Today December 10, 2022 we commemorate assassination of San Jose Mercury News journalist Gary Webb.
This article by the late award winning journalist Robert Parry was first published on December 13, 2004
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In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy — the Reagan-Bush administration’s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s.
For his brave reporting at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb paid a high price. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the American Journalism Review and even the Nation magazine. Under this media pressure, his editor Jerry Ceppos sold out the story and demoted Webb, causing him to quit the Mercury News. Even Webb’s marriage broke up.
On Friday, Dec. 10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide, a gunshot wound to the head.
Whatever the details of Webb’s death, American history owes him a huge debt.
Though denigrated by much of the national news media, Webb’s contra-cocaine series prompted internal investigations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department, probes that confirmed that scores of contra units and contra-connected individuals were implicated in the drug trade. The probes also showed that the Reagan-Bush administration frustrated investigations into those crimes for geopolitical reasons.
Failed Media
Unintentionally, Webb also exposed the cowardice and unprofessional behavior that had become the new trademarks of the major U.S. news media by the mid-1990s. The big news outlets were always hot on the trail of some titillating scandal — the O.J. Simpson case or the Monica Lewinsky scandal — but the major media could no longer grapple with serious crimes of state.
Even after the CIA’s inspector general issued his findings in 1998, the major newspapers could not muster the talent or the courage to explain those extraordinary government admissions to the American people. Nor did the big newspapers apologize for their unfair treatment of Gary Webb. Foreshadowing the media incompetence that would fail to challenge George W. Bush’s case for war with Iraq five years later, the major news organizations effectively hid the CIA’s confession from the American people.
The New York Times and the Washington Post never got much past the CIA’s “executive summary,” which tried to put the best spin on Inspector General Frederick Hitz’s findings. The Los Angeles Times never even wrote a story after the final volume of the CIA’s report was published, though Webb’s initial story had focused on contra-connected cocaine shipments to South-Central Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Times’ cover-up has now continued after Webb’s death. In a harsh obituary about Webb, the Times reporter, who called to interview me, ignored my comments about the debt the nation owed Webb and the importance of the CIA’s inspector general findings. Instead of using Webb’s death as an opportunity to finally get the story straight, the Times acted as if there never had been an official investigation confirming many of Webb’s allegations. [Los Angeles Times, Dec. 12, 2004.]
By maintaining the contra-cocaine cover-up — even after the CIA’s had admitted the facts — the big newspapers seemed to have understood that they could avoid any consequences for their egregious behavior in the 1990s or for their negligence toward the contra-cocaine issue when it first surfaced in the 1980s. After all, the conservative news media — the chief competitor to the mainstream press — isn’t going to demand a reexamination of the crimes of the Reagan-Bush years.
That means that only a few minor media outlets, like our own Consortiumnews.com, will go back over the facts now, just as only a few of us addressed the significance of the government admissions in the late 1990s. I compiled and explained the findings of the CIA/Justice investigations in my 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & “Project Truth.”
Contra-Cocaine Case
Lost History, which took its name from a series at this Web site, also describes how the contra-cocaine story first reached the public in a story that Brian Barger and I wrote for the Associated Press in December 1985. Though the big newspapers pooh-poohed our discovery, Sen. John Kerry followed up our story with his own groundbreaking investigation. For his efforts, Kerry also encountered media ridicule. Newsweek dubbed the Massachusetts senator a “randy conspiracy buff.” [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Kerry’s Contra-Cocaine Chapter.”]
So when Gary Webb revived the contra-cocaine issue in August 1996 with a 20,000-word three-part series entitled “Dark Alliance,” editors at major newspapers already had a powerful self-interest to slap down a story that they had disparaged for the past decade.
The challenge to their earlier judgments was doubly painful because the Mercury-News’ sophisticated Web site ensured that Webb’s series made a big splash on the Internet, which was just emerging as a threat to the traditional news media. Also, the African-American community was furious at the possibility that U.S. government policies had contributed to the crack-cocaine epidemic.
In other words, the mostly white, male editors at the major newspapers saw their preeminence in judging news challenged by an upstart regional newspaper, the Internet and common American citizens who also happened to be black. So, even as the CIA was prepared to conduct a relatively thorough and honest investigation, the major newspapers seemed more eager to protect their reputations and their turf.
Without doubt, Webb’s series had its limitations. It primarily tracked one West Coast network of contra-cocaine traffickers from the early-to-mid 1980s. Webb connected that cocaine to an early “crack” production network that supplied Los Angeles street gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, leading to Webb’s conclusion that contra cocaine fueled the early crack epidemic that devastated Los Angeles and other U.S. cities.
Counterattack
When black leaders began demanding a full investigation of these charges, the Washington media joined the political Establishment in circling the wagons. It fell to Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s right-wing Washington Times to begin the counterattack against Webb’s series. The Washington Times turned to some former CIA officials, who participated in the contra war, to refute the drug charges.
But — in a pattern that would repeat itself on other issues in the following years — the Washington Post and other mainstream newspapers quickly lined up behind the conservative news media. On Oct. 4, 1996, the Washington Post published a front-page article knocking down Webb’s story.
The Post’s approach was twofold: first, it presented the contra-cocaine allegations as old news — “even CIA personnel testified to Congress they knew that those covert operations involved drug traffickers,” the Post reported — and second, the Post minimized the importance of the one contra smuggling channel that Webb had highlighted — that it had not “played a major role in the emergence of crack.” A Post side-bar story dismissed African-Americans as prone to “conspiracy fears.”
Soon, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times joined in the piling on of Gary Webb. The big newspapers made much of the CIA’s internal reviews in 1987 and 1988 that supposedly cleared the spy agency of a role in contra-cocaine smuggling.
But the CIA’s decade-old cover-up began to crack on Oct. 24, 1996, when CIA Inspector General Hitz conceded before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the first CIA probe had lasted only 12 days, the second only three days. He promised a more thorough review.
Mocking Webb
Meanwhile, however, Gary Webb became the target of outright media ridicule. Influential Post media critic Howard Kurtz mocked Webb for saying in a book proposal that he would explore the possibility that the contra war was primarily a business to its participants. “Oliver Stone, check your voice mail,” Kurtz chortled. [Washington Post, Oct. 28, 1996]
Webb’s suspicion was not unfounded, however. Indeed, White House aide Oliver North’s emissary Rob Owen had made the same point a decade earlier, in a March 17, 1986, message about the contra leadership. “Few of the so-called leaders of the movement … really care about the boys in the field,” Owen wrote. “THIS WAR HAS BECOME A BUSINESS TO MANY OF THEM.” [Capitalization in the original.]
Nevertheless, the pillorying of Gary Webb was on, in earnest. The ridicule also had a predictable effect on the executives of the Mercury-News. By early 1997, executive editor Jerry Ceppos was in retreat.
On May 11, 1997, Ceppos published a front-page column saying the series “fell short of my standards.” He criticized the stories because they “strongly implied CIA knowledge” of contra connections to U.S. drug dealers who were manufacturing crack-cocaine. “We did not have proof that top CIA officials knew of the relationship.”
The big newspapers celebrated Ceppos’s retreat as vindication of their own dismissal of the contra-cocaine stories. Ceppos next pulled the plug on the Mercury-News’ continuing contra-cocaine investigation and reassigned Webb to a small office in Cupertino, California, far from his family. Webb resigned the paper in disgrace.
For undercutting Webb and the other reporters working on the contra investigation, Ceppos was lauded by the American Journalism Review and was given the 1997 national “Ethics in Journalism Award” by the Society of Professional Journalists. While Ceppos won raves, Webb watched his career collapse and his marriage break up.
Probes Advance
Still, Gary Webb had set in motion internal government investigations that would bring to the surface long-hidden facts about how the Reagan-Bush administration had conducted the contra war. The CIA’s defensive line against the contra-cocaine allegations began to break when the spy agency published Volume One of Hitz’s findings on Jan. 29, 1998.
Despite a largely exculpatory press release, Hitz’s Volume One admitted that not only were many of Webb’s allegations true but that he actually understated the seriousness of the contra-drug crimes and the CIA’s knowledge. Hitz acknowledged that cocaine smugglers played a significant early role in the Nicaraguan contra movement and that the CIA intervened to block an image-threatening 1984 federal investigation into a San Francisco-based drug ring with suspected ties to the contras. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & “Project Truth”]
On May 7, 1998, another disclosure from the government investigation shook the CIA’s weakening defenses. Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, introduced into the Congressional Record a Feb. 11, 1982, letter of understanding between the CIA and the Justice Department. The letter, which had been sought by CIA Director William Casey, freed the CIA from legal requirements that it must report drug smuggling by CIA assets, a provision that covered both the Nicaraguan contras and Afghan rebels who were fighting a Soviet-supported regime in Afghanistan.
Justice Report
Another crack in the defensive wall opened when the Justice Department released a report by its inspector general, Michael Bromwich. Given the hostile climate surrounding Webb’s series, Bromwich’s report opened with criticism of Webb. But, like the CIA’s Volume One, the contents revealed new details about government wrongdoing.
According to evidence cited by the report, the Reagan-Bush administration knew almost from the outset of the contra war that cocaine traffickers permeated the paramilitary operation. The administration also did next to nothing to expose or stop the criminal activities. The report revealed example after example of leads not followed, corroborated witnesses disparaged, official law-enforcement investigations sabotaged, and even the CIA facilitating the work of drug traffickers.
The Bromwich report showed that the contras and their supporters ran several parallel drug-smuggling operations, not just the one at the center of Webb’s series. The report also found that the CIA shared little of its information about contra drugs with law-enforcement agencies and on three occasions disrupted cocaine-trafficking investigations that threatened the contras.
Though depicting a more widespread contra-drug operation than Webb had understood, the Justice report also provided some important corroboration about a Nicaraguan drug smuggler, Norwin Meneses, who was a key figure in Webb’s series. Bromwich cited U.S. government informants who supplied detailed information about Meneses’s operation and his financial assistance to the contras.
For instance, Renato Pena, a money-and-drug courier for Meneses, said that in the early 1980s, the CIA allowed the contras to fly drugs into the United States, sell them and keep the proceeds. Pena, who also was the northern California representative for the CIA-backed FDN contra army, said the drug trafficking was forced on the contras by the inadequate levels of U.S. government assistance.
The Justice report also disclosed repeated examples of the CIA and U.S. embassies in Central America discouraging Drug Enforcement Administration investigations, including one into alleged contra-cocaine shipments moving through the airport in El Salvador. In an understated conclusion, Inspector General Bromwich wrote: “We have no doubt that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy were not anxious for the DEA to pursue its investigation at the airport.”
CIA’s Volume Two
Despite the remarkable admissions in the body of these reports, the big newspapers showed no inclination to read beyond the press releases and executive summaries. By fall 1998, official Washington was obsessed with the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, which made it easier to ignore even more stunning disclosures in the CIA’s Volume Two..
In Volume Two, published Oct. 8, 1998, CIA Inspector General Hitz identified more than 50 contras and contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan-Bush administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations, which had threatened to expose the crimes in the mid-1980s. Hitz even published evidence that drug trafficking and money laundering tracked into Reagan’s National Security Council where Oliver North oversaw the contra operations.
Hitz revealed, too, that the CIA placed an admitted drug money launderer in charge of the Southern Front contras in Costa Rica. Also, according to Hitz’s evidence, the second-in-command of contra forces on the Northern Front in Honduras had escaped from a Colombian prison where he was serving time for drug trafficking
In Volume Two, the CIA’s defense against Webb’s series had shrunk to a tiny fig leaf: that the CIA did not conspire with the contras to raise money through cocaine trafficking. But Hitz made clear that the contra war took precedence over law enforcement and that the CIA withheld evidence of contra crimes from the Justice Department, the Congress and even the CIA’s own analytical division.
Hitz found in CIA files evidence that the spy agency knew from the first days of the contra war that its new clients were involved in the cocaine trade. According to a September 1981 cable to CIA headquarters, one of the early contra groups, known as ADREN, had decided to use drug trafficking as a financing mechanism. Two ADREN members made the first delivery of drugs to Miami in July 1981, the CIA cable reported.
ADREN’s leaders included Enrique Bermudez, who emerged as the top contra military commander in the 1980s. Webb’s series had identified Bermudez as giving the green light to contra fundraising by drug trafficker Meneses. Hitz’s report added that that the CIA had another Nicaraguan witness who implicated Bermudez in the drug trade in 1988.
Priorities
Besides tracing the evidence of contra-drug trafficking through the decade-long contra war, the inspector general interviewed senior CIA officers who acknowledged that they were aware of the contra-drug problem but didn’t want its exposure to undermine the struggle to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government.
According to Hitz, the CIA had “one overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government. … [CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the contra program.” One CIA field officer explained, “The focus was to get the job done, get the support and win the war.”
Hitz also recounted complaints from CIA analysts that CIA operations officers handling the contra war hid evidence of contra-drug trafficking even from the CIA’s analytical division. Because of the withheld evidence, the CIA analysts incorrectly concluded in the mid-1980s that “only a handful of contras might have been involved in drug trafficking.” That false assessment was passed on to Congress and the major news organizations — serving as an important basis for denouncing Gary Webb and his series in 1996.
Though Hitz’s report was an extraordinary admission of institutional guilt by the CIA, it passed almost unnoticed by the big newspapers.
Two days after Hitz’s report was posted at the CIA’s Internet site, the New York Times did a brief article that continued to deride Webb’s work, while acknowledging that the contra-drug problem may indeed have been worse than earlier understood. Several weeks later, the Washington Post weighed in with a similarly superficial article. The Los Angeles Times never published a story on the release of the CIA’s Volume Two.
Consequences
To this day, no editor or reporter who missed the contra-drug story has been punished for his or her negligence. Indeed, many of them are now top executives at their news organizations. On the other hand, Gary Webb’s career never recovered.
At Webb’s death, however, it should be noted that his great gift to American history was that he — along with angry African-American citizens — forced the government to admit some of the worst crimes ever condoned by any American administration: the protection of drug smuggling into the United States as part of a covert war against a country, Nicaragua, that represented no real threat to Americans.
The truth was ugly. Certainly the major news organizations would have come under criticism themselves if they had done their job and laid out this troubling story to the American people. Conservative defenders of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush would have been sure to howl in protest.
But the real tragedy of Webb’s historic gift — and of his life cut short — is that because of the major news media’s callowness and cowardice, this dark chapter of the Reagan-Bush era remains largely unknown to the American people.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It’s also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth.’
Today we commemorate the death Gary Webb on December 10 2004. The following article by Kurt Nimmo was written on December 12 2004
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Write about the CIA and drugs, end up dead. You may recall Webb’s 1996 series in the San Jose Mercury about how the CIA sold coke in Los Angeles and used the money to fund the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s. He received a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for his coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Even so, he had a difficult time keeping a job, mostly because editors and publishers are a timid lot these days.
“Webb was found Friday morning at his home in Sacramento County, dead of an apparent suicide. Moving-company workers called authorities after discovering a note posted on his front door that read, ‘Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance,’” reports the Associated Press . “Webb died of a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Sacramento County coroner’s office.”
Four Bush biographers, Mark Lombardi, J.H. Hatfield, Danny Casalaro, and now Gary Webb—all “suicide” victims. What are the odds all of these people actually committing suicide?
… Examining the male U.S. suicide rate for recent years, we can extrapolate a conservative estimate of 17 male suicides per 100,000 people, or 0.017%. The odds of 4 specific, male biographers committing suicide would be the 4th power of 17/100000, or 8.3521 4.913 x 10^-17… roughly 1 chance 10,000,000,000,000,000. About as good a definition of impossible as you can get. A person would stand a better chance of playing the Canadian lottery 6/49 exactly twice in one’s lifetime and winning ther grand jackpot BOTH TIMES! (That is, picking 6 numbers out of 49 possible numbers and matching all 6 numbers out of 6 random draws, on 2 separate occasions, and having only purchased two Canadian lottery tickets ever.) This calculation should be regarded as a conservative estimate: the actual odds against such a “coincidence” would be much greater. For example, if any of the biographers were female, the odds would be even greater.
Now that Bush has his “mandate,” we will probably see other critics fall victim to accidents and suicides.
Crime families usually deal harshly with their enemies—and so does the CIA.
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Immer wieder stehen mutige Aufklärer vor der Frage, wie sie ihre Mitmenschen intellektuell und gefühlsmäßig erreichen können, um ihnen die individuellen und kollektiven Vorurteile nehmen zu können. In einer Zeit, in der laut Präsident Putin die Gefahr eines Atomkrieges wächst (1) und die Selbstvernichtung der Menschheit möglich ist, bedürfen wir mehr denn je Mitbürgerinnen und Mitbürger, die uns sagen, was Wahrheit und was Lüge ist.
Erkenntnisse der wissenschaftlichen Psychologie noch wenig gefragt
Die Antwort der humanistischen Psychologie auf die aufgeworfene Frage könnte lauten: Vor den Mitmenschen keine Angst haben, sich mit ihnen zusammenschließen, sich in sie einfühlen und ohne Zwang an sie appellieren.
Welche segensreichen Auswirkungen würde es für unsere Kinder und unser gesellschaftliches Zusammenleben haben, wenn wir die Angst vor den Mitmenschen aufgeben könnten und sie freilassen würden. Der Mensch ist ein harmloses Wesen und von Natur aus nicht böse, sondern gut (Alfred Adler). Die Menschen – auch die seelisch kranken – würden gesund werden. Einige reife Menschen haben das bereits im vorletzten Jahrhundert erahnt und die Tiefenpsychologie hat ihnen Recht gegeben (2).
Zwar wird die Aufklärung durch alternative Medien als wichtig empfunden, doch immer weniger Menschen sind in der Lage, die eigenen Lebensprobleme wegen des wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Niedergangs im Land zu lösen. Deshalb wird eine friedliche Welt erst bei einer tiefgreifenden Änderung der gegenwärtigen Verhältnisse entstehen. Für eine solche Welt setzen sich die Menschen aber erst dann in Bewegung, wenn sie in der Lage sind, ihre eigenen Probleme zu lösen. Die humanistische Psychologie und nicht-spekulative Psychotherapien bieten hierfür Erfolg versprechende Lösungen an.
In einer Zeit, in der die grenzenlose soziale Not und Ungerechtigkeit weiter aufrecht erhalten bleibt und sich sogar verstärken wird, weltbedrohende Kriege inszeniert und der gewaltige Fortschritt von Natur und Technik zum Nachteil und Schaden der Menschen missbraucht werden, sind wir erst recht auf die Einsichten der modernen tiefenpsychologischen Forschung angewiesen.
Doch das Wissen der psychologischen Fakultät ist bis heute noch wenig gefragt, da ihre Forschungsergebnisse relativ neu, wenig bekannt und schwer vermittelbar sind. Überdies werden sie von den Herrschenden nicht geschätzt oder sogar bekämpft. Erst wenn man erkannt hat, dass die Menschheit ohne Psychologie nicht vorankommt, wird man auf ihre Erkenntnisse dankbar zurückgreifen.
Ausgangspunkt für das anstehende Problem sollte nach Erkenntnissen der Tiefenpsychologie die Erziehung sein.
Kasernenhof in der Erziehung – „da liegt der Hund begraben“
Natürlich lehren die Eltern das Kind die Regeln des Anstands: Wie sich zum Beispiel bei Tisch gut benehmen und sich zuvor die Hände gründlich waschen. Aber die meisten Eltern nehmen sich nicht die Mühe, dem Kind zu vermitteln, „komm mit mir, schau, wie ich die Hände wasche!“ und erklären ihm, warum es die Hände waschen soll.
In der Regel ist in der Erziehung Zwang im Spiel: „Gehe zuerst die Hände waschen, bevor du zu Tisch kommst, sonst bekommst du eine Ohrfeige!“ Die ganze Haltung der Eltern ist der Zwang, die Gewalt, der Kasernenhof. Und das macht die Kinder krank, verdirbt bereits in jungen Jahren ihre Seele. Man muss die Menschen nicht zum Kooperieren zwingen, das Kind kooperiert ohne Zwang gerne. Es sind gerade Zwang und Gewalt, die beim Kind das natürliche Bedürfnis zur Mitarbeit ersticken.
Als Erwachsene finden sich diese Menschen dann nicht zurecht; sie können mit dem Partner nicht zusammenleben und die Ehen gehen zugrunde, weil sie verschiedene Meinungen über die Erziehung, über die anderen Menschen und die Welt haben.
Die Welt wird nur dann genesen und die Menschheit weiterkommen – das zeigt uns die Geschichte –, wenn sich die Menschen auf freiwilliger Basis assoziieren; wenn sie sich zusammensetzen und überlegen, wie sie die Probleme gemeinsam lösen können. Die Freiheit im Sinne der Freiwilligkeit ist ein wesentlicher Teil der sozialen Natur des Menschen. Missbraucht man sie, kann das schwerwiegende Konsequenzen haben.
Negativ-Beispiel der Russischen Revolution und des Umgangs mit religiösen Menschen
In Russland haben die Führer der Revolution die Menschen verkannt und Zwang angewandt; sie konnten die Menschen nicht frei lassen. Hätte Russland auch nur zum Teil den humanistischen Weg gewählt, wäre eventuell der Zweite Weltkrieg verhindert worden.
Die Menschen machen ja mit, sie wollen leben. In Russland haben sich die Menschen in der Oktoberrevolution befreit, aber anschließend sind sie nicht unabhängig geworden. In einer Gesellschaft, die sich in zwei Klassen organisiert – in eine, die regiert und in eine, die regiert wird – entwickeln sich zwei Ideologien, zwei Mentalitäten: die Mentalität der Sklaven / Knechte und die des Meisters. Ein solche Organisation verunmöglicht die Freiheit.
Und wie haben sich die Bolschewiki religiösen Menschen gegenüber verhalten? Sie haben die Kirchen zugesperrt und daraus Versammlungslokale gemacht. Damit verletzten sie die Menschen in ihrem tiefsten Inneren, in ihrem Glauben, in ihrer Abhängigkeit, in ihrer Angst. Wurde der russische Bauer dadurch bekehrt? Nein! Er war unwillkürlich dagegen. Heute weiß man, dass man den Menschen die Religion nicht nehmen muss: „Willst du beten?“ Ja, bete nur!“
An die Bauern hätte man appellieren können: „Was, du willst deinen Acker, dein Korn nicht versichern? Dein Nachbar bekommt einen möglichen Schaden von der Versicherung in Rubel ausbezahlt und kann sich neues Korn kaufen. Und du? Wer wird dir helfen, wenn du in der Gemeinschaft der Versicherten nicht mitmachst?“ Die russischen Revolutionäre waren eben nicht so weit, weil das Problem der Psychologie noch nicht bekannt war.
Menschen die Freiheit geben, damit sie gerne mitmachen und gesund werden
Mit Freiheit ist nicht die Freiheit der Herrschenden gemeint. Diese nehmen sich die „Freiheit“ heraus, den Menschen auszubeuten: Eine Clique von Kapitalisten beutet die anderen Menschen aus. Diese haben dann kein Lebensrecht, die Freiheit wird ihnen nur vorgespielt. Ein Knecht zum Beispiel muss sein ganzes Leben Knecht bleiben; er kann nicht heiraten, keine Familie gründen, weil er eben Knecht ist. Aber wenn der Präsident oder Führer ruft, dann kann er nicht NEIN sagen. Er könnte sagen: „Ich habe doch nichts, deshalb habe ich auch nichts zu verteidigen!“
„Freiheit“ ist in dem Sinn zu verstehen, dass die Menschen ihre Sicherheit haben und nicht betteln müssen. Stellen wir uns das Prinzip der Freiheit so vor, dass jeder arbeitende Mensch weiß, dass wenn er nicht mehr arbeiten kann, wenn er zum Beispiel erkrankt oder alt wird, dass er dann dieselbe Möglichkeit hat zu leben, dass er den Lohn, den er heute hat, weiter bekommt, dass er seine Wohnung und eventuell sein kleines Häuschen behalten und dass er weiter leben kann. Im kapitalistischen System haben die Menschen keine Ruhe und keine Sicherheit. Das würden sie in einer freiheitlichen Gesellschaft haben.
Der Mensch ist doch ein harmloses Wesen – besonders derjenige in der heutigen kapitalistischen Gesellschaft. Er ist eingestellt auf das Arbeiten. Für ein bisschen Freiheit wäre er froh. Auch mit den Kranken würde man fertig werden, sie würden nicht stören. Wenn seelisch kranke Menschen eine andere Gesellschaft vorfinden, eine andere Situation, eine andere Moralauffassung, dann werden sie gesund und verhalten sich anders.
Lassen wir die Menschen frei, verlangen wir nichts von ihnen. Sie werden das gerne aufnehmen. Assoziieren wir uns mit den Menschen, glauben wir an sie, fühlen wir uns ein in sie und appellieren an sie. Der andere will so gut leben wie ich. Dann wird er mitmachen. Wir müssen keine Angst haben vor unseren Mitmenschen.
An die Menschen appellieren und sie frei entscheiden lassen
Die Menschen werden von allen Institutionen – angefangen von der Erziehung zuhause und in der Schule bis hinauf zur Rekrutenschule – so programmiert, dass sie in der Regel alles machen, was die Machthaber von ihnen verlangen. Das ist Programm, das ist bewusst. Und in dieser Stimmung werden sie ein Leben lang gehalten – sowohl sogenannte Intellektuelle als auch die Masse der Bevölkerung. So liefern sich heute junge wie auch ältere „Handy-Süchtige“ ganz und gar den Wertvorstellungen großer, übelmeinender Tech-Giganten aus.
Doch gleichzeitig kann man feststellen, dass sowohl Jugendliche als auch ältere Mitbürger gerne bereit sind, sich im Kaffee oder Bus auf ein persönliches Gespräch von Angesicht zu Angesicht einzulassen, wenn man nicht als Besserwisser auftritt, der schon weiß, wenn man sich wirklich für ihre persönlichen Probleme interessiert und eine Ausdrucksweise wählt, die jeder verstehen kann. Dabei ist es ganz wichtig, nur an sie zu appellieren und sie frei entscheiden zu lassen.
Auch in schriftlichen Äußerungen geht es darum, selbst schwierigste tiefenpsychologische Erkenntnisse und Befunde in einer Sprache zu vermitteln, die nicht allein dem Fachmann, sondern auch dem interessierten Laien verständlich sein kann.
Es bleibt die zu Beginn gestellte Frage, wie man möglichst viele Mitmenschen intellektuell und emotional erreichen dann, damit sie eines Tages gegen das Unrecht aufstehen – gedanklich, gefühlsmäßig und politisch.
Basis- oder Graswurzel-Bewegungen entstehen aus der Basis der Bevölkerung
Die interessante Idee der Gründung einer Graswurzel-Bewegung wurde während einer internationalen Webinar-Debatte von einem Freund geäußert.
Eine Graswurzel-Bewegung ist laut „Wikipedia“ eine gesellschaftliche Initiative oder Bewegung, die aus der Basis der Bevölkerung entsteht:
„Graswurzelbewegungen haben typischerweise basisdemokratische und konsensorientierte Strukturen, da sie den gewöhnlichen lobbyistischen oder parteipolitischen Meinungsbildungsprozess umgehen wollen. Der Wandel soll durch engagierte Artikulation von Bürgerinteressen (…) erreicht werden. (…).
Das Ziel von einigen Graswurzel-Initiativen ist es, gesellschaftliche Alternativen zum Bestehenden aufzubauen, bis hin zum revolutionären Anspruch, grundsätzliche Systemveränderungen zu bewirken. Dabei wird sowohl auf den langfristigen Aufbau von Netzwerken gesetzt als auch auf spektakuläre Einzelaktionen, die in erster Linie Öffentlichkeit schaffen sollen. Nicht selten bedient man sich hierbei der Methoden des zivilen Ungehorsams.“ (3)
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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Lehrer (Rektor), Doktor der Pädagogik (Dr. paed.) und Diplom-Psychologe (Dipl.-Psych.). Viele Jahrzehnte unterrichtete er und bildete Fachkräfte fort. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und pädagogisch-psychologischen Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zum Gemeinsinn und zum Frieden. Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.
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A peaceful dissolution of the USSR according to the agreement between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1988 in Reykjavik brought a new dimension of global geopolitics in which up to 2008 Russia, as a legal successor state of the USSR, was playing an inferior role in global politics when an American Neocon concept of Pax Americana became the fundamental framework in international relations. Therefore, for instance, Boris Yeltsin’s Russia capitulated in 1995 to the American design regarding an outcome of the USA/EU policy of the destruction of ex-Yugoslavia in November 1995 (the Dayton Agreement) followed by even worse political capitulation in the case of Washington’s Kosovo policy that became ultimately implemented in June 1999 (the Kumanovo Agreement).
Russia in the 1990s was geopolitically humiliated by the USA and its West European clients to such an extent that we can call the period of Boris Yeltsin’s servile policy toward the West a Dark Time in the history of Russian international relations when the main losers became the Serbs who were and still are (since February 2022 together with Russians) extremely demonized by the Western mass-media and academic institutions.[i]
An ideological-political background of Boris Yeltsin’s foreign policy of Russia was Atlanticism – an orientation in foreign policy that stresses the fundamental need to cooperate (at any price) with the West, especially in the area of the politics and economy. In other words, the integration with the West and its economic-political standards became for Boris Yeltsin’s Russia, governed by the Russian Liberals, an order of the day. This trend in Russia’s foreign policy in the 1990s had its roots in the 19th century’s geopolitical and cultural orientation of Russian society by the so-called Russian „Westerners“ who became the opponents to the Russian „Slavophiles“ for whom the ultimate aim of the Russian foreign policy was to create a Pan-Slavonic Commonwealth with the leadership of Russia.
The actual outcome of the Russian Liberals „in the years following Yeltsin’s election was catastrophic as, for instance, Russia’s industrial production dropped by nearly 40%, over 80% of Russians experienced a reduction in their living standards, health care disintegrated, life expectancy fell along with the birth rate, and morale overall collapsed“.[ii]
However, the political influence of the Russian Liberals became drastically weakened by Vladimir Putin’s taking power in Russia from 2000 onward and especially from 2004. A new global course of Russia’s foreign policy after 2004 became directed toward the creation of a multipolar world but not a unipolar Pax Americana one as the American Neocons wanted. Therefore, the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Syria became currently directly exposed to the Russian-American geopolitical struggle while Kosovo is up to now still left to the exclusive US sphere of interest.
Nevertheless, after 2022−? the special military operation in East Ukraine (Russia Minor) by Moscow, it can be expected in the nearest future that post-Yeltsin’s Russia will take decisive geopolitical steps concerning Kosovo as from the year 2000 the Russian exterior policy is constantly becoming more and more imbued with the neo-Slavophile geopolitical orientation advocated by Aleksandar Solzhenitsyn (1918−2008) as a part of a more global Eurasian geopolitical course of the post-Yeltsin’s Russian Federation supported by many Russian Slavophile intellectuals like a philosopher Aleksandar Dugin.
Ivan L. Solonevich, probably, gave one of the best explanations of Russia’s geopolitical situation and peculiarity in comparison to those of the USA and the UK focusing his research on the comparative analysis of geography, climate, and levels of individual freedoms between these countries:
„The American liberties, as well as American wealth are determined by American geography. Our [Russia’s] freedom and our wealth are determined by Russian geography. Thus, we’ll never have the same freedoms as the British and Americans have, because their security is guaranteed by the seas and oceans, but ours could only be guaranteed by military conscription“.[iii]
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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.
Notes
[i] As a very example of such moral, cultural and civilizational demonization of the Serbs by the Western academic writings is [John Hagan, Justice in the Balkans: Prosecuting War Crimes in The Hague Tribunal, Chicago−London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003].
[ii] John Baylis, Steve Smith (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, Second edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, 124.
[iii] Irina Isakova, Russian Governance in the Twenty-First Century: Geo-strategy, Geopolitics and Governance, London−New York: Frank Cass, 2005, 12.
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Research by the European Council on Foreign Relations shows that 35% of European citizens want the Ukraine war to end as soon as possible. Their EU government has called on citizens to give up their lifestyle of abundance in order finance Kiev’s war. Europeans are bearing the cost of economic sanctions on Russia and spending more on weapons and aid sent to Ukraine while Europeans are suffering from the economy and home heating costs.
Washington knows that Kiev can be unpredictable, as evidenced by the Ukrainian missile shot into Poland in November which took the lives of two Polish civilians and threatened an escalation based on Ukrainian mistakes.
US General Mark Milley suggested that the coming cold winter weather could present an opportunity for peace negotiations to begin. Milley admitted that Kiev has very little chance of removing Russian troops from occupied areas.
Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscource interviewed international Human Rights Lawyer Arnaud Develay to understand the current issues surrounding the Ukraine conflict.
Steven Sahiounie (SS): On Tuesday, Ukraine used drones to attack locations far inside Russia. In your opinion, what will be the Russian response?
Arnaud Develay (AD): The Russian Federation has been quite clear in at least one of the objectives it pursues in Ukraine: The Special Military Operation aims to disable the war-making (demilitarization) abilities of the Kiev regime. This means that Moscow will not only continue to take out the constant supplies of weaponry supplied by NATO to Zelensky and his cronies, it will likely continue its campaign of raids on Ukraine’s energy infrastructures in order to coax Kiev to come to the realization that the only way out of the conflict is to call for negotiations. It is a delicate balancing act in that while Russia certainly cannot afford to leave attacks on its own territory unanswered, it must retaliate in a way that does not lead to an escalation and thus avoid an open conflict with the United States which would be catastrophic. It bears noting that some reports indicate that the next deliveries of HIMARS will feature built-in mechanisms preventing Kiev from using the systems into Russian territories. (The latest attacks were carried out through the use of drones). Make no mistake about it: Washington is perfectly aware that Kiev is an unpredictable player (as seen recently in the matter of the “Russian missile” in Poland).
SS: Recently the EU announced a $ 60 cap on Russian oil. In your opinion, how will this effect Russia and will they respond?
AD: Russia has been quite clear on this issue: it will not accept to supply oil under these conditions under any circumstances. Moscow will thus merely reorient its oil deliveries to customers which are willing to pay market prices. The reasoning is that if the EU is bent on (completely) downgrade its own economies (and thus pay a higher price to intermediaries), it should be forced to confront the absurdity of its own decisions rather than expect Moscow to comply with what amounts to (yet) another unacceptable injunction.
SS: Are there any divisions among the EU and NATO member states concerning the support for the war in Ukraine?
AD: While on the whole the political class in the Collective West appears to display unity of the Ukraine issue, Hungary and Serbia have taken great heed in not angering Moscow. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called for the organization of a referendum in his country on the issue of imposing sanctions on Russia. Brussels was quick to sanction Budapest in withdrawing 7.5 billion euros in EU funds to Hungary albeit on the pretext of completely unrelated matters. The divide in Europe has more to do with the ever-increasing schism between the people and its leaders. Unqualified assistance to the criminal regime in Kiev has led to EU government calling for their citizens to accept “the end of abundance”. Energy prices have led to the closure of hundreds of thousands of small and medium size businesses. Inflation has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels, leaving many to struggle making ends meet. Trudeau, Sunak and Macron have not only branded protesters a threat to democracy; these DAVOS puppets have expressed a willingness to use emergency legislation in order to justify the unleashing of massive police/military powers to crush dissent.
SS: The Azov Battalion professes Nazi political ideology. In your opinion, do the Neo-Nazis in Ukraine have wide support from the Ukrainian population?
AD: It is difficult to estimate the level of support for these militias in the Ukrainian population. Obviously, one would assume that support for the “integral nationalism” ideology is strongest in the Western part of the country. One must however get a grasp of the (often Western-financed) indoctrination programs imposed in Ukraine these past 9 years. Former SBU operative Vassili PROSOROV recently produced a documentary (Culturocide) in which he describes in particularly vivid details how Ukraine’s school manuals depict an altogether completely alternate version of history. Infamous figures such as Stepan BANDERAS are glorified while the rejection of anything related to Russia and its culture is turned into a central fixture of Ukraine’s “identity”.
SS: The special operation in Ukraine is now in the 10th month. In your opinion, as winter grows colder, will there be any peace negotiations?
Obviously, the answer to this question resides in Washington. There are currently reports of divergent tactical opinions as to what should be expected in the coming months. Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Milley is said to favor a “freeze” of the current front lines until Spring while neocons in the State Department call for continued military operations. Obviously, the Ukraine conflict is as much an informational war as it is a military conflict per se. Neocons (for ideological reasons) and those who benefit from the gigantic grift going on in Ukraine needs to prevent “Ukraine fatigue” from settling in. (There are reports that the incoming Republican House of Representatives will demand an audit on the distribution circuits of the various aid packages). In order to do that, they need to keep feeding the propaganda machine with Kiev’s “military exploits”. At the end of the day, war is a serious matter and conditions on the ground are the ultimate arbiter. While the mainstream media continues its hysterical rant about Russian “retreat”, Moscow is methodically reorganizing its military for what could be a massive Winter offensive.
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Cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra shares data on the Big Pharma takeover of modern medicine
Due to Big Pharma’s stronghold over health care, we’re facing what Malhotra calls a pandemic of misinformed doctors and unwittingly harmed and misinformed patients
Drug companies and medical device manufacturers aren’t in business to make patients happy; they’re beholden to their shareholders, for whom they have a financial obligation to produce a profit
Malhotra shares data showing why he believes COVID-19 shots should be suspended
Malhotra notes that political involvement and policy advocacy, combined with social participation and social movements, can together lead to the creation of relevant knowledge to protect public health
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Fear inhibits your ability to think critically. This is a central point made by cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra in his London presentation November 14, 2022. Many people were gripped by unprecedented fear during the COVID-19 pandemic, which shaped attitudes about the pharmacological interventions offered.
Willful blindness is another phenomenon to be aware of. It’s when people turn a blind eye to the truth. Also known as conscious avoidance, this tactic has historically been used in legal trials to avoid criminal liability by ignoring or purposely staying unaware of key facts.
However, Malhotra notes, people also engage in willful blindness in order to feel safe, avoid conflict, reduce anxiety and to protect prestige or, in some cases, “precious, fragile egos.”1
The Illusion of Knowledge Is Worse Than Ignorance
Malhotra quoted the late Stephen Hawking, who stated, “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”2 In terms of health care, evidence-based medicine has been hijacked by Big Pharma; it’s now an illusion. There’s also an illusion that we’re at the forefront of medicine, with prestigious organizations leading the helm, when in reality multiple health crises are upon us.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of health is a “state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”3 Public health, too, is not only about preventing disease, but also promoting health and prolonging life, while helping populations reach the highest possible level of well-being. But are public health agencies actually helping to achieve these goals?
Malhotra, a cardiologist trained by the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS), as well as a visiting professor of evidence based medicine at Bahiana School of Medicine and Public Health in Salvador, Brazil,4 cited a 2020 study published in the British Medical Bulletin.5
It used data from the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics from 2010 to 2020, which showed a “dramatic slowdown in life expectancy and diverging trends in infant mortality in the UK as a whole and England and Wales, respectively.” Health trends in the U.K., the study concluded, “are worrying and raise important questions about government policies.”6
Throughout his career, Malhotra has tried to call attention to failures in treating heart disease. “Despite so-called modern science,” heart disease remains the No. 1 cause of death globally.7 “So clearly there’s something that we’ve done wrong on that front,” Malhotra said.8
More recently, he’s focused on using real evidence-based medicine to share the truth about COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. His two-part paper on the topic was published in the Journal of Insulin Resistance, specifically,9,10 because this journal does not accept money from the pharmaceutical industry.11
A Pandemic of Misinformed Doctors and Patients
Due to Big Pharma’s stronghold over health care, we’re facing what Malhotra calls a pandemic of misinformed doctors and unwittingly harmed and misinformed patients. This misinformation comes from a variety of sources, including:12
Malhotra describes John Ioannidis, professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University, as the “Stephen Hawking of medicine.”13 Ioannidis cowrote a paper in 2017 titled, “How to Survive the Medical Misinformation Mess.”14 At the time, he described four key problems:
Much published research is unreliable, offers no benefit to patients or is not useful to decision makers
Most health care professionals are not aware of this problem with published research
Health care professionals lack the necessary skills to evaluate the reliability of medical evidence
Patients and families lack accurate medical evidence and skilled guidance when they need to make medical decisions
The solution, according to Ioannidis, involves focusing efforts on “making health care professionals more sensitive to the limitations of the evidence, training them to do critical appraisal, and enhancing their communication skills so that they can effectively summarize and discuss medical evidence with patients to improve decision-making.”15
Ioannidis also wrote a 2005 paper about why most published research findings are false. Not surprisingly, one factor that makes a research finding less likely to be true is “greater financial and other interest and prejudice.”16
Drug Companies Are Beholden to Their Shareholders
Drug companies and medical device manufacturers aren’t in business to make patients happy; they’re beholden to their shareholders, for whom they have a financial obligation to produce a profit.17 There’s no legal requirement for them to offer patients the “best” treatment.
Further, regulators regularly fail at their duty to prevent industry misconduct, while doctors and medical journals — which do have a responsibility to put patients’ interests and scientific integrity first — collude with industry for financial gain.18
Recently, Malhotra was heavily involved in campaigning to end NHS COVID-19 shot mandates. But prior to this he spoke to the European Parliament in 2018 to warn them of the epidemic of misinformed doctors and patients, stating, “Honest doctors can no longer practice honest medicine. We have a complete health care system failure …”19
In fact, in 2016, Dr. Peter C. Gotzsche, cofounder of the Cochrane Collaboration and the Institute for Scientific Freedom, stated prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death — most of them preventable.20 “The reason for that,” Malhotra said, “is the information that comes from drug companies — essentially the results of clinical trials — exaggerate the benefits and the safety of the drugs.”21
Corporate crime and fraud are also rampant — from 2009 to 2014, Gotzsche noted that most of the top 10 drug companies committed fraud, totaling about $14 billion, including hiding data on drug harms and illegally marketing drugs.
Yet, the fines the drug companies had to pay for their crimes were miniscule in comparison to the profits they made from the drugs. Since then, however, nobody was fired and “nothing has changed to stop them from committing these crimes again.”22
Tobacco Tactics Revisited During COVID Pandemic
Malhotra is among those who early on during the pandemic that poor diet can increase your risk of dying from COVID-19, by increasing obesity risk, chronic disease and disrupting your gut microbiome.23 In April 2020, he tweeted, “The government and public health England are ignorant and grossly negligent for not telling the public they need to change their diet now.”24
Not only did they not publicly share the importance of healthy weight and diet to ward off COVID-19, but they glamorized and encouraged junk food consumption via their official social media channels. At one point during the pandemic, Royal Free Hospital, which is part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, tweeted the following along with a photo showing dozens of doughnut boxes:25
“You guys at @krispykremeUK Enfield sure know how to put a smile on our staff’s faces!1,500 doughnuts delivered to our staff at Barnet Hospital-#glazeamaze.”
“I’ve got nothing against people having a treat,” Malhotra said. “But hospitals shouldn’t be promoting … and essentially advertising the fact that we are giving 1,000 free Krispy Kreme doughnuts to nurses in the middle of the pandemic. I don’t think that was very productive considering what we know about the influence on COVID.”26
That hospitals were promoting junk food and junk food companies instead of healthy food is reminiscent of Big Tobacco’s tactics, which not only suppressed the harmful effects of cigarettes but also recruited doctors to promote them, using slogans such as, “More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette.”
“We see the same tactics repeating themselves,” Malhotra continued. “What Krispy Kreme is doing is using the NHS as a branding opportunity for what are essentially addictive, toxic foods that should just be treats but not part of the regular diet.”27
How COVID Shots Were Oversold
Malhotra was one of the first to take Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot, and he’s double-jabbed. Initially, he was in favor of the shots but a study published in Circulation, which found an increased incidence of inflammatory markers linked to heart attacks in people who’d received mRNA COVID-19 shots,28gave him pause.
Then, a whistleblower from a prestigious British institution contacted him and said a group of researchers had found inflammation of coronary arteries after the mRNA shot. However, the researchers had a meeting and decided not to share their findings because it might affect their funding from the drug industry.29 He then learned of data from Scotland that showed an unexplained 25% increase in heart attacks.
He went to the media, armed with data, to share his concerns in October 2021, calling for an investigation. It received a lot of attention, but Malhotra was soon targeted by anonymous complaints to a medical organization, which put his medical license at risk. At that point, he decided to gather other experts and critically review the data — then publish the truth.
In November 2020, Pfizer claimed their COVID-19 shot was 95% effective against COVID-19, but this was highly misleading and, according to Malhotra, based on flawed methodology:30
“‘Relative risk reduction is a way of exaggerating the benefits of any intervention … which would be in the interest of people trying to sell you something — in this case, the pharmaceutical industry.
So if, for example, you have 1,000 people in a trial that didn’t have the vaccine versus 1,000 people that did in the placebo group … you may have two people dying. And in the intervention group, you may have just one person dying. And that’s a reduction of 50%. One over two is a 50% relative risk reduction. But actually, you’ve only saved one life out of 1,000.
So, the absolute risk reduction is only 1 in 1,000. It’s a big difference. The guidance has been for many years that we must always use absolute risk reduction in conversations with patients, not just relative risk reduction alone; otherwise, it’s considered unethical,’ Malhotra said.
The accusation is that governments acted on Pfizer’s relative risk figure of 95% efficacy, when the absolute risk was a mere 0.84%. In other words, you’d have to vaccinate 119 people to prevent just one from catching COVID. ‘So we were basically sold on something that ultimately, and in retrospect now, was very, very misleading.'”
Big Pharma Provides Majority of Budget for Leading Regulators
If there were ever any doubt that regulatory agencies are captured by industry, consider that significant portions of regulatory agencies’ budgets come from the pharmaceutical industry that these agencies are supposed to regulate. For instance:31
Data and health advice from these agencies cannot be considered independent or trustworthy when it’s clouded by vested interests. What did one study32 — conducted by people who do not take money from the drug industry — find?
It reanalyzed data that led to the original approval of the shots, and subsequent shot mandates, revealing people were more likely to suffer a serious adverse, disability, hospitalization or life-changing event after receiving an mRNA COVID-19 shot than be hospitalized with COVID.33Malhotra shared additional facts about COVID-19 shots that are now known based on the best available evidence:34
COVID-19 shots offer no protection against infection now
No reduction in COVID mortality
Natural immunity is very protective
Shot side effects are nearly three times more likely if you get the shot after having COVID-19
Unprecedented harms have been reported from the shots
“We have pulled vaccines in the past for much less,” Malhotra said. “… This vaccine needs to be suspended completely, pending an inquiry.”35 So why haven’t you heard about this? It’s clear that willful blindness has taken over. Malhotra notes that political involvement and policy advocacy, combined with social participation and social movements can together lead to the creation of relevant knowledge.
“We need to make sure we’ve got clear, relevant, concrete knowledge in a way that can be disseminated and understandable to the public.”
Toward that end, Malhotra states that it’s crucial for the integrity of public health for the facts to be acknowledged and for regulators to state that they’ve changed their minds too. Moving forward, in order to ensure access to real, evidence-based medicine, key changes need to be made, according to Malhotra, including:
Drug industry should play no role in testing drugs
Drug industry should not be able to hide raw data from trials
All results of all trials in humans must be made publicly available
Regulators such as the FDA and MHRA should not get any money from the drug industry
What Can You Do to Help?
To help enact change, Malhotra is calling for citizen power in the U.K. to use social media, calling for the suspension of mRNA shots. Specifically, he suggests tweeting and sharing the following, which can be tweaked depending on your location:
“My name is … and I call on the Secretary of State for Health, @SteveBarclay to #SuspendTheMRNAjabsnow until the raw data is released for independent analysis.”
Further, in order to beat the psychopathic corporate tyranny that has taken over, we must act virtuously, which involves embracing the following to keep moving forward:
Wisdom
Courage
Moderation
Justice
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, marked the re-emergence of war on the European continent, and an ultimate attempt to correct the Western-led system prevailing since the end of the Cold War. Fyodor A. Lukyanov, Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, clarifies the motives behind the Russian leadership’s decisions in Ukraine. He also shares how Russia views shifts to the new world order and how global governance could be improved. This article is part of Ukraine Shifting the World Order.
Institut Montaigne: Several rationales have been advanced by President Putin and his circle to justify the attack on Ukraine. How do you assess the respective weight of the motivations behind Russia’s move?
Fyodor A. Lukyanov: The launching of a military campaign against Ukraine is undoubtedly a groundbreaking event in post-Soviet history – perhaps the most significant. Many intertwined motivations guided this decision. We can try to summarize the most important ones.
First, there was development both inside and around Ukraine pointing to increased military cooperation between Ukraine, NATO and the US. During the war, many things from the previous period came up, confirming the Kremlin’s suspicious belief that military interaction between Ukraine and the West had been essential and growing after 2014. Now the secret is out in the open and has become a matter of pride for the US, the British and NATO. Since Moscow noticed this dynamic for a protracted while, a conclusion was made that either Ukraine (or Ukraine together with NATO) may try to challenge Russia one day in the foreseeable future. So, when Russian leaders said that the February move was a preemptive strike, they meant it.
Ukraine is the culmination of a long history of Russian attempts to limit NATO expansion, which started in the 1990s and never stopped since. From the Russian point of view, NATO abused its exceptional position obtained after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The alliance de facto positioned itself as equal to the European security system. Its expansion was presented as the consistent extension of the security zone in Europe despite Russian claims that this went against the overall consensus on indivisible securities. Starting from the late 1990s, Russia came up with several proposals about how to adapt the European security architecture to address Russia’s concerns as a country never considered a potential NATO ally. All Russian ideas were consistently dismissed by Western allies without proper discussions. The assumption that security arrangements (as they emerged in the wake of the collapse of communism and the USSR) were non-negotiable was seen by Western powers as an axiom. Russian bitter irritation grew with each new state joining NATO, and it was clear since 2008 that Moscow considered Ukraine as an absolute red line when it came to NATO membership, Putin warned about that during NATO’s Bucharest summit. The 2014 Euromaidan in Ukraine, passionately supported by the West, contributed to the feeling that the West decided to disregard any red lines drawn by Russia.
The specific part of this decision clearly outlined in President Putin’s article in July 2021 is a perception in Russia that Ukraine in its current borders, and with its current identity based on sharp distancing from Russia, is an artificial creature with no real historical grounds. This is a complicated reckoning with the Soviet past, considered in today’s Russia in an ambivalent way – both as a historic peak of Russian might and an experiment that undermined traditional Russia and encouraged quasi-ethnic separation. Some call the current situation a postponed Russian civil war: one which the nation avoided immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but with growing internal tensions fueled by what was described above.
IM: Was NATO not de facto in decline? Was the NATO threat not exaggerated by the Russian leadership?
FAL: I would not deny that Russia’s leadership and strategic community were excessively focused on the NATO threat. But Moscow had reasons to grow suspicious of this organization. How should one define the decline of NATO? 1991 – 16 member states, 2022 – 30. Is this decline? NATO did not engage in any military campaign during the Cold War, but starting from the 1990s, NATO (or at least NATO countries like Iraq) launched several big campaigns, including a big military operation in Europe (Kosovo war) immediately after the first post-Soviet enlargement in 1999. Obama was supposed to be reluctant to make any new military commitments but he made new ones.
Trump was presented as friendly to Russia, but he proclaimed in his strategic doctrine the new era of great power rivalry between China and Russia. NATO officially stated in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia will be members of the alliance and did stick to this commitment all the way. Should leaders of those countries and Russian leadership have seen those statements as jokes? Chancellor Scholz said in a recent interview that he told Putin privately that Ukraine had no chance to join NATO within the next 30 years. Well, why not declare this publicly? It was exactly what Russia asked for: denounce the open-door policy.
Especially given the fact that the Kremlin had the experience of oral and private commitments about NATO, which were just abandoned by the US and its allies when they didn’t need them anymore. And, of course, the military support for Ukraine was rapidly growing over several years, regardless of the probability of formally joining NATO. We see it now in the war.
IM: Do you agree that shaking up a world order still dominated by the West (more specifically the US) was an important motivation for the Russian leadership?
FAL: Allow me to formulate it differently. Russia did not want to shake up the Western-led world order. Rather, as it saw signs of a weakening world order due to multiple objective reasons (while remaining pushy when it came to expansionist moves), Russia wanted to use this decline to get rid of post-Cold War arrangements. It is hard to deny that Russia raised this issue many times in different forms – from polite and constructive suggestions in the early 2000s until the ultimatum in December 2021. Until the end, the West assumed that Russia had no legitimate right to demand something beyond the “rules-based order”, whereas rules were formulated without real Russian participation. It should be emphasized that Russia literally turned to arms after decades of other, peaceful attempts to correct (not destroy) the Western-led system and find a proper place there. It did not produce any meaningful response from the West, because the West was fully convinced that the existing scheme was fine for all. And those who thought differently were just wrong.
IM: Seen from Moscow, what kind of developments, triggered by the war in Ukraine, should produce a real weakening of the grip of the West on the main pillars of the world order?
FAL: The most remarkable result so far is that the US failed to recruit any country beyond its official allies to join the anti-Russian coalition. Given the severity of the crisis and the heavy human consequences of it, one could expect the broader scope of countries to support Western attempts to punish Russia. It did not happen; a majority of nations preferred not to join anti-Russian measures. It does not mean they support what Russia is doing, but they flatly rejected to follow prescriptions from the West. And this is a sign of a changing constellation of forces in international relations, and certain Western fatigue among the “Rest”. US monopoly after the Cold War was too overwhelming. The lack of alternatives that did exist during the bipolar era prompted many to aspire to more diversity. The movement towards a new order and away from the hegemonic one has started and will continue.
The way in which the US and its allies orchestrated economic warfare against Russia, which is primarily based on the monopoly of the US dollar, and almost monopoly of the Western financial infrastructure (international payment systems, insurance, currency reserves), moved many nations to question how to avoid such a critical dependence. It will not happen very soon, but sooner than we could imagine, profoundly shifting the international landscape.
The movement towards a new order and away from the hegemonic one has started and will continue.
On the other hand, Russia was not able to get strong support from many countries, including for instance in Central Asia.
Russia is implementing its own security agenda with very harsh methods. This is a national task as formulated by the leadership and basically supported by a large part of the population. Russia did not consult anybody and did not ask for advice because Russian leadership is convinced that it should be done, despite how the rest of the world views it. In such a situation it would be strange to expect “strong support” from anybody. But the very fact that many countries remain neutral or express understanding is important per se.
As far as Central Asia is concerned, expectations that this region will become an apple of discord between Russia and China are not new. As always, the reality is finer and more nuanced. The main reason why it is not happening is that Central Asian countries are much more sophisticated than one suggests. All of them know that they:
Need to keep friendly and balanced relations with powerful neighbors;
Feel more comfortable with Russia due to cultural and historical closeness and the economic gravity of Russian space;
Try to use economic opportunities offered by China, but know exactly that there is no such thing as free cheese;
Follow changes in the international environment to finetune their policies. To ask who will overtake Central Asia means to be arrogant vis-à-vis those states.
IM: Even if Russia wins on the ground in Ukraine, it looks like it is doomed to end up in bad shape i.e, more dependent on China, isolated from the West, maybe keeping some support in the Global South, but with less capacity for influence. Do you have a different view?
FAL: Russia is facing enormous challenges, no doubt about that. The Russian leadership decided that the path of the last thirty years was wrong and should change. The Soviet Union, by the end of its history, experienced a sharp political and economic decline, but paradoxically, was at the peak of countries’ technological capacities and strategic self-sufficiency. The decision to open up and integrate into a globalized international environment led to improved conditions for a part of the population, but a loss of many skills and rapidly increasing dependency on international markets.
The Russian economy thirty years after the Soviet Union’s collapse became more simplistic, and raw material based than in the Soviet time. Expectations that the technological level can be improved through cooperation and interdependence faced obvious limitations because technological leaders were predictably not keen to share the most advanced developments. Rather the opposite, the post-Soviet period was marked by the massive brain drain and leak of technologies, additionally weakening Russia (as the other former Soviet Republic’s) innovative potential.
While small or even middle-sized countries could base their strategies on integration into other powers’ technological spheres, Russia was too big to count on that. And too ambitious to take a subordinated position.
Of course, the next question arises, whether Russia will be able to catch up with its technological level being cut from the West and increasingly dependent on China. One can have well-grounded doubts about that. But Russian history showed that the country can produce unexpected results in the situation of force-majeure while comfortable prosperity leads to strange apathy. Second, the peaceful and linear development of globalization started to show signs of disruption well before the Ukrainian conflict, interdependence has been replaced by the growing rivalry between great powers, and the conclusion made by Russian leadership was that strengthening independent sovereign capacities is the only way to be prepared for the next stage of international development – a Hobbesian style fierce competition on all levels.
As far as China is concerned, the Sino-Russian rapprochement will have the same limits as the Russian-Western one. When Russia starts to feel that there is a chance to lose strategic independence (which is not the case by far yet), it will start to distance itself and seek counterbalances.
IM: Retaining the hypothesis of a relatively weakened Russia – politically and economically vis-à-vis the US and China – will Moscow increasingly rely on military power and social control to assert dominance? Will destabilizing Europe be the solution for Russian strategists to offset the relative weakening vis-à-vis the US and China?
FAL: Relying more on military power and domestic societal control is undoubtedly the path forward for Russia in the foreseeable future. There is simply no other alternative in this crisis environment. The question is whether Russia will be unique in this sense, or whether those trends in various forms will prevail universally. The more crisis and instability worldwide, the more inclined to rely on force and control; this is a universal trend, although forms can differ depending on the political system.
Russia is certainly not capable of breaking the EU, even if this scenario may be seen as desirable in certain constituencies in Moscow. There is another issue that the European integration process shows multiple signs of internal crisis, mostly unconnected to Russian affairs. In the current stage of relations, the European Union is clearly of no value to Russia. So, there is no reason to believe that Moscow will do something to strengthen ties with the European Union anytime soon.
Russia is certainly not capable of breaking the EU, even if this scenario may be seen as desirable in certain constituencies in Moscow.
There are different views in Russia on how to behave vis-à-vis Europe in the next period – to take distance as much as possible and stress differences with Europe at all levels, or to contribute to European transformation towards a more traditional “Europe of nations“. There is an open debate, but no result yet.
IM: To what extent is the “special relationship” with China counted in Russia’s strategic calculations? What does it mean for Taiwan’s future? Would such a showdown be anticipated as the “last nail” in the coffin of Western dominion over the world order?
FAL: The “special relationship” with China is crucial for Russian development in the next period for several reasons. Conflict with the West is the obvious one, but there are other motives of equal importance. China’s position in world affairs fluctuating between being the first or the second superpower is likely under any circumstances. China is Russia’s biggest neighbor, this simple logic suggests that good relations are indispensable. Both economic and geopolitical gravitation of China is in place, this is fact of life. China carefully avoids any allied status in relations with Russia, but objectively, countries move towards each other as both of them are labeled as dangerous revisionists by the US. In the case of Taiwan, China sees the US as an ultimate provocateur who is ready to destroy any mutually beneficial interdependence for its own sake. Russian views on the US, and especially the EU in the Ukrainian context are similar. So, the interests of Russia and China are not coinciding, but the logic of how the West sees them brings Moscow and Beijing ever closer together.
IM: Finally, for the Russian leadership, what new order should replace the current one? Any alternative to the last 30 years? How can global governance for our most pressing issues be assured in a new world?
FAL: The second half of the 20th century was a unique period in the history of international relations. Institutions played a defining role in how to shape relations between states, it has never been the case before (not to that extent at least), and there are doubts that this will be repeated in the future. The international constellation of powers was too specific and exceptional between 1945 and 1991. The more traditional and “normal” situation in international relations is a much more chaotic stance with situational arrangements and agreements based on changing power balances – both regionally and now even globally. It does not mean a high degree of stability, on the contrary, but at least the permanent awareness of all important players, that they should be cautious and always think about the intended and unintended consequences. The universalist ideological framework as it emerged after the end of the Cold War (i.e. after the end of the period with two competing ideological frameworks) can’t stay without an overwhelming dominance of a superpower, the polycentric system requires a “peaceful coexistence” of different ethical and cultural frameworks, based on pragmatic balance and mutual benefits, not on the perception of sides of history, which are “right” or “wrong”.
If this picture is correct, one conclusion follows: the order as we knew it from the previous decades is unlikely to be restored any time soon. All major international problems (including those which used to be called “global”) should be addressed on a much more flexible transactional base, in the process of permanent adjustment of interests and possibilities. This does not promise a very stable future. But in the situation of a deeply asymmetric international environment (multiple players of different caliber and characteristics) without a chance to install anybody’s solid control (be it institutions or great powers) each country should be prepared for a protracted period with very limited ability to strategize.
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A discussion was held in the US Senate today with distinguished doctors and scientists from major universities and medical centers. The story they told of corruption and mismanagement of the COVID pandemic is a turning point for humanity. I summarize some of the highlights here, and plan to conclude tomorrow.
Most of the people on today’s panel suffered loss of income, loss of status, or loss of their jobs because they publicized truths about COVID and COVID policies that were anathema to the medical establishment and detrimental to pharmaceutical profits.
COVID policy has been a crime against humanity, and underlying that crime has been a crime against science. Science is held in high public regard, even as the reputations of most other institutions have declined in recent decades. The reputation of science is based on open debate and logical evaluation of evidence. Debate has been stifled by people with money and power, and those same people then claim to speak for “science”. The public is gradually recognizing the enormity of this fraud. I fear the public support for science will crumble.
Sen Ron Johnson introduced the hearing by reminding us that promising drugs for early treatment of COVID were made known to him by some of the people at today’s hearing already in the spring of 2020, and yet our government agencies were advising against their use, despite long and assuring safety records.
Liz Willner created a website to make the CDC’s vaccine safety data available in a more accessible format. According to VAERS data reported to CDC, vaccine injuries increased twenty-fold in 2021 and vaccine-related deaths increased fifty-fold.
Aaron Siri, a lawyer for Del Bigtree’s ICAN, described how the CDC created a system called V-Safe for recording a large sample of vaccine safety data, and then hid the data from the public. Siri pressed through the Freedom of Information Act to obtain that data for more than 1½ years before some of it was released. Much still remains secret. Risk of myocarditis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and autoimmune disorders was recognized and reported early in the Pfizer trials, and these conditions were in early specifications for the V-Safe system. In the end, none of these conditions were included, suggesting that CDC made a deliberate decision not to create a paper trail for them.
Ed Dowd, a securities analyst, reported data from Group Life insurance policies that cover healthy, employed people ages 18 to 64. The death rate in this group jumped 40% in the third quarter of 2021, coincident with Federal vaccine mandates for large employers who buy these Group Life policies. [Note: The death rate for healthy, employed people is quite low, so the absolute number of deaths continued to be dominated by people who are old and sick. The overall death rate in America increased only a little during this time, but the Group Insurance companies took a big hit. —JJM]
Josh Stirling, another security analyst, summarized data from Britain’s Office of National Statistics. To date, vaccinated people in the UK are dying at a rate 26% higher than the unvaccinated. The increase was concentrated in young people, who have suffered 49% increased risk of mortality to date.
Lt Col Theresa Long, MD, MPH, reported that alarming increases in disabling conditions for the US Army were reported right after vaccination was mandated, and these signals were dismissed as a “computer glitch”. The glitch was fixed, abut disabling illnesses and injuries continue in the Army, where they are now occurring at almost twice the pre-vaccination rate of 2020. The number of military deaths from the COVID vaccines is about 50% higher than the deaths from COVID itself.
Dr Ryan Cole reported that coronaviruses as a class mutate rapidly, and that’s why we have never had a vaccine for any coronavirus in the past. A largely vaccinated public drives the virus to mutate even faster. The current COVID vaccines immunize against a variant of COVID that was extinct more than a year ago.
Dr Harvey Risch, MD, PhD, emeritus professor of epidemiology from Yale, reminded us that for young, healthy people, the risk of serious COVID is lower than the risk of injury from the COVID vaccines. Vaccine mandates can only be justified for vaccines that lower risk of transmitting the virus, and the current vaccines do not prevent transmission, even in the old and vulnerable groups where they protect against serious COVID.
Dr Pierre Kory specialized in pulmonary medicine and critical care as a professor at University of Wisconsin before he was dismissed from the UW medical school for advocating early treatment for COVID. He reminded us that early treatment has always been our best line of defense for everything from the common cold to cancer. (This include the original SARS virus of 2003.) 30% of the world’s people live in countries where hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin is taken daily as preventives, and these countries have had much lower rates of COVID mortality than the “developed world”, where these medicines were discouraged. Why were early treatments for COVID disparaged by the authorities?
Dr Paul Marik, with 300 peer-reviewed publications, is the second most published expert on critical care in the world. He estimated that hundreds of thousands of American deaths would have been avoided if HCQ and IVM had been adopted as early treatments beginning in 2020. He reported that in his hospital, he was forbidden from using safe, effective treatments for COVID, including vitamin C. Instead, he was encouraged to prescribe Remdesivir. Remdesivir is a patented antiviral drug and costs about $3,000 per patient. But Remdesivir can only be administered in a hospital, and antivirals are useless by the time a patient gets to the hospital, because he is well past the stage where the virus has been vanquished, and the patient is threatened by its after effects, including lung damage, low blood oxygenation, and sepsis. Remdesivir is highly toxic to the kidney. According to WHO, Remdesivir increases risk of kidney failure twenty-fold. Dr Marik claimed that there are no legitimate medical uses for Remdesivir, and yet Federal reimbursement to hospitals is boosted 20% (for the entire bill) if Remdesivir is included in the treatment plan.
Dr Kory talked straight to doctors and medical researchers: “High-impact journals have been under the control of the pharmaceutical industry…We’ve seen repeated cases of manipulation of the data to show that a company’s product is effective and, conversely, manipulated trials to try to prove to everyone that safe, effective repurposed drugs that offered no profit were ineffective or dangerous. There is an immense amount of corruption in medical publishing and in the conduct of science.”
Dr Peter McCullough, MD, MPH is a heart specialist with a degree in epidemiology, and was professor at Baylor College of Medicine before he was dismissed for his vocal stance on early treatment of COVID. America suffered 250,000 deaths before the COVID vaccines. Normally, the second year of a pandemic is milder, both because the virus evolves to be less deadly and because the most vulnerable people were killed in the first year. But since the vaccine rollout, we have had 750,000 additional COVID deaths in America. This is not the record of a successful vaccine.
Paul Alexander, PhD, reported that the COVID vaccines lose their efficacy and dip into negative efficacy after a few months, such that people who have been vaccinated are more likely to get COVID multiple times. Vaccinated individuals only have immunity to the part of the virus that is mutating most rapidly. As long as we keep boosting people every few months, the virus will continue to mutate and the pandemic will continue for many more years. “Had we not mass vaccinated, it is probable that we would have achieved herd immunity in the United States in the winter of 2021.”
Dr Robert Malone, MD, who holds the patent as the original inventor of mRNA technology, changed his perspective on the COVID vaccines after he had a near-fatal response to vaccination. Vaccine development is a very slow process, and viruses mutate rapidly. The hope for mRNA technology was that a generic vaccine platform could be developed so that a new viral genome could just be plugged into an existing technology and vaccines could be developed at warp speed. This very promising idea has not panned out, but those who are heavily invested in the paradigm refuse to recognize the failures and the danger of mRNA vaccine technology.
Dr Malone described the innovation of using pseudouridine instead of natural uridine as one of the four nucleotide bases in mRNA vaccines. This is a trick that causes the body not to degrade mRNA as it normally would, so the mRNA stays around much longer. The upshot is that once the body is injected with an mRNA vaccine, the mRNA stays around and continues to generate spike protein for at least 60 days. We have no data beyond 60 days, so it is “at least” 60 days. The vaccine was designed to do its job of stimulating immunity in the first 48 hours. After this, the continued production of spike protein serves no protective purpose, but it can continue to be toxic.
Dr Janci Lindsay, professor of toxicology, reported on the vaccines’ effects on fertility, and evidence that the mRNA can incorporate into the genome and be passed through sperm or egg to the next generation. As long as the mRNA is turned to DNA, it can be passed to the next generation through plasmids in the sperm. The spike protein might become a part of the human genome.
David Wiseman (PhD pharmacologist from Johnson & Johnson) told us that FDA has strict standards for safety testing of “vaccines” and much stricter standards for “gene therapies”, including 5 to 15 years of follow-up for cancer and DNA damage. The FDA did not even apply the looser “vaccine” standards when evaluating the COVID vaccines, even though these mRNA products meet the definition of “gene therapies”.
Dr Ryan Cole reported on the change in definition of “vaccine” that made possible the approval of the mRNA products, which have a very different mechanism from traditional vaccines. They should have been tested with standards appropriate for gene therapies.
Dr McCullough emphasized that immunity provided by the COVID vaccines does not extend to the nose or throat, so that vaccinated people are exhaling a viral load that is no different from unvaccinated. This is why the current crop of vaccines cannot stop transmission, and why any argument for mandating vaccination as a public health measure is flawed. “These vaccines have no support for reducing transmission of the infection.” So the justification for vaccination must be lowering the risk of hospitalization and death. And yet, the only clinical trials that we had were not designed to measure rates of hospitalization and death. [NB Data from the Pfizer trial showed a higher death rate among the vaccinated compared to the control group — JJM]
Dr Malone and Dr Alexander raise the subject of “original antigenic sin”. In teaching the body to respond to just one part of the virus with one arm of the immune system, we hijack the body’s response when a COVID virus comes along a few months later that has a mutated spike protein. The immune system is fixated on the original spike protein, and its response to the altered virus is impaired. This is a well-known mechanism for several decades, so we should not be surprised when COVID vaccines show negative effectiveness after a few months.
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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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First published on December 3, 2022
***
From the very outset in January 2020, people worldwide were led to believe and accept the existence of a rapidly progressing and dangerous epidemic. Media disinformation and the fear campaign were instrumental in sustaining the COVID-19 narrative.
Scientific lies and falsehoods have been used to sustain the legitimacy of the COVID-19 policy mandates including lockdowns, the imposition of the face mask, social distancing and the suppression of fundamental human rights.
People worldwide were led to believe that Big Pharma’s COVID-19 vaccine injections were the “solution”.
A structure of “Global Governance” dominated by powerful financial interests is unfolding which undermines democracy and the institutions of civil society. More than 7 billion people worldwide are directly or indirectly affected by the corona crisis and the destructive mandates implemented by morally depraved national governments. The entire planet is in state of economic and social chaos.
Comments Off on Video: The Corona Lockdown, The Most Devastating Crisis in Modern History. What We Need is “Democratic Regime Change”. Michel Chossudovsky
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***
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis told attendees at a private GOP event Saturday that he plans to hold Pfizer and Moderna “accountable”, arguing they were not transparent about their oft-mandated drugs’ side effects.
DeSantis, who seized a massive re-election victory in last month’s gubernatorial race, made the remarks during a Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) event on December 3 at the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, according to American Greatness.
In a video embedded in the outlet’s report, DeSantis promised to work in conjunction with Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo “to hold these manufacturers accountable for this mRNA [shot] because they said there were no side effects and we know that there have been a lot.”
While DeSantis didn’t name names, the mRNA jabs widely in use in the U.S. are made by Big Pharma giants Pfizer and Moderna. Johnson & Johnson’s shot doesn’t use mRNA technology.
At a private event over the weekend, Governor Ron DeSantis said that his administration intends to hold vaccine manufacturers accountable for making false claims about COVID products that have caused injuries and death.https://t.co/VllyRXa8RG
The conservative governor, who has surpassed former president Donald Trump in recent polls gauging Republican preference for the 2024 presidential race, also referenced a recent analysis conducted by Florida’s Department of Health that uncovered a disturbing spike in heart problems among mRNA jab recipients.
“We did a study in Florida and we saw an 86% [sic] increase in cardiac related activity in people ages 18 to 39 from mRNA shots — and so we’re going to be doing some stuff to bring accountability there,” DeSantis said.
In October, Florida’s department of health formally advised young men against receiving themRNA injections, citing their analysis that found “an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination,” according to a department press release.
“Studying the safety and efficacy of any medications, including vaccines, is an important component of public health,” Ladapo said in the October 7 statement. “Far less attention has been paid to safety and the concerns of many individuals have been dismissed – these are important findings that should be communicated to Floridians.”
“With a high level of global immunity to COVID-19, the benefit of vaccination is likely outweighed by this abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death among men in this age group,” the statement added.
To date, the CDC maintains that the mRNA COVID-19 shots are “safe and effective and severe reactions after vaccination are rare.” The agency notes that “[s]ome people have no side effects” following jab reception, but that “[m]any people have reported side effects, such as headache, fatigue, and soreness at the injection site, that are generally mild to moderate and go away within a few days.”
However, the CDC does acknowledge a “small but increased risk of myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccines” especially among young men.
In his Saturday remarks, DeSantis highlighted the work Florida has already done to protect residents from coercive jab mandates, including the November 2021 legislation banning blanket vaccine mandates.
“We wouldn’t let them mandate on you in Florida,” DeSantis told attendees at the Saturday GOP event, making note of attempts by Florida localities and companies like Disney to enforce jab mandates upon workers.
“We said no across the board, so everybody had the ability to opt out of anything they were trying to impose on you,” the governor said. He observed that many Americans who didn’t live in Florida were compelled to get the jab because their state governments didn’t protect them against mandates.
“And then what? They’re not allowed to sue or get any sort of recourse when this was something they wanted to do? So this is something that we’re going to lead on in Florida,” DeSantis vowed.
In addition to promising to hold vaccine manufacturers to account and urging “particular caution” regarding reception of the shots for young men, Florida has stood alone as the only state to refuse participation in the rollout of COVID shots for babies and young children between six months and five years old.
In March, the Sunshine State formally advised against jabbing children and teens under age 18 with the experimental injections.
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Featured image is a screenshot from a Rumble video via LSN
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that member states inched closer to developing a legally binding global pandemic treaty.
“I welcome the agreement by @WHO Member States to develop a zero draft of a legally binding #PandemicAccord designed to protect the world from future pandemics and to continue discussions on the draft in February 2023,” said WHO CEO Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
I welcome the agreement by @WHO Member States to develop a zero draft of a legally binding #PandemicAccord designed to protect the world from future pandemics and to continue discussions on the draft in February 2023.https://t.co/ZnUqvrkMr3
The development follows a third meeting from WHO member states to develop a global pandemic treaty. The first meeting was in December 2021, and the second was in March 2022.
It’s unclear how the WHO’s pandemic treaty will affect its 194 member states, including Canada.
The WHO states the global pandemic treaty will determine future pandemic requirements for individual countries, such as lockdowns, and that these requirements will be “legally binding.”
The WHO says the treaty will be a “legal instrument, rooted in the WHO Constitution, designed to protect the world from future pandemics.”
Article 21 of the WHO’s constitution states the WHO has “authority to adopt regulations concerning (a) sanitary and quarantine requirements and other procedures designed to prevent the international spread of disease.”
“Other procedures” presumably include global vaccine passports, which member states have already supported.
However, the WHO also claims the pandemic treaty will “respect sovereignty.”
The draft that resulted from this third meeting includes a provision that reads:
“States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to determine and manage their approach to public health, notably pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of health systems pursuant to their own policies and legislation provided that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to other States and their peoples.”
Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis has been outspoken regarding the potential impact a global pandemic treaty could have on Canadians.
Earlier this year, the WHO and the German health minister said that countries disobeying regulations dictated by the WHO through their pandemic treaty might need to be sanctioned.
The Counter Signal contacted the WHO for comment but did not receive a response by publication.
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***
Germany saw what is perhaps its largest police raid in history, involving 3,000 officers targeting 130 properties across nearly the entire country. With 25 “Reichsbürger” suspects arrested, that amounts to 120 police officers per suspect. It was quite the show of force, and in a sign that the media knew well in advance about the coming arrests, a number of suspects, including German aristocrat Heinrich XIII and former AfD MP Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, were photographed and filmed as they were perp walked out of their homes.
It was a real coup for Germany’s left-wing government and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who has made it her political goal to wipe out the right.
It is worth noting that nobody has been found guilty yet, but of course, even with the notoriously left-wing German media using the incident to whip up fear of the German right, the past may indicate the case could end up being more PR than reality.
The notorious “Nordkreuz” terror group, which was trumpeted by the media in 2017 as a far-right extremist network preparing for “Day X” — or the day when the group would carry out assassinations of left-wing opponents following the collapse of the German government — mostly fizzled out. At the time, politicians, journalists, and various anti-racist organizations jumped on the case, which involved up to 50 people, as an example of Germany’s growing far-right scene.
Ultimately, the Office of the Attorney General halted its investigations into the group, saying they had “no probable cause” to keep going. Like this most recent case involving “Reichsbürger,” the “Nordkreuz” group also contained a variety of individuals with military and police experience.
The supposed ring leader of “Nordkreuz” was only given a suspended sentence of 21 months, as the judge in the case said that nearly every weapon and piece of ammunition he owned was legal, and that although he had made some “unconstitutional” comments in a group chat with other members, there was no evidence he had any active plans to overthrow the government or carry out any terror attacks.
In the end, even if some members of the group “fantasized” about a Day X, there was no indication they had any concrete plans to partake in any direct action. Many in the left dream of a communist overthrow of the German government, or a society based on anarchist collectives, and some of them may even discuss what such a society would look like in various groups scattered across Germany’s cities, but would such discussions constitute an imminent threat to Germany’s democratic order?
The question is always when does fantasy start to cross into the realm of reality.
If the plan was real, it was crazy to begin with
The details from the current Reichsbürger case remain unclear, as the case has yet to go to trial. However, if Prince Heinrich XIII, who authorities deem the leader of the group, truly planned to imminently storm the Reichstag and seize power, then he and his cohorts are delusional, potentially insane, and acutely unaware of how power actually works. Power is not a capture-the-flag game where you can run into a government building and scream: “Look, now I’m in power!”
Even if the group was planning to storm the Reichstag, which is a claim we should take with a grain of salt until all the facts come to light, there is little possibility of such a “coup” succeeding in the modern era. If the group managed to defy all odds and take control of the Reichstag, the individuals allegedly involved in this case would have been promptly handcuffed and ushered into prison. After all, any successful coup requires a base of power. That means support from the military, a segment of the current elite, or a mass of the country’s populace — with all three being ideal, but the former two prerequisites far more important.
Of course, if the group was procuring illegal weapons and making concrete plans to conduct a coup, then the authorities are no doubt going to take action and are likely justified in conducting searches on the houses of the suspects, but the question will remain how far along were their plans, how many of the weapons were actually illegal, and how concrete these plans actually were.
According to media reports, there are about 25,000 people in Germany who identify with the Reichsbürger movement, a loosely defined movement but one that generally believes that the country’s current government is illegitimate and that the old monarchy was never properly dissolved in a legal manner. While some of them may be doctors, lawyers, former soldiers, and engineers, this does not represent a base of support for ushering in a new government. Many of them would also likely balk at a few members storming the Reichstag and seizing power through violent means.
We can take it a step further. If the Reichbürgers in this case actually managed to take power, all it would take is one negative report from German public broadcaster ARD and the whole Reich citizens government would promptly see an angry Twitter mob perform a reverse coup, this time with the full support of a very woke populace and increasingly woke security service. As the saying goes, China has state-run media, and the West has media-run states. The Reichbürger movement has no media, no backing, and therefore no power.
If Heinrich XIII truly wanted to rule, as the media claims was his plan, then he would have been better off taking out some Facebook ads first, perhaps explaining things a bit beforehand. Did most Germans even know what a Reichsbürger was before this case? Probably not.
Even the Islamists who dream of sharia in Germany, and there is no small number of them, are not looking to “seize power” through their terror attacks. They instead often cite revenge for Western actions in Muslim lands and sometimes sheer hate for what they describe as an atheistic and godless Western culture. For those Muslims serious about overthrowing democracy and ushering in sharia law, they openly say that demographics and time are on their side, and most hold no illusions about a band of Muslims storming government buildings to seize power. In other words, Islamic rule, if it were to ever happen, will come through the humdrum affair of “democracy.”
Fuel for a crackdown on the right
Regardless of the merits of the Reichsbürger case, the latest raid will be used to justify further oppression against the right, including of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). That means more surveillance and even more police raids. Even the notorious left-wing RAF terror group active in the 1970s and 1980s, which committed a number of high-profile murders, never had such a police response as the latest Reichsbürge arrests, but with the AfD rapidly growing in popularity, the public needs a spectacle.
The media also welcomed the distraction from the brutal random murder of a 14-year-old German girl by an Eritrean migrant in Illerkirchberg, which has once again raised questions about mass immigration at the national level and led to the city of Ulm to suspend intake of all refugees.
This is the same media that has also mostly ignored that of the 226 investigations launched by the Federal Public Prosecutor up until June 30 of this year; 131 were targeted at radical Islamists, 68 against foreign extremists, and only nine against right-wing extremists.
However, nothing should contradict the government’s narrative that the right is the “biggest threat,” and if an Islamist was perp walked out of their home in front of the camera for every terror investigation, the evening media would indeed have a very hard time keeping this narrative up.
The latest Reichsbürger case, regardless of how valid the allegations may turn out to be, is necessary for the left-wing government to shape public opinion of the AfD, which from a political standpoint, is the main target of this investigation, even though it has little do with the case. After all, there are just not enough “right-wing extremists” prepared to use violence to really justify the government’s claim of the right being the biggest threat. That is why the media was informed well in advance of these raids and was ready to record just in time for the evening news.
Coups are very hard in the modern age
On a side note, most revolutions and coups, which were always difficult to pull off, are especially difficult in the modern age and doubly so in Germany where — despite inflation and a souring economy — most people live in relative comfort and a deep fear of anything the media labels extreme right or even right-wing. Most of the coups that do work in the modern era require NGO funding, support from the CIA, Big Tech, and repetitious media messaging, such as the color revolutions seen across Eastern Europe and the Middle East over the last two decades.
Even in the “old days,” coups were rarely successful, and even in cases such as Castro and Che’s communist overthrow of Cuba, they were won against all odds. When Castro and Che’s ship arrived in Cuba with 81 armed revolutionaries, Batista’s army was already waiting for them. Only 19 men survived, including Castro and Che, who escaped into the Sierra Maestra mountain range and waged an extraordinary guerilla warfare campaign that saw them eventually overthrow the entire government.
Even for those who despise the politics of Che and Castro, what they pulled off from a military and propaganda perspective has rightly gone down in the annals of history. Most men would have thrown in the towel after 85 percent of their comrades were killed in the first minutes of the “revolution.”
The fact that Batista knew Castro was coming indicates informers were already in the group, or Western intelligence or Batista’s own agents used other means to know from top to bottom what the group’s plans were. This intelligence leak was before the era of smartphones and internet surveillance.
In contrast, German domestic intelligence is inside encrypted chats, they are inside people’s computers, and they are openly monitoring members of one political party but also a large variety of political groups. For those “planning” a coup, regardless of whether they are on the left, right, or adhere to some other political or religious ideology, the odds have never been more stacked against you.
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***
The ongoing unrest in Iran since mid-September following the death of a Kurdish woman in police custody shows no signs of abating as of now. The unrest has drawn support from all social strata and assumed anti-government overtones. The efficacy of suppressing the unrest is doubtful. Iran is entering a period of turmoil.
Indeed, the government faces no imminent threat but seems cognisant of the imperative need to address the hijab policy to pacify the protestors. As the protests continue, many women are walking on the streets of cities across Iran, especially in Tehran, without head coverings.
There is a long history of Western countries fuelling public unrest in Iran. Regime change agenda must be there in the western calculus but,curiously, Washington is also signalling interest in reaching an accommodation with Tehran under certain conditions relating to the regime’s foreign and security policies in the present international milieu.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian stated explicitly on Monday that the US and a number of other Western countries have incited riots, because “one of the US’ objectives was to force Iran to make big concessions at the negotiating table” for the revival of the JCPOA. Amirabdollahian’s remark followed some megaphone diplomacy by Rob Malley, the US special envoy on Iran last weekend.
Speaking in Rome, Malley connected the dots and outlined the linkages in the matrix. He said:
“The more Iran represses, the more there will be sanctions; the more there are sanctions, the more Iran feels isolated. The more isolated they feel [isolated], the more they turn to Russia; the more they turn to Russia, the more sanctions there will be, the more the climate deteriorates, the less likely there will be nuclear diplomacy. So it is true right now the vicious cycles are all self-reinforcing. The repression of the protests and Iran’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine is where our focus is because that is where things are happening, and where we want to make a difference.”
In effect, Malley admitted that the Biden Administration is a stakeholder in the ongoing protests in Iran. Importantly, he also hinted that although Iran has taken a series of fateful decisions that make a full revival of the nuclear deal and a lifting of some economic sanctions a political impossibility for now, the door to diplomacy is not shut if only Iran’s leadership changed course on relations with Russia.
In further remarks to Bloomberg on Saturday, Malley said that “Right now we can make a difference in trying to deter and disrupt the provision of weapons to Russia and trying to support the fundamental aspirations of the Iranian people.”
As he put it, Washington now aims to “disrupt, delay, deter and sanction” Iran’s weapon deliveries to Russia, and any supplies of missiles or assistance in the construction of military production facilities in Russia “would be crossing new lines.”
In sum, Malley has linked the US approach toward Iran’s protests with Tehran’s foreign and security policies in regard of Russia and its war in Ukraine.
The first signs that the US intelligence was focusing on Iran-Russia military ties — in tandem with its Israeli counterpart, of course —appeared in late July, when the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made an allegation during a media briefing at the White House that Iran wanted to sell weapons-capable unmanned aerial vehicles to Moscow.
Sullivan claimed that Iran was already training Russian personnel in using the drones. Within the week, Sullivan doubled down on that allegation.
The timing of Sullivan’s disclosure must be noted carefully — coinciding with a visit to Tehran by Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 19. Putin’s talks with the Iranian leadership messaged a strategic polarisation under way between Moscow and Tehran with far-reaching consequences for regional and international politics.
Putin’s discussions ranged from the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Syria to the legality of Western-led sanctions regimes, de-dollarisation, geopolitics of energy, the International North-South Transport Corridor, defence cooperation and so on, anchored on the congruent interests of the two countries on a number of important strategic and normative issues.
Following up Putin’s discussions, Iran’s armed forces Chief of Staff, General Mohammad Bagheri travelled to Moscow in mid-October. Gen. Bagheri met Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, which signalled that the military relations between the two countries was acquiring an irreversible momentum.
A fortnight after Gen. Bagheri’s visit, Russian Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev came to Tehran to discuss “various issues of Russian-Iranian cooperation in the field of security, as well as a number of international problems,” according to Interfax news agency.
Russian state media said Patrushev discussed the situation in Ukraine and measures to combat “Western interference” in both countries’ internal affairs with his Iranian security counterpart Ali Shamkhani. Patrushev also met with Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi.
Meanwhile, Washington senses that there is disharmony within the Iranian establishment on how to handle the protests, and, in turn, this is sharpening the internal Iranian debate about the wisdom of growing alliance with Russia vis-a-vis re-engaging with the West in a fresh attempt to revive the nuclear deal.
Clearly, Malley’s remarks hinted that amidst the US’ support for protests in Iran, it still remains open to doing business with Tehran if the latter rolls back its deepening strategic partnership with Moscow and refrains from any involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.
In fact, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Grossi (who holds Washington’s brief) also chipped in with a remark on Monday that the UN watchdog has no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon programme, implying that the resumption of negotiations in Vienna faces no “systemic” block.
That said, Tehran’s cooperation with Moscow on foreign and security policy policies is of long-term consequence to Iran and there is no question of the Iranian leadership putting all its eggs in the American basket. For Russia, too, the partnership with Iran is of strategic importance in the conditions of multipolarity.
Significantly, Iranian media has reported that Iran’s nuclear negotiator and deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani visited Moscow last weekend and met his Russian counterpart Sergei Ryabkov in Moscow to “discuss the prospects of full-scale implementation” of the JCPOA (2015 nuclear deal) “in order to strengthen the approach of multilateralism and confront unilateralism and adhere to the principles contained in the United Nations Charter” as well as the two countries’ “efforts to prevent instrumental political abuse and selective treatment of human rights issues by Western powers.”
The official news agency IRNA later reported from Tehran quoting Bagheri Kani that the two sides “reviewed bilateral relations over the past months and created frameworks and mechanisms in agreement with each other for developing relations.” He mentioned Syria, South Caucasus and Afghanistan as areas of cooperation between Tehran and Moscow.
Most certainly, the latest round of Iran-Russia consultations was noted in Washington. On Saturday, the Director of National Intelligence in the Biden Administration Avril Haines held out a veiled threat that while Iranian leaders may not see the protests as a threat now, they could face more unrest because of high inflation and economic uncertainty. She said, “We see some kind of controversies even within them about exactly how to respond — within the government.”
On the other hand, Bagheri Kani’s consultations in Moscow would have taken into account the large-scale US-Israeli air exercises last Tuesday simulating strikes on the Iranian nuclear program. The Israeli military said in a statement that joint flights of four Israeli F-35i Adir stealth fighter jets that accompanied four US F-15 fighter jets through Israel’s skies simulated “an operational scenario and long-distance flights.”
The statement added, “These exercises are a key component of the two militaries’ increasing strategic cooperation in response to shared concerns in the Middle East, particularly those posed by Iran.”
The US-Israeli exercises underscores the criticality in the situation surrounding Iran. Tehran’s shift to enrichment at 60% causes disquiet in Washington. But a military strike on Iran is fraught with unpredictable consequences not only for West Asian region but also the global oil market, which is facing uncertainties due to the US attempt to put a price cap on Russian oil.
The bottom line is that the protests in Iran are assuming the proportions of a casus belli. The US has internationalised Iran’s internal upheaval.
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***
Ukrainians have been paying a terrible price for the failure of ensuring sensible and reasonable negotiations from 2014 to February 2022 – which could have prevented the invasion by Russia in the first place, and once the war started, could have led to the end of this war.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. This war has been horrendous, though it does not compare with the terrible destruction wrought by the US bombardment of Iraq (“shock and awe”) in 2003. In the Gomel region of Belarus that borders Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian diplomats met on February 28 to begin negotiations toward a ceasefire. These talks fell apart. Then, in early March, the two sides met again in Belarus to hold a second and third round of talks. On March 10, the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia met in Antalya, Turkey, and finally, at the end of March, senior officials from Ukraine and Russia met in Istanbul, Turkey, thanks to the initiative of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. On March 29, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlusaid, “We are pleased to see that the rapprochement between the parties has increased at every stage. Consensus and common understanding were reached on some issues.” By April, an agreement regarding a tentative interim deal was reached between Russia and Ukraine, according to an article in Foreign Affairs.
In early April, Russian forces began to withdraw from Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv Oblast, which meant that Russia halted military operations around Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. The United States and the United Kingdom claimed that this withdrawal was a consequence of military failure, while the Russians said it was due to the interim deal. It is impossible to ascertain, with the available facts, which of these two views was correct.
Before the deal could go forward, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnsonarrived in Kyiv on April 9. A Ukrainian media outlet – Ukrainska Pravda – reported that Johnson carried two messages to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky: first, that Russian President Vladimir Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with,” and second, that even if Ukraine signed agreements with the Kremlin, the West was not ready to do so. According to Ukrainska Pravda, soon after Johnson’s visit, “the bilateral negotiation process was paused.” A few weeks later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv, and following the trip, Austin spoke at a news conference at an undisclosed location in Poland and said, “We want to see Russia weakened.” There is no direct evidence that Johnson, Blinken, and Austin directly pressured Zelensky to withdraw from the interim negotiations, but there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to suggest that this was the case.
Russian and Ukrainian delegations at the negotiating table on March 7, 2022. Photo: Belta news agency via Xinhua
The lack of willingness to allow Ukraine to negotiate with Russia predates these visits and was summarized in a March 10, 2022, article in the Washington Post where senior officials in US President Joe Biden’s administration stated that the current US strategy “is to ensure that the economic costs for Russia are severe and sustainable, as well as to continue supporting Ukraine militarily in its effort to inflict as many defeats on Russia as possible.”
Long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, since 2014, the United States has – through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative of the US Department of Defense – spent more than $19 billion in providing training and equipment to the Ukrainian military ($17.6 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022). The total annual budget of the United Nations for 2022 is $3.12 billion, far less than the amount spent by the US on Ukraine today. The arming of Ukraine, the statements about weakening Russia by senior officials of the US government, and the refusal to initiate any kind of arms control negotiations prolong a war that is ugly and unnecessary.
Ukraine is not in Iowa
Ukraine and Russia are neighbors. You cannot change the geographical location of Ukraine and move it to Iowa in the United States. This means that Ukraine and Russia have to come to an agreement and find a solution to end the conflict between them. In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky won by a landslide (73%) in the Ukrainian presidential election against Petro Poroshenko, the preferred candidate of the West. “We will not be able to avoid negotiations between Russia and Ukraine,” Zelensky said on a TV panel, “Pravo Na Vladu,” TSN news service reported, before he became president. In December 2019, Zelensky and Putin met in Paris, alongside then-Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and France’s President Emmanuel Macron (known as the “Normandy Four”). This initiative was driven by Macron and Merkel. As early as 2019, France’s President Emmanuel Macron argued that it was time for Europe to “rethink… our relationship with Russia” because “pushing Russia away from Europe is a profound strategic error.”
In March 2020, Zelensky said that he and Putin could work out an agreement within a year based on the Minsk II agreements of February 2015. “There are points in Minsk. If we move them around a bit, then what bad can that lead to? As soon as there are no people with weapons, the shooting will stop. That’s important,” Zelensky told the Guardian. In a December 2019 press conference, Putin said, “there is nothing more important than the Minsk Agreements.” At this point, Putin said that all he expected was that the Donbas region would be given special status in the Ukrainian constitution, and during the time of the expected Ukraine-Russia April 2020 meeting, the troops on both sides would have pulled back and agreed to “disengagement along the entire contact line.”
Role of Macron
It was clear to Macron by 2020 that the point of the negotiations was about more than just Minsk and Ukraine; it was about the creation of a “new security architecture” that did not isolate Russia – and was also not subservient to Washington. Macron developed these points in February 2021 in two directions and spoke about them during his interview with the Atlantic Council (a US think tank). First, he said that NATO has “pushed our borders as far as possible to the eastern side,” but NATO’s expansion has “not succeeded in reducing the conflicts and threats there.” NATO’s eastward expansion, he made clear, was not going to increase Europe’s security. Second, Macron said that the US unilateral withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019 – and Russia’s mirroring that – leaves Europe unprotected “against these Russian missiles.” He further said, “As a European, I want to open a discussion between the European Union and Russia.” Such a discussion would pioneer a post-Cold War understanding of security, which would leave the United States out of the conversation with Russia. None of these proposals from Macron could advance, not only because of hesitancy in Russia but also principally because they were not seen favorably by Washington.
Confusion existed about whether US President Joe Biden would be welcomed into the Normandy Four. In late 2020, Zelensky said he wanted Biden at the table, but a year later it became clear that Russia was not interested in having the United States be part of the Normandy Four. Putin said that the Normandy Four was “self-sufficient.” Biden, meanwhile, chose to intensify threats and sanctions against Russia based on the claims of Kremlin interference in the United States 2016 and 2018 elections. By December 2021, there was no proper reciprocal dialogue between Biden and Putin. Putin told Finnish President Sauli Niinistö that there was a “need to immediately launch negotiations with the United States and NATO” on security guarantees. In a video call between Biden and Putin on December 7, 2021, the Kremlin told the US president that “Russia is seriously interested in obtaining reliable, legally fixed guarantees that rule out NATO expansion eastward and the deployment of offensive strike weapons systems in states adjacent to Russia.” No such guarantee was forthcoming from Washington. The talks fizzled out.
The record shows that Washington rejected Macron’s initiatives as well as entreaties from Putin and Zelensky to resolve issues through diplomatic dialogue. Up to four days before the Russian invasion, Macron continued his efforts to prevent an escalation of the conflict. By then, the appetite in Moscow for negotiations had dwindled, and Putin rejected Macron’s efforts.
An independent European foreign policy was simply not possible (as Macron had suggested and as the former leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev had proposed in 1989 while talking about his vision for a “common European home” that would stretch from northern Asia to Europe). Nor was an agreement with Russia feasible if it meant that Russian concerns were to be taken seriously by the West.
Ukrainians have been paying a terrible price for the failure of ensuring sensible and reasonable negotiations from 2014 to February 2022 – which could have prevented the invasion by Russia in the first place, and once the war started, could have led to the end of this war. All wars end in negotiations, but these negotiations to end wars should be permitted to restart.
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***
The last thing you’d ever expect to hear on a mainstream news channel, is the truth. But—strange as it might seem—that’s exactly what happened on Wednesday night on the Tucker Carlson Show.
Carlson interviewed veteran journalist Glenn Greenwald in a 4-minute segment that provided the best ‘easy-to-understand’ summary of the Ukraine War you’ll hear anywhere. And what was so shocking about the interview, was how casually both men veered onto topics that are essential to grasping “How we got to where we are today” but which are entirely banned on all the other cable news channels. You are not allowed to know, for example, that Russia was “lured into the conflict in Ukraine”. That does not fit the script that has been passed-along from the Biden State Department to their lapdogs at the cable news stations. You’re also not allowed to know that the US does not fight wars “to spread democracy” or that “the US has no vital interests in Ukraine” or that “Russia is not really our enemy”. All of those topics are verboten. You’re not even allowed to think about these things, which is why– for the most part– they have been completely scrubbed from any-and-all discussion of foreign policy in the corporate media.
That’s what makes the segment with Greenwald such a stunner, because it’s 4 glorious minutes of pure, unvarnished truth delivered from a platform that typically only produces, lies, disinformation and propaganda. That’s why I transcribed the entire interview. Any mistakes are mine. Here it is:
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald: "If you want to believe the fairy tale that the US government goes to war to spread democracy, Ukraine is not the place for you." pic.twitter.com/dxgaVNYuj7
Tucker Carlson– What bothers me is not so much what Zelensky is doing– there’ alot of tyranny abound the world (and) I don’t brood on it. But the fact that (a) we are paying for it, and (b) our leaders are defending it. I think every American should be upset about that.
Glenn Greenwald– “I think in general, Americans should be very skeptical when the government says ‘We’re going to fight wars on the other side of the world and spend tens of billions of dollars in military aid to spread democracy.’ The US government doesn’t actually care about spreading democracy. Many of its closest allies in the world have always been some of the world’s most despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. All the US government cares about is whether these regimes serve US interests. …If you want to believe the fairy tale that the US government goes to war to spread democracy, then Ukraine is not the place for you. You mentioned the argument that ‘Zelensky is in war, he has to curb liberty’, but go back to 2021, a year before Russia invaded and you’ll find articles where he shut down opposition television stations and shut down opposition political parties (which is) the hallmark of what every tyrant or despot does….and that was true even before Russia invaded.”
Tucker Carlson– I wonder how Republicans can continue to defend this (because) I think you are right; I think our foreign policy is almost always about defending our interests…. But I don’t see our critical interests at stake here, so, what is this about?
Glenn Greenwald– If the US government was honest… they would get rid of this script that we have to go and defend democracy. That is a fairy tale that tries to get Americans to feel better about the fact that we are involved in many, many countries all over the world. That is not the real reason. The only reason to do it is for ‘vital US interests’. The line in Washington for decades was the US has no vital interests in Ukraine. That was Obama’s view, that was the bipartisan view. Why did that change? The only reason is because we saw an opportunity to trap Russia inside Ukraine all based on the view that Russia is our enemy (which is) something only Democrats should believe because they think Russia is to blame for the 2016 election and Hillary’s defeat. But why would Republicans want confrontation with Russia? What American benefits from that except arms manufacturers? …
Tucker Carlson– That’s a really good question, and I haven’t unraveled it. (But) It seems pretty clear that the Biden administration baited Russia into this invasion. You had the Vice President (Kamala Harris) in western Europe days before telling Zelensky to join NATO which, of course, they knew was a red line (for Russia) They wanted this invasion, I think that’s very obvious. Do you think this was all about ‘preparing for war with Russia’?
Glenn Greenwald–If you think Russia is a grave enemy of the United States, then it makes sense to try to lure them into a war that they can’t win, like we got lured into Afghanistan for 20 years or like we lured the Soviet Union into Afghanistan back in the ’70s because it does deplete your enemy. The question is: Why should Russia be seen as our enemy? Both Obama and Trump said there’s no reason to see Russia that way. It has one-fifteenth the size of our military budget. It’s not threatening American borders. Why are we so obsessed with spending tens of billions of dollars to weaken Russia which we could be using here at home to benefit the lives of American citizenswhen Russia is not doing anything to the United States unless you are a crazy ‘resistance’ person who believes they’re the reason Donald Trump won. But if you don’t believe that, what is the rational for this? There is none.”
Tucker Carlson– “I know, and as always, they have hijacked the best instincts of the American people, their compassion, and turned it against them. Glenn Greenwald, great to see you tonight”.
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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).
Featured image is a screenshot from the video via The Unz Review
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***
The ideology of Nazism came into being in the years after the First World War. Had the conflict not erupted, it is unlikely that Adolf Hitler and his henchmen would have ever risen to prominence.
The Nazi fervour did not emerge out of thin air following the end of World War I in November 1918. Almost all of the elements of Nazism were present in Germany even prior to the war; but before 1914 those ingredients had been scattered and rather dormant. They did not constitute a solid whole.
German historian Martin Broszat, who grew up during Hitler’s reign, wrote that in pre-1914 Germany there had existed “a virulent anti-Semitism, a blood-and-soil ideology, the notion of a master race, the idea of territorial acquisition and settlement in the East”. Broszat noted “only the First World War was to cause the decisive seismic shift in the country’s political culture. This was the soil in which Nazism was to grow”. (1)
In rural Germany before 1914, overall there had been scant political consciousness. With the general mobilisation of German males during World War I, the nation’s rural sectors were politically awakened. As Broszat put it, after the fighting was over Germany had “become a mass society” and “Young peasants and land labourers returned with changed personalities, after the war had torn them from the slow-moving pace of provincial life, and had thrown them into the ‘wide world’ and onto the stage of fateful national developments”.
The unrest in interwar German society was much greater than in countries like France and Britain. The Germans had not been victorious in the war, and it was more likely therefore that an extreme right ideology should rise forth in Germany, and not in the so-called Western democracies.
The warning signs were emerging early on, when a far-right military coup d’état was implemented in Berlin during the spring of 1920 [Kapp Putsch, 13–17 March] (2). Leading the Kapp Putsch into Berlin, on the morning of 13 March 1920, was the Marine Brigade of Lieutenant-Commander Hermann Ehrhardt, whose soldiers had served in the German military during the war.
Once Ehrhardt’s men marched into Berlin’s city centre, they could be seen wearing the ancient swastika symbol in large white print on their helmets and armoured vehicles. Perhaps it can be said that the Marine Brigade, which consisted of between 5,000 to 6,000 men, were among the first true Nazis.
The swastika was displayed by Ehrhardt’s Marine Brigade before it was used by Hitler and the new Nazi Party, which had officially been founded on 24 February 1920, a couple of weeks before the Kapp Putsch. The swastika was then adopted by Hitler for the Nazi Party in the summer of 1920. (3)
Aged 38 in 1920, Ehrhardt was an ex-officer in the German Imperial Navy. Ehrhardt had participated in a commanding role, for example, in the Battle of Jutland (31 May–1 June 1916), the largest naval battle of World War I and which forever destroyed the myth of invincibility of the Royal Navy, as over 6,000 British seamen lost their lives in the course of little more than a day.
Ehrhardt was a ruthless, daring and fanatical soldier, which was the case with many of the men under his command. Military author Donald J. Goodspeed wrote of the Marine Brigade, “All in all, it would have been hard to find a more formidable body of troops”.
Through 1919, the Marine Brigade had helped to liquidate various leftist developments in Germany, such as in the cities of Dresden and Brunswick. The Marine Brigade assisted further in eliminating the Bavarian Soviet Republic, which was toppled in early May 1919, while they also overcame the groups of Polish fighters who had attacked Upper Silesia. Ehrhardt’s unit was part of the paramilitary formations (Freikorps) which were springing up in Germany shortly after the war.
It was at this time, in late February 1919, that General Erich Ludendorff returned to Germany after 3 months voluntary exile in southern Sweden (4). General Ludendorff had ruled Germany through a military autocracy from August 1916 to October 1918, failing narrowly to defeat the larger forces of the Anglo-French-American armies. Lt. Col. Goodspeed, a biographer of Ludendorff, wrote that the general possessed “outstanding military abilities”. (5)
The war was over, however, and the 54-year-old Ludendorff had to get on with the rest of his life. He would be a figure of inspiration for the radical German right. Following his return to Berlin from Sweden, Ludendorff, because he was one of the most well-known people in Germany, was given spacious quarters at the Adlon Hotel in central Berlin. The Adlon Hotel was among the best hotels in Europe and was the headquarters of the Allied Disarmament Commission.
Ludendorff informed the English generals staying at the Adlon Hotel that Germany “would never have lost the war if it had not been for the vacillation and weakness of the German Government and people”.
The old order in Germany had collapsed, when Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on 9 November 1918 and left permanently for the Netherlands, ending his 30-year tenure as the German Empire’s monarch. A left-leaning government promptly came to power in Germany, which would become known as the Weimar Republic. The German president from 11 February 1919 was Friedrich Ebert, who for many years had been a member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Germany. Also prominent in the Weimar government was Philipp Scheidemann, the SPD leader.
Through 1919 and beyond Ludendorff said repeatedly of the leftist forces and politicians, “The greatest blunder of the revolutionaries was to leave us all alive. If I once get back to power there will be no quarter. I should hang up Ebert, Scheidemann and their comrades with a clear conscience and watch them dangle!”
As soon as possible, Ludendorff’s intention was to reclaim complete power in Germany, and then embark upon a massive war of conquest across Europe. He wanted to re-establish Germany as the dominant nation on the continent and, once that was accomplished, retire in peace.
Ludendorff’s megalomania was already pronounced by 1919. In a letter to wife Margarethe during his exile in Sweden, Ludendorff compared himself to Hannibal, the Carthaginian general often considered to be one of history’s greatest commanders. Ludendorff wrote to his wife, “Tell everybody how like my fate was to that of Hannibal. That will teach them to understand”. Hannibal went into voluntary exile in the year 195 BC, having been forced to do so by the Romans. (6)
Forefront in Ludendorff’s mind was the overthrow of the Ebert government. The Adlon Hotel was too conspicuous a place for the sort of work which Ludendorff was thinking of. Later in 1919, some friends proposed to lend him a luxuriously furnished apartment on the Viktoriastrasse (Victoria Street), located opposite the Tiergarten park in the centre of Berlin. He accepted their offer.
Before long, comrades and conspirators were convening in Ludendorff’s flat on the Viktoriastrasse, from Dr. Wolfgang Kapp and General Walther von Lüttwitz, to Ludendorff’s former Chief-of-Operations Colonel Max Bauer, and Captain Waldemar Pabst. Captain Pabst, who would later be in contact with Hitler and Benito Mussolini, had in January 1919 ordered the executions in Berlin of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the revolutionary socialists.
With Ludendorff’s backing, in October 1919 Pabst formed a far-right political organisation called the Nationale Vereinigung, or Bureau of National Union. Its aims were to co-ordinate the anti-Republican forces and to oust the German Republic by a military coup, which would be known as the Kapp Putsch. Involved in the Bureau of National Union was Dr. Kapp, a far-right politician, and General von Lüttwitz, the overall commander of the German paramilitary units.
With the war imprinted on people’s minds, including that of the Western Allies, Ludendorff moved carefully in his aim of regaining control of Germany. For the time being he remained somewhat obscured from the centre of events. Goodspeed wrote,
“As Kapp looked about him for a sword he thought first of General Ludendorff himself, who had returned from Sweden, and whose name still commanded considerable respect throughout the country… but in early 1920 he [Ludendorff] still retained enough sense of reality to proceed with some caution. Although Ludendorff lent the rebel movement his moral support, he declined to lead a putsch”. Kapp settled for General von Lüttwitz.
After initially succeeding, the coup would collapse after just 5 days. This was due largely to the lack of ruthlessness and efficiency shown by Kapp and von Lüttwitz in dealing with their adversaries on Berlin’s streets, and their leniency to the Weimar politicians, who were allowed to leave Berlin unmolested rather than being apprehended by the Kappists.
Following the Kapp Putsch’s fall on 17 March 1920, the conspirators slunk away from the Reich Chancellery and Berlin. Kapp went to Sweden, von Lüttwitz fled to Hungary, while Pabst left for Austria. Ludendorff’s involvement in the coup and presence in the Reich Chancellery with the other plotters was not a secret; unlike the ringleaders, Ludendorff held sufficient authority to remain in Germany. Yet he could not stay in Berlin for much longer, as the capital itself had become too hot a place to hold the general.
Before Ludendorff departed Berlin he shook hands with Colonel Max Bauer, a key ally of his during the war, and said, “Bauer, we are the richer for a bitter experience”. Bauer then fled to Hungary. In late March 1920 Ludendorff, now going by the name of “Herr Lange”, left Berlin by train for the southern German state of Bavaria, a region that would be a hotbed of Nazi activity for years and which the Weimar government could not control.
Lieutenant-Commander Ehrhardt, who had become properly acquainted with Ludendorff during the Kapp Putsch, made his way to join the general in Bavaria. Ernst Pöhner, the anti-communist Bavarian Chief of Police, had invited Ehrhardt and the Marine Brigade to Munich, the capital of Bavaria. Ehrhardt was made the Chief of the Emergency Police, and his troops were given positions as agricultural labourers on the sprawling estates around Munich.
In late 1920 Ehrhardt established a far-right murder society, called the Organisation Consul. It comprised of members of the Marine Brigade, which after the failure of the Kapp Putsch was outlawed by the Ebert government. In a 2 year period, Ehrhardt’s Organisation Consul would commit at least 354 political assassinations in Germany. (7)
The Organisation Consul simply killed anybody who Ehrhardt deemed an enemy of Germany. Among the various terrorist associations which hindered the Weimar Republic, the Organisation Consul would be surpassed in notoriety only by the Nazi Party. Very few of the Organisation Consul’s members were ever convicted for the murders. (8)
Ludendorff, meanwhile, shortly after relocating to Bavaria, moved to the small village of Ludwigshöhe, beside Munich. Threatened with assassination from communist or left-wing militants, Ludendorff lived in a villa in Ludwigshöhe surrounded by high walls, where he was guarded around the clock by Ehrhardt’s men. Ludendorff’s daily existence was one of incessant conspiracy, and though he was not personally involved with the Organisation Consul or their killings, Goodspeed pointed out, “These were the people around Ludendorff now and he was, in spirit at least, one of them”.
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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 Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Notes
1 Martin Broszat, Hitler and the Collapse of Weimar Germany (Berg Publishers, 1st edition, 1 January 1987)
2 Adriana Popa, “German citizens defend democracy against Kapp Putsch, 1920”, Nvdatabase.Swarthmore.edu, 27 November 2010
3 Jean-Denis Lepage, Hitler’s Stormtroopers: The SA, The Nazis’ Brownshirts, 1922-1945 (Frontline Books, 30 Sept. 2016)
History of World War II: Operation Barbarossa, the Allied Firebombing of German Cities and Japan’s Early Conquests
By Shane Quinn
The first two chapters focus on German preparations as they geared up to launch their 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, called Operation Barbarossa, which began eight decades ago. It was named after King Frederick Barbarossa, a Prussian emperor who in the 12th century had waged war against the Slavic peoples. Analysed also in the opening two chapters are the Soviet Union’s preparations for a conflict with Nazi Germany.
The remaining chapters focus for the large part on the fighting itself, as the Nazis and their Axis allies, the Romanians and Finns at first, swarmed across Soviet frontiers in the early hours of 22 June 1941. The German-led invasion of the USSR was the largest military offensive in history, consisting of almost four million invading troops. Its outcome would decide whether the post-World War II landscape comprised of an American-German dominated globe, or an American-Soviet dominated globe. The Nazi-Soviet war was, as a consequence, a crucial event in modern history and its result was felt for decades afterward and, indeed, to the present day.
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***
Can you imagine the audacity to fail a multi-trillion dollar audit of public funds, and then ask for even more of those taxpayer dollars?
Pentagon leaders just did exactly that.
This month news broke that the agency once again failed to pass a basic audit showing that it knows where its money goes. And instead of holding out for any kind of accountability, Congress stands ready to give a big raise to an agency that failed to account for more than 60 percent of its assets.
This is a sign of an agency that is too big, plain and simple.
Other major government agencies have long since passed audits. But the Pentagon — with its global sprawl of more than 750 military installations, expensive contractors, and boondoggle weapons systems — is so big and disjointed that no one knows where its money goes.
Here’s a simple solution: the Pentagon needs to be a lot smaller.
After 20 years of war, when government spending is desperately needed elsewhere, the Pentagon’s fifth failed audit in as many years — it’s never, ever passed — should be the last straw.
This isn’t using our taxpayer dollars wisely. It’s robbing programs that we need, like the discontinued Child Tax Credit expansion that cut child poverty by half. The only winners here are the military contractors who commandeer roughly half of the Pentagon’s budget in any given year.
For what taxpayers spend on Lockheed Martin in a typical year alone, we could instead give every American child a strong startin life through quality childcare and preschool. Which would make us stronger?
It looks like the people in this country are starting to catch on, though: A new poll shows that just 48 percent of Americans trust the military, down from a high of 70 percent in 2018.
It’s not because they don’t trust the troops. It’s because after 20 years of ill-begotten wars, the brass expects to get $858 billion of our hard-earned tax dollars when they can’t even account for half of what they’ve already gotten. Sorry, but we have too many other needs in this country for that to make sense anymore.
With the tide of public opinion turning, the days of endlessly growing Pentagon budgets are numbered.
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Federal budgeting expert Lindsay Koshgarian directs the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
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***
It’s the holiday season, which means parents are doing last-minute gift shopping while their kids eagerly await a host of presents from family. Ironically, Congress is engaging in a similar exercise in its final few work weeks of the year, and lawmakers are poised to pass a massive defense budget that is sure to make military brass and defense contractors giddy with glee ahead of Christmas day.
Finally, the legislative text of the Senate-House “compromise” version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was dropped on Tuesday night, just two days before the House is scheduled to vote on the bill before the end of the day Thursday. The final, gift-wrapped package – including defense-related and non-defense related policy bills that may join the festivities as legislative stocking stuffers – has been negotiated in secret by just a handful of lawmakers, away from the prying eyes of other lawmakers, reporters, and the general public. It numbers 4,408 pages.
Unfortunately, this is a somewhat regular exercise for the U.S. Congress: procrastinating on necessary legislative items, waiting until the last minute for a resolution, and negotiating that resolution behind closed doors. It’s evidence of a broken legislative process. It has also served to push the military budget to heights unimaginable just a few years ago.
This “compromise” version of NDAA will authorize 2023 defense spending at levels $45 billion higher than President Biden requested earlier this year and a whopping $80 billion higher than 2022 authorization levels. The total defense authorization amount is $858 billion, just $1 billion outside the range I predicted could come to pass in late October. As I wrote then, this hefty sum puts Congress on track to reach a $1 trillion defense budget much quicker (2027) than congressional budget experts currently project (2032).
And both lawmakers and the military continue to play budget games that only serve to hurt the American taxpayer. In November, Bloomberg reported that the Department of Defense sent Congress a highly unusual second unfunded priorities list (UPL) for the 2023 budget year, with total requests adding up to $25 billion. These UPLs, also called wish lists, have already helped Congress push the military budget higher in recent years. It’s common practice (and, of late, required by law) for the military branches and combatant commands to send their wish lists to lawmakers early in the year when the Department as a whole submits its annual budget request. But this second, Department-wide effort appears to be both unprecedented and something of a shameless play at influencing the budget negotiations.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had a similar takeaway. In a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in early December, Warren called the wish list “an end-of-year money grab, designed to short circuit the administration’s budget and the congressional appropriations process.”
An additional trend I’ll be watching, one that won’t matter so much in 2023 but could matter a lot in the future, is which NDAA amendments get approved for inclusion in the compromise product. Every year, lawmakers in both the House and the Senate file hundreds of amendments to the NDAA, in part because it’s one of the few major pieces of legislation that Congress still reliably passes every year. Everyone wants their priority to hitch a ride on this must-pass bill.
Unfortunately, the amendments often serve to push future military budgets higher by authorizing all sorts of new programs and new spending. Congress doesn’t always fund those new programs right away, but authorizing the new programs gives them the option to fund them in the future.
One prominent example I wrote about in October is the CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science) Act of 2022. This multibillion-dollar legislation, enacted by Congress earlier this summer, provides subsidies to well-heeled American corporations to produce more semiconductors – a Congressional bid to steer semiconductor manufacturing away from China. The CHIPS Act was made possible in part by authorizations lawmakers previously made on a bipartisan basis in the 2021 NDAA.
Lawmakers introduced hundreds of amendments to the 2023 NDAA, dozens of which would authorize a collective $100 billion-plus on initiatives like military financing for Taiwan, defense cooperation with U.S. allies to counter China, and nuclear fuel. I’ll be watching closely to see which of these initiatives are included in the thousands of pages of a compromise NDAA package. They may signal where Congress wants to increase the military budget in 2024, 2025, and beyond.
Congress is rushing to pass the NDAA over the next week or two, before they go home for the holidays. Lawmakers will all but certainly pass a massive increase to the defense budget approved by members of both parties in both chambers of the legislature – at least $80 billion in total above 2022 levels, and that doesn’t include tens of billions of dollars the Pentagon has received to combat Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
If so, then Christmas will come early for the nation’s military brass, who often get to spend without consequences from lawmakers who control their purse strings, and defense contractors, who benefit mightily from the taxpayer-funded largesse.
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***
The corporate media is flooded with reports of the supposed spontaneous uprisings of Chinese citizens against the oppressive Communist regime enforcing inhuman zero-COVID policies that lock down entire cities and that require QR code scans for the use of all public buildings, including public restrooms.
Granted that the media has entirely ignored efforts of Chinese to organize protests, strikes, and online campaigns against the true exploitative forces in China, multinational corporations like Walmart, Amazon, and Foxconn, it seems doubtful that this new flurry of political heavy breathing represents a serious effort to address economic inequality in China.
Rather we are being fed yet another flavor of color revolution customized to the current ideological environment of narcissistic decay in the United States, one that encourages the projection of internal totalitarianism onto the “other,” onto China.
China is the only place, within the sickly etiolated intellectual discourse of the United States, wherein the enemy techno-fascism can be accurately limned without political risk.
At the same time, there can be no doubt that China is subject to a massive campaign to destroy governance and to create a docile population subject to the whims of faceless powers who hide behind online systems masquerading as “government.”
But that “communist government” turns out to be, if you scratch the surface, private contractors, Israeli, Japanese, American and other IT and intelligence firms, who have set up shop across China at the local level and are seizing control of government by privatizing all functions of government, using COVID-19 as the wedge to force everything online.
This strategy has no precedent in the policy of the Communist Party of China, or in the Communist tradition of Chen Duxiu and Mao Zedong. Rather it draws on the strategies private contractors to seize control of local government using the control of IT infrastructure. That strategy has much in common with the takeover of local government by contractors that has been implemented in Oklahoma (as documented by Julianne Romanello) and in Louisiana.
The knowhow for contract tracing, facial recognition technology. Geo-fencing, and mandatory daily PCR tests can be traced back to the technology and policy for the control of Palestinians on the West Bank, as well as American research on social manipulation carried out by DARPA, RAND, and other contractors for the Department of Defense and the CIA.
The reader of the media is offered a choice between two flawed interpretations of what is happening in China. On the one hand, there are those who suggest that the techno-fascist policies we see in China are a product of an alien and dangerous Chinese culture that threatens the freedom of the West and its glorious constitutional tradition. This threat is attributed to communism and a docile Chinese civilization stretching back to the antiquity.
On the other hand, there are others who defend China as an emerging alternative civilization, one maligned by the jealous declining Western powers because of its new technological and economic power. But such critics choose to look the other way when it comes to totalitarian governance that Chinese workers face under COVID-19.
Let me illustrate these two perspectives with statements made by two colleagues of mine, men with whom I have had close exchanges in the past.
For an example of China-threat rhetoric, I cite a fellow contributor to Global Research John Whitehead who writes,
“The fate of America is being made in China, our role model for all things dystopian. An economic and political powerhouse that owns more of America’s debt than any other country and is buying up American businesses across the spectrum. China is a vicious totalitarian regime that routinely employs censorship, surveillance, and brutal police state tactics to intimidate its populace, maintain its power, and expand the largess of its corporate elite.”
The dystopian world that Whitehead describes in China, is beyond dispute. But it is most certainly not “made in China.” Rather large parts of Chinese local government (and the enforcement of the COVID regime varies immensely from region to region) have been taken over by private contractors tied to investment banks like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, and private contractors for IT.
The reductive rhetoric used by Whitehouse precludes the most obvious conclusion: that the working people of China and the United States are having their lives, their freedoms, and their health destroyed by multinational corporations and that they should work together to combat this global takeover.
Many American intellectuals feed us a warmed-over “yellow peril” argument such as was advanced in the 19th century, presenting Chinese culture as inherently repressive and corrupting, something that must be stopped from entering the United States at any cost. Such an effort to demonize an alien culture is a classic strategy employed by the rich to deflect a serious discussion of class conflict and of the control of the means of production to a reductionist emotional anger at the foreign.
The alternative view offered in the media is that presented by intellectuals like Martin Jacques, author of the thoughtful study of China’s rise, “When China Rules the World.” Although Jacques offers a more balanced and fair perspective on China than does the “yellow peril” gang, his decision to present China and its civilization as an alternative to a corrupt and decadent West, without mentioning a word about how COVID 19 has been used as an excuse to implement radical social control, deeply undermines his arguments.
Jacques stated recently that “for China to embrace common prosperity, to establish a society of greater fairness, greater equity, that is a very important message not only to China, but to the world as well” while remaining silent on COVID policies. Such an approach is intellectually dishonest and suggests that he has agreed to collaborate with the deeply compromised gang of Chinese, Israeli, American and other teams of investment banks and consulting firms who are radically restructuring Chinese society.
Although China does offer some alternatives to the extraction-based imperialism that drives the Western economies—especially as a nation that has not waged any foreign wars in recent history, and has had almost no overseas military presence, nevertheless, the narcissistic advertisements for designer clothes used by multinational corporations to turn Chinese into consumers, the push to eliminate books and newspapers from hotels and other public spaces, the radical degrading of the quality of journalism (which was superior to the US until the last five years) and the promotion of the lives of the rich and powerful as an ideal for youth, suggests a covert war has been launched against the Chinese people by multinational interests that is at least the equal of campaigns in the US and Europe.
The failure of those sympathetic to China to confront this cruel reality, and to rather limit their analysis to praise for China’s more rational diplomacy, for its advances in rail technology and in solar energy, or for its less imperialist approach to investment in Africa, is unacceptable.
Why should we call it the “Third Opium War?”
Those struggling to understand the nature of the COVID-19 assault on China would do best to consider the last time that the Western powers, and specifically the financial powers in London, set out to take over the Chinese political system, to control the Chinese economy, and to degrade and diminish the authority of Chinese culture.
That process of political, ideological and military assault was launched in the two Opium Wars. British corporate interests worked hand-in-hand with corrupt members of the Chinese ruling class, men who saw in the decay of the Qing Dynasty opportunities for personal benefit through the promotion of British propaganda, namely arguing that Western civilization was inherently more advanced than China’s.
The first Opium War of 1840 was launched by the British to establish absolute authority in East Asia and to strip China of its autonomy through a political and cultural assault that not only impoverished the Chinese economy, but also reduced the ability of Chinese to think for themselves.
The British employed the same strategy they used in India: developing corrupt relations with the gentry at the local level so as to undermine the central government, attacking Chinese civilization as inherently backwards, and inducing economic dependency on the British imperial trade system and finance system.
At that time, China had the most powerful economy in the world, a highly educated population, and an admirable commitment to stable agricultural production and sustainable long-term development. Unlike other nations, China could not be drawn into the tangled spider’s web of trade and finance controlled by the British easily.
The British ruling class could not stand it that China ran a trade surplus with England and that it had no need for British products or use for British logistics in external trade, but sold the British large amounts of tea, porcelain and other products on its own terms.
The British cultivated ties with corrupt local gentry and introduced ideas about transportation via trains, mail service, finance and banking, and medicine that were radically different than what existed in China. The British suggested in the publications that they produced, and later in the missionary schools that they set up, that massive changes were necessary in China in order China to make progress towards modernity. Some of those suggestions were accurate; most were twisted so as to justify imperialism; some concepts like the imperative for growth and international trade were deeply destructive.
Although the British victory in the first Opium War and in the Second Opium War (together with France in 1856 to 1860) was a result of British superior military technology, the British were not ahead because they were smarter but rather because they had waged constant wars in the 18th and 19th centuries that pushed the development of these specific technologies.
At the same time, “Britain” or “England” are misleading terms that habit and institutions force on us so that we can only perceive conflicts in terms of countries, and mistake battles between corporate interests for conflicts between the presidents of China, the United States and Russia.
It was not “England” that attacked China in 1840 after Governor General Lin Zexu wrote an open letter to Queen Victoria in 1839 asking that she end the immoral opium trade and then proceeded to burn illegal opium that the government had seized. Rather it was the British bankers in London who formulated and implemented this plan to take China apart, to reduce it to a semi-colony using the knowhow they had from their takedown of India, Bangladesh and other nations.
The organization at the center of the Opium Wars was the British East India Company, private corporation reporting to the richest British citizens that was able to employ the authority of the government to justify and to advance its activities.
The British East India Company developed a sophisticated system for analysis, for the assessment of opportunities for financial benefit, and for the exploitation of weaknesses in other countries in the early 19th century. It had teams of experts prepared to take action, including military action, for the benefit of the banks, and it lobbied at home British politicians to encourage military action that benefited its clients.
The British East India Company was the father of MI6 (military intelligence section 6) intelligence agency founded in 1909, and more importantly, the grandfather of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency of the United States) founded in 1947. Both of those organizations pose as government agencies but work, for the most part, for the benefit private interests.
Operation COVID-19
Let us move forward to Operation COVID-19, the global coup d’état disguised as a pandemic that was launched against China, and the world, in December of 2019 and that continues on to the present. Although not directed exclusively at China this operation resembles the previous two Opium Wars in method and in purpose.
The author does not have inside knowledge as to exactly how the COVID-19 operation was planned and launched; most likely no one has the full picture. Enough information is available, however, to permit an informed assessment, as opposed to the repetition of the disinformation circulated as journalism these days.
The strategy behind the Wuhan outbreak of 2019, the start of the COVID Wars, had its roots in classified research conducted at DARPA, RAND, and other American institutions, on how to conduct warfare using biotechnology, nanotechnology, and cyber-warfare.
The cyber-warfare imagined in security circles was less concerned with hacking computers and more with hacking the minds of citizens so as to render them incapable of independent thinking and encourage psychological and ideological dependency on a consumer culture powered by narcissism. The promotion of a banal consumer culture that destroys the intellectual functions of the educated classes in politics was a critical part of the groundwork for the COVID wars.
This new form of warfare is best described as “silent weapons for quiet wars,” to use the term employed in the (supposedly) classified manual from the 1950s discovered in 1986 that describes the use of social engineering and automation as a strategy for domination. Private finance and intelligence complexes like BlackRock, Vanguard, and Goldman Sachs, along with the strategic teams of billionaires are the primary clients of this campaign.
China was selected as a primary target (although the strategy is being carried out around the world) for the radical degradation of the population’s thinking through the promotion of AI, smart phones, thereby creating addiction to consumption culture and immediate stimulation, and forcing dependency on technology.
China was a ripe target because modernization ideology has been so central to Chinese society and the imperative to surpass the West that humiliated China in the 19th century is so acute among Chinese intellectuals that the promotion of dangerous automation and geo-fencing could be easily justified as a means for China to surpass the West and to become truly modern. Moreover, Chinese Confucian thought encourages a trust in the role of government that makes it hard for citizens to grasp how corporations have seized control of policy and administration in government.
The use of QR codes for all public spaces, including public restrooms, the requirement of vaccination, and PCR tests within the last 48 hours (or sometimes last 24 hours) was initially accepted by citizens because it was justified as more advanced than the “West.”
Most likely the operation was launched by corrupt elements of intelligence in both the United States and China who are pursuing plans to create a slave society in which billionaires set the ideological and administrative rules for the entire society.
The Chinese and the foreign agents involved in COVID-19 policies at the local level follow directives issued by private intelligence companies that work together with the World Economic Forum, intergovernmental agencies like the World Health Organization that is controlled by the Gates Foundation, and to other multinational institutions tied to global finance.
The promotion of a “new Cold war” between the United States and China in the corporate media is critical to this campaign. Lower level government officials, and citizens, on both sides, are fed the story that because relations between China and the United States are getting worse, that there can be no cooperation or communication between the two nations. This narrative is made substantial by directives that prohibit, or make difficult, interactions between government officials, academics, and cultural figures.
The reality is that a tiny group of key players representing the super-rich in the United States and in China coordinate closely to promote COVID-19 lockdowns in China.
If anyone asks who makes these policies in China, who handles the data, or who is control of the programs, that undergird QR codes and contact tracing, the answer is inevitably it is the Chinese government. But the truth is that few, or none, of these policies were made up or implemented by the Chinese government itself, but rather that the Chinese government is occupied by IT corporations that report to the billionaires (often through Israel and the United States,) and bypass the Chinese government altogether.
Those involved in the Wuhan COVID-19 action in 2019 ruthlessly attacked those in the Chinese government who opposed them, setting up their own shadow government in cooperation with private consulting firms and intelligence contractors.
That shadow government in China (or the United States for that matter) draws its power from its control of IT processes that government depends on. Control of the transfer, storage, processing and all internal communications in government by private IT firms (often simply private intelligence firms in effect selling off data to the highest bidder) has made possible the construction of a shadow empire that is run for the benefit of the billionaires, using a carefully calibrated process to degrade the thinking of citizens, and to decrease freedom of movement and action over months and years. This plan effects massive shifts in society in a manner that is slow enough as to avoid detection by citizens (especially if they are addicted to smart phones) and rapid enough to make the organization of effective resistance difficult.
Ironically, the Communist Party of China, which is described by the Western press as the unique source of totalitarianism in the world, is often the only force capable of resisting the march of techno-fascism. Whereas Western corporations are busy eliminating humans from organizations and implementing AI-based automation, and transforming political parties into appendages of investment banks, the CPC actually holds meetings with large numbers of people, conducts concrete debates on policy that involve detailed consideration of specifics.
A walk through any city in China will make it obvious what sort of a war is taking place below the surface.
Advertisements for I-phones, Italian designer clothes, processed foods laden with sugar, and other consumer goods produced by multinational corporations scream out from every corner at the citizen rendered consumer.
This campaign creates an uncompromising money economy linked to the spider’s web of global finance. Youth gather at I-Phone lounges to gossip and message each other about banal topics, or eat at fashionable restaurants at a great distance from any awareness of the reality that faces working people.
At the same time, there are posters put up along the streets that call on the citizens to be ethical, to treat others with respect, to keep the city clean, and to care for family. These posters encouraging ethical behavior remind me of things I saw in early childhood that have since disappeared since in the United States.
These efforts at ethical government are products of the CPC, not foreign concerns.
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Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
All images in this article are from US Provisional Government
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When the Pentagon used NATO to provoke Russiainto invading Ukraine, it had to know that one of the great benefits to such an invasion would be that it would enrich U.S. weapons manufacturers, who, of course, are an important, integral, and loyal part of America’s national-security state form of governmental structure.
And sure enough, those weapons manufacturers now have a lot to be grateful for. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal,
The world’s biggest arms makers are scaling up production of rocket launchers, tanks and ammunition as the industry shifts to meet what executives expect to be sustained demand triggered by the war in Ukraine.
The Pentagon has committed more than $17 billion in weapons and services to Ukraine, most of it drawn from existing stocks. It has also awarded about $3.4 billion in new contracts to replenish domestic and allies’ stocks.
The Pentagon knew that when it was forced to exit Afghanistan, where it had used a massive amount of weaponry for some twenty years to wreak death and destruction on that impoverished Third World country, its loyal army of arms manufacturers might begin to suffer. The crisis that the Pentagon has ginned up in Ukraine has clearly helped to alleviate that suffering.
But the Russian invasion of Ukraine had had another beneficiary — the Pentagon itself. That’s because before Americans had a real opportunity to focus on the Pentagon’s 20-year deadly and destructive debacle in Afghanistan, everyone began focusing exclusively on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Thanks to the crisis in Ukraine, the entire Afghanistan misadventure has been relegated to a memory black hole.
But we really still need to do some serious soul-searching, examination, and analysis of the Afghanistan debacle. We cannot let the Pentagon use the crisis that it has ginned up in Ukraine as a way to shift our attention away from what happened in Afghanistan. It would be a grave mistake to just “move on” from Afghanistan and permit the Pentagon to focus our attention exclusively on the evil Russians and their invasion of Ukraine.
It is important to focus on the Constitution, the document that President Biden and the Democrats and even some Republicans have suddenly discovered and begun revering. It requires a congressional declaration of war before a president can legally wage war. There was never a congressional declaration of war against Afghanistan. That made the Pentagon’s war against Afghanistan an illegal one under our form of constitutional government.
Equally important, if President George W. Bush had sought a declaration of war from Congress, it is a virtual certainty that he would not have been able to secure it. That’s because Bush would not have been able to provide any evidence whatsoever of Taliban complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Without any evidence of such complicity, it is difficult to imagine Congress issuing a declaration of war against Afghanistan, especially knowing that such a war would inevitably wreak massive death and destruction on that impoverished Third World country.
Bush claimed that his invasion of Afghanistan was morally justified under the principle of “self-defense.” But that claim necessarily depended on showing that the Taliban regime was involved in the 9/11 attacks. No such evidence existed, and Bush knew it. Thus, if he had gone to Congress and sought a declaration of war based on “self-defense,” he would have gone there empty-handed insofar as evidence is concerned.
In fact, if Bush really believed that the Taliban regime had attacked the United States, he would never have gone to the United Nations seeking its approval to defend itself by invading Afghanistan. No president would do that.
What about the “harboring” charge? Bush claimed that his invasion of Afghanistan was morally justified because Afghanistan was “harboring” Osama bin Laden. Bush’s claim is without validity. To warrant a “harboring” charge, Bush would have to provide evidence that the Taliban regime had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and was knowingly conspiring with bin Laden to provide him a base to plan the attacks. Bush knew that he had no evidence to support such a charge.
What Bush actually meant by his “harboring” charge was that the Taliban was refusing to comply with Bush’s unconditional extradition demand for bin Laden. But under international law, the Taliban regime had every right to refuse Bush’s extradition demand. That’s because there was no extradition treaty between Afghanistan and the United States. When there is no extradition treaty between two nations, neither one is required to comply with an extradition demand from the other.
What about the claim that the 9/11 attacks were an “act of war” and, therefore, the United States had the legitimate authority to invade Afghanistan to kill or capture bin Laden, who was living in Afghanistan?
It was a bogus justification for invading Afghanistan. Under U.S. law, terrorism is a criminal offense, not an act of war. That’s why terrorism prosecutions are brought in U.S. District Courts. No nation has the legitimate authority to invade another nation to kill or capture a suspected criminal who is residing in that country.
One of the most notorious terrorists was a CIA man named Jose Posada Carriles. He is widely considered to be one of the people who brought down a Cuban airline with a bomb over Venezuelan skies. He later safely ensconced himself in the United States.
When Venezuela demanded Posada’s extradition, U.S. officials protected him by refusing to comply, notwithstanding the fact that there was an extradition treaty between Venezuela and the United States.
Would interventionists who supported the deadly and destructiveinvasion of Afghanistan to kill or capture bin Laden have supported a similar deadly and destructiveVenezuelan invasion of the United States to kill or capture Posada? I think not.
Using NATO to gin up the crisis in Ukraine is bad enough. While U.S. arms manufacturers are clearly a beneficiary of that crisis, so is the Pentagon because it has caused people to forget what the Pentagon did to the people of Afghanistan and to just “move” on to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We must not let that happen, especially given the massive death and destruction that the Pentagon wreaked in its immoral and illegal war against an impoverished Third World country.
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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.
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Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has confirmed her government’s duplicity regarding the conflict in Ukraine by confirming that the 2014 ceasefire agreement was meant to give Kiev time to build up its military, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
In an interview with Zeit magazine published on Wednesday, Merkel said that the Minsk protocol brokered by Germany and France was “an attempt to give Ukraine time,” which it used to “become stronger” as evidenced on the battlefield now. She was referring to the first of the two documents known collectively as the “Minsk agreements” that were designed to help Kiev reconcile with rebels in the east, who had rejected the outcome of an armed coup in the capital in 2014.
Berlin and “by extension, the West” never intended to implement the Minsk agreements, Zakharova concluded based on Merkel’s remarks. The US and its allies “simulated supporting the UN Security Council resolution” which endorsed the roadmap to peace while pumping weapons into Ukraine and “ignored all crimes committed by the Kiev regime … for the sake of a decisive strike against Russia,” she explained in a social media post on Thursday.
Merkel confirms Ukraine peace deal was a ploy
In the Zeit interview, Merkel stated that Russia “could easily have overrun” Ukrainian troops in 2015, adding that she doubted that “NATO countries could have done as much then as they do now”. The second part of the Minsk agreements was signed in February 2015 amid a military defeat suffered by Ukrainian troops, which attempted to quash the Donbass militias.
Merkel’s description of the accords coincides with that made by former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, during whose tenure they were signed. Domestically, in August 2015, he stated that the peace deal was a ruse to give his government time for a military buildup. He said the same thing to Western audiences in June this year.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine in late February, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk protocols, under which the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk would have been given special status within the Ukrainian state. The Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states, which have since voted to join Russia alongside Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.
Russia also demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
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It was uncanny. During the past two and a half years virtually every doctor in the West who dared to question the official Covid Narrative – by raising doubts about the Jab, by discussing natural immunity, individualized treatment, informed consent, and by questioning draconian mandates and restrictions – found themselves under attack by their local medical authorities.
December 10 is Human Rights Day. On this day, U.S.-led Western states that are responsible for a majority of the most horrific crimes against humanity will cynically exploit the human rights idea, partially to deflect from their sordid records, but also to enlist the liberal human-rights framework into their arsenal of ideological weapons.
On November 14, Der Spiegel published a report according to which leaked documents of the German Ministry of Defense indicate that the Bundeswehr is preparing for a war with Russia. The secret draft titled “Operational guidelines for the Armed Forces” was authored by the German Chief of Defense Staff, General Eberhard Zorn.
As the security crisis and energy instability worsen in Europe, mainly in Germany, the unfeasibility of continuing the current European model of automatic alignment with American foreign policy becomes increasingly evident. American rivalry with Russia, passively embraced by European states, seriously violates EU’s interests and places the entire bloc under a serious threat.
While many are now familiar with the manipulation of predictive modelling during the COVID-19 crisis, a network of powerful Malthusians have used the same tactics for the better part of the last century in order to sell and impose their agenda.
The German leader just published what can be interpreted as his manifesto explaining why his country must supposedly restore its prior hegemonic status, and it was released by none other than the same magazine run by the Council on Foreign Affairs, which is regarded as among the most influential policymaking platforms in the US-led West’s Golden Billion.
COVID-19 is a global operation run for the benefit of the super-rich that aims to destroy the lives and the minds of the citizens of China, and the world. The current operation in China is most likely directed by private intelligence firms based in the United States, Israel, Great Britain, and also in China.
Time and again, courageous enlightened people are faced with the question of how to reach out to their fellow human beings intellectually and emotionally in order to be able to take away their individual and collective prejudices.
Ghana’s government recently announced plans to procure oil using gold rather than US dollars – the currency predominately used in the global oil trade.
Imagine, the European Union (EU) and the G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States), decide to put a price cap of US$ 60 per barrel on Russian oil. Just like that. Europe – a US-vassal – is going out of her way to bash Russia, to sanction Russia, and scream, “we won’t buy any Russian energy!”
Republican Senator Ted Cruz has weighed in on the revelations in Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ publication, urging that it is “evidence of corruption that goes to the highest level of government.” Appearing on Fox News, Cruz asserted that the effort to crush the Hunter Biden laptop story went “to the highest level of the FBI. And it goes to the highest level of Big Tech.”
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December 10 is Human Rights Day. On this day, U.S.-led Western states that are responsible for a majority of the most horrific crimes against humanity will cynically exploit the human rights idea, partially to deflect from their sordid records, but also to enlist the liberal human-rights framework into their arsenal of ideological weapons.
This Human Rights Day must be different. As tens of thousands of people are dying in Ukraine during an avoidable war to the ongoing wars in Yemen and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the slaughter of Palestinians in occupied Palestine, and the hundreds of thousands who died unnecessarily from COVID-19 in the United States, it must be stated—without any equivocations—that if human rights are to have any value, they must be liberated and reconstructed to serve the oppressed.
That has been the work of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) since its inception in 2017. Embracing the Black radical human-rights and peace traditions, the tagline of this formation has been: “A People(s)-Centered Human Rights Project Opposing War, Repression and Imperialism.”
We love peace!
It is only within the context of social peace that the possibility of human freedom, as well as individual and collective development and progress, can take place. But powerful forces correctly understand peace is a threat. It is a threat because those whose existence depends on the use of extreme forms of state and institutional violence understand the inexplicable link between peace and social justice.
But without justice, there can be no peace!
That is why the Black Alliance for Peace correctly stated, “Peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather the achievement by popular struggle and self-defense of a world liberated from the interlocking issues of global conflict, nuclear armament and proliferation, unjust war, and subversion through the defeat of global systems of oppression that include colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy.”
There can be no ambiguity here. We do not fight for the ideas in people’s heads—we fight the structures of oppression.
And human rights?
BAP operates within the framework of the Black radical human-rights tradition that is being popularized as the People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework (PCHRs). What constitutes that framework?
PCHRs are “those non-oppressive rights that reflect the highest commitment to universal human dignity and social justice that individuals and collectives define and secure for themselves through social struggle,” according to BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka.
This people(s)-centered framework proceeds from the assumption that the genesis of the assaults on human dignity at the core of human-rights violations is located in the ongoing structural relationships of colonial-capitalist oppression. Therefore, the PCHRs framework does not pretend to be non-political. It is a political project in the service of Africans, as well as the colonized working classes, peasants, and socially oppressed. It names the enemies of freedom: The Western white-supremacist, colonial-capitalist patriarchy.
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Mark Sleboda joins me to talk about the situation on the ground in Ukraine:
positional fighting along the front;
possible Ukrainian offensives before New Year’s;
Russia’s large winter offensive;
dwindling Western arms supplies;
Russian cruise missile production;
where did the Geran-2 drones go?;
and what’s coming next.
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On November 14, Der Spiegel published a report according to which leaked documents of the German Ministry of Defense indicate that the Bundeswehr is preparing for a war with Russia. The secret draft titled “Operational guidelines for the Armed Forces” was authored by the German Chief of Defense Staff, General Eberhard Zorn. It was written in late September and according to General Zorn, “an attack on Germany can potentially happen without warning and can cause serious damage, even existential. Therefore, the defense capabilities of the Bundeswehr are essential for the survival of the country.” The German Chief of Defense Staff stressed the need for a “mega-reform” of the Bundeswehr, adding that “for approximately 30 years, the focus placed on missions abroad no longer does justice to the current situation, with possible consequences that endanger the system.”
Instead, General Zorn thinks it’s crucial for Germany to focus on “the Atlantic defense of the Alliance,” with the “capacity to provide visible and credible deterrence, to dominate Germany’s military action plan.” In this regard, specifically, “the Bundeswehr must arm itself for a forced war, since a potential confrontation on NATO’s eastern flank has once again become more probable.”
The draft clearly identified Russia as the “immediate threat”. However, the designation makes little sense, as Russia is now over 1,500 km away from Germany, with Belarus, Poland and Ukraine standing between the two countries. While it made some sense for Germany to maintain a large, highly trained military force with constant combat readiness during the (First) Cold War, as the USSR had approximately half a million soldiers in East Germany at the time (in addition to other Warsaw Pact member states), the situation is effectively reversed nowadays.
It’s precisely NATO that’s encroaching on Russia’s western borders, with the crawling expansion including coups and other interventions in various Eastern European and post-Soviet states. This aggression by the political West forced Moscow’s hand, culminating with the February 24 counteroffensive. However, the German plan has already been set in motion and no matter how ill-conceived it is, an analysis of how it could play out is in order. The plan certainly isn’t new, as it has been in the works for well over half a year. Back in early March, the German government announced it would allocate approximately €100 billion to upgrade the Bundeswehr, which has become a mere shadow of what it was during the heydays of the (First) Cold War.
The 2021 budget for Bundeswehr was approximately €50 billion. If Berlin was to increase that by close to 100%, it would put extreme pressure on the struggling German economy. Such a massive upsurge in military spending wouldn’t only take away from other branches of the government, but it would also come at a time when the sanctions boomerang from the failed economic siege of Russia is ravaging all of the European Union. The bloc hasn’t even begun recovery from the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s already facing severe economic contraction resulting from anti-Russian sanctions and policies. Much of Germany’s prosperity was based on access to cheap Russian energy, which is now a thing of the past thanks to Berlin’s suicidal subservience to “Euro-Atlantic values”.
In essence, this means that Germany is doomed to massively increase military spending while having significantly fewer resources at its disposal to do so. This doesn’t even factor in how the German people would react to such a momentous foreign (and, to a large extent, domestic) policy shift. As the EU’s largest and most important economy, Germany would also cause shockwaves throughout the bloc if it were to go ahead with such a plan. With Russian energy supplies either gone or effectively unaffordable, any government in power in Berlin would have virtually the entire German private sector against it, with the notable exception of the arms industry, which would be the only one not contracting thanks to increased orders for the Bundeswehr.
On the other hand, even this plan is bound to hit several major snags before it’s even put in motion. The US Military Industrial Complex dominates in NATO, making it the primary beneficiary of German (re)militarization. Domestic weapons production has atrophied significantly in the last 30 years, while the globalization of the world economy led to the rest of it being outsourced to other countries, both in Europe and elsewhere around the globe.
At least half a dozen European governments have already fallen so far, while the neoliberal elites in Brussels are now forced to contend with new anti-liberal political parties in power in several EU member states. This is bound to cause further rifts within the bloc. It will be followed by the general militarization of the EU, which will further erode the already falling living standards and cause more political instability. This will turn Europe into an economically devastated bulwark that serves no other purpose except to contain Russia while the US shifts focus to the Asia-Pacific region.
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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Featured image: German troops in a NATO military exercise in 2021 (Source: Multipolarista)
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As the security crisis and energy instability worsen in Europe, mainly in Germany, the unfeasibility of continuing the current European model of automatic alignment with American foreign policy becomes increasingly evident. American rivalry with Russia, passively embraced by European states, seriously violates EU’s interests and places the entire bloc under a serious threat.
Germany is the most economically important country for the EU and at the same time the most dependent on Russia. Without any energy sovereignty and dependent on the partnership with Moscow to supply its internal market, Berlin sought for decades to maintain pragmatic relations with Russia, capable of overcoming any political or ideological rivalries, aiming exclusively at the well-being of the German people and the local economy. But this stance has been completely abandoned.
During the early days of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, Germany was the first country to try to somehow resist American pressure for sanctions, at least as far as energy is concerned. But the Scholz government was absolutely unable to resist pressure from Washington and quickly “surrendered”, favoring the American anti-Russian strategy and harming German interests.
Obviously, without the energy to power its industry, the negative effects have already started to be seen in Germany, but the situation will only get worse as winter gets more severe in Europe. With high energy prices and no perspective of improvement in the short term, as well as under a strong crisis of legitimacy with constant mass protests, the country is truly immersed in a severe crisis which consequences spread beyond national borders, since, with the largest European economy weakened, the whole EU is affected.
However, energy and economy are just some of the problems facing Berlin. The German adherence to American sanctions was not the only anti-strategic attitude taken by the government, which also strived to become one of the biggest arms suppliers for the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, to the point of causing irreversible damage to domestic military reserves.
Before the Russian operation in Ukraine, military experts already frequently reported the obsolescence of the German military apparatus and its inability to defend the country, whose only hope in a possible conflict situation would be to rely exclusively on the “goodwill” of its NATO partners. Now, with Berlin sending its few weapons to Kiev and with an industry weakened by the energy crisis, unable to continue replenishing stocks, the situation is even more hopeless, placing Germany at a very serious level of subservience to the US.
In fact, on December 8, 2022, Olaf Scholz marks one year in the German government, and, as we can see, his administration so far has been a real disaster for the strategic interests of the German state and the entire EU. To sum it up, it is possible to say that his rise to power marked the decline of any German participation in the proposal of a “sovereign” Europe. Earlier, Angela Merkel was an active advocate of increasing the EU’s political autonomy, despite her close ties with the US. Merkel even became Emmanuel Macron’s main partner when the French president announced in his Sorbonne speech the project of achieving a “European sovereignty”.
As a politically stable and considered for years the “de facto” leader of the EU, Merkel tried to make Germany the economic pillar of a more independent Europe in relation to the US. Macron has emerged as an important ally, considering France’s military power – having even proposed the creation of a European army outside NATO. Thus, both countries together would have the conditions to lead a new shift in the bloc, making it a more “distant” ally of the US, defending its own interests without automatic alignment. But the fragility of the Scholz government prevented any process in this direction.
Scholz’s weakness and unpopularity caused his government to passively accept foreign impositions and escalate participation in the Ukrainian conflict, harming its own economy and people. More than that, Scholz passively accepted the humiliation imposed by the West in the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines. Several intelligence reports point to the involvement of the US, UK and Poland in the sabotage, and even so Germany remains inert and submissive.
These events hindered any idea about “European sovereignty”. Macron’s project for the continent has lost force and today France acts more independently. Germany was unable to play a leading role in managing a new future for the European bloc and has consolidated itself over the last twelve months as an American satellite state, also reflecting its subservience to other European states, economically weaker, which did not have any posture other than increasing the irrational automatic alignment with the US.
As a result, Europe loses the opportunity to become an independent bloc amidst the rise of a multipolar world. At some point in the near future, European leaders will try to reverse the mistakes that are being committed now, but they will find it much more difficult. Weakened, the US-led NATO will become more reactive and aggressive in the future, seeking to retain all zones of influence it still has. And, as Washington has already made clear with the Nord Stream attacks, sabotage and aggression are possible options for forcing Europe to maintain its submissive posture.
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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.
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While many are now familiar with the manipulation of predictive modelling during the COVID-19 crisis, a network of powerful Malthusians have used the same tactics for the better part of the last century in order to sell and impose their agenda.
While much propaganda has gone into convincing the world that eugenics disappeared with the defeat of Hitler in 1945, the reality, as I discussed in my previous article The Revenge of the Malthusians and the Science of Limits, is far removed from this popular fantasy.
In that piece, I reviewed the origins of cybernetics as a new “science of control” created during World War II by a nest of followers of Lord Bertrand Russell who had one mission in mind. This mission was to shape the thinking of both the public as well as a new managerial elite class who would serve as instruments for a power they were incapable of understanding. 1
We also explored the science of limits that was infused into the scientific community at the turn of the 20th century with the imposition of the assumption that humanity, the biosphere, and even the universe itself were closed systems, defined by the second law of thermodynamics (aka: entropy) and thus governed by the tendency towards decay, heat death and ever-decreasing potential for creative change. The field of cybernetics would also become the instrument used to advance a new global eugenics movement that later gave rise to transhumanism, an ideology which today sits at the heart of the 4th industrial revolution as well as the “Great Reset.”
In this article, we will evaluate how this sleight of hand occurred and how the minds of the population and governing class alike have been induced to participate in our own annihilation. Hopefully, in the course of this exercise, we will better appreciate what modes of thinking can still be revived in order to ensure a better future more becoming of a species of dignity.
Neil Ferguson’s Sleight of Hand
In May 2020, Imperial College’s Neil Ferguson was forced to resign from his post as the head of the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). The public reason given was Neil’s sexual escapades with a married woman during a draconian lockdown in the UK at the height of the first wave of hysterics. Neil should have also been removed from all his positions at the UN, WHO and Imperial College (most of which he continues to hold) and probably jailed for his role in knowingly committing fraud for two decades.
After all, Neil was not only personally responsible for the lockdowns that were imposed onto the people of the UK, Canada, much of Europe and the USA2, but as the world’s most celebrated mathematical modeller, he had been the innovator of models used to justify crisis management and pandemic forecasting since at least December 2000.
It was at this time that Neil joined Imperial College after spending years at Oxford. He soon found himself advising the UK government on the new “foot and mouth” outbreak of 2001.
Neil went to work producing statistical models extrapolating linear trend lines into the future and came to the conclusion that over 150,000 people would be dead by the disease unless 11 million sheep and cattle were killed. Farms were promptly decimated by government decree and Neil was awarded an Order of the British Empire for his service to the cause by creating scarcity through a manufactured health crisis.
In 2002, Neil used his mathematical models to predict that 50,000 people would die of Mad Cow Disease which ended up seeing a total of only 177 deaths.
In 2005, Neil again aimed for the sky and predicted 150 million people would die of Bird Flu. His computer models missed the mark by 149,999,718 deaths when only 282 people died of the disease between 2003-2008.
In 2009, Neil’s models were used again by the UK government to predict 65,000 deaths due to Swine flu, which ended up killing about 457 people.
Despite his track record of embarrassing failures, Neil continued to find his star rising ever further into the stratosphere of science stardom. He soon became the Vice Dean of Imperial College’s Faculty of Medicine and a global expert of infectious diseases.
In 2019, he was assigned to head the World Health Organization’s Collaboration Center for Infectious Disease Modelling, a position he continues to hold to this day. It was at this time that his outdated models were used to “predict” 500,000 COVID deaths in the UK and two million deaths in the USA unless total lockdowns were imposed in short order. Under the thin veneer of “science”, his word became law and much of the world fell into lockstep chanting “two weeks to flatten the curve.”
Predictive model taken from the March 16 paper authored by Imperial College London’s COVID-19 Response Team, led by Neil M. Ferguson, “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand”
When Neil was pressed to make the code used to generate his models available to the public for scrutiny in late 2020 (after it was discovered that the code was over 13 years old), he refused to budge, eventually releasing a heavily redacted version which was all but useless for analysis.
A Google software engineer with 30 years experience writing (under a pseudonym) for The Daily Skeptic analyzed the redacted code and had this to say:
“It isn’t the code Ferguson ran to produce his famous Report 9. What’s been released on GitHub is a heavily modified derivative of it, after having been upgraded for over a month by a team from Microsoft and others. This revised codebase is split into multiple files for legibility and written in C++, whereas the original program was “a single 15,000 line file that had been worked on for a decade” (this is considered extremely poor practice). A request for the original code was made 8 days ago but ignored, and it will probably take some kind of legal compulsion to make them release it. Clearly, Imperial are too embarrassed by the state of it ever to release it of their own free will, which is unacceptable given that it was paid for by the taxpayer and belongs to them.”
Besides tax-payers, the author should have also included Bill Gates, as his foundation donated millions of dollars to Imperial College and Neil directly over the course of two decades, but we’ll forgive her for leaving that one out.
Monte Carlo Methods: How the Universe Became a Casino
The Daily Skeptic author went further to strike at the heart of Neil’s fraud when she nailed the underlying stochastic function at the heart of Neil’s predictive models. She writes:
“‘Stochastic’ is just a scientific-sounding word for ‘random.’ That’s not a problem if the randomness is intentional pseudo-randomness, i.e. the randomness is derived from a starting ‘seed’ which is iterated to produce the random numbers. Such randomness is often used in Monte Carlo techniques. It’s safe because the seed can be recorded and the same (pseudo-)random numbers produced from it in future.”
The author is right to identify the stochastic (aka; random) probability function at the heart of Neil’s models, and also correctly zeroes in on the blatant fudging of data and code to generate widely irrational outcomes that have zero connection to reality. However, being a Google programmer who had herself been processed in an “information theory” environment, which presumes randomness to be at the heart of all reality, the author makes a blundering error by presuming that Monte Carlo techniques would somehow be useful in making predictions of future crises. As we will soon see, Monte Carlo techniques are a core problem across all aspects of human thought and policy making.
The Monte Carlo technique itself got its name from Information Theorist John von Neumann and his colleague Stanlislaw Ulam who saw in the chance rolling of dice at casino roulette tables the key to analyze literally every non-linear system in existence- from atomic decay, to economic behavior, neuroscience, climatology, biology, and even theories of galaxy-formation. The Monte Carlo Casino in Morocco was the role model selected by von Neumann and Ulam to be used as the ideal blueprint that was assumed to shape all creation.
According to the official website for The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences(INFORM), it didn’t take long for Monte Carlo Methods to be adopted by the RAND Corporation and the U.S. Air force. The INFORM site states:
“Although not invented at RAND, the powerful mathematical technique known as the Monte Carlo method received much of its early development at RAND in the course of research on a variety of Air Force and atomic weapon problems. RAND’s main contributions to Monte Carlo lie in the early development of two tools: generating random numbers, and the systematic development of variance-reduction techniques.”
As discussed in my previous segment, RAND Corporation was the driving force for the adoption of Cybernetics as the science of control within US foreign policy circles during the Cold War.
The person assigned to impose cybernetics and its associated “systems” planning into political practice was Lord President of the British Empire’s Scientific Secretariat Alexander King- acting here as Director General of Scientific Affairs of the Organization for Economic Coordination and Development (OECD) and advisor to NATO. His post 1968 role as co-founder of the Club of Rome will be discussed shortly.
Whereas selling end-times scenarios to a gullible populace took the form of such Gates-funded stochastic models utilizing Monte Carlo techniques like those deployed by Neil Ferguson, the selling of end-times scenarios in the form of global warming have also used the exact same techniques, albeit for a slightly longer time frame. As Dr. Tim Ball proved in his successful lawsuits against the IPCC’s Michael Mann of “Hockey Stick” fame, those end-times global warming models have also used stochastic formulas (aka randomness functions) along with Monte Carlo techniques to consistently generate irrationally high heating curves in all climate models.
Michael Mann’s 1998 “hockey stick” temperature model, debunked several times over for using fraudulent techniques and selective data, but used by the IPCC to this very day. Source.
In an October 2004 article on Technology Review, author Richard Muller described how two Canadian scientists proved that this fraud underlies Mann’s Hockey Stick model, writing:
“Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick… This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!”
Not coincidentally, these same stochastic models utilizing Monte Carlo techniques were also used in crafting economic models justifying the high-frequency trading ridden casino economy of the post-1971 era of myopic consumerism and deregulation.3
The Club of Rome and World Problematique
The age of “predictive doomsday models” was given its most powerful appearance of “scientific respectability” through the efforts of an innocuous sounding organization called The Club of Rome.
“In 1968 David Rockefeller founded a neo-Malthusian think tank, The Club of Rome, along with Aurelio Pecceiand Alexander King. Aurelio Peccei, was a senior manager of the Fiat car company, owned by the powerful Italian Agnelli family. Fiat’s Gianni Agnelli was an intimate friend of David Rockefeller and a member of the International Advisory Committee of Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank. Agnelli and David Rockefeller had been close friends since 1957. Agnelli became a founding member of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission in 1973. Alexander King, head of the OECD Science Program was also a consultant to NATO.”
The think tank was founded by two self-professed Malthusians named Aurelio Peccei and OECD Director General for Scientific Affairs Sir Alexander King who promulgated a new gospel to the world: The age of scientific progress and industrial growth must stop in order for the world to reset its values under a new paradigm of zero-technological growth.
Both Peccei and King were also advocates of a new pseudoscience dubbed “World Problematique,” which was developed in the early 1960s and can simply be described as “the science of global problems.” Unlike other branches of science, solving problems facing humanity was not the concern for followers of Problematique. Its adherents asserted that the future could be known by first analyzing the infinite array of “problems” which humanity creates in modifying the environment.
To illustrate an example: Thinking people desire to mitigate flood damage in a given area, so they build a dam. But then damage is done to the biodiversity of that region. Problem.
Another example: Thinking people wish to have better forms of energy and discover the structure of the atom, leading to nuclear power. Then, new problems arise like atomic bombs and nuclear waste. Problem.
A final example: A cure for malaria is discovered for a poor nation. Mortality rates drop but now population levels rise, putting stress on the environment.
This list can go on literally forever.
An adherent to Problematique would fixate on every “problem” caused by humans naively attempting to solve problems. They would note that every human intervention leads to dis-equilibrium, and thus unpredictability. The Problematique-oriented mind would conclude that if the “problem that causes all problems” were eliminated, then a clean, pre-determined world of perfect stasis, and thus predictability, would ensue. Reporting on the growth of the Club of Rome’s World Problematique agenda in 1972, OECD Vice Chair, and Club of Rome member Hugo Thiemann toldEurophysics News:
“In the past, research had been aimed at ‘understanding’ in the belief that it would help mankind. After a period of technological evolution based on this assumption, that belief was clearly not borne out by experience. Now, there was a serious conflict developing between planetary dimensions and population, so that physicists should change to consider future needs. Science policy should be guided by preservation of the biosphere.”
On page 118 of an autobiographical account of the Club of Rome entitled ‘The First Global Revolution’ published in 1991, Sir Alexander King echoed this philosophy most candidly when he wrote:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
The Club of Rome quickly set up branches across the Western world with members ranging from select ideologues in the political, business, and scientific community who all agreed that society’s best form of governance was a scientific dictatorship. The Canadian branch of the organization was co-founded by the hyperactive Maurice Strong himself in 1970 alongside a nest of Fabians and Rhodes Scholars including Club of Rome devotee Pierre Trudeau. More on this will be said below.
One particularly interesting 1973 propaganda film was produced by ABC News and showcases the Club of Rome-MIT “innovation” on computer modelling. Describing the new modelling technology unveiled by MIT and the Club of Rome, the video’s narrator states:
Click image to watch the video.
“What it does for the first time in man’s history on the planet is to look at the world as one system. It shows that Earth cannot sustain present population and industrial growth for much more than a few decades.”
The 1001 Nature Trust
In order to finance this paradigm shift, the 1001 Nature Trust was founded in 1970 by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.
Bernhard ( founder of the Bilderberg Group in 1954) had worked alongside his close misanthropic associates Prince Philip Mountbatten, and Sir Julian Huxley to create the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1961. The WWF was itself created to raise funds for the previously created International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which was founded by Sir Julian Huxley in 1947. Huxley had been a busy bee, having established UNESCO the year prior with a mandate to revive eugenics and promote world government under new names. When he co-founded the WWF, Huxley was also acting President of the British Eugenics Society.
The plan was simple: each of the 1001 founding members simply put $10,000 into the trust which was then directed towards the green paradigm shift that sought to replace the old paradigm of “saving humanity from empire” towards the new paradigm of “saving nature from humanity” as outlined by Sir King above.
Prominent 1001 Nature Trust members included international royalty, billionaires, and technocratic sociopaths who wanted nothing more than to manage this promised Brave New World as part of the “alpha” caste.
Many of these figures were simultaneously founding members of the Club of Rome, including Canada’s Maurice Strong, who later became Vice President of the WWF under Prince Philip’s presidency.
When Strong became WWF Vice President in 1978, the man he replaced was Maj. Gen. Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. Bloomfield was another 1001 Club founding member whom New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison discovered to be implicated in the Montreal-based assassination of the anti-Malthusian President John F. Kennedy in 1963 via his involvement with Permindex. This same Swiss-based organization served as a cover for various Gladio-connected assassinations including several efforts to kill JFK ally Charles de Gaulle, resulting in that organization’s expulsion from France soon thereafter.
A Word on Maurice Strong
One of Prince Bernhard and Prince Philip’s most powerful “ally” was a man named Maurice Strong, a 1001 Trust founding member who also happened to co-found the World Economic Forum and served as WWF vice-president under Philip from 1976-78. In a 1990 interview with West Magazine, Strong let the cat out of the bag, asking rhetorically:
“What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group’s conclusion is ‘no’. The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
It is important to recall that Maurice Strong’s remarks took place in the context of a “fictional book” he wished to write that would take place at the World Economic Forum- a group he and Kissinger led in co-founding 20 years earlier using a German cardboard cut out named Klaus Schwab. In 2015, Klaus eulogized Strong by calling him “my mentor.”
While some apologists dismiss the sociopath’s remarks as simple musings over a work of fiction, it is worth considering what Maurice himself announced at the keynote address to the 1992 UN Conference on Population and the Environment in Rio De Janeiro. Strong had been tapped to head this second Earth Summit (the first having been the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment which he also chaired). At this 1992 summit, Strong said:
“Industrialized countries have developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma. It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class, involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing- are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.”
The Rio Summit had established a new era in the consolidation of NGOs and corporations under the “green” agenda. This doctrine was formalized with Agenda 21 (later renamed Agenda 2030) and the Earth Charter, co-authored by Mikhail Gorbachev, Jim MacNeill and Strong between 1996-2000. The International Earth Charter drafting Committee was chaired by none-other than transhumanist billionaire Steven Rockefeller. My God
According to the World Economic Forum’s own website, Prince Bernhard was the primary patron of the infamous 1973 WEF Summit that announced the Davos Manifesto for the first time, laying the groundwork for the theory of technocratic feudalism with a loose capitalist veneer known as “Stakeholder Capitalism.” It was also at this 1973 Summit, that the Club of Rome was first introduced to the world scene in order to present a new program for population control.
Limits to Growth
The document which became the bible and blueprint of this new anti-humanist movement that birthed today’s Green New Deal agenda was titled Limits to Growth(1972) and today holds the record as the most widely read book on ecology, having sold 30 million copies published into 32 languages.
A recent article celebrating the book’s 40-year anniversary stated “it helped launch modern environmental computer modeling and began our current globally focused environmental debate. After Limits [To Growth], environmentalists, scientists and policy-makers increasingly thought of ecological problems in planetary terms and as dynamically interconnected… It is worth revisiting Limits today because, more than any other book, it introduced the concept of anthropocentric climate change to a mass audience.”
The book itself was the culmination of a two-year study undertaken by a team of MIT statisticians under the nominal heading of Jay Forrester and Dennis Meadows.
Here’s a February 2022 video of Dennis Meadows musing over his hopes that the coming inevitable genocide of 80% of the world population could be accomplished peacefully under a “benevolent” dictatorship.
The MIT study itself did not even begin in the USA, but rather in Montebello Quebec in 1971, when Club of Rome-backer Pierre Trudeau allocated tax payer money to initiate the project. A network of Rhodes Scholars and Privy Councillors centered around Alexander King, Maurice Strong, Maurice Lamontagne (founder of Environment Canada), Marc Lalonde (Rhodes Scholar, Trudeau advisor and head of the Prime Ministers Office), Michael Pitfield (Privy Council Clerk and founder of Canada’s CSIS) and Rhodes Scholar Governor General Roland Michener, among others, had presided over that meeting. When the Canadian funds had served their role, the project continued to receive its funding from the Aurelio Peccei’s Volkswagen Foundation.
Caption: Sir Alexander King (left) and the model produced by the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth predicting an apocalyptic end of the world by 2000 (right)
The Chaining of Prometheus
A long time, London-trained asset and close collaborator of Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was Maurice Lamontagne, a Club of Rome member and former President of Canada’s Privy Council from 1964-65.
Of all of the Club of Rome’s members, Lamontagne was the most candid in identifying the Earth’s greatest enemy to be human creativity itself. Writing in his Senate Committee Reports of 1968-1972 which reformed science policy funding and planning, Lamontagne wrote:
“Nature imposes definite constraints on technology itself and if man persists in ignoring them the net effect of his action in the long run can be to reduce rather than to increase nature’s potential as a provider of resources and habitable space… But then, an obvious question arises: How can we stop man’s creativeness?”
Correctly recognizing that the yearning to discover the unknown is built into the human condition, Lamontagne answers his own question, writing:
“How can we proclaim a moratorium on technology? It is impossible to destroy existing knowledge; impossible to paralyze man’s inborn desire to learn, to invent and to innovate… In the final analysis we find that technology is merely a tool created by man in pursuit of his infinite aspirations and is not the significant element invading the natural environment. It is material growth itself that is the source of conflict between man and nature.”
Thus, creativity and its fruits of technological progress are acceptable only IF they reduce the assumed conflict between man and nature posited by Lamontagne. “Bad” technology in Lamontagne’s formulation, has the effect of increasing humanity’s material growth (i.e.: powers of productivity). If, on the other hand, we promote technologies of a low energy flux density form, such as windmills, solar panels and biofuels, which reduce the energy available and thus the amount of economic activity in which man can engage, then technology can be defined as a “good” thing” according to this twisted logic.
This concept was echoed by another Club of Rome member and collaborator with Lamontagne on his Senate Report named Omond Solandt. Solandt made his career as the science advisor to Lord Louis Mountbatten (Prince Philip’s mentor) during WWII and headed Canada’s Defense Research Board until 1957, where he collaborated on MK Ultra alongside the infamous Ewan Cameron at McGill University. Testifying to the Lamontagne Senate Commission in 1970 Solandt said:
“There is no longer any need to advance science. The need is rather to understand, guide and use science effectively for the welfare of mankind.”
What defines “the welfare of mankind” in the mind of an MK Ultra proponent should give one chills.
In preparation for the “post-industrial order” that was unleashed with the 1971 floating of the US dollar and the destruction of the Bretton Woods monetary system, Lamontagne prescribed that the “new wisdom” should no longer aim at discoveries in atomic, medical and space sciences, in order to focus on more “practical” engineering endeavors. He also proposed that funding to advanced science be diminished by widening the definition of “science” itself to embrace the humanities, monetary economics and social sciences. Those programs then began absorbing the funding that had formerly been directed to research on pure science. Lamontagne stated this in volume one of his report:
“The new wisdom prescribes that the additional R&D effort be devoted to the life sciences and social sciences rather than the physical sciences… to economic and social objectives rather than curiosity and discovery.”
In Defense of Prometheus
One leading Canadian scientist took an early stand against this Club of Rome-driven transformation. Ronald Hayes, professor of environmental science at Dalhousie University and Canadian civil servant wrote his 1973 book “The Chaining of Prometheus: The Evolution of a Power Structure for Canadian Science”, where he identified Lamontagne as a minion of the god Zeus as portrayed in Aeschylus’ famous drama Prometheus Bound. The ancient Greek drama told the story of the demi-god Prometheus who was punished for 10,000 years for the defiant act of teaching humanity how to use the Fire which Zeus had monopolized for himself.
Attacking the call to deconstruct the entire 1938-1971 science funding structure and rebuild it under a new technocratic regime, Professor Hayes called out the concerted attack on the National Research Council of Canada which had been the driving force of technological progress since WWII saying:
“Lamontagne wants to destroy the National Research Council, the body that has nurtured and launched much of the government research and got the graduate programs going in our universities. It is a fault of the Trudeau administration which Lamontagne echoes.”
Hayes attacked the newly-formed powers of the Treasury Board which were now given exceptional control of science policy under a new scientific dictatorship when he said:
“The most subtle exercise of power, which obviates the necessity of close control, is infiltration by reliable people- the creation of a ruling elite…These Englishmen became known the world over as the rulers of the British Empire… With somewhat similar aims, the Public Service Commission is grooming future Canadian government managers to follow the general policies and precepts of the Treasury Board.”
Predictive Models Take Over Actual Thinking
Although Professor Hayes was right to attack the terrible fraud that was being committed under the helm of Senator Lamontagne’s reform of Canadian science funding in 1973, he neglected the global changes which the Club of Rome’s predictive modelling revolution had set into motion.
The Club of Rome’s 1972 Limits to Growth was the first of its kind to fuse together global temperature with economic variables like population growth, resource loss, and the under-defined category of “pollution”. By utilizing linear equations to extrapolate trends into the future, the Club of Rome had set the stage for two major fallacies:
Fallacy #1 – The fabric of physical space time shaping the discoverable universe is intrinsically non-linear and thus not expressible by any form of linear equations regardless of the computing power involved. Human creative mentation is most explicitly non-linear as it is tied to non-formalizable states of existence like inspiration, love of truth, dignity, and beauty which no binary system can approximate. The Club of Rome programmers ignored these facts and assumed the universe was as binary as their software.
Fallacy #2 – The data sets themselves could easily be skewed and re-framed according to the controllers of the computer programmers who aspired to shape government policy. We have already seen how this technique was used to drive fallacious results of future scenarios under the hand of Imperial College’s Neil Ferguson and the same technique has been applied in ecological modelling as well.
This use of skewed, under-defined statistics, projected into the future in order to “act preventatively on future crises” became a hegemonic practice for the next 40 years and has been used by neo-Malthusians ever since to justify the increased rates of war, poverty and disease across the world.
With the Limits to Growth computer models, a scientific veneer was given to the cultish efforts of fringe neo-Malthusians like Stanford University’s Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book The Population Bomb tried to forecast an inevitable global planetary crisis where oil would dry up, arable lands would dry away and resources would disappear by the year 2000. Ehrlich’s cynical thesis won over a cult following but due to its airy generalizations, it didn’t win many converts among policy making or scientific circles. The club of Rome changed all of that, making Ehrlich’s book a best seller by 1972.
To get a sense of the roots of Ehrlich’s Malthusian outlook, it is worth appreciating his hateful concept of human nature as little more than thoughtless cancer cells growing at geometric rates and slowly killing its host. In his 1968 book, he wrote:
“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people… We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”
Ehrlich’s protégé John Holdren, who helped lead the shutdown of NASAs manned space systems and slashed what little remained of an American fusion program as Obama’s science Czar from 2009-2017, added his voice to this new Malthusian priesthood in his 1977 book Ecoscience (co-authored with Ehrlich).
On pg. 942 we find a clear blueprint for a system of green global governance which the duo saw as the only solution to the oncoming population bomb:
“Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime- sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market. The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.”
Under this heartless logic, nation states simply had to be converted into tools for imposing depopulation programs rather than naively endeavoring to end colonialism, poverty and war as John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Charles de Gaulle, Daniel Johnson, Enrico Mattei or Martin Luther King had once attempted.
The Problem of Discoveries
Of course, if one did not wish to accept the “solutions” proposed by the neo-Malthusians then an alternative path would need to be adopted. This healthier outlook was contingent upon the cultivation and application of new pioneering discoveries without killing “useless eaters” but it would also increase the “unpredictability factor” which mathematical control freaks could never tolerate.
In the pro-growth cultural dynamic of the 1960s and 1970s, the master key to this new age of abundance was understood to be found in the domain of fusion energy. The processes of fusing atoms like helium and hydrogen isotopes in order to generate vast amounts of energy had been harnessed after WWII, but sadly the application of this technology had only known destructive ends via thermonuclear weapons. However, there was no reason to think that peaceful uses of this immense power could not be made available if moral national policies could encourage it. The heat and energy densities of atomic fusion were incredible with a spoonful of ocean water yielding greater energy availability than thousands of barrels of oil.
But for followers of “World Problematique” emerging into dominant positions of government within the Trilateral Commission and World Economic Forum, this “solution” was only the gateway to more problems.
In 1975, Ehrlich stated that in his view,humanity’s acquisition of fusion energy was “like giving an idiot child a machine gun.” In 1989, faced with the prospect of Cold fusion’s realization, John Holdren ruminated that developing fusion energy was undesirable because it would only enflame mankind’s “‘pave the planet and paint it green’ mentality.”
At that same time, Jeremy Rifkind, Third Industrial Revolution author and fringe activist-turned-international climate advisor to the UN, stated “the prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
In true Pygmalion fashion, the oligarchy was able to “scientifically justify” their misanthropic view of global governance by first breaking humanity’s kneecaps and then arguing that we were never meant to run.
Take, for instance, the fact that the slashing of fusion power research begun under the Trilateral Commission-controlled Presidency of Jimmy Carter, which has continued unabated until the present day.
Not only did actual funding fall far below the minimum requirements to build and activate prototypes of new designs, but starting in 1977 the funding was increasingly redirected towards “zero-technological growth” forms of energy like windmill and photovoltaic cell technology. Even conventional domains of nuclear energy research like the closing of the fuel cycle using fast breeder reactors which the USA once championed were killed by Executive Order and buried under moratoria during the 1970s. One of the key figures in this attack on fusion was a RAND Corp alum and former CIA director, James Schlesinger, then serving as Secretary of Energy under Carter. Schlesinger amplified regulatory laws and cut funding in fusion despite milestones being reached in Los Alamos and Princeton in 1976. Schlesinger’s worldview as a priest of doom was defined in a 1960 book where he said:
“Economics is the science of choice in a world of limited resources…. We have gone around the world spreading the ‘gospel of plenty’ raising the level of expectations … [but] in the nature of things, these rising expectations can never be satisfied…. We must in our strategic policy return to the days before the Industrial Revolution … [and] prepare to fight limited wars.”
“Assistance for population moderation should give emphasis to the largest and fastest growing developing countries where there is a special US and strategic interest.”
Among those developing nations targeted for population reduction, NSSM-200 listed birth control and the withholding of food as primary tools. Kissinger cynically wrote:
“is the US prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can’t/won’t control their population growth?”
Throughout the 1970s, the Trilateral Commission/Council on Foreign Relations cabal under the direction of Kissinger, David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski completely took over American foreign policy and launched a new economic program which Trilateral Commission member Paul Volcker called “the controlled disintegration of the economy.”
Upon attaining chairmanship of the Federal Reserve in 1979, Volcker put this policy to work by raising interest rates to 20% and keeping them there for another two years- destroying America’s small and medium agro-industries while only leaving a cartel of corporate behemoths capable of surviving such draconian rates. Real growth plummeted, long term planning was forgotten and deregulation ushered in vast speculation, which replaced the formerly dirigistic (nationally directed) forms of capitalism that made the west viable in previous ages.
The collapse of US manufacturing as the nation was induced to slide ever more deeply into a new “services economy” paradigm of speculation and consumerism.
The global transformation unleashed with Nixon-Schultz 1971 destruction of the gold reserve was always driven by an intention to replace national systems of economic planning with a new anti-nation state system driven by myopic speculation.
In this new system, being a good citizen meant only being a good consumer where the worship of short-term gains blinded corrupt fools to the reality that a hive of oligarchs were taking control of mainstream media, science, academia, corporate governance and the civil service of governments across the Trans Atlantic. Under this post 1971 paradigm, concepts like “growth” were increasingly defined by purely quantitative-monetaristic parameters and premised upon increased rates of debt and speculative activities.
All investments into authentic forms of scientific and technological progress of the sort that overcame humanity’s “carrying capacities” were increasingly shut down, while new categories of technological progress were created. “Technologies” and “innovations” that diminished humanity’s power to overcome its limits to growth were encouraged in the form of “appropriate technologies” like windmills and “biotechnology.” Information systems technologies were transformed from supportive components of productive economic activity, into the dominant forces of economic considerations as better computers were brought online. Under this new Malthusian ethos, “technology” would become merely a tool to enslave the masses, and would lose its traditional spirit of creative emancipation of humanity.
As already stated, fusion energy research was systematically destroyed. Investments into space exploration was slashed as NASA’s Apollo Program was officially cancelled in 1973, and NASA’s funding collapsed from 4% GDP in 1965 to less than 1% by 1975 (see graph). Infrastructure investments dried up and America’s age of nuclear power construction was shut down.
Keeping the world addicted to oil
Last but not least, the new rules of the “Great Game” unleashed by Kissinger and the Trilateral Commission was vectored around an oil-driven economic order.
As researcher William Engdahl demonstrated in his 1992 Century of Oil, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had more of a role in manufacturing this crisis from scratch by keeping hundreds of tankers replete with petrol from being unloaded in the USA and facilitating the 400% increase with the assistance of several high level oil ministers in the Middle East beholden to Kissinger. In recent years, Saudi Arabia’s former OPEC minister at the time corroborated Engdahl’s research, stating:
“I am 100 per cent sure that the Americans were behind the increase in the price of oil. The oil companies were in real trouble at that time, they had borrowed a lot of money and they needed a high oil price to save them.”
With this 1973 sleight of hand, the stage was set for a new takeover of the world as a new lie was launched that asserted that all ideas of “the future” could only be accessed by linear equations extrapolated into the future. Predictive computer modelling measuring the diminishing rates of oil, coal and natural gas as well as arable land for food production, a new age of scarcity could be imagined that involved a closed world of diminishing returns.
Predictive Modelling as Social Control
In today’s language, this practice of ‘predictive modelling’ is reflected in the central banking high priest (and UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance) Mark Carney’s calls for a new financial system to promote a decarbonized society by 2050. Carney’s professed urgency is based on “predictive models” that state that the world will heat 1.5 degrees according to a presumed connection to carbon dioxide emissions. Per Carney and his associates, this can only be corrected if we monetize carbon and make it profitable to shut down human industrial activity.
As it turns out, when compared to the real data, not only does one quickly find that the post 1977 warming trend ended in 1999, but the actual temperature falls well below all computer projections produced by the IPCC (which is to environmental policy what the WHO is to health policy).
This hysterical prediction is also seen in Prince (now King) Charles’ obsessive warnings that the world has 18 months to save itself before “predictive modelling” says that global warming becomes unstoppable and the earth burns in a dystopic inferno!
“The more people there are, the more resources they’ll consume, the more pollution they’ll create, the more fighting they will do. We have no option. If it isn’t controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily by an increase in disease, starvation and war. …In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”
One should not make the mistake of separating Philip’s misanthropic statements with his active role in co-founding the controlled opposition global “ecology” movement alongside Bilderberg group founder Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands.
The Great Reset: An Oligarch’s Wet Dream
When one reviews the nature of those reforms on the World Economic Forum’s websites which are intended to replace the policies of the pre-COVID era, it becomes crystal clear that this Great Reset (which combines full spectrum remedies to the dual crises of COVID and Global Warming), is merely another attempt to steer humanity into a techno-feudal, depopulated cage under a system of global governance managed by social engineers and their oligarchical patrons.4
Just as the deadly remedies proposed to solve those fake crises of pandemics have always been the objective of Imperial College’s fraud, so too has the remedy of “decarbonization” of industrial civilization been the deadly goal behind the war on global warming which computer models have convinced the world is the primary existential threat to humanity since 1972. Just like the WHO’s demands that national sovereignty be cancelled in order for “the greater good” to be defended by a supranational medical regime, the same argument for a world government has been championed by supporters of the man-made global warming thesis for over 50 years. For those unfamiliar with the facts of the computer generated chimera of “man-made global warming”, I refer you to my recent essay In Defense of CO2: Astro-Climatology, Climategate and Common Sense Revisited.
Today, those “solutions” take the form of Agenda 2030, which pushes for the deconstruction of industrial civilization, the shutdown of agriculture, fossil fuels and the shackling of nations to inefficient forms of energy like windmills, solar panels and biofuels in order to ostensibly save nature from humanity.
In spite of all of the evidence to demonstrate that neither covid-19 nor man-made global warming have any existence beyond the predictive computer models programmed to scare us into believing they do, it is worth asking: How have so many seemingly educated people become persuaded that COVID-19 or climate change are so existentially dangerous that we must shut down the world economy to somehow save ourselves from their supposedly apocalyptic effects?
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1 The ideological blueprint for this applied science of control was outlined decades earlier in the three volume piece co-written by Russell and his fellow Cambridge Apostle Sir Alfred North Whitehead dubbed “The Principia Mathematica” (in honor of Sir Isaac Newton’s plagiarism published three centuries earlier). Both Principias set the stage for systems of political economy that would be used by the British Empire to attempt to control their victims, with Newton’s concepts of mass, forces, attraction and empty space sitting at the heart of the political economic theories of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo and John Maynard Keynes while Russell’s concepts created the ideological foundation for the cybernetics, information theory, systems analysis and the cult of Artificial Intelligence during the last century.
2 A March 25, 2020 edition of Business Insider described Neil’s role in shaping US COVID policy writing: “Dr Deborah Birx, coronavirus response coordinator to the Trump administration, told journalists at a March 16 press briefing that the Imperial paper [Ferguson’s computer projection] prompted the CDC’s new advice to work from home and avoid gatherings of 10 or more.”
3 One particularly notable example is the Merton-Scholes Formula for pricing oil stock prices and derivative contracts after 1973, which won its programmers Nobel Prizes in the 1990s. This “forecasting code” was great at demonstrating nearly infinite rates of monetary growth but was incompetent at identifying the real-world boundary conditions, which ultimately caused their predictions to fail every single occasion they were applied.
4 I say “merely another attempt” because this is not the first time a post-nation state transhuman world order has been attempted over the past century, and studying the REASONS for the failures of the previous three attempts would be a valuable exercise for anyone wishing to survive the current storm.
The Clash of the Two Americas
Vol. 1 & 2
by Matthew Ehret
In his new two volume series The Clash of the Two Americas, Matthew Ehret introduces a new analysis of American history from the vantage point that the globally-extended supranational shadow government that managed the British Empire was never fully defeated and has acted within the USA itself since 1776 as a continuous multi-generational fifth column managing every significant event and assassination of American presidents for the next 250 years.
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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***
“Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerors
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture…
Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away…”
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet
Realism has its own moral and intellectual properties and truth cannot be made truer simply by numbers and fake political statements. We, the People of globe, have no passion for war; it is incompatible with human nature whereas peace is the outgrown truth of human consciousness and moral, spiritual and physical balance. The on-going war between Russia-Ukraine and NATO appears to set the psychological agenda undermining a sustainable future for mankind without realizing its real-world affects across the board manifesting frightening waves of fear and hatred across the globe. Fear and hatred are the defining traits used by the warmongers to belittle mankind just as lifeless digits and numbers to be counted in official statistic.
Is the media propaganda a weapon of conquest of human minds, soul and future-making? Come to understand the contemporary issues of the 21st century’s Russian-American and European discards over Ukraine and the future of oil and gas supplies, grain exports and economic relationships all under scrutiny between those who during the 2nd WW stood united against foreign aggression and killings of fellow human beings . There is an amassed collection of fear, ambiguity and distrust that spells out the prevalent reality of current global affairs. There is no corresponding communications and dialogues between the superpowers to change the horrible present into a sustainable and peaceful future for the humanity populating this planet. All that is happening or could happen such as: “Ukraine goes in darkness”, “Russian bombing destroyed Ukraine’s infrastructures”, “NATO not fighting in Ukraine” , “the EU discard over Russian war on Ukraine”, and lot more making sensational headlines. The perplexed statistic of weapons and money to aid Ukraine represents a shaky scenario of encountering the military onslaught, and balancing of reason is missing across the tensions of unrealized possibilities of peacemaking and conflict resolution.
Is there an Irony between Logic and Political Wickedness?
Alexis Carre, the 2022-23 Thomas W. Smith Postdoctoral Research Associate of the James Madison Program, Princeton University (“Europeans Have Weapons but Aren’t Warriors” Foreign Policy: 12/07/22) , argues negating the history of European conquests across Asia, Africa, North Africa and South America as if they went in peace and were not the warriors of horrors, killings and political deception and military occupation. Often crises have multiple spillover agendas for change and surprises. Just as there is an EU, alliance between America and Japan, Russia and China-Japan and so on. Could we imagine the coming of a new age of relationship between Russia, Ukraine and America-led NATO when even most exemplary political vigilance could be liable to unusual surprises?
Ukraine wanted to join the European community-NATO and claims the right of freedom to join any international organizations for its betterment, peace and security. NATO’s formation and scope is limited to nationalistic conventional warfare in the European theatre. One wonders, what wars did NATO fight to protect its ideals and strategic priorities after the 1945 WW? What NATO had to do with Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya? Were these accidental engagements or simply an extension of planned irresistible catastrophic instances of tyranny against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. The history of NATO and its plans and ideological motives are equally distorted and disfigured on the global screen of reason, honesty and accountability.
Is NATO run by the wrong people, glued to wrong thinking and doing the wrong things without any rational sense of time, people’s interest and history? Craig Murray (“NATO-an idea Whose Time has Gone.”: AntiWar.com), former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee, UK, foresees the body as obsolete
It is also the case that the situation in countries where NATO has been most active in killing people, including Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan ……NATO’s attempt to be global arbiter and enforcer has been disastrous at all levels…it is very clever and cynical. NATO provides power to the elite and money to the wealthy.
Leader of Human Consciousness should Think Critically before They Act
Hans Morgenthau(Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 1978): the legendry theorists of the 20th century points out that: “Realism, believing as it does in the objectivity of the laws of politics…politics must be subjected to the dual test of reason and experience…..for realism, theory consists in ascertaining facts and giving them meaning through reason….If we want to know the moral and political qualities of his (politician) actions, we must know them, not his motives.”
We, the People live in a splendid Universe in which planet Earth floats ordained by the commands of God. We are moral beings unlike animals that possess the eyes, ear and other senses but cannot draw logical conclusion from their senses. We, the People draw rational results what we see and what we hear, therefore, we are different, and we cannot act or live animals. There is a moral sense of spirituality and humanity to co-exist in harmony with the rest of all creations on this Earth. Modern wars represent sadistic and cruel minds to undermine human rights, dignity and life. They destroy all that is built over the ages that we call human cultures and civilizations. All of the Abrahamic Faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) reveal the truth of “Trust” – human beings took to be responsible and be at peace with the Nature of Things. This TRUST and its reminder are explicitly mentioned in (The Qur’an, Chapter 33: 72):
“We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth; And the mountains but they refused; To undertake it, being afraid thereof: But man undertook it; He was indeed unjust and foolish.”
We are One Humanity and we are the most intelligent being populating the earth. We can THINK and REASON and cannot act like animals without accountability. The Earth is a living entity and is meant for us – the human beings. We, the People wonder who else except God created life, the Earth and the living Universe floating in space well balanced and functional since time immemorial. Who else other than God determined the Earth spinning of 1670 km per hour? Who else than God ordained it to orbit the sun at 107,000 km per hour? And who else than God made it to spin at 28,437 km per hour at the equator? (See this). Be aware that earth average distance to the Sun is about 93 million miles (105 million km); the distance of Moon from Earth is currently 384,821 kmequivalent to 0.002572 Astronomical Units and if the distance between the Earth-Sun or the Earth-moon were ever to change, there will be no sign of life or habitats left on Earth.
We, the People, wish to rejoice truth, not evil. We, the people of the world enjoin focused minds and imagination to articulate a new world of One Humanity, brotherhood and peaceful co-existence amongst all, free of hatred, fear, wars, encroachment and animosity. We, the people of the globe possess understanding – how to change the egoistic and embittered insanity of the few hate-mongers and warlords into equilibrium of balanced relationship between Man, Life and God- given living Universe in which we reside all.
Every beginning has its end and effective leaders should always be open to listening and learning. President Macron had a phone conversation with President Putin and reasserts the need for futuristic ‘security guarantees’ for Russia to come to peacemaking. President Biden tells audience in Washington that he can speak with President Putin. President Putin shows readiness to talk with Western leaders. What are they waiting for? Why don’t they take initiatives to have a dialogue for a ceasefire and peace treaty? The US, the EU and NATO and Russia should rethink peacemaking, not to enlarge the scope of current conflict in Ukraine. President Putin needs rethinking to be at peace with its neighbors even if its national interest differs and future could be challenging for peaceful co-existence. Most superpowers and their strategic thinkers and political planners lack understanding of the convergent factors of life articulating viable change when it is at the peak of its lifeline. They worship the form and forgot the essence of peace, security, human survival, Planet Earth and global peace and unity of mankind for sustainable future. Raymond Aron, French Political Philosopher and Sociologist offered the following foresight at the dawn of 1939 WW2:
“When one is speaking to people who profess to despise peace, one must say that, if one loves peace, it is not out of cowardice. It is ridiculous to set regimes founded on work against regimes founded on leisure. It is grotesque to believe that cannons can be resisted with butter, or effort with rest.”
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Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Lambert Academic Publications, Germany, 12/2019. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
In recent developments (December 8, 2022), Céline Dion has been diagnosed with a Neurological Disease Called Stiff-Person Syndrome
In an emotional Instagram video shared on Thursday, Céline Dion opened up about her health, which she says will force her to cancel and postpone a series of upcoming concert dates.
“Recently, I’ve been diagnosed with a very rare neurological condition called stiff-person syndrome, which affects something like one in a million people,” she said in her video.
“While we’re still learning about this rare condition, we now know that this is what has been causing all of the spasms that I’ve been having.”
Our thoughts are with Celine Dion.
At this stage, there is no firm evidence that Celine Dion’s neurological condition was triggered by the mRNA vaccine.
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Sustained by media disinformation and fake science, the mRNA vaccine was put forth as a solution to curbing the pandemic. Amply documented, the Covid-19 Vaccine has triggered from the outset in December 2020 an upward trend in mortality and morbidity. The evidence is overwhelming.
Below is the incisive and outspoken article by Dr. Nicole Delépine on the tragic fate of Celine Dion and Justin Bieber.
This is also a message in solidarity with all humanity, particularly children and young adolescents.
On behalf of the victims of the vaccine, it is our sincere hope that renowned artists and World stars will henceforth join the Worldwide campaign and take a firm stance against the Covid-19 vaccine.
We are demanding that the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine be immediately withdrawn and discontinued Worldwide. If you have doubts, read the bombshell Secret Report by Pfizer, which is now in the public domain (released under FOI).
Please forward this article.
Informing people of the dangers of the Covid vaccine, saves lives.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research June 17, 2022, update December 8, 2022
First published on June 17, 2022
***
Given the number of followers of Canadian Singer Celine Dion on Twitter, (924,200 followers), on Facebook more than a million and other networks, we can hope that the misfortunes of this fabulous singer will touch more people than the official sites of EudraVigilance or Vaers [US] more difficult to consult and as a means to inform the public. If only to instill some doubt regarding the dangers of the covid-19 vaccine…
What happened to her?
For the moment her family and/or her agents are feeding reminders of her recordings and concerts etc.. But why this silence, these eternal cancellations of concerts for the moment postponed to September 2023. Who still believes this?
@jjdenoual Nov. 2, 2021:
“Following her second injection of the vaccine against the coronavirus, Celine DION would have been paralyzed and would have cancelled all her concerts! But radio silence in the media, because it would be panic among all the vaccinated!”
@Rideaubleu Oct 31, 2021:
“So let’s recap the rant: a firefighter vaccinates a 12 year old girl, to celebrate the 100000th dose. They offer the child tickets to the Celine Dion concert, a concert that was cancelled because the singer who called for the vaccination is paralyzed. No, this is not a joke.”
Our colleagues of the magazine Public have recently published that the 53-year-old singer would be struck by a singular disease called small fiber neuropathy, a pathology that Celine Dion would have contracted a year ago, “shortly after being vaccinated against Covid without the link being made” openly.
However, she is not known to present the factors described for this disease (mutations in the SCN9A and SCN10A genes, metabolic syndrome, HIV, celiac disease, Sjögren’s syndrome, amyloidosis, chronic inflammatory bowel disease, infectious diseases, hepatitis C, Lyme disease, hypothyroidism, immune system disorders)
Another coincidence?
If this vaccine lead were to be confirmed, Celine would be, like millions of other people, the victim of a worldwide “conspiracy”, as Bob Kennedy Jr. maintains in his book on the subject.
In May 21, Celine said:
“I encourage everyone to get vaccinated because I think that right now it’s the only way to build immunity around the world.”
How did she know that?
How can she make such a statement?
Would she have liked me to replace her to sing on stage? Each one of us has our own job, our own skills.
This manipulation by lobbies and the media must stop.
On May 19, 22, Celine Dion confirmed what everyone feared about her health:
“I’m so sorry to have to change the dates of the European tour again; the first time it was because of the pandemic, now it’s because of my health,” said the singer, now 54 years old.
“To be honest, I’m looking forward to it, but I’m not quite ready yet…” “There’s something major. These famous spasms are starting to become extremely worrying.“
“We wonder if she is not reading a message, we feel extremely sad, as if robotic,” commented Canadian columnist Sophie Durocher after watching the short clip.
“If an artist of Celine Dion’s caliber reports, it’s not because she has a little headache, there is something major. These famous spasms start to become extremely worrying“, she continued to the microphone of a local radio.
“Millions of dollars are at stake! We’ll have to ask ourselves the question. Is Celine Dion going to go back on stage,” she wondered.
According to the British tabloid “The Daily Express”, Celine Dion was suffering from dystonia. A pathology that is characterized by muscle contractions, occurring involuntarily and prolonged.
In short, all these comments confirm the high probability of a post-vaccination neurological disease, evoking the case of Mauricette suffering from Creutzfeldt-Jakob or a related disease.
What was even more shocking and denied for a while was that Celine Dion had been a tenacious advocate of the experimental injection to the point of imposing the vax on her concert audience. She really believed in it and was a victim of her belief!
Vaccination” became a religion.
Devastating. What a pity, what a mistake, what an aberration!
How can artists, far from real medicine and probably too close to journalistic delusions imposed by laboratories eager to sell, enter into this manipulation to the point of finally losing their lives, in any case already their life as an artist.
Corruption is not limited to financial corruption but touches all facets of the human soul, the desire to please, to advise, to play the savior etc…
Tragic story that repeats itself over and over again as the days go by and the toxic effect of these experimental products becomes embedded in the body.
After Celine, Justin Bieber
A second example was revealed in the evening of June 10th 2o22
Agence France-Presse:
“Justin Bieber had hosted a concert in favor of covid pseudo vaccines on June 27, 2020 organized by Global Citizen Ursula with the support of Ursulavon der Leyen, president of the European Commission, Melinda Gates, president of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (Gavi), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, or Derrick Johnson (president of NAACP).”
The young Justin Bieber had, like Celine, asked his concert audience for a triple vaccination.
Remember that this is a 28-year-old pop star – who has 539.2 million followers on social networks. We can imagine the capacity of influence of these stars themselves manipulated by Big Pharma and / or affiliates.
He had already experienced a warning about injections, after the complications of his wife Hailey who despite her young age had suffered a stroke possibly post-vaccination.
Hopefully, his young fans will ask themselves some questions on this occasion and hesitate to go for another injection.
By what tortuous thinking mechanism had he turned into an injection merchant, of which he knew nothing, especially since all the elements were hidden?
The only verifiable certainty was that these substances were experimental, as the clinicaltrials.gov site immediately demonstrated.
They are still experimental and we will have to wait until 2023 to obtain the official data from the trials.
And the UK data given by England’s ONS also demonstrate the lethal danger for the population of the injections.
Thus on June 10, 2022 we learn via twitter
“After his girlfriend, Justin Bieber is in turn seriously ill and forced to interrupt his tour. Triple vaccinated, he had asked his fans for full vaccination schedules to attend his concerts.”
Or via @vl_plus After his wife Hailey was hospitalized for a blood clot in her brain marieclaire.fr/hailey-bieber-…
it’s Justin Bieber himself who suffers from a mysterious illness “that is getting worse” and even forces him to suspend his concerts….mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-…
@AldoSterone111 Justin Bieber is canceling his concerts. He is very sick. His face is paralyzed… Looks like a vaccident. dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/arti…11/06/2022 00:48
“I can’t believe I’m saying this. I’ve done everything to get better but my illness is getting worse.”
The 28-year-old star did not give any details about his mysterious illness .
In short our famous and beautiful singer is disfigured by a facial paralysis well described in the complications of anti-covid vaccination as Bell’s palsy. To present it under the name of Ramsay’s syndrome may be scholarly, but it does not change the fact.
What a misfortune to have made sick these beautiful young people who had the future in front of them and who moreover thought it useful to advise others this absolute delusion.
According to an infectiologist, Justin Bieber’s shingles appeared along the two nerves of the face, the facial and the auditory, that’s why the singer has trouble speaking and surely hearing. Instagram/Justin Bieber
It is necessary to demand that national authorities Worldwide put an immediate end to these dangerous injections.
The latter are characterised by devastating short and medium term consequences (myocarditis, sudden death of sportsmen, etc., disease close to the mad cow) and unknown consequences in the long term.
The rapidly fatal evolution of cancers that have been cured for many years or of recent cancers is increasingly observed after the injections, particularly the third one.
It should be remembered that in the first phase of vaccination, only 5% of batches were affected by vaccine accidents. Placebos, different dosages and ingredients. We do not know. What is certain is that since the third dose called booster, the accidents seem more frequent, and faster even if we can also distinguish geographical varieties, which suggests differences in the batches. Russian Roulette … Do you really want to try it?
Transferred from The Uncensored Truth on Telegram
“Justine Bieber: facial paralysis… The 28-year-old Canadian star has to cancel two dates of her Toronto tour (or more) due to this complication that causes paralysis of part of her face.
In the video posted on the social network Instagram, Justin Bieber appears, facing the camera, unable to blink his right eye, his mouth half blocked.
“I can no longer smile on this side, I am paralyzed from a part of the face”
“My heart breaks to have to postpone these upcoming shows (doctors orders). To all my people, I love you guys so much and I’m going to rest and get better.”
In the clip released Friday, Justin showed the devastating effects of his diagnosis by showing that his eye would not blink, could not smile and the nostril would not move on the right side of his face.
He explained:
“So there is complete paralysis on that side of my face. So for those who are frustrated with my cancellations of upcoming shows, I’m just physically obviously not able to do them. It’s pretty serious as you can see.”
Conclusion
In conclusion, let’s wish these artists and the many other victims of the injections the best recovery possible.
Nevertheless, let’s hope that in the future, artists, sportsmen, politicians, associations, etc… will avoid launching advertising campaigns for vaccines and/or drugs (supposedly miraculous), and/or screening tests etc. for which they do not have the background data (often hidden). To each their own.
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Three states. Same incumbent. Comparable levels of non-performance. Simultaneous elections. Yet very different outcomes.
What explains this?
A student of comparative politics would love a puzzle like this one. Similarity of background conditions and difference in political outcomes is the stuff of systematic study of politics. From Aristotle to Tocqueville, great political theorists have insisted that careful comparison could yield deep insights into the way politics works on the ground.
Let us use this method to make sense of the MCD polls in Delhi and the state elections in Gujarat and Himachal. Election Commission of India and the State Election Commission of NCT Delhi ensured a synchronisation of the assembly and municipal elections. Notwithstanding the dubious nature of the decision, students of political science would be grateful to them for arranging this “natural experiment”. You might say that state elections cannot be compared to municipal elections, but there were more voters in MCD than in Himachal Pradesh. For all practical purposes, MCD can be treated as a state election.
You might think it is too early to draw definite conclusions. As of now, we just have exit polls for Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and the counting for MCD is still on. For the present purpose, however, the broad trends we know so far are enough. I assume that the BJP is poised for a very big, possibly unprecedented victory in Gujarat with nearly 20 percentage points vote share lead over Congress. For MCD, we already know that the AAP is headed for a clear majority with a vote share lead of around five percentage points. Exit polls do not give us confidence to tell who might form the government in Himachal. But we do know that it is a close race in terms of votes. The Congress might just scrape through, or may well lose the election that it was favoured to win.
Three states three outcomes
Unless exit polls are completely off the mark, we may go ahead and press our question: why do we see three radically different outcomes in three comparable situations? Why has the incumbent BJP been removed in the MCD, is unsure of a victory in Himachal Pradesh and given a resounding mandate in Gujarat? Why three different shades of reverses for the Congress: a positive swing in Himachal, a status quo in Delhi and a rout in Gujarat? Similarly, why has the AAP faced different fates: non starter in Himachal, early breakthrough in Gujarat and clear majority in Delhi?
The answer does not lie in the initial conditions. The victory margin of the BJP was similar in all the three elections held in 2017: in Himachal and Gujarat it was exactly 7 percentage points, and 9 percentage points in Gujarat.
Nor do we resolve this puzzle by differences in performance and the perception of the incumbent. Frankly, all the three governments were rather poor performers. The three Municipal Corporations of Delhi, all controlled by the BJP for 15 years, were a model of poor metropolitan governance, with shocking failure on sanitation, drainage and education. The BJP government in Gujarat, incumbent for 27 years now, has very little to show on human development indicators like poverty, education and heath, besides high corruption. By the comparatively high standards of Himachal, the BJP ran a poor government in the state. Jobs, inflation, pensions and road connectivity have emerged as the main concerns of voters in Himachal, according to ground reports. In all cases, this anti-incumbency was reflected in popular sentiment. At least in latent form if not manifest. In Gujarat for instance, even though a Lokniti-CSDS Pre Poll survey found a fairly high satisfaction level among voters with the BJP government, seven out of 10 voters also described it as corrupt and half the voters said that Parivartan (change) would be a ‘very important’ issue for them while voting.
Nor can we explain the different verdicts by falling back on some generic explanations. If Modi magic is to be given the credit for the BJP’s victory in Gujarat and its honorable performance in Himachal, why did it not work in Delhi? Similarly, the BJP’s big advantage over all its opponents in terms of money, media and organisational machine is a constant in all elections. It gives the BJP an edge in every election, but does not explain the difference in these three states. State leadership of the incumbent does not help either, as the BJP has pretty non-descript leaders in all the three states. Party factionalism is no doubt a factor, especially in Himachal. But this factor is also beginning to be a constant. Like the Congress in its heydays, factionalism is becoming a structural feature of the BJP.
What works for the BJP
The real difference that works in the BJP’s favour is in the nature of the opposition and what it does. Specifically, three things make a difference.
One, there needs to be a clear principal challenger to the BJP. In AAP, there was a clear challenger to the BJP in Delhi. In Himachal too, Congress remained the main challenger. There was no significant split in opposition votes in Himachal. Gujarat stands out as an exception. Exit polls suggest that the AAP may have secured anywhere around 20 per cent votes, a significant leap for the new entrant, and effectively split the opposition votes. The same vote share that gave the BJP a very narrow victory in 2017 may be enough for a landslide.
Two, the main challenger has to have a clear message and an identifiable messenger. The Congress raised some issues in Himachal, but it is not clear if it had any clear message in Delhi and Gujarat. It failed to present a clear leader in any of these states. On the contrary, the AAP was sharp with its issues in Gujarat and Delhi. It did not need a new face in Delhi, with Arvind Kejriwal in the saddle. And it took the risk to project a new face in Gujarat. This seems to have paid off.
Three, the opposition has to put up a determined, well organised fight.
In this respect, too, the Congress was wanting in all the three states. There does not seem to be a clear strategy that was effectively executed in any of the three states. It could have taken advantage of its weakness in MCD to present a new leadership, but it did not. In Gujarat, it did not fight as a cohesive organisation with a clear focus and sense of purpose. Himachal was a shade better but not good enough to take full advantage of its big initial lead. On the contrary, the AAP demonstrated strategy and determination. Its strategy is to wreck the Congress, no matter what, an approach that coincides with the BJP’s goal of a Congress-mukt Bharat. The party appears to have worked perfectly on this strategy. Once it realised that Himachal was not working out, it simply withdrew resources and energies from that state. It put all the energy, and its newly acquired money, into achieving a breakthrough in Gujarat. And it led a sustained campaign in MCD. This appears to have paid off.
This is not a new revelation. The same lesson could be drawn from the BJP’s defeat in West Bengal.
And come to think of it, the lesson from the success of the historic farmer’s struggle is no different: Narendra Modi is not omnipotent. The BJP is vulnerable and can be defeated. But only if the opposition is determined, tenacious and strategic. It is still not too late to learn this lesson for 2024.
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This article was originally published on The Print.
Yogendra Yadav is among the founders of Jai Kisan Andolan and Swaraj India. Views are personal.
Featured image: AAP supporters in Delhi watch the Municipal election results on a big screen. | Photo by Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint
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The German leader just published what can be interpreted as his manifesto explaining why his country must supposedly restore its prior hegemonic status, and it was released by none other than the same magazine run by the Council on Foreign Affairs, which is regarded as among the most influential policymaking platforms in the US-led West’s Golden Billion. The very fact that they ran his manifesto can be regarded as this de facto New Cold War bloc’s tacit support for Germany’s hegemonic ambitions.
Poland Isn’t As Paranoid As Some Speculated
Polish grey cardinal Jaroslaw Kaczynski wasn’t off the mark in recentlywarning against German domination of Europe in comments that echoed those from a year ago wherein he accused that country of wanting to build a “Fourth Reich”. His country previously hyped up its neighbor’s military threat to Central Europe in order for Warsaw to consolidate its regional influence, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s manifesto for Foreign Affairs magazine proves that Berlin’s hegemonic ambitions do indeed exist.
Germany’s New Strategic Culture
Titled “The Global Zeitenwende: How to Avoid a New Cold War in a Multipolar Era”, the German leader articulated the range of means that the EU’s de facto leader is poised to employ for comprehensively entrenching its influence across the bloc on the basis of supposedly reacting to the UkrainianConflict. The first one-third of the piece is just an explanation of how everything got to this point from his government’s perspective, but then he transitions to talking about tangible policies.
In Scholz’s words, “Germany’s new role will require a new strategic culture, and the national security strategy that my government will adopt a few months from now will reflect this fact”, which frames everything that follows in his article. Russia is the primary target of this strategy as proven by the Chancellor declaring that “the guiding question will be which threats we and our allies must confront in Europe, most immediately from Russia.”
He then patted himself on the back for pushing through constitutional reforms earlier in the year for facilitating his government’s plans to expound approximately $100 billion in modernizing the Bundeswehr, which he accurately described as “mark[ing] the starkest change in German security policy since the establishment of the Bundeswehr in 1955.” Two percent of GDP will also be invested in defense in accordance with the US’ prior demands of its NATO partners.
“Military Diplomacy”
Complementary with Germany’s unprecedented post-World War II military buildup is Scholz’s policy of reversing its prior refusal to export arms to active conflict zones in order to equip Kiev. Not only that, but his country will also train an entire brigade of Ukrainian troops on its territory as part of a new EU mission alongside replacing Soviet-era arms that former Warsaw Bloc countries give Kiev with modern German ones.
Beyond its borders, Scholz said that “Germany has significantly increased its presence on NATO’s eastern flank, reinforcing the German-led NATO battle group in Lithuania and designating a brigade to ensure that country’s security. Germany is also contributing troops to NATO’s battle group in Slovakia, and the German air force is helping monitor and secure airspace in Estonia and Poland. Meanwhile, the German navy has participated in NATO’s deterrence and defense activities in the Baltic Sea.”
Of particular concern was the Chancellor reaffirming that “Germany will continue to uphold its commitment to NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements, including by purchasing dual-capable F-35 fighter jets”, which is bound to rattle Russia. Quite clearly, Scholz intends for Germany to compete with Poland as the US’ top military proxy in the EU, to which end he’s hoping that Berlin’s more impressive military capabilities and existing nuclear sharing partnership with Washington will give it the edge over Warsaw.
Institutional Expansion
This observation shouldn’t be interpreted as an intent to revise the geopolitical outcome of World War II like some in Poland have speculated with respect to what they refer to as their country’s “Recovered Territories” that now form its border with Germany. Rather, it just means that Germany is becoming more confident flexing its military might in the sense of comprehensively enhancing its partners’ defensive capabilities per their leaderships’ request, though it’s true that this risks making them vassals.
More than likely, Scholz will seek to replicate this exact same strategy across the Western Balkans upon those aspirant states’ ultimate membership in the de facto German-led EU after they complete the so-called Berlin Process that he talked about having revived in his article. Despite acknowledging the difficulties of admitting new members, the Chancellor spoke about the promise that this outcome would have for bolstering the bloc’s potential to set new global standards for trade and the environment, et al.
This ambitious agenda will be advanced in full cooperation with France, according to Scholz, which he described as “shar[ing] the same vision of a strong and sovereign EU.” Migration and fiscal policies must be reformed, he said, in order to prevent external forces like Russia from supposedly exacerbating intra-bloc divisions. His proposed solution for streamlining progress on these sensitive issues is to “eliminat[e] the ability of individual countries to veto certain measures.”
Entrenching Influence
There’s no other way to describe the aforementioned reform than as amounting to an unprecedented political power play exactly of the sort that Hungary and Poland previously warned about. If successful, then it’ll result in the complete subjugation of all EU members to the Franco-German duopoly, thus eliminating those vestiges of sovereignty that they still retain. In other words, this Great Power axis will become the only one that matters in Europe.
It’ll likely be impossible for smaller states to ever restore their lost rights either in the event that Germany assumes direct control over their militaries sometime in the future like Scholz’s proposal for standardizing the EU’s weapons systems very strongly suggests will inevitably happen. That rising hegemon’s expanded military presence along the bloc’s eastern periphery that he spoke so highly about earlier in the article could inevitably lead to that in order to entrench Berlin’s political influence.
Similar so-called “coup plots” like the one that its authorities claim to have foiled on Wednesday could become the pretext upon which Germany assumes direct control over Central European countries’ militaries on the basis of supposedly helping them sustainably ensure “law and order”. Seeing as how those forces might by that time have standardized their weapons systems, they’d be perfectly interoperable with Germany’s, especially if they’ve already carried out multiple joint exercises by then.
The Real China Connection
The rest of Scholz’s article talked a bit about Germany’s forthcoming approach to China, but those plans aren’t as directly relevant to his country’s hegemonic ambitions as those that it’s poised to implement against Russia, hence why they’ll remain outside the scope of the present analysis. Upon reviewing the insight that’s been shared thus far, it’s clear that “Germany’s Century-Long Plot to Capture Control Of Europe Is Almost Complete”, with each passing day reducing the likelihood of offsetting this scenario.
Its leader just published what can be interpreted as his manifesto explaining why Germany must supposedly restore its prior hegemonic status, and it was released by none other than the same magazine run by the Council on Foreign Affairs, which is regarded as among the most influential policymaking platforms in the US-led West’s GoldenBillion. The very fact that they ran his manifesto can be regarded as this de facto New Cold War bloc’s tacit support for Germany’s hegemonic ambitions.
The takeaway is that America aspires to restore its declining unipolar hegemony by facilitating Germany’s hegemonic revival in order to rely on that country as its premier “Lead From Behind” (LFB) proxy for managing the Golden Billion’s anti-Russian containment efforts in Europe. This policy is aimed at allowing the US to focus more on expanding NATO to the Asia-Pacific so as to advance its anti-Chinese containment efforts in the other half of Eurasia.
That incipient development is meant to make it more likely that the People’s Republic agrees to America’s terms for the series of mutual compromises between them for establishing a balance of influence that’ll eventually become the “new normal”. It’s important for these two superpowers to make tangible progress on the NewDétente ahead of Secretary of State Blinken’s planned trip to Beijing sometime early next year, ergo the timing behind Foreign Affairs’ publication of Scholz’s manifesto.
Concluding Thoughts
The grand strategic context within which he articulated Germany’s hegemonic ambitions is therefore to facilitate its American patron’s gradual refocusing away from Western Eurasia towards its Eastern half as his country assumes the role of the US’ top LFB proxy in Europe for containing Russia. This sequence of events for enhancing the West’s containment of China is tacitly endorsed by the Golden Billion’s elite as evidenced by Foreign Affairs publishing his related article, thus confirming that the US’ plan is in motion.
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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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Members of the World Health Organization (WHO), an unelected international public health agency, are meeting to consider a draft version of a proposed international pandemic treaty which will give the WHO new powers to “tackle false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation” and be legally binding under international law.
The draft treaty contains various provisions in Article 16 (“Strengthening pandemic and public health literacy”) that require the WHO’s 194 member states (which represent 98% of all the countries in the world) to target so-called misinformation.
Member states are told to “conduct regular social media analysis to identify and understand misinformation,” design their own messaging to “counteract misinformation, disinformation and false news,” and manage “infodemics” (a phrase that was created by the WHO and describes “too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak”).
While the provisions in Article 16 don’t directly call for member states to censor content that’s deemed to be misinformation, a provision in Article 14 (“Whole-of-government and other multisectoral actions”) paves the way for Big Tech to perform this censorship on the WHO’s behalf.
Under this provision, member states are required to collaborate with non-state actors and the private sector through an “all-encompassing whole-of-government, multistakeholder, multi-disciplinary and multi-level approach.”
Under the pandemic treaty, the ties between governments and pro-censorship Big Tech companies will become even stronger and collaboration will be required.
We obtained a copy of the draft international pandemic treaty for you here.
Additionally, the idea that the WHO should be acting as an arbiter of truth is especially ironic given that it was one of the most infamous producers of misleading information during the Covid pandemic. In a January 14, 2020 tweet, the organization stated that “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of the coronavirus.
The meeting to discuss the draft treaty began on December 5 and will run till December 7. It’s being attended by members of an intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) that was established by the World Health Assembly (WHA), the decision-making body of the WHO, in December 2021.
The INB was tasked with drafting and negotiating a “global accord on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.” This global accord has become known as the international pandemic treaty.
Based on the current proposed timeline, the INB expects to finalize the international pandemic treaty by May 2024 and present a final report to the seventy-seventh WHA meeting.
We obtained a copy of the INB’s current proposed timeline for you here.
If passed, the international pandemic treaty will be adopted under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution. This article gives the WHA the power to impose legally binding conventions or agreements on WHO member states if two-thirds of the WHA vote in favor of them.
This process of lawmaking circumvents the usual process of elected officials voting on the laws that apply to their country by allowing a handful of global representatives to decide on the rules that apply to all countries. Even if representatives from a third of the WHO’s member states vote against the international pandemic treaty, it will still be applied to their country under international law.
Not only does this process limit the power of politicians to decide on the laws that apply to their specific country but it also limits the power of citizens to hold politicians accountable at the ballot box. Most of the representatives for member states are unelected diplomats who remain in their positions, even when new governments are elected. And most of the votes that determine whether an international law applies to a specific country are cast by representatives from other countries.
Despite this undemocratic process, the international pandemic treaty has the support of numerous democratic countries including the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the European Council (EC) (which represents 27 European Union (EU) member states).
Some politicians from these countries have opposed the treaty and several petitions, including those that can force a parliamentary debate on the treaty, have gained traction.
However, the international pandemic treaty is still very much on track to being finalized by May 2024 and the WHO has shown no intention of abandoning its far-reaching power grab.
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Parallels between Covid-19 and the Opium Wars
COVID-19 is a global operation run for the benefit of the super-rich that aims to destroy the lives and the minds of the citizens of China, and the world. The current operation in China is most likely directed by private intelligence firms based in the United States, Israel, Great Britain, and also in China. Such private intelligence firms work for the rich, but pretend to be part of the government. They might be considered as “the direct descents” of the British East India Company that planned the first two opium wars.
The British East India Company needed to destroy China in 1840 because it was the one great power that resisted integration into its global trade system controlled by the imperialists and the only great power that possessed an advanced civilization capable of competing with the Western tradition.
There are three main similarities between operation COVID 19 and the Opium Wars
Abuse of medicine for political control
Medicine was a big part of the strategy of the British to take over China in 1840. The British introduced “advanced” Western medicine to the Chinese, suggesting that Western science had produced miracle medicines which could cure any disease. Some medicines were based on real scientific advances, but most of these miracle drugs were powered by addictive opium.
Not only were the sales of these “Western” medicines brimming with opium (heroin) profitable, they also weakened the will of the Chinese, undermined traditional ideologies (including homeopathic medicine) like Confucianism, and they rendered the Chinese as consumers rather than citizens. The ultimate goal was not making Chinese healthy, but creating an apathetic, narcissistic, and indulgent ruling class.
The project was largely successful.
China’s economic independence was undermined gradually over decades as the decision making process within the Chinese government was infiltrated by British agents (mostly Chinese intellectuals who imagined themselves to be reformers). A new generation of Chinese intellectuals also came to power who were brainwashed by books and magazines to see Britain as a more civilized nation.
Chinese youth were taught by the Chinese who had studied in London that England was rich and powerful because of the high moral character of its citizens, because of its advanced systems of education and its use of the scientific method, and because of its remarkable technologies born of an enlightened civilization that the Chinese had failed to achieve. By comparison, Chinese culture was backwards and foolish.
The truth that was hidden from the Chinese seeking salvation in Western modernity was that the wealth undergirding British progress was not generated by the protestant work ethic, or the refined civilization of the upper classes. No! That wealth was the product of the ruthless slave trade wherein millions of Africans were sold to create farms in the “New World” that put ordinary farmers at home out of business and created enormous fortunes for London bankers. That wealth was also generated by the takeover of India, Bangladesh, and Arabia that allowed the British to seize the assets of those nations.
Today, Western pharmaceutical corporations market allopathic medicines in China of doubtful use, employing massive budgets to advertise such products to Chinese as “advanced” western medicine. Many of these medicines contain opium products, or artificial opiates, that are similar in function to the opium used against the Chinese in nineteenth century. Many of these Western medicines are addictive, mood altering, or both.
Chinese suffering from depression because of the brutal contradictions of a decadent capitalist society are told by their doctors that the problem is a disease and they are prescribed “Western” medicines that contain opiates. The process is quite similar to the abuse of opium in China by Western corporations in the 19th century.
The dependency on opium enforced in the 19th century also parallels the forced dependency on vaccines, that is demanded by the state in order to live a normal life in China.
Global crime syndicates like the World Health Organization use false science to undermine the health of the Chinese and to force an artificial dependency on vaccines.
Nor is the promotion of addiction among Chinese limited to pharmaceuticals. The constant push for smart phones, social media, games, and pornography in Chinese society, creating an environment in which literally all citizens have no choice but to carry a smart phone and to respond to its demands. Such actions create artificial new habits and dangerous addictions and dependencies in the Chinese people that allow for further exploitation.
The content of media is not meant to convey information or wisdom, or even to entertain in the traditional sense, but rather to slowly alter the function of the brain by inducing dependency on short-term stimulation (dopamine release) and inhibiting concentration.
Such addictions inhibit complex, three-dimensional thinking, and reduce the ability for long-term planning of the citizen. If you check social media giants like Wechat and Toutiao regularly for a few months you will no longer be capable of thinking for yourself.
The purpose of the new media in China backed by multinational investors is NOT to make Chinese more independent-minded and open to new ideas, but to render them so docile that they will accept a state of virtual confinement.
The second strategy is to destroy the authority and the legitimacy of Chinese culture by promoting as superior an artificial Western culture through images and texts which suggest that the West is attractive, authoritative, fulfilling and materially rich.
That strategy was critical to the success of Britain and other imperialist powers in China after the Opium Wars. Westerners declared that China’s civilization was, by its very nature, backwards and limited. British scholars and missionaries argued that the Chinese characters, Chinese family practices, local customs, even the core of tenets of Chinese philosophy, had to be abandoned before China could become modern and thereby could be saved.
Today, Young Chinese are bombarded with images of Starbucks, Adidas, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton which are designed to make it seem as if Western people (Americans) are rich and self-confident, that they legitimately get pleasure from wasting money on food and drinks.
The lives of privileged people who live in big houses, drive fancy automobiles, are cold and aloof, are presented as something to be envied, as a model for youth. This destructive ideological campaign is not merely an effort to expand market share. It is an operation intended to undermine Chinese cultural authority so that a debased and decadent consumer culture (created in Hollywood with corporate funding) can be fed directly to the people.
Corporate advertising in Qingdao encouraging a narcissistic culture of the privileged
A similar strategy was pursued by imperialist powers in China during the 19th century. Chinese civilization in 1840 was complex and sustainable, as sophisticated in its art, its literature, its learning and its government administration as any nation on earth. The number of books published, the number of educated people, in China was without match in the world.
Ironically, British explicitly imitated the Chinese civil service system in the 1870s when setting up its own civil service system to manage the empire—but only after destroying the Chinese government from within.
The promotion of trains, telegraph lines, postal systems, and electric lights in the 19th century served to undermine the sovereignty of China and to destroy the ability of the Chinese to govern themselves by making accepted practices seem outdated and backwards and demanding that foreign experts (or Chinese trained abroad) to take over large sections of the decision-making process in government. China lost control of its culture, its educational system, and ultimately of its government over the fifty years following the humiliations of the Opium Wars.
If we look at the current ecological crisis, and the decay of human civilization, we cannot help but question whether any of that modernization ideology was founded in scientific truth.
A similar process is taking place today in China whereby technology, in the form of on-line purchasing, geo-fencing, the use of QR codes, the promotion of 5G and a variety of applications controlled by unseen corporate powers are being implemented everywhere in the name of modernity. There is no transparency in China as to how policy decisions are made.
The problem stems not from the authoritarian Communist Party of China, but rather from the privatization of local government resulting from the push for automation and digitalization that is promoted by multinationals like Cisco, SAP, and Amazon.
Store shut down in Changsha by obscure COVID-19 directives and demand for QR codes for use of facilities.
China is not an inscrutable Fu Man-Chu power deviously plotting to take over the world, but rather a victim of multinational corporations determined to destroy any resistance to a neo-liberal consensus in China.
Just as the Qing Dynasty was blamed for the covert attacks of the British East India Company and others, including the horrific crypto-Christian Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) that nearly toppled the dynasty, now the Communist Party of China is blamed for a totalitarian nightmare that was developed by foreign multinational corporations.
This devious scheme to blame the Chinese for the orchestrated controlled demolition of Chinese society is precisely the strategy employed by the British Empire in the Opium Wars.
Of course there are plenty of corrupt members of the CPC up to their elbows in profits from this criminal takeover, but the ultimate power is not the Chinese government.
Many educated Chinese now want to move abroad because of the oppressive “zero-covid” geo-fencing and contact tracing that is being implemented and that is turning Shanghai and Chengdu into the Gaza Strip using the know-how of Israeli subcontractors. Few indeed are able to grasp the true nature of the transformation of China.
The third step in the British assault on China in the nineteenth century was the integration of China into a global trade and finance system that London controlled for the benefit of the few.
China wisely avoided large-scale foreign trade during the Ming and Qing dynasties because of legitimate concerns with food security, economic independence, and the preservation of local economies. The British not only forced trade agreements “unequal treaties” on China, as did other colonial powers, after the Opium Wars, they also cultivated a new crop of Chinese intellectuals in cities like Shanghai who argued that Chinese participation in global trade and finance was the only way to become “advanced.”
A significant group of the wealthy in major Chinese cities see their class interests as aligned with the globalists. They promote AI education that dulls the mind, argue for smart cities that enforce a prison planet culture they embrace an on-line environment that renders the Chinese dependent on foreign IT contractors, and opens the doors wide to foreign manufacturers of drones and robots who intend to further the “Gaza Strip transformation” of China.
Parasitic figures like Warren Buffett are trotted in the Chinese media occupied by the globalists and presented to the public as economic geniuses. Chinese universities, under pressure from corporations demanding “modernization,” have abandoned the economic analysis of class struggle and parasitic global finance that was once standard in favor of misleading globalist growth doctrine.
The intentional flattery of the Chinese by members of the billionaire class like Jim Rogers or John Thornton, and also by professors at Harvard or Stanford, is key to this assault. Chinese are told by corporate media at home and abroad that they will soon overtake the West, that China leads in technology. Huawei and Xiaomi are praised by select Western experts, implying that China offers the world hope for future development.
Although there is some truth mixed in these flattering words, the purpose is devious. Chinese are subject to a propaganda campaign arguing that they must accept Western standards for success (growth, consumption, exports, and digitalization) that will render citizens passive and indulgent, that demand a high level of energy consumption, and that increase reliance on trade and logistics systems controlled by the globalists—if they want to be the great power of the 21st century.
The promotion of endless growth as the ultimate goal of the economy, a policy that lacks any scientific basis, merely increases the use of fossil fuels and demands harmful overproduction in China. Throw-away plastics pollute the ground and the oceans, thousands of unneeded automobiles and computers are produced to meet growth goal set by Westerners.
Marxist Economic Analysis
The plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held on October 23 was distinctive in its clear affirmation of the centrality of Marxist economic theory for the People’s Republic of China. The corporate media immediately attacked President Xi Jinping for being a backwards socialist running against the tide of history. How could it be that China would embrace the discredited and bankrupt ideology of the ruined Soviet Union, Communism?
Recently, Winston Smith argued that the entire World Economic Forum bid to seize control of the global economy is the product of “Communism” in his essay “The Left’s Grasp.” Somehow a viable alternative to control by the globalists is discredited as a puppet of those globalists.
But the consultants for multinational banks had no trouble assessing the threat of this move in China to return to “Marxist economics”.
If China manages to start applying Marxist economic analysis in research, in media analysis, and in economic policy, highlighting class warfare, ideological manipulation, and the misuse of capital and the abuse of overproduction, it would become the only nation in the world to do so, and would do so at precisely the historical moment when such an approach is desperately needed.
The globalists cannot allow China to use Marxism in its analysis because that could make China the a powerful nation not only in an economic sense, but in an intellectual sense as well.
Another danger posed is the centrality of science, and the scientific method of rigorous analysis, to Marxist thought—drawing on the foundations of modern science in the epistemology of Kant and Hegel.
The COVID-19 campaign, whether in China or the United States, was made possible by degrading science, by making hospitals and medical experts puppets of global finance, and by bribing doctors to endorse unscientific policies. In many cases, appeal to the scientific method has become a crime.
COVID-19 is not science at all but rather “sciencism,” the false ideology wherein the authority of the ruling class is disguised as “science.” The ability of the citizen to confirm scientific truth through independent action has been prohibited.
The billionaires are terrified by the potential unleashed by the 20th plenary. Although the globalization, consumption narcissism, and technology fetishism used by globalists to control Chinese remains in place, the relative value of modernization has been weakened. Moreover, the exclusion of Li Keqiang from the Central Committee, a long-time supporter of the globalists, suggested a struggle in the CPC to move away from a globalist vision and restore the Marxist tradition.
Marxism has its clear weaknesses. But compared with the drivel that billionaires pay Harvard Business School professors to teach their students, Marxist economics is an advanced science. If China leads a global Marxist movement based in scientific analysis of the contradictions of the economy and ideology, that will have mass appeal in every country in the world.
Finding a real solution
The ultimate plan of the billionaires behind the current third opium war is to make all citizens of the world, starting with China, dependent on global banks for money, on multinational corporations for food and employment, on IT firms for interaction with others, and confined to their homes where they will be rendered irrelevant through automation.
The only solution to this war on humanity is to give up the entire dangerous developmental growth model that has been promoted by neo-imperialists after the Second World War, to create local cooperatives for agriculture and production, and to create a culture wherein the value of actions is assessed in terms of wisdom, virtue, and sustainability–and not in terms of money.
A return to a truly sustainable civilization that promotes the best for all of humanity for the next thousand years, and that rejects the creation of a slave society through bio-fascism, technology authoritarian, or of genocide. Chinese Confucian and Daoist thought, or even Chinese interpretations of Marx like those of Mao Zedong could offer a real alterative.
The solution to this attack is an alliance between Americans and Chinese against the techno-fascism that has infected those two nations and which is being exported out to the entire world through the American control of ideology and finance and the Chinese control of manufacturing and distribution.
Yet such a powerful alliance of Chinese and Americans against techno-fascism is made impossible by the current “new Cold War” campaigns that make any interaction between the two countries suspect.
The current Third Opium War can only be stopped in its tracks if an alliance between Americans and Chinese of conscience can be assembled that oppose the dark alliance of global finance and IT tyranny that has woven the two countries together in a horrific death pact, a “Frankenstein Alliance.” The time has come to start precisely such a movement.
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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.
Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.
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Imperialism has always been — and always is — control of foreign governments. This is especially control of those governments’ foreign policies — international trade, military, diplomatic, etc., and not merely (if at all) domestic policies (which always are of far less concern to the rulers in the imperial nation — in this case, America).
The present article is dense (containing as much information as perhaps a normal article that’s five times as lengthy) and so it needs to be read slowly, but the topic is crucially important for all Europeans; and is essential for Europeans in order for any democracy to be able to exist in Europe (since democracy is impossible if the public are ignorant or deceived — as is commonly the case):
Prior to the 1991 end of the Soviet Union, America’s imperialism used its European colonies (called “allies” — and which any empire’s colonies or vassal-nations necessarily will be, since the colonies’ foreign policies are always controlled by the imperial nation) as providing military bases(locations to position imperial troops and weapons in order to further-expand the empire), and as being markets for U.S.-manufactured goods, not as being lands from which to extract resources (the traditional “banana republic” vassal-nations).
Military bases continued to be the top (#1) U.S. priority, despite the end of the Soviet threat and Russia’s adopting a democratic Constitution — a Constitution far more democratic than almost any in Europe — and this continued U.S. European military alliance, NATO, demonstrated, and actually proved, that America is imperialistic and had come to be the world’s dominant empire after the Soviet Union’s end. However, increasingly after that time (1991), the second priority, of using Europe as the biggest market for U.S. goods and services, declined. On 9 October 2018, the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank published “Understanding the Roots of the U.S. Trade Deficit” and reported three “Key Takeaways”:
1. Profound economic changes lie at the root of both the U.S. trade deficit and declining manufacturing employment.
2. The role of the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency has helped finance domestic consumption of imported goods.
3. Labor productivity and a shifting of comparative advantage to developing nations explain the loss in manufacturing jobs.
U.S. manufacturing jobs were being transferred to places like China, not to places like Germany. The lowered labor-costs, by manufacturing in under-developed countries, were adding to the wealth of the owners of America’s international corporations (these being the individuals who funded the careers of successful national politicians — members of Congress, and Presidents — and thus control America’s foreign policies), but America’s weapons (products of Lockheed Martin, etc.) continued to be U.S. manufacturing jobs that are (producing products that are) going to places like Germany — NOT (like for consumer products) going to places like China. (Germany is a U.S. vassal-nation, but China is a U.S. target-nation.)
That same study also included this key passage, which pertained to President Richard Nixon’s having gotten America off the gold standard and onto its replacement, the oil standard (with the Saudis):
As saving and investment became mismatched, the saving gap (S[avings] – [minus] I[nvestment]) started to grow more and more negative around the early 1970s [the end of the gold standard], suggesting rapidly accumulating private debt and public debt in the U.S. Figure 2 shows that the cumulative saving-investment gap started to grow in the middle 1970s and ballooned to $11 trillion in recent years, suggesting roughly an equal amount of foreign holdings of U.S. currency and government bonds.
Therefore, the current international monetary system — based on the U.S. dollar as the dominant world reserve currency and U.S. government securities as the most-sought-after store of value — is the root cause of persistent trade deficits in the U.S.
Had the [gold-based] Bretton Woods system been kept in place, the U.S. ability to issue an astronomical amount of U.S. dollars and Treasuries as a substitute for gold in the global market would have been severely constrained, and U.S. trade would have been far more balanced.
However, though that explanation explains why the “Cumulative Saving Gap” didn’t exist, at all, prior to ending the gold standard, the explanation ignores one critically important aspect of the curve that is displayed in “Figure 2” and which aspect is an accelerated increase in that gap (increased downward turn) after around the year 2001.
What had happened in 2001? The 9/11 attacks and the effective elimination of Constitutional rule in the United States: the extreme militarization of America’s economy, and thus the INCREASED importance, to the American economy, of those manufacturing jobs which relied upon the CONTINUED and increasingly important European military market. (For a while, after 9/11, many of the main purchasers of U.S. weapons were in the Middle East, which is the #2 foreign profit-center for U.S. arms-makers, especially because it is heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. But the war in Ukraine, which Obama started, has restored the Cold War to arms-trade dominance.)
America wouldn’t be able to sell to China the weapons that the U.S. was manufacturing to be placed in Europe. America’s NATO (the Cold-War relic) was Euro-American, not Sino-American. Consequently, America needed to increase yet further its grip over European Governments: it therefore must treat them more openly, and more boldly (such as America’s and UK’s joint operation of blowing-up the Nord Stream pipelines of Russia’s energy supplies into Europe) as being banana republics, and to do whatever is needed in order to get these Governments to comply with U.S. demands (such as to comply with Washington’s secondary sanctions against Russia and against Iran).
Whereas the 9/11 event ‘justified’ America’s emergency rule and its increased weapons-sales, this impetus was waning as an excuse for continuation of the empire; and, so, when Barack Obama came into office in 2009, he promptly re-oriented toward the old Cold War targets, anti-Russia and anti-China planning and policies (his TTIP, TISA, TTP, overthrow-Assad, and overthrow-Yanukovych, etc. — overthrow any nation’s leadership that is at all friendly toward Russia and/or China), and this required him and Joe Biden to force Europe to commit to anti-Russia and anti-China policies; and, so, it required to split the world into a renewed Cold War without any need for an ideological (anti-‘communist’) excuse.
The only way to do this is to deindustrialize Europe. So: that is now happening. Europe is to become more of America’s banana-republics. That’s why the Biden Administration is determined to take manufacturing jobs away from Europe.
The U.S. Government’s, and its think tanks’, many policy documents that focus upon an alleged need to continue and to expand U.S. global hegemony, are unapologetic about America’s zero-sum-game view that in order for the U.S. to succeed, the nations that it views as ‘competitors’ (by which they actually mean enemies) must be defeated.
And all other nations must continue to be dominated by America.
The U.S. is not treating Europe (other than Russia) as enemies; it isn’t threatening them as being targets of America’s bombs; but it is instead treating them as ‘allies’, or vassal-nations to be used as staging-areas for its ultimate invasions to defeat its ‘competitors’.
This entails treating Europe as banana republics, specifically of a military type. Ending NATO would be unacceptable to the people who control America, because it would end that. However, any creation of a solely European military alliance against Russia and/or China, would ultimately mean replacing NATO instead of ending it; and this idea, which has been proposed by Emmanuel Macron and others, would be only a nominal response to the problem. In order for Europe to free itself from the ever-increasing U.S. vise-grip, what’s needed would be to end NATO and accept into its own ranks Russia and an authentically continent-wide, EurAsian (no longer the existing artificial “European”) vision of its own future, instead of to fight against it as America’s rulers insist must continue to be done. The “Old World” will then become “the New World” of the future, while “the New World” of the Western Hemisphere will decline into no longer being the #1 threat to peace as America is and actually has been ever since 25 July 1945. Europe needs to become part of the solution, and to quit being part of the problem.
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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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First published on September 27, 2022
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Introduction to Dr. Bruce Dooley interview with Liz Gunn on the Federation of State Medical Boards
It was uncanny. During the past two and a half years virtually every doctor in the West who dared to question the official Covid Narrative – by raising doubts about the Jab, by discussing natural immunity, individualized treatment, informed consent, and by questioning draconian mandates and restrictions – found themselves under attack by their local medical authorities.
Licences were suspended and sham investigations were begun by medical boards and councils, globally.
I first learned of the Federation of State Medical Boards from a colleague here in New Zealand, Dr. Bruce Dooley, which prompted my introductory article on its suspected influence and its association with the International Association of Medical Regulatory Authories.
Dr. Dooley has highly significant personal and in-depth information about this little known, privately funded entity that is pulling the strings worldwide against the honest practice of medicine in the Age of Covid. Here he sits down with veteran New Zealand media presenter and journalist Liz Gunn for a startling and moving interview about the depth, the details and the reach of this shadowy and immensely influential organization – an organization that has been operating for over a century with no public accountability to affect the lives of doctors who are themselves ignorant of its very existence.
– Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D. September 28, 2022
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New York State isolation camp regulation, 10 NYCRR 2.13 “Isolation and Quarantine Procedures,” allows the authorities to force-isolate free citizens without age restriction, time limit, due process, or having to prove that the person is infected.
Brave attorney Bobbie Anne Cox defeated the New York state draconian isolation camp regulation in July 2022.
The New York State Governor and Attorney General have been fighting with tooth and nail to keep this regulation in place — and after the Judge struck it down, they promised to appeal.
Currently, the tyrants are likely sitting in ambush, trying not to stir the waters before the elections but ready to attack after the elections.
The media is silent, which is why it’s on us to spread the word, unite, and do our best to throw them out of office and set a good example for future aspiring tyrants.
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This story is about a very brave attorney who’s defeated New York State isolation camp regulation. It is also about the need to act — since we are not out of the woods yet, and the NYS Governor and Attorney General have promised to appeal the Judge’s decision striking down the unconstitutional regulation. They are currently sitting in ambush, likely hoping to get re-elected in the upcoming New York state elections and “do the ugly” then.
As a New Yorker, I am appalled and disgusted, and my hope is that many, many people learn about the New York State abysmal isolation camp regulation and throw the aspiring totalitarians out of office. It is not about politics, agreements, or disagreements, it is about protecting our parents and our children from an unconstitutional regulation that can easily lead to separation of families and indefinite detention with no due process. It is that ridiculous and disgusting.
One Person Can Make a Difference
The attorney who filed a lawsuit against the unconstitutional regulation — and won — is Bobbie Anne Cox, a seasoned New York lawyer who has been practicing in the area of property tax law for nearly 25 years.
Early on, she became outspoken about the “COVD measures” by the former New York State governor Andrew Cuomo. When Bobbie Anne first found out about the New York isolation camp regulation, she rubbed her eyes — but it was there, and it was real.
Bobbie Anne started talking to other attorneys, and many attorneys recommended to wait until the authorities start pulling people out of their homes and throwing them into camps — and file a lawsuit then. But she couldn’t wait for the ugly, and after putting in a lot of hard work and legal research into how one could file such an unprecedented lawsuit, she figured out an angle, which was “separation of powers.”
As a result, she won, and the brave NYS Supreme Court Judge Ronald Ploetz struck the regulation down (court decision).
However, like I mentioned earlier, both the Governor and the Attorney General — who are up for … hopefully, being voted out of office on November 8 — have promised to appeal the Judge’s decision. And now it’s up to all of us to spread the word like crazy and let people know what we are facing — since the media is not covering this at all.
What’s in the Isolation Camp Regulation?
Uniting NYS, a citizen group, has created a dedicated website that provides very detailed information the isolation camp regulation, the lawsuit, and how individual people can help fight the tyrants. Here is what they have to say about the regulation itself:
10 NYCRR 2.13 “Isolation and Quarantine Procedures”
Allows the DOH to pick and choose who they want to force to isolate or quarantine, without proof that the person poses a health threat, for however long the DOH wishes to force the quarantine, and at a location that the DOH deems appropriate (which can include a quarantine “facility” or detention center).
They do not need to prove that you are actually sick. They can just suspect that you MIGHT be harboring a communicable disease.
There is no age restriction, so they can force you, or your child, or your elderly parent/grandparent into isolation or quarantine, for however long they want!
In the interview, Bobbie Anne mentioned that when the lawyer representing the NYS Attorney General’s Office (fighting to keep the draconian regulation in place) was asked how one would get out of isolation once placed in it by authorities, their answer was that the family could hire a lawyer. So, really, there is no due process!
A Throwback to Early 2020
On March 30, 2020, during a WHO media briefing, Michael Ryan mentioned the “need to go and look in families to find those people who may be sick and remove them.” Remember that media briefing? The “conspiratorial” internet blew up, and then the videos of the talk were mostly taken down, then a thousand other things happened, and it was kind of forgotten.
That statement was one of the things that inspired me to write my very first Substack. The full video of the media briefing is still up on the WHO channel.
An Attack on Parental Rights
Another totalitarian move that Bobbie Anne Cox talks about in the interview is New York bill A9963, proposed by NYS Assemblyman Richard Gottfried and co-sponsored by five other NYS Assembly Members.
The bill strips parents of any control over medical, dental, or mental health interventions that their minor child may “choose” to undertake. They still get to pay for said interventions, but even the insurance companies potentially billing them don’t have to tell them what they are paying for, unless the minor child gives an explicit permission to tell the parents. You can read more about this draconical proposal on Bobbie Anne’s Substack.
A Critical Juncture
We are at a critical juncture where we are being assaulted by tyrants like there is no tomorrow. It is critical because they are bullies — but we are not victims, and we have the spiritual power to refuse to bend over. Bobbie Anne Cox is a beautiful example of being brave — and winning. May we all be protected from the bullies — and may we all protect each other.
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***
Time and again, courageous enlightened people are faced with the question of how to reach out to their fellow human beings intellectually and emotionally in order to be able to take away their individual and collective prejudices.
At a time when, according to President Putin, the danger of nuclear war is growing (1) and the self-destruction of humanity is possible, we need fellow citizens more than ever to tell us what is truth and what is a lie.
Insights of scientific psychology still little in demand
The answer of humanistic psychology to the question raised could be: Not to be afraid of fellow human beings, to join forces with them, to empathise with them and appeal to them without coercion.
What beneficial effects it would have for our children and our social coexistence if we could give up the fear of fellow human beings and set them free. Man is a harmless being and by nature not evil but good (Alfred Adler). People – even the mentally ill – would become healthy. Some mature people already guessed this in the century before last and depth psychology proved them right (2).
Although enlightenment through alternative media is perceived as important, fewer and fewer people are able to solve their own life problems because of the economic and social decline in the country. Therefore, a peaceful world will only come about with a profound change in the current conditions. However, for such a world, people will not set themselves in motion until they are able to solve their own problems. Humanistic psychology and non-speculative psychotherapies offer promising solutions for this.
At a time when boundless social hardship and injustice continue to be perpetuated and will even intensify, world-threatening wars are staged and the tremendous progress of nature and technology is misused to the detriment and harm of people, we are all the more dependent on the insights of modern depth psychological research.
But the knowledge of the psychological faculty is still little in demand today, because its research results are relatively new, little known and difficult to communicate. Moreover, they are not appreciated or even fought against by those in power. Only when it is recognised that humanity cannot progress without psychology will people gratefully draw on their findings.
According to the findings of depth psychology, the starting point for the problem at hand should be education.
Barrack yard in education – “that’s where the dog is buried”.
Of course, parents teach the child the rules of decency: how to behave well at the table, for example, and how to wash their hands thoroughly beforehand. But most parents don’t take the trouble to teach the child, “come with me, see how I wash my hands!” and explain to him why he should wash his hands.
There is usually coercion involved in parenting, “Go wash your hands first before you come to the table, otherwise you’ll get a slap!” The whole attitude of the parents is the coercion, the violence, the barrack yard. And that makes children sick, corrupts their souls at a young age. You don’t have to force people to cooperate, the child likes to cooperate without coercion. It is precisely coercion and violence that stifle the child’s natural need to cooperate.
As adults, these people then do not find their way; they cannot live together with their partner and marriages perish because they have different opinions about education, about other people and about the world.
The world will only recover and humanity will only progress – history shows us this – if people associate on a voluntary basis; if they sit down together and think about how they can solve the problems together. Freedom in the sense of voluntariness is an essential part of man’s social nature. Misusing it can have serious consequences.
Negative example of the Russian Revolution and the treatment of religious people
In Russia, the leaders of the revolution misjudged people and used coercion; they could not let people go free. If Russia had chosen the humanist path, even in part, the Second World War might have been prevented.
After all, the people go along with it, they want to live. In Russia, the people freed themselves in the October Revolution, but afterwards they did not become independent. In a society that organises itself into two classes – one that governs and one that is governed – two ideologies, two mentalities develop: the mentality of the slave/servant and that of the master. Such an organisation makes freedom impossible.
And how did the Bolsheviks behave towards religious people? They locked the churches and turned them into meeting places. In doing so, they hurt people deep inside, in their faith, in their dependence, in their fear. Was the Russian peasant converted by this? No! He was involuntarily against it. Today we know that you don’t have to take religion away from people: “Do you want to pray?” Yes, pray!”
One could have appealed to the farmers: “What, you don’t want to insure your field, your grain? Your neighbour will get a possible damage paid out by the insurance company in roubles and can buy new grain. And you? Who will help you if you don’t join the community of the insured?” The Russian revolutionaries were just not that far ahead because the problem of psychology was not yet known.
Giving people freedom so that they like to participate and become healthy.
Freedom does not mean the freedom of the rulers. They take the “freedom” to exploit people: A clique of capitalists exploits other people. They then have no right to live, freedom is only pretended to them. A servant, for example, has to remain a servant all his life; he cannot marry, cannot start a family, because he is a servant. But when the president or leader calls, he cannot say NO. He could say, “But I have nothing, therefore I have nothing to defend!”
“Freedom” is to be understood in the sense that people have their security and do not have to beg. Let us imagine the principle of freedom in such a way that every working person knows that if he can no longer work, for example if he falls ill or becomes old, that he will then have the same opportunity to live, that he will continue to receive the wage he has today, that he can keep his flat and possibly his little house and that he can continue to live. In the capitalist system, people have no peace and no security. They would have that in a free society.
Man is a harmless being after all – especially the one in today’s capitalist society. He is attuned to work. He would be happy for a little freedom. Even the sick would be dealt with, they would not be a nuisance. If mentally ill people find a different society, a different situation, a different moral conception, then they become healthy and behave differently.
Let people be free, don’t demand anything from them. They will gladly accept it. Let us associate with people, let us believe in them, let us empathise with them and appeal to them. The other person wants to live as well as I do. Then he will join in. We don’t have to be afraid of our fellow human beings.
Appealing to people and letting them decide freely
People are programmed by all institutions – starting with education at home and in school and going all the way up to recruit school – so that they usually do whatever those in power ask them to do. That is programme, that is conscious. And they are kept in this mood all their lives – both so-called intellectuals and the mass of the population. So today, young as well as older “mobile phone addicts” are completely surrendering themselves to the values of big, mean-spirited tech giants.
But at the same time, we can see that both young people and older citizens are more than willing to engage in a face-to-face conversation in a coffee shop or on the bus, if you don’t come across as a know-it-all who already knows when you are really interested in their personal problems and choose a way of expressing yourself that everyone can understand. It is very important to appeal only to them and let them decide freely.
In written statements, too, it is a matter of conveying even the most difficult depth psychological insights and findings in a language that can be understood not only by the expert but also by the interested layperson.
The question posed at the beginning remains how to reach as many fellow human beings as possible intellectually and emotionally so that they will one day stand up against injustice – intellectually, emotionally and politically.
Grassroots or grassroots movements emerge from the grassroots of the population
The interesting idea of creating a grassroots movement was voiced by a friend during an international webinar debate.
According to “Wikipedia”, a grassroots movement is a social initiative or movement that emerges from the grassroots of the population:
“Grassroots movements typically have grassroots democratic and consensus-based structures, as they seek to bypass the usual lobbying or party-political opinion-forming process. Change is to be achieved through committed articulation of citizens’ interests (…). (…).
The aim of some grassroots initiatives is to build social alternatives to the existing, up to the revolutionary claim of bringing about fundamental systemic changes. In doing so, they rely both on the long-term development of networks and on spectacular individual actions, which are primarily intended to create publicity. Not infrequently, the methods of civil disobedience are used.” (3)
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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel holds a doctorate in education (Dr. paed.) and a degree in psychology (Dipl.-Psych.). For many decades he was a teacher (headmaster) and trained educational professionals. As a retiree, he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice.
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My December 6 address to the European Conference on the Revival of Fascism: The Revival of Fascism in the 21st Century, Center for Geostrategic Studies, Belgrade, December 6-8, 2022.
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My appreciation to those with the foresight to organize this conference.
I limit my remarks to definitional clarity.By “fascism” I assume we mean not merely economic cooperation between government and private business, but the over-riding of citizens’ values and opinions by powerful groups in control of governing.We mean by fascism the ignoring and suppression of popular opinion.
Moreover, we mean the use of media as propaganda in order to implant falsehoods in the minds of the populations that make them easier to sway and control. Under a regime of fascism, official narratives are constructed, and any dissent, regardless of how factual, is dismissed as “misinformation.”
In these few words, I have described our current existence in the Western World.
The beliefs that made us free by restraining government power and holding it accountable are everywhere under attack.
We are being dehumanized by fascism, which makes it easier to dispose of us. For example, the liberal city government of San Francisco on November 29, 2022, by a vote of 8 to 3 gave robots the right to kill humans.San Francisco will now employ killer robots as members of its police force.
In the United States today free speech is said to be a threat to democracy if it dissents from official explanations.There is talk about criminalizing “misinformation.”
We know how close we are to being muzzled when in the United States free speech, protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution is under attack as a “threat to democracy.”
There is a second necessary definitional clarification.We must not confuse fascism with nationalism.It is the globalism of American hegemony and the globalism of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” that terminates self-rule that are the threats, not nationalism.
The nations of the world are being turned into towers of babel where internal disunity makes them unable to resist tyranny.
Once Identity Politics divides a population, there is no unity necessary to constrain a government. Only a people unified with common values into a nation can resist the global forces constructing a tyranny. If nationalism is conflated with nazism and racism, on what political basis can globalism be resisted?
Globalism is the ultimate tower of babel. The division created by Identity Politics eliminates the unity necessary for opposing tyranny.
The belief system that upholds liberty is seriously weakened by decades of attack.In the Western world the costs imposed on belief systems by self-denunciation and virtue-signaling are now apparent.To restore freedom to people requires resurrection of an almost dead civilization.I hope clarity about the definition of fascism contributes to this important effort.
Thank you for the opportunity to address this important conference.
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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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Ghana’s government recently announced plans to procure oil using gold rather than US dollars – the currency predominately used in the global oil trade.
“Ghana’s government is working on a new policy to buy oil products with gold rather than U.S. dollar reserves, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia said on Facebook on Thursday.
The move is meant to tackle dwindling foreign currency reserves coupled with demand for dollars by oil importers, which is…increasing living costs…
Using gold would prevent the exchange rate from directly impacting fuel or utility prices as domestic sellers would no longer need foreign exchange to import oil products.”
The US petrodollar buttresses America’s position as the world’s sole superpower. Wars have been waged against much more powerful foes than Ghana to maintain the petrodollar’s dominance.
Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi tried out something similar to Ghana’s plans about a decade ago, and now he’s six feet under while his former country has devolved into a failed state with literal slave auctions.
What really precipitated the US-led, French-facilitated destruction of Libya all those years ago?
“Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa.”
The official justification for deposing Gaddafi was to promote human rights and Democracy™ (sound familiar?). In reality, as Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails (for which the hero Julian Assange has paid with his freedom) reveal, the true motivation was much more basic and material.
In an email stored on her private server, longtime Clinton advisor and vaunted Swamp veteran Sidney Blumenthal wrote on April 2, 2011:
“Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver … This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).”
“In a ‘source comment’, the original declassified email adds:
“According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:
1. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
2. Increase French influence in North Africa,
3. Improve his internal political situation in France,
4. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
5. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.”
So, in public, the illegal invasion of Libya was framed as a liberation effort to free Africans from oppression. In private, it was all about oil and gold and raw geopolitical power.
Black Lives Matter greatly to Democrats, except when they have natural resources and don’t cooperate with the petrodollar program.
“We came, we saw, he died,” a visibly giddy Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State and chief architect of the Libyan coup, declared on national television when she learned in real-time of Gaddafi’s death. Nothing stimulates her more than death.
All of this provokes the obvious question: Is Ghana playing with fire here? How long until they are similarly liberated by the liberal and loving Democrats?
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This article was originally published on The Daily Bell.
Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose and/or Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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***
Arrogance sometimes is boundless and ridiculous. Arrogance in its extreme form may be self-destructive.
Imagine, the European Union (EU) and the G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States), decide to put a price cap of US$ 60 per barrel on Russian oil. Just like that. Europe – a US-vassal – is going out of her way to bash Russia, to sanction Russia, and scream, “we won’t buy any Russian energy!”
Yet, Europe depends to about 40% on Russian hydrocarbon energy, mostly gas. Lack of Russian energy would leave an enormous gap in Europe’s energy supply – a void that cannot be replaced by other suppliers overnight. To avoid an economic collapse, a rapid deindustrialization, in fact, a suicide of human, social and economic dimensions, Europe has no choice but importing energy from Russia, and this despite all the yelling and bruhaha for “sanctions”.
Over the past few weeks Russian tankers – at the rate of 125% from what used to be “normal”- arrived at Amsterdam and other European ports to fill up Europe’s gas reservoirs. Today, most of EU gas reserves are full to the brim. See this.
Both the embargo and the price cap come into effect as of Monday 5 December. By now European gas reserves are almost overflowing – having been supplied hastily with more than the average tonnages per week. The sanctions from now forward are sheer hypocrisy.
The price cap supposedly applied for oil Russia supplies to third countries, sovereign countries, over which the EU has zero control and even less command.
Graciously, Europe allows for a transition period of 45 days for vessels carrying Russian oil purchased and loaded prior to December 5.
Russia reiterates that she will neither agree to the price cap nor sell her oil to countries supporting it.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told Rossiya 24 TV on Sunday, “We believe that this tool is non-market, inefficient, grossly interferes with market instruments, contrary to all the rules, like those of the WTO, for example. We are not going to use price cap instruments. We are now working on mechanisms to prohibit the use of the cap.” He added that Russia will only sell its oil to countries “that work with us on market terms,” even if it means reducing output (RT – 5 December 2022).
This at first sight looks indeed like Arrogance no end. Neither the EU or the G7 are based on International Law. The EU is described as a unique partnership between 27 European countries, known as Member States, or EU countries. Together they cover most of the European Continent and are home to close to half a billion people (Wikipedia).
Without an International Law base, the EU has political institutions, social and economic policies, which transcend nation states for the purpose of cooperation and human development. According to its [the EU’s own] Court of Justice, the EU represents “a new legal order of international law” (Wikipedia). This “new legal order” has never been ratified by the United Nations.
The legality of the G7 is described by Google as an informal grouping of wealthy Western nations. It has no permanent secretariat or legal status (Oct 11, 2022). The G7, though are intimately linked to the obtuse Council on Foreign Relations.
The G7 are all those countries that are part of the core-Matrix of neoliberal globalism, those who play along with the UN Agenda 2030, alias the Great Reset towards a One World Order.
Russia, who used to be a “member” of the G7, was dismissed years ago when Moscow departed from the western aggressive warrior and all-dominating globalist agenda. Russia, like China, aims for a multipolar world while preserving national sovereignty.
The EU / G7 double-speak sanctions on Russia, “no energy from Russia”, yet semi-clandestinely filling up their gas deposits with Russian hydrocarbons, before the self-imposed embargo date of 5 December.
Since there is no other reasonable alternative for Russian energy, not in the foreseeable future Europe seems to be hellbent to destroy her economy.
The deception agenda, where people are being lied to, like energy shortages, the need to survive a potentially geoengineered weaponized cold, is alienating and gradually waking up more people. We are talking about a winter which is meant to kill the weak, the infirm and the old — the useless eaters (Hariri, Klaus Schwab associate, WEF).
On Sunday, 4 December, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said, “Russia won’t sell at the price limit agreed by the EU and the G7”. A day earlier the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov Kremlin also said it will not recognize the arbitrarily set western U$ 60 /barrel price cap.
What’s next?
Europe’s full reservoirs will be used to keep her industry alive for a while. In the meantime, private citizen will have to follow strict maximum home temperature mandates. In other words, freezing. The disease-vulnerable and poor may not survive – another step into the criminal eugenist agenda.
The EU / G7 “price cap” in the end may be nothing more than a propaganda gimmick to make the public at large believe its Russia’s fault when they freeze to death. All the while, the EU industry keeps turning out consumables for the rich and for profit of the oligarchs.
In a poll taken by the German “Der Spiegel”, one of four families will not buy any Christmas presents – they cannot afford it. This brutal reality is not much different in other European or Global North country.
Here may be the other, real reason for banning Russian oil and gas:
When the President of Sri Lanka in conformity with the Great Reset’s World Order, stopped imports of fertilizers to “bring back sustainable agriculture”, the country’s agriculture collapsed. No harvest, no local food. Mass famine, related diseases and death.
Is the EU embargo on Russian oil and gas based on a similar wicked scheme of agriculture destruction? No nitrogen-based fertilizers, massive crop reduction, collapsing farms, food shortages, famine, diseases – and death.
It would not be a surprise. A few weeks ago, the Dutch Government has decided against yearlong farmer and public protests, to close down 3,000 farms, about a third of the Netherlands’ farmland.
Is killing agriculture part of the real agenda behind the EU’s hypocritical sanctioning of Russia for a war which is constantly fueled by EU, NATO and US weapon deliveries? Shamelessly, the west transfer tens of billions of dollars to the delight of the US war-industrial complex, but to the detriment of the Ukrainian people and of peace and ultimately for a sinister, diabolical agenda of mass killing — back to the Rockefeller-Gates eugenics cult of close to hundred years ago.
There is still time to stop this ferocious onslaught on people’s lives.
Only we can stop it, by detaching from the Matrix, from a system that CANNOT – ever be reformed, but must be shed aside. With new human spirituality, we must face the stark reality – that only a new begin can salvage humanity. Live Local! We can do it. Solidarity and sovereignty work hand in hand. Even apart – we are connected by positive energy.
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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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On Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a wide-ranging public war update during a televised session of his Human Rights Council, which at least one independent regional outlet said was tightly controlled in terms of the kind of questions Kremlin officials could ask.
Among the more important topics he addressed related to the now 10-month long “special military operation” in Ukraine was future plans for broader mobilization and the prospect of deployment of nuclear assets. On the latter point, Putin lashed out at the United States and NATO, saying “Russia does not have tactical nuclear weapons in other countries, unlike the US.”
This was in reference to the fact that some NATO members in Europe, including extending as far east as Turkey, do act as host countries to many of the US’ tactical nukes under the NATO defense umbrella. “Our nuclear forces are in a more advanced state than any other country in the world,” he boasted at one point.
Importantly, given the ratcheting US-NATO arms pipeline to Ukraine’s forces, which has lately involved transfer of increasingly sophisticated and longer range missiles, Putin warned that the “risk of nuclear war in the world is rising.”
He further took the opportunity to restate Russia’s ‘defensive’ nuclear doctrine, stressing that nuclear weapons would be considered as a response to an attack on Russian territory, while also stating that he stands ready to defend Russian territory “using all available means”.
According to a translation of Putin’s remarks in Sky News:
“We didn’t speak about usage of nuclear weapons.” Then, he said: “Russia has not gone mad.”
“We have the most advanced weapons, but we do not want to wave it around.”
But in taking a swipe at Washington’s nuclear deployments in Europe, he seemed to suggest that it’s precisely the US side doing the nuclear saber-rattling.
“Yes, we will do this by various ways and means. First of all, of course, we will focus on peaceful means, but if nothing else remains, we will defend ourselves with all the means at our disposal,” Putin said.
Western mainstream media will more than likely run with the comments as a fresh “threat” that Russia stands ready to conduct a nuclear attack if cornered in Ukraine, and yet just like the previous time he made similar statements, the Russian leader was in fact articulating the defensive nature of the country’s official nuclear policy against ‘existential’ threats to Russian territory.
Putin at the meeting with Human Rights council of Russia: the threat of nuclear war is increasing, but Russia will not use the nuclear weapons first, however it will not use the nuclear weapons second, because it will not be possible after nuclear strike at Russia pic.twitter.com/IrgLe9EWiM
Among the more important new commentary from Putin, however, was the following:
In rare comments on the status of the war, Mr Putin admitted it would likely be a “long process” – suggesting Russia has no plans to abandon the conflict any time soon.
Last month into this month has already seen some ambiguous signals from Washington that the Biden administration could be ready to at least contemplate pushing Kiev to the negotiating table. Moscow too has said it remains “open” to talks – however, Putin’s projection of a “long” conflict strongly suggests the warring sides are nowhere close to establishing a process for ceasefire dialogue.
Elsewhere in the Human Rights Council meeting with top officials, Putin sought to quash persistent rumors of a second military mobilization across society next year. He expressed there was no need, after the prior 300,000 reservists which were called up for Ukraine operations.
He emphasized determination to see the operation through to achieve previously stated goals: “Russia could be the only guarantor of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. But it’s up to the new leaders of Ukraine,” Putin said.
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Featured image: Russian president Vladimir Putin (Illustration by TPYXA_ILLUSTRATION/Shutterstock)
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
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***
On December 6, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin hosted Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles. It was the 32nd occasion the countries had met in this setting.
The Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) is really a chat fest held between Australian Ministers for Defence and Foreign Affairs along with the US Secretaries of State and Defense, accompanied by officials of touted seniority. Advertised as an occasion for the states “to discuss and share perspectives and approaches on major global and regional political issues, and to deepen bilateral foreign security and defence cooperation,” it is more accurately an occasion for Washington to keep an eye on its satellite.
The occasion would have been a disappointment for sceptics of the US-Australian alliance, one that has seen Australians join, with somnambulistic facility, failed distant, needless wars. Even with a change of government in Canberra, it is clear that the US security lobby remains ascendant, tranquilising Australian politicians with the virtues of the alliance.
The joint statement from Blinken, Austin, Wong and Marles was filled with the gruel of banality: rules-based order, as they understood it; the importance of the relationship to “regional peace and prosperity”, despite signs it is becoming increasingly dangerous to that cause; and utterances about human rights and fundamental freedoms.
For keen watchers of encroaching militarism, the following would have stood out:
“The principals also decided to evolve their defense and security cooperation to ensure they are equipped to deter aggression, counter coercion, and make space for sovereign decision making.”
This could hardly be a reference to Australian sovereignty, given its whittling down over the years to the decisions of an increasingly more engaged US in the Indo-Pacific region. While Canberra decries any moves by Pacific Island neighbours to exercise their own rights of sovereignty to seal security arrangements with Beijing, it ignores its own subordinate, increasingly garrisoned role in the US imperium.
China comes in for a predictable mauling, given its actions in the South China Sea and the making of “excessive maritime claims that are inconsistent with international law.” Wishing to enrage the Yellow Devil further, the parties also reiterate “Taiwan’s role as a leading democracy in the Indo-Pacific region, an important regional economy, and a key contributor to critical supply chains.”
Strategic competition, as a concept, was fine in principle, but to be pursued “responsibly,” a word that has little meaning in the thuggery of international politics. The parties also agreed to “work together to ensure competition does not escalate into conflict” and looked to the PRC “to do the same and to engage Beijing on risk reduction and transparency measures.” More could be done on the issue of transparency and China’s nuclear arsenal, for instance.
The statement then goes on to raise the importance of cooperation with Beijing in some areas of mutual concern followed by a sharp backhanded serve. Cooperation with China on “issues of shared interest, including climate change, pandemic threats, non-proliferation, countering illicit and illegal narcotics, the global food crisis, and macroeconomic issues” was important, but so was “enhancing deterrence and resilience through coordinated efforts to offer Indo-Pacific nations support to resist subversion and coercion of any kind.”
There is also more poking with the expression of “serious concerns about severe human rights violations in Xinjiang, the human rights situation in Tibet, and the systematic erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy, democratic institutions, and processes undermining commitments made by the PRC before the handover.”
Australia’s promised submarines under the AUKUS security pact, almost as credible as the Loch Ness monster, receives an airing. Giving nothing away, the statement “commended the significant progress AUKUS partners have made on developing the optimal pathway for Australia to acquire a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability at the earliest possible date.” No date is provided, but a year on when that optimal pathway will be miraculously revealed is 2023. Best not wait up.
The joint statement does little to dissuade the idea that Australia is moving, inexorably, towards a satellite, garrison state to be disposed of and used by the US imperium. Under the “Forced Posture Initiatives” – the wording is telling – the US will further integrate Australia into its military operations via Enhanced Land Cooperation, Enhanced Maritime Cooperation, and the Combined, Logistics, Sustainment, and Maintenance Enterprise.
The US armed forces would continue its “rotational presence” in Australia across air, land and sea including “US Bomber Task Force rotations, fighters, and future rotations of US Navy and US Army capabilities.” The emphasis, in other words, is entirely US-centric, with Australia’s posture being rather supine, even as it aids “US force posture with associated infrastructure, including runway improvements, parking aprons, fuel infrastructure, explosive storage infrastructure, and facilities to support the workforce.”
What a wonderful list of targets for any future foe, and bound to become even juicier with Austin’s promise to “find ways to further integrate our defense industrial bases in the years ahead.”
While they do not tend to make regular appearances on uncritical mainstream news outlets, Australian civil society members have been alarmed by such moves. The 280 submissions to the Independent and Peaceful Australian Network (IPAN) addressing the high cost of Australia’s relationship with the United States attest to a very different narrative.
IPAN’s report drawn from its People’s Inquiry into “Exploring the Case for an Independent and Peaceful Australia,” informed by those submissions and released last month, should be mandatory reading for Canberra’s insular policy hacks. In his contribution to the report covering the defence and military aspects of the alliance, Vince Scappatura took note of the most pressing concern among the submissions: “that the alliance makes Australia an unnecessary target of America’s foes.”
The alliance has also seen Australia committed to “several needless and costly wars and is likely to do so again in the future, with especially grave consequences in the context of the great power rivalry between the US and China.” Unfortunately for the industrious Scappatura and those honourable souls determined to force a revision of the relationship, the sleepwalkers are in charge. And when that happens, wars are rarely far away.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
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***
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) held a panel on COVID-19 vaccines in Washington on Dec. 7, featuring experts including Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Peter McCullough.
Experts discussed vaccine development, vaccine composition, data from insurance and adverse event systems, and other topics.
Here are four takeaways from the panel.
Insurance Experts Record Jump in Excess Mortality
Edward Dowd, a former BlackRock analyst now with the Humanity Project, showed data from the Society of Actuaries 2021 Group Life Insurance survey that showed a jump in excess mortality among young and middle-aged adults starting around the time the vaccines began being administered.
The only thing that changed at the time, Dowd said, was “vaccines and mandates.”
He pointed out that Denmark and the United Kingdom, among other countries, have stopped recommending or entirely halted vaccination of young, healthy people because of growing concerns over side effects like heart inflammation that can lead to death.
“Why are our health authorities still pushing this vaccine if other countries are backing off?” Dowd asked.
Representatives from major U.S. health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), were invited to the discussion but did not attend.
Josh Stirling, an insurance analyst, presented an analysis of data from the United Kingdom that concluded death rates were higher among the vaccinated as of May 2022.
Doctors Report Increase in Heart Inflammation Since Pandemic Started
Several vaccines have been linked to side effects such as myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation that can turn deadly.
Doctors testifying during the panel said they’ve seen an increase in patients with the inflammation.
“It’s been very high,” Dr. Reneta Moon, a clinical associate professor at the Washington State University College of Medicine.
Moon said she saw a handful of cases in her 20 years of practicing before the pandemic. The number has jumped since the pandemic started, she said.
Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a pediatrician based in Hawaii, said he’s also seen more cases.
Milhoan said that the researchthat’s emerged shows myocarditis and a related condition, pericarditis, are caused by the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.
Moderna and Pfizer have not responded to requests for comment on heart inflammation.
The studies show that the spike protein, which the vaccines cause the body to make, is “cardiotoxic and cause the heart to be inflamed,” Milhoan said. “Let that sink in, the current public health plan is asking our own body to make a cardiotoxin.”
Dr. Harvey Risch, a professor emeritus of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, presented data from the CDC that show young people face little risk from COVID-19.
The share of infection among those aged 0 to 17 that led to death, for instance, was just 0.01 percent through September 2021, while the share was 0.05 percent among those 18 to 29.
“When you have such low or nonexistent mortality in these low age groups, the potential severe adverse effects of the vaccine will surmount the nonexistent mortality of these age groups and therefore, what we’ve been told, that everybody has to be vaccinated … had no reason to be there in the first place, because there was no mortality they were trying to prevent,” Risch said.
The share was much higher among older people. Among those 85 and older, for example, the share was 24.6 percent.
Because vaccines have little to no impact on transmission or infection, the only point of getting vaccinated is for treatment, but most young people “had no reason to choose that when mortality from infection is orders of magnitude is much less than from vaccination,” Risch said.
No Strong Trials
As the vaccines have performed worse and worse against infection, health officials say they should still be taken to protect against severe disease.
But McCullough, chief scientific officer of The Wellness Company, said that no randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial has shown the vaccines reduce hospitalization or death.
Such trials, known as RCTs, are generally considered the highest form of evidence for a drug.
Both the emergency authorization and approval for the vaccines have been on the basis of preventing infection. In fact sheets, prospective recipients are told the vaccines “have been shown to prevent COVID-19.” There’s no mention of severe illness or death.
Dr. David Gortler, a former official with the Food and Drug Administration, said that the best way to prove a drug has efficacy is long-term studies, which have not yet been performed on the vaccines because they’re so new.
U.S. authorities currently advise virtually all Americans to get a primary series, or two doses, of a vaccine. They also say that pretty much all Americans above the age of 4 should get a booster, and that many Americans should get multiple boosters. The currently available boosters are updated, but have no clinical effectiveness data. About 12 percent of Americans have received one of them, according to the CDC.
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Zachary Stieber is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times based in Maryland. He covers U.S. and world news.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
December 8th, 2022 by Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti
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***
In this episode of Grandangolo Dentro la Notizia, we report the complete interview carried out in Moscow by Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti with Olga Zinoviev, head of the Zinoviev International Research and Training Centre at the Moscow State University, co-president of the Zinoviev Club.
When she was asked “Russia is at war. How do you see the situation?” Olga Zinoviev replied:
“It’s not Russia at war, but the whole West is at war against Russia. It was not our decision to make the life of the Ukrainian people so complicated. It is surely the decision of the West to destroy everything that determines our future. Western countries and first of all England, the United States, and their satellites cannot bear that we have our own life, they are even uncomfortable by our very existence, both when there was the Soviet Union and today when it’s Russia. The Soviet Union was destroyed in the early 1990s. And they thought they could adopt the same recipe to destroy life in other countries: Syria, Lebanon, and so on. They also adopted the same method towards the Yugoslav Federation. That’s why they bombed the Yugoslav Federation, an independent country. Alexander was telling me it was the beginning of a plan to destroy Russia. And he was right ”.
When she was asked what she thought about the position taken by the European Union, Olga Zinoviev replied:
“I fear for Europe, because it is gradually losing its independence already compromised from the beginning by the project of the European Union, which was actually the United States’ project to exercise their hegemony over Europe”
She then reiterated the concept;
“The multipolar world represents our world view. We have so many populations, we have so many languages. Why are we forced to think in English, why are we forced to obey as if drafted in their military, what does Washington want of us? We have different religions, different cultures, enormously interesting cultures”.
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***
Disaster capitalism and crisis narratives are currently being used to manipulate popular sentiment and push through a set of unpalatable policies that would otherwise lack sufficient political support.
These policies are being promoted by wealthy interests that stand to make billions of dollars from what is being proposed. They seek to gain full control of food and how it is produced. Their vision is tied to a wider agenda aimed at shaping how humanity lives, thinks and acts.
Throughout much of 2022, protests by Dutch farmers have grabbed the headlines. Plans to reduce the Netherlands’ nitrogen output by half come 2030 have led to mass protests. The government talks of the need to move away from animal-based agriculture and its climate-impacting emissions.
This ‘food transition’ often goes hand-in-hand with the promotion of ‘precision’ agriculture, genetic engineering, fewer farmers and farms and lab-made synthetic food. This transition is sold under the banner of ‘climate-friendly’ and piggy backs on the ‘climate emergency’ narrative.
Campaigner Willem Engel claims the Dutch government is not seeking to eliminate farmers from the landscape for environmental reasons. Instead, it is about the construction of Tristate City, a megalopolis with a population of around 45 million extending to areas of Germany and Belgium.
Engel suggests the ‘nitrogen crisis’ is being manipulated to drive through policies that will result in reshaping the country’s landscape. He argues that the main nitrogen emitter in the Netherlands is not agriculture but industry. However, land currently occupied by farms is strategically important to industry and housing.
The tristate concept is based on a giant unified ‘green’ urban region linked by ‘smart’ technologies that can economically compete with the massive metropolises we see in Asia, especially in China.
The Dutch government recently announced plans to buy out up to 3,000 farms in a bid to comply with controversial targets to reduce run-off from synthetic nitrogen fertilisers. Dutch nitrogen minister Christianne van der Wal says farmers are to be offered more than 100 per cent of the value of their farms. But there are plans to enforce buyouts in 2023 if voluntary measures fail.
Is what we see happening in the Netherlands the initial step in trying to get the public to accept GM crops, lab-engineered ‘food’ and 90 per cent of humanity being crammed into mega-cities?
And is it just a coincidence that the following ecomodernist vision of the future appears in Dutch on the Netherlands-based RePlanet.nl?
It says that by 2100, there will be ten billion people on the planet:
‘More than 90 per cent of these live and work in the city, compared to 50 per cent in 2000. Around the city are large farms full of genetically modified crops that achieve four times as high a yield as at the beginning of the 21st century.’
It also states that beyond the farmland begins nature, which now occupies most of the surface of our planet. Whereas in 2000 half of the earth’s surface was still in use by humans, by 2100 it is only a quarter. The rest has been returned to nature, biodiversity and CO2 emissions are back to pre-1850 levels and hardly anyone is in extreme poverty anymore.
So, there you have it. Drive farmers out of farming, grab their land for urbanisation and rewilding, and we will all live happily ever after on genetically engineered crops and synthetic food created in giant vats. In this techno make belief land, no one is poor, and everyone is fed.
A technocratic vision where the stranglehold of the current food conglomerates remains intact and is further entrenched, and politics is reduced to decisions about how best to tweak the system for optimal gains (profit).
In this future, digital platforms will control everything, the brain of the economy. E-commerce platforms will become permanently embedded once artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms plan and determine what will be produced and how it will be produced and distributed.
We will be reduced to little more than serfdom as a handful of digitally enabled megacorporations control everything. Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta, Cargill and the like will work with Microsoft, Google and the big-tech giants to facilitate AI-driven farmerless farms and e-commerce retail dominated by the likes of Amazon and Walmart. A cartel of data owners, proprietary input suppliers and retail concerns at the commanding heights of the economy, peddling toxic industrial (fake) food.
And what of elected representatives (if they still exist in this dystopian vision)? Their role will be highly limited to technocratic overseers of these platforms.
This is where the interlocking hegemonic class steered by the likes of the Gates Foundation, Big (Agri)Tech, Big (digital) Finance, Big Pharma and ‘environmentalists’ like journalist George Monbiot who peddle this vision want to take us.
And they will tell you this is for your own good – to avoid hunger and starvation and to ensure wildlife is protected, the planet is ‘saved’, zoonotic pandemics are avoided or that some other doomsday scenario is dodged.
The current food system is in crisis. But many of its problems were brought on by the same corporate interests who are behind what is outlined above. They are responsible for an inherently unjust food regime driven by World Bank, WTO and IMF policies which act on their behalf.
These corporations are responsible for soil degradation, synthetic fertiliser run offs into waterways, the displacement of rural populations and land appropriation, the flight to over-populated cities and proletarianization (former independent producers reduced to wage labour/unemployment), the massive decline in bird and insect numbers, less diverse diets, a spiralling public health crisis due to chemical-intensive farming and so on.
Those who promote the ecomodernist vision are using genuine concerns about the environment to push through an agenda. But where does genuine environmentalism begin?
It does not start with ‘precision’ agriculture in which gene-editing and the like is akin to using a blunt ax and constituting genome vandalism (according to Harvard professor George Church).
And it does not begin and end with genetically engineered crops that have failed to deliver on their promises and chemically doused plants to be used as ‘feed’ for energy-consuming vats that engineer matter into food.
Nor does it begin and end with the World Bank/IMF using debt (see the article Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago) to enforce dependency, displace populations, crowd people into densely packed high-rises and strip humanity of its inherent connection to the land.
Many of the problems mentioned above could be overcome in the long term by prioritising food and seed sovereignty, localised production and local economies and agroecological farming. But this is of no interest to Bayer, Microsoft, Cargill and the like because none of that fits their business model – indeed, it poses an existential threat.
Rather than forcing farmers out of farming, the Dutch government could encourage them to farm differently.
But that requires a different mindset from that which depicts farmers and farming as a problem in order to ram through an agenda based on a fairy tale techno utopian vision of the future.
The globalised system of food production based on an industrialised, high-input, chemical-dependent and corporate dependent model underpinned by geopolitical interests is the real problem.
Hans Herren, World Food Prize Laureate, says:
‘We need to push aside the vested interests blocking the transformation with the baseless arguments of “the world needs more food” and design and implement policies that are forward-looking… We have all the needed scientific and practical evidence that the agroecological approaches to food and nutrition security work successfully.’
These policies would facilitate localised, democratic food systems and a concept of food sovereignty, based on optimal self-sufficiency, agroecological principles, the right to culturally appropriate food and local (communal) ownership and stewardship of common resources, not least land, water, soil and seeds.
Because when discussing food and agriculture, that’s where genuine environmentalism starts.
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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.
Featured image: Dutch flag displayed in the window of a farm dwelling. Photo credit: Ewien van Bergeijk – Kwant
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.
In a statement, the banking regulator said the maximum customer ATM withdrawal for naira has been capped at NGN20,000 ($45) per day. In comparison to the earlier daily cap of NGN150,000 ($337), this represents a significant reduction.
The central bank has also imposed a limit on weekly cash withdrawals to NGN100,000 ($225) from banks for individuals and NGN500,000 ($1,124) for corporations.
Any withdrawals above the said limit will attract a processing fee of 5% and 10%, respectively, the regulator said.
In addition, the central bank has imposed a limit of NGN10m ($22,553) on cheques processed through the banking system and prohibited the cashing of cheques for more than NGN50,000 ($112) over the counter.
The daily maximum for cash withdrawals from point-of-sale terminals is NGN20,000 ($45).
The move is the most recent in a series of directives issued by the central bank to reduce the usage of cash and promote digital currencies to increase access to banking services.
According to Bloomberg’s report, Nigeria’s economy is largely informal, with cash outside banks representing 85% of currency in circulation.
Around 40 million adults in Africa’s most populous nation do not have a bank account, the report added.
Last month, the central bank announced plans to issue new high-value notes from mid-December to mop-up excess cash.
“Customers should be encouraged to use alternative channels — Internet banking, mobile banking apps, USSD, cards, POS, eNaira to conduct their banking transactions,” the central bank said.
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Featured image: Weekly cash withdrawals from banks have also been capped. Credit: Jake Allen on Unsplash.
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***
Republican Senator Ted Cruz has weighed in on the revelations in Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ publication, urging that it is “evidence of corruption that goes to the highest level of government.”
Appearing on Fox News, Cruz asserted that the effort to crush the Hunter Biden laptop story went “to the highest level of the FBI. And it goes to the highest level of Big Tech.”
“We’ve known for a long time that big tech is censoring conservatives,” Cruz said, adding that “what Elon did here is he just laid naked all of the lies that the corporate media has told.”
“It’s clear during the 2020 election, over and over and over again, the Biden campaign and the DNC would reach out to their buddies at Twitter and say, hey we don’t like this, and their response is ‘handled,’ and they’d take it down, over and over and over again,” Cruz stated.
He continued,
“And in particular, all of the exchange back and forth when the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, it was evidence that the leadership at Twitter knew within hours that their ridiculous, fake excuse that it was hacked was a ridiculous fake excuse.”
“Even James Baker, who…had been the FBI’s general counsel and then was at Twitter — even he acknowledged well, gosh, we don’t have the evidence on this, but it doesn’t matter, Let’s block it anyway,” Cruz noted, referring to the now fired Twitter Fed, who continued to try to censor Musk’s data dump.
Cruz further highlighted that in “one of the exchanges back and forth they reveal the reason, which is they say we want to avoid — we want to avoid what happened in 2016, Donald Trump winning.”
Thank goodness for the @FBI otherwise we mighthave accidentally elected the wrong person president https://t.co/YihaIWdHhn
“This was all about weaponizing big tech. It is absolutely corrupt. And what is amazing is the Democrats were fully in on it,” Cruz charged, adding “The corporate media was fully in on it, and Elon’s released the receipts, which shows all of them are willing to abuse power to stay in power.”
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Featured image is a screenshot from the first video above
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***
In a stunning 8-to-3 vote yesterday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors banned the SFPD from using deadly force with remote-controlled robots. The Board also sent the killer robot policy back to its Rules Committee for revisions and more public comment. This is a big reversal: just one week ago, the Board voted 8-3 to authorize the SFPD to use these killer robots.
In one week, San Francisco and the greater Bay Area rallied to tell the Board that this policy was unacceptable. That rallying cry was so loud and undeniable that it was impossible for the Board, and the world, to ignore. The campaign to stop killer robots was coveredbynewsoutletsallovertheworld as people waited to see what kind of precedent would be set for law enforcement. Opponents staged a rally against the policy, and over 50 local organizations signed a coalition letter demanding that the Board reverse course on killer robots, … and they did.
But even as we take this moment to celebrate, make no mistake: the fight to stop killer robots in San Francisco, and around the country, is not over.
What happens next?
The Board sent the killer robot back to its Rules Committee. We may have to debate all over again the rules for police robots in San Francisco. The community will have more opportunities to give public comments. So will the police. They may try to find a more reasonable way to sell the idea of armed robots. We will stay vigilant and engaged.
Luckily, a majority of the Board of Supervisors voted to ban killer robots for the time being. Hopefully, they will support a permanent ban.
YOU Did It
This could not have been achieved without the hard work of activists and residents across the Bay Area who worked together, made their voices heard, and came out to a rally early on a Monday morning. We’re thankful for the leadership of the stalwart city leaders who never backed down on this issue: Supervisor Preston, Supervisor Rosen, and Board President Walton. We also appreciate supervisors Mar, Chan, Melgar, Peskin, and Safai for changing their votes.
The world was watching to see if a diverse and politically lively city would allow its police to kill with robots. The negative national attention this received should make it obvious not only to San Francisco, but to community leaders around the country and the globe that this policy was extremely unpopular. We’re proud that San Francisco said “no” …for now. Residents should have protection against killer robots, and we will continue the fight to make sure that happens.
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***
Julian Assange could be extradited to the United States within weeks, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson has warned. He told journalist Glenn Greenwald that Assange was “running out of time” and that legal avenues in London to challenge his unlawful extradition were being exhausted, “he will never get a fair trial there.”
Hrafnsson’s urgent warnings came during an interview in Brazil, published Monday on Rumble. He told Greenwald, “Julian’s case is coming to the end of all possibilities of getting a fair solution through the court proceedings. He is fighting extradition in London. Within weeks he could be extradited.”
Assange has been charged under the Espionage Act (1917) for WikiLeaks’ publications exposing war crimes by US imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan, and anti-democratic conspiracies of the US government and its intelligence agencies throughout the world. If found guilty, the 51-year-old journalist and father of three faces 175 years in a US federal prison. He has already spent more than a decade in detention in the UK, including three years without charge in Belmarsh maximum security prison.
Hrafnsson was appointed WikiLeaks editor in 2018 after Assange’s communication with the outside world was cut under pressure from the US government, a prelude to his seizure from the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019. An award-winning journalist in his own right, Hrafnsson worked with Assange to verify WikiLeaks’ most famous release, the Collateral Murder video, travelling to Iraq in early 2010 to interview relatives of civilians killed by targeted airstrikes launched from US AH-64 Apache helicopters.
Speaking last week in Brazil, Hrafnsson said legal channels for Assange to appeal his extradition are fast closing. In June, then UK Home Secretary Priti Patel approved Assange’s extradition after the High Court overturned an earlier court decision barring it on medical grounds. The High Court accepted worthless assurances by the US government that Assange would not face oppressive treatment, ignoring overwhelming evidence that the CIA plotted to kidnap and kill Assange.
Britain’s courts have mounted a legal vendetta against Assange, approving the extradition request in violation of his fundamental legal and democratic rights as a publisher and journalist. The High Court and Supreme Court have handed down rulings aimed at speeding his dispatch to his would-be assassins. In March, the High Court refused Assange’s application to appeal its earlier ruling to the Supreme Court. His lawyers have since appealed the Home Secretary’s extradition order.
Hrafnsson said, “We are now in a waiting period for the appeal court in London, the High Court, to give us the answer of whether they will hear an appeal by Julian to push back against the extradition. If they decide not to hear the appeal—which would be scandalous in itself—then there is the Supreme Court, which could decide quickly not to hear the case, you know, ‘not of importance to the public’… Under the worst-case scenario, he could be on a plane to the US within weeks.
“In my perception, and I’ve been sitting in on all the proceedings in London, all the extradition proceedings in London have exposed only one thing, and that’s the fact that this is just not going to be won in a court. There’s no justice to be had in court rooms in London. That’s obvious and I don’t have to mention the United States, that’s one of the essences of the defence in fighting the extradition, that he will never be able to get a fair trial there. So, we’re running out of time. We need to push this on a different level and so I decided that we needed to go on a tour to shore up political support, because the only way to fight a political persecution is through political means.”
Hrafnsson and WikiLeaks Ambassador Joseph Farrell are currently touring Latin America, starting with a one-hour private meeting in Colombia with President Gustavo Petro and Foreign Minister Alvaro Duran at the Presidential Palace in Bogotá on November 21.
In Brazil, they held a private meeting with President Lula da Silva on November 29, followed by an address to Brazil’s parliament. In Rio De Janeiro they held a public meeting at the Brazilian Press Association, followed by a reception at the home of famous musician-composer Caetano Veloso. They have since met privately with Argentinian Vice President Cristina Kirchner and with President Alberto Fernández at the Casa Rosada. They are visiting Chile and Mexico next.
Hrafnsson told Greenwald,
“Our aim is to get political leaders to apply pressure, if you want to call it that, or just request of the Biden administration to reconsider, to stand behind their own ideals, the ideals that they preach around the world of press freedom and not put this pressure on the First Amendment and their treaty commitments and basically drop the charge against Julian. That’s the only way out.”
There is enormous support for Assange and WikiLeaks in Latin America. The workers and oppressed masses of the region have suffered brutal US-backed military dictatorships that claimed tens of thousands of lives in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama and Guatemala. But the statements of support by Latin America’s bourgeois politicians are politically worthless. Lula, Kirchner and company have demonstrated their loyalty to imperialism, enforcing International Monetary Fund austerity and state repression against the working class.
Appeals to Biden, who has designated Assange a “hi-tech terrorist”, are more bankrupt still. Even after former US president Donald Trump called for the “termination” of the Constitution last week, Biden remained silent. Not even Trump’s fascist coup attempt in January 2021 could rouse him to defend the Constitution, let alone its First Amendment guarantees to free speech, press and assembly. Last week Biden oversaw watershed legislation enforcing a White House-brokered employment contract and banning tens of thousands of US railroad workers from striking.
The persecution of Assange is the spearhead of a massive assault on democratic rights, aimed at destroying freedom of speech, illegalizing investigative journalism, intimidating and terrorizing critics, preventing the exposure of government crimes and suppressing mass popular opposition to social inequality and war. The British government’s plans to ban strikes, including its threats to mobilise the military, show that Assange’s fate is inextricably linked to that of the working class.
NATO’s escalating war against Russia is being accompanied by authoritarian measures. The British government’s “emergency powers” are being combined with denunciations of strikers as “Putin’s stooges”—repeating word for word the Pentagon’s narrative against Assange and WikiLeaks.
Assange’s fate must not be left in the hands of political forces such as Lula, Biden and other enemies of the working class. A powerful mass constituency for Assange’s defence—and the struggle to win his freedom—is growing among millions of workers and young people who are entering the global fight against capitalist austerity, state repression and war.
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Five years ago today, Congress learned from sworn, horse’s-mouth testimony that there is no technical evidence that Russia (or anyone else) hacked the DNC emails showing how the DNC had stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nomination.
I can almost hear readers new to this website cry out in disbelief: “That cannot be. Official Washington and the media assured us that the Russians hacked those emails in order to help Trump win. And didn’t Obama throw out 35 Russian diplomats in reaction? And what about those 12 Russian intelligence agentsindicted for hacking?” Were U.S. officials and media mistaken?
No, not mistaken. They were lying.
“But … but, does this mean Special Counsel Robert Mueller knew there was no concrete evidence of Russian hacking just six months into his 22-month investigation into Trump-Russia collusion?”
Get Him Under Oath
On December 5, 2017, Shawn Henry, head of the cyber security firm CrowdStrike, testified to the House Intelligence Committee that there was no technical evidence that Russia hacked the DNC emails that WikiLeaks published in July 2016. CrowdStrike had been hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign (with the FBI’s blessing) to investigate “Russian hacking”.
Shawn Henry is a protégé of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom Henry served as head of the Bureau’s cyber-crime investigations unit before he went to CrowdStrike. What are the chances that Shawn Henry did not keep his former mentor, the Special Counsel, informed of this critical factoid?
Why are some of you readers just now learning about this – five years after that testimony? Short answer: Adam Schiff (D, CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee was able to keep Henry’s unclassified testimony secret from Dec. 5, 2017 until May 7, 2020, when he was forced to release it. Schiff gave the silencer-baton to friends in the corporate media, who have now suppressed Shawn Henry’s testimony for longer than even Schiff could.
In sum, five years (and counting) after Henry’s testimony, the corporate media are still keeping viewers/listeners in the dark. Were we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) not banned from corporate media, those interested in the “hacking” hoax could have learned what was going on by reading our Memorandum“Allegations of Hacking are Baseless”, of December 12, 2016 – a year before Shawn Henry, under oath, came clean. Henry’s confession came as no surprise to us. (Updates are available here and here.)
Yet, the New York Times, for example, keeps up the drumbeat. Charlie Savage was careful last week to insert the following, in an article about Julian Assange (don’t miss what the New York Times itself embedded):
His [Assange’s] public image shifted significantly after WikiLeaks published Democratic emails that had been hacked by the Russian government as part of its covert operation to help Donald J. Trump win the 2016 presidential election.
Thus the words of Charlie Savage and the Gray Lady. There is always some clown who does not get the word – but Charlie is no clown. He knows what the narrative still has to be, and adheres to it (and, thus, to his job).
The reasoning behind suppressing Shawn Henry’s testimony appears to have gone something like this: The truth about “Russian hacking” cracks the centerpiece of Russia-gate; it pulls the rug from under what we corporate media have been saying about the evil Putin and what we label Trump’s “bromance” with him. Worse, the truth could deny the MICIMATT the image of the threatening “enemy” it needs to “justify” building and selling weapons. Besides, Americans probably can’t handle the truth. And what they don’t know won’t hurt them.
What Americans Don’t Know
Humorist Will Rogers had it right:
“The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so; that’s the problem.”
What Americans “know” is that President Vladimir Putin is evil and that Russia must be stopped in Ukraine. This comes of six straight years of indoctrination/brainwashing. Putin and his colleagues, of course, are aware of this. It must seem to them that people in the US an Europe are being steeled with the propaganda basis for wider war. This gets extremely dangerous. What people don’t know can really hurt them and lead them into another misbegotten war – this one far worse than other recent misadventures.
If the sophomores advising President Joe Biden refuse to acknowledge that Russia has escalation dominance in Ukraine, the likelihood of wider war in the coming months looms large. And despite recent optimistic projections by top intelligence officials, Ukraine and NATO are far more likely to run out of ammunition before Russia does.
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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
December 8th, 2022 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
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In observance of International Human Rights Day, celebrated annually on December 10th, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is calling on the Canadian government to defend the human rights of the Palestinian people. CJPME points out that the human rights violations committed against the Palestinians by the Israeli government are particularly long-standing, deeply entrenched, and well-documented, and deserve immediate international attention. Unfortunately, despite the urgency required to address Israel’s abuses, CJPME notes that Canada has repeatedly chosen to ignore them.
To emphasize its message, CJPME is participating today in a press conference in Ottawa organized in conjunction with other Canadian human rights organizations. The event will take place at 11:00 a.m., in the West Block media studio (Room 125-B), on Parliament Hill.
“Unfortunately, the Trudeau government is almost indistinguishable from the Harper government in terms of its indifference toward Palestinian human rights,” asserts Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME. CJPME points out that while the Trudeau government makes frequent reference to the “international rules-based order” while remarking on human rights violations in other parts of the world, it virtually never condemns Israel’s ongoing violations. Worse, Canada frequently provides diplomatic cover for Israeli abuses by attempting to block criticism of Israel in international forums. “This is hypocrisy, plain and simple,” adds Woodley.
International recognition of the severity of Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians reached new levels this year, when Amnesty International[i] joined other prominent human rights organizations – including Human Rights Watch[ii] and Israel-based B’Tselem[iii] – in concluding that Israel is practicing apartheid against Palestinians. As highlighted in Amnesty’s landmark report, the Palestinian people have been subject to systemic oppression and domination by Israel since 1948 and throughout the subsequent decades. This oppression has included land expropriation, political arrests, discriminatory laws, unfair trial practices, restrictions on freedom of movement and civil liberties, and lethal violence against civilians, among other abuses. CJPME notes that apartheid is a crime under international law and that such grave allegations deserve to be investigated by the relevant international authorities.
CJPME’s criticism of the Trudeau government aligns with numerous public opinion polls which demonstrate clearly that Canadians want their government to support Palestinian human rights, including in international forums. CJPME continues to urge the Canadian government to adopt a series of measures that would show meaningful support for Palestinians while playing a constructive role in the region. For example, Canada should:
Engage with the growing consensus among human rights organizations that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, as defined under international law;
Stand up for human rights defenders and oppose Israel’s criminalization of Palestinian NGOs;
Suspend all military trade with Israel;
Provide support for investigations by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) into war crimes and other alleged violations;
Support the re-establishment of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid;
Push for an end to the blockade of Gaza and increase its funding for Palestinian refugees via UNRWA.
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[iii] “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid,” B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), January 12, 2021, accessed Nov. 9, 2022 at https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid
The COVID-19 pandemic crisis coupled with the war in Ukraine has precipitated the world into a mesh of economic, social and environmental disruptions. And it is people worldwide who are the victims.
In our campaigns against the experimental COVID vaccines and the dangers of nuclear war, Global Research is publishing independent analyses (with different viewpoints) on a daily basis.
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The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
“Michel Chossudovsky, in his book “The Worldwide Corona Crisis” describes in clear and concise and unabashed language the origins of this war, its conduct and its goals. No book of this kind can be infinitely comprehensive, nor should it aspire to be. But in this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight.” –Dr. Emanuel Garcia, psychoanalyst and psychiatrist
“In The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Michel Chossudovsky succinctly and methodically pierces through the numerous layers of lies surrounding the “pandemic.” This meticulously researched chronicle is a must-read for anyone wanting to truly understand world events of the past two-and-a-half years.”
–David Skripac, former captain in the Canadian Air Force
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
“Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.” –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
Pfizer on Monday said if the bivalent booster receives EUA, children in this age group will receive two doses of the original COVID-19 vaccine, followed by a dose of the “updated” vaccine targeting Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.
It is commonplace in the west that the first and only recognized tragedy regarding Ukraine is Russia’s decision to invade on February 24th 22. It is without question an absolute tragedy as Russian President Putin’s decision should not be seen as anything other than both immoral and illegal.
From the outset of World War II, the Franklin Roosevelt administration envisaged that America would emerge from the conflict in a position of global dominance. The United States had boasted the world’s largest economy since 1871, surpassing Britain that year, and the gap increased through the early 20th century and beyond.
The Roosevelt administration had been eager for some time to wage war against Japan and sought to unleash such a war by means of the institution of an oil embargo and other provocations. Having deciphered Japanese codes, Washington knew a Japanese fleet was on its way to Pearl Harbor, but welcomed the attack since a Japanese aggression would make it possible to “sell” the war to the overwhelmingly anti-war American public.
The historical, political and ethnic divisions in Ukraine go back decades, if not centuries, but we don’t have the space for that kind of deep-dive. For now, we’ll be keeping it to three simple parts: The fall of Viktor Yanukovych, the Crimean referendum, and the ensuing civil war which puts the region in a direct path to the events of today.
Family physician Dr. David Nixon recently shared dark field microscopy photos of “concerning” structures that appeared in Pfizer jab fluid over time and that seem to be the product of “intelligent design” in a Sunday episode of the International Crimes Investigative Committee (ICIC) co-hosted by the group’s founder, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich and ex-Pfizer executive Dr. Michael Yeadon.
European policies which advocate mass joint borrowing among EU member states to further finance Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion of the country will have devastating consequences for the continent, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned on Friday.
Welcome to the early 21st century dystopian nightmare reality where Orwell’s 1984 is no longer fiction, and if you are hearing voices, it could be the government transplanting those thoughts in your head. If you think your appliances are listening to you, well, you may be right. Truth is treason and fact is fiction. Freedom is selfish and fascism is kindness.
A government-linked Ottawa-based group, Ottawa People’s Commission on the Convoy Occupation (OPC), launched a public commission into the effects of Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ protest in downtown Ottawa last winter. The globalist-led group claims to want “to address resident’s trauma and losses” due to the convoy. However, they seem to be exploiting residents of Ottawa in order to seize the millions of dollars Canadians donated to the Truckers Freedom Convoy.
To end the war in Ukraine, peace champions must win the war of ideas. This requires tackling two often-repeated claims that serve as obstacles to a diplomatic agreement between Ukraine and Russia. The first problematic claim is that the war was unprovoked; the second that Ukraine can achieve a decisive military victory.
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It is commonplace in the west that the first and only recognized tragedy regarding Ukraine is Russia’s decision to invade on February 24th 22. It is without question an absolute tragedy as Russian President Putin’s decision should not be seen as anything other than both immoral and illegal. It was immoral because Russia did not face an immediate threat. It was illegal as it violated another country’s borders and the UN Charter. But in western governmental perspectives and with western mainstream media in tow, the discussion abruptly ends there and conveniently ignores two additional tragedies, one pre-war and one in the spring. With the current need for launching real diplomacy facing all parties, these additional tragedies may suggest trouble without an about face from the west.
That tragedy of the invasion is many times over exposed for the dreadful consequences that have ensued and which are so predictable in war: here the ongoing mayhem for civilians who have fled to eastern European countries, or been killed or traumatized by injury, families torn apart, hundreds of thousands of soldiers (total) whose early lives have ended, buildings, bridges and other infrastructure left in ruins, the terrible anxiety of bombs or missiles falling on one’s town, the power grid being seriously jeopardized by attacks.
But the overall process before and during this war demonstrates a dreadful combination of other tragedies that sit most squarely upon President Biden, with assistance from other national heads of state, European in particular. “Negotiations” between the west and Russia before the invasion mark the initial tragedy (a form of more passive western sabotage) and the outcome of the late March, early April negotiations between Ukraine and Russia themselves in Istanbul, the third tragedy, an active western knife to the back of negotiators that spelled dismay and lost hope as well as continued absolute hell for all victims of this war, those mentioned plus the unfolding effects upon economies in major European countries, Germany and Britain to name but two.
During the discussions and negotiations before the invasion Russia had presented its redline position (s), repeating its very deep security interests being at stake with what had been happening in Ukraine especially since the coup there in 2014, to say nothing of the very long-term expansion of NATO eastward over the past twenty-five years. Russia wanted negotiations that essentially would have had Ukraine become a neutral nation, in other words, demilitarized and unaligned in that way. The United States under Mr. Biden, with NATO in tow, objected, indicating repeatedly that doing so would rob Ukraine of its sovereignty because it deserved the right to join with any alliance it wished. Mr. Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, State Department spokesperson Ned Price, then Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, stuck to this position as if it were sacrosanct. It was empty. To be discussed, it later became a position Ukraine itself was willing to discard if peace negotiations offered promise.
Mr. Biden deceived the American public as well as the publics of other nations into believing that a nation’s sovereignty was totally and uniquely defined by its freedom to choose membership in a military alliance of its choosing. Austria and Switzerland, as examples of neutral nations, have clearly through decades not declared that their general sovereignty has been compromised. Any nation makes thousands of sovereign decisions over time – what kind of economic system it will have, its programs for social security, taxation, investments regulation, programs for low-income and poor residents, its political system, the nature of its constitution, postal system, educational system, energy policies, criminal system, foreign relations and the list goes on and expands over time with adjustments to any of them. Ukraine would have been doing the same as a neutral country, given security guarantees. Mr. Biden and his followers were spouting nothing but simplified rhetoric, worthy of being labeled a charade and likely cloaking unexpressed intentions.
During negotiations it took independent media to expose that the U.S. and its allies at the table refused to allow Russia’s chief security interests to even be discussed, as revealed in an interview with Derek Chollet, counsel to Mr. Blinken himself and privy to the negotiations. (1) These were non-issues as far as the United States was concerned.
These failed “negotiations” were a tragedy by themselves because they had held out a prospect that at the very least the invasion could have been thwarted with a genuine full give and take negotiation worthy of the name but instead represented empty rhetoric and the arrogance that only some countries have a right to issue a redline. Russia seemed not to recognize that the U.S. does not allow another nation to present a red line to it, that the U.S. presents red lines to others and that it decides another country’s real security interests.
Remarkably on April 20, ’22 an event occurred outside of the Ukraine-Russia war that strikingly exposed the nature of American hypocrisy when it comes to security interests of others versus its own. The clear and profound meaning of the event went unnoticed by the mainstream media and received far too little exposure from even independent media.
The Solomon Islands, a U.N. South Pacific Ocean member country 8,000 miles from Washington, D.C. and of miniscule size, announced a security agreement with China. This set off alarm bells within the Biden Administration because such an agreement represented a potential security threat to the U.S. It sent officials twice to the Islands despite the Islands indicating that there was no military nature to the agreement. In addition, the U.S. has military bases in the Pacific among its worldwide count of 867 such bases. Those who very closely watch U.S. behavior abroad wondered if in fact the U.S. might actually threaten the Islands. It did just that, threatening “military action” against them. This situation was an apparent American redline without the name but Russia’s longstanding perception of threat from encroaching NATO and neighbor Ukraine’s threats to it by potentially joining NATO were not even worthy of discussions meant to help prevent a full scale actual war.
A number of weeks into the war and the intervention of Turkish President Erdogan to sponsor peace talks led to the two nations of Ukraine and Russia making very significant progress by themselves, as represented in the “15 point” peace plan. (2) This was a remarkable achievement to date where Ukraine neutrality and Russian withdrawal of troops were cornerstone features. That sacrosanct issue of “sovereignty” for Ukraine that the west had obsessed about seemed to have become a lesser issue after all, specifically for Ukraine itself and especially with the security guarantees discussed in the negotiations. The fact that there were as many as 15 agreed upon points was enormously important. But then something happened. A different type of major tragedy, and number three among the group of them.
That something was a change in position by Ukraine that left Russian Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov, a key member of Russia’s negotiating team, in disbelief before media sources. That change came about by the intervention of the United States and Britain indicating to Ukraine President Zelensky that the west would not support negotiations with Russia. Boris Johnson, acting on behalf of the true signal caller, Mr. Biden himself, expressed to the press that he had, on a solo trip to Ukraine urged that country not to negotiate any further. What was Ukraine to do under the circumstances where it was totally dependent upon western weaponry, multiple sources of other materials and billions of dollars flowing into it?
Since then we have been told multiple times by Biden spokespersons that Russia has no interest in negotiations. During a summer Atlantic Council event, for example, Mr. Blinken made the claim that
“We have not seen any interest on the part of Vladimir Putin in engaging in any kind of meaningful diplomatic initiative”. (3)
This is a sad example of the type of distorting propaganda that the U.S. has stored in its playbook and is ever ready to launch.
In addition to the many hideous consequences of this war there is an insipid and poisonous propaganda campaign that erupts from all sides (Ukraine, Russia, the U.S., Britain, NATO generally) which does nothing but place added obstacles in the way of peaceful settlement. Some signs of hope have emerged – the grain transport agreements, prisoner swaps, some level of U.S.-Russia military communications to help prevent a nuclear war. But assuming that the world avoids a nuclear “exchange” arising from this war and that negotiations to actually end the war are finally decided upon, is there any confidence that with what has transpired to date in the name first of negotiations to prevent and then later stop the war that there will be a full setting of “adults in the room”? Or will the past be prologue?
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Don L. Durivan is a long-time activist against wars, is engaged in humanitarian projects abroad and at home and works in health care finance issues for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Notes
1. Alex Jordan, Responsible Statecraft, April 28, 2022, “Did the U.S. really take Russia’s NATO concerns ‘very seriously’?”
2. The Irish Times, March 16, 2022, “Ukraine and Russia draw Up a 15 point neutrality plan to end war”.
3. Connor Echols, Responsible Statecraft, July 1, 2022, “Diplomacy Watch”.
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Pfizer and BioNTech are seeking Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for an updated COVID-19 bivalent “booster” vaccine for children ages 6 months to 4 years old.
Pfizer on Monday said if the bivalent booster receives EUA, children in this age group will receive two doses of the original COVID-19 vaccine, followed by a dose of the “updated” vaccine targeting Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.
Previously, children under age 5 could receive a three-dose series of the original COVID-19 vaccine. However, since the shots received EUA in June, only 2% of children under 2 and about 4% of 2- to 4-year-olds have received their primary doses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The bivalent vaccine is currently authorized as a “booster” dose in the U.S. and the EU, for children 5 and older.
Bivalent boosters are ‘obsolete,’ come with ‘very concerning side effects’
Drs. Peter McCullough, Meryl Nass and Michelle Perro were critical of Pfizer and BioNTech’s bid to receive EUA for the bivalent booster for young children.
“It is unconscionable, given what we know about the poor performance of the existing vaccines and their very concerning side effects, that FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] and CDC went along with the new ‘boosters’ without a single human trial — and now the manufacturers want to give these untested vaccines to children as young as 6 months of age.”
Without human trials for the “boosters,” said Nass, an internist with special interests in vaccine-induced illnesses, it was “guaranteed that no one would know what their safety issues were — making the whole process of informed consent, which is legally needed for unlicensed vaccines — a charade.”
Perro, a pediatrician, pointed out that by continuing to administer the original COVID-19 vaccines to children, children are receiving a vaccine “for a virus that is no longer in circulation.”
Perro told The Defender,
“There are key factors to take into consideration as to why the FDA authorization for the Omicron ‘retooled’ vaccine would be not only misguided, but malignant for children.”
She added:
“If the authorization is approved, children in the 6-month to 4-year-old age group would receive two doses of the primary series of the original Delta-variant-derived Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
“Any pediatric clinical provider would know that the original vaccine is no longer of any use since the variant has undergone innumerable variations since its emergence. There are now hundreds of new variant lineages, varying in pathogenicity as well as location, with the present variants now being designated informally as ‘Coldvid’ due to their relatively benign nature.
“The point is the original vaccine was made for a virus that is no longer in circulation. Following up with the Omicron-adapted bivalent vaccine is equally nonsensical for the same reasoning.”
Similarly, McCullough, a cardiologist, questioned the bivalent booster for the youngest age group, telling The Defender that they are “obsolete” and “dead on arrival”:
“The bivalent booster failed to stop Omicron BA.4/BA.5 in animals, but because it was pre-purchased, HHS [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] decided to use the vaccine and its surrogate antibody rise, irrespective of its failed efficacy or lack of demonstrated safety since there were no human trials.
“In the last several months BA.4/BA.5 has moved out, giving way to BQ.1 and BQ1.1, so the bivalent boosters are now obsolete even on theoretical grounds. With no theoretical or actual benefit and with no assurances on short or longer term safety, the bivalent boosters are dead on arrival.”
In questioning the effectiveness — and need — for the “boosters,” Nass referred to a Nov. 18 New York Times report on the “surge” in respiratory illnesses across the U.S., which stated:
“The newer variants, called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, are spreading quickly, and boosters seem to do little to prevent infections with these viruses, as they are excellent evaders of immunity.”
Addressing the increase in non-COVID-19 respiratory illnesses, Perro said this was set into motion with the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccines.
She told The Defender:
“Forcing a vaccine schedule with experimental genetic therapeutics for organisms that have morphed since their introduction begs the question as to what is the root cause motivation — whether it be monetary or other. Every illness and its subsequent therapy requires a risk-benefit ratio when evaluating children. In terms of COVID-19, we are giving an already outdated vaccine which has not been studied for a potential disease which has nearly zero risk in kids.
“The harm to children from this experimental gene-immunomodulating therapy has been demonstrated by our own CDC, documenting severe illness and death in children who have received this unnecessary vaccine. Placing this series on the vaccination schedule for children gives Pharma an indemnity pass.
“While government agencies are touting viral strains on communities from other pathogens (i.e., RSV and influenza), it should be emphasized that this viral tsunami has been triggered by the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccine which has disarmed and disabled people’s innate immunity to fight off these other pathogens.”
Nass said the continued expansion of the federal COVID-19 state of emergency allows the administration of EUA vaccines to continue.
“It is only by continuing to declare a pandemic emergency that these exceedingly dangerous, unlicensed EUA vaccines could be used,” she said. “If the government was honest and admitted the emergency was over, by law no EUA vaccines could be given to anyone.”
Instead, Nass added, the vaccines are illegally mandated, in many cases to attend college, “even though college-age males are at the highest risk of myocarditis and at extremely low risk of a serious case of COVID.”
“Our public health establishment, under the leadership of Tony Fauci, Robert Califf and Rochelle Walensky has become a criminal enterprise,” Nass said.
According to Perro,
“The only authorization must be no authorization and it is time for the FDA to do its job.”
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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
Featured image is from CHD
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
As Russia actually do launch an invasion or “special operation” in Ukraine, we thought now was a good time to recap on how we got here.
The historical, political and ethnic divisions in Ukraine go back decades, if not centuries, but we don’t have the space for that kind of deep-dive. For now, we’ll be keeping it to three simple parts: The fall of Viktor Yanukovych, the Crimean referendum, and the ensuing civil war which puts the region in a direct path to the events of today.
Much like our 30 Facts on Covid, this piece is intended as a quick reference guide to help get friends and family up to speed on the recent history of Ukraine, a handy index of contemporary sources, or a refresher course for those who’ve forgotten the details.
Anyway, let’s get to it.
1990
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, multiple Western leaders give both written and spoken assurances to then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, that NATO does not plan to increase its territory eastwards.
To quote US Secretary of State James Baker:
not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”
1997
The Charter on a Distinctive Partnership is signed by representatives of both NATO and Ukraine. This document is a long-term agreement that Ukraine will move gradually into cooperation with NATO and eventually become a member. This is in direct violation of the assurances given above.
2002
NATO publishes their NATO-Ukraine Action Plan, re-affirming their commitment to “closer ties” with Ukraine, and outlining a long term plan for “reforms” in Ukraine that will make it suitable for “full Euro-Atlantic integration”.
2008
US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko sign the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership, the charter “emphasizes the continued commitment of the United States to support enhanced engagement between NATO and Ukraine”.
February
Viktor Yanukovych, leader of Ukraine’s Party of Regions, wins the presidential election and is named Ukraine’s fourth President. Yanukovych is the former governor of Donetsk, the region of his birth, and wins office with a huge percentage of the vote from ethnically Russian east Ukraine.
May
As one of his first acts as President, Yanukovych signs an agreement with Russia, extending their lease on the Black Sea naval base in Crimea until at least 2042. This extension is met with consternation and rebuke in the Western press, with one paper asking:
The End of Ukraine’s EU Integration?”
Writing in the Guardian, Luke Harding called it:
the most concrete sign yet that Ukraine is now back under Russia’s influence following Yanukovych’s victory in February’s presidential elections.
Also noting that “the lease extension is likely to increase opposition to Yanukovych in Ukraine’s western provinces.”
Ukraine’s parliament votes through a new bill barring the country from joining any military bloc. This, as the BBC noted at the time, effectively ends any prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, killing a plan that the West had worked on for 13 years.
However, the elections also mark the first time Ukraine elected a far-right MP to its parliament, with Oleh Tyahnybok’sSvoboda party winning 37 seats and over 10% of the vote (entirely from the ethnically Ukrainian west of the country).
Contemporary press reports, as well as think-tanks such as OpenDemocracy, note the “concerning” rise of “far-right politics” in Ukraine.
September
The Ukrainian cabinet unanimously approves the draft of the long-awaited Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. Yanokuych is expected to officially sign the agreement at the EU’s “Eastern Partnership Summit” in Vilnius on November 28th and 29th.
Russia – Ukraine’s major creditor and biggest trade partner – warns that this treaty would “cause chaos”, break the terms of an existing treaty between Ukraine and Russia, and lead to Ukraine’s economy collapsing. As a counteroffer, they suggest Ukraine sign a new deal with the Eurasian Economic Union.
November
The Ukrainian government issues a decree suspending preparations for the association agreement (AA). Deputy Prime Minister Yuriy Boyko warns the current terms of the agreement would “seriously damage the economy”.
“Pro European” demonstrations begin in Maidan square within days of the decree being issued. A poll run by the Kyiv Post finds an even split on joining the EU vs the Eurasian customs union: 39% for, 37% against.
Yanukovych attends the Eastern Partnership Summit on the 28th, but does not sign the Association Agreement, instead suggesting a new tri-lateral agreement between Ukraine, Russia and the EU. Russia is open to negotiating such a deal, but EU rejects this offer completely.
Despite not signing the AA, Yanukovych tells the press that Ukraine still intends to work for closer ties with the EU: “an alternative for reforms in Ukraine and an alternative for European integration do not exist…We are walking along this path and are not changing direction”.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov echoed this: “I affirm with full authority that the negotiating process over the Association Agreement is continuing, and the work on moving our country closer to European standards is not stopping for a single day”.
Nevertheless, this is ubiquitously covered in the Western media as Yanukoych “refusing to sign the association agreement in favour of closer ties with Russia”.
Thousands more gather in Maidan Square and others begin occupying Kiev City Hall. Protests intensify as opposition politicians speak of Yanukovych “committing treason”, they call for a re-run of the Presidential election, despite new elections being only 18 months away.
On November 29th the protesters make their first “official” demands, including the immediate resignation of Viktor Yanukovych.
In a press conference, far-right MP Oleh Tyanybohk officially calls it a “revolution”, and asks that police and members of the military defect to their side.
When the police came, unlike the Muscovites, they didn’t leave. They swung chains and threw Molotov cocktails and built barricades in the streets. They took over municipal buildings. They nearly toppled the city’s main statue of Lenin. They sang the national anthem and chanted “Revolution!”
8/12/2013 – Protesters topple a statue of Lenin. Grafitti reading “Yanukovych you’re next” is scrawled on walls. An effigy of Gadaffi’s severed head is carried around the square to chants of “Yanukovych the game is over!”. Kyiv Post reports preparation of Molotov cocktails.
10/12/2013 – Berkut riot police attempt to break down the barricades and clear the square. Tear gas is deployed. They are beaten back.
11/12/2013 – US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyattvisit the protests and talk to opposition leaders. They are photographed shaking hands and distributing food:
That same day Foreign Affairs, the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, runs an article headlined: “Yanukovych Must Go”
Also that same day, former President Leonid Kravchuk hosts a “roundtable” political discussion with members of all parties and all of Ukraine’s past presidents, the aim is to diffuse the crisis. The talks have Yanukovych’s blessing, the opposition refuses to attend.
13/12/2013 – US Senator John McCain visits Kiev where he gives a speech telling the crowd“We are here to support your just cause”.
Later he is photographed shaking hands with Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the far-right Svoboda party:
The UK’s Channel 4 news reported [emphasis added]: “Far-right group at heart of Ukraine protests meet US senator”.
This includes 180 million dollars on “development programs” for “judges, members of parliament [and] political parties”.
16/1/2014 – After weeks of stalemate, the Ukrainian parliament passes ten new bills into law. Known collectively as the “Anti Protest Laws”, these laws allow a strict crackdown on protest activity, including removal of parliamentary immunity from MPs promoting violence and stripping of drivers license from those that used vehicles to obstruct public roads.
19/1/2014 – Clashes between riot police and protesters on Hrushevskoho Street, many of the protesters are from far-right groups such as Svoboda and Right Sector, and are seen wearing neo-nazi symbols and slogans.
25/1/2014 – President Yanukovych reaches out to opposition leaders, offering them a power-sharing agreement that would install Yatseniyuk as Prime Minister and Vitaliy Klitschko as his deputy. The opposition refuses the offer.
28/1/2014 – In a gesture of compromise, the parliament repeals 9 of the ten protest laws, passing a new law granting amnesty to all those involved in the protests, providing they cease occupying government buildings. The oppostion refuses these terms.
February
7/2/2014 – A recorded phone call between Nuland and Pyatt is leaked to the press, famously dubbed the “fuck the EU” call.
In the conversation, dated January 28th, Nuland and Pyatt discuss at length the structure of the Ukrainian cabinet once Yanukovych is gone. This is still 25 days before Yanukovych was removed from power
A poll published that same day by the Kyiv Post found more Ukrainians opposed the Maidan protests than supported them.
19/2/2014 – President Yanukovych declares a “truce” in a joint statement signed by the three main opposition leaders. The statement committed to negotiation for a lasting peace.
20/2/2014 – Snipers open fire on the crowd in Maidan Square, resulting in at least sixty deaths. Both protesters and police officers are killed in the gunfire. EuroNews reports that the “truce is shattered” mere hours after it was signed.
The agreement required the creation of a temporary “National Unity Government”, to be replaced following new Presidential Elections by the end of 2014. It also called for a full investigation into the shootings on the Maidan the previous day.
Yanukovych pledged that the government would not declare a state of emergency or call in the military, and would pull all police back from the site of the protests, in return for protesters surrendering all public buildings and illegal weapons.
Leaders of the militant protesters – including Dmitryo Yarosh of the neo-Nazi Right Sector – rejected the agreement, and threatened to storm the Parliament and Presidental Residence if Yanukoyvch did not resign immediately.
22/2/2014 – Rather than abiding by the terms of the agreement, once the police pulled back the protesters stormed government buildings and seized control of Kiev. Yanukovych flees to the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine.
A contemporary Time article reported:
Ukraine’s beleaguered President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev Saturday as protestors took full control of Ukraine’s capital, signaling a dramatic turn in the three-month crisis just hours after the signing of an European Union-sponsored peace deal […] As police abandoned their posts across the capital, the opposition established control over key intersections and captured the presidential palace, setting up a perimeter around Yanukovych’s former residence
Within hours of the storming of the city, the Ukrainian parliament votes to strip Yanukovych of his office by 328 votes to 0, with over 120 MPs absent from the vote. This vote was unconstitional and not a legally binding form of impeachment, in any way.
From the eastern city of Kharkiv, Yanukovych gives a televised speech, declaring he was still the “legitimate elected President of Ukraine“, and that he had no intention of fleeing the country.
25/2/2014 – Yanukovych’s own Party of the Regions disavows him in parliament, and he flies to Russia, claiming his life is in danger.
27/2/2014 – Arseniy Yatsenyuk is sworn in as Ukraine’s interim Prime Minister, a post he would hold onto following elections in May 2014.
Vitaly Klitschko is relegated to the somewhat lower office of Mayor of Kiev, and Oleh Tyahnybok resumed his office as a simple MP.
Ukraine’s new government takes shape exactly as predicted by Nuland in her phone call of January 28th.
The same day Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Secretary General of NATO, tells the press that“the door is still open” for Ukraine to join the military bloc.
28/2/2014 – UK current events show Newsnight runs this segment, titled “The Neo-Nazi Threat in New Ukraine”:
March
Evidence emerges that the snipers shooting at the crowds were not employed by the Ukrainian government, but were shooting at both sides in an effort to stoke chaos.
This evidence is presented to the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton by Estonia Foreign Minister Urmas Paet in a phone call that is later leaked to the press, and confirmed to be genuine by the Estonian government.
Neither the EU, nor the new government of Ukraine, makes any effort to investigate this evidence or bring the killers to justice.
Following the 2014 parliamentary elections, the 5-party coalition government officially makes joining NATO a “national priority”.
*
So, there it is, a timeline of the key events leading to the fall of Viktor Yanukovych. Genuine grassroots revolution, or NATO backed coup? You decide.
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***
An Australian doctor has gone public with microscopic images of unidentified objects that appear to be “self-assembling” from the contents of Pfizer’s COVID injection.
Family physician Dr. David Nixon recently shared dark field microscopy photos of “concerning” structures that appeared in Pfizer jab fluid over time and that seem to be the product of “intelligent design” in a Sunday episode of the International Crimes Investigative Committee (ICIC) co-hosted by the group’s founder, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich and ex-Pfizer executive Dr. Michael Yeadon.
Nixon showed how boxy, dark structures, similar in shape to crystals but with “internal structures that appear to be different from … a naturally occurring crystal,” appeared on the periphery of the slide’s jab contents after he left it out overnight.
Remarkably, the formation of the crystalline structures appeared to depend on their exposure to electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs), according to Nixon. When he put the slide “inside a faraday bag” blocking EMFs he said came from his wireless router, he only saw black, round “dots.”
However, when he “didn’t shield the site,” only the angular, crystal-like formations “would appear the next morning.”
While discussing Nixon’s findings, Dr. Yeadon advised that further experiments were needed to ascertain if it was indeed the presence of EMFs, as opposed to other variables such as “temperature or air currents,” that affected the structures’ formation.
Other reports have been made that EMFs affect the formation of structures within the COVID jabs. Ecuador-based electrical engineer Matt Taylortestified on the Stew Peters show that when he put a drop of the COVID jab on a microscope slide and placed that slide on an internet router, he observed the self-assembly of what he believes “look like integrated circuits.”
According to Taylor, when he turned the router off, the objects “immediately” began to break apart. He repeated the experiment three times and “begg[ed]” people to reproduce his investigation to see if his findings can be replicated. In fact, Nixon indicated that Taylor had inspired his own test with the faraday bag.
Electrical engineer Shimon Yanowitz added during the ICIC discussion that he believes Nixon and Taylor’s work are “in corroboration with each other,” and that Nixon has observed “the exact same phenomena found by Matt Taylor,” except with the distinct appearance yielded by dark field microscopy.
Nixon went on to show that after leaving the injection fluid out on the slide for 10 weeks, the crystalline formations seemed to have morphed to take on the “appearance of a much more concerning nature.”
The structures Nixon showed maintained angular shapes, but now appeared to contain one or more bright light-reflecting points, in addition to other interior formations. The close-ups of these objects were photographed at 200x magnification, Nixon told LifeSiteNews.
The structures, which Nixon at this point describes as “chips,” were now present not only on the periphery of the slide’s jab contents but all throughout it.
Nixon shared with LifeSiteNews a video running at 200x speed that highlighted both relatively small and large lights that seemed to suddenly appear in the “chip.”
The chips were also “often associated with” new ribbon-like objects that Nixon now describes as “wires” — that is, they often appeared alongside the “wires.”
Nixon said on Friday that he has seen similar “wire” formations in the blood of the vaccinated and shared with LifeSiteNews a picture in which one can see clumping blood cells surrounding the “wire” with the “frayed edges” Nixon said are often present.
Another of Nixon’s remarkable findings was that he had “discovered all of these structures disappeared overnight,” “except for a couple.” He said that these remaining structures also “slowly disappeared” over time, and he showed a time-lapse video he captured of one of the crystalline objects in which it appeared to shrink until it disappeared.
He has shared video footage of this phenomenon on his website, noting that chips “literally melt away.”
While it is unclear to Nixon what the structures are and what their purpose is, he believes “it seems to be acting in a way that would suggest it’s electronic.”
Nixon told LifeSiteNews he has “spent hours” looking at his video footage “with IT and engineering colleagues,” and that they have drawn “comparisons with the electronic components that they are familiar with.”
Alexandra Latypova remarked in a prior statement to LifeSiteNews that while she cannot discern what Nixon’s findings are, “we know size alone is problematic since these are observable under standard optical microscope, so these are very large structures.”
Dr. Ana Maria Mihalcea pointed out during the ICIC group discussion that corroboration of Nixon’s findings is not easy to come by, since in the United States, for example, “it is a criminal offense to look at the Pfizer vials.”
“And so the people who are asking for rigorousness, which would be [a] university-setting type of scientific elaboration, we cannot provide this … It should be the pharmaceutical companies, the FDA and the CDC who prove or disprove us and really show that they are doing the studies to say, ‘What is this?’”
“Because we … don’t even have the means to be able to do this with a scientific rigor that would be acceptable to the scientists who are denying this possibility,” Mihalcea remarked.
Interestingly, at least two electrical engineers — Yanowitz and Taylor — believe that what they have seen in the COVID injections under a microscope looks like electronic “circuits,” and they and others have also described findings of “self-assembling” jab structures.
Yanowitz, who cited “a lot of background in microscopy and microelectronic fabrication,” asserted regarding Nixon’s findings that “when you look at this thing from the point of view of an electrical engineer, you have nothing but to assume that this is an electronic circuit that is self-assembling right before your eyes.”
“I also have to say that on my side, I found in addition to what seems like electronics, I found other structures self-assembling,” Yanowitz said.
“So this is not just the materials and the excipients that are in those vials. It’s this amazingly advanced technology that seems to make new things out of these materials and excipients,” he added.
Among other unidentified objects from the COVID jab that he said “could be ribbons, filaments, [and] tubes” of some kind, Yanowitz captured images of what he called “electronic circuitry,” which he again emphasized was not visible in the vial itself but appeared from the contents of the vial over time after what he asserted was a “self-assembly” process.
Yanowitz said he had placed the vial contents in an “actual incubator of body temperature,” which “did speed up the self-assembly by quite a bit.”
Dr. Carrie Madej, who examined the contents of different COVID jabs under the microscope from different manufacturers, has also observed what she referred to as the “self-assembling” of unidentified objects from the Moderna injection.
In the Pfizer jab, Madej saw “something that looks similar to teslaphoresis,” which is “when these little graphite-like black, metallic particles start to coalesce into strings, like a spider web. They do that through any external force — it could be light, it could be a magnetic force, it could be an impulse, like a frequency.”
Karen Kingston, who used to do marketing work for Pfizer, pointed out Sunday that “80 percent” of the “ingredients, the manufacturing process, and the toxicity” of the COVID jabs was “redacted under the FDA law since it was approved.”
“We have the right under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) to know what those ingredients are. These are not biologics,” Kingston said.
“So any expert who’s saying they’re 100 percent confident there’s no nanotechnology or devices or graphene oxide in here, how do they know when 80 percent of the ingredients are redacted?” she added.
Dr. Fuellmich highlighted Kingston’s point and the legal importance of the uncertainty of what exactly these COVID jab structures are.
“What we do know is that this stuff doesn’t belong in there,” said Fuellmich, going on to point out that informed consent to the injections is impossible without knowledge of their full contents.
“You cannot consent to something that you don’t know anything about. Information is everything,” Fuellmich went on.
Concern over the safety of the COVID jabs has been increasing not only as reportsof death and injury directly in response to the injections are being made via the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) but also as excess deaths have spiked considerably since the rollout of the COVID injections in 2021.
Last January, Scott Davison, the president of OneAmerica insurance in Indianapolis, highlighted the industry’s astonishing 40% increase in 2021 third-quarter death rates, which were the highest the company has “seen in the history of the business.”
“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So, 40% is just unheard of.”
Entrepreneur-turned-journalist Steve Kirsch has explained such a catastrophe would only happen by pure chance every 2.8e32 years, which is “basically never.”
*
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All images in this article are from LSN
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
European policies which advocate mass joint borrowing among EU member states to further finance Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion of the country will have devastating consequences for the continent, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned on Friday.
During an interview on the “Good morning, Hungary!” program on Kossuth Rádió, Orbán slammed the futility of the existing EU sanctions on Russian energy. He also said that “not only our children, but also our grandchildren will suffer the consequences” of the mass joint borrowing scheme proposed by the European Union to continue financing Ukraine’s defense; furthermore, we will also have to pay for the states that become insolvent along the way, he added.
The Hungarian leader reaffirmed his country’s opposition to Brussels financing the operation of the Ukrainian state through joint borrowing, suggesting instead that agreements with Ukraine should be made at the national level through bilateral agreements between individual countries.
“We do not want the European Union to become a community or group of jointly indebted states instead of a community of cooperating member states,” Orbán told listeners.
He highlighted that Ukraine has now found itself in a situation whereby it is incapable of functioning as an independent nation because of the ongoing conflict, and while it needs help from its neighbors and allies in the short-term, it is not for Brussels to speak on behalf of all member states.
“We accept the need for support, but we are not happy about it; if there was no war, there wouldn’t be this necessity either,” Orbán said.
The Hungarian prime minister also discussed the ongoing EU sanctions on Russian energy, including the latest oil sanctions due to come into effect on Dec. 5, which Hungary is exempt from.
He warned that any further extension of EU sanctions on Russian gas or nuclear energy would have “tragic consequences” for Hungary, and insisted his nation must be exempt from such a decision.
Orbán lamented the failure of the ongoing energy sanctions, which he argued have not brought us “one millimeter closer” to the end of the war.
“We are facing a difficult winter, Ukraine is in an increasingly difficult situation, Russia is suffering difficulties, but its revenues from energy carriers are at their peak, so the policy of sanctions has not achieved its goal,” he added.
The Hungarian leader explained that while Hungary is not subject to the incoming ban on Russian oil imports into Europe, it will still be affected by the “price-inflating effect of the sanctions.”
Lastly, Orbán vowed to continue fighting for Hungarian interests in Brussels, telling listeners:
“We have always achieved our own national goals in the negotiations on sanctions, so we are participating in the discussion of the ninth package with good hopes.”
He warned, however, that the “pressure is constant,” and with new packages of sanctions expected, the Hungarian government must “constantly fight to protect our interests.”
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Featured image: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gives an interview to Kossuth Rádió on Dec. 2, 2022 (Source: MTI/Prime Minister’s Press Office/Zoltán Fischer)
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***
Welcome to the early 21st century dystopian nightmare reality where Orwell’s 1984 is no longer fiction, and if you are hearing voices, it could be the government transplanting those thoughts in your head.
If you think your appliances are listening to you, well, you may be right. Truth is treason and fact is fiction.
Freedom is selfish and fascism is kindness.
Killer robots are being deployed and the Malthusian depopulation agenda is being implemented.
An evolution of good old fashion eugenics called transhumanism is being sold as the advancement of the human race, and global technocrats are openly planning to use artificial intelligence to decide which industries to eliminate in an effort to stop economic growth.
The infrastructure for smart cities, the sophisticated prisons of the future, are in place or being employed. The force and coercion of deadly gene therapy shots continues despite the enormous evidence of causing harm. Unimaginably, masks, lockdowns, and vaccine passports, in many places, may be here to stay. Don’t be surprised if the classic film Casablanca is banned because it critiques fascism by highlighting the oppressive government policy of asking for your vaccine passport, I mean, “Your Papers Please”.
The recent reports in San Francisco about the decision to use killer robots to target American citizens suspected of crimes, should be an eye opener for those still looking the other way. This, of course, is just the beginning.
A Chinese company is promoting a ‘new species’ of 5G powered artificial intelligence driven robots to do everything from serving you coffee to pumping gas. However, these robots may be more of a ‘Terminator’ style prototype than a ‘Jetsons’ automated house keeper. The planned future may entail these terminator style robots for law enforcement purposes, or stated more clearly, oppression. Nothing could go wrong here.
As if this absurdity wasn’t enough, according to Aman Jabbi, the sophisticated prisons called smart cities will include street lights that can kill, total surveillance, and forcing people into the Metaverse under a new digital slavery system. Rural and suburban America will be eliminated as humans are herded into these smart cities. According to Jabbi, much of the infrastructure is in place in many areas of the United States, including Florida and Georgia.
A next generation prototype city, called Neom, or ‘the line’, is being constructed in Saudi Arabia. According to Joseph Bradley, Neom’s technology and digital CEO, “NEOM is not about building a smart city, it is about building the first cognitive city, where world-class technology is fueled with data and intelligence to interact seamlessly with its population.”
As frightening as this is, the previously mentioned deliberate plan proposed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), to use artificial intelligence to decide which industries to liquidate in order to stop economic growth, should send a chill down your spine.
That’s right, the WEF is actually proposing that economic growth is bad and that economic growth should diminish.
This of course is to save the planet from the natural phenomenon called climate change. This psychotic, I mean noble goal, is to stop the depletion of natural resources. Of course, this system must be fair, so artificial intelligence will be used to decide who gets to succeed, and who gets to fail. Don’t worry, I’m sure that algorithm will be proprietary information, like the ones used in the voting machines, or the ingredients of those Covid shots.
If you are wondering how long it will take for the self appointed masters of the universe to determine whether all the useless humans are necessary, you need not wait. There are some interesting coincidences that have emerged globally since the introduction of the Covid gene therapy shots. All cause mortality is going up while birth rates are dropping. Evidence is emerging that these shots may be both a biological and technological weapon. After all, those semi synthetic blood clots are normal. No worries, nothing to see here, move it along.
The high priests of knowledge and truth in our society have determined that for our own good, we are not allowed to know the contents of the Covid shots. These same high priests have also protected us from knowing the algorithm in our computerized voting machines. Fortunately, the government and media and big tech have colluded to protect us from free speech and have actively censored information about the dangerous Covid shots, and our fake elections.
Well, you know what they say, a little knowledge can be dangerous…
Pilot programs of a centralized digital bank currency are currently being rolled out. A CDBC has the potential to create a total slave system where your money is not yours, but instead, is more of an allowance based on approved behavior as the algorithm can be tied into your ESG score. Access to normal life activities can eventually be tied to your speech and political views. Or maybe you’ll be allowed to buy food when you get your gene therapy booster.
Eugenics has evolved into transhumanism, where our billionaire Marxists are seeking to live forever while experimenting on the human race. As mentioned in a previous article, this was prophesized by C.S. Lewis in his book That Hideous Strength. Written shortly after WWII, this work of fiction depicts fascist intellectuals seeking to merge humans with artificial intelligence to find a way to live forever and sanitize humanity. Ultimately, the transhumanists were deceived and were in fact communicating with dark entities. Well, we do know the globalists are evil.
The fusion of Malthusian population control cultists and climate change cultists has led to this abysmal thing called The Great Reset. The Great Reset is a “revolution” led by billionaire technocrats
The Great Reset is unrestricted warfare on the human race.
I see a few scenarios where this can go. Most aren’t so good. We can see total control and a prison planet emerge, it could all blow up and civilization collapse, or we could see the emergence of pockets of liberty as we enter the new dark age. The globalists could fail and we see a free planet emerge. Or there could be a fusion of the two extremes. Nothing is certain. Although, I would argue that the only way possible good outcomes can emerge is if there is active resistance at all levels.
In some way, we all signed up for the early 21st century dystopian nightmare reality.
We all have a choice. We can hide and grovel on our knees, or we can enter the arena, and work to stop global genocide, preserve the human race, and the elusive, yet beautiful thing, called freedom.
It is a wonderful time to be alive. We get to slay the dragon, or die trying.
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