities and to extend its reach. Material truths, such as those that determine computing efficiencies or weaponry, are avidly embraced and arrogated. Truths that pertain to human psychology and behavior, however approximate or incomplete, are recruited for purposes of manipulation.

Starkly and succinctly put, the ideal goal of Power is to accomplish moe and more with less and less effort until there is nothing but Omnipotence, within whose realm a mere wish is enough to effect material change.  We see precursors everywhere – a few keystrokes on a computer can result in a missile strike thousands of miles away, a few swipes on the face of a mobile phone can bring up the image and voice of a friend halfway across the world. For the technocratic cabal behind the Covid Agenda, to be God or god means to have total supreme complete control, notwithstanding the supreme irony of assuming that any God or god worth his or her salt could be so pitifully mundane.

Despite this all I am actually sanguine because we are now a world in transition with respect to communication and journalism. Until recently virtually all of the information we received derived from  the major media outlets and their social media offspring. We know with certainty thanks to Elon Musk that government agencies were in cahoots to censor and regulate Twitter accounts, just as we know with certainty that mainstream media is and has been thoroughly infiltrated by Deep State operatives.

Once we understand that our authorities lie, that these authorities have lied, and these authorities will always lie, then we can embrace our own revolutionary role in reporting news as citizen journalists not beholden to advertising, graft or coercion.

An immense opportunity beckons, perhaps an immeasurably hopeful one. And while truth may always be hard to fathom, we citizens have a much better chance of approximating it than propaganda mouthpieces whose function, even when they get the facts right, is to enhance the status of their paymasters.

Of course at the very core of this hope lies freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and an enthusiasm for open civil debate.   Why should a State or any group seek to censor and attack these liberties unless it or they have something to hide? New World Order puppet governments like New Zealand are now attempting to label those who differ from their (disastrously wrong) Covid policies as “domestic terrorists” – a sure sign that we dissenting underlings are calling their bluff.

It’s about time. Bring on 2023.

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The Dec. 16 announcement by Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of a new defense strategy, while doubling military spending by 2027 to implement it, is the largest defense shake-up in decades and a wake-up call to the antiwar movement. 

The decision includes openly acquiring offensive weapons and reshaping its military command structure for its expanded armed forces. On Dec. 23, the draft budget was approved by Kishida’s cabinet.

Japan’s dangerous military expansion should set off international alarm bells. This major escalation is taking place based on intense U.S. imperialist pressure. It is the next step in the “Pivot to Asia,” aimed at threatening and surrounding China and attempting to reassert U.S. dominance in the Asia Pacific.

The movements opposing endless U.S. wars must begin to prepare material and draw mass attention to this ominous threat.

The plan to double military spending will add $315 billion to Japan’s defense budget over the next five years and make Japan’s military the world’s third largest, after the U.S. and China. Defense spending will escalate to 2% of gross domestic product, equal to the goal the U.S. sets for its NATO allies. Japan’s economy is the world’s third largest.

The Japanese government plans to buy up to 500 Lockheed Martin Tomahawk missiles and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM), procure more naval vessels and fighter aircraft, increase cyber warfare capabilities, manufacture its own hypersonic guided missiles and produce its own advanced fighter jets, along with other weapons. The plan shifts from relying solely on missile defense to also embracing “counterstrike” capabilities.

Three key security documents — the National Security Strategy (NSS), as well as the National Defense Strategy (NDS) and the Defense Buildup Program (DBP) — shed some of the postwar constraints on the Japanese military.

Article 9 – a class struggle against military rearmament

Although the U.S. occupation force, after defeating Japan’s military in World War II, imposed a “pacifist” constitution on Japan, for decades now U.S. strategists have pressured Japan’s government to aggressively rearm, and especially to buy U.S.-made weapons, to act as a junior partner to U.S. efforts to dominate the Asia-Pacific region.

Article 9 of the imposed Japanese constitution prohibits Japan from maintaining an army, navy and air force. To get around this, the “Japanese Self-Defense Forces” (JSDF) have since 1952 been treated as a legal extension of the police and prison system. The U.S. occupiers considered the JSDF an essential repressive tool defending capitalist property relations against the workers’ movement.

The decision for aggressive military expansion is in open violation of Japan’s supposedly pacifist constitution.

The effort to “reinterpret” Article 9 has been a continuing political struggle inside Japan. Mass rallies of hundreds of thousands have mobilized many times in defense of Article 9, which offers a clear prohibition of Japan’s maintaining a military force. The widespread opposition to the Japanese military and to constitutional change comes from working people, mobilized by the unions and the communist and socialist movements.

This movement pointed out to everyone how the wartime militarist regime of the 1930s and 1940s carried out brutal repression and led Japan into WWII. The people know from bitter experience that these ultrarightist forces, whose roots are in historic Japanese colonialism, are the real threat to their rights and the social gains they have made.

The present doubling of the defense budget will be funded by raising taxes. A huge military budget will inevitably mean severe cuts to the country’s limited social spending.

The Liberal Democratic Party, which has held power almost continually since the 1950s, is right-wing, pro-military and allied to U.S. imperialism, especially against China and the DPRK. They have been pushing for an end to the constitutional and legal restrictions on the country’s military.

The assassination of retired President Shinzo Abe on July 8, 2022, just two days before Japan’s election, brought additional votes to the LDP. It was able to win the two-thirds supermajority in Parliament, needed to move forward aggressively with its military plans.

Targeting China

Japan’s military expansion fits in with Washington’s aggression aimed at China, the DPRK and Russia. U.S. strategists’ goal is to use the U.S. alliance with Japan, South Korea and Australia, just as it uses the U.S.-led NATO alliance in Europe.

The doubling of NATO’s membership and NATO’s targeting of Russia have led to war in Ukraine, when the U.S. government imposed thousands of new sanctions against Russia, and the U.S. has ruptured the European Union’s mutually beneficial trade with Russia.

China is Japan’s largest trading partner in both imports and exports. Previous National Strategy Documents said Japan was seeking a “mutually beneficial strategic partnership” with China. Suddenly Japanese strategists started labeling China “the greatest strategic challenge in ensuring the peace and security of Japan.” (U.S. Institute of Peace, Dec. 19)

Japan had expanded trade with Russia in gas, oil, autos and machinery. Previously Japan’s Dec. 17, 2013, National Security Strategy document called for “enhanced ties and cooperation with Russia.” Now Japan considers Russia a “strong security concern.” (USIP, Dec. 19)

A U.S.-Japan alliance is now defined as a “cornerstone” of Japan’s security policy. (Japan Times, Dec. 17)

U.S. praise of Japan’s rising militarism

The U.S. media praised Japan’s new security strategy document as a “bold and historic step.” U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan praised the defense spending hike, which “will strengthen and modernize the U.S.-Japan alliance.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Japan an “indispensable partner” and cheered that the changed security documents reshape the ability to “protect the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.” (quotes, whitehouse.gov, Dec. 16)

U.S. corporate power is the immediate beneficiary of this sharp turn in policy, built on military threats and economic sanctions.

Foreign Affairs Magazine calls the announcement “a profound transformation” and states: “The new national security strategy, however, represents a stunning change. … [T]he government is enacting policies that have been debated for decades but were always blocked. Until now … Japan’s new national security strategy should be applauded. ” (Foreign Affairs, Dec. 23)

U.S. needs collaborators

U.S. policy toward the defeated capitalist class in Germany, Italy and Japan was remarkably similar. At the end of WWII, many of the industrial leaders who had backed these fascist regimes were quietly protected and rehabilitated in Japan, Germany and Italy, along with the fascist collaborators who fled from workers’ control in Eastern Europe.

The U.S. and later NATO used the rehabilitated fascists against a rising workers movement in West Europe and against socialist construction in Eastern Europe. U.S. corporations, who had aggressively moved into the defeated Axis countries, needed insurance that their investments would be protected from the strike waves.

By 1950 the U.S. was at war on the Korean peninsula and, while using U.S. troops in Korea, needed a military force for “peacekeeping and self-defense” of capitalist property relations in Japan. Germany, Italy and Japan began to rearm during that period.

The impact on Okinawa

A chain of 150 islands called the Ryukyu Archipelago, of which the largest island is Okinawa, 400 miles from the Japanese mainland, is in reality a colony of Japan. Its population of 1.74 million people suffers from Tokyo’s rule and from the occupation by U.S. military bases. Okinawa is geographically closer to Taiwan than it is to the main islands of Japan.

Upgrading and strengthening Japanese ground units on Okinawa is part of the new National Security Strategy (NSS). Other islands, which are part of the chain southwest of Japan, will be further militarized.

Okinawa is the largest of the Ryukyu islands. (Source: Workers World)

Upgrading of Japan’s 15th Brigade on these islands for future electronic warfare, cyber warfare and joint operations of the ground, maritime and air forces are clearly a sign of plans to intervene in the Taiwan Straits.

In recent years, Japan has deployed anti-ship and air-defense missiles on its southwest islands of Amami Oshima, Okinawa Main Island, Miyako Island and a missile base on Ishigaki Island, the island closest to Taiwan.

More than 50,000 U.S. troops remain as an occupying force in Japan, at present the largest U.S. occupation force in any country. More than half of U.S. troops are based on Okinawa.

Okinawa residents, the Indigenous Ryukyu people, have spent decades protesting the constant presence of the U.S. military in their daily lives. There are now 31 U.S. military installations on the island prefecture of Okinawa, which accounts for 74% of the area of all U.S. military bases in Japan, although Okinawa only constitutes 0.6% of Japanese territory.

The U.S. maintains 73 military bases and 28,500 troops in South Korea. Both South Korea and Japan are forced to pay for “hosting” these troops of occupation.

‘Using North Korea threat as cover’

Japan has previously justified its remilitarization by claiming North Korea is a threat. However, retired Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) Admiral Tomohisa Takei told the media that China has been the main target for which Japan has been preparing, “by using North Korea’s threat as cover.” (AP, Dec. 17)

Both Japan and South Korea engage on a regular basis in coordinated military drills under U.S. command threatening Korea DPRK. Massive demonstrations in South Korea and missiles fired from targeted North Korea respond to these military provocations.

This cynical admission of the planning and preparation for war, while claiming self-defense, is similar to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Dec. 8 admission that the signing of the 2014 Minsk Agreement was not a peace treaty with Russia. Merkel confirmed that NATO wanted war from the start but needed time to prepare Ukraine militarily. (interview in Die Zeit, Dec. 7)

Having goaded Russia into an invasion of Ukraine in a bid to weaken and fragment Russia, the U.S. is next seeking to turn Taiwan into a military quagmire for China. The Biden administration is facilitating Taiwan’s purchase of advanced weaponry from the U.S. and greater diplomatic ties with the island.

Part of an effort to focus political attention through fact sheets, talking points, videos and webinars on the growing threat of U.S. pressure for Japan’s rearming is the short video, posted on the International Action Center website titled: “Japan’s constitutional amendment: a dangerous signal.” (tinyurl.com/mwjdt8rm) 

The video was made in China and includes U.S. participation. People from many countries will need to cooperate to confront the growing militarism in Japan, the U.S. and their allies.

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This article was originally published on Workers World.

Sara Flounders is an American political writer active in progressive and anti-war organizing since the 1960s. She is a member of the Secretariat of Workers World Party, as well as a principal leader of the International Action Center. Sara can be reached at [email protected].

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Countercurrents

First published by Global Research on December 23, 2019

China’s exit in October 1949, from the sphere of US control, was perhaps the heaviest blow to strike American post-World War II global hegemony. China’s successful drive for independence had been anticipated in Washington for many months.

In September 1948, the far-sighted American diplomat George Kennan noted that “there are considerable limitations on what we can do to affect the course of events in China”. Over the elapsing seven decades since, the scale of American influence in China’s domestic affairs has been restricted at best, but continues apace nonetheless. Washington has implemented a range of policies in the hope of destabilising and splintering China.

The Pentagon’s strategies towards China have somewhat mirrored those they directed against the USSR: Utilisation of proxy groups, extremists and ethnic minorities, along with client states.

The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIC), a terrorist organisation, was founded by Uyghur jihadists in 1988, just as separatist uprisings were breaking out in Xinjiang province, north-western China. The Turkistan Islamic Party, previously known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, received CIA sponsorship from its early existence.

In contradictory fashion, the Turkistan Islamic Party, which is based largely in north-western Pakistan, is deemed a terrorist organisation by the United States, along with other major countries like Russia, and of course China and its neighbour Pakistan.

By 2001, militant Uyghurs were preparing for guerrilla warfare in the same camps situated in Afghanistan where the CIA and ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, had once provided training to Mujahideen extremists – in order to hamper Soviet troops embedded in Afghanistan 40 years ago. Between 1990 and 2001, the Turkistan Islamic Party perpetrated over 200 terrorist acts, including blowing up vehicles, market places and assassinating Chinese government officials.

Following the September 11 attacks on America, Uyghur extremists were seen fighting against US soldiers during Washington’s “war on terror” in Afghanistan. Almost two dozen Uyghurs were sent to the notorious US-run Guantanamo detention camp in south-eastern Cuba, with some Uyghurs held there for as long as 12 years.

High profile Uyghur separatists, like the Xinjiang-born Anwar Yusuf Turani, founder of the East Turkestan Government in exile, is himself living in the state of Virginia, on America’s east coast. Turani has been a willing tool in Washington’s power game with China; in June 1999, he met with president Bill Clinton and asked him to back political movements seeking independence for Xinjiang; and Turani later enjoyed dialogue with Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, who promised to support the “fundamental human rights” of “Uyghurs and others living in China”.

Further prominent Uyghur exiles living in America have called for Xinjiang’s independence from China, such as Rebiya Kadeer, a five-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, born in Xinjiang, and who also resides in the US state of Virginia.

For 11 years until November 2017, she was the leader of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), headquartered in Munich, and which is partly funded by the National Endowment For Democracy (NED). The NED, partially subsidised by the United States Congress, has a long history of “soft power” interference in sovereign states around the world: China, Nicaragua, the Ukraine, and so on.

The World Uyghur Congress was established in April 2004 by Erkin Alptekin, a former adviser to the CIA.

Kadeer’s husband has previously worked as a commentator for the US government-run broadcaster, Radio Free Asia. Like Turani, Kadeer is something of a pawn for Washington in the growing US-China geopolitical rivalry. In the past, she accepted invitations to meet president George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, so as to seek backing for Uyghur independence from China. During a June 2019 visit to US ally Japan, she called on Tokyo to provide more political support for Xinjiang.

One of the central reasons for Beijing’s strong focus on Xinjiang, is because this region is rich in both oil (21 billion tonnes) and coal deposits (40% of China’s entire reserves). Some Uyghur natives have complained that Beijing simply dispatches the raw materials from Xinjiang directly towards the Chinese capital, and to other relatively affluent cities like Shanghai, without providing adequate compensation in response. Even a small surtax could be enough to significantly improve the living conditions of Uyghurs.

The experienced Brazilian historian, Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, wrote that Beijing’s vested concerns in Xinjiang are also partly due to its position as a pipeline hub; a territory through which natural resources pour into China from Central Asia, and which Bandeira states “was one of the factors behind the ethnic tensions that erupted over the course of the 1990s, and the beginning of the 21st century, with China investing $15 billion in the region’s infrastructure and development until 2001, including petrochemical plants and gas transports to Shanghai”.

The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), a state-owned company based in Beijing, “sought to transform Xinjiang into the country’s largest oil and gas production base until 2020”. Unsurprisingly, Beijing’s exploitation of Xinjiang’s resources has been increasing, while the province is a focal point too for China’s vast Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) industrial project.

Furthermore, Xi Jinping’s government retains strong ambitions in linking Xinjiang to Gwadar, a strategic port situated in southern Pakistan and which rests on the Arabian Sea. For a number of years, Beijing have been investing heavily in Pakistan, also reaching south to Gwadar, which could provide China’s administration with a field of scope into some of the planet’s most vital oil shipping lanes; with the Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf waters positioned tantalisingly close to Gwadar.

China is Pakistan’s largest trading partner, and Beijing views its neighbour as an important ally, borne out by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor – an infrastructural program between these two nations valued at tens of billions of dollars.

Focusing on the Pentagon’s efforts again to destabilise China, we turn our attention to Tibet: A glorious region in south-western China whose landscapes are dominated by towering, snow-filled Himalayan mountain tops, vast uninhabited plains, while in size Tibet is almost twice as large as France.

Following China’s 1949 revolution, the American Congress deemed that Tibet had a right to “self-determination”; and Washington gave full support to the Tibetan Government in exile, which was established in 1960 by the current Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso). The Dalai Lama – who has links to the CIA dating to the 1950s – fled to India from Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, following the failed and bloody 1959 Washington-backed Tibetan uprising against Chinese control.

This revolt was partially instigated within the United States itself, under the auspices of CIA officer Bruce Walker at Camp Hale, the US army training facility in Colorado. At Camp Hale from the years 1956 to 1957, the CIA extensively trained 250 to 300 “Tibetan freedom fighters”, all of which was kept secret from the public. The CIA’s training of Tibetans continued at Camp Hale until it was closed in 1964.

Another covert base for US operations against China was established in the Colorado ski resort town of Aspen, where Tibet’s proxy forces were flown over by American aircraft before being dropped by parachutes.

Other CIA training camps were established in separate locations in the south Asian country of Nepal, which borders Tibet to the north. Between 1949 and 1951, the number of CIA operatives engaged in covert actions increased ten times over. The CIA’s budget, for encouraging revolts and social unrest in China, reached 20 times the sum of money allocated for the 1953 overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. The CIA received assistance in targeting China from the special services of Nepal and India.

The Dalai Lama’s older brother, Gyalo Thondup, was involved in various CIA-sponsored operations against China, which were eventually crushed by Beijing, resulting in many thousands of deaths. Often playing the role of the Dalai Lama’s “unofficial envoy”, Thondup, living in India today and aged in his early 90s, first travelled to the US in 1951. He provided ample information to the US Department of State on all issues concerning Tibet.

A CIA-funded and armed Tibetan army, the Dokham Chushi Gangdruk, continued a guerrilla warfare campaign for years within the frontiers of China. By the mid-1960s, there were almost 2,000 US-supported combatants of Tibetan ethnicity in operation. The Dalai Lama benefited from generous quantities of CIA funds, and in 1964 alone he was subsidised with $180,000.

Until 1975, the Dalai Lama obscured the CIA’s role in the 1959 Tibetan revolt and other activities, at a time when he was in contact with US agents in Tibet. The Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, was furnished with an allowance from the CIA dating to the early 1950s, but perhaps even preceding that.

During an interview with the New York Times in mid-September 1993, the Dalai Lama said, “today, the help and support we receive from the United States is truly out of sympathy and human compassion”. Well into the 21st century, US governments have continued chanelling funds to Tibetan independent causes, through US Department of State branches like the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM).

Elsewhere in China, and in more recent times, Washington has been limited to utilising its “soft power” organisations like the Reagan-era founded NED, which is financially supporting the anti-Beijing protests in Hong Kong. Since 2014, the NED has provided about $30 million to Hong Kong’s pro-Western or independence marchers. The demonstrations have enjoyed large-scale coverage and sympathy from the mainstream press.

It may be apt to highlight the phrase used by the American scholars, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, in their book Manufacturing Consent – regarding the case of “Worthy and Unworthy victims”.

In liberal media analysis, there are quite often examples on display of our world’s recognised and unrecognised victims. The typical mass media narrative applies the principles of: Rohingya Muslims, “Worthy victims”. Palestinians, “Unworthy victims”. Hong Kong protesters, “Worthy victims”, Yellow Vest protesters, “Unworthy victims”, etc.

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

First published on January 1, 2019, minor edits

Today, Cubans are commemorating the 64th  anniversary of their independence. On this day in 1959, the Cuban Revolution was successfully conducted by Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement[i] and became an enduring symbol of resistance to neo-colonialism, capitalism, and hegemony. As a result, Cuba’s corrupt and brutal dictator, Fulgencio Batista (1901-1973), who had the full backing of the US government, left the island and escaped to the Dominican Republic, along with some of his loyal supporters. The victory of the Cuban Revolution meant that January 1, 1959 marked the first time in 467 years that Cubans were not subject to serfdom and exploitation by a foreign power.

Spain was the first country to exercise dominion over Cuba, beginning in 1510. However, Spain’s defeat at the hands of the Americans in the Spanish-American War of 1898 did not bring about the emancipation that Cubans were expecting, as the island was subsequently transformed into a US neo-colony.

In the period between the conclusion of the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the US exercised imperial power over Cuba, exploiting its natural and human resources, and dictating its domestic and foreign policies. When Batista, who was supported by Washington since 1933, came to power via coup d’état on March 10, 1952, he and his corrupt associates immediately collaborated with Washington and the American mafia to facilitate the continued exploitation Cuba’s resources.

In particular, he permitted the American mafia to take control of all the casinos on the island in exchange for millions of dollars being deposited into his Swiss bank account (Díaz-Briquets and Pérez-López 2006, 77). Meanwhile, throughout the entire period when Americans exercised imperial power over Cuba, Washington used its authority to advance the interests of American corporations, which ended up controlling all of the economic sectors on the island, in addition to gaining ownership of the best agriculture land, mines and natural resources. In fact, ‘[b]y the 1950s, the U.S. controlled 80 percent of Cuban utilities, 90 percent of Cuban mines, close to 100 percent of the country’s oil refineries, 90 percent of its cattle ranches, and 40 percent of the sugar industry’[ii]. The domination of Cuba at the hands of the Americans was best explained by Fidel Castro (October 10, 1968 in Manzanillo) when he stated:

the Yankees took over our economy. In 1898, US holdings in Cuba amounted to 50 million pesos; in 1906 they amounted to some 160 million; and in 1927, to 1.45 billion…I don’t believe there is another country in which economic penetration has taken place so incredibly quickly, allowing the imperialists to take over our best lands, all our mines, our natural sources. They controlled the public services, the greater part of the sugar industry, the most efficient industries, the electricity industry, the telephone service, the railroads, the most important businesses and the banks.

The island was essentially a playground for Americans, featuring gambling, drug trafficking, the mafia, gangsters, and prostitution, with Batista serving as their loyal puppet. Although Batista’s dictatorial and corrupt regime oppressed the Cuban population, violated human rights and committed countless crimes against democratic principles (equality and freedom), it was never criticized nor condemned by Washington. Batista’s dictatorial rule was accompanied by extreme rural poverty, misery, illiteracy, an increase in the number of sex workers, exploitation, and high unemployment rates. Almost half of Cuba’s adults and 37.5% of the total population were illiterate, and as much as 70% of all children did not have access to a teacher during the period of US dominance. Furthermore, most Cubans could not obtain housing or access decent healthcare services, and electricity and water infrastructure were very limited. These conditions, exacerbated by American domination in all segments of the economy, led to most Cubans experiencing exploitation, racism, police brutality, starvation and humiliation. Women were particularly vulnerable to exploitation, as many girls from urban areas elected to serve as prostitutes for American tourists and businessmen. It did not take very long for the American mafia operating on the island to realize that they could profit from this situation, which eventually led to them operating almost 300 brothels in Havana to supplement the money they earned from selling illegal drugs.

These appalling conditions inspired Fidel Castro and approximately 165 of his compatriots to make an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Batista dictatorship on July 26, 1953. Following their failed attack against the Moncada military barracks near Santiago de Cuba, Castro was sentenced 15 years in prison, of which he served only two years on account of a strong amnesty campaign that was organized by relatives and colleagues of the prisoners, as well as opponents of the Batista regime. After his release, Castro relocated to Mexico because of threats made against his life by the Batista government. There he organized, trained and armed a new group of revolutionaries that came to be known as ‘the 26th of July Movement’, commemorating the date of his first attempt to overthrow the Batista regime.

Fidel Castro and Camilo Cienfuegos, January 1959

By the time the 26th of July Movement was ready to attempt its overthrow of the Batista regime, it counted a total of 82 revolutionaries within its ranks, including Fidel, as the main organizer, Camilo Cienfuegos (1932-1959), Raúl Castro, Ernesto Ché Guevara (1928-1967), and Juan Almeida Bosque (1927-2009). In November 1956, all 82 of these revolutionaries left Mexico for Cuba on a 10-day voyage aboard a yacht called Granma, which only had the capacity to carry 12 passengers. Upon arriving in Cuba, they advanced to the Sierra Maestra mountain range in order to meet up with other supporters of the revolutionary movement against the Batista dictatorship. However, they were met by many attacks from the Cuban Army, and only 12 of the 82 revolutionaries survived to reach Sierra Maestra. Nonetheless, the survivors of the Granma yacht and supporters of the revolutionary movement on the island continued the guerrilla war by organizing resistance groups in towns and cities across the island. The Batista government responded by arresting and torturing large numbers of civilians in an effort to weaken and eventually defeat the revolutionaries. It was unsuccessful, as the guerrilla war prevailed in 1959, overthrowing one of the most brutal and repressive dictators in Latin American history, who managed to murder more than 20,000 Cubans and transform the country into a police state during his seven years in power, all with the full backing of his supporters in the United States.

Sierra Maestra, 1957, Fidel castro (fourt from left)

After the revolution, Fidel Castro governed Cuba, first as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976, then as President from 1976 until 2008. From the outset, his government consistently defended and promoted anti-imperialism and instituted measures aimed at ending the colonization, humiliation and exploitation of Cuba at the hands of the United States, which included shutting down all casinos and brothels on the island, marginalizing the mafia, and curtailing international tourism. One of the first acts of the new government was to nationalize foreign enterprises and utilities, including banks and telephone companies, most of which belonged to American companies. Additionally, refineries that were controlled by American corporations such as Shell and Esso were nationalized and Cuba signed a trade agreement to purchase oil from the Soviet Union. The Castro government also instituted a number of land and agrarian reforms, including measures aimed at limiting land ownership and forbidding foreigners from purchasing or possessing land in the country. In an effort to improve Cuban living standards, education and health care were made universally accessible to all citizens without exception. The Castro socialist regime also made large investments in housing construction and infrastructure improvements, which included building 600 miles of roads in six months. Through such actions, Cuba earned the reputation of being ‘the first territory free from imperialist domination in Latin America and the Caribbean’ (Fidel Castro, May 1, 2003 Havana).

American officials were unanimously opposed to the Cuban Revolution and the socialist reforms being implemented by the Castro government, viewing them as direct attacks against US interests in Cuba. President Dwight Eisenhower became furious with Castro’s nationalization process and anti-imperialist policies and retaliated decisively, eventually breaking off diplomatic relations with the island on January 3, 1961. Eisenhower also responded by collaborating with the mafia and approving efforts on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to overthrow Cuba’s socialist government, which came to be known as the ‘Program of Covert Action Against Castro’. These efforts culminated in the invasion at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961, where approximately 1,400 Cuban exiles that were trained, armed and funded by the CIA attacked Cuba in an attempt to topple Fidel Castro’s socialist regime. Although this failed invasion was executed when John F. Kennedy was President, the CIA began planning this operation in March 1959, when the Eisenhower administration was still in power.

Subsequently, in 1962, the Kennedy government imposed a full commercial, economic and financial embargo on Cuba, which blocked virtually all trade between the two countries and banned U.S. citizens from travelling to the island. Since being instituted, the trade embargo has been accepted as the best mechanism to reverse the socialist revolution by all of the subsequent US administrations. The rationale behind the imposition of the embargo was best explained by Lester D. Mallory, former deputy assistant Secretary of State, on April 6, 1960:

The majority of the Cuban people support Castro. There is no effective political opposition… The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection and hardship… every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba… a line of action which… makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.

The US embargo is widely accepted as the primary obstacle to the development of the Cuban economy since 1962, with the Cuban Foreign Ministry estimating total damages at more than $1.1 trillion as of 2014. Regardless, Washington does not consider the economic embargo to be a violation of human rights and insists that regime change is a prerequisite for lifting it, which runs counter to world opinion.

In addition to the commercial, economic and financial blockade, the Americans also employed a wide variety of other tactics aimed at destabilising and destroying Cuba’s socialist regime, which included funding Cuban exiles to organize terrorist attacks and sabotage the island’s economy, engaging in chemical and biological warfare, imposing economic and political sanctions that inhibited Cuba’s ability to access credit and loans from international banks and prevented free trade, and supporting CIA efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Although some estimates put the total number of CIA assassination attempts against Fidel Castro at 638, he has managed to become one of the world’s longest serving leaders of a nation. Interestingly, against the backdrop of all these attacks and efforts to reverse the Revolution, Fidel Castro consistently expressed his willingness to enter into negotiations to normalize relations with the US; however, he made it explicitly clear that while economic problems could be discussed, communism was not on the table. Specifically, Castro (May 1, 1961 in Havana) stated that:

Cuban people are capable of establishing their own government. We have never considered the possibility of discussing this. We will discuss only matters that do not affect our sovereignty.

In 1991, Cuba formally requested UN assistance in ending the blockade. Since then, the UN General Assembly has voted on a non-binding resolution criticizing the ongoing impact of the embargo every year, which has passed with overwhelming support on each occasion. In the most recent vote held in October 2018, 189 of the 193 member states comprising the General Assembly voted for the non-binding resolution, with only the U.S. and Israel voting against it and Moldova and the Ukraine abstaining. In fact, no more than four countries have ever voted against this resolution over its 27-year history, with the U.S and Israel being the only two countries that have opposed it every time. Support for the resolution has grown steadily, as evidenced by the declining number of abstentions since the initial vote, as members of the General Assembly, including many U.S. allies, cannot justify the devastating economic impacts of the embargo on the daily lives of the Cuban people.

The trade embargo targets all Cuban people indiscriminately, which directly violates articles 2[iii], 13[iv], and 25[v]of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). In fact, a thorough investigation conducted by the American Association for World Health[vi]in 1997 declared that ‘the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens…the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba. For several decades the U.S. embargo has imposed significant financial burdens on the Cuban health care system…since 1992 the number of unmet medical needs-patients going without essential drugs or doctors performing medical procedures without adequate equipment-has sharply accelerated. This trend is directly linked to the fact that in 1992 the U.S. trade embargo—one of the most stringent embargoes of its kind, prohibiting the sale of food and sharply restricting the sale of medicines and medical equipment-was further tightened by the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act.’[vii]Furthermore, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also confirmed ‘the impact of such sanctions on the human rights of the Cuban people and, therefore, insists that the embargo be lifted.’[viii]

After enduring significant hardships from repeated attempts to destroy Fidel Castro’s socialist regime on the part of Americans, Cubans were hit particularly hard by the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which produced what came to be known as the ‘special period’ from 1989 to 1995. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost its most important trade partner and the large subsidies emanating from the socialist block. Approximately, 80% of Cuban exports were destined for the Soviet Union, while a similar magnitude of imports originated there. As a result, the Cuban economy collapsed, contracting by more than 40% in 1992 alone. This led to severe shortages of basic needs, including food and medication, which resulted in malnutrition and a significant increase serious health problems during the special period. Of course, the US could never pass up such a grandiose opportunity to tighten the screws further by enacting measures to strengthen its embargo against Cuba with the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act in 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act in 1996.

In response to the hardships associated with the special period, Fidel Castro’s government initiated a number of quasi-free market economic reforms and sought foreign investment to reinvigorate the economy, which included permitting small-scale private enterprises, reopening the island to foreign tourism in 1993-94, and investing in biotechnology. In fact, the reforms implemented during the special period are the reason why many of the hotel and resort chains currently operating on the island are actually joint ventures between the Cuban government and foreign companies, primarily from Spain and Canada. That would suggest that Cuba has been trying to rejuvenate its socialist system since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, as opposed to abandoning its ideals in favour of capitalism.

Despite the disastrous economic consequences of the special period and the strengthening of the American embargo that accompanied it, Cuban socialism continued to produce many impressive achievements, including the attainment of full employment, universal access to free education and health care services, and improving social justice. As a result, the island was able to achieve higher literacy rates and life expectancy, and lower child mortality, child malnutrition, and poverty rates compared to any other Latin American country (Navarro, 2014, Vandepitte, 2011). In fact, the World Bank acknowledged that Cuba’s international ‘success in the fields of education and health, with social services that exceeds those of most developing countries and, in certain sectors, are comparable to those of the developed nations.’ Furthermore, according to estimates from the United Nations Development Program, Cuba ranks third in Latin America on the Human Development Index (HDI). More precisely, according to the United Nations Human Development Report 2017, ‘Cuba ’s 2017 HDI of 0.777 is above the average of 0.757 for countries in the high human development group and above the average of 0.758 for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.’

In addition to its success in areas of human development, Cuba has also been active in providing practical foreign aid in the form of sending highly-trained specialists, such as teachers, doctors, and engineers, to developing countries where they are urgently needed. Since 1959, Cuba has sent more than 300,000 healthcare professionals to various countries in Latin American and Africa that were otherwise unable to meet the health care needs of their citizens on their own. This is a practice for which Cuba is particularly well-regarded.

Currently, around 50,000 Cuban health workers are operating in 66 countries. To put that figure into perspective, in 2014, ‘Cuban medical staff were caring for more than 70 million people in the world, more than the whole G8 plus the World Health Organisation and Médicins Sans Frontières put together.’[ix]Cuba also helps combat doctor shortages by providing free medical school for students from various developing countries. In fact, Havana’s Latin American Medical School is ‘the largest medical school in the world’, producing approximately 29,000 doctors from 90 countries since 2005. The quality of the Cuban health care system has been acknowledged by former US president Jimmy Carter, who stated that: ‘Of all the so-called developing nations, Cuba has by far the best health system. And their outreach program to other countries is unequalled anywhere.’

Castro’s government was also well-known for its commitment to the environment, as demonstrated by the country’s sustainable use of natural resources and its efforts to combat over-consumption and global warming. Since 2006, Cuba was the only country in the world that managed to attain sustainable development, as defined by the United Nations Development Programme. In 2014, Cuba registered a low ecological footprint[x]of less than 1.8 hectares per capita, well below the 2.8 world average.

Outside of the western mainstream press, Cuba is actually widely-renowned for its commitment to peace, social justice, equality, and humanitarian aid since its socialist Revolution in 1959. Nowhere else in the world did the ‘spirit of international solidarity become so deeply rooted’ than in Cuban (Fidel Castro 2003). In 1963, Fidel Castro’s government organized the ‘Committee in Solidarity with Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia’, which sought to provide these countries with assistance during the Vietnam War by sending Cuban medical professionals, engineers and technological advice. Castro’s government was also an enduring supporter of Palestinian liberation, as evidenced by Cuba becoming the first country to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. In addition to consistently expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause, Castro permitted numerous Palestinian students to study in Cuba, sent 4,000 Cuban soldiers to defend Syrian territory from invasion by the Israelis during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and condemned Israel’s sealing off of the Gaza strip in 2012 as a ‘Palestinian Holocaust’. Fidel Castro also condemned the disastrous NATO-led military intervention of Libya that commenced in March 2011. Such actions and strong positions have made Fidel Castro highly-respected throughout the Arab world since the early years of the Cuban Revolution.

Cuba also played a prominent role in liberation movements on the African continent. For example, in 1961, Cuba supported the National Liberation Front in its fight against French colonialism in Algeria. Subsequently, in October 1963, after Algeria had been liberated from France, Cuba sent troops to help safeguard Algeria’s recently acquired independence against Moroccan expansionism during the Sand War (Fidel Castro, May 1, 2003 Havana). Cuba also sent material and military assistance in support of the Marxist Movement for the Liberation of Angola in the late 1960s. After Angola gained independence from Portugal in November 1975, Cuba supported the leftist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) by sending 25,000 troops to help repel interventions on the part of South Africa and Zaire, which were supported by Washington. After Zaire and South Africa withdrew their forces, Cuban troops remained to support the MPLA government during much of the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002), eventually leaving in 1991.

The impact of the Cuban Revolution was not limited to freeing Cubans from subservience to American domination; it was also viewed as a model for national liberation movements opposing imperialism and colonialism throughout Asia, Africa, and South and Central America. ‘The case of Cuba is not an isolated one. It would be an error to think of it only as the case of Cuba. The case of Cuba is that of all underdeveloped nations. It is the case of the Congo, it is the case of Egypt, it is the case of Algeria, it is the case of Iran, and finally, it is the case of Panama, which wants its canal back. It is the case of Puerto Rico, whose national spirit they are destroying. It is the case of Honduras, a portion of whose territory has been seized. In short, without specifically referring to other countries, the case of Cuba is the case of all underdeveloped and colonized countries…The problems of Latin America are like the problems of the rest of the underdeveloped world, in Africa and Asia. The world is divided up among the monopolies, and those same monopolies that we find in Latin America are also found in the Middle East. Oil in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and in every corner of the earth is in the hands of monopolistic companies that are controlled by the financial interests of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France…The monopolistic interests are not concerned with the development of the peoples. What they want is to exploit the natural resources of our countries and exploit the peoples.’[xi]

The Cuban people have been struggling against the ‘most formidable imperial power ever known to humankind’ for 60 years. It could be said that, ‘never has the world witnessed such an unequal fight’ when considering the relative sizes, populations, and military strengths of the two countries (Fidel Castro, May 1, 2003 Havana). However, despite these disparities in favour of the US, ‘Cuba crushed the Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion organized by a US administration, thereby preventing a direct military intervention…In 1962, Cuba confronted with honor, and without a single concession, the risk of being attacked with dozens of nuclear weapons…It stoically endured thousands acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks organized by the US government. It thwarted hundreds of assassination plots against the leaders of the revolution’ (Fidel Castro, May 1, 2003 Havana). Cuba was able to achieve these victories because ‘there is something more powerful than weapons, [no matter how sophisticated and powerful those weapons may be]: ideas, reason and the morality of cause’ (Fidel Castro, May 1, 2003 Havana). These are things that are not ‘born of human beings’ nor do ‘they perish with an individual’ (Fidel Castro, June 23, 2007).

‘Long live free Cuba! Long live the Victorious Revolution!’ (Fidel Castro)

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Global Research contributor Dr. Birsen Filip holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Ottawa.

Notes

[i]The 26th of July Movement became Cuba’s Communist Party in October 1965.

[ii]https://revcom.us/a/056/cubahist-en.html

[iii]‘Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.’ (http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/)

[iv]‘(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state’ and ‘(2) everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.’ (http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/).

[v]‘(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control’ (http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/).

[vi]‘The American Association for World Health (AAWH) was founded in 1953 as a private, non-profit charitable and educational organization, and serves as the U.S. Committee for the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Its purposes are to inform the American public about major health challenges that affect people both here and abroad, and to promote cooperative solutions that emphasize grassroots involvement.’ (http://archives.usaengage.org/archives/studies/cuba.html)

[vii]http://www.medicc.org/resources/documents/embargo/The%20impact%20of%20the%20U.S.%20Embargo%20on%20Health%20&%20Nutrition%20in%20Cuba.pdf

[viii]http://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/amr250072009eng.pdf

[ix]http://www.theindependentbd.com/arcprint/details/55858/2016-08-15

[x]An ecological footprint refers to the biologically productive area that is necessary to provide for everything that a person uses including fruits and vegetables, the consumption of energy, fibers, space for buildings and roads, etc.

[xi]Fidel Castro speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in 1960.

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The curtain is coming down on the brutal 11-year old Syrian conflict, which former US President and Nobel Laureate Barack Obama initiated, as the Arab Spring swept through West Asia two decades ago. The United States has suffered yet another big setback in West Asia as the year 2022 draws to a close. The unfolding Turkish-Syrian reconciliation process under Russian mediation is to be seen as a saga of betrayal and vengeance. 

Ankara came under immense pressure from the Obama Administration in 2011 to spearhead the regime change project in Syria. Obama blithely assumed that Turkiye would gleefully serve as the charioteer of “moderate” Islamism for the transformation in West Asia. But Ankara took its time to calibrate its foreign policies to adapt to the Arab Spring before responding to the shifting landscape in Syria.

Erdogan was caught unprepared by the uprising in Syria at a juncture when Ankara was pursuing a “zero-problems” policy with Turkiye’s neighbours. Ankara was unsure how the Arab Spring would play out and remained silent when the revolt first appeared in Tunisia. Even on Egypt, Erdogan made an emotional call for Hosni Mubarak’s departure only when he sensed, correctly so, that Obama was decoupling from America’s  staunch ally in Cairo. 

Syria was the ultimate test case and a real challenge for Erdogan. Ankara had invested heavily in the improvement of relations with Syria within the framework of the so-called Adana Agreement in 1998 in the downstream of Turkish military’s massive showdown with Damascus over the latter harbouring the PKK [Kurdish] leader Ocalan. Erdogan initially did not want Bashar al-Assad to lose power, and advised him to reform. The families of Erdogan and Assad used to holiday together. 

Obama had to depute then CIA chief David Petraeus to visit Turkey twice in 2012 to persuade Erdogan to engage with the US in operational planning aimed at bringing about the end of the Assad government. It was Petraeus who proposed to Ankara a covert program of arming and training Syrian rebels.

But by 2013 already, Erdogan began sensing that Obama himself had only a limited American involvement in Syria and preferred to lead from the rear. In 2014, Erdogan went public that his relations with Obama had diminished, saying that he was disappointed about not getting direct results on the Syrian conflict. By that time, more than 170,000 people had died and 2.9 million Syrians had fled to neighbouring countries, including Turkey, and the fighting had forced another 6.5 million people from their homes within Syria. 

Simply put, Erdogan felt embittered that he was left holding a can of worms and Obama had scooted off. Worse still, the Pentagon began aligning with the Syrian Kurdish groups linked to the PKK.  (In October 2014, US began providing supplies to Kurdish forces and in November 2015, US special forces were deployed in Syria.) 

Indeed, since then, Erdogan had been protesting in vain that the US, a NATO ally, had aligned with a terrorist group (Syrian Kurds known as YPG) that threatened Turkiye’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. 

It is against such a backdrop that the two meetings in Moscow on Wednesday between the defence ministers and intelligence chiefs of Turkey and Syria in the presence of their Russian counterparts took place. Erdogan’s reconciliation process with Assad is quintessentially his sweet revenge for the American betrayal. Erdogan sought help from Russia, the archetypal enemy country in the US and NATO’s sights, in order to communicate with Assad who is a pariah in American eyes. The matrix is self-evident. 

On Thursday, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said:

“At the meeting (in Moscow), we discussed what we could do to improve the situation in Syria and the region as soon as possible while ensuring peace, tranquility and stability… We reiterated our respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty rights of all our neighbours, especially Syria and Iraq, and that our sole aim is the fight against terrorism, we have no other purpose.” 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been counselling Erdogan in  recent years that Turkiye’s security concerns are best tackled in coordination with Damascus and that Adana Agreement could provide a framework of cooperation. The Turkish Defence Ministry readout said the meeting in Moscow took place in a “constructive atmosphere” and it was agreed to continue the format of trilateral meetings “to ensure and maintain stability in Syria and the region as a whole.” 

Without doubt, the normalisation between Ankara and Damascus will impact regional security and, in particular, the Syrian war, given the clout Turkiye wields with the residual Syrian opposition. A Turkish ground operation in northern Syria may not be necessary if Ankara and Damascus were to revive the Adana Agreement. In fact, Akar disclosed that Ankara, Moscow and Damascus are working on carrying out joint missions on the ground in Syria.

The Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu’s willingness right in the middle of the Ukraine war to take the steering wheel and navigate its reconciliation with Syria adds an altogether new dimension to the deepening strategic ties between Moscow and Ankara. For Erdogan too, Syria becomes the newest addition to his policy initiatives lately to improve Turkiye’s relations with the regional states. Normalisation with Syria will go down well with Turkish public opinion and that has implications for Erdogan’s bid for a renewed mandate in the upcoming elections.

From the Syrian perspective, the normalisation with Turkiye is going to be far more consequential than the restoration of ties with various regional states (starting with the UAE) in the recent years who had fuelled the conflict. Turkiye’s equations with Syrian militant groups (eg., Syrian National Army and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), its continued occupation of Syrian territory, Syrian refugees in Turkiye  (numbering 3.6 million), etc. are vital issues affecting Syria’s security.    

The US resents Erdogan’s move to normalise with Assad — and that too, with Russia’s helping hand. It is now even more unlikely to give up its military presence in Syria or its alliance with the Syrian Kurdish group YPG (which Ankara regards as an affiliate of the PKK.) 

But the YPG will find itself in a tight spot. As Syria requests Turkiye to withdraw from its territories (Idlib and so-called operation areas) and stop supporting armed groups, Turkiye in return will insist on pushing the YPG away from the border. (The government-aligned Syrian daily Al-Watan reported quoting sources that at the tripartite meeting in Moscow, Ankara has committed to withdrawing all its forces from Syrian territory.) 

Indeed, the replacement of the YPG militia by the Syrian government forces along the borders with Turkiye would lead to the weakening of both YPG and the US military presence. However, the question will still remain unanswered as regards the place of Kurds in the future of Syria. 

The US State Department stated recently,

“The US will not upgrade its diplomatic relations with the Assad regime and does not support other countries upgrading their relations. The US urges states in the region to consider carefully the atrocities inflicted by the Assad regime on the Syrian people over the last decade. The US believes that stability in Syria and the greater region can be achieved through a political process that represents the will of all Syrians.”

Last week’s meetings in Moscow show that Russia’s standing in the West Asian region is far from defined by the Ukraine conflict. Russian influence on Syria remains intact and Moscow will continue to shape Syria’s transition out of conflict zone and consolidate its own long-term presence in Eastern Mediterranean. 

OPEC Plus has gained traction. Russia’s ties with the Gulf states are steadily growing. The Russia-Iran strategic ties are at its highest level in history. And the return of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister means that the Russian-Israeli ties are heading for a reset. Clearly, Russian diplomacy is on a roll in West Asia. 

Conventional wisdom was that Russia and Turkiye’s geopolitical interests would inevitably collide once the floodgates were opened in Ukraine. Herein lies the paradox, for, what has happened is entirely to the contrary. 

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In Ashrafieh, the wealthy Christian neighborhood in east Beirut, there is a group of 300 young, muscular, and bearded men patrolling the streets from 6 pm. to 6 am. as part of Neighborhood Watch, but they have an extremist Christian ideology which many have termed neo-fascist. They call the group the Soldiers of God, and its members refer to themselves as the Guardian Angels.

According to an investigation carried out by Lebanese army intelligence, the Soldiers of God participated in the October 2021 massacre of 7 people, and the injury of 32 others who were Hezbollah and Amal supporters in Tayouneh, a neighborhood in Beirut. The report specified the names of the Soldiers of God members who participated and their connection to the Societe Generale Bank Group (SGBL).  The report also stated the person in charge of coordinating the massacre was Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea’s head of security, Simon Musallam.

Lebanese security has deemed the Soldiers of God as a “Christian extremist group that may pose a danger in the future.”

Who are the Soldiers of God?

They are an armed Christian militia tied to the Kataeb Party and the Lebanese Forces (LF) who have a long history of deadly violence during the Lebanese Civil War 1975-1990.

Some see the Soldiers of God simply as a Christian answer to Hezbollah. Sectarian divisions are dangerous in Lebanon, which is home to many religions and sects that formed the basis of the Lebanese civil war. The Lebanese people are concerned that a possible return to street battles between armed groups divided along sectarian lines might be the latest in a long string of disasters to hit Lebanon since 2019.

The group espouses a right-wing Christian ideology that is against secularism, communism, homosexual lifestyle, drugs, abortion, and civil marriage.  They are active on social media but shy away from media interviews.  While being based in Ashrafieh, they are known to be present in smaller numbers in Zahle, Jal El Dib, and Bourj Hammoud.

Who is funding the annual budget of $330,000?

The Neighborhood Watch is part of the Achrafieh 2020 civil organization, which was founded in 2012 by Member of Parliament, Nadim Gemayel, who is a member of the Kataeb party.  His father was the President of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, until his 1982 assassination.

Bashir Gemayel had founded a Christian militia, the LF, which fought in the Lebanese civil war and received their training in Israel. The party is now supported by Saudi Arabia and led by Samir Geagea.  The LF committed a massacre of 3,500 Lebanese citizens in 1982 in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps while their ally, Israel, guarded the perimeters.

Antoine Sehnaoui, (also spelled as Anton Al-Sehnawi) Chairman of the Board of Directors of SGBL, has been linked to the group as a source of funding; however, he has denied this. The Soldiers of God were founded by Joseph Mansour, an employee of SGBL, in 2020 and some of the group work for SGBL as security guards.

Are the Soldiers of God aligned with the ISF?

Representative Paula Yacoubian brought to light the curious case of a woman in Ashrafieh who was the victim of a home robbery. The woman called the local police to report the robbery, but it was the Soldiers of God who showed up at her door in response. The woman was so shocked that she reported the occurrence to her elected representative.

The General Directorate of the ISF issued a statement, in which it said that the matter was investigated and they did not find any interaction between the ISF and the Soldiers of God. The ISF has said they are against any type of vigilante group claiming to be providing security. Lebanon’s public security sector is underfunded and some have tried to justify the Soldiers of God as an additional source of security off the public payroll.

Achrafieh 2020 Secretary, Akram Nehme, said recently “First, we’re not in a war situation. Second, we are in complete coordination with the police, the Mukhabarat (intelligence agencies), and all the necessary authorities that are needed to do our activity.”

The Soldiers of God are supporters of the Kataeb Party and the LF and are opposed to Hezbollah and all refugees in Lebanon, such as Palestinians and Syrians.

Gemayel and Geagea

Samir Geagea is a Lebanese politician and militia commander who now leads the LF as a political party, following its demilitarization in 1986. Recently, Geagea said, “They are saying that they want a president who protects the back of the resistance, but do we need a president who would protect Hezbollah’s back, or do we need him to protect the back of the Lebanese?”

Geagea was referring to criticism directed at Hezbollah which some claim has prevented the election of a new President of Lebanon. The former President, Michel Aoun, had aligned his office with Hezbollah. Aoun was a former General during the civil war, and despite being Christian, he valued Hezbollah’s ability to defend Lebanon’s southern border while the national army was underfunded and lacked the weapons needed for security.

The Soldiers of God are loyal to the parties of Gemayel and Geagea. In the aftermath of the Tayouneh massacre, 68 people have been charged, with 47 of them being charged with “murder, attempted murder, inciting sectarian strife and forming an armed gang,” while 20 others are charged with “murder, attempted murder and possession of weapons without a license.”

The Lebanese Civil War

During the period from 1975 to 1990, an estimated 120,000 people died in the Lebanese civil war, with another 1 million who left the country. Lebanon is very diverse.  There are the Christians: Maronite Catholic, Roman Catholic, Armenian, Greek Catholic, and Syrian Orthodox.  Then the Muslims: Sunni and Shiite.  The Druze are a sizeable community as well. At one time in history, the Christians outnumbered the others, but in recent times the Muslims became the majority.

During the French mandate of 1920-1943, the political system and parliament became sectarian.  This focus on identity-based on religious terms laid the framework for the civil war, where each community had an armed militia and they turned the country into a warzone.

In 1989 the Taif agreement began the process of the end of the civil war. In 1991 all the militias were to be dissolved which the exception of Hezbollah and the Lebanese army was to begin rebuilding itself as the sole non-sectarian armed group. However, this never materialized and the southern border of Lebanon is protected by Hezbollah, much to the dismay of many Lebanese who wish there were only state institutions for defense and security.

The Lebanese people are worried that sectarian violence may be increasing and the flames of civil war may be fanned by the Soldiers of God, and their ties to the warlords, militias, and parties who participated in the Lebanese civil war.  This is part one of a two-part series explaining Lebanon’s position currently as a failed state.

*

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

All images in this article are from MD

 Gli Stati Uniti – come annunciato lo scorso mese* – hanno cominciato in dicembre a inviare in Italia e altri paesi europei le nuove bombe nucleari B61-12. Lo conferma un documento ufficiale del Dipartimento della US Air Force. Esso stabilisce “le norme di sicurezza per le operazioni degli aerei C-17 che trasportano armi B61-12 nell’area di responsabilità del Comando Europeo degli Stati Uniti”. Tale area, nella geografia del Pentagono, comprende non solo l’Europa ma l’intera Federazione Russa. 

Il documento specifica quali armi nucleari vengono trasportate con i C-17 Globemaster, i più grandi aerei USA da trasporto militare.  Essi portano dagli Stati Uniti in Europa le bombe nucleari B61-12 e dall’Europa negli Stati Uniti le bombe che esse sostituiscono: le B61-3, B61-4 e B61-7. Una singola B61-12 ha infatti quattro opzioni di potenza a seconda dell’obiettivo da colpire. I C-17 Globemaster – specifica sempre il documento – trasportano anche altre armi nucleari: B61-11, W78, W80-1, B83-1, W87-0.

Le norme di sicurezza elencate nel documento confermano la pericolosità delle operazioni di carico, trasporto e scarico delle armi nucleari. Vi può essere “la probabilità di incendio di un aereo con armi nucleari a bordo” e un guasto dell’aereo mentre è in. volo che costringe a “un atterraggio di emergenza” o allo “sgancio di un’arma nucleare”.

Lo schieramento sul nostro territorio nazionale delle nuove bombe nucleari USA – armi da first strike con guida di precisione e capacità anti-bunker, di cui saranno dotati soprattutto i caccia F-35 – espone l’Italia in prima linea nel sempre più pericoloso confronto tra NATO e Russia. In tal modo l’Italia viola il Trattato di Non-Proliferazione delle Armi Nucleari, ratificato nel 1975, il quale stabilisce: “Ciascuno degli Stati militarmente non nucleari si impegna a non ricevere da chicchessia armi nucleari, direttamente o indirettamente”. 

La puntata si chiude con una intervista allo storico Franco Cardini sul silenzio del governo e parlamento italiani e sulla fase storica che viviamo.

Manlio Dinucci

 

*Vedi Grandangolo del 4 novembre 

https://www.byoblu.com/2022/11/04/sotto-lalbero-di-natalela-nuova-bomba-nucleare-usa-b61-12-grandangolo-pangea/

 

STASERA ALLE 20:30

SUL CANALE TV 262 BYOBLU

GRANDANGOLO

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Introductory Note

The WHO’s Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, took the decision unilaterally (without the endorsement of The IHR Emergency Committee) to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). (July 23, 2022)

Conflict of Interest? Multibillionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is Dr. Tedros’ mentor. The WHO is partly funded by the Gates Foundation. 

Bill Gates had envisaged a smallpox pandemic scenario more than five years ago at the Munich Security Conference in February 2017:

“The next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus … or a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu. 

“An outbreak that is concentrated among men who have sex with men”:

“Although I [Tedros] am declaring a public health emergency of international concern, for the moment this is an outbreak that is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners.

Dr. Tedros’ “Aloneness”:

Is this a “legal decision” taken by Dr.Tedros (“Me, Myself and I”) in defiance of the WHO Emergency Committee on behalf of 194 member states of the WHO?

What’s the science behind this far-reaching statement.

Michel Chossudovsky, August 6, 2022

See Video: Michel Chossudovsky and Peter Koenig. The Gates-WHO Monkeypox Crisis

To leave a comment or Access the GRTV Bitchute site click here

With thanks to Dr. Stephen Frost, Webinar presentations, recorded on August 2, 2022

***

Ten Countries, Ten Airports. (That’s Where the Testing Takes Place)

Screenshot of November 4 2021 Article in Evening Standard

 

***

See Related Articles on the WHO’s Monkeypox PHEIC

For further details on the Timeline and the Simulated Scenario of a Monkeypox Epidemic:

Worldwide Monkeypox Health Emergency (PHEIC): For Bill Gates, It’s “Moneypox”: Simulation of Fictitious Monkeypox Virus Pandemic in March 2021, Goes Live in May 2022 

See also article by Michel Chossudovsky

“Factual Chaos” at the WHO? Dr. Tedros: Monkeypox Outbreak Is “Among Men Who Have Sex with Men”

 

 

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Latest Update July 23, 2022. First published on May 21, 2022

Author’s Note and Update

The WHO Declares a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

In recent developments,  the WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus  went against the majority vote of the WHO expert committee (9 against 6 in favor): i.e. AGAINST the calling of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PEIC).

“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing in Geneva on Saturday (July 23). “I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern.”  

The evidence is scanty, the motivation is political.

The unspoken objective is to sustain the fear campaign. 

According to Bloomberg, “The declaration from Tedros … underscores divisions within the organization over the severity of the threat. The pathogen typically causes flu-like symptoms, followed by a rash that often starts on the face and spreads down the belly.  (Bloomberg)

Is Dr. Tedros in conflict of interest, going against a committee of medical doctors and scientists?  The WHO is funded by the Gates Foundation. And Bill Gates is centrefold. He has been pushing for the monkeypox scenario since 2017. (see analysis below). 

And guess what: it’s the Real Time PCR test which the CDC declared invalid for detecting SARS-CoV-2 (effective December 31 2021) which is now being used to “detect the monkeypox pathogen”. 

The July 2021 CDC advisory pertaining to the failures of the RT-PCR test reads as follows:

“CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza”.

And now the CDC has put forth a procedure “used for the detection of Monkeypox virus DNA in clinical specimens by real-time PCR”: 

“This [RT-PCR] assay detects DNA at varying concentrations, providing a qualitative result of either positive, negative, or inconclusive in the identification of Monkeypox virus infections.” (CDC)

If you test RT-PCR positive for Covid-19, it may be “mistakenly” tabulated as a “positive” Monkeypox virus infection.  

Versatility of the RT-PCR test! Anything Goes. SARS-CoV-2, Influenza, MonkeyPox. It is also being applied to detect the “dangerous” Covid omicron variants and BA 4 and 5 sub-variants. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research July 23, 2022

See Related Article on the WHO’s Monkeypox PHEIC

 

“Factual Chaos” at the WHO? Dr. Tedros: Monkeypox Outbreak Is “Among Men Who Have Sex with Men”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky,

 

Video: Michel Chossudovsky and Peter Koenig on the WHO Monkeypox Agenda

With thanks to Stephen Frost, Webinar presentation, recorded on August 2, 2022

***

Another Chapter of “Fake Science” is Unfolding

Say Goodbye to SARS-CoV-2, Say Hello to the Monkeypox Pathogen

Screenshot of November 4 2021 Article in Evening Standard

Possible “Monkeypox Terror Attacks” Announced by Bill Gates in November 2021

In a TV interview with Jeremy Hunt in early November 2021, Bill Gates warned  governments to prepare for simultaneous smallpox terror attacks in 10 airports:

“You say, OK, what if a bioterrorist brought smallpox to 10 airports? You know, how would the world respond to that? There’s naturally-caused epidemics and bioterrorism-caused epidemics that could even be way worse than what we experienced today”, he said (emphasis added)

Ten Countries, Ten Airports. (That’s Where the Testing Takes Place)

Compare that to the latest news report on May 19, 2022, more than six months later (emphasis added):

An unprecedented outbreak of monkeypox virus has officially spread to 10 countries outside of Africa, with 107 confirmed or suspected cases reported as of this writing, in the United Kingdom (9 cases), Portugal (34), Spain (32), France (1), Belgium (2), Sweden (1), Italy (3), Canada (22), the United States (2), and Australia (1). (WSWS, May 19, 2022)

To watch the video interview with Bill Gates click below

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Video Interview with Michel Chossudovsky on Monkeypox

click lower right corner for fullscreen

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Bill Gates’s February 2017 Warning of Bioterrorism: Deadly Strain of Smallpox Virus. Munich Security Conference

This is not the first time that Bill Gates has warned governments of the dangers of a bioterrorist attack involving a deadly strain of the smallpox virus. The following announcement was made at the 2017 Munich Security Conference:

“The next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus … or a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu.” (Munich Security Conference, February 2017, emphasis added)

Click Screen to access video:

Munich Security Conference, 2017

 “Investing Billions in Research”. For Bill Gates, It’s “Moneypox”

Another Warning by Bill Gates of a Smallpox Terror Attack,  November 2021

On November 4, 2021 Bill Gates warned governments “to prepare for future pandemics and smallpox terror attacks by investing billions in research and development”. 

Mr Gates made the warning during a Policy Exchange interview with the chair of the Health Select Committee Jeremy Hunt.

The Microsoft founder also called for the formation of a new billion-dollar World Health Organisation Pandemic Task Force.  

He said that countries like the US and the UK must spend “tens of billions” to fund the research.

“I’m hoping in five years, I can write a book called, ‘We ARE ready for the next pandemic’, but it’ll take tens of billions in R&D – the US and the UK will be part of that”, he said.

“It’ll take probably about a billion a year for a pandemic Task Force at the WHO level, which is doing the surveillance and actually doing what I call ‘germ games’ where you practise.” (Evening Standard, emphasis added).

But there is more in this unfolding multibillion dollar monkeypox saga.

Is a New Fear Campaign in the Making?

The monkeypox simulation agenda was planned well in advance. It started in December 2020 with a meeting of senior U.S National security officials.

The Monkeypox Time Line

The Time Line is as follow:

• December 2020: US National Security and Biological Weapons Experts’ Meeting under the auspices of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Planning and Formulation of a Simulation of a Monkeypox Pandemic,
• July 2020: FDA approval of Smallpox and Monkeypox Vaccine, “first permitted commercial marketing or use of the product” in US. (For details see below)
• March 2021 Tabletop Simulation of Fictitious Monkeypox Pandemic at Munich Security Conference 2021
• November 2021. Bill Gates warns governments of the likelihood of a monkeypox terrorist attack (see statements above)
• May 2022. WHO announcement. Towards a Monkeypox Pandemic? Unfolding Fear Campaign.
• Commencing May 2022. The marketing of Smallpox vaccines, effective against monkeypox.
• May 2022- : Ongoing propaganda in support of the WHO Pandemic Treaty (coupled with the QR Code).

December 2020: The Expert Planning of A Tabletop Simulation of a Monkeypox Virus Pandemic

As early as December 2020, a simulation of a monkeypox pandemic had been envisaged by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a nonprofit organization, founded by former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn and philanthropist Ted Turner. 

Ted Turner has a close relationship with Bill Gates. He is a member of The Good Club which includes Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey and many more. The Good Club is known for its resolve to “Try to Shrink World’s Population” according to the WSJ.

The NTI National Security and Biotechnology Advisory Group

At the December 2020 meeting, the NTI convened a group of experts to “advise” on the tabletop exercise scenario. Among the experts were senior officials, scientists and experts in bioterrorism and national security,  from U.S. entities including the Department of Homeland Security, USAID, State Department, National Defense University, John Hopkins, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health,  Department of Health and Human Services, etc.  (See page 27 of report)

The following NTI report entitled:

Strengthening Global Systems to Prevent and Respond to High-Consequence Biological Threats: Results from the 2021 Tabletop Exercise Conducted in Partnership with the Munich Security Conference,

by Jaime M. Yassif, Ph.D., Kevin P. O’Prey, Ph.D., and Christopher R. Isaac, M.Sc.,

A Note on the History of “Scenario Simulations” of Pandemics

Scenario Simulations of Pandemics were initiated  with Rockefeller’s “Lock Step Scenario” in 2010 which consisted in  the use of “scenario planning” as a means to carry out “global governance”.  In the  Rockefeller’s 2010 Report entitled “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development Area” scenarios of Global Governance and the actions to be taken in the case of a Worldwide pandemic were contemplated.

More specifically, the report envisaged (p 18) the simulation of a Lock Step scenario including a global virulent influenza strain. The 2010 Rockefeller report was published in the immediate wake of the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic.

And then in 2018, The Clade X Table Top Simulation was conducted under the auspices of the John Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Clade X was described by its organizers as a day-long pandemic tabletop exercise the purpose of which “was to illustrate high level strategic decisions in the United States and the world … to prevent a pandemic”.

It was  “played by individuals prominent in the fields of national security or epidemic response”.

EVENT 201 (October 2019)

Clade X was followed by another tabletop simulation entitled Event 201 (also under the auspices of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in October 2019). Event 201 pertained to a coronavirus epidemic entitled 2019-nCoV. 

Among the 201 John Hopkins table top scenario “players” were key personalities holding advisory and senior positions in a number of core organizations. Less than 3 months later,  these 201 “players” became actively involved in the policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The Monkeypox Scenario Exercise Summary

Below is the executive summary of the March NTI Simulation (emphasis added) followed by relevant excerpts as well as the list of participants.

It is worth noting that while the December 2020 team which formulated the simulation project were exclusively from the US focussing on issues of national security, the participants of the Table Top Scenario were from Big Pharma, the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, WHO, UN, as well as representatives from the EU, China, Africa. (See list below)

These recommendations (which in all likelihood were discussed in December 2020 by the National Security and Biotech advisors prior to the conduct of the Simulation Scenario) are intended to support the WHO Pandemic Treaty (coupled with the QR Code) which consists in establishing a global digital data bank which derogates the rights of individual member nation states. The pandemic treaty is intent upon establishing the contours of a system of “Global Governance” dominated by the financial establishment.

It should be noted that two key participants of the Monkeypox 2021 NTI simulation were involved in the John Hopkins 201 Scenario (October 2019) which consisted in the simulation of a novel corona virus 2019-nCoV pandemic. These included Dr. George Gao Fu, head of China’s CDC and Dr. Chris Elias, President of the Global Development Division of the Gates Foundation, both of whom played a key role in staging the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in early 2020.

And currently George Fu Gao is playing a key role in the implementation of China’s Zero Covid Strategy which has led to the lockdown of Shanghai in late March 2022, as well as in several other major urban areas.

 

A New Fear Campaign? Pandemic Preparedness in America. The Smallpox Vaccine Effective against Monkeypox

Governments have already placed orders for the delivery of smallpox vaccines effective against monkeypox. 

While there were only two confirmed cases in the US of monkeypox recorded on May 18, the US government had already signed a contract with Bavaria Nordic  consisting of an order of  “millions of doses of a vaccine that protects against the virus” (Forbes).

The terms of this contract were in all likelihood negotiated prior to the announcement of the outbreak of the 92 monkeypox cases by the WHO on May 13.

Bavarian Nordic, the biotech company that makes the vaccine, has announced a $119 million order placed by the U.S., with the option to buy $180 million more if it wants. Should that second option be exercised, it would work out to approximately 13 million doses.

The order will convert existing smallpox vaccines, which are also effective against monkeypox, into freeze-dried versions, which have a longer shelf life.

How long is the “pandemic” slated to last?

“The converted vaccines will be manufactured in 2023 and 2024”, according to Bavaria Nordic (May 18, 2022.

Screenshot from Bavaria Nordic Announcement

The Role of Johnson and Johnson?

What the media has failed to acknowledge is the relationship between Johnson and Johnson and Bavarian Nordic, the Danish Biotech Company.

Bavaria North was a Partner of J and J until May 10, 2022, 3 days prior to the WHO official announcement pertaining to the alleged monkeypox outbreak.

The Global Head of J and J and Jannsen’s Public Health R&D is Dr. Ruxandra Draghia Akli, who participated in the Table Top Simulation on behalf of Big Pharma. (See list of participants above). Was the smallpox monkeypox vaccine developed by Bavaria Nordic in partnership with J and J?

The earlier Patent was registered in the US by Bavarian North. It was reviewed and first permitted for commercial marketing by the FDA on July 14, 2020, nine months prior to the NTI sponsored Scenario Simulation in March 2021 at the Munich Security Conference

Live (U.S. Patent No. 7,335,364) from Bavarian Nordic A/S, and the USPTO requested FDA’s assistance in determining this patent’s eligibility for patent term restoration. In a letter dated July 14, 2020, FDA advised the USPTO that this human biological product had undergone a regulatory review period and that the approval of Smallpox and Monkeypox Vaccine, Live represented the first permitted commercial marketing or use of the product.

As filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on January 11, 2016: Bavaria North acknowledges its relationship to Johnson and Johson. 

 

In China, Social Media has Gone Haywire

According to a Daily Mail Report

 

 

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US Representative for Silicon Valley Ro Khana argues that the US should become a manufacturing superpower – again. Writing from an American perspective, Khana remarks that the rising US trade deficit since 1998 has cost the country 5 million well-paying manufacturing jobs, leading to the closure of about 70,000 factories. This process has destroyed several communities, while wealth has concentrated in large coastal cities. Deindustrialization and its consequences are familiar to people in many countries, and it now haunts post-Nord Stream Europe too, according to  Irish economist Philip Pilkington, as I’ve written.

Although deindustrialization is a fact, there is nothing “inevitable” about it and scholars today question the whole idea that the process is a natural outcome of technological changes that supposedly always lead to the reign of the service sector.

Be it as it may, deindustrialization is real enough and the complex dynamics behind it pertain to policies both at the international and the domestic level.

Globalization, particularly, allows companies to hire highly trained and yet less expensive workforce abroad. The so-called manufacturing sector is not the only one affected: in fact, remote work has opened new opportunities for white-collar workers – and has also made outsourcing more attractive. A estimates that 3.4 million white collar jobs in the US will be sent offshore between 2003 and 2015.

Moreover, Meta itself is reducing headcounts for the very first time ever. As big tech stocks now face high interest rates, Facebook, now Meta, has been overtaken, in terms of market value, by ExxonMobil Corp, as writes journalist Joe Weisenthal. This has been described or even applauded by some analysts as an instance of the so-called “triumph of the real”. The reality shift discourse today also extends to the financial realm, as in Russian President Vladmir Putin’s famous quote about “real reserves” – versus paper and digital assets.

Nothing is simple, though. Economically, in the post-pandemic post-Nord Stream world, amid the Ukraine conflict and the energy crisis, we are right now living peculiar times of intense uncertainty, with high volatility not seen since the 2020 global crisis. Besides that,  the relationship between stock market and the labor market strength is no longer stable, which means that good news are not necessarily good news, and the future of the dollar itself is unclear, as de-dollarization advances globally even though (or precisely because) the rising dollar brings the planet closer and closer to recession.

Re-industrializating the nation resonates everywhere today as a good response to many such ills. While much has been said about the social consequences of deindustrialization and outsourcing in terms of domestic social conflicts and tensions, there is also, from the point of view of the nation-state, an important strategic angle, where geopolitics and geoeconomics converge.

Of course, with the pandemics and the global supply chain crisis, many lawmakers have turned their eyes to the importance of a more resilient economy, in terms of industrial policy. In the US, for instance, different voices have been calling for the re-shoring of supply chains critical to the national interest, including medicines and strategic technology – and this call often employs the language of national security concerns.

In this spirit, Ro Khana, in the aforementioned piece, argues that economic imperatives should drive US foreign policy with regard to its rival China. He also suggests that manufacturing workers are much more likely to join unions, thus benefiting from protections that make them part of the large American “middle class”. This, Khana reasons, make for a more democratic society, with less internal conflict. However, one should add that if such positive outcomes are based on hurting other countries, this can alienate even potential partners and allies.

As I’ve written, it is increasingly difficult to insulate industries from geopolitical disputes in today’s world. For sure, it is only natural that nations seek to defend their own interests and to compete. The problem is that while Beijing, for instance, seems to have turned geoeconomics into the very core of its geostrategic approaches (thereby deriving political power from economic power),  Washington, on the other hand, has been dangerously weaponizing economic policies and in fact its financial system and the very world economy.

Washington seems to already share at least some of Khana’s concerns – at the expense of even its partners and allies, though. One can see this quite clearly with regards to the US chip war (against China), and how it hurts Taiwan itself, as exemplified by the chip giant TSMC’s new plant in Arizona. The American subsidy war against Europe is yet another case in point. Biden’s new subsidies package basically aims at wiping out the rival European industry, and the EU in turn is now preparing a huge subsidy initiative to counter  the American one. Besides the more familiar arms race, we can now witness a peculiar and weaponized industry race.

Industrialization/manufacturing holds the key for the powers and the emerging powers in the 21st century, even when so much is talked about the “post-industrial” world. The hard truth is that neoliberalism is quite dead: subsidies, domestic procurement mandates, and protectionism in general are on the rise. Economic nationalism should thus become increasingly relevant – and, unfortunately, so should trade and industry wars. The dangers of this scenario, to sum it up, involve making economic warfare much more dangerous than it already is, by turning things into an existential challenge for the targets of such warfare, thereby “cornering” them – be they rivals, enemies or even partners and allies.

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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During the course of 2022, the security situation in the eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) became a flashpoint for international concern and East African military intervention.

The-then outgoing Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta through a series of statements provided a clear indication that his country, the largest economy in the East African Community (EAC), would send a military force to the contested areas of the DRC where the credibility of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force (MONUSCO), which has been in the mineral-rich state for nearly two decades, has completely evaporated.

Since November 2021, the rebels have escalated their attacks on civilians while fighting several battles with the Congolese military. These M23 fighters are making demands on the DRC government in Kinshasa claiming that the previous administration of President Joseph Kabila had refused to integrate them into the Congolese national defense forces.

The clashes between M23 and the recently arrived EAC peacekeeping forces are ongoing despite the multilateral agreement which was reached in the Republic of Angola during November where the governments of the DRC and Rwanda settled upon a disengagement of forces. M23 was not a part of the negotiations and consequently is not a signatory to the agreement.

Angola and the DRC are member-states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) which encompasses 16 governments from throughout the sub-continent and Indian Ocean island-territories. However, the soldiers involved in the EAC peacekeeping operations are all from East Africa. (See this)

Mass demonstrations have been held in several towns in the eastern DRC against the continuing presence of MONUSCO. Residents of these communities in North Kivu around Goma and other areas say that the UN peacekeepers are not fulfilling their mandate to protect civilians from violent attacks by the M23 rebel organization.

According to a recent report on the situation in eastern DRC:

“Fighting between the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and suspected members of the M23 rebel group continues in North Kivu Province as of Dec. 28. Clashes reportedly resumed Dec. 26 in the Bishusha, Tongo, Karenga, and Karuli areas. Around 50 people suspected of collaborating with ethnic Hutu Congolese militias were also reportedly kidnapped by M23 rebels in Rusekera. This comes after forces of the East African Community (EAC) officially took back control of Kibumba, a town located about 20 km (12 miles) from Goma, Dec. 23, after the M23 rebels withdrew from the area following a joint conference between the M23, officials of the EAC regional force and some members of the Joint Verification Mechanism of the Great Lakes region, Dec. 22.”

Neighboring Rwanda has been accused of arming and bankrolling the M23 rebels. Rwandan President Paul Kagame denies backing the rebels despite the allegations being made also by the United States and France.

M23 is reportedly composed of the Tutsi ethnic group which lives in the eastern DRC. The rebels are often described as Rwandans since they come from the same ethnicity as the ruling party in Kigali.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda remains a cornerstone of Kagame’s domestic and foreign policies. Hutu ethnic leaders who controlled the Rwandan government during the early 1990s coordinated the attempted extermination of the Tutsis. The Rwanda administration accuses the DRC of harboring the same Hutu elements which carried out the mass killings nearly three decades ago. France, which had troops in Rwanda at the time when the genocide which began in April 1994, has had a rocky diplomatic relationship with Kigali.

Until the processes of reconciliation and renewal are satisfactorily completed in regard to the events of 1994, there will continue to be tensions between the two major ethnic groupings in Rwanda. Neighboring states in East and Central Africa cannot avoid being cognizant of this history which is a manifestation of the legacy of German and Belgian colonialism which institutionalized ethnic stratification and animosity during the late 19th century extending well into the conclusion of the 20th century.

SADC, Rwanda and the Security Crisis in Mozambique

Although there are no SADC peacekeeping forces operating in the eastern region of the DRC, they are involved in another member-states’ security crisis, that being the Republic of Mozambique. Interestingly enough, Rwanda, which is considered an aggressor by the DRC administration of President Felix Tshisekedi, is playing an important role in the counter-insurgency efforts in northern Mozambique.

Image: SADC forces in Mozambique

France. which has been reluctant to accept any responsibility for the genocide in Rwanda, appears to be cooperating with Kigali which deployed its military forces operating in Cabo Delgado protecting the natural gas resources being developed by Total, a French-based energy firm.

Over the last several years a group initially calling itself “al-Shabaab” has attacked the massive Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) project now underway in Cabo Delgado province. Mozambique is well-endowed with natural gas resources offshore in the Indian Ocean.

Due to the armed attacks by the Islamist insurgents, which appear to have no connection with the rebels of the same name in the Horn of Africa state of Somalia, the LNG development was suspended during 2020. With the intervention of Rwanda and the SADC Mission to Mozambique (SAMIM), the situation has improved significantly enabling the production and export of natural gas to resume.

SADC on its website says of the mission in Mozambique that:

“The operation of SAMIM is supported by the Regional Coordination Mechanism (RCM) which reports to the Head of Mission and the SADC Executive Secretary. Since its deployment, SAMIM has registered a number of milestones, including recapturing villages, dislodging terrorists from their bases and seizing weapons and warfare material, which has contributed to create a relatively secure environment for safer passage of humanitarian support. Additionally, members of the community have developed confidence in SAMIM forces, feeling more secure and allowing internally displaced persons to return to their normal lives SAMIM comprises troops deployment from eight (8) Personnel Contributing Countries from SADC namely, Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia, working in collaboration with the Forças Armadas de Defesa de Moçambique (FADM) and other troops deployed to Cabo Delgado to combat acts of terrorism and violent extremism.”

Insecurity and the Anticipated Global Recession

The securing of energy resources during this period is essential in light of a burgeoning economic crisis throughout the AU region and the world. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic three years ago, the capitalist world has undergone tremendous turmoil necessitating the reconfiguration of the production of goods and services.

Compounding the efforts to emerge from the pandemic-induced higher levels of displacement, business closures, supply chain bottlenecks and far higher rates of inflation not experienced in four decades, are undoubtedly, the circumstances which prompted the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. Oil and natural gas became weapons in the war by the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies to weaken Russia and even remove the administration of President Vladimir Putin.

As the war approaches its first anniversary, there is no consistent indication that the White House will seek a negotiated settlement between Kyiv and Moscow unless it involves a complete capitulation to NATO. The imperialist military alliance has been expanding its membership and territory since the collapse of the socialist countries in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The administration of President Joe Biden has proven its Cold War credentials by starting a protracted war in Eastern Europe and provoking military operations by the People’s Republic of China involving Taiwan. Outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi led a Congressional delegation to Taiwan making a direct threat to Beijing and repudiating the “One China” policy in effect since the 1970s.

Consumer prices for petroleum, electricity and natural gas have risen substantially since February of 2022. The costs for food, transportation, rents, mortgages and other essential products and services have increased making life even more difficult for billions of people around the world.

Although the Biden administration and NATO has sought to make Moscow appear as the instigator of the Ukraine war, the origin of the current conflagration extends at least back to 2014 when the former President Barack Obama’s White House engineered the overthrow of the Ukraine government and the violent suppression of the Russian population along with anti-fascist forces.

African people must take all of these factors into consideration in formulating domestic and foreign policy imperatives for the coming year and beyond. The scarcity of energy resources within the NATO countries has already resulted in greater demand for the continent’s natural gas and oil. This has been evidenced with the visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to Algeria during 2022 in his campaign to mitigate the negative impact of natural gas shortages stemming from sanctions against Russia.

The AU member-states must leverage this demand from Western Europe to build up its infrastructure in preparation for the coming economic downturns. Consequently, Pan-Africanism is a necessity for the continent in order to achieve sustainability and genuine development.

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

Featured image: Kenya troops deployed to eastern DRC / all images are from the author

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Agreement on a new Israeli government — a coalition of extreme rightwingers, religious bigots and outright fascists – was announced on Dec. 21. Binyamin Netanyahu will return once again as prime minister. Two open fascists, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Belazel Smotrich, will hold key posts dealing with the West Bank and the occupied Palestinian population, and indeed, hold the balance of power in the new ruling cabinet.

A document issued by Netanyahu on Dec. 28 states that the new government’s first priority is to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev Desert, the Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria [West Bank].” The Galilee and Negev are heavily Palestinian areas inside the 1948 borders of the Israeli state. The illegally annexed Golan Heights are Syrian territory conquered in the 1967 war that also brought the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza under Israeli control.

Without a doubt, a key aim of the new government’s policy is to increase pressure on the Palestinian population everywhere inside historic Palestine to abandon their homeland. Netanyahu announced his intention to annex the West Bank “while choosing the timing and considering the national and international interests of the state of Israel.” The “international interests” here refers to Israel’s indispensable armer, funder and protector, the United States, which fears that outright annexation could lead to new upheavals and instability in the region. In recognition of this factor, the Israeli government is clearly going forward with an accelerated program of de facto annexation while holding back on an official announcement.

The formation of an openly annexationist government represents a logical next step in the ongoing right-wing shift of the Israeli political landscape over the past several decades. But from its very start as a movement in the late 19th century, Zionism was another variant of racist European colonialism. It was in the name of achieving the Zionist objective of an exclusivist Jewish state that 750,000 Palestinians were driven by means of terror from their homeland in 1948, and hundreds of thousands more in the 1967 war when Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Today, in violation of international law, more than 700,000 settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are protected by the Israeli “Defense” Forces in a thorough apartheid system that has a separate legal system and separate access to resources for Israelis and Palestinians.

Fascists in the new Israeli cabinet

The latest Israeli election, the fifth in the last four years, took place on Nov. 1. A coalition of five extreme right-wing and racist parties narrowly won a majority, 64 seats in the 120-seat Knesset (parliament). Over the next seven weeks, Netanyahu succeeded in dividing up cabinet ministries among his Likud party and its four partners. Becoming a cabinet minister comes not just with an honorific title, but also with a budget. The more important ones have considerable power over sectors of the state, society and the occupied Palestinian population.

Netanyahu’s Likud party won 32 seats and was supported in forming a government by two rightist religious parties, Shas with 11 seats and United Torah Judaism with seven.

Two parties, Religious Zionism, led by Belazel Smotrich and Oztma Yehudit (Jewish Power), headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, formed a bloc which won 14 seats, without which the new government could not have come into being. Both have demanded and received key positions.

A new “National Security Ministry” was created by the passage of the “Ben-Gvir bill” on Dec. 27. As minister, Ben-Gvir will have control over the infamous Border Police in the West Bank, one of the key instruments of the repressive colonial apparatus.

As a youth, Ben-Gvir was a follower of the notorious racist Meir Kahane, a Brooklynite who moved to Israel and created the Kach party. Kach was outlawed as a terrorist organization by the Israeli government in the early 1990s based on its virulent racism. So extremely racist were Ben-Gvir’s views and actions that he was refused induction into the Israeli military when he reached the age of induction.

Like Smotrich, Ben-Gvir is a leader of the violent racist settler movement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a movement which now feels freer than ever to carry out murderous attacks on Palestinians.

Nothing could be more revealing about Ben-Gvir than his hero-worship of Baruch Goldstein. In 1994, Goldstein, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen from New York, murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers and wounded 125, including many children, inside the Mosque of Ibrahim in the West Bank city of Hebron. Ben-Gvir kept a photo of Goldstein on his living room wall until grudgingly taking it down in order to run for the Knesset in 2020, saying, “for the sake of unity and a right-wing victory in the elections, I’m removing the photograph in my living room.” (Times of Israel, Jan. 15, 2020)

Like Ben-Gvir, Smotrich stands for the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and inside 1948 Israel. In October 2021, he told Palestinians members of the parliament: “You’re here by mistake, it’s a mistake that Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948.” Ben-Gurion was Israel’s first prime minister who presided over the mass expulsion of Palestinians.

Joint List MK Aida Touma-Sliman, a Palestinian member of the Knesset, tweeted in response: “We are putting up with this filthy fascism every day at the Knesset.” (Haaretz, Oct. 13, 2021).

Also like Ben-Gvir and several other members of the new government, Smotrich is deeply racist, misogynistic and homophobic. In 2016, he tweeted that he supported the segregation of Palestinian and Jewish women in maternity wards. (Jerusalem Post, April 6, 2016). And in 2015, he said that developers should not have to sell houses to Palestinians (J.Post, July 16, 2015.) In a mockery of a Gay Pride parade in 2006, Smotrich organized a “Beast Parade,” made up of animals. Ten years later he tweeted, “I am a proud homophobe.”

For many years, Smotrich has advocated a “shoot-to-kill” policy for the occupation forces in the West Bank. Asked in 2017 what he would do about a Palestinian child throwing stones at a demonstration, he answered: “Either I will shoot him, or I will jail him, or I will expel him.” (Guardian, Mar. 12, 2017)

Smotrich will be the new finance minister and, more importantly, was made a second minister inside the defense ministry with control over Civil Administration in the West Bank. The position of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich guarantee an escalation of fascist attacks on Palestinians, which are already taking place on more than a daily basis. For example, between just Oct. 10 and 21, 100 such attacks took place in the West Bank. These attacks are generally “observed” and often joined in by the occupation military forces. (Haaretz, Oct. 21)

Liberation photo collage. Binyamin Netanyahu, Belazel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The make-up of the latest and most openly racist government in Israeli history is an embarrassment to supporters of the Zionist state inside and outside Israel. So, too, is the government’s intolerance for any version of Judaism that is not Orthodox. Smotrich said in 2016 that he was “not willing to recognize Reform (Jewish) conversions and their fake religion.”

While the clear aim of the new Israeli regime is to continue the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the Palestinian people have made it equally clear that they are steadfast in their resistance and have no intention of surrendering their homeland.

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This article was originally published on Liberation News.

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In the evening of October 29, 130,000 men and women wearing Halloween costumes went to Itaewon area in Seoul to have fun and enjoy the freedom from 3-year COVID-19 confinement.

The joyful laughter, merry songs and cry of freedom suddenly turned into voice of despair, fear, agony and last fading voice of dying children calling for loved family and friends.

On narrow and steep alley, tens of thousands of people were pushing and shoving and the people at the lower part of the alley were crushed to death under the weight of layers of human bodies.

It was a man-made disaster which should not happen, which could not happen. But it happened and it took away 158 precious and young lives including 26 foreign persons and injured 198 people.

The world is asking how such disaster can happen in a country like South Korea which is known as model country for economic development, security, safety and democracy, especially under the liberal government of Moon Jae-in.

The question the world is asking why this man-made disaster happened in South Korea.

What I am going to say may disturb some and even infuriate some others. But, it is about the time that the world should be aware of the disturbing political reality which is, in the final analysis, responsible for the disaster.

I am writing this paper hoping that the world opinion will be formed and put pressure on the South Korean government so that hidden truth be discovered, the responsible people be punished and similar man -made disaster never happens again.

I am offering my sincere condolence to the surviving parents including 26 surviving parents of foreign countries.

I hope also that the surviving parents of foreign countries join Koreans in fighting for the truth of why and how their children died.

This paper examines the following:

• Failure of the Public Safety System
• Reasons for the System Failure
• Impact of the Disaster on Politics of South Korea

Failure of the public safety system

The low priority given to the public safety is responsible for the disaster. It is argued that, in this paper, the public safety failed due to absence of public safety planning.

A good system of public safety planning should include the following: prior safety planning, disaster management, post disaster analysis and judicial measure designed to prevent similar disaster in the future.

But in this section, I will deal with the prior planning and disaster management.

Prior planning: The prior planning for the event of Halloween festivity should be the responsibility of the mayor of Yongsan District where Itaewon is located. But, the mayor for some mysterious reasons failed to do so.

This is difficult to understand in view of the fact that Yongsan District (ward) had undertaken, for years in the past, large scale events in the Itaewon area including the Halloween festivities.

What the Yongsan District government did was the planning only for   traffic ticket control and rubbish collection excluding safety planning for the Halloween crowd.

In other words, there was no prior safety planning at all to protect the young Halloween lovers. This is incomprehensible in view of the fact that a very large crow was expected to converge toward the Itaewon area.

Management of the disaster: In the absence of prior safety planning, it was not easy to conduct properly the crowd management. Before anything else, the communication network did not work.

Somebody should have reported the danger and somebody should have sent help. In this case, the help was the Korean National Police Special Operation Unit (KNPSOU). In fact, somebody reported the danger, but no help came.

On the day of the disaster, October 29, already at 16:00, the Halloween crowd started to increase in size. By 18:00, on a narrow and steep alley, there were so many people that somebody called the 112 emergency call center to explain the situation and asked for help which did not come.

The following is the list of SOS calls: 18:34: 20:09: 20:33: 20:53; 21:00; 21:02; 21:07; 21:10; 21:51; 22:11. There were 11 calls. On this list, one call is missing.

We can see that the calls for help became dramatically more frequent after 21:00. This shows that the number of deaths was increasing rapidly after 21:00.

As the time went by, there were 30 people in a space of 8 m^2.. A large crowd was going up the alley, while equally large crowd was coming down the alley. And somewhere in the alley, the two crowds collided and many people fell and crushed to death by the weight of layers of human bodies. They could not breath, they died.

The hellish drama continued until 22:30 and 158 young lives were sacrificed because of the stupidity, the cruelty and irresponsibility of adults who should have known better.

The deployment of one special operation units of police (KNPSOU) could prevent the disaster. They were near the scene of the disaster, but they did not come, because somebody decided not to send them to the scene of the disaster.

In short, the disaster management went nowhere. Those who could prevent the disaster were not on duty at crucial time.

Park Hee-yong, mayor of Yongsan District government saw the massing crowd, but she was not there to prevent the tragedy.

Lee Jae-hee: Yongsan District Police chief was aware of the crisis and asked Seoul Metropolitan Police agency for the deployment of the KNPSOU specialized in managing large crowd. But no help came.

Ryu Mi-jin, chief of the 112 call center was absent in the room managing the emergency calls.

Kim Gwang-ho Seoul Metropolitan Police chief was not present in his office. He was at home at the night of October 29 and received the report after midnight.

Yoon hee-geun, chief of the National Police Agency went to his home town and camping sight at the night of October 29. He received the report after midnight.

The location of Kim Soon-ho, the chief of the Department of Police of the Ministry of Interior and Public Safety was not known. This department was created illegally to control the police force to be politically used.

On the other hand, the chief of Yongsan fire station, Choi Seon-beon, went to the scene too late to save the lives.

Lee Sang-min, Minister of Interior and Public Safety was nowhere. After all, he is the minister responsible for public safety in Korea.

Nobody knows exactly where the president, Yoon Suk-yeol was during mass killing. In the final analysis, he had the ultimate responsibility of the disaster.

So, there is no doubt that the public safety system failed to save lives. But, we ask questions why the system failed.

Reasons for the Failure of the Public Safety System

We know how the tragedy happened. But, nobody knows why it happened. However, many tend to relate the disaster to unusual and irrational behaviours of the president, Yoon Suk-yeol, his wife, Kim Gun-hee and shaman called, Cheon-gong.

Let me begin by introducing Yoon Suk-yeol, president of South Korea since May 9 this year.

First, he knows very little about economics, national security, international relations and, especially public administration.

Second, he is turning the time machine backward; he is living in Korea of fifty years ago of military dictatorship. He has become a prosecutor and spent all his life of suspecting people as possible criminals, indicting, investigation and sending them to prison.

He looks at the world through the eyes of a prosecutor not through the eyes of a politician.

To make the matter worse, he tries to solve political issues as criminal issue. He lacks the qualities of understanding, communicating and compromising with others, the qualities essential for a good political leader.

Third, he has been a worst biased prosecutor. His mother-in-law is a well established criminal, but she has never been fully punished for her crimes including the embezzlement of public funds.

His wife is notorious for all kinds of illegal and immoral activities including the manipulation of stock prices and the plagiarism of her academic degrees in corrupted ways. She has never been indicted because of the influence of her husband.

Fourth, he is even suspected as alcoholic. He often misses major decision making meetings due, probably, to his alcoholism.

Fifth, this is very serious aspects of Yoon Suk-yeol. In Korea, there is a shaman called Cheon-gong who pretends to be the last saviour of humanity sent by God.

In a country where the freedom of religion is guaranteed, the existence of the shaman Cheon-gong is not a legal problem.

What follows will certainly scandalize the world. It is a sad reality in a country like Korea which is the 10th largest economy in the world.

What I am saying about the shaman, Cheong-gong, is based on several information sources including KBS report, MBC report, the recent Ohmynews report and even the ParisMatch report (November 4) on the Itaewon tragedy.

To be sure, in a democratic country like Korea where religious freedom is guaranteed, shaman can exist.

But, the problem is the fact that the president and his wife are faithful followers of the shaman, who declared that Yoon’s wife, Kim Gun-hee had been attending for years his lectures, while the president meets the shaman often. Therefore, one can say that the shaman and the president’s couple are very close to each other.

To make the matter worse, the shaman can influence the major decisions of the president and his wife. A recent poll (das-bei-da-238) shows that 54.5% of the respondents says that the shaman exert influence on the president’s policy decisions.

The shaman Cheon-gong’s vision is that the world should be ruled by “jung-bop” (rightful laws) which is not spelled out. But, it seems that the shaman wants to rule the world according to his perception of what is right or wrong with the help of somebody. Somebody seems to be Yoon Suk-yeol.

Here are some known cases showing the close relationship between the Shaman and Yoon’s couple.

• The Shaman asked Yoon to leave the position of prosecutor general and run for the presidential candidacy, which Yoon did.
• Cheon-gong asked Yoon to stamp the Chinese figure “king”(王) on the palm of his hands. Yoon showed it during the televised presidential debate. This Chinese figure is supposed to bring good fortune.
• Once Yoon became president, the shaman told Yoon not to move into the Blue House (Korean White House) because evil spirits of many dead people may get into Yoon, which Yoon obeyed.
• The shaman would have asked Yoon to install the president’s office to the Yongsan area (south of Han River). Yoon Suk-yeol moved his presidential office to the Yongsan area.

The Shaman is reported to have said about the Yongsan area.

“The dragon will come to the Yongsan area with precious stones in its mouth.”

The dragon seems to be Yoon and the precious stones are supposed to new order created by Yoon.

Yoon Suk-yeol and his wife went to London on September 18 to attend the funeral ceremony of late Queen Elizabeth II. He is suspected to have not gone to the funeral chapel because Cheon-gong told him that there was evil spirit in the funeral chapel.

We see now that Yoon Suk-yeol makes important decisions which are likely to be suggested (or ordered) by shaman Cheon-gong.

So, we may say that Yoon’s decisions are beyond the usual rational boundary of reasoning.

Coming back to the root cause of the Itaewon disaster, those who should be responsible for the tragedy should admit their responsibility and ask for pardon of the surviving families and friends and to Korean population. But they have not done so.

A recent poll (das-boe-ie-da 238) shows who are responsible for the 10.29 disaster.

• President, Yoon Suk-yeol: 65.0%
• Minister of Interior and Public Safety, Lee Sang-min: 74.3%
• Mayor of Seoul City, O Se-hoon : 71.5%
• Mayor of Yongsan District , Park Hee-yong: 82.4%

However, they have behaved and are behaving in irresponsible manner.

First, the Minister of Interior and Public Safety, Lee Sang-min said this on October 30, the day following the disaster.

Image: The Itaewon alleyway during the week-long national mourning, 31 October 2022 (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

“Even if we deployed more police forces, we would not be able to save the young victims.”

This sounds as if the minster knew in advance what would happen.

Second, as pointed out above, the four key decision makers were absent from posts during the fatal moment.: Park Hee-young, mayor of Yongsan District; Ryu Min-jin, the person in charge of the 112 call center; Yoon Hee-gun, the National Polive chief and Kim Gwang-ho, Seoul Meropolitan Police chief

Third, the authorities are blaming only those who are not in the position of giving orders; they are not decision makers.

Several of them are indicted for their “negligence” in their duties. But, in reality, they did their best to save the lives.

These individuals are crucified to hide the wrong doings of their superiors In Korea, these immoral and illegal actions of the superiors are called the process of “tail cutting” designed to sacrifice the persons of lower rank in order to save the person of higher rank who has the responsibility of wrong doings.

This shows how hard the responsible people are trying to hide the truth, which enforces the possibility of pre-planned wrong doings.

Fourth, two persons died. One was a key employee of Seoul city involved in the management of public safety. The other was employee (known as Jeong) of the Yongsan Police station who was involved in the management of reports.

They were reported to have killed themselves. But, few believe that they killed themselves.

Unfortunately, in Korea, under the government of pro-Japan conservative government, it is a common knowledge that people at the low level of the decision making process are often forced to kill themselves to protect their superiors. The surviving families cannot protest due to fearful threat by the authorities of power.

Thus, those who should be responsible for the tragedy do everything to hide something important which might have something to do with the tragedy.

Now, what bothers Koreans and the world is some of the troubling statements of the Shaman in connection with the Itaewon tragedy, Cheon-gong. The following are some of these statements:

“The Itaewon disaster is good for Korea.”

“The greater the number of the victims, the better will be for the global reputation of Korea.”

“In order that the sacrifice be worthwhile, the number of the victims should be great.”

“The Itaewon disaster is nobody’s fault.”

So, the shaman’s statements have two messages. One is the idea that the disaster is good for Korea. The other is that nobody’s fault.

The shaman advised also the president family and other high ranking officials of Yoon government to use the Itaewon tragedy for international diplomacy.

All these sound utter nonsense, but there are some people who seem to take this nonsense seriously.

Now, if we relate the shaman’s statement and Yoon’s habit of doing what the shaman says, we have to come to a troubling conclusion that the death of 158 young souls could have something to do with the Yoon-shaman collusive relations.

To be sure, there is no evidence that Cheon-gong is involved in the disaster.

But, many South Koreans suspect that there is relation between the tragedy and the shaman-Yoon relationship.

Witnesses of the tragedy said the ambulance vehicles took away first the dead bodies leaving behind the wounded to die. Why?

One thing obvious is that it is just impossible to find out the real cause of the tragedy. What happened on the alley of Itaewon was how the children died; it was not why they had to die so horribly. We already know how, but we do not know why.

It is hoped that the ongoing parliamentary probe of the tragedy should invite Cheon-gong at all costs to clarify the intention behind his statements related to the Itaewon disaster.

It is hoped also that the coming parliamentary probe will be bold, strong and persistent enough to resist aggressive obstruction by the president and his party, the People Power Party (PPP).

The very belligerent and irrational behaviours of the president and the PPP show strongly that they cannot reveal the true cause of the tragedy which seems to have something to do with the collusion between the president’s family and their spiritual leader, Cheon-gong.

Impact of the 10.29 disaster (Itaewon Disaster)

There will be the external impact and the internal impact. The external impact will be the worsening reputation of South Korea as the safest place in the world.

Candlelight Action vigil-protest for Itaewon disaster, 5 November 2022 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Under the 5-year government of Moon Jae-in government of the Democratic Party of Korea, the reputation of South Korea was very high due to successful anti-COVID 19 policy, the adoption of new economic growth policy based on more equal income distribution, productive foreign relations and, above all, three-year peace on the Korean peninsula owing to the North-South peace-process.

But, Yoon Suk-yeol has pulled the reputation of South Korea down to the ground after 6-month government due to restoration of destructive neo-liberal economic policy, disastrous foreign policy and above all the sustained attempt to create the dictatorship of corrupted prosecutors.

Now, the irresponsible attitude of Yoon government concerning the 10.29 tragedy has given the coup-de-grâce to the international reputation of the country of morning calm.

The 10.29 disaster will make South Korea unsafe country and this will hurt the credibility of its government and the tourism will be hit. The damage can go even further. The tragedy may adversely affect South Korea’s international political leadership and even its trade.

But, the internal impact can be even more serious. Yoon Suk-yeol is surely the worst president South Korea has ever had. His approval rate has remained around 30% since 6 months. He has the dubious reputation of receiving the lowest international approval rate after the retired UK prime minster, Liz Truss.

The principal reasons for such poor internal approval rate include his incapacity, stubbornness, uncivilized manner, zero experience in politics, violence, destructive diplomacy, the worst sort of human right violation and, above all, his ambition of implanting prosecutor dictatorship.

It is a known secret that the president’s wife, Kim Gun-hee tells the president, Yoon Suk-yeol what national policies should be and that it is the shaman, Cheon-gong who tells Kim Gun-hee what to tell her husband.

The majority of South Koreans have already given up any hope for Yoon’s presidential leadership and begun massive candle-light demonstration. On October 19, no less than 400,000 people hit the street and shouted “Down Yoon Suk-yeol!” and “To prison Kim Gun-hee!”

The parliamentary probe into the Itaewon disaster is going on. But, I am afraid that it will not be able to find out the real reason of the tragedy, because the government will use every possible means to hide the truth behind the tragedy. It is possible that the real reason of the tragedy is something which cannot be revealed.

In such situation, the Candle-Light movement will increase in volume and intensity leading inevitably the end of Yoon Suk-yeol government.

And, South Koreans may have to see once again the sad scene where president leave the presidential residence and even move, along with his wife, toward the institutions of free means and free boarding.

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Dr. Joseph H. Chung is professor of Economics of Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM) and member of the Research Center on Integration and Globalization (IEIM) He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image: Itaewon 2022 Halloween (Licensed under CC BY 3.0)

Tucker “Gets It” – Putin Doesn’t Want American Missiles on His Border

By Mike Whitney, December 29, 2022

Tucker Carlson is right about Ukraine. NATO membership for Ukraine was clearly a provocation aimed at luring Russia into an invasion. And, it worked, too. Putin could not take the risk of having “a hostile government next door” or “American missiles on his border,” so he acted to preempt those threats by sending the tanks across the border on Febrary 24, 2021.

Africa in Review 2022: Regional Dynamics and Continental Security

By Abayomi Azikiwe, December 29, 2022

There of course cannot be the realization of the Africa 2063 project until an internal and interstate relations framework between the 55 member-states which makeup the African Union (AU) reach a level of political equilibrium.

Dangers of Pentagon’s ‘Decapitation Strike’ Against Russia

By Drago Bosnic, December 29, 2022

In recent decades, one of the political West’s favorite strategies have been the so-called “decapitation strikes” against various countries or non-state actors. One of the first examples of this happened in the 1990s in Europe, during the US aggression against Yugoslavia.

Blackrock to Take Zelenskyy’s Panhandling Act to the Next Level

By Kurt Nimmo, December 29, 2022

Blackrock is the world’s largest asset management and investment firm. It invests more than $10 trillion in client funds, a mountain of cash that casts a shadow over the GDP of many countries, including Germany, the fourth largest GDP in the world.

2022’s Danger Signs: From Totalitarian Paranoia to Authoritarian Madness

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, December 29, 2022

With every new law enacted by federal and state legislatures, every new ruling handed down by government courts, and every new military weapon, invasive tactic and egregious protocol employed by government agents, we were reminded that in the eyes of the government and its corporate accomplices, “we the people” possess no rights except for that which the Deep State grants on an as-needed basis.

WHO Fraud. There Never Was a Pandemic! February 20, 2020, Dr Tedros Announced an “Expanding Worldwide Epidemic”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 29, 2022

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These five reasons are being shared for the purpose of hopefully inspiring Kiev to pragmatically reconsider its presently recalcitrant position to peace talks with Moscow. They’re meant to be objective insofar as they acknowledge Kiev’s interests as its leadership understands them to be (despite the author disagreeing with the aforesaid of course) while still attempting to strike a fair balance between those same interests, its patrons’, and Moscow’s.

Zelensky pushed his so-called “peace plan” from last month earlier this week while talking to Indian Prime Minister Modi, which demands that Russia withdraw from the entirety of Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders as a precondition for resuming talks. This politically unrealistic stance confirms that he isn’t serious about ending the UkrainianConflict, but there are five arguments for why Kiev should reconsider its recalcitrant position:

1. The Western Military-Industrial Complex’s Limitations Prevent Kiev From Achieving Full Victory

“Biden Spilled The Beans About Why The West Can Never Fully Satisfy Zelensky’s Begging” during the Ukrainian leader’s trip to DC last week when revealing that the US can’t give Kiev weapons that it hasn’t yet shared with its NATO allies while the latter can’t deplete their stockpiles much more than they already have. Without that happening, which is impeded by the Western military-industrial complex’s limitations, it’s not possible for Kiev to achieve the full victory that Zelensky envisages.

2. Freezing The Line Of Control (LOC) Can Prevent Further Losses In The Event Of Another Offensive

Considering the extreme unlikelihood of Kiev achieving its maximum objectives in the conflict, it therefore follows that the most prudent approach is to secure the gains that it’s already made thus far around Kharkov and Kherson Regions. Failing to freeze the LOC risks the scenario of Russia either achieving a breakthrough somewhere along the existing front or perhaps opening up another one somewhere else entirely, both of which might result in further losses for Kiev.

3. Indefinitely Perpetuating The Conflict Is Mutually Disadvantageous

For as tempting as it might be for Kiev to comply with its Western patrons’ demands to indefinitely perpetuate the conflict and continue fighting “until the last Ukrainian” in order to supposedly degrade Russia’s military capabilities, this is mutually disadvantageous and should thus be avoided. While no one in the West doubts that doing so would impose growing costs on Russia, few realize how much it destabilizes their de facto New Cold War bloc’s socio-economic and ultimately political cohesion.

4. Russia’s Pragmatic Peace Signals In Recent Weeks Suggest The Sincerity Of Its Intentions

All Russian officials without exception, from President Putin on down, have signaled in recent weeks that they’re willing to politically resolve the conflict so long as their country’s reunification with Novorossiya is at the very least tacitly recognized. This suggests that Moscow is indeed sincere, which in turn draws attention both to the many constructive critiques that can be made about its special operation thus far as well as its awareness of the Golden Billion’s own struggles in this proxy war too.

5. Kiev Can Still Remain Committed To Its Maximum Objectives Without Militarily Pursuing Them

And finally, sincerely negotiating at least an indefinite ceasefire with Russia in order to relieve pressure upon itself and its especially its patrons doesn’t by any means suggest that Kiev can’t remain committed to its maximum objectives. Just like India and Pakistan continue putting forth their respective maximum demands vis-à-vis the decades-long frozen Kashmir Conflict without militarily pursuing them, so too can Kiev do the same, with this outcome perhaps even serving to solidify its national unity for years to come.

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The abovementioned five reasons were shared for the purpose of hopefully inspiring Kiev to pragmatically reconsider its presently recalcitrant position to peace talks with Moscow. They’re meant to be objective insofar as they acknowledge Kiev’s interests as its leadership understands them to be (despite the author disagreeing with the aforesaid of course) while still attempting to strike a fair balance between those same interests, its patrons’, and Moscow’s.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

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

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***

“AGENDA 2063 is Africa’s blueprint and master plan for transforming Africa into the global powerhouse of the future. It is the continent’s strategic framework that aims to deliver on its goal for inclusive and sustainable development and is a concrete manifestation of the pan-African drive for unity, self-determination, freedom, progress and collective prosperity pursued under Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance The genesis of Agenda 2063 was the realization by African leaders that there was a need to refocus and reprioritize Africa’s agenda from the struggle against apartheid and the attainment of political independence for the continent which had been the focus of The Organization of African Unity (OAU), the precursor of the African Union; and instead to prioritize inclusive social and economic development, continental and regional integration, democratic governance and peace and security amongst other issues aimed at repositioning Africa to becoming a dominant player in the global arena.” – Quoted from African Union 2063 introductory paragraph.

There of course cannot be the realization of the Africa 2063 project until an internal and interstate relations framework between the 55 member-states which makeup the African Union (AU) reach a level of political equilibrium.

Notions surrounding the 2063 goals envision the greater economic, political and security links among all of the regions and states on the continent.

Image: Kwame Nkrumah threatened MS headline 1962

These ideas are by no means novel since the work of an earlier generation of African leaders such as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah advanced a theoretical program as early as 1945-1947, where in his book “Toward Colonial Freedom”, the future prime minister and president of Ghana placed the struggles for independence and development within a broader Pan-African and anti-imperialist ideology. Although the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) did not meet the criteria established by Nkrumah and other anti-capitalist leaders and organizations as the ultimate expression of unification and socialism, since 1963, the concepts defining African governmental cooperation have advanced.

Recognizing the existential threat of Revolutionary Pan-Africanism to imperialism, the intelligence agencies and military  apparatuses of the western states sought to destabilize and physically remove those political parties and liberation movements which fundamentally attacked the structures of national oppression and economic exploitation. Subsequently, neo-colonialism became the dominant threat to self-determination and unity among the African people and other post-colonial societies globally.

During the OAU period of the armed phase of the African Revolution for the total liberation of Southern Africa and other geo-political regions, the Liberation Committee played an important role in coordinating material assistance to the freedom fighters. This state assistance to the liberation movements in Africa was a reflection of the broad mass sentiment on the part of workers, youth, revolutionary intellectuals, artists and farmers in support of a rapid process of decolonization.

According to Nkrumah in Toward Colonial Freedom:

“That under imperialism war cannot be averted and that a coalition between the proletarian movement in the capitalist countries and the colonial movement, against the world front of imperialism becomes inevitable. It is, therefore, in this alone that the hope of freedom and independence for the colonies lies. But how to achieve this? First and foremost, organization of the colonial masses. The duty of any worthwhile colonial movement for national liberation, however, must be the organization of labor and youth; and the abolition of political illiteracy. This should be accomplished through mass political education which keeps in constant contact with the masses of colonial peoples. This type of education should do away with that kind of intelligentsia who have become the very architects of colonial enslavement.”

These principles articulated during the post-World War II period must be merged with the contemporary existing realities of the African continent and the overall international situation. Therefore, the interference of imperialism into the internal affairs of the African people remains a major source of disunity and displacement among millions across the continent.

Burkina Faso, Ghana and ECOWAS

Image: Ghana President Nana Akufo-Addo

A recent diplomatic row between the West African states of Ghana and Burkina Faso provides an example of the role of imperialism in the 21st century. The current Ghana President Nana Akufo-Addo has been one of the few African heads-of-state who has ventured to criticize the Russian Federation’s special military operation in neighboring Ukraine.

The official position of the AU is characterized by the call for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. This view has been a point of disagreement between the White House and the AU member-states since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict in late February 2022 up until the U.S. and African leaders summit held during mid-December.

It is no secret that the political tradition represented by President Akufo-Addo has been the antithesis of that which is represented by Nkrumah and his Convention People’s Party (CPP) which led the former Gold Coast to independence in 1957. At present Ghana has security relations with the Pentagon’s United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) while recently receiving clearance for the acceptance of a multi-billion-dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Since the overthrow of the CPP government in February 1966, the Ghana experience with the IMF and other western-based financial institutions has been marred by the imposition of policies which stifle the growth of state structures and independent economic initiatives. The 600 industrial projects enacted by the Nkrumah-CPP government of the 1950s and 1960s were liquidated by the subsequent military and neo-liberal regimes which  have ruled Ghana for over five decades.

Burkina Faso, which has experienced two military coups during this year, has grown frustrated with the failure of the French military and AFRICOM to defeat the Islamist insurgency which has killed many Burkinabe soldiers and civilians. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced while the economy has not benefited from the close military alliance with  Paris and Washington.

Among the military government and the people, there is a burgeoning political orientation towards the Russian Federation. During the aftermath of the most recent coup which brought Ibrahim Traore to power on September 30, many were seen in the streets flying both Burkinabe and Russian flags. The French embassy was violently attacked by Burkinabe youth and burned along with other symbols of neo-colonialism inside the landlocked West African state.

Could this saber rattling on the part of the Ghana president be a gesture aimed at winning favor from the U.S.? Why would such a statement from Akufo-Addo while representatives from 49 African states were patiently involved in meetings with the White House, the Pentagon and State Department?

Both Ghana and Burkina Faso have gone through revolutionary phases within their post-independence political trajectory. Under Nkrumah between 1948, when he and other leading figures within the United Gold Coast Convention (UGGC) were detained after a national rebellion which swept the country early that year, until he was later imprisoned as leader of the CPP during 1950-1951. The transitional period of 1950-51 marked by the positive action general strike to 1957, the year of independence, remained focused on African unity. After 1957, there was the convening of two major conferences the following year, 1958, which called for the total independence and unification of independent Africa.

In Burkina Faso, Captain Thomas Sankara led a military coup of lower-ranking officers in 1983 which sought to initiate a revolution based upon many of the ideas already advanced by Nkrumah and other socialists namely Fidel Castro and Che Guevara of Cuba and Argentina. However, in October 1987, the Burkinabe Revolution was betrayed by elements within its leadership which fell victim to the machination of France and its allies in the West Africa region.

Sankara’s administration was overthrown at the time of his brutal assassination. A trial of the former leader, Blaise Compaore, who was used in the reversal of the Revolution and the cold- blooded murder of Sankara, has taken place inside the country. Compaore was himself removed from office in 2014 by a national uprising of the people in Burkina Faso. It was this fact of history which occurred decades after the October 1987 imperialist-instigated coup against Sankara.

Burkina Faso, Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR) have all invited the Wagner Group, a Russian-based military services firm, to assist them in countering the rebels which have proved to be a formidable adversary. Why should the security imperatives of modern-day Burkina Faso in regard to relationships with the Wagner Group undergirded by the popular solidarity in the country with the Russian Federation emerge as a cause for concern for the Ghana government?

Relations between West African and all continental states in order to be effective needs to be based upon mutual cooperation, interests and respect. Obviously, since the 1960s, the role of international finance capital has further underdeveloped Africa. These diplomatic confrontations involving the summoning and withdrawal of ambassadors from one African capital to another, does nothing to advance the struggle for actual security and genuine sovereignty.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has a noble mission of building unity among its 15 member-states. Such a conflict between Burkina Faso and Ghana further complicates the already delicate status of ECOWAS in its attempts to reestablish civilian rule in Mali, Guinea-Conakry and Burkina Faso.

To be continued in part II.

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

Featured image: Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore / all images in this article are from the author

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***

In recent decades, one of the political West’s favorite strategies have been the so-called “decapitation strikes” against various countries or non-state actors. One of the first examples of this happened in the 1990s in Europe, during the US aggression against Yugoslavia. At the time, NATO forces directly targeted the Serb/Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. In complete disregard for the safety of his family, NATO destroyed Milosevic’s mansions and residencies, causing casualties among civilians in the process. Although the attacks failed, the Serb/Yugoslav leader was still deposed and later imprisoned in the aftermath of a successful NATO-orchestrated coup.

A similar approach was used against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. These attacks failed, but after the US-led invasion forces occupied most of the country, he was taken prisoner by American troops and after a show trial by the new puppet regime in Baghdad, executed in 2006. A very similar fate awaited the leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, who was also directly targeted during the 2011 NATO aggression on Libya. Unlike Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi never got a show trial, but was instead brutally killed by a mob. Again, in both cases, NATO strikes on the residencies of both leaders resulted in the deaths of their immediate family members and any civilians in their vicinity.

It should be noted that these decapitation strikes brought mixed results. While they did destroy much of the command structure of the targeted country or organization, the ensuing chaos and power vacuum were usually filled by someone with little regard for meaningful dialogue and brought even more suffering to the people of the affected country, causing decades of instability and factionalism. Such strikes were always conducted with impunity, as the targeted countries had no means to respond. It seems this has become such a favorite strategy in the Pentagon, that the US simply forgot that certain countries can “return the favor”, so now they’re suggesting the same against global powers such as Russia.

For months, in complete disregard of reality, some US officials have been calling for the elimination of Russian leadership. Threatening a country incapable of retaliating is one thing, despite how morally and legally reprehensible that is, but threatening a country whose response could quite literally end the world is a clear indicator of just how detached the US establishment has become. And yet, this doesn’t stop the said officials from continued calls for decapitation strikes against Russia, as stated by former CIA head David Petraeus, or direct calls for Putin’s assassination by both former US National Security Advisor John Bolton and a sitting US senator Lindsey Graham.

The comments by these US officials inevitably caught Russia’s attention, including its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In an interview with Russia’s TASS news agency published on Tuesday, he condemned that Washington DC obviously doesn’t rule out the assassination of President Vladimir Putin. The foreign minister noted that “some unnamed officials from the Pentagon actually threatened to conduct a ‘decapitating strike’ on the Kremlin… What we are talking about is the threat of the physical elimination of the head of the Russian state.” Moscow’s top diplomat cautioned against such a line of thinking. “If such ideas are actually being nourished by someone, this someone should think very carefully about the possible consequences of such plans,” Lavrov warned.

His comments were most likely directed at a late September article by Newsweek, when several Pentagon officials suggested a “decapitation strike to kill Putin in the heart of the Kremlin.” At the time, Putin stated that Moscow would “use all means necessary to defend Russia and its people”. As per usual, the Western mainstream propaganda machine immediately (and deliberately) took the Russian president’s words out of context and suggested that the remarks are “a clear sign” of Moscow’s planned usage of thermonuclear weapons. However, Russia has repeatedly stated that it doesn’t plan to deploy any of the weapons of mass destruction from its massive arsenal.

Lavrov also warned that some of the US vassals and satellite states are openly embracing this confrontational approach. “They seem to have gone completely beyond the bounds of decency,” he said, referring to a statement by former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, who “without a shadow of a doubt declared during the election debates that she was quite ready to order a nuclear strike.” Russia’s top diplomat once again cautioned against such statements, but also recalled that they’re even worse in the case of the Neo-Nazi junta. “I am not even mentioning the Kiev regime’s provocations that go off the chart. Volodymyr Zelensky went as far as to demand preventive nuclear strikes by NATO countries on Russia. This is also beyond the bounds of what is acceptable,” he warned.

Indeed, such rhetoric is quite disturbing, to say the least. Given how heavily armed the global powers are, calls for decapitation strikes or assassinations of any of their leaders are extremely dangerous. However, such statements aren’t coming from Moscow or Beijing, as they are aware of the irreversible consequences of such actions. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case in Washington DC, where a complete lack of etiquette (diplomatic or otherwise) seems to have become the norm. How exactly this could affect the world remains to be seen, as Russia is exercising restraint for the time being. This approach is the only sensible one, but the issue is that the political West often sees it as a sign of “weakness”.

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Featured image: America’s biggest threat: The Pentagon (US Department of ‘Defense’ photo)

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***

“Getting Ukraine to join NATO was the key to inciting war with Russia. We didn’t get it at the time. (But) Now it’s obvious. Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because he didn’t want Ukraine to join NATO. Putin certainly had other motives as well; people always do, but that’s the main reason Russia invaded. The Russians don’t want American missiles on their border. They don’t want a hostile government next door. Now that is true, whether you are allowed to say it aloud in public or not. It has been true for a long time. A lot has been written about this over many years by serious people. No one who knows anything and is honest, will tell you Putin invaded Ukraine simply because he is evil. Putin may be evil, he certainly seems to be, but he also has strategic motives for doing that, whether you agree with those motives or not. That is irrelevant. Those are the facts.” Tucker Carlson, Fox News

Tucker Carlson is right about Ukraine. NATO membership for Ukraine was clearly a provocation aimed at luring Russia into an invasion. And, it worked, too. Putin could not take the risk of having “a hostile government next door” or “American missiles on his border,” so he acted to preempt those threats by sending the tanks across the border on Febrary 24, 2021.

Where Carlson is a little off-base, is when he he says that Putin’s actions were prompted by “strategic motives”. That’s not really wrong, it just misses the point. The point is that Washington’s combat troops and missile sites on Russia’s western border would pose a grave threat to Russia’s national security. Putin would have to be out-of-his-mind to allow a development like that. So, he did what any American president would have done if he had been in the same situation. He invaded. This is an excerpt from an article at the World Socialist Web Site:

The narrative in the media, which presents the invasion as an unprovoked action, is a fabrication that conceals the aggressive actions by the NATO powers, in particular the United States, and its puppets in the Ukrainian government.…

In Europe and Asia, the US pursued a strategy aimed at encircling and subjugating Russia. Directly violating its earlier promises that the Soviet bureaucracy and Russian oligarchy were delusional enough to believe, NATO has expanded to include almost all major countries in Eastern Europe, apart from Ukraine and Belarus.

In 2014, the US orchestrated a far-right coup in Kiev that overthrew a pro-Russian government that had opposed Ukrainian membership in NATO. In 2018, the US officially adopted a strategy of preparing for “great power conflict” with Russia and China. In 2019, it unilaterally withdrew from the INF Treaty, which banned the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Preparations for war with Russia and the arming of Ukraine were at the center of the Democrats’ first attempt to impeach Donald Trump in 2019.” (“The US-Ukrainian Strategic Partnership of November 2021 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine“, World Socialist Web Site)

This is a brief but excellent summary of events leading up to the Russian invasion on February 24, 2021. Putin and his advisors had been following developments in Ukraine with growing alarm after it became apparent that their worst fears were materializing. The CIA was not only arming and training paramilitaries in the east in preparation for a war against ethnic Russians in the Donbas, the US was also cultivating an explicitly anti-Russia political party –which contained openly fascist elements– that was designated to implement Washington’s proxy-war strategy. In short, the US fanned the flames of ethnic hatred in order to lay the groundwork for its “Great Power” conflagration with Moscow. Here’s more from the WSWS:

The key to understanding this is the US-Ukrainian Charter on Strategic Partnership, signed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on November 10, 2021..

The Charter endorsed Kiev’s military strategy from March 2021, which explicitly proclaimed the military goal of “retaking” Crimea and the separatist-controlled Donbass, and thereby dismissed the Minsk Agreements of 2015, which were the official framework for settling the conflict in East Ukraine.

The US stated that it would “never recognize Russia’s attempted annexation of Crimea,” and that it “intends to support Ukraine’s effort to counter armed aggression,” including with “sanctions” and “other relevant measures until restoration of the full territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

Washington also explicitly endorsed “Ukraine’s efforts to maximize its status as a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner to promote interoperability,” that is, its integration into NATO’s military command structures.

Ukraine’s non-membership in NATO is and was, for all intents and purposes, a fiction. At the same time, the NATO powers exploited the fact that Ukraine is not officially a member as an opportunity to stoke a conflict with Russia that would not immediately develop into a world war.” (World Socialist Web Site)

This, of course, is the critical point: For Russia, Ukraine’s membership in NATO was “the reddest of red lines”. Since the end of WW2, NATO had expanded from 12 to 30 countries almost all of which pushed further eastward towards Russia’s western border. When the United States indicated it would seek NATO membership for Ukraine at the Bucharest Summit in 2008, Putin’s response was uncharacteristically ferocious. Here’s political analyst John Mearsheimer with a brief recap:

“… bringing Ukraine into NATO was fraught with danger. Indeed, at the Bucharest Summit…. both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, were opposed to moving forward on NATO membership for Ukraine because they feared it would infuriate Russia. Angela Merkel recently explained her opposition. (She said) “I was very sure that Putin is not going to let this happen. From his perspective that would be a Declaration of War.” (John Mearsheimer, “Why 2008 Summit in Bucharest is the main cause of the Ukraine War”, You Tube, 1 minute)

Putin reiterated Russia’s opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine repeatedly in the months leading up to the invasion. Four months prior to the invasion, Radio Free Europe published this report which was a fairly typical expression of Russian concerns:

The Kremlin has reiterated that any expansion of NATO military infrastructure in Ukraine would cross one of President Vladimir Putin’s “red lines”… The latest flare-up in frayed relations among the nations started on September 27 when Lukashenko said the United States is “building up bases” in Ukraine and that he and Putin have “agreed we must do something about it.”...

Russia staunchly opposes the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added that Putin has repeatedly noted the issue of the potential broadening of NATO infrastructure on Ukrainian territory “would cross red lines.”

Ukraine began joint military exercises with the United States and other NATO member troops last week, while Russia and Belarus held large-scale drills that alarmed the West. (“Kremlin Warns Over NATO Infrastructure In Ukraine”, Radio Free Europe)

The point we’re making is that the current conflict has nothing to do with claims that Putin is “an aspiring imperialist longing to reconstruct the Soviet empire.” There is no evidence for that at all. The real issue is NATO expansion and, in particular, the secret agreements between the United States and Ukraine that made Ukraine a full-fledged member of NATO in everything but name. Take a look at this excerpt from an article by Marcy Winograd:

The September, 2021, Joint Statement on the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership reaffirmed Ukraine as a de facto NATO partner, “to continue our robust training and exercise program in keeping with Ukraine’s status as a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner.”

…. the Partnership Interoperability Initiative (PII) encouraged favored non-NATO nations, then Australia, Finland, Georgia, Jordan and Sweden–the NATO farm team– to share intelligence and participate in NATO-led military interventions, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, and join in euphemistically-labeled “war games.”

For Ukraine’s support of NATO operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, as well as cyber defense and Black Sea maritime maneuvers, NATO in 2020 welcomed Ukraine into the club of favored NATO wannabes, awarding Ukraine special status as the 6th Enhanced Opportunity Partner (EOP) to receive military training and participate in the multinational NATO Response Force (NRF) of land, air, and sea troops and Special Operations Forces to deploy in a flash, wherever commanded. Such B list status allowed Ukraine to integrate into NATO’s military command structures to prepare, plan and conduct joint operations.

The NATO Farm Team

The degree of present-day involvement of “enhanced opportunities partners” in NATO remains a mystery shrouded in secrecy, even as NATO conducts mock nuclear exercises during Europe’s largest war since the second world war. For two weeks in October fourteen NATO countries, most unnamed, participated in the annual training and flying missions commanding fighter jets and B-52 capable nuclear bombers, albeit without live warheads, over Belgium, the United Kingdom and the North Sea in a dress rehearsal for a nuclear attack on Russia.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, Steadfast Noon participants were to practice conducting strikes with US nuclear equipment loaded onto fighter jets of non-nuclear NATO countries–a violation of the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

One does not need a cinematic Hollywood imagination to envision Ukraine, part of NATO’s farm team, one day agreeing or rather inviting the US and NATO to install nuclear equipment on Ukrainian fighter jets targeting Russia–or go one step further to install nuclear weapons in Ukraine itself, much as the US has installed its nuclear weapons in the NATO countries of Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.

Now the argument that Ukraine was not a NATO country, would never be allowed to join NATO, had nothing to do with NATO and, therefore, posed no existential threat to Russia falls flat. As does the argument that Ukraine posed no nuclear threat to Russia because it had agreed to transfer back to Russia the nuclear weapons left in Ukraine following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Who needs nuclear weapons when you can borrow them like a prom dress or store borrowed nukes in your air base garage?

…“the November 2021 US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership committed the US and Ukraine to joint defense and security operations “deepening cooperation in areas such as Black Sea security, cyber defense and intelligence sharing ..” (“Letter to the Left on Ukraine”, Marcy Winograd, Code Pink)

Brilliant analysis, and right to the point. Ukraine didn’t need to be formally entered into NATO because the US stealthily bestowed defacto membership on them out of the public eye. Naturally, Putin and his lieutenants knew what was going on, but the media made sure that everyone else remained in the dark. And all of this sleight-of-hand was going on just months before Putin was forced to invade. It’s actually shocking.

Let’s summarize:

Ukraine was being armed and trained by its partners at NATO

Ukraine was participating in military drills and maneuvers conducted by NATO

Ukraine had been “integrated into NATO’s military command structures” including “support of NATO operations… cyber defense and Black Sea maritime maneuvers”

Ukraine was sharing “intelligence and participating in NATO-led military interventions, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Ukraine participated in “mock nuclear exercises” with NATO

Ukraine (and its NATO allies) endorse the retaking of Crimea from Russia (“unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s ….territorial integrity… including Crimea”)

Does it sound like Ukraine snuck into NATO through the back door?

It does.

This summary helps to show that Ukraine’s non-membership in NATO is largely “a fiction.” Ukraine has been fully-integrated into the anti-Russia Alliance in every way except formal approval. Ukraine’s Strategic Partnership with the US, which was signed by both parties in 2021, underscores this point. It also helps “to clarify” –as Marcy Winograd notes– “that the United States and NATO provoked the war.” Indeed, Washington has put a significant amount of time and energy into a project that is aimed at crossing all of Russia’s redlines, directly challenging Russia’s basic security interests, and forcing Russia to invade a neighboring country. Simply put, Washington placed a gun to Russia’s head and threatened to pull the trigger.

Fortunately, Putin responded in the way that best ensured the safety and security of his own government, his own country, and his own people. We would expect any responsible leader to do the same.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

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

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Blackrock is the world’s largest asset management and investment firm. It invests more than $10 trillion in client funds, a mountain of cash that casts a shadow over the GDP of many countries, including Germany, the fourth largest GDP in the world. It is fair to say it controls, or has outsized influence, on the Federal Reserve, Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs and Vanguard, the WEF meet and greet at Davos (and its control freak Great Reset), and all that follows, including President Biden and Congress.

Larry Fink, the founder, and CEO of Blackrock has teamed up with the Man in Perpetual Green, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Specialists of this company are already helping Ukraine to structure the fund for the reconstruction of our state,” said Green Man after a video call with Fink, according to Bloomberg.

Zelenskyy has taken his worldwide panhandling act to the next level. According to Zelenskyy’s government web page—up and running, although average Ukrainians are freezing in the dark—Larry Fink will help drum up the funds to rebuild what will be blown up again. (As for Zelenskyy’s website, it is safe for the moment, hosted as it is in Santa Clara, California.)

In accordance with the preliminary agreements struck earlier this year between the Head of State and Larry Fink, the BlackRock team has been working for several months on a project to advise the Ukrainian government on how to structure the country’s reconstruction funds.

Zelenskyy and Fink “agreed to focus in the near term on coordinating the efforts of all potential investors and participants in the reconstruction of our country, channelling investment into the most relevant and impactful sectors of the Ukrainian economy,” CNBC reports.

Good luck with that. It might be a good idea to glance at Ukraine’s massive corruption before investing a dime in that black hole. According to Transparency International, Ukraine is the second most corrupt country in Europe and ranked 120 out of 182 of the most corrupt countries in the world.

According to Dragon Capital, the richest Ukrainian oligarchs in 2016, two years after the USG-orchestrated coup in Kyiv, have accumulated over $11 billion, almost 13% of Ukraine’s GDP.

Much of the money accrued by Rinat Akhmetov, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Victor Pinchuk, and former president and confectionary/automotive magnate Petro Poroshenko, was taken through the neoliberal organized theft of public assets, known as privatization. Kolomoyskyi is a major funder of the neo-Nazi group, Right Sector. He is widely seen as the puppet master of the former comedian and current president Zelenskyy. His reach includes business operations in the US.

Ukraine is a money launderer’s dream come true. Its banking sector thrives on Ponzi schemes. Oligarchs reap fortunes skimming billions from government-subsidized gas prices. Corrupt officials collaborate with oligarchs to monopolize business. In 2015, it was determined less than 50 percent of businesses in Ukraine turned a profit, and 9.8 of all business operations were controlled by and benefited corrupt government officials and the oligarchs they work for.

In July, the Associated Press reported,

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s dismissal of senior officials is casting an inconvenient light on an issue that the Biden administration has largely ignored since the outbreak of war with Russia: Ukraine’s history of rampant corruption and shaky governance.

Of course, Biden—or that is, since he is obviously cognitively impaired, his neocon “advisers”—do not give a hoot about the suffering of average Ukrainians victimized by free-hand oligarchs and corrupt government officials. It’s all about Russia, China, and the role of the world hegemon.

Earlier this year, Larry Fink told stockholders “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is reversing the long-running trend of globalization.” Strangely, Fink seems to believe Russia’s effort to keep NATO out of Ukraine and away from its western border has “exacerbated the polarization and extremist behavior we are seeing across society today.” Submit, lest you be tarred and feathered as a polarized extremist.

It now appears Fink’s cherished globalization is headed for the rocks as the growth of capital markets slow and the centrally managed economy pivots toward recession (actually a full-blown depression, but this scary subject is rarely broached in the respectable, misinformation, narrative-strict corporate propaganda media).

Larry’s not alone in his waking nightmare. Oaktree Capital Management founder Howard Marks also loses sleep over the demise of centralized, corporate-driven, neoliberal-infused, government-enforced globalization. Marks and WEF said in April “the war is forcing the pendulum of international affairs to swing away from globalization as companies and governments rethink their interdependence.”

To be sure, authoritarian regimes often cut themselves off from the global market for a host of reasons—Russia’s Vladimir Putin is just one example.

If not for lies, these guys would stand naked. According to the World Economic Forum, Putin is an “authoritarian” because he understands the global elite want to kill him, destroy Russia, and turn its JDAM-blasted smoldering remains into mutually hostile little bantustans, thus easily plundered and controlled. It has nothing to do with interdependence or the joke that is democracy. That’s feel-good PR pablum designed to deceive you.

“The basic problem with globalization is not hard to grasp,” writes Mike Whitney.

“The giant corporations have outsourced millions of high-paying manufacturing jobs to low wage platforms across Asia leaving behind thousands of shuttered factories and broken communities, a sharp spike in opiate addiction, and the steady erosion of living standards.”

Putin argued the elite are oblivious to the effect of their predation. I disagree. Pathocrats enjoy witnessing the misery of millions, that’s how they get their jollies. If they are oblivious to anything, it is that many of them may be swinging from lamp posts before this is over.

It seems like elites don’t see the deepening stratification in society and the erosion of the middle class…(but the situation) creates a climate of uncertainty that has a direct impact on the public mood. Sociological studies conducted around the world show that people in different countries and on different continents tend to see the future as murky and bleak. This is sad. The future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same time, people see no real opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events and shaping policy. As for the claim that the fringe and populists have defeated the sensible, sober and responsible minority—we are not talking about populists or anything like that but about ordinary people, ordinary citizens who are losing trust in the ruling class. That is the problem.

Zelenskyy and Fink are preparing to turn a profit on the destruction of Ukraine. “Bringing in BlackRock signals the beginning of the much-anticipated shift from bilking taxpayers to bilking private investors,” writes JD Rucker.

BlackRock will wield its tremendous influence over corporations across the globe to funnel as much private equity into the nation as possible where the money will be distributed to all powerful parties [oligarchs] that need their palms greased.

Corrupt government officials (many of them Ukronazis) and the psychopathic oligarchs they serve will profit from the Zelenskyy-Fink scheme to rebuild what Russia will knock down. Russia is determined, for the sake of its national security, to turn Ukraine into a toothless, nazi- and NATO-free rump state, a former oligarch-dominated state busted up into little harmless and easily controlled remnants.

I don’t have a crystal ball, but I believe Zelenskyy will ultimately flee the country with a proverbial suitcase stuffed with fiat greenbacks and equally devalued paper money of the European Union, following in the footsteps of previous defeated and humiliated autocrats.

Larry Fink will continue to be Larry Fink. He will push “stakeholder capitalism,” squeaky clean window dressing for predatory neoliberalism. Larry knows what side of his bread gets the butter, that’s why he has embraced “woke” politics. “Stakeholder capitalism might just force CEOs to think twice before doing things that hurt the public,” the New York Post surmises.

More PR poison. For “Klaus Schwab and the WEF, the framework of stakeholder capitalism must be globalized,” observes Michael Rectenwald at Mises Wire. Schwab and the WEF have high hopes for rebranded neoliberalism merged with the preposterous “woke” ideology.

Not going to happen. The collective nations of the world, led by the example of Russia, will ultimately pitch neoliberalism into the dustbin of history. The problem is WEF and globalist psychopaths, deluded by mental illness and corrosive hubris. They may indeed begin the process of irradiating the planet and making any sort of social and commercial activity a relic of a forgotten past.

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The danger signs were everywhere in 2022.

With every new law enacted by federal and state legislatures, every new ruling handed down by government courts, and every new military weapon, invasive tactic and egregious protocol employed by government agents, we were reminded that in the eyes of the government and its corporate accomplices, “we the people” possess no rights except for that which the Deep State grants on an as-needed basis.

Totalitarian paranoia spiked. What we have been saddled with is a government so power-hungry, paranoid and afraid of losing its stranglehold on power that it has conspired to wage war on anyone who dares to challenge its authority. In a Machiavellian attempt to expand its powers, the government unleashed all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace in order to justify its demands for additional powers to protect “we the people” from emerging threats, whether legitimate, manufactured or overblown.

The state of our nation suffered. The nation remained politically polarized, controlled by forces beyond the purview of the average American, and rapidly moving the nation away from its freedom foundation. The combined blowback from a contentious presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in Americans being subjected to egregious civil liberties violations, invasive surveillance, martial law, lockdowns, political correctness, erosions of free speech, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, and the criminalization of lawful activities.

Thought crimes became a target for punishment. For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous. In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly. In 2022, those who criticized the government—whether that criticism manifested itself in word, deed or thought—were flagged as dangerous alongside consumers and spreaders of “mis- dis- and mal-information.”

Speech was muzzled. Those who want to monitor, muzzle, catalogue and censor speech continued to push for social media monitoring, censorship of flagged content that could be construed as dangerous or hateful, and limitations on free speech activities, particularly online. Of course, it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act. If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

Kill switches aimed to turn off more than just your car. Vehicle “kill switches” were sold to the public as a safety measure aimed at keeping drunk drivers off the roads, but they were a perfect metaphor for the government’s efforts to not only take control of our cars but also our freedoms and our lives. For too long, we have been captive passengers in a driverless car controlled by the government, losing more and more of our privacy and autonomy the further down the road we go.

Currency went digital. No matter how much money the government pulls in, it’s never enough, so the government came up with a new plan to make it even easier for its agents to seize Americans’ bank account. In an Executive Order issued in March 2022, President Biden called for the federal government to consider establishing a form of digital money. Digital currency will provide the government and its corporate partners with a mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient.

The government spoke in a language of violence. Police violence killed three people a day. Warrior cops—trained in the worst-case scenario and thus ready to shoot first and ask questions later—did not make us or themselves any safer. Despite this, President Biden’s pledged to expand law enforcement and so-called crime prevention through a $30 billion “Fund the Police” program.

Cancel culture became more intolerant. Cancel culture—political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance—shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs. Everything has now become fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint.

Homes were invaded. Government agents routinely violated the Fourth Amendment at will under the pretext of public health and safety. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the many ways the government and its corporate partners-in-crime used surveillance technology to invade homes: with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, and other monitoring devices.

Political theater kept the public distracted. Having devolved into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population, the political scene provided ample diversions with its televised Jan. 6 committee hearings, the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings, and more.

Bodily integrity was undermined. Caught in the crosshairs of a showdown between the rights of the individual and the so-called “emergency” state, concerns about COVID-19 mandates and bodily integrity remained part of a much larger debate over the ongoing power struggle between the citizenry and the government over our property “interest” in our bodies. This debate over bodily integrity covered broad territory, ranging from abortion and forced vaccinations to biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Although the Supreme Court overturned its earlier rulings recognizing abortion as a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment, it did nothing to resolve the larger problem that plagues us today: namely, that all along the spectrum of life—from the unborn child to the aged—the government continues to play fast and loose with the lives of the citizenry.

The government’s fiscal insanity reached new heights. The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) hit $30 trillion. That translates to roughly $242,000 per taxpayer. It’s estimated that the amount this country owes is now 130% greater than its gross domestic product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens). That debt is also growing exponentially: it is expected to be twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2051.

Surveillance got creepier. On any given day, the average American going about his daily business was monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. In such a surveillance ecosystem, we’re all suspects and databits to be tracked, catalogued and targeted. With every new AI surveillance technology that was adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry were marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.

Precrime became more fact than fiction. Under the pretext of helping overwhelmed government agencies work more efficiently, AI predictive and surveillance technologies were used to classify, segregate and flag the populace with little concern for privacy rights or due process. All of this sorting, sifting and calculating was done swiftly, secretly and incessantly with the help of AI technology and a surveillance state that monitors your every move. Where this becomes particularly dangerous is when the government takes preemptive steps to combat crime or abuse, or whatever the government has chosen to outlaw at any given time.

The government waged psychological warfare on the nation. The government made clear in word and deed that “we the people” are domestic enemies to be targeted, tracked, manipulated, micromanaged, surveilled, viewed as suspects, and treated as if our fundamental rights are mere privileges that can be easily discarded. Aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation, the government weaponized violence; surveillance, pre-crime and pre-thought campaigns; digital currencies, social media scores and censorship; desensitization campaigns; fear; genetics; and entertainment.

Gun confiscation laws put a target on the back of every American. Red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others) gained traction as a legislative means by which to allow police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats. Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.

The burden of proof was reversed. Although the Constitution requires the government to provide solid proof of criminal activity before it can deprive a citizen of life or liberty, the government turned that fundamental assurance of due process on its head. Each and every one of us is now seen as a potential suspect, terrorist and lawbreaker in the eyes of the government. The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

The Supreme Court turned America into a Constitution-free zone. Although the Court’s rulings on qualified immunity for police who engage in official misconduct were largely overshadowed by its politically polarizing rulings on abortion, gun ownership and religion, they were no less devastating. The bottom line: there will be no consequences for cops who brutalize the citizenry and no justice for the victims of police brutality.

The FBI went rogue. The FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people ran the gamut from surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, and intimidation tactics to harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, and that’s just based on what we know.

The government waged war on political freedom. In more and more cases, the government declared war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

The military industrial complex waged more wars. America’s part in the showdown between Russia and the Ukraine conveniently followed on the heels of a long line of other crises which have occurred like clockwork in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms.

The Deep State went global. We’ve been inching closer to a new world order for the past several decades, but COVID-19, which saw governmental and corporate interests become even more closely intertwined, shifted this transformation into high gear. This new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations owes its existence in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations. This powerful international cabal, let’s call it the Global Deep State, is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threat to our rights as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, if not greater.

Authoritarian madness escalated. You didn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist or even anti-government to recognize the slippery slope that starts with well-meaning intentions for the greater good and ends with tyrannical abuses no one should tolerate. When any government is empowered to adopt a comply-or-suffer-the-consequences mindset that is enforced through mandates, lockdowns, penalties, detention centers, martial law, and an utter disregard for the rights of the individual, there should be reason for concern.

The takeaway: the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it rests—as it always has—at the local level, with “we the people.”

Unless we work together to push back against the government’s overreach, excesses and abuse, 2023 will be yet another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for freedom.

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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.

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As readers know, I am concerned that the neoconservatives’ drive for US hegemony is the road to nuclear war.  But we also face demise from other directions.  In this column I share thoughts on the use of orchestrated pandemics to destroy economic independence and civil liberty and to reduce the world population, a declared goal of Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab.  In subsequent columns I will address other threats that go unattended.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky, emeritus professor at the University of Ottawa and Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, has made an important point.  The injection of a dangerous substance into a large percentage of the world population was not a mistake, but an intentional act of murder.  

Pfizer and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), charged with protecting public health, knew in February 2021 that the Covid “vaccine” that went into use in mid-December 2020 was deadly and under law should have been recalled. 

Pfizer’s own internal documents recorded 1,200 deaths from the vaccine and tens of thousands of adverse health effects including cardiac disorders and spontaneous abortions over a two month period.  Understand, the report, which was to be locked up for 75 years, was a forced release resulting from a federal court order to the FDA. It is Pfizer’s own internal report.  It is not a report by independent medical scientists that some pretend “fact checker” can label as “misinformation.”

The report is now public.  Under law, as Pfizer and the FDA knew the “vaccine” was dangerous to life and health and did not recall it, they committed murder.  

The issue before us is the missing indictments for murder of the Pfizer executives and FDA officials who are responsible for the deaths and injuries of millions of people.

As the presstitutes are totally complicit in the mass murder, don’t expect any attention from the media to the released Pfizer report, backed up by the extraordinary increase in excess deaths in every vaccinated country following the vaccination campaign.  Dr. Michael Yeadon, formerly Pfizer Vice President and Chief Science Officer has said that in addition to the deaths, infertility, and injuries from the “vaccine,” the effect of the “vaccine” is also to seriously impair the immune system, thereby making everyone injected susceptible to morbidity from diseases.

Don’t expect Congress or the Executive Branch to do anything.  Members of the House and Senate are dependent on campaign contributions, and Big Pharma are heavy contributors. The FDA is a marketing agent for Big Pharma.

Don’t expect the medical profession to do anything. Big Pharma is responsible for 70% of medical research grants.  Medical scientists are not going to bite the hand that feeds them. Former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet have said that they have no confidence in the research reported in the journals because 70% of the articles are financed by Big Pharma.  Big Pharma is also a large donor to medical schools.  The FDA, like all regulatory agencies, is captured and run by those they are supposed to be regulating.

Peter Koenig, formerly of the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) concludes that we are faced with “a clear eugenics agenda, mass depopulation, unprecedented.”  

We should be terrified that Bill Gates, WHO, and the bought-and-paid-for Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security recently completed (October 23, 2022) two months ago a simulation of the next pandemic. See this.  

Remember the “Covid Pandemic” was preceded by a similar simulation just prior to the release of the Covid virus.  A Dutch expert has revealed that the plan is in place for 10 years of infectious pandemics to pave the way for the Great Reset.

Keep in kind that the Covid virus was the product of years of research funded in part by Fauci at NIH.  

Keep in mind that Covid test kits were produced years in advance of the Covid pandemic. Obviously, someone knew in advance that a pandemic was coming.

Keep in mind that Fauci and Bill Gates predicted a couple of years in advance that there would soon be an infectious disease pandemic.  Keep in mind that there is no way of knowing in advance that a new infectious virus is going to appear and be sufficiently contagious to result in a pandemic. 

Before you do what you have been brainwashed to do and dismiss facts as a conspiracy theory, ask yourself how it is possible for so many pieces that fit together to be a coincidence.

As there is no media, few independent politicians, and a gullible and unaware population, what is to stop the coercion by fear of the world’s population into the serfdom and slavery of the Great Reset? Elites committed to an ideology have decided that they have the moral right to take over our lives.  The elites know that the sheeple  will submit. Fear will govern them.

Twitter Prevented Experts From Speaking Against the Disastrous Covid Protocol, see this.

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

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The South African Institute of International Affairs has put into circulation its latest policy report on Russia-African relations. In the introductory chapter, Steven Gruzd, Samuel Ramani and Cayley Clifford have summarized various aspects of the developments between between Russia and Africa over the past few years and finally questioned the impact of Russia’s policy on Africa.

According to Steven Gruzd, Samuel Ramani and Cayley Clifford, this special far-reaching policy report includes academic research from leading Russian, African and international scholars. It addresses the dimensions of Russian power projection in Africa, new frontiers of Russian influence and provides a roadmap towards understanding how Russia is perceived in Africa.

It highlights narratives about anti-colonialism and describes how these sources of solidarity are transmitted by Russian elites to their African public. For seeking long-term influence, Russian elites have oftentimes used elements of anti-colonialism as part of its current policy to control the perceptions of Africans and primarily as new tactics for power projection in Africa.

The reports delved into the historical fact that after the collapse of the Soviet era, already more than three decades, Russia is resurgent in Africa. While Russia has been struggling to make inroads into Africa these years, the only symbolic event was the first Russia-Africa Summit held in Sochi, which fêted heads of state from 43 African countries and showcased Moscow’s great power ambitions.

Moscow has signed bilateral agreements to participate in various economic directions with many African countries. It has also signed military-technical agreements with over 20 African countries and has secured lucrative mining and nuclear energy contracts on the continent. Russia exports more arms to Africa than the United States, France and China combined. It uses private military contractors.

While it has made thousands of promises and signed bilateral agreements, Russia is largely invisible in economic sectors, keep a remote distance from participating in building critical infrastructures and investing in industrial spheres. Moscow simply builds relations on illusions and lacks the overwhelming power to realize its policy goals in Africa. During critical times of coronavirus pandemic, Moscow terribly failed to supply the Sputnik V vaccines through the African Union.

Russia’s expanding influence in Africa are compelling, but a closer examination further reveals a murkier picture. Despite Putin’s lofty trade targets, Russia’s trade with Africa stands at just $20 billion, which is lower than that of India or Turkey. 

The report authors said that the renewed attention by Russia to Africa presents both risks and opportunities for the continent, especially in this changing geopolitical situation. But the key question arises: Who is courting whom?

The report points to the fact that African countries have engaged with Russia in a ‘business-as-usual fashion’ and have either refrained from condemning Russia’s aggression or from expressing explicit solidarity with Ukraine. Nevertheless, over half of all African states sided with the West in condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in UN General Assembly votes in March and October 2022.

Russia’s major breakthroughs on the continent are confined to its support for fragile states, such as Mali, or autocracies, such as Cameroon, as major regional powers are reluctant to convert rhetorical cooperation into multidimensional partnerships.

The authors further wrote that “Russia’s growing assertiveness in Africa is a driver of instability and that its approach to governance encourages pernicious practices, such as kleptocracy and autocracy promotion, and the dearth of scholarship on Moscow’s post-1991 activities in Africa is striking.”

Records further show that Russia indeed kept a low profile for two decades after the Soviet collapse. One particularly problematic assumption is that Russia’s resurgence in Africa is a relatively recent phenomenon, which took hold at the tail end of Putin’s second term from 2004 to 2008 and accelerated after Russia-West relations soured over the 2014 Ukraine crisis and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. 

Now Russia’s main tactics to expand its influence, such as debt forgiveness, arms contracts to fragile states and resistance to US unilateralism, come from its transition-era playbook and are not simply throwbacks to its Soviet-era superpower status. These continuities and forces that have shaped them are largely ignored in Western accounts and deserve granular attention.

In addition, Russia has used social media, state media and ‘political technologists’ to create distorted narratives of Russian largesse and to erode public support for Western involvement in Africa. At times, image triumphs over reality, as Russian narratives are more appealing than its actions. It is clear that Moscow’s approach to Africa is customised and is not a mere extrapolation from Putin’s global approach to foreign policy. 

Moreover, the limited amplification of African voices causes sub-Saharan Africa to be viewed as a passive pawn of Russian power projection and neglects the perspectives of African civil society and the historical legacies that drive elites to court the Kremlin. Africa’s agency is thus discounted and diminished.

On the other hand, Russian public diplomacy in Africa explores the targeted use of historical ties, existing anti-Western narratives, state-centric approach and educational programmes to enhance Moscow’s ‘soft power’ on the continent.  

In Southern Africa, a pattern of ‘differentiated courtship’ emerges clearly. By bridging Southern and Eastern Africa, its tactics include debt-for-development, nuclear energy, military and paramilitary cooperation, disinformation campaigns and election interference and sponsorship of political parties. 

Further in the Horn of Africa, Russia’s tactics for influence projections span from participating in anti-piracy missions to vaccine diplomacy. 

The war in Ukraine has elevated the level of scrutiny of Russia’s actions both in Europe and elsewhere in the world, including in Africa. Undeniably, Moscow is wooing African elites to serve its interests, African states are trying to play off Moscow, Washington, Brussels and Beijing for maximum advantage. While many complexities and nuances still remain in the entire relationships, it necessary not to over-generalize the unique features in the bilateral ties. 

In the context of a multipolar geopolitical order, Russia’s image of cooperation could be seen as highly enticing, but it is also based on illusions. Better still, Russia’s posture is a clash between illusions and reality. Russia, it appears, is a neo-colonial power dressed in anti-colonial clothes.

Simply put, Moscow’s strategic incompetence and dominating opaque relations are adversely affecting sustainable developments in Africa. Thus far, Russia looks more like a ‘virtual great power’ than a genuine challenger to European, American and Chinese influence. The second Russia-Africa Summit – if it indeed goes ahead in 2023 – will provide an ideal opportunity to reflect on progress since the inaugural gathering in 2019, and attempt to separate bluster from the concrete facts on the ground. But, ‘who is courting whom’ in the current relations between Africa and Russia.

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The first three were the direct result of US intelligence agencies’ anti-Russian information warfare campaign and attendant political weaponization of the false perceptions that were instilled in the minds of the European elite. The last two then built upon the preceding progress to geostrategically re-engineer the continent via a clever divide-and-rule system that’s upheld by the Damocles’ sword of catalyzing cascading crises across Africa that would inevitably spill into Europe as punishment if the US’ vassals ever dare to seriously rebel.

The successful reassertion of the US’ previously declining unipolar hegemony over Europe was one of the most important developments of the past year. The objectivity of this assessment is evidenced by Director General of the prestigious Russian International Affairs Council Andrey Kortunov extensively elaborating on that trend in his report about “A New Western Cohesion and World Order” that he published in late September. It’s worth reading for those who aren’t yet familiar with his thoughts.

The present piece won’t rehash that esteemed expert’s insight, but build upon it in the geostrategic direction. The overarching trend that Kortunov devoted considerable time to investigating has some additional facets that he either glossed over or completely missed in his report. This analysis will therefore aim to correct those shortcomings, while humbly acknowledging that it too is far from comprehensive and admittedly overlooks some details as well.

What follows are the five ways that the US successfully reasserted its hegemony over Europe in 2022. These factors contributed to the past year being transformational for Russian grand strategy since they forced the Kremlin to decisively oppose the US-led West’s Golden Billion after realizing that any potential rapprochement with this de facto New Cold War bloc was now impossible even if it undertook some pragmatic compromises to that end. Here’s how the US made this outcome inevitable:

1. Influence Networks & Values Were Exploited To Decouple The EU From Russia

American intelligence agencies leveraged their deeply embedded influence networks across the continent to coerce the EU into unilaterally conceding on its objective national (and especially economic) interests vis-à-vis Russia. In pursuit of this, they also exploited nebulous notions of so-called “Western values” in order to falsely present Russia’s special operation not as a military campaign in defense of its national security red lines, but as supposedly being an existential threat to the West.

2. Liberal Totalitarianism Was Weaponized As A “Self-Defensive” Reaction To Russia

The totalitarian tilt inherent in the liberal-globalist ideology that proliferated across the EU since the end of the Old Cold War was weaponized by the US to make that bloc’s decoupling from Russia irreversible. American perception managers provoked its most fascist manifestations such as rampant Russophobia into finally coming to the surface on the false pretext of being required to “defend Western values” from so-called “Russian subversion”, which resulted in irreconcilable differences between those two.

3. The World War II Mindset Was Manipulated To Entrench The EU’s Newfound Vassalhood

Upon being led by the preceding two developments into considering Russia to be a World War II-like existential threat, the EU was easily manipulated into surrendering its sovereignty to the US on the false basis that failing to do so would result in the “New Hitler” steamrolling them after Ukraine. Granting America control of their military policies saw it demanding that Europeans indefinitely make sacrifices for the “war effort”, which in practice led to them subordinating their economies to the US’ too.

4. The US-Provoked “Friendly Competition” Between Europeans Keeps Them Divided

Europe’s preexisting centralization trend was unprecedentedly accelerated in the face of the falsely presented “Russian threat”, but the US cleverly provoked “friendly competition” between its vassals as part of their “shared war effort” to ensure that they remain divided and never unite against it. This saw it encouraging a rivalry between Germany and Poland over leadership of Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), which is expected to be indefinitely maintained for divide-and-rule purposes by its UK “junior partner”.

5. Africa’s Artificially Manufactured Food & Fuel Crises Are Wielded As A Damocles’ Sword

The West’s anti-Russian sanctions artificially manufactured Africa’s food and fuel crises that otherwise would never have materialized but have subsequently been wielded by this de facto New Cold War bloc’s US leader as a Damocles’ sword over its EU vassals. In the worst-case scenario that they ever seriously rebel, America will exacerbate these systemic crises for the purpose of provoking unparalleled political unrest in Africa that’ll inevitably result in a crippling wave of uncontrollable migration to the EU.

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The five developments mentioned above add credence to Kortunov’s conclusion that the US has indeed successfully reasserted its previously declining unipolar hegemony over Europe across the past year, which represents one of the most globally significant trends of 2022. The first three were the direct result of its intelligence agencies’ anti-Russian information warfare campaign and attendant political weaponization of the false perceptions that were instilled in the minds of the European elite.

The last two built upon the preceding progress to geostrategically re-engineer the continent via a clever divide-and-rule system that’s upheld by the Damocles’ sword of catalyzing cascading crises across Africa that would inevitably spill into Europe as punishment if the US’ vassals ever dare to seriously rebel. The latter likely won’t be necessary though since the former “division of labor” driven by the US’ manipulation of Europeans’ World War II mindset has proven sufficient for keeping them under control.

Looking forward, the US is expected to exploit its restored hegemony over the EU in order to give itself an edge over China in their ongoing talks on a New Détente. It’ll threaten to have the bloc impose Russian-like maximum sanctions against the People’s Republic on an equally manipulated values-driven basis if China doesn’t concede on its security interests in the Asia-Pacific. This scenario shouldn’t be taken lightly since the US already got the EU to sacrifice its economic interests vis-à-vis Russia.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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War fever has strongly affected thinking about the conflict in Ukraine. US Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warns that this could lead to another dangerous global conflict. In a recently published notable article, he calls for rapid negotiations and urges politicians to develop a strong vision and political courage.

When it comes to foreign policy, Henry Kissinger is one of the most important voices in the US. For many years he was national security adviser. He also served as Secretary of State under the Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In the early 1970s, he masterminded the rapprochement between the US and China in order to isolate and weaken the then Soviet Union.

The 99-year-old Kissinger is not a wimp. He was directly involved in the 1973 coup in Chile and also in the extremely brutal Vietnam War.

Call for rapid peace negotiations

On December 17, he wrote a remarkable article for the British magazine Spectator. In it, he calls for a quick end to the fighting and for peace negotiations. Otherwise, he fears there will be a new world war.

He notes that Ukraine has had a number of successes in its defence against Russia. “Ukraine has acquired one of the largest and most effective land armies in Europe [through this war], equipped by the US and its allies.” The country has also become de facto integrated into NATO and therefore “neutrality is no longer meaningful”.

That is why, according to Kissinger, it is time for the West to turn those successes into political realities.

“The time is approaching to build on the strategic changes which have already been accomplished and to integrate them into a new structure towards achieving peace through negotiation.”

Such a peace process should, on the one hand, cash in on successes and “confirm the freedom of Ukraine”. On the other hand, we must “define a new international security structure for Central and Eastern Europe” in which Russia “should find a place”.

Kissinger calls for a cease-fire along the borders where the war began on Feb. 24. “Russia would disgorge its conquests thence, but not the territory it occupied nearly a decade ago, including Crimea. That territory could be the subject of a negotiation after a ceasefire.”

If no agreement can be reached on the pre-war dividing line, then

“recourse to the principle of self-determination could be explored. Internationally supervised referendums concerning self-determination could be applied to particularly divisive territories which have changed hands repeatedly over the centuries.”

Frivolous belligerence

Kissinger calls the idea which prevails in some warmongering circles of defeating Russia militarily and then splitting it up unwise, frivolous and dangerous.

“The preferred outcome for some is a Russia rendered impotent by the war. I disagree. For all its propensity to violence, Russia has made decisive contributions to the global equilibrium and to the balance of power for over half a millennium. Its historical role should not be degraded.”

A “dissolution of Russia” or a total weakening could turn the largest country in the world “into a contested vacuum”. Given the large number of nuclear weapons, the result would be an extremely dangerous powder keg, where other countries “might seek to expand their claims by force”.

Moreover, such a defeat is far from obvious. Russia’s military setbacks “have not eliminated its global nuclear reach, enabling it to threaten escalation in Ukraine”. Or as they say in Dutch: ‘a cornered cat can make strange jumps.

Motives

There are two motives that make Kissinger advocate peace negotiations. On a strategic level, he thinks the US and the West are overplaying their hand in this conflict. Not only is weakening Russia not an option, by escalating this conflict, the West risks driving Russia into the hands of China, creating a powerful enemy.

In The Wall Street Journal of August 12, he says:

“We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to”.

He argues that the US can better control two such enemies by triangulating between them, as happened under President Nixon. He offers no simple prescription: “You can’t just now say we’re going to split them off and turn them against each other. All you can do is not to accelerate the tensions and to create options.”

On a tactical level, Kissinger wants quick negotiations to preserve the territorial gains made on the battlefield as much as possible. According to The Economist, Ukraine is running out of ammunition for its anti-aircraft systems and needs better missile defence systems. It will probably be months before the promised and much more effective Patriot missiles from the US are operational.

Meanwhile, Russia is preparing for a new offensive. Possibly as early as January, Russian troops could launch a major attack. In doing so, they would try to drive back the Ukrainian army and could even make a second attempt to take the capital Kiev. That may be why Kissinger advocates getting to the negotiating table as soon as possible.

Judging by the current war rhetoric of Ukrainian President Zelensky, peace negotiations stand little chance at the moment. But in every war, there is a great gulf between propaganda and reality. Behind the scenes, the US government, Ukrainian officials and other Western allies have been having quiet conversations about what a diplomatic solution could ultimately look like.[i]

Kissinger is unaffected by the war fever surrounding this conflict. He appeals to common sense and calls on politicians to develop a strong vision and muster political courage:

“The quest for peace and order has two components that are sometimes treated as contradictory: the pursuit of elements of security and the requirement for acts of reconciliation. If we cannot achieve both, we will not be able to reach either. The road of diplomacy may appear complicated and frustrating. But progress to it requires both the vision and the courage to undertake the journey.”

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Marc Vandepitte is a Belgian economist and philosopher. He writes on North-South relations, Latin America, Cuba, and China. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Note

[i] Financial Times, 22 december 2022, p. 2.

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The Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s advance in achieving fusion energy using lasers has been splashed as a huge success worldwide. So what is the success all about? The joint press release of the United States Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration says this experiment “will pave the way for advancements in national defence and the future of clean power”. In other words, there is a weapons component to the fusion experiment. The Department of Defence is the Department of War.

Talking to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Prof Richard Rosner of the University of Chicago, a former director of the Argonne National Laboratory, explained that the experiment’s primary purpose was to test the health of the nuclear weapons stockpile without conducting an actual explosion. The controlled fusion experiment was a real-life test of a laser system. It showed it is possible to ignite hydrogen (in this experiment, a mixture of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium) using lasers to produce a little more energy—therefore, a net gain—than the lasers supplied. However, if we take into account the energy required to produce the 192 laser beams, then, alas, the experiment is still very far away from a net gain. The possibility of viable fusion energy production using lasers is at least a few decades away. It is as good as saying we do not know when—or if at all—the production of fusion energy will be viable.

But why was this experiment required, as the press release says, for advancements in national defence?

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was originally thought to be an intermediate step towards total disarmament. Initially, the maintenance of complex equipment—the thermonuclear nuclear warhead—was done by replacing faulty parts from other disassembled bombs. It may still be possible to continue on this path if all disassembled bomb parts are kept in the inventory or if a few parts are manufactured, even at a high cost. But the question remained: what about the health of the fissile material itself? How long would it stay stable and usable?

The task of the “stockpile stewardship” program of the United States government-owned National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was to ensure the “health” of the bombs without conducting physical tests. The just-conducted test at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories ensures that nuclear materials are still functional: take a few samples from the stockpiled bombs, ignite them using the complex 192-laser system it has built, and see whether the outputs are as expected. If yes, the stockpile is still of “healthy” hydrogen bombs. No physical tests are necessary, and the “crown jewels”—this is what Colin Powell called them—of the United States armoury are still as potent as ever! It also ensures that people handling such complex tests really know what they are doing.

The NNSA funds the team that worked on the laser project at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. This one and the Los Alamos Laboratory are the two biggest weapons research laboratories in the United States. In other words, the funding for the Lawrence Livermore experiment came from the stewardship program of the NNSA, which looks after the health of the nuclear bomb stockpile that the United States maintains.

How much does the ageing stockpile of nuclear weapons cost the United States? Daniel Gross tells us that upkeep—storage, protection, and maintenance—requires about $20 billion annually, nearly three times the National Science Foundation’s budget.

Apart from its primary purpose of checking out the health of the hydrogen bomb stockpile, does the Lawrence Livermore laser experiment have a significant spin-off in terms of fusion energy? Indeed, there have been several military-to-civilian transfers in the past. So why does this not herald a possibility of plentiful fusion energy and, therefore, a move away from fossil fuels and global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions? The simple issue of time is crucial here. If we do not cut emissions drastically in the next 10 to 20 years, the window to reduce greenhouse emissions, so that the temperature rise can be limited to 2 degrees Celsius, will close. We no longer have the luxury of time. Therefore, anything that happens at least two decades in the future will no longer be relevant in limiting global warming.

So let us forget fusion energy with respect to global warming. But can fusion be a source of grid energy? If not stop or slow down global warming, can it be a long-term, plentiful energy source?

Leaving out the easy answer—we already use fusion energy since solar energy arises from the fusion in the sun—yes, it is a possible source. But then we must address two other questions. One is a science-technology question: what processes do we use to produce more energy output than we must spend as input? And two, what will achieving this cost us? Always, it is the technologists who ask the second question, ‘OK, it works, but at what cost?’ Is it cheaper or at least comparable to other technologies?

The science component is the easy one to answer. As Prof Richard Rosner says in an interview with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, we solved this problem long back. The hydrogen bomb uses a fission device—a miniature atom bomb—as the trigger, which causes fusion in the hydrogen envelope that surrounds the trigger, initiating nuclear fusion. To quote Rosner, “So we have known how to fuse hydrogen and release energy for a long time—in 1952, we exploded the first thermonuclear device, whose detonation was largely the result of hydrogen fusion. So we’ve known how to do that for a very, very long time.” Lawrence Livermore Laboratory has achieved the same but under controlled conditions.

But is it even the first instance of controlled fusion? No, other facilities have achieved it, too, using the electromagnetic compression of hydrogen in what are called Tokamaks. In a few cases, the fusion lasted much longer. New in the Lawrence Livermore experiment is more energy output than input from the lasers—hence the “net gain”. But the energy needed to produce the 192 laser bombs that compressed a tiny capsule containing a mixture of deuterium and tritium would be about a hundred times more than what the lasers supplied to the capsule.

Leave out the question of energy involved in firing the lasers. Consider what scaling up we require to make laser-firing hydrogen a viable energy source. The answer is quite depressing. To cite Rosner again, we will need to fire such laser beams ten times per second and a million pellets/capsules per day before we can say the process is viable. And this is before accounting for the cost of the process and whether it can become economically viable.

Are there better alternatives to creating fusion energy than laser beams? In the Tokamaks, a fuel consisting of a mixture of hydrogen isotopes is compressed with electromagnetic forces that lead to fusion. This has been tried out in various institutions. At the moment, the Chinese experiment, called EAST, appears to be in the lead, followed by JET, the European Tokamak. The ITER Tokamak, an international project in which India is a partner, is scheduled to come on stream by 2025. But it plans to produce sustained fusion energy output ten times the input, using deuterium and tritium, only by 2035. Still, it will not produce electricity, as that is a well-known technology with no new research component.

Why do we find it so challenging to produce fusion energy when the stars, including our sun, do it so easily? The answer is that the enormous gravitational force of the sun compresses hydrogen far more easily than we can. The problem here on earth is compressing hydrogen isotopes without such a gravitational force. That is why we need lasers or electromagnetic forces to do what gravitational force easily does for stars. Second, we need alternates to fossil energy here and now. As I have written previously, the challenges are storing the energy generated from renewable sources like the sun on the grid and switching to mass public transport to make the energy transition we urgently need. It is not solving the far more difficult problem of creating mini-suns here on earth.

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In September, the U.S. created a foundation that was supposed to unfreeze Afghanistan’s foreign assets. Yet, interviews with trustees reveal that, in three months, no funds have been disbursed—or concrete plans made—to help the Afghan people.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 and, in response, Europe, the United Arab Emirates and the United States froze the Afghan central bank’s roughly $9 billion in foreign assets — $7 billion of which was under control of the United States.

Without access to these funds — alongside a lattice of sanctions, a decline in humanitarian aid and harsh political turmoil under Taliban rule — Afghanistan has been led into an economic collapse with a dramatic uptick in poverty; 6 million Afghans are facing the immediate risk of starvation. According to calculations from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a left-leaning think tank, U.S. sanctions on Afghanistan (including the freezing of these central bank assets) could kill more people than 20 years of U.S. war and occupation.

In September, the Biden administration placed half of the U.S.-controlled assets into a private foundation, trusteed by just four people, ​“to be used for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan while keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban and other malign actors,” according to a joint statement from the departments of Treasury and State.

But interviews with two of those four trustees reveal that no funds have yet been disbursed to help the Afghan people and there are no policies in place to do so immediately. One trustee underscored that it is unlikely the foundation will be a vehicle to quickly return the assets to Afghanistan’s central bank while the Taliban is maintaining oppressive rule.

This lack of progress raises concerns that the Biden administration is on course to worsen the rapidly spiraling humanitarian crisis. ​“Who pays the price,” asks Basir Bita, an Afghan activist who works with the Afghan refugee community in Canada and who has family in Afghanistan, ​“for the U.S. freezing the funds? The public. The people who live in Afghanistan.”

Creation of a foundation

The United States froze the Afghan central bank’s assets amid public outcry over the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Biden administration depicted the move as a refusal to legitimize Taliban rule.

Yet, according to Andrés Arauz, a senior research fellow at the CEPR,

​“The reality is that central banks don’t just hold government money — they also and mostly hold commercial banks’ money. They are not only banks of governments; they are also banks of banks. It was important for the working of Afghanistan’s financial system, and therefore its economy, that their banks have access to money that was seized by the United States.”

The freezing of the assets plunged Afghanistan into a liquidity crisis, in which people are unable to access their cash and perform essential transactions. Alongside the liquidity crisis is hyper-inflation, which has worsened the acute and widespread problem of hunger. Between June 2021 and July 2022, the price of wheat flour in Afghanistan skyrocketed 68% and cooking oil jumped 55%, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Seventy percent of homes are ​“unable to meet basic food and non-food needs,” the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned in June. Reports have emerged of Afghans selling their daughters, and their kidneys, in an effort to survive hunger and rising debt.

Citing the deepening catastrophe, some activists and lawmakers have been calling for the Biden administration to take a less collectively punitive approach and return the assets to Afghanistan’s central bank. In January, the New York Times editorial board published an op-ed warning against a policy of letting the Afghan central bank fall apart, titled, ​“Let Innocent Afghans Have Their Money.”

In the midst of all of this, in February, the Biden administration issued an executive order to set aside $3.5 billion of the U.S.-held central bank assets for victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001 (though lawyers and lobbyists stand to profit handsomely). This move was widely criticized by United Nations experts and some 9/11 families for its disastrous humanitarian consequences for Afghans.

On September 14, the U.S. departments of Treasury and State announced the other half of the U.S.-controlled reserves of the Afghan central bank — another $3.5 billion — would be placed under the control of a Swiss foundation called the Afghan Fund. The Afghan Fund would ​“maintain its account” with the Bank for International Settlements, which is a global financial institution, based in Switzerland, that provides banking services for central banks.

According to a statement from the Bank for International Settlements, its role ​“is limited to providing banking services” and it plays no part in the decision-making of the Afghan Fund.

In the short term, the Afghan Fund’s board of trustees ​“will have the ability to authorize targeted disbursements to promote monetary and macroeconomic stability and benefit the Afghan people,” according to the joint statement from Treasury and State. The foundation could, for example, use the assets to pay for ​“critical imports like electricity,” or to pay for ​“Afghanistan’s arrears at international financial institutions to preserve their eligibility for financial support.” The Afghan Fund’s long-term goal is to return the funds to the Afghan central bank, but only if key assessments and ​“counter-terrorism” controls are implemented, the statement indicates.

Some activists and members of the U.S. Congress cautiously supported the creation of the Afghan Fund, hoping it marked a step toward the United States unfreezing the assets.

​“The fund has the potential to create a vital pathway to a functioning financial system, returning desperately needed assets to Afghanistan that could alleviate major price spikes of food and other essentials,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in a September 15 statement.

The press coverage surrounding the Afghan Fund intimated a major unlocking of the assets could be just around the corner. ​“Setting up the new fund will enable the funds to flow quickly,” Kylie Atwood wrote for CNN.

But now, three months later, no money has been distributed and two of the Afghan Fund’s trustees say there is no immediate plan to return assets to the Afghan central bank.

Four trustees

The Afghan Fund has four trustees who make its decisions. Of the two born in Afghanistan, the first is Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady, former head of the Afghan central bank and Afghanistan’s former minister of finance. The second is Shah Mehrabi, a professor at Montgomery College in Maryland, who also serves on the Afghan central bank’s Supreme Council.

Mehrabi and Ahady each confirmed to Workday Magazine and In These Times that, in the three months since it was created, the Afghan Fund has not disbursed any funds — neither directly to the Afghan central bank, nor to meet any immediate needs for economic stabilization — and has no immediate plans to make significant disbursements to the central bank.

At the first meeting of the Afghan Fund trustees in Geneva on November 21, ​“potential disbursement issues were addressed but no policy and procedures or options were elaborated or finalized,” Mehrabi explains. There is another meeting scheduled for January, he says, but ​“release of these funds to the central bank most likely will not occur in January.” Ahady confirmed the Afghan Fund has not yet reached agreement on a policy to disburse funds.

According to Mehrabi and Ahady, among the trustees at the November 21 meeting was Andrew Baukol, the U.S. Treasury’s acting undersecretary for international affairs, who replaced Scott Miller, U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, as a trustee. (The U.S. Embassy in Switzerland confirmed that Miller had been replaced, and ​“the U.S. representative is now based at Treasury.”) The swap-in of Baukol, who has also worked in the CIA and the U.S. office of the International Monetary Fund, suggests a larger role for the Treasury Department.

The fourth trustee is Alexandra Baumann, a Swiss foreign ministry official.

For any decision to go through, it must have the unanimous backing of the foundation’s four trustees, Ahady explains. Given the Treasury Department’s representation, ​“If the U.S. government disagrees, no decision will be made,” he says.

Mehrabi’s position on the board was a win for advocates of unfreezing the Afghan central bank funds, as he is an outspoken proponent of unlocking the assets and restoring them to the central bank. Mehrabi explains over WhatsApp that he would like to see a ​“limited, monitored release” of funds to the Afghan central bank, ranging from $80 million to $100 million per month, ​“depending on the demand and stabilization of currency and stable prices.” (He has previously called for $150 million a month.)

Mehrabi’s proposal is relatively moderate compared with others who have issued less qualified calls to fully unfreeze the Afghan central bank assets and revive the institution. But for those who are anxious to welcome any amount of disbursement to Afghanistan’s central bank, Mehrabi stands out for supporting the direct flow of funds.

When asked whether other trustees agree the funds should be returned to the Afghan central bank, Mehrabi replies, ​“The issue of disbursement has not been fully discussed yet and finalized.”

A Treasury Department readout from the November 21 meeting says the trustees of the Afghan Fund agreed on operational matters, like ​“hiring an external auditor” and ​“developing compliance controls and foundational corporate governance documents.” But the readout contains no mention of what will happen with the actual assets.

When asked about the prospect of unlocking the assets for the Afghan central bank, Mehrabi explains: ​“The U.S. government’s position has been not to release funds to the central bank unless capacity building and AML/CFT issues [anti-money laundering and counter-financing control measures] are resolved. How long will this take? There is an immediate need to tackle higher prices that people are suffering from, and lack of funds has prevented businesses from paying for imports. If funds are not released soon, the suffering of Afghans will continue.”

Ahady says over the phone that, due to the position of the United States, the Afghan Fund will be unlikely to return any significant portion of the assets to the Afghan central bank while the Taliban ​“is declining U.S. requests for more inclusive government and women’s rights.”

Some funds may be disbursed for key items that circumvent the central bank in the public interest, Ahady says, such as printing new bank notes or passports. But the primary purpose of the Afghan Fund ​“is really to keep this money so that, one day, when the situation becomes normal, this is the capital of the Afghan central bank. So at least the central bank will have capital to work with. So the main idea is not so much disbursement, unless it’s strictly needed, but to manage the fund that’s under sanction.”

Ahady declined to comment on whether he supports this orientation to the frozen assets.

Such an approach would differ from the standards laid out in the joint statement from the departments of Treasury and State, which highlights three conditions for unfreezing the assets: that the central bank ​“demonstrates its independence from political influence and interference”; ​“demonstrates it has instituted adequate anti-money laundering and countering-the-financing-of-terrorism (AML/CFT) controls”; and ​“completes a third-party needs assessment and onboards a reputable third-party monitor.”

According to Cavan Kharrazian, a progressive foreign policy advocate for Demand Progress, any delay will most greatly harm those who are already vulnerable and oppressed under Taliban rule. ​“For the foreseeable future, the Taliban will be in charge of the government of Afghanistan,” Kharrazian says. ​“While they have a deplorable human rights record, especially towards women, there is also a severe economic and humanitarian crisis in the country that needs immediate attention. This crisis affects the most vulnerable segments of society the worst.”

Kharrazian adds: ​“The U.S. just spent 20 years and trillions of dollars attempting to eradicate and replace the Taliban and its oppressive rule. It didn’t work. But the U.S. does have the ability to facilitate the unfreezing of funds that can benefit millions of people facing humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan.”

Afghan activist Bita implores that ​“the funds need to be released right now, because people are struggling. So many people lost their lives, so many people sold their kids on the streets, so many forced their daughters to marry a man because of the economic situation. So it has to be right now.”

Arauz, from the CEPR, says it would be a profound mistake on the part of the United States to withhold assets from the Afghan central bank in order to punish the Taliban. ​“The central bank funds are not government funds,” he emphasizes. ​“They are commingled with commercial banks’ funds, which ultimately belong to depositors, which are human beings and businesses. It would not be returning the funds to the Taliban — it would be returning funds to the commercial system and depositors of the Afghan economy.”

The clock is ticking and activists warn that each day without the unfreezing of the funds brings more hardship for Afghans. ​“When the fund was created, every major humanitarian institution, the United Nations, etc., were already pretty clear that the whole country faced a giant humanitarian crisis that needed to be addressed as soon as possible,” Kharrazian says. ​“There was already a sense of urgency.

“They’ve waited three months to deliberate over sending small portions over what should have been fully unfrozen funds. If it was urgent in September, it’s especially urgent now, with winter arriving.”

Ahady’s position is that unlocking the Afghan central bank assets would not be a magic wand. He says that ​“the objective of sanctions is to make things difficult, and have these sanctions contributed to the slowdown of economic activities in Afghanistan? Yes.” But, he contends, a number of factors are to blame, including dependency on foreign assistance, the imposition of sanctions, and poor economic management. ​“I think that, even if the U.S. government were to release this fund, this is not going to solve Afghanistan’s economic problems,” he says. ​“It might help a little bit. Just a little bit.”

Afghan Fund trustee Baumann did not respond to a request for an interview, but she has emphasized caution in previous statements to the press. ​“The [Afghan central bank], in its current form, is not a fit place for this money,” she said in an October article from SWI swiss​in​fo​.ch, a media service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. ​“We do not have any guarantee that if the money goes back right now that it will be effectively used for the benefit of the Afghan people.”

The U.S. Treasury Department also did not return a request for comment.

With no clear timetable for disbursing funds, Erik Sperling, executive director of advocacy organization Just Foreign Policy, expresses frustration. ​“Given U.S. Treasury’s continued veto and dominance over the Swiss Fund,” he says, ​“U.S. officials like Janet Yellen, Adewale O. Adeyemo and, ultimately, President Biden are responsible for destroying [the Afghan] economy and knowingly plunging tens of millions of Afghans into crisis.”

According to Bita, ​“The way the U.S. government has taken hostage of the funds — that is one way of dehumanizing the people of Afghanistan.”

“With this money,” Bita adds, ​“you could save the lives of so many people.”

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Sarah Lazare is the editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing editor for In These Times. She tweets at @sarahlazare.

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In my humble opinion the surfacing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington last week was possibly the most disgusting example of the corruption of our country and its values since Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu arranged for a similar invitation to address a rapturous Congress back in 2015. Zelensky’s “surprise” visit had in fact been arranged over the course of several months and was a carefully choreographed performance intended to pay political dividends for both the White House, for the Democratic Party in Congress and for Zelensky and his political supporters at home.

He met privately with President Joe Biden in the White House, where he presumably received most of what he was seeking as well as a pledge of total support until “Ukraine wins.” He subsequently was invited to address a Joint Session of Congress, a privilege that was most definitely not arranged at short notice, with House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi predictably calling on all Congressmen to attend. The session began with a three minute standing ovation from the assembled Representatives and Senators.

So the creepy little con-man was enabled to have his say in a video link that reached a global audience. That it consisted of a gaggle of lies to justify the rapid passage of hundreds of billions of dollars from the struggling American taxpayer to a nation renowned only for its reputation as the most corrupt in Europe was not noted by the audience. As it has been from the start Joe Biden’s war, it is inevitable that the Democrats in Congress should leap around and fill the chamber with cheers every time Zelensky opened his mouth to emit yet another inanity.

But to their shame, many Republicans joined in on the celebration of the odd diminutive man Zelensky, whose beatification was passionately embraced by the national media to make sure no one missed out on the importance of the event. The New York Times report on the visit began by describing Zelensky’s status as “a national hero and global superstar, having forged a leadership style blending personal daring with deft messaging to rally his people at home and his allies abroad.” In part, that message included describing his struggle as engaging in a battle pitting “good against evil.”

Image: President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Wednesday, December 21, 2022, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

Nevertheless, those Republicans whose heads were not wedged up their keesters did boycott the event, to the tune of only 86 out of 213 being present. It seems that some Republicans are against the war generally speaking while others actually believe that the billions going to Ukraine should be audited to determine whether it is being stolen or not. Congressmen Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert attended but played with their cell phones and did not rise and applaud the stirring rhetoric coming from Zelensky, who was basically seeking many new weapons and lots more money justified not as “charity” but as an “investment” so he and Ukraine could work to bring rule of law, global security, democracy and freedom to the world. In the aftermath, one particularly delusional commentator has enthused how

“There can be no more compelling or effective leader of the democratic free world today than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Fate has called upon him to rise to a level of courage and clarity few figures in history have demonstrated.”

In his speech, Zelensky clearly forgot to mention how he has eliminated freedom of speech and association in his own country as part of his war agenda, while also banning opposition parties and media and even harassing the Russian Orthodox Church. But the tweetosphere inevitably ignored those issues and erupted instead over the alleged bad behavior by some Republicans in not supporting such a great leader. One Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC), who is the anointed NBC television network’s Presidential Historian, tweeted, “For any members of Congress who refused to clap for Zelenskyy, we need to know from them exactly why.” Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) responded sarcastically to Beschloss, “Haul them before a Committee and force them to pledge allegiance to Ukraine and Zelensky or else face long-term imprisonment in a supermax. Refusing to clap for a foreign leader on command is a form of treason.”

And politicians too were inevitably prone to bombastic misrepresentation. Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia tweeted how

“This disrespect is embarrassing. It embarrasses you, your constituents, the body we serve in, and our country. Huge numbers of President Zelensky’s people have been killed in a bloody war they did not seek. We must be able to debate foreign policy without mocking human suffering.”

Another lunkhead Democrat Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts declared war, asserting that

“We’re in a global struggle between democracy and autocracy. And Ukraine is fighting on the frontlines of that struggle. Our support for Ukraine is sending a message to Moscow, it’s sending a message to Beijing. And it’s sending a message to other authoritarian regimes.”

Auchincloss was apparently unaware that it is the United States government that has itself become more autocratic/despotic in that it is generally accepted that the president now has extralegally assumed the authority to allow war crimes to be committed in places like Syria, Afghanistan and Libya while also torturing people to death in secret prisons. The president and his Attorney General Merrick Garland are also rooting out “domestic terrorists” who generally speaking are white people who oppose Democratic Party policies.

Clearly, neither Beyer nor Auchincloss understands that a principled “debate” on foreign policy is not taking place at all in America, largely due to the ability of their party and colleagues to manage and control the process whereby it is possible to start an illegal/unconstitutional war that just might go nuclear without any real pushback from critics or the public.

When it comes to controlling the narrative on Ukraine, the normally inept Biden Administration has unleashed the most effective propaganda machine that has ever existed, even if one is taking into consideration George W. Bush’s many lies relating to Afghanistan/Iraq. It is interesting to note that nor did Beyer find Zelensky’s macho sporting of a “wartime uniform” featuring combat style sweatshirt and fatigue cargo pants, which Tucker Carlson described as befitting the “manager of a strip club,” as disrespectful of the august body that he was addressing.

Nor was Beyer apparently affronted when Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris unfurled and waved a huge Ukrainian flag at the speaker’s rostrum. And speaking of Zelensky’s performance itself, one has to wonder who wrote Zelensky’s speech? He has neither the experience nor the smarts necessary to appeal to the most basic instincts of the American people, so one might rather expect that the piece was written and the presentation coached by the usual neocon handlers that have presumably surrounded him since his ascent to power.

The chinless and gutless wonder Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made up for the lack of ardor exhibited by some of his colleagues by saying on the day before Zelensky’s arrival that arming Kiev to “defeat” Russia tops the agenda of “most Republicans.” He elaborated that

“Making sure the Defense Department can deal with the major threats coming from Russia and China, providing assistance for the Ukrainians to defeat the Russians, that’s the number one priority of the United States right now, according to most Republicans.”

Mitch calls defeating the Russians the number one priority for the United States, not the open southern border nor the economy suffering from inflation, shortages and recession. And then there is Senator he/she Lindsey Graham, who clearly endorsed that hardline in spades, calling for the “assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” an act that would surely initiate World War 3.

I rather suspect that the passion unleashed for the Jewish Zelensky is at least in part engineered by the usual suspects among the politically powerful Jewish groups, lobbyists and media personalities, where criticism of Ukraine, which has a large Jewish population, is considered a capital offense. Jewish media in the US hailed the impending news of the Zelensky visit, enthusing in seasonal fashion over how “Ukraine’s survival” under Zelensky had been a “modern day Hanukkah miracle.”

Hatred of Russia (and of course Iran) is also a sine qua non among such groups and media outlets and they will twist every argument to urge US military intervention in both those countries. That is precisely what Zelensky himself does when he calls for NATO intervention even when he is the one who bombs neighboring Poland.

In the current situation, you will not find the totally “reliable” New York Times debunking the ridiculous claim that throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at Zelensky and his band of thieves is in any way related to US national security requirements. No one was threatening the United States and the war that erupted in February was clearly negotiable on two major issues: implementation of the Minsk accords of 2014-5 over autonomy for Donbas and demands for neutrality for Ukraine, i.e. no joining NATO. It was the United States that encouraged Ukraine’s abrupt tilt towards and west and refused to negotiate in any seriousness with Russia over issues that were vital to that country’s actual security.

So did the Zelensky bit of kabuki theater largely engineered by the White House and Nancy Pelosi succeed in getting everything the Ukrainians wanted? Probably not, as offensive missile systems that could be used to strike deep into Russia are still on hold, but the money and other weapons are now in the pipeline. And there surely will be more to come, certain to include US military “advisers” on the ground.

No matter how it turns out, the Ukraine is a tragedy writ large and the fools sitting complacently on Capitol Hill are largely to blame for not recognizing that US interests do not necessarily coincide with the aspirations of Volodymyr Zelensky and his fellow accomplices. Maybe in two years’ time when the whole house of cards has collapsed and Americans, feeling a great deal of economic and political pain, begin to wonder what took place, it will be time to throw all the bums out and replace them with folks who really care about what happens to this country.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

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***

June 22, 2022 was the 81st anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, and a prominent German antiwar activist took the occasion to publicly question why the German government is now supporting neo-Nazi organizations in Ukraine.

As a result, that activist is now facing the possibility of up to three years in prison.

Heinrich Bücker runs Berlin’s popular Coop Antiwar Cafe, which since 2005 has been a gathering space for activists working on a wide range of issues. Since 2019 the cafe has co-organized the weekly event “Frente Unido América Latina” in front of the U.S. Embassy. He’s a member of the “Kommunistische Platform” in the party DIE LINKE; a member of the League of Anti-Fascists; and represents the U.S.-based World Beyond War in Berlin. The cafe also represents the “Aufstehen” Initiative in Berlin Mitte, backing the left politician Sahra Wagenknecht and organizing left events against sanctions and for peace.

On June 22, Bücker gave a speech at an event hosted by Berlin’s Friedenskoordination (Peace Coordination) at the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park, in which, according to a statement on the antiwar cafe’s website, he said that

“… it seems incomprehensible to me that German politics should again support the same chauvinistic and especially Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German Reich found willing helpers in 1941. The SS and Wehrmacht used Ukrainian national-fascist organizations as repressive and murderous squads against their own countrymen, including millions of Jewish men, women and children.”

The collaboration of ultra-nationalist Ukrainian organizations with the Nazi occupation is a matter of historical record. And, before the present war, Western mainstream media would routinely report on the existence of present-day fascist organizations in Ukraine, such as the Azov Battalion, Right Sector, National Militia, C-14 and many others. (See this)

But that coverage has now ended.

On Oct. 19, Bücker received a letter from the Berlin State Criminal Police Office notifying him that he was under investigation for possible violation of Paragraph 140 of the German Criminal Code, which has to do with disturbing the public peace. A violation of the statute can be punished by a fine or a prison sentence of up to three years. The investigation was apparently prompted by a complaint by a Berlin attorney upset about Bücker’s speech.

“In Germany, we are currently experiencing a narrowing of the space for debate and massive restrictions on freedom of expression, caused by one-sided reporting in the mainstream-media,” Bücker writes. “There are now a number of individuals who are in the focus of the German criminal investigation authorities. Similar tendencies are also reported from other EU [European Union] countries.”

The Coop Antiwar Cafe itself also has come under attack. In addition to threatening emails, the cafe’s front windows were recently smashed.

Along with his June 22 speech, Bücker also initiated a statement on the war in Ukraine that questioned the official line that it’s simply an act of unprovoked Russian aggression. Instead, the statement, posted on the cafe’s website, points to the steady eastward expansion of NATO up to the very borders of Russia, and U.S. and European support for the 2014 coup that drove out the elected president of Ukraine and brought in a right-wing government anxious to join NATO and hostile to both Russia and the country’s ethnic Russian minority.

Another reason for the police interest in Bücker could be the prominent role he has played in promoting an anti-imperialist statement on the war in Ukraine initiated by the U.S-based Odessa Solidarity Campaign, a project of the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality. That statement, similar to the one initiated by the Coop Antiwar Cafe, has been endorsed by more than 230 organizations and individuals in 22 countries, with nearly two-thirds of the endorsers from Germany.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the African People’s Socialist Party is calling for support in the face of expected indictments of four of its leaders and prominent supporters who have been actively speaking out against U.S. support for Ukraine. The APSP is a Pan-African organization that for the past 50 years has been opposing U.S. wars at home and abroad.

In response to the police pressure, Bücker’s allies and supporters in Germany have been preparing a united defense effort. Stay tuned for new developments and calls for solidarity.

For more information on repression directed against antiwar activists and efforts to support them, see:

Coop Antiwar Cafe: http://coopcafeberlin.de

African People’s Socialist Party: https://apspuhuru.org

Odessa Solidarity Campaign: https://odessasolidaritycampaign.org

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Phil Wilayto is a longtime antiwar and social justice activist based in Richmond, Virginia. He is editor of The Virginia Defender quarterly newspaper; co-founder of the Virginia Prison Justice Network; and coordinator of the antifascist Odessa Solidarity Campaign. Wilayto is the author of several books, including “The Feeding Trough,” an investigation into the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; “We Won’t Go Back!” an eyewitness account of the 1989 Pittston coal strike;” and “In Defense of Iran: Notes from a U.S. peace delegation’s journey through the Islamic Republic.” He can be reached at: [email protected].

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For over two decades, American families have faced an unscrupulous foe that threatens the public health and welfare. It is a rogue, unmanageable institution within our federal government, now seemingly beholden solely to private corporate interests. Citizens have been horribly mistaken in believing that the nation’s leading health agency, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), honors its mandate to protect the public from “dangerous health threats,” both domestic and foreign. We are expected to assume the CDC relies upon the most advanced and cutting-edge medical science and data to make its policy decisions. However, the agency’s history of corruption and fraud contradict its own pledge, as outlined on its website. Instead of protecting the “health security of our nation,” the CDC uses bromides and meaningless pageantry to hide its true nature.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, now entering its fourth year, the fear-mongering spewed from the CDC has become virulent. It is a classic Orwellian script. Back in 2018, writing for the Foreign Policy Journal, Jeremy Hammond accused the agency of promoting disinformation about influenza statistics in order to induce fear in the public as a marketing campaign to increase vaccination rates. Moreover, the SARS-2 virus outbreak from the Wuhan laboratory has been seized upon as an opportunity to brainwash the public and reshape it into obedient livestock in order to increase the agency’s power over public health policies and vaccination compliance. Worse, this disinformation campaign has ignored everything we know so far about the efficacy and safety of the Covid-19 vaccines, especially the experimental mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer.

Unfortunately, the government has assured us that there is no public space to debate the pros and cons of these vaccines. The CDC has consistently shut down debate when its decisions are challenged.  Physicians, medical researchers, immunologists and former vaccine advocates who challenge the loose claims for vaccine safety and efficacy are frustrated and eager to publicly debate the best vaccine advocates the CDC and vaccine industry have to offer, but none will take up the challenge because the science is so clearly not on their side.

The agency consistently fails to conduct and apply any gold standard and robust review for its own medical research and ignores the best independent peer-reviewed science. In short, the agency is a mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical-industrial complex and operates for its own financial advantage, rather than for the benefit of society. Its revolving doors are kept spinning with a constant influx of pharmaceutical industry and vaccine insiders. In fact the lines separating corporate influence and public health are grossly blurred and distorted. It is no surprise that documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests paint the CDC as rotten in its core and one of the greatest health threats to the nation. The agency, in Robert Kennedy Jr’s words, is a “cesspool of corruption.”

Despite the CDC’s claims on its website that it “does not accept commercial support” and ”no financial interests or other relationships with the manufacturers of commercial products,” the British Medical Journal called out the agency for accepting funding from the pharmaceutical industry and other for-profit corporations. In 2019, this resulted in a citizens’ petition addressed to then CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield for promulgating false disclaimers and to demand greater transparency in its financial relationships. The petition charges the agency’s blatant “deception” with “misleading health professionals, consumers and others both in the United States and around the world.” Four years later the CDC’s duplicity has not only heightened but it has been increasingly wrapped in secrecy and untruths.

What you will never hear in the mainstream media is that there is another medical institution that is supposed to have been granted the responsibility to assure the CDC receives quality and reliable scientific research to use as the basis for its healthcare decisions.  The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly known as the Institute of Medicine (IOM) until 2015, does not possess the CDC’s legislative clout; however, elected officials are led to believe that it represents a far superior body of scientists and researchers in their medical fields.

Founded in 1970, the Institute of Medicine falls under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences started by President Abraham Lincoln and Congress in 1863. The Academy’s purpose is to bring together the nation’s best scientific minds to advise the government on scientific matters. The IOM was founded later to provide expert advice and reliable medical research to the White House and Congressional legislators to guide their decisions, keeping them informed about the social, economic and political impacts of healthcare.

According to its principles, and unlike the CDC, NAM members deliberating on vaccine research and policies are supposed to be independent and not represent private interests. This also meant the provision of “unbiased” opinions to the CDC and NIH. Even Julie Gerberding, a former CDC director and now head of Merck’s vaccine division, recognized NAM as “an authoritative resource on medical issues, including vaccination, and a global leader in vaccine-policy development.”

However, during the past decade NAM has increasingly become simply another private, non-profit voice to support CDC policies. On one occasion the Academy rejected the proposal for a study that would compare the quality of health between children receiving the CDC’s full vaccination schedule and a second group receiving fewer vaccines.

NAM’s rationale was that it would be unethical to conduct such a study. It has also become riddled with scandals and conflicts of interest. The Project on Government Oversight has accused the Academy of gross conflicts of interest and a culture of secrecy, including its funding resources.  A 2021 investigation conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests the NAM has become no different than our other federal health agencies acting on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry. The report states that the Academy has been receiving millions of dollars directly from all of the major vaccine manufacturers and bankrolls taxpayers to pay for discarded drugs, or “drug waste.” Back in 2016, it was estimated that these payouts amounted to $2.8 billion annually. Today, NAM is another broken agency that Congress should either eradicate or rule to have scrupulously reformed.

The CDC’s horribly unethical activities are a matter of public record. These are not secrets or confidential information. The documents and voices of whistleblowers within the CDC are readily found on the internet to support all of our charges against the agency. They are readily available to anyone who wishes to investigate. Unfortunately, our media has again failed to do its job in accurately reporting on federal corruption, instead becoming an instrument of the Medical Deep State and a mouthpiece to deceive the public.

CDC misconduct includes widespread corporate nepotism favoring private pharmaceutical interests, illegal destruction of clinical data that showed a correlation between the MMR vaccine and a 250 percent increase in autism among African American boys, hiring a criminal(s) to conduct fraudulent research to conceal the neurological risks of mercury-containing vaccines, the silencing of internal officials and whistleblowers, serving as the go-between on behalf of the beverage industry concerning the World Health Organization’s restriction of sugary soft drinks, etc. The CDC fudged firearm safety statistics; that report led Harvard University’s Injury Control Research Center director David Hemenway to declare that no one should trust the CDC’s estimates.

During the 1970s, it was the CDC’s Dr. Colleen Boyle who covered up the hideously toxic nature of Agent Orange and dioxin that thousands of Vietnam War veterans were exposed to. Although the IOM and Congress at that time revealed Boyle’s chicanery, the agency duly rewarded her loyalty with a promotion.

Image: Thuy` Linh, 21 years old. Third generation Agent Orange victim genetic malformation, born without arms. Thuy` Linh finished high school 2 years ago. She applied to many universities to study but most of them didn’t accept her because of her missing arms. Her mother finally found a school willing to admit her. She finished her course in design a few months ago. Currently, she is looking for a suitable job. She went to Tû Dû Obstetrics Hospital when she was 3 years old and stayed until she was 18. HO CHI MINH CITY, VIET NAM, 2015. Photo credit: Mathieu Asselin

Long before the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, the CDC and the drug industry had already been closely colluding to push unsafe vaccines. In 2004, Congress accused the agency of operating as a public relations firm for private interests, rather than as a watchdog ensuring the integrity of vaccine science. That same year, the US Office of Special Counsel uncovered potential evidence that the CDC and pharmaceutical companies were destroying data linking the vaccine preservative thimerosal with neurological disorders. Senator Tom Coburn’s expose reveals the agency’s widespread budgetary mismanagement has wasted millions of tax dollars and concludes that the CDC cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease.

In October 2017, Congressman Bill Posey sent a letter to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling on him to resume efforts to extradite and prosecute Dr. Poul Thorsen for money laundering of over $1 million from the CDC. The catch is that Thorsen was contracted by the CDC to conduct fraudulent research in Denmark that would mask any association between the vaccine preservative thimerosal and autism.

In 2011, Thorsen was placed on the Inspector General’s most wanted list; nevertheless, the CDC has continued to erect obstacles to extradition efforts. More worrisome, Rep Posey discovered that for at least three years after the FBI issued its arrest warrant, the CDC and National Institutes of Health continued to collaborate with Thorsen and even jointly-published more junk science together.

Read the entire document here.

Another misdemeanor involved the CDC providing erroneous data to Congress about its women’s health program, WISEWOMAN, commissioned to provide preventative health services to women between 40 and 65 to reduce cardiovascular disease. Native Americans were also targeted for assistance in the program. The data was cooked and enrolled far less women than the CDC reported to Congress.

These ethical violations are systemic throughout the agency and Congress has been paralyzed in any efforts to rein in the rottenness that saturates the agency’s leadership.  Even CDC’s scientists are fully aware of the degree of corruption permeating the agency. In 2016, a group of CDC scientists submitted a letter outlining their concerns to the agency’s chief of staff. Out of fear of retribution, the group filed their complaint anonymously. They wrote:

“We are a group of scientists at the CDC that are very concerned about the current state of ethics at our agency. It appears that our mission is being influenced and shaped by outside parties and rogue interests…. What concerns us most is that it is becoming the norm and not the rare exception. Some senior management officials at CDC are clearly aware and even condone these behaviors. Others see it and turn the other way. Some staff are intimidated and pressed to do things they know are not right.”

Over the years, Congressional subcommittees have voiced warnings to CDC officials to clean up their act. A House Government Reform Committee reported that both the CDC’s and FDA’s advisory committees for vaccines were thoroughly compromised with pharmaceutical conflicts of interest. In 2009, the Office of the Inspector General conducted an investigation of conflicts of interests within the CDC. The Office discovered that 97 percent of its advisors failed to declare their links to the pharmaceutical industry.

Prior to Covid-19, one of the greatest series of on-going medical scandals, cover-ups and misinformation has been the federal health agencies’ denial of vaccine safety and the epidemic rise in autism and other neurological disorders.

Speaking at Yale University in 2019, Children’s Health Defense founder Robert Kennedy Jr presented data from his investigations into the CDC’s culture of medical negligence and efforts to cover up the compelling evidence for vaccine-induced injuries, including autism.

Over the course of twenty years, the NAM/IOM has monitored and reviewed the medical literature to determine the most- and least- likely injuries associated with specific vaccines and provided recommendations to the CDC.

In 1991, 22 illnesses were identified, 6 were confirmed as vaccine-related and 12 remained uncertain due to insufficiently reliable studies. Those cases with confirmed causation included learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, and childhood diabetes. This data was collected subsequent to President Ronald Reagan signing the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, a point when autism rates started to climb exponentially.

Three years later, the NAM/IOM identified 54 medical conditions, the medical literature supported 10 diseases as vaccine-induced and 38 were uncertain. Among the confirmed illnesses were seizures, demyelinating disease, sterility, transverse myelitis and, for the first time, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Again in 2011, the IOM reported a whopping 155 adverse conditions with 16 vaccine-induced injuries supported by the science, including a correlation between the DTaP vaccine and autism.

Because the IOM holds no official authority over the federal agencies, its recommendations to the CDC went unheeded. Instead, the agency has dug itself into a deeper hole of secrecy and corruption. With a budget of $11.5 billion, Kennedy notes that only a pathetic $20 million is designated for vaccine safety.

These early IOM reports are extremely valuable. They identify many of the same childhood diseases that have risen to epidemic proportions in the intervening years, and they indict vaccines as a causal factor. Yet regrettably, as noted above, the NAM/IOM is as compromised and corrupt as the CDC. The Academy, too, has become another pawn of the Medical Deep State sharing a similar goal to keep every American on the ever-revolving vaccination treadmill with lies and even threats and force if necessary.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the CDC expanded its authoritative powers and influence into public life as never before. Piggybacking on the 1944 Public Health Service Act, for the first time, the agency enacted on its authority to override state health departments in order to mandate masks and quarantines, health inspections, widespread Covid monitoring with the unsuited PCR test, and forced closures of businesses, schools and houses of worship.  In collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC unleashed a highly refined strategic offensive against Americans by capturing the nation’s media networks to propagandize its fabricated interpretation of the severity of the SARS-2 virus and its variants.  This involved generating a culture of fear, political and social divisions, and a dystopian atmosphere to implement policies to gain further control over the population.

According to federal health documents obtained by Judicial Watch, in order to promote the Covid-19 vaccines and boosters, the CDC and HHS infiltrated all media companies and their producers, morning and afternoon talk shows, cultural event organizers, entertainment firms, management agencies for celebrities such as Tom Brady, Hollywood scriptwriters, leading Christian evangelical leaders on the Christian Broadcast Network, Catholic publications, and the major sports organizations such as the NFL and NASCAR. They also succeeded in capturing Google’s Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.  All of these entities were pressured to comply with the “vaccine engagement” packages sent to them.

Since the CDC also operates as an intelligence agency alongside the Department of Defense and the national security state, its pandemic surveillance program tracked the mobile phones of tens of millions Americans. According to internal documents obtained through a Freedom of Information filing, the agency used this phone data to monitor lockdowns and vaccination compliance. This included tracking the entry into K-12 public schools and even compliance on transportation hubs, “parks and green spaces” and Native American reservations.

In their analysis report “Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates: Twenty-One Scientific Facts that Challenge the Assumptions,” the Physicians for Informed Consent drew from the CDC’s own medical data and the Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials to show the CDC has debunked its own propaganda to the public. Among the facts presented in the CDC reports are:

• In 68 countries, there was “no significant signaling of Covd-19 cases decreasing” with higher vaccination compliance.
• There is no strong evidence that the vaccines decrease Covid-19 deaths. In the Eurosurveillance report for July 2021, 100 percent of “severe, critical and fatal” Covid-19 cases were among vaccinated persons.
• There is evidence that previous SARS-CoV-2 infection is more effective than COVID-19 vaccines.
• Serious adverse event risk for the Pfizer mRNA vaccine is 1 in 556 subjects and 1 in 1,408 for Moderna’s vaccine
• There was a 97 percent increased risk of cardiac-related deaths in men between 18-39 years within 28 days of vaccination.
• There is no observable benefit for vaccinating children versus the risks of children with a SARS-2 infection. Nevertheless Pfizer’s clinical trial for children 5-11 years old showed 1 in 59 vaccinated kids suffered from severe systemic reactions
• For those not living in a nursing home, Covid-19 survival rate is 99.8 percent overall and 99.999 percent for children.

The CDC’s and Anthony Fauci’s frequent debacles, scientifically-based policy reversals, revelations of data secrecy and officials’ lies have contributed to a national decline in confidence and trust. One notable reversal was the CDC no longer recognizing the PCR test as a valid means to detect active SARS-2 infections.

Reporting about this announcement in December 2021, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research noted that the CDC admitted that the PCR tests “cannot differentiate between SARS-coV-2 and influenza viruses.”

For many years the CDC’s website clearly states that “Influenza virus testing is not required to make a clinical diagnosis of influenza in outpatients with suspected influenza, particularly during increased influenza activity when seasonal influenza A and B viruses are circulating in the local community.”

This would certainly explain the enormous discrepancy and exponential drop in the number of hospitalizations and deaths associated with the flu since the start of the pandemic compared to other flu seasons.

It is also a fine example of counterfeit medical science masquerading as a clinical fact because the Encyclopedia of Virology claims there are over 200 different human respiratory viruses in circulation. How can any physician determine the viral cause for any flu-like symptoms if it is not tested for?

In early 2022, the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania conducted one of the more thorough surveys on Americans’ perceptions of the CDC providing “trustworthy information” about the pandemic. Despite the survey’s findings revealing an overall lack of confidence, the results were notably divided between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives’ approval fell below 40 percent for Fauci and 52 percent for the CDC; Fauci boasted 85 percent approval among the corporate liberal media and 89 percent for the CDC.

The CDC has now had three years to reinvent itself under the pretext of a life-threatening global pandemic. It had the choice to overhaul its long history of incompetence as a protector of public health; instead it chose to follow the course of dictatorial control as the nation’s sole authoritative voice over medicine and heath.  Never before has medical science been so politicized. And this raises a final and fundamental question.

Would you hire someone with such an extensive rap sheet to care for your child, let alone a newborn infant?  Would you trust them to undertake the correct measures in an emergency, or use sound judgment to assure your loved one’s well-being?

For the now millions of vaccine-damaged adults and children following the advent of mRNA vaccines, the CDC remains a felon on the loose with the full protection of the government.

Congress is a mob of inebriated Keystone cops who refuse to realize the urgency in an exhaustive re-evaluation and housecleaning of the CDC, the FDA and Fauci’s NIAID.

The CDC’s gross negligence during the past couple of years and utter disregard for Americans’ well-being and health draws only one conclusion.  You are dispensable. The American public is best served as willing experimental fodder for new novel drugs and vaccines.

Today’s killing fields in Ukraine, sponsored by the US’s military industrial complex, is a microcosm of America’s killing fields orchestrated by the pharmaceutical complex for many decades.

For the drug industry’s bottom line, we do not matter. Nor do your children.

And the mainstream media and every major network, newspaper and magazine, are similarly complicit in preserving the CDC’s culture of deception.

The entire American medical establishment demands to be officially stamped with a “black box warning” in order to draw the public’s attention to the serious and life-threatening dangers from believing the false propaganda being disseminated by the CDC and other federal health agencies.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. (Raed Mansour/Flickr)

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CIA’s Deadly “Strategy of Tension” to Destroy Russia

By Kurt Nimmo, December 27, 2022

During the Cold War, the CIA worked closely with the neo-Nazis in Ukraine and emigre groups. Project AERODYNAMIC (formerly CARTEL, ANDROGEN, AECARTHAGE, between 1949 and 1970) concentrated on anti-Soviet operations, largely confined to propaganda. This entailed working closely with ultranationalists that have long had one goal in mind—the murder of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

Is the Pandemic Over? The Worldwide Corona Crisis. Bankruptcies, Unemployment, Famine and Food Insecurity

By Michael Welch and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 28, 2022

Now that U.S. President Joe Biden declared the COVID-19 “pandemic” over, the shell-shocked citizenry of the planet as they cautiously emerge from their locked down territories and slowly remove the masks from their faces, the time has certainly come for people to take stock of the nearly three years since this menace has run amok on their neighborhood and their lives.

Looking Back on 2022: Ukraine and the Rest of the Story

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, December 28, 2022

The Ukraine war has also aggravated global inflationary trends — already evident before the war. Global inflation is now affecting millions of people all over the world. Economies are stagnating also because investment flows are slowing down, yet another consequence of the war. This affects the generation of jobs and the general employment pattern even in countries far from the war zone.

War on Global Agriculture: The Unsustainable ‘Sustainable’ UN Agenda 2030

By F. William Engdahl, December 28, 2022

Over the past weeks a coordinated all-out assault on our agriculture—the ability to produce food for human existence—has begun. The recent G20 governmental meeting in Bali, the UN Agenda 2030 Cop27 meeting in Egypt, the Davos World Economic Forum and Bill Gates are all complicit.

Sri Lanka’s Neoliberal Nightmare, Widespread Famine Triggered by COVID-19 Lockdown and an Unpayable External Debt

By Asad Ismi, December 28, 2022

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), Sri Lanka faces a “serious food crisis,” with 6.3 million people—close to 30% of the 22 million population—being food insecure. Food inflation has reached a record-high of 90%, making staples such as rice unaffordable for millions of people. Overall, inflation is running at 60%.

Video: Bill Gates Calls for “Aggressive” Carbon Taxes to “Accelerate” Fourth Industrial Revolution

By Steve Watson, December 28, 2022

Speaking with the World Economic Forum Wednesday, Bill Gates called for an aggressive implementation of carbon taxes in order to force middle income countries to fundamentally alter their entire industry sectors.

What Is Asymmetric Warfare?

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, December 27, 2022

Asymmetric warfare exists in the case when two sides of combat forces (two states, two blocs, a state vs. one military bloc, etc.) are very or even extremely different regarding their military and other capacities to fight each other. They are as well as very different in the terms of their areas of comparative strategic advantage, Therefore, the confrontation between such two different sides is coming to turn on one belligerent side’s ability/capacity to force the other side to fight on their own terms and conditions.

“Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.”

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, December 27, 2022

Whether World War I or World War II, whether the Vietnam War or the West’s current proxy war against Russia: time and again mothers send their sons to the “field of honour” and afterwards wear a black armband “in proud mourning”. Youth dies before it can begin to live.

Country for Bad Dreams: Vandalism on the Australian Nullarbor Plain

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, December 27, 2022

Edward John Eyre, the first European to cross the Plain in 1840-1841, wrote hauntingly of it as “a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of Nature, the sort of place one gets into bad dreams”.  In his case, personal circumstances soured the impressions: horses dying of dehydration; a case of mutiny resulting in the killing of his companion John Baxter; the theft of the party’s supplies; the slimmest chances of survival.

Pfizer’s Shots Aren’t Safe and Were Never Shown to be

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, December 27, 2022

A whistleblower who worked on Pfizer’s Phase 3 trial has also come forward with evidence showing data were falsified, patients were unblinded and follow-up on reported side effects lagged way behind. Why didn’t any of these issues concern the DSMB? Was it because there really was no independent DSMB?

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As 2022 draws to a close, the world bears the tragic burden of the war in Ukraine. The war began on the 24^th of February of this year with the Russian invasion of its neighbour. It has been 10 months. There is nothing to indicate that it will end any time soon.

Thousands have perished — soldiers on both sides and civilians in Ukraine. A huge number of people have been injured and maimed. Both Russian and Ukrainian prisoners have been subjected to torture.

Accompanying this record of death and suffering is the destruction and devastation of infrastructure, both civilian and military. A nuclear facility in Ukraine is caught in this crossfire thus enhancing the danger of a nuclear conflagration. It has been exacerbated by reckless threats about the deployment of nuclear weapons by combatants themselves. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the world has not been this close to such a confrontation.

The Ukraine war has also been a huge boon to arms merchants. Billions of dollars of weapons have been rushed to Ukraine by the US and other NATO members. In some instances they help to advertise new varieties of combat tools that have yet to prove their effectiveness in battle.

The war has also had a severe impact upon certain dimensions of the global food supply chain brought about largely by the sanctions imposed upon Russia by the United States and some of its allies as a way of punishing the former. The actual victims of these sanctions however have sometimes been the poor in countries of the Global South.

The Ukraine war has also aggravated global inflationary trends — already evident before the war. Global inflation is now affecting millions of people all over the world. Economies are stagnating also because investment flows are slowing down, yet another consequence of the war. This affects the generation of jobs and the general employment pattern even in countries far from the war zone.

The war’s impact upon both longstanding and more recent political crises has also been telling. Kashmir is still under occupation and the occupied continue to resist and yet it is receiving even less attention from the media because of another war more closely linked to powerful global actors. Likewise, Palestine erupts every other day because of harsh Israeli aggression but the world is preoccupied with Ukraine mainly because it is the present epicentre of the struggle for global hegemony. Then there is Somalia, Eritrea and Peru, among other conflicts. Each is significant in its own way. But they have been pushed to the margins by the tragedy in Ukraine.

Image is from Andrew Korybko

I shall end this section of my analysis by highlighting three other major events in 2022, each of which should have received much more attention from the people. The first is the popular uprising in Pakistan following the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan in April 2022 by a segment of the military core working hand in glove with political leaders backed to the hilt by specific elites in Washington. The Pakistani people know that this is a blatant regime change operation because Imran was more inclined towards pursuing an independent foreign policy for his country with even stronger ties to Beijing and Moscow. The US ruling elite is against such a policy because it is convinced that it would not jive with US geopolitical goals in the region.

The hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of ordinary Pakistanis who have come out into the streets to protest against the US backed regime, and for Imran, since April represent the mass expression of democratic aspirations seldom seen in any society anywhere in the world. This outpouring of sentiment was further reinforced by sweeping by-election victories by Imran’s party, the Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) in July. Imran and his party are demanding that free and fair elections be held immediately to allow the people to decide on who should rule Pakistan.

While there has been some coverage of the people’s uprising in the Western and Eastern media, its underlying significance has not been given the focus it deserves for an obvious reason. The uprising represents a direct challenge to the politics of regime change which is one of the primary weapons in the arsenal of those who seek to run the world. For them—the advocates of global hegemony led by the US elite — the courage and determination of the Pakistani masses is the ultimate nightmare!

Let us now turn to yet another event this time involving Pakistan’s neighbour, Afghanistan. When the Taliban regained power in Kabul in August 2021  after 20 years of US misrule,  the defeated American elite retaliated by freezing financial  assets  belonging to the Afghan people kept in the country’s Central Bank. Worth at least 7 billion dollars, the US government placed this money in September this year under the authority of a so-called independent panel over which the Taliban or the Afghan people have no say.  In reality, it is still the US government that will decide how or when the money will be unfrozen and for what purpose it would be used. This is a terrible travesty of justice. Even UN officials in Kabul have criticised the move. They feel that part of the money should be used immediately to feed millions of Afghanis who are suffering from hunger and malnutrition. According to some sources, mass famine is a real possibility in parts of the country. It is highly immoral to manipulate money belonging to the Afghan people in this manner in order to avenge one’s defeat and to fulfil a larger hegemonic agenda in the region.

This brings us to the third event in 2022 that should be high on our radar. This is mass hunger and suffering in parts of East Africa, a region that covers Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan. Oxfam estimates that one person is likely to die every 36 seconds in that region partly because of acute hunger and extreme poverty. Across East Africa, 6 million children suffer from malnutrition.

The underlying causes for the plight of the people are varied. Drought linked to climate change is undoubtedly a major factor. Local-level conflicts are also responsible. Prices for food have also escalated in the course of the year brought about by a number of reasons, one of them being the war in Ukraine. The war also explains to an extent why humanitarian funding for the region is far below the target. There is a gap of more than 3 billion dollars.

There have been other important happenings in 2022 which have been given the emphasis they deserve by the mainstream media. The climate crisis is an example. Freezing winter storms in the US this December have come as a shock to many people. The mainstream media should have also given as much attention to yet another climate change disaster —- the massive flooding in Pakistan from June to October 2022 that resulted in one-third of the country being submerged in water.

The mainstream media continues to accord appropriate attention to the Covid 19 pandemic. Though its overall impact is much less in 2022, many people in the global North and the global South remain deeply concerned about a disease whose origin remains a mystery. People ask, is it linked in some way to unfolding geopolitical challenges?

When we reflect upon all that has happened in 2022, the various happenings can be classified into two categories. One, those that are directly linked to the war in Ukraine and two those that have been overshadowed by the war and yet call for resolution in the larger interest of humanity. There are also a couple of events that fall outside the two categories. Everything considered, Ukraine remains at the vortex of humanity’s concerns in 2022.

The world realises why it is so urgent to bring the fighting to an end and to work out a diplomatic solution to the conflict. There have been attempts in that direction. In the early months of the conflict, Pope Francis of the Catholic Church tried to mediate.   He was followed by Indonesian President, Joko Widodo in his capacity as the then Chair of G20. Widodo met with the main protagonists on both sides of the divide and pleaded for the cessation of the conflict on the ground that it was having an adverse impact upon countries of the Global South.

Civil society groups have also offered ideas on ending the war. Code Pink and Common Dreams have articulated their thoughts on a peace initiative. Two of my friends (Richard Falk and Joseph Camilleri) and I also launched a call to end the war in Ukraine through a public document entitled “ To all Who Care About Humanity’s and the Planet’s Future.”

The document not only discusses the perilous situation the world is in but also analyses the underlying causes of global friction and tension. It suggests solutions to both the Ukraine war and the conflict over Taiwan and proposes concrete steps that can be taken to create a world that is not burdened by hegemonic politics, a world distinguished  by just and equitable relations between nations and communities. Towards this end it advocates the reversal of the militarisation of the international system and espouses far-reaching reforms of international institutions. The document recognises that for all these changes to take place there has to be “a massive global awakening of human wisdom and energy.”

Image: CODEPINK “No War with Russia Rally, Negotiate Ukraine, Don’t Escalate.” (2022) 

Richard, Joe and I then invited a number of individuals we were familiar with to endorse the document on the 27^th of August 2022.  44 of them responded positively. They comprise some of the world’s leading civil society personalities, public intellectuals and activists. With their endorsement, the document went public. The citizens of the world were now invited to join the effort to stop wars, reduce global tensions and build a world committed to justice and compassion in which the dignity of all creation is the primary goal of all human endeavour. To date, 3,646 women and men have signed up on Change.org.

In spite of our effort and the endeavours of others, peace moves have not made a dent so far. While there are many reasons that explain the continuance of the Ukraine war, the absolutist position adopted by the antagonists appears to be a formidable obstacle. For the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, his initial aim was to dissuade Ukraine from joining NATO which would have brought NATO to his country’s doorstep and perhaps threatened its security. But as the fighting in Ukraine became more complicated with massive Western and NATO military assistance to Ukraine, he seems more determined now to emasculate his neighbour completely. Similarly, Ukraine and its backers were concerned in the earlier phase of the war with defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and nothing more but as Ukraine began to repel the Russian invasion, its backers began to feel that they would be able to confront and defeat the Russian armed forces and should therefore seize the opportunity to destroy Russia’s military might once and for all.

The extreme positions adopted by both sides are unrealistic — and dangerous. Ukraine is not going to disappear from the map. Neither is it possible to crush the Russian nation. A prolonged war will only increase the suffering of both Ukrainians and Russians, and other Europeans. Indeed, with winter setting in and the energy crisis looming large on the horizon, the toll upon lives and lifestyles could become unbearable.

This is the time for both sides to concede and compromise. They should move away from hard-line positions. They should work towards a negotiated settlement.

The world, especially civil society groups should convey this message to all the parties involved. There is no way that anyone can score a decisive victory in this conflict. This is why it is better to sue for peace NOW.

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Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from South Front

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First published on December 10, 2022

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“Even the official definitions of the corona virus, I can quote Anthony Fauci, or I can quote the CDC, or the WHO….The definition is such that it is not a life threatening disease by any means!”

• Professor Michel Chossudovsky (from this week’s interview)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Now that U.S. President Joe Biden declared the COVID-19 “pandemic” over, the shell-shocked citizenry of the planet as they cautiously emerge from their locked down territories and slowly remove the masks from their faces, the time has certainly come for people to take stock of the nearly three years since this menace has run amok on their neighborhood and their lives.

There are reports of massive bankruptcies, unemployment, famine and food insecurity worldwide resulting from the pandemic. UNICEF estimated 1.6 billion children were affected by the closures of schools.

Suicide rates had gone up. Deaths attributable to drug overdose has gone up dramatically starting in 2020.[1]

Meanwhile, the wealth of billionaires increased! The combined wealth of U.S. billionaires collectively by $850 billion over the seven first months of the pandemic. At the global level, the world’s 2,189 billionaires saw their combined wealth go up a whopping $1.5 trillion to $10.5 trillion! [2]

All because of a little virus called SARS-CoV-2?

A sober second look at this situation might reveal that there is more to it than that. Arguably, it was the lockdowns, insider trading and other factors that may have been just as devastating as people collapsing from a virus.

These and other data and analysis have just been released in a new book written by the renowned author and academic Michel Chossudovsky. It is entitled The Worldwide Corona Crisis: Global Coup D’Etat Against Humanity.

A clear and simple to follow condensation of three solid years of research, this 164 page volume, available in pdf form unravels its history, which includes

• a deliberate fear campaign to terrify the global populace into compliance with the wishes of the architects,
• the very flawed approach for diagnosing the virus,
• the corrupt science which played a role in favour of the profits and influence of global pharmaceutical corporations,
• the deliberate smearing of scientists and anyone else who expresses a counter-viewpoint to the dominant COVID narrative,
• the dangers of the vaccines, the vaccine passports,
• digital identities and ultimately even a period of depopulation that may be planned by the powers that be.

Chossudovsky also offers a message of what can be done to arrest this process before democracy becomes a relic of the past as the New World Order truly shines its sinister light on the citizenry of the 99 percent!

The book is available for free on this site as a free download.  FREE COPY Click here to download.

After the interview, I will talk in more detail about some of the other important points raised in the book.

Michel Chossudovsky is Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization in, Montreal, and Editor of Global Research. He is Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, and award wining author of 13 books including The Worldwide Corona Crisis: Global Coup D’Etat Against Humanity (2022) and The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015)

(Global Research News Hour Episode 372)

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Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

1. Michel Chossudovsky (2022), (Pg 77-82) “The Worldwide Corona Crisis: Global Coup D’Etat Against Humanity”, Global Research Publishers, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
2. https://ips-dc.org/u-s-billionaire-wealth-up-850-billion/

 

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First published on January 21, 2022

Speaking with the World Economic Forum Wednesday, Bill Gates called for an aggressive implementation of carbon taxes in order to force middle income countries to fundamentally alter their entire industry sectors.

Gates declared that

“The rich countries have to play a central role, both funding RND and having policies, in some cases carbon taxes will be used to drive the demand for these clean products.”

He continued,

“Only by doing that in an aggressive way will the economic costs be brought down enough that we can turn to all the middle income countries and say ‘OK, change your whole cement industry, change your whole steel industry.’”

“The number of companies working on these things is very exciting,” Gates proclaimed.

He further lamented that

“Some of them will fail, a lot of them will fail,” but asserted “we only need a reasonable number, a few dozen of them to make it through and that’s what we have to accelerate.”

Watch:

In his books, World Economic Forum founder and globalist Klaus Schwab makes clear that the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ or ‘The Great Reset’ will lead to the abolition of private property.

That message is echoed on the WEF’s official website, which states, “Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city – or should I say, “our city”. I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.”

Apparently, you won’t be allowed to own any private property and your only recourse will be to live in a state of permanent dependency on a small number of rich elitists who own everything.

That used to be called feudalism, which is a form of slavery.

Indeed, while Americans are being told by technocrats that the future is one without private property, Gates himself and other billionaires have been buying up huge amounts of farmland.

Gates is now the biggest owner of farmland in America, according to a Forbes report from last year.

America’s biggest owner of farmland is now Bill Gates https://t.co/j9gW4zQ0Yh pic.twitter.com/0tZLJcGXfg

— Forbes (@Forbes) January 14, 2021

Meanwhile, the great unwashed will be pushed to living in tiny houses or pods, with living standards dramatically lowered in the name of saving the planet.

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First published on November 16, 2022

***

We, 50 organizations focused on food sovereignty and justice worldwide, want you to know there is no shortage of practical solutions and innovations by African farmers and organizations. We invite you to step back and learn from those on the ground.

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Dear Bill Gates:

You were recently featured commenting on the global state of agriculture and food insecurity, in a recent New York Times op-ed by David Wallace-Wells and also in an Associated Press article.

In both articles, you make a number of claims that are inaccurate and need to be challenged. Both pieces admit that the world currently produces enough food to adequately feed all the earth’s inhabitants, yet you continue to fundamentally misdiagnose the problem as relating to low productivity; we do not need to increase production as much as to assure more equitable access to food. In addition, there are four specific distortions in these pieces which should be addressed, namely:

1) the supposed need for “credit for fertilizer, cheap fertilizer” to ensure agricultural productivity,

2) the idea that the Green Revolution of the mid-20th century needs to be replicated now to address hunger,

3) the idea that “better” seeds, often produced by large corporations, are required to cope with climate change, and

4) your suggestion that if people have solutions that “aren’t singing Kumbaya,” you’ll put money behind them.

First, synthetic fertilizers contribute 2% of overall greenhouse gas emissions and are the primary source of nitrous oxide emissions. Producing nitrogen fertilizers requires 3-5% of the world’s fossil gas. They also make farmers and importing nations dependent on volatile prices on international markets, and are a major cause of rising food prices globally. Yet you claim that even more fertilizer is needed to increase agricultural productivity and address hunger.

Toxic and damaging synthetic fertilizers are not a feasible way forward. Already, companies, organizations, and farmers in Africa and elsewhere have been developing biofertilizers made from compost, manure, and ash, and biopesticides made from botanical compounds, such as neem tree oil or garlic. These products can be manufactured locally (thereby avoiding dependency and price volatility), and can be increasingly scaled up and commercialized.

Second, the Green Revolution was far from a resounding success. While it did play some role in increasing the yields of cereal crops in Mexico, India, and elsewhere from the 1940s to the 1960s, it did very little to reduce the number of hungry people in the world or to ensure equitable and sufficient access to food.

It also came with a host of other problems, from ecological issues like long-term soil degradation to socio-economic ones like increased inequality and indebtedness (which has been a major contributor to the epidemic of farmer suicides in India). Your unquestioning support for a “new” Green Revolution demonstrates willful ignorance about history and about the root causes of hunger (which are by and large about political and economic arrangements, and what the economist Amartya Sen famously referred to as entitlements, not about a global lack of food).

Third, climate-resilient seeds are already in existence and being developed by farmers and traded through informal seed markets. Sorghum, which you tout in your interview as a so-called “orphan crop”, is among these already established climate-adapted crops. You note that most investments have been in maize and rice, rather than in locally-adapted and nutritious cereals like sorghum. Yet AGRA (the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa), which your foundation (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) created and financed, has been among those institutions that have disproportionately focused on maize and rice. In other words, you are part of creating the very problem you name. The AGRA initiative, which your foundation continues to fund, has also pushed restrictive seed legislation that limits and restricts crop innovation to well-resourced labs and companies. These initiatives don’t increase widespread innovation, but rather contribute to the privatization and consolidation of corporate monopolies over seed development and seed markets.

Finally, your assertion that critics of your approach are simply “singing Kumbaya,” rather than developing meaningful (and fundable) solutions, is extremely disrespectful and dismissive. There are already many tangible, ongoing proposals and projects that work to boost productivity and food security–from biofertilizer and biopesticide manufacturing facilities, to agroecological farmer training programs, to experimentation with new water and soil management techniques, low-input farming systems, and pest-deterring plant species.

What you are doing here is gaslighting–presenting practical, ongoing, farmer-led solutions as somehow fanciful or ridiculous, while presenting your own preferred approaches as pragmatic.

Yet it is your preferred high-tech solutions, including genetic engineering, new breeding technologies, and now digital agriculture, that have in fact consistently failed to reduce hunger or increase food access as promised.

And in some cases, the “solutions” you expound as fixes for climate change actually contribute to the the biophysical processes driving the problem (e.g. more fossil-fuel based fertilizers, and more fossil-fuel dependent infrastructure to transport them) or exacerbate the political conditions that lead to inequality in food access (e.g. policies and seed breeding initiatives that benefit large corporations and labs, rather than farmers themselves).

In both articles, you radically simplify complex issues in ways that justify your own approach and interventions. You note in the New York Times op-ed that Africa, with the lowest costs of labor and land, should be a net exporter of agricultural products. You explain that the reason it is not is because “their productivity is much lower than in rich countries and you just don’t have the infrastructure.”

However, costs of land and labor, as well as infrastructures, are socially and politically produced. Africa is in fact highly productive–it’s just that the profits are realized elsewhere. Through colonization, neoliberalism, debt traps, and other forms of legalized pillaging, African lives, environments, and bodies have been devalued and made into commodities for the benefit and profit of others.

Infrastructures have been designed to channel these commodities outside of the continent itself. Africa is not self-sufficient in cereals because its agricultural, mining, and other resource-intensive sectors have been structured in ways that are geared toward serving colonial and then international markets, rather than African peoples themselves. Although you are certainly not responsible for all of this, you and your foundation are exacerbating some of these problems through a very privatized, profit-based, and corporate approach to agriculture.

There is no shortage of practical solutions and innovations by African farmers and organizations. We invite you to step back and learn from those on the ground. At the same time, we invite high profile news outlets to be more cautious about lending credibility to one wealthy white man’s flawed assumptions, hubris, and ignorance, at the expense of people and communities who are living and adapting to these realities as we speak.

From:

Community Alliance for Global Justice/AGRA Watch

Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)

Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI)

GRAIN

African Centre for Biodiversity

Kenya Food Rights Alliance

Growth Partners

Grassroots International

Agroecology Fund

US Food Sovereignty Alliance

National Family Farm Coalition

Family Farm Defenders

Oakland Institute

A Growing Culture

ETC Group

Food in Neighborhoods Community Coalition

Detroit Black Community Food Security Network

Sustainable Agriculture of Louisville

Haki Nawiri Afrika

Real Food Media

Agroecology Research-Action Collective

Environmental Rights Action/ Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN)

Les Amis de la Terre Togo/ Friends of the Earth Togo

Justiça Ambiental/ JA FoE Mozambique

Friends of the Earth Africa

Health of Mother Health Foundation (HOMEF)

Committee on Vital Environmental Resources (COVER)

The Young Environmental Network (TYEN)

GMO Free Nigeria

Community Development Advocacy Foundation

African Centre for Rural and Environmental Development

Connected Advocacy

Policy Alert

Zero Waste Ambassadors

Student Environmental Assembly Nigeria (SEAN)

Host Community Network, Nigeria (HoCON)

Green Alliance Nigeria (GAN)

Hope for Tomorrow Initiative (HfTI)

Media Awareness and Justice Initiative (MAJI)

We The People

Rainbow Watch and Development Centre

BFA Food and Health Foundation

Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA)

Women and Children Life Advancement Initiative 

Network of Women in Agriculture Nigeria (NWIN) 

Gender and Environmental Risks Reduction Initiative (GERI) 

Gender and Community Empowerment Initiative 

Eco defenders Network 

Urban Rural Environmental Defenders (URED) 

Peace Point Development Foundation (PPDF)

Community Support Centre, Nigeria

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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Das erwähnte Zitat des US-amerikanischen Dichters und Historikers Carl August Sandburg entspricht nicht der Realität: Der Mensch, ob jung oder alt, kann nicht sagen: „Nein, ich gehe nicht in den Krieg!“, er muss folgen. Bis heute kann man sich diese menschliche Reaktionsweise nicht erklären, weil sich der Mensch noch nicht erkannt hat – nicht sich selbst, nicht seine Natur, nicht seine seelische Verfassung und nicht seine Reaktionsweisen. Aufgrund tiefenpsychologischer Erkenntnisse wissen wir heute, dass die frühkindliche Erziehung so auf ihr Gefühlsleben eingewirkt hat, dass sie gehen müssen. Das ist kein freier Wille. Doch der Mensch kann sich durch fachmännische Hilfe Stück für Stück selbst erkennen, sich seiner unbewussten Gefühlsanteile bewusstwerden und sein Verhalten zum Wohle der Menschheit ändern. Wenn man sich mit diesen psychologischen Gedanken befreunden kann, werden sie Mut machen und keine neuen Ängste schüren. 

Der Krieg ist kein unabwendbares Schicksal; er ist ein gutes Geschäft, doch für die Menschheit eine Niederlage

Ob Erster oder Zweiter Weltkrieg, ob Vietnamkrieg oder der momentane Stellvertreterkrieg des Westens gegen Russland: Immer wieder schicken Mütter ihre Söhne auf das “Feld der Ehre“ und tragen anschließend „in stolzer Trauer“ eine schwarze Armbinde. Die Jugend stirbt, bevor sie beginnen kann zu leben (1).

Krieg ist für uns alle ein großes Unglück. Papst Johannes Paul II. sagte am 13. Januar 2003: „Krieg ist niemals ein unabwendbares Schicksal. Krieg bedeutet immer eine Niederlage für die Menschheit.“ Andere Völker zu bezwingen und sie zu beherrschen, das ist ein gutes Geschäft. Nie zuvor haben die Staaten der Welt so viel Geld für Rüstung ausgegeben, so viele tödliche Waffen geschmiedet wie heute. Die Gewinne der globalen Rüstungsindustrie sind astronomisch.

Im Leben der Völker hat der Militarismus stets eine verhängnisvolle Rolle gespielt. Der Kampf des Menschen gegen den Menschen hat immer wieder die Errungenschaften der Kultur in Frage gestellt. Die kriegerische Lebensweise wirkt verrohend und die Folge ist gewöhnlich ein Rückfall in die Barbarei, der sich auf allen Gebieten des gesellschaftlichen Lebens bemerkbar macht.

Leider ist die Menschheit nicht imstande, dieses uralte Übel aus der Welt zu bannen. Machtpolitische, wirtschaftliche und soziale Gründe geben dem Geist der Gewalt ständig neue Nahrung und führen zu vernichtenden Kriegen. Angesichts der ungeheuren Opfer an Menschen und Material, von denen die Kriegsgeschichte berichtet, erhob sich von Zeit zu Zeit der Mahnruf hochgesinnter Menschen, die das Ideal einer friedlichen Welt proklamierten. Die Idee eines ewigen Friedens ist sicher so alt wie die Menschheit selbst.

Heute sehen wir, dass der Krieg nur Werke der Zerstörung vollbringt; niemals dürfen wir von ihm unser Heil erwarten. Die geschichtliche Betrachtung zeigt sogar, dass der Niedergang der Kultur immer mit Kriegen verbunden war. Und obwohl diese Tatsache hinlänglich bekannt ist, ruft kein Universitätslehrer, kein Philosoph, kein Psychologe der Jugend zu: „Geht nicht!“

Männer jeden Alters können leider nicht anders. Die Erziehung hat so auf ihr Gefühlsleben eingewirkt, dass sie gehen müssen. So wie sie in der Kinderstube Vater und Mutter folgen mussten, folgen sie als Erwachsene politischen Autoritäten. Dieses Gefühl des absoluten Gehorsams aus der Kindheit tragen sie bis ins hohe Alter mit, ist ihnen aber nicht bewusst. Deshalb können und dürfen wir sie nicht verurteilen. Und die Eltern haben leider nicht gewusst, dass die Erziehung zum absoluten Gehorsam ein Fehler war. Sie haben es in der Regel gut gemeint, aber in ihrer Unwissenheit und aufgrund eigener Kindheitserlebnisse bringen sie ihre Kinder durch fragwürdige Erziehungsmethoden in Not.

Die gute Nachricht ist, dass die Menschen sich mit Hilfe eines psychotherapeutischen Fachmanns Stück für Stück selbst erkennen, sich ihrer unbewussten Gefühlsanteile bewusstwerden und ihr Verhalten ändern können.

Die Tiefenpsychologie und die Dynamik des Unbewussten als wesentlicher, hochwirksamer Teil des Lebens

Kein Mensch hat in vorpsychologischen, vom religiösen Mittelalter geprägten Zeiten über sich selbst, über seine Gefühle und über sein Leben Bescheid gewusst. Erst mit Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 bis 1872) und Karl Marx (1818 bis 1883) haben die Menschen angefangen, sich als Wesen der Natur zu sehen und sich selbst zu beobachten (2). Kurze Zeit später hat ein gewisser Arzt, Siegmund Freud (1856 bis 1939), in Wien die Entdeckung gemacht, dass der Mensch ein Unbewusstes hat. Das war vor über 100 Jahren.

Unglücklicherweise hat Freud als Kind seiner Zeit die Welt und die Menschen nicht verstanden. Er war konservativ und ein guter Patriot. So war er der Meinung, dass Österreich-Ungarn den Ersten Weltkrieg gewinnen soll. Die anderen sollen zugrunde gehen. Seine Psychoanalyse ist in gewissem Sinne versandet; sie ist eine ärztliche Sache geworden.

Doch durch die wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse der Tiefenpsychologie wissen wir heute, dass man dem Menschen helfen, dass er sich umorientieren und seine Gefühle verändern kann. Die Lehre des Individualpsychologen Alfred Adler (1870 bis 1937) ist zu einem Grundpfeiler der Tiefenpsychologie geworden und aus der psychologischen Forschung nicht mehr wegzudenken. Die weitere Entwicklung der Tiefenpsychologie hat Adler in vielen Punkten Recht gegeben. Für Adler ist der Charakter ein schöpferisches Produkt des Kindes, entstanden aus der Auseinandersetzung mit den frühkindlichen Lebensumständen, insbesondere den Erziehungseinflüssen, die für die Charakterbildung am maßgeblichsten sind.

Die grundlegende Erkenntnis der Tiefenpsychologie ist die Annahme eines dynamischen Unbewussten als wesentlicher und hochwirksamer Teil des psychischen Lebens des Menschen. Aus diesem Grund kann der Mensch nicht sagen „Nein, ich gehe nicht in den Krieg!“ Die frühkindliche Erziehung hat sein Gefühlsleben so geprägt, dass er der Autorität, die ihn zu den Waffen ruft, folgen muss. Da es sich um unbewusste Gefühlsanteile aus der Kindheit handelt, ist sein Verhalten nicht das Ergebnis eines freien Willens. Er kann deshalb nicht verurteilt werden.

Leider gibt es heute noch wenig Psychologen, die sich der Sache der Menschen annehmen.

Doch das ist nicht gewollt. Das Wissen des jungen Menschen, der sich dem Studium der Psychologie zuwendet, fällt auf den alten Boden. Er ist religiös, national, patriotisch und staatsgläubig. Er steht in der Regel auf dem Standpunkt der Erhaltung dieses Systems.

Verehrte Leser, ich hoffe, wir verstehen uns und Sie können sich mit den psychologischen Gedankengängen anfreunden. Erst wenn bei den Menschen die innere Gefühlslage entstanden ist, dass man immer NEIN sagen kann und niemandem folgen muss, erst dann kommt die Tat.

Die Dynamik des Unbewussten in der Liebesbeziehung zwischen Mann und Frau

In diesem Zusammenhang erinnert sich der Autor an psychotherapeutische Gespräche während seiner Ausbildung und in der eigenen Praxis. In diesen Gesprächen ging es ebenfalls um die Dynamik des Unbewussten.

Junge Männer wandten sich hilfesuchend an den Psychotherapeuten, weil sie mit ihrer Haltung des Grolls und der Ablehnung die Liebe mit ihren Freundinnen und Frauen zugrunde richteten. Aufgrund ihrer Kindheitserlebnisse mit Eltern und Geschwistern konnten sie die Frau nicht bejahen, sich nicht auf eine Stufe mit ihr stellen. Sie wollten mehr gelten als die Frau und stets das letzte Wort haben; die Frauen dagegen sollten brav sein und gehorchen. Diese Männer meinten selbstkritisch, dass sie wohl unvernünftig seien, weil sie sich selbst schaden würden.

Doch sie waren nicht unvernünftig. Sie verhielten sich sehr wohl vernünftig, weil ihre Handlungen ihrer Gefühlssituation entsprachen. Aufgrund von Kindheitserlebnissen wie Verwöhnung, Verzärtelung und Bevorzugung als männliche Nachkommen konnten sie die Frau nicht bejahen und wollten mehr gelten als sie.

Auch hier haben Eltern in ihrer Unwissenheit den Fehler gemacht, die Söhne gegenüber den weiblichen Geschwistern zu bevorzugen und sie zu verwöhnen. Damit haben sie sie als Erwachsene in diese Situation gebracht. Doch anstatt den Eltern böse zu sein und ihnen zu zürnen, ist es sehr wichtig, sie zu verstehen und sich mit ihnen zu versöhnen.

Deshalb wurde den jungen Männern empfohlen, Kraft und Mut aufzubringen, um sich mit Hilfe eines psychotherapeutischen Fachmanns der unbewussten Gefühle aus der Kindheit bewusst zu werden, damit die Liebesbeziehungen gerettet werden kann. Da sie nichts für ihr irritiertes Verhalten konnten – es war kein freier Wille –, sollten sie sich auch nicht die Schuld geben. Sie sollten sich aber bewusstwerden, dass hier etwas vorliegt, dessen sie nicht Herr werden können.

Auch bei diesen Männern musste zuerst eine gesunde Gefühlsgrundlage entstehen, bevor sie sich mit der Frau und allen anderen Menschen auf eine Stufe stellen konnten.

Forderungen an die Erziehung

Da wir Menschen das Produkt der Erlebnisse in der Kindheit sind, haben wir als Erwachsene nur das zur Verfügung, was wir bei unseren Beziehungspersonen an Vertrauen, Mut und Kenntnissen erlebt und erfahren haben. Die Eltern und Geschwister sind unsere Welt. Hier bekommen die Kinder sozusagen ihren Fahrplan, den Kompass für das Leben. Wenn sie dann in den Kindergarten kommen, wissen sie schon Bescheid, haben sie bereits eine Einstellung und eine Meinung über sich selbst und die anderen Menschen.

Erziehungsmethoden der Vergangenheit schufen den Menschentypus, der die Tragödie der Geschichte verursachen konnte. Das autoritäre Prinzip, jahrhundertelang als fraglos-gültige Grundlage des erzieherischen Verhaltens angesehen, drosselte bereits in den Kindheitsjahren das Gemeinschaftsgefühl der Menschen und stattete sie mit jener Aggressionsbereitschaft aus, durch die eine gewalttätige Welt im Zustand der Gewalttätigkeit verharren konnte.

Durch die Erkenntnisse der wissenschaftlichen Psychologie wissen wir heute, dass der Mensch in einem derartigen Maße das Produkt seiner Erziehung ist, dass man die Hoffnung hegen darf, durch bessere, das heißt, psychologische Erziehungsmethoden Menschen heranbilden zu können, die gegen die Verstrickungen des Machtwahns gefeit sein werden. Indem die Pädagogik in Elternhaus und Schule auf ausschließliche Autorität und auf Gewaltanwendung verzichtet und sich mit wahrem Verständnis dem kindlichen Seelenleben anpasst, wird sie einen Menschentypus hervorbringen, der keine „Untertanen-Mentalität“ besitzt und darum für die Machthaber in unserer Welt kein gefügiges Werkzeug mehr sein wird.

Auch die Schule hat eine große Aufgabe und Verantwortung. In erster Linie hat sie die Überzeugung zu vermitteln, dass erfahrungsgemäßes Wissen, Verstand und Vernunft immer und überall den Vorrang haben. Sie sollte der Jugend von Anfang an Werte vermitteln, die unserem Heute entsprechen und die auch im Erwachsenenalter noch Gültigkeit haben. Darüber hinaus sollte sie den jungen Menschen eine psychologische Bildung vermittelt, das Wissen über sie selbst und ihre Belange.

Des Weiteren hat die Schule die eigene Kraft und das Selbstbewusstsein der jungen Menschen zu stärken und vom eigenen geliebten Seelenheil abzulenken auf das Heil der Allgemeinheit, auf die Notwendigkeit der Hilfsbereitschaft.

Die Demokratisierung der Erziehung, aufgefasst als Achtung vor der kindlichen Persönlichkeit und als freundschaftliche Zuwendung des Erziehers zu seinem Zögling auf der Basis konsequenter Führung ohne Zwang und Gewalt ist dazu berufen, einen der wertvollsten Beiträge zum Aufbau einer humanen Gesellschaftsordnung zu leisten.

Die unbewussten Gefühlregungen aus der Kindheit, die der Erwachsene vergessen hat und die ihn oft nicht froh werden lassen, kann er bei einem fähigen Tiefenpsychologen psychotherapeutisch abklären und sich so kennen lernen. Es ist immer möglich, aus alten negativen Gedanken und Gefühlen herauszuwachsen und schließlich zu entscheiden, ob man in den Krieg ziehen will – oder besser nicht.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Doktor der Pädagogik (Dr. paed.) und Diplom-Psychologe (Dipl.-Psych.). Viele Jahrzehnte war er Lehrer (Rektor) und bildete pädagogische Fachkräfte fort. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis.

Noten 

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/youth-died-before-they-could-begin-live/5776057

2. http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=28358&css; https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-with-whom-can-we-reorganise-society/5800536

Das Bild stammt aus The Unz Review

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First published on August 19 2022

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A great humanitarian uproar in recent weeks demanding the safe shipping of Ukrainian grain to ease a hunger crisis in Africa and elsewhere is deceptive on many levels.

Not the least is who owns the land on which the grain is grown and whether that grain is actually illegal GMO patented corn and other grains. A corrupt Zelenskyy regime has quietly made deals with the major GMO agribusiness companies in the West who have been stealthily taking control of some of the world’s most productive “black earth” farmland.

The 2014 CIA Coup

In February 2014 a US Government-backed coup d’etat forced the elected president of Ukraine to flee for his life to Russia. In December 2013 President Viktor Yanukovych had announced following months of debate that Ukraine would join the Russian Eurasian Economic Union on promise of a $15 billion Russian purchase of Ukraine state debt and 33% reduction in cost of imported Russian gas.

The competing offer had been a paltry “associate membership” in the EU tied to Ukraine acceptance of a draconian IMF and World Bank loan package that would force the privatization of Ukraine’s invaluable agriculture land, allow planting GMO crops, as well as imposing severe pension cuts and social austerity. In return for a $17 billion IMF loan, Ukraine would also have to raise personal income taxes by as much as 66% and to pay 50% more for natural gas. Workers would have to work ten years longer to get pensions. The aim was to open Ukraine to “foreign investment.” The usual IMF rape of the economy on behalf of globalist corporate interests.

A key provision of the US and IMF demands on the post-coup government of US-picked Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk , a leader of the CIA-backed Maiden protests against Yanukovych, was to finally open Ukraine’s rich agriculture land to foreign Agribusiness giants, above all GMO giants including Monsanto and DuPont. Three of the Yatsenyuk cabinet , including the key Finance and Economy ministers, were foreign nationals, dictated to Kiev by the US State Department’s Victoria Nuland and then-Vice President Joe Biden. The Washington-imposed IMF loan conditions required that Ukraine also reverse its ban on genetically engineered crops, and enable private corporations like Monsanto to plant its GMO seeds and spray the fields with Monsanto’s Roundup.

Since Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, keeping control of Ukraine’s precious “black earth” land has been one of the most heated issues in national politics. Recent polls show 79% of Ukrainians want to retin control of their land from foreign takeover. Ukraine, as southern Russia, is home to valuable black earth or chernozems, a dark, humus-rich soil that is very productive and needs little artificial fertilizer.

2001 Moratorium

A 2001 Ukraine law imposed a moratorium on private sale of farmland to larger companies or foreign investors. The moratorium was to halt buy up by corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs and their leasing to foreign agribusiness of the rich farmlands. By then Monsanto and other Western agribusiness had made significant inroads into Ukraine.

When Ukraine left the Soviet Union in 1991, farmers who had worked on the Soviet collective farms were each given small plots of the land. To prevent sale of the plots to hungry foreign agribusiness, the 2001 moratorium was voted. Seven million Ukrainian farmers owned small plots totaling some 79 million acres. The remaining 25 million acres were owned by the state. Cultivation of GMO crops was strictly illegal.

Despite the moratorium, Monsato, DuPont, Cargill and other Western GMO purveyors secretly and illegally began spreading their patented GMO seeds in the black earth of Ukraine. Small landowners would lease their land to large Ukrainian oligarchs, who in turn would enter secret agreements with Monsanto and others to plant GMO corn and soybeans. By the end of 2016 according to a now-deleted US Department of Agriculture report, about 80% of Ukraine’s soybeans, and 10% of corn, were grown illegally from genetically modified seed. The Zelenskyy 2021 law has allowed this open door to GMO to be vastly expanded.

Enter the Comedian

In May 2019 Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Ukrainian TV comedian, a protégé of notoriously corrupt Ukraine oligarch, Igor Kolomoisky, was elected President in a tragic popular revolt “against government corruption.” One of Zelenskyy’s first acts in 2019 was to try to overturn the 2001 land moratorium. Farmers and citizens staged huge protests throughout 2020 to block the changes proposed by Zelenskyy.

Finally, taking advantage of the covid lockdown restrictions and bans on public protests, in May 2021 Zelenskyy signed Bill No. 2194, deregulating land, calling it the “key” to the “farmland market.” He was right. In a sneaky move to calm farmer opposition, Zelensky claimed the new law allows only Ukrainian citizens to buy or sell the valuable farmland in the first few years. He did not mention the huge loophole allowing foreign-owned companies like Monsanto (today part of Bayer AG) or DuPont (now Corteva), or other companies which have been operating in Ukraine more than three years, to also buy the desired land.

The 2021 law also gave ownership to notoriously corrupt municipal and village governments who can change the land purpose. After January 2024 Ukraine citizens as well as corporations can buy up to 10,000 hectares of land. And an April, 2021 amendment to the land market law– “On Amendments to the Land Code of Ukraine and other Legislative Acts concerning the improvement of the management system and deregulation in the field of land relations”– opened another huge loophole for foreign agribusiness to take control of the rich Ukraine black earth. The amendment circumvents the ban on sale of land to foreigners by changing the purpose of the land, say from cropland to commercial land. Then it can be sold to anyone, including foreigners who can in turn repurpose it to farmland. Zelenskyy signed the bill and went back on his campaign pledge to hold a national referendum on any change in land ownership.

Should there be any doubt as to interest of US GMO-linked agribusiness in grabbing Ukraine prime farmland, a look at the current Board of Directors of the US-Ukraine Business Council is instructive. It includes the largest private grain and agribusiness giant in the world, Cargill. It includes Monsanto/Bayer which owns patented GMO seeds and the deadly pesticide, Roundup. It includes Corteva, the huge GMO fusion of DuPont and Dow Chemicals. It includes fellow grain cartel giants Bunge and Louis Dreyfus. It includes the major farm equipment maker John Deere.

These were the powerful agribusiness corporations reportedly behind Zelenskyy’s betrayal of his election promise.

With Bayer/Monsanto, Corteva and Cargill already controlling a reported 16.7 million hectares of prime Ukraine black earth farmland, and with a de facto bribe from the IMF and World Bank, Zelenskyy’s government caved in and sold out. The result will be very bad for the future of what was until recently the “breadbasket of Europe.” With Ukraine now being pried open by the GMO cartel companies, it leaves only Russia which banned GMO crops in 2016 as the only major world grain supplier without GMO. The EU is reportedly working on a new law that would overturn the long-established critical approval process for GMO crops and open the floodgates there to the GMO takeover.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics. 

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

 

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-2-3

Product Type: PDF File

Price: $9.50

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Click here to order.

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First published on August 1, 2022

***

The world is now facing a man-made food catastrophe. It is reaching crisis levels. 

Current policies in many parts of the world place a priority on climate change for realizing a green new deal. Meanwhile, such policies will contribute to children dying from severe malnutrition due to broken food systems, with shortages of food and water, stress, anxiety, fear, and dangerous chemical exposure.

More negative pressure on farmers and the food system is asking for a catastrophe. The immune system of many people, especially children, has lost its resilience and has weakened too far with high risks for intoxication, infections, non-communicable and infectious diseases, deaths and infertility.

Dutch farmers, of whom many will face a cost of living crisis after 2030, have drawn the line. They are supported by an increasing number of farmers and citizens worldwide.

It’s not the farmers who are the most heavy polluters of the environment, but industries who make the products needed for a technocracy revolution to green energy, data mining, and Artificial Intelligence. As more of the WEF plans are rolled out by politicians, inequalities grow, and conflicts are rising all over the world.

The strong farmers’ revolt in the Netherlands is a call for an urgent transition to a people-oriented, free and healthy world with nutritious food cultivated and harvested in respect to natural processes. The cooperation of ordinary people worldwide is on the rise to prevent a mass famine catastrophe caused by the plan of scientism and technocracy to rule and control the world by unelected scientists and elites.

Enough food, access to food is the problem

Farmers around the world normally grow enough calories (2,800) per person (while 2,100 calories/day would be sufficient) to support a population of nine to ten billion people worldwide. But still over 828 million people have too little to eat each day. The problem is not always food; it is access. The UN which wrote in 2015 in the Sustainable Development Goals goal 2: No hunger and malnutrition for all in 2030 will not be reached.

Throughout history many times natural or manmade disasters led to food insecurities for longer periods of time, resulting in hunger, malnutrition (undernourishment) and mortality. The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the situation. Since the global pandemic began, access to food estimates show that food insecurity has likely doubled, if not tripled  in some places around the world.

Moreover, during the pandemic, global hunger rose to 150 million and is now affecting 828 million people, with 46 million at the brink of starvation facing emergency levels of hunger or worse. In the hardest hit places, this means famine or famine-like conditions. At least 45 million children are suffering from wasting, which is the most visible and severe form of malnutrition, and potentially life-threatening.

With global prices of food and fertilizers already reaching worrying highs, the continuing impacts of the pandemic, the political forces to realize climate change goals and the Russia-Ukraine war raise serious concerns for food security both in the short and the long term.

The world is facing a further spike in food shortages, pushing more families worldwide at risk for severe malnutrition. Those communities which survived former crises are left more vulnerable to a new shock than before and will accumulate the effects, diving into famine (acute starvation and a sharp increase in mortality).

Furthermore, growth of economies and development of nations are currently slowing down due to a lack of workforce due to a sharp decrease in well-being and higher mortality rates.

In the wake of new nitrogen limits that require farmers to radically curb their nitrogen emissions by up to 70 percent in the next eight years, tens of thousands of Dutch farmers have risen in protest against the government.

Farmers will be forced to use less fertilizer and even to reduce the number of their livestock, in some cases up to 95%. For smaller family-owned farms it will be impossible to reach these goals. Many will be forced to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for up to eight generations.

Moreover, a significant decrease and limitations of Dutch farmers will have huge repercussions for the global food supply chain. The Netherlands is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the United States. Still, the Dutch government pursues their agenda on Climate Change while there is currently no law to support the implementation, while they will not change much in the planet’s major air pollution. Models used to arrive at the decision of the Dutch government are debated by acknowledged scientists.

In no communication have Dutch politicians considered the effects of their decision on breaking a most important goal in the UN agreement: ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all in 2030.

Unfortunately, Sri Lanka, a country whose political leader introduced zero Nitrogen and CO2 emissions policy, is now facing economic problems, severe hunger, and difficulties to access food upon a political decision that farmers were not allowed to use fertilizers and pesticides. Still, politicians responsible for Nitrogen emissions/climate change in other countries pursue the same green policy.

Furthermore, experts are warning that heat, flooding, drought, wildfires, and other disasters have been wreaking economic havoc, with worse to come. Food and water shortages have been in the media.

On top of that, Australian experts announce a risk for an outbreak of a viral disease in cattle. This could cause an A$80 billion hit to the Australian economy and even more real supply chain issues. Countless businesses and producers go bankrupt. The emotional toll they are facing to euthanize their healthy herds is immense and hardly bearable. It is pushing more farmers to end their life.

Hopefully, the need for the Danish government to apologize, as an investigative report on the cull of more than 15 million minks in November 2020 criticized the action that led to the misleading of mink breeders and the public and the clearly illegal instructions to authorities, will help politicians to reconsider such drastic measures on farmers.

Worldwide, farmers’ protests are rising, supported by more and more citizens who stand up against the expensive mandates for changes to “green policies” that already brought massive miseries and instability.

At a ministerial conference for food security on June 29 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that worsening food shortages could lead to a global “catastrophe”.

Malnutrition responsible for more ill health than any other cause

The increased risk of food and water shortages the world is facing now will bring humanity to the edge. Hunger is a many-headed monster. For decades conquering world hunger has become a political issue in a way that it could not have been in the past. The use of authoritarian political power led to disastrous government policies, making it impossible for millions of people to earn a living. Chronic hunger and the recurrence of virulent famines must be seen as being morally outrageous and politically unacceptable, says Dreze and Sen in Hunger and Public Action, published in 1991.

“For those at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger in the world would be a disaster. For those who need availability of cheap labor, hunger is the foundation of their wealth, it is an asset,” wrote Dr. George Kent in 2008 in the essay “The Benefits of World Hunger.”

Malnutrition is not only influenced by food and water shortage, but also to exposures of extreme stress, fear, insecurity of safety and food, social factors, chemicals, microplastics, toxins, and over-medicalization. No country in the world can afford to overlook this disaster in all its forms, which affects mostly children and women in reproductive age. Globally more than 3 billion people cannot afford healthy diets. And this is in contradiction to what many people think is just a low-income country problem.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic began, about 8% of the population in North America and Europe lacked regular access to nutritious and sufficient food. A third of reproductive-age women are anemic, while 39% of the world’s adults are overweight or obese. Each year around 20 million babies are born underweight. In 2016 9.6% of the women were underweight. Globally in 2017, 22.2% of the children under the age of five were stunting, while undernutrition explains around 45% of deaths among children under five.

As stated by Lawrence Haddad, the co-chair of the Global Nutrition Report independent Expert Group, “We now live in a world where being malnourished is the new normal. It is a world we must all claim as totally unacceptable.” While malnutrition is the leading driver of disease with nearly 50% of deaths caused by nutrition related non-communicable diseases in 2014, only $50 million of donor funding was given.

Malnutrition in all its forms imposes unacceptably high costs – direct and indirect – on individuals, families and nations. The estimated impact on the global economy of the chronic undernourishment of 800 million people could be as high as $3,5 trillion per year, as was stated in a Global Nutrition Report in 2018. While child deaths, premature adult mortality and malnutrition-related infectious and non-communicable diseases are preventable with the right nutrition.

This will be much more at this precious moment, as the population sharply increases in excess mortality and non-communicable diseases among the working age people as recently shown by insurance companies.

Famines cause transgenerational effects

Famine is a widespread condition in which a large percentage of people in a country or region have little or no access to adequate food supplies. Europe and other developed parts of the world have mostly eliminated famine, though widespread famines that killed thousands and millions of people are known from history, like the Dutch Potato famine from 1846-1847, The Dutch Hunger winter 1944-1945 and a Chinese famine of 1959-1961.

The latter was the most severe famine both in terms of duration and number of people affected (600 million and around 30 million deaths) and led to a widespread undernutrition of the Chinese population in the period from 1959-1961. Currently, Sub-Saharan Africa and Yemen are countries with recognized famine.

Unfortunately, global destabilization, starvation and mass migration are increasing fast with more famines to be expected if we do not act today.

Epidemiological studies of Barker and later of Hales showed a relation between the availability of nutrition in various stages of pregnancy and the first years of life and diseases later in life. Their studies demonstrated that people with metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases were often small at birth. More and more research proves the role of nutrition-related mechanisms influencing gene expression. Even the period prior to pregnancy might influence a later risk for insulin resistance or other complications of the fetus.

As demonstrated in a study with 3,000 participants in Northern China, prenatal exposure to famine significantly increased hyperglycemia in adulthood in two consecutive generations. Severity of famine during prenatal development is related to the risk for Type 2 diabetes. These findings are consistent with animal models that have shown the impact of prenatal nutritional status on neuro-endocrine changes that affect metabolism and can be programmed to transmit physiologically across multiple generations through both male and female generations. Early life Health shock conditions can cause epigenetic changes in humans that persist throughout life, affect old age mortality and have multigenerational effects. Depending on which trimester the fetus is exposed to food deprivation or even stress alone a related disease later in life may vary from schizophrenia, ADHD to renal failure and hypertension among others. Other studies of famine exposure in people have produced evidence of changes in the endocrine system and to prenatal gene expression in reproductive systems.

The effects of periods of famine or undernutrition have predominantly been seen in people with low social economic income. However, 1 in 3 persons in the world suffered from some form of malnutrition in 2016. Women and children are 70% of the hungry. There is no doubt that undernutrition increased further during the past six years. Stunting and wasting increased in the most vulnerable. Two out of three children are not fed the minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop to their full potential.

The hungry people in countries like Sri Lanka, Haiti, Armenia ,and Panama are the tip of the iceberg, opening the eyes of many citizens worldwide to a fast-growing problem as a result of the lockdowns, mandates and coercive policies in climate change, drought and the Ukraine war.

Citizens of the world have been facing for years: excess mortality, a fast decline in infertility and childbirth with a threat to human rights for women and more diseases.

Shocking reports of the UN and WHO acknowledged the health of people and environment is declining. The world is moving backwards on eliminating hunger and malnutrition. The real danger is that these numbers will climb even higher in the months ahead.

The truth is that food innovation hubs, food flats (vertical farming), artificial meats and gene and mind manipulations will not be able to tackle the depressing state humanity is facing.

Zero-Covid policy has brought humanity at risk in its existence. Covid-19 vaccines with a risk for harmhave been rolled out even for children under five years, hardly at risk for a severe disease, but undernourishment that greatly increases susceptibility to major human infectious diseases has not been taken care of.

Conflicts are growing worldwide, increasing instability. Citizens will no longer accept policies without a clear harm-cost benefit analysis.

We need to act now to decrease food and fuel prices immediately by supporting farmers and effective food systems for nutritious food to heal the most malnourished (children and females at childbearing age) in the population.

Let us hope for a return of Hippocrates’ principle: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

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Carla Peeters is founder and managing director of COBALA Good Care Feels Better. She obtained a PhD in Immunology from the Medical Faculty of Utrecht, studied Molecular Sciences at Wageningen University and Research, and followed a four-year course in Higher Nature Scientific Education with a specialization in medical laboratory diagnostics and research. She studied at various business schools including London Business School, INSEAD and Nyenrode Business School.

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***

At least from the very academic viewpoint, war is a condition of armed conflict between at least two sides (but, in fact, states). There are, historically, several types of warfare as conventional warfare, civil war, lightning war (blitzkrieg in German), total war, hegemonic war, liberation war, war on terrorism, etc. However, according to the used warfare technique, there is, for instance, little war (guerrilla war in Spanish) or according to the (counter)balance of warfare sides, there is asymmetric war as an example.

Asymmetric warfare exists in the case when two sides of combat forces (two states, two blocs, a state vs. one military bloc, etc.) are very or even extremely different regarding their military and other capacities to fight each other. They are as well as very different in the terms of their areas of comparative strategic advantage, Therefore, the confrontation between such two different sides is coming to turn on one belligerent side’s ability/capacity to force the other side to fight on their own terms and conditions.

Another feature of asymmetric warfare is that the strategies that the weaker side has consistently adopted against the stronger side (enemy) often involve targeting the enemy’s domestic political base as much as its forward military capabilities. Nevertheless, in essence, usually, such strategies involve inflicting pain over time without suffering unbearable retaliation in return.

In practice, a very illustrative example of asymmetric warfare was when on March 20^th, 2003, US-led coalition forces invaded (made aggression) Iraq of Saddam Hussein with the objective of locating and disarming suspected (and not existing) Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The coalition forces lead a very fast and overwhelmingly successful military campaign with the occupation of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Consequently, the Iraqi military forces collapsed and finally surrendered to the occupants. US President Bush Junior declared the official end of major fighting operations in Iraq on May 2^nd, 2003.

On one hand, historically speaking, the casualties during the conventional part of the war were low for major modern and contemporary military conflicts. However, on other hand, the fighting soon has been evolved into an insurgency in which the combination of guerrilla/terrorist attacks on both Western coalition forces and the civilians of Iraq became the everyday norm.

Therefore, by the spring of 2007, the coalition had suffered some 3.500 men and around 24.000 wounded. Some independent sources estimate that total Iraqi war-related deaths are up to 650.000 (the minimum is 60.000). The 2003 Iraqi War is an example of how the asymmetric war can be transformed into guerrilla warfare with unpredictable consequences for the originally victorious side. The same happened with the war in Afghanistan in 2001 which started as an asymmetric war but was finished twenty years later with the victory of Taliban guerrilla forces over the Western coalition.

Nevertheless, the 2003 Iraqi War illustrated several themes that have been prominent in the talks regarding the future development of warfare including the question of asymmetric war as well. In this particular case, one of the focal features of asymmetric warfare was the fact that the fast military victory of the US-led coalition saw the Iraqi armed forces overrun by the technological superiority of the advanced weapons and information systems of the West, particularly of the US. It simply suggested that military revolution was on the way (RMA – revolution in military affairs).

Another feature of asymmetric warfare in Iraq in 2003 was that US-employed military (operational) doctrine has been as well as of focal importance. In other words, the military success of the Western coalition forces was not only the result of pure technological supremacy, but it was as well as the result of superior operational doctrine. A very fast and comparatively bloodless victory for the US-led coalition launched the view that in the post-Cold War 1.0 strategic environment, there were few inhibitions on the use of force by the US Army as at that time still being a hyper-power in global politics and international relations. Therefore, it was not the threat from the time of Cold War 1.0 that some regional conflict or war would escalate into nuclear warfare between two superpowers. In addition, Washington was healing the trauma of Vietnam through asymmetric wars against Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 1991/2003.

It can be said that in the case of the asymmetric war against Iraq in 2003, a focal point was US dominance of information warfare in both the military sense (using satellite systems for communication, weapons targeting, reconnaissance, etc.) and civilian sense (manipulation of the civilian communications and global media images of the warfare). Consequently, Washington succeeded at least in the West to produce an understanding of the war as pro-democratic and preemptive (against the use of WMD by Iraqi forces, in fact, against Israel).

Nevertheless, the point was that this conflict did not end with the surrender of the regular forces (army) of Iraq. It, actually, confirmed some arguments of those who supported the idea of “post-modern” warfare (or “new” wars) out of the regular (standard) type of wars (army vs. an army).

On other hand, the ability to operate using complex informal military networks allowed the Iraqi rebels after the regular phase of the war in 2003 to conduct effective asymmetric warfare, regardless of the overwhelming superiority of Western military technology. The insurgents, as well as, have been able to use the global media in order to present their warfare as a liberation war against Western neo-imperialism. However, the techniques used by the rebels were brutal (terrorism), ruthless, and in many cases targeted against the civilian population, in a campaign supported by outside structures (both governmental and non-governmental) and finance. It is sustained by an overtly identity-based campaign and reflects at the same time the features of the concept of the “post-modern” or “new” wars.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

I once described a friend of mine, a French skier, as ‘poetry in motion’. What did I mean by that? Can an athlete truly be a poet? After all, a poet is someone who generally takes great time and care to craft a gem, a poem, a creation to be polished and refined with pumice,  as the famous Latin poet Catullus wrote: āridā modo pūmice expolītum. A craft defined by contemplation, meditation and revision, an exertion not dependent upon the exigencies of the moment, but of a larger conception of time.

When I described my skiing friend Alain, was I christening him as a true poet? What makes poetry? What makes a poet? What does a poet make?

After all, the words ‘poem’ and ‘poetry’ are derived from a Greek root that means ‘to create, to make’.

Is a bricklayer a poet? Hmmm …

When I thought of Alain’s skiing, I thought of something that was graceful, beautiful and possessed of a certain kind of light, perhaps even of symmetry. I did not think of brute force, of hammer blows, of a monstrous subjugation of the snow-clad mountains of Taos Ski Valley, but rather of a a display of exquisite subtlety and skill and adaptation to the terrain.  Even when Homer, the G.O.A.T. in poetry,  dealt with the savage brutality of the Trojan War in his Iliad, he transformed this brutality into something transcendently poetic.

‘Poetic justice,’ on the other hand, connotes something different: closure, a neat declaration of the laws of Karma, a tidy wrapping up of things, a reestablishment of order in a world that was careening into chaos.

Argentina’s wild and improbable run to victory in the football (soccer)  World Cup of 2022 provided us with many examples of football grace, football force and football justice. The incomparable Lionel Messi finally achieved his much-desired goal after much travail in a concluding match with France that featured more moments of thrill and drama than I had remembered in a sporting event. Up 2-0 in the second half, Argentina seemed to be assured of a clear cut win, until a careless penalty was awarded to France and, 97 seconds later, a natural goal was volleyed home by a resurgent Kylian Mbappe to level the score. In extra time Messi struck and Argentina again seemed to have the game in hand before an unlikely Argentinian handball in the box gave France the opportunity to equalise.

Thus the game was reduced – and I use this term deliberately – to a penalty shootout, where luck and fortune have as much weight as skill. Nonetheless, the Argentinians emerged victorious.

Was this poetic justice for the Lionel Messi who had laboured for so many years scoring goal upon goal and registering assist upon assist for his club teams and the national team, whose vision on the soccer pitch was breathtaking? Perhaps. Whatever it was, I believe that the better team in the end did indeed merit the honour of hoisting the trophy.

For me, however, it was the magnificent play of Angel Di Maria that pushed my thoughts into the direction of poetry. Di Maria had been wreaking havoc upon the hapless French up until minute 65, when he was taken off. His speed and ability to thrust unsettled the French, and his creative manoeuvres led to the first Argentinian goal, having drawn a penalty converted by Messi. But it was his breathtaking finish to a play that began with Emi Martinez, the Argentine keeper, and progressed back and forth across the vast pitch to culminate in a strike that justified visions of poetry.

It was the goal of the tournament, a thing of beauty, a creation that emerged from nothing, from the unpredictable chaos of the game into a sublime and unforeseen event.

And isn’t this just what true poetry really is? The distillation of the complexity and messiness of the world into an essence of beauty and truth?  Well, we may argue about whether football produces truth, but we really can’t argue about the spontaneous eruptions of beauty, dependent upon the laws of chance and the skill of players prepared for the vagaries of fate.

After he scored this magnificent goal Di Maria used his hands to create the image of a heart.

It was the fitting exemplar of a majestic culmination.

Di Maria, Messi and Argentina’s manager Lionel Scaloni all hail from the city of Rosario in Argentina, a trio that joined forces, ultimately, in the service of poetic justice and display.

After all, true poetry is nothing more or less than a novel distillation of our disorderly world into that thing of beauty which the great English poet Keats rightly called a joy forever. By these standards Di Maria, Messi and the entire Argentinian team were poets, forged in the crucible of spontaneous necessity, and rendering unto us, we eager spectators, renewed hope in the capabilities of humankind and the exquisite existence of a transcendent and aesthetically delightful order.

Vamos Argentina, vamos Angel Di Maria, vamos poesía!

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a member of Pfizer’s data safety monitoring board (DSMB), was previously a paid adviser to Pfizer. DSMBs are supposed to be independent, and aren’t if members have previous relationships with the company

German autopsies found “highly unusual tissue inflammation” in people who died shortly after getting the jab, and investigators suspect the inflammation observed would be fatal. They also found spike protein in the tissues of the deceased, but not another key part of SARS-CoV-2. This suggests the actual virus was not part of the problem; the only possible source of the spike protein was the jab

Data from the German health insurance provider BKK, which covers about 10.9 million Germans, show 2.05% of COVID jab recipients sought medical care after their jab

The largest German statutory health insurance dataset, which encompasses 72 million Germans, show massive increases in sudden and unexpected deaths after the COVID jabs rolled out

December 13, 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for a statewide grand jury investigation of crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 jabs. He also established an independent Public Health Integrity Committee to analyze and assess federal health guidance before they’re implemented in Florida

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Contrary to the official narrative (and hence popular belief), the COVID shots have no demonstrated safety. In Episode 298 of The Highwire, Del Bigtree interviews attorney Aaron Siri about the various lawsuits his firm has brought to reverse COVID jab mandates.

Siri describes a recent deposition of Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a world-leading vaccinologist who sat on Pfizer’s data safety monitoring board (DSMB). This five-member committee oversaw the safety of Pfizer’s jab. A DSMB is supposed to be an independent group of experts, whose responsibility it is to monitor patient safety and treatment efficacy data while a clinical trial is ongoing.

Pfizer’s Not-so-Independent Safety Monitoring Board

As noted by Siri in the deposition, since the DSMB is supposed to be independent, it’s crucially important that all the members of that board have no potential conflicts of interest and are in fact truly independent of the drug company whose product they’re evaluating.

In the case of Edwards, she was a paid adviser to Pfizer before she was hired (by Pfizer) to be on the DSMB for their COVID jab. According to Edwards, this fact is irrelevant, because that prior relationship did not influence the work she did on the board.

“I say what I believe based on my expertise,” she told Siri. “So, you don’t think financial incentive can sway people’s judgment at all?” Siri asked. “It does not sway my judgment, Sir,” she replied. “Then why have an independent DSMB?” Siri asked. “Why doesn’t Pfizer just have some of its employees on it?”

“Because we are independent; we are independent from Pfizer in this assessment,” she replied. But just how can an independent advisory committee possibly be “independent” if members have prior relationships with the company?

Another noteworthy tidbit from that deposition was Edwards’ comment that she reviewed “lots of reactions and adverse events” from the COVID jab trial. Yet the public has continuously been told there are no bad reactions. So, what was she looking at? And why, if there were “lots of reactions,” did the DSMB conclude that there are no safety concerns?

Of course, we know at least some of what she was looking at. Pfizer trial documents¹ have been released showing the company amassed nine single-spaced pages’ worth of “adverse events of special interest” (see pages 30 through 38²), including 1,223 events with fatal outcomes between December 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021 alone.

A whistleblower who worked on Pfizer’s Phase 3 trial has also come forward with evidence showing data were falsified, patients were unblinded and follow-up on reported side effects lagged way behind. Why didn’t any of these issues concern the DSMB? Was it because there really was no independent DSMB?

What German Autopsy Data Have Revealed

In a mid-December 2022 Substack article, the anonymous writer who goes by the moniker “A Midwestern Doctor” reviewed German autopsy data, which demonstrate:³

• The presence of “highly unusual tissue inflammation” in people who died shortly after getting the jab. As noted by the author, “Pathologists had not observed this phenomena before the COVID-19 vaccines, and they suspected this inflammation would be fatal.”
• The presence of COVID spike protein in the tissues of the deceased, whereas another key part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was absent. This suggests the actual virus was not part of the problem; the only possible source of the spike protein was the jab.

The most recent and “most definitive” study on this subject, according to A Midwestern Doctor, examined 35 people who died within 20 days of getting the COVID jab. After thorough autopsy examination, 10 of the deceased were determined to have died from causes other than the jab.

Among the remaining 25, most died from causes that, in general, have frequently been linked to vaccination. Five died from myocarditis, which could potentially be linked to the shot. In three of those five cases, the COVID jab was determined to be the definitive cause of the myocarditis that led to their death.

As noted by A Midwestern Doctor, “These results are very important for convicting the vaccines if it can also be proven that a large number of unexpected deaths are occurring following vaccination.” As it turns out, that’s exactly what excess mortality data tell us.

German Insurance Provider Data Show Rise in Doctor’s Visits

A Midwestern Doctor also cites data from the German health insurance provider, BKK, which covers about 10.9 million Germans. One of the BKK board members, Andreas Shöfbeck, discovered concerning trends in their data, which he sent to the Paul-Ehrlich Institut, an agency of the German Federal Ministry of Health.

No good deed goes unpunished in the era of COVID censorship, however, so Shöfbeck was summarily dismissed from the board as thanks for his contribution to public health and safety. The BKK dataset showed 2.05% of COVID jab recipients sought medical care after their jab. A Midwestern Doctor continues:⁴

“This concerning safety signal prompted … the AfD [Alternative for Germany, a conservative political party] … to file the German equivalent of FOIA [Freedom of Information Act request] for the rest of the insurance data …

Recently AfD obtained AOK Sachsen-Anhalt’s data, which once analyzed, demonstrated that many of the conditions we associate with COVID-19 injuries noticeably increased when the vaccination campaign initiated … [C]onditions which rose five-fold or more were:”

“AfD also submitted a FOIA request to KBV, the association which represents all physicians who receive insurance in Germany and thus the largest insurance dataset available.”

Largest Insurance Dataset Reveal Rise in Sudden Deaths

The larger statutory health insurance dataset from KBV, which encompasses 72 million Germans, show massive increases in sudden and unexpected deaths after the COVID jabs rolled out.

The following graph is from a press conference presentation by data analyst Tom Lausen (see video below; it’s in German, but you can enable English subtitles).⁵ No mainstream media attended the press conference.

As noted by A Midwestern Doctor:⁶

“… one way that individuals have analyzed the unusual changes in health following the vaccination campaigns has been to assess how far they fall outside of the expected range of variation …

I did a quick calculation for the above graph and found that 2021’s increase from 2016-2020 was 37.7σ [sigma], while 2022’s was 41.0σ. This is quite a big deal (the rarity of an event happening by chance increases exponentially as the σ increases).

For context, a 7σ event has a 1/390,632,286,180 chance of spontaneously occurring (it is thought to occur once in a billion years) … (I was not able to find a reference on the probabilities for the even higher σ events observed here).

Given these numbers, it is very difficult to argue that these events were not caused by something. In this regard, we are also quite fortunate that while the vaccines were rushed to the market over a period of time far too short to establish safety, that process still took a year.

Because of this lag, it is possible to refute the commonly cited argument that these changes were due to COVID-19 or the lockdowns, as these only occurred in 2020 …”

Dramatic Rise in Heart-Related Fatalities

Lausen also presented a graph for German fatalities per quarter involving cardiac problems.^7,8 These six death certificate codes all correspond to “sudden deaths” with cardiac cause. As you can see, heart-related mortality more than doubled in the first quarter of 2021 from the year before, and nearly tripled from the five-year average.

Some have argued that since few shots were given in early 2021, heart-related deaths would not have increased until the second quarter if there was a correlation between the two. However, other data show there was a rapid rise in COVID jab doses administered during the first quarter of 2021 (see graph below), so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that there is a correlation.

Also, as with all-cause mortality, the fact that heart-related deaths did NOT spike during 2020 suggests COVID-19 had nothing to do with the rise that occurred in the first quarter of 2021.

Data Analyst Calls for Immediate End to COVID Jabs

In the conclusion of his presentation, Lausen calls for the immediate suspension of the COVID jabs until correlation between the shots and death can be conclusively ruled out. He also calls for:⁹

• Autopsies on all who died suddenly to determine what the massive increase is due to
• Mandatory recording of the COVID jab status of all deceased individuals, and the brand used, and regular publication of these data
• Immediate evaluation of the KBV data by German health authorities
• Informing all doctors and the population at large about the increase in diseases being reported post-jab
• Regular publication of KB e V data linked with COVID jab data held by the Paul Ehrlich Institute and the Robert Koch Institute (Germany’s public health institute)

The Shots Also Have Negative Effectiveness

In addition to not being safe, by any standard, the COVID shots are also negatively effective, meaning after 90 days, both Moderna’s and Pfizer’s shots make you more susceptible to COVID.

As shown in the graphic below, Danish data reveal Omicron cases among the jabbed rose dramatically after three months for both injections, giving Pfizer a negative effectiveness of 76.5% at 90 days’ post-jab and Moderna a 39.3% negative effectiveness.

As noted in a series of Twitter posts by Chris Martenson Ph.D.:¹⁰

“If you’ve been vaccinated, and feel like you’ve been getting sick more often than your unvaccinated friends, your impression is correct … The only rational, scientific, ethical, and moral response is to #StoptheShotsNow for everyone under 50 who is healthy. Anything less is profiteering, politics, or personal failure. Or assault and/or homicide if you’re a doctor.”

Florida Governor Calls for Grand Jury Investigation

I’ve reviewed data on side effects and excess mortality in the U.S. in several previous articles, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently did what many of us have been calling for in light of those data.

December 13, 2022, he petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for a statewide grand jury investigation of crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 jabs.¹¹ According to the governor’s press release:¹²

“The pharmaceutical industry and the FDA have refused to release patient-level data for independent researchers.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna have received FDA approval for pediatric and adult patients and continue to be marketed as safe and effective, even though the vaccines do not prevent transmission and adverse events have been minimized and disregarded by the Biden Administration and Big Pharma.

In response, Governor DeSantis has filed a petition to impanel a statewide grand jury to investigate crimes and wrongs in Florida related to the COVID-19 vaccines and further recommend enforcement methods.”

Florida Establishes Independent Public Health Committee

DeSantis is also implementing autopsy surveillance of post-jab sudden deaths, and has established a Public Health Integrity Committee, an independent group of expert researchers “charged with assessing federal decisions, recommendations, and guidance related to public health and health care … to ensure that Florida’s public health policies are tailored for Florida’s communities and priorities.”

The Committee, which will be overseen by Florida surgeon general Dr. Joseph Ladapo, consists of the following members:

As noted in the governor’s press release:¹³

“The Biden Administration and pharmaceutical corporations continue to push widespread distribution of mRNA vaccines on the public, including children as young as 6 months old, through relentless propaganda while ignoring real-life adverse events.

At today’s roundtable the Governor and health experts discussed data covering serious adverse events. These risks include coagulation disorders, acute cardiac injuries, Bell’s palsy, encephalitis, appendicitis, and shingles.

‘Health care professionals should always communicate the risks of a medical intervention to their patients in a manner that is clinically appropriate and meets standards of ethical practice. President Biden and Big Pharma have completely prevented that from happening – it is wrong,’ said Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo.

‘With these new actions, we will shed light on the forces that have obscured truthful communication about the COVID-19 vaccines.'”

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Notes

¹ PHMPT.org 5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports

² PHMPT.org 5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports, Pages 30-38

^{3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9} A Midwestern Doctor December 13, 2022

⁸ Meryl Nass Substack December 19, 2022

¹⁰ Twitter Chris Martenson December 15, 2022

^11, 12, 13 FLgov.org December 13, 2022

Featured image is from NaturalNews.com

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***

“This is quite shocking,” declared South Australia’s Attorney-General and Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Kyam Maher.  “These caves are some of the earliest evidence of Aboriginal occupation of that part of the country.”  That evidence was subtracted this month by acts of vandalism inflicted on artwork in Koonalda Cave on the Nullarbor Plain, claimed to be the world’s largest limestone karst landscape and covering over 200,000 square kilometres.

Edward John Eyre, the first European to cross the Plain in 1840-1841, wrote hauntingly of it as “a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of Nature, the sort of place one gets into bad dreams”.  In his case, personal circumstances soured the impressions: horses dying of dehydration; a case of mutiny resulting in the killing of his companion John Baxter; the theft of the party’s supplies; the slimmest chances of survival.

The work in question, carvings on chalk limestone, is said to be some 30,000 years old, considered sacred by the Mirning people.  By the time news reached CNN of the incident, eight years had been shaved off the estimate, one more in line with the 1956 dating by archaeologist Alexander Gallus.  In information available on the Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, the “finger markings and unique archaeological deposits found in Koonalda Cave provide a rare glimpse of Aboriginal life on the Nullarbor Plain during the Pleistocene.”

The rock art in question is now plastered by crude graffiti, featuring such messages as “don’t look now, but this is a death cave”.  The verdict of archaeologist Keryn Walshe, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the Koonalda Cave is unsurpassed, was gravely unequivocal.  “The art is not recoverable.”  To remove the graffiti from the soft surface would effectively do away with the art itself.  “It’s a massive, tragic loss to have it defaced to this degree.”

Something of a consensus has been reached on how this took place.  A steel case, installed in the 1980s, was breached by digging intruders.  Astonishingly, the Mirning elders seemed to have been the last ones to know about it.  Bunna Lawrie, for instance, only heard about the matter this month.  (Access is usually restricted to a few male elders; the site is closed to tourists.)  “We are the traditional custodians of Koonalda,” he declared in a statement, “and ask for this to be respected and for our Mirning elders to be consulted.”

Put it down to inadequate resources, and a lack of will, which has also seen previous acts of vandalism take place.   “The failure to build an effective gate, or to make use of modern security services, such as wildlife monitoring cameras that operate 24/7, has in many ways allowed this vandalism to occur,” suggested Clare Buswell of the Australian Speleological Federation Conservation Commission in a submission to the Aboriginal lands parliamentary standing committee made earlier this year.

The statement by Lawrie reiterates the point.  “Since 2018 we have been asking for support to secure the entrance as a priority and to offer appropriate Mirning signage.  This support did not happen.”  Other misfortunes had befallen the site since, including the collapse of the cave entrance, and access works that did not involve consultation and were “not approved.”

The destruction of such sites should shock, but each revelation seemingly inures the authorities to them.  The pattern is clear: apologies follow; horror is expressed; and even offers of compensation made to cope with irreversible harm.  But the business of trashing a legacy continues, digestible as the stuff of accident or indifference.

In many instances, laws sympathetic to development and mining also do much to doom such works to extinction.  The rock shelters of the Jukaan Gorge site in Western Australia were remorselessly levelled by Rio Tinto in May 2020, an outcome that was ethically atrocious yet legally sanctioned by the legislation of the day.

Of note was the mining giant’s conduct towards local elders.  The company’s legal team stomped on any protest, haughtily informing members of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (PKKP) that any emergency application to halt to the company’s works made to the federal government could only take place with the company’s blessing, and with 30 days-notice.  Carol Meredith, the chief executive of the PKKP Aboriginal Corporation, recalled the sharp response from Rio’s lawyers, who stated that “we were not able to engage seeking out an emergency declaration that perhaps would have stopped proceedings, because of our claim-wide participation agreement.”

Within the wheels of the company, blissful ignorance reigned.  Rio Tinto’s head of corporate relations, Simone Niven, was not only based in London but had little idea about the significance of the Juukan Gorge caves.  Relations could hardly be counted as her strong suit.

Conforming to previous instances of such vandalism, penalties are being called for regarding the perpetrators of the graffiti.  Under the legal regime, damaging such sites can carry a fine of $A10,000 or six months in prison. But the harm has been done; again, history has been left poorer, and the dreams worse than ever.

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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 Alamay via People