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For drugmaker Pfizer, a fortune amassed in the covid pandemic is now paving the path to pharma nirvana: a weight loss pill worth billions.

The company has reaped nearly $100 billion from selling covid-19 vaccines and treatments to U.S. taxpayers and foreign governments. With that windfall, it plans to get richer, sinking the cash into developing and marketing potential blockbusters for conditions like migraines, ulcerative colitis, prostate cancer, sickle cell disease, and obesity.

It just announced it will triple or even quadruple the price of its covid vaccine once it goes on the commercial market next year. Meanwhile, the company is inundating doctors and pharmacists — and consumers — with advertising touting its covid drug Paxlovid.

“Pfizer is a remarkable marketing machine. They have an incredible ability to make the most of molecules and get them adopted,” said Timothy Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

The federal government is helping Pfizer with its marketing, urging people to get boosters targeting the omicron variants, although early data has been mixed on whether the shots work better than the earlier version. But even with a 66% drop in covid vaccine sales in the past quarter, the company made about $4.4 billion in those three months. Pfizer has a deep stream of cash to finance its future. Covid has been very good for business.

The company appears most excited — judging from its messages to investors — about two experimental diabetes pills, “me too” drugs in the class known as GLP-1 agonists. As Pfizer competitors have already discovered, they double as weight-loss drugs. In one trial, more than half of obese patients on a high-dose Eli Lilly and Co. injectable lost a fifth of their body weight — results that have raised the drugs’ cachet as a diet aid in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and other social niches where cost is no issue and being thin is always in.

Wall Street analysts are predicting such massive demand for these drugs that Pfizer “can find a place there with marketing” if its version works, though it is at least two years from licensure, said Mohit Bansal, a Wells Fargo analyst. By 2035, the Lilly drug alone could earn $100 billion a year for its formulation, according to one Bank of America analysis.

Pfizer still sees covid as a “multibillion-dollar franchise” long term, Chief Financial Officer David Denton told a Nov. 1 earnings call, since covid “is going to be somewhat like a flu, sustained flu, but actually more deadly than the flu.”

The company announced Oct. 20 that it would charge $110 to $130 a shot once government contracts run out next year, more than double what investors were expecting. The U.S. government paid $30.50 per shot in its latest contract with Pfizer, according to Zaid Rizvi, a researcher for the advocacy group Public Citizen.

Pfizer was a good citizen in keeping prices down during the worst of the pandemic, CEO Albert Bourla told investors. Now payers will pick up the added cost, while consumers “wouldn’t see the difference” because there’s generally no copay for vaccines.

Still, unless new mutations are dangerous enough to scare enough people, Wall Street analysts expect sales to lag, as the public loses interest, Republican politicians discourage booster shots, and concerns continue about rare heart damage in young people getting the shots. Pfizer said in July it had taken “a $450 million write-off of inventory related to covid-19 products” that exceeded “approved shelf-lives.” And Moderna on Nov. 3 lowered sales predictions for its covid vaccine.

“Not many people are going to go out and get their fourth, fifth, and sixth boosters if there’s no major new variant,” said Geoff Meacham, an analyst at Bank of America. “If you’ve had the two mRNAs and a booster, you are pretty well protected. Do you need it annually?”

That lagging interest in covid products has investors pushing Pfizer to show where it can make up revenue for three bestsellers — the breast cancer drug Ibrance, the rheumatoid arthritis drug Xeljanz, and Eliquis, a blood thinner — whose patents run out this decade.

While conducting its own research, Pfizer fattened its development portfolio in the past two years by buying companies that already had developed promising drugs. The company hopes these purchases, and its own work, will give it $25 billion in new annual revenue by 2030.

Meanwhile, the company has treated investors to $25 billion in dividends over the past three years and spent $9 billion jacking up share prices with stock buybacks.

All this is due to the huge profit bulge from its covid products, which has enabled Pfizer to outpace Johnson & Johnson as the biggest industry revenue earner so far in 2022. From late 2020 through September, Pfizer earned about $80 billion from sales of 3.8 billion covid vaccines and Paxlovid, and the company expects an additional $15 billion in the remainder of this year. Until recently, investors had been predicting that number would fall to around $11 billion annually by 2026, but Pfizer’s recent commercial pricing announcement increased that figure, potentially, by up to $3 billion, according to a Wells Fargo analysis.

Still, “from the investor’s point of view, the focus is not on covid as much at this point. The focus is, what do they do with this money and expertise?” Bansal said, and how to “use it to grow their core business.”

To grow that core, Pfizer since last year has acquired several midsize companies with promising or licensed drugs. It spent $11.6 billion for Biohaven, whose migraine drug Nurtec ODT brought in $324 million in the first half of 2022. Pfizer predicts up to $6 billion in annual revenue from the drug.

Its hopes are also high for Oxbryta, a sickle cell anemia drug produced by Global Blood Therapeutics, which Pfizer bought for $5.4 billion. Priced at $125,000 a year, the drug, which raises oxygen levels in patients, earned $100 million in the first two quarters of the year but might be worth $2.5 billion annually with a powerful marketing engine behind it, according to Wall Street analysts.

Pfizer is strengthening its franchise in respiratory vaccines and treatments, Dr. Mikael Dolsten, the chief scientific officer, said on the Nov. 1 call. It’s racing against GSK and Moderna to be first to license a vaccine that protects older adults as well as pregnant women and their newborns against RSV, a respiratory virus that has overwhelmed children’s hospitals this fall. The company also has released an updated version of its bacterial pneumonia vaccine, which brought in $5.3 billion in 2021.

The other mRNA vaccine companies are also rolling in cash but have narrower strategies. Moderna is testing 32 infectious-disease vaccines and developing a long-shot individualized cancer vaccine. Pfizer’s German partner, BioNTech, which did most of the original development of their covid vaccine, has a similar focus.

Pfizer and Moderna both began advanced clinical trials this year for their first non-covid mRNA vaccines — against influenza. If flu season is widespread enough, the tests could show whether the vaccines are any better than standard flu shots, and whether one works better than the other.

Investors expect a lot from Pfizer, with its 80,000 employees and $81 billion in 2021 revenue. And they are likely to get it.

Nurtec, the migraine drug it acquired with Biohaven, will be a good test case. Pfizer and giants like it each have at least 2,000 sales reps marketing to primary care physicians in the United States, Calkins said. An operation like that probably costs $400 million a year, he said, far more than a company like Biohaven could afford.

Pfizer will use its marketing prowess, particularly among primary care physicians, to “build the world’s leading migraine franchise,” CEO Bourla said on the Nov. 1 call. Pfizer has the resources to flood the media with direct-to-consumer ads and negotiate with insurers and pharmacy benefit managers to make sure patients can get this and other drugs, said Bansal, the Wells Fargo analyst.

Sickle cell patients are harder to reach, but Pfizer “has relationships in the hospital setting, the heft of their investment in commercialization” to increase sales of Oxbryta, said Evan Seigerman, a research analyst at BMO Capital Markets.

Pfizer also plans to make a blockbuster of etrasimod, an experimental drug against ulcerative colitis that it acquired with its $6.7 billion purchase of Arena Pharmaceuticals.

Pfizer’s GLP-1 formulation is key to its goals. The GLP-1 drugs are similar to a gut peptide, or small protein, that stimulates biochemical pathways that help release insulin, diminish appetite, and lower certain immune responses. While the drugs were invented and licensed to fight Type 2 diabetes, the FDA has approved one of them for obesity treatment as well, and companies are testing GLP-1 formulations against fatty liver disease, sleep apnea, kidney disease, congestive heart failure, and even Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Pfizer executives said they hope to decide by 2024 which of two candidate drugs to take into large clinical trials. The company sees itself finding a niche with a pill that can be taken with or without food, according to Dolsten. Most of the current products are injectables, which turn off many people.

Assuming one of the drugs gets licensed, marketing will do the rest.

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***

In this issue of the Report, we have an exclusive interview with Alexandria (Sasha) Latypova, MBA, a former pharmaceutical executive, and independent analyst. Her prior reports on TrialSite News that deaths reported in VAERS after COVID-19 vaccination are not randomly distributed according to manufacturing lots as they are with influenza vaccines. Instead, they are aggregated in specific “hot lots.”

For example, from data on 33 lots of the Pfizer vaccine, 80% of the deaths have arisen from 35% of the lots. For Moderna, only 24% of the lots account for 80% of the deaths. Lot sizes were small initially, and some contaminated the metallic beads used in the manufacturing process. This explains reports and videos of injection site magnetism early in the campaign and why over time, these claims dissipated.

The lot sizes became larger, and the rushed nature of vaccine manufacturing invariable loads specific lots with more viable intact mRNA, while others have considerably less genetic material and or broken fragments of mRNA.Under the existing government contracts, there is no FDA or third-party inspection of the products for safety, quality, or purity. Because the US Department of Defense, under the Emergency Use Authorization countermeasures program, is the ”developer” of the vaccines, there is a complex array of biological defense contractors that make the components of the vaccines.

Specifically, private contractors do the fill-and-finish manufacturing, and the DOD or its designees has material possession of the products until delivery at a vaccine center. At this stage, the vaccine companies (Pfizer, Moderna, JNJ, Novavax) are largely marketing shields for the military program. Ms. Latypova makes it clear, by the US EUA regulations, COVID-19 mass vaccination is a DOD operation, and the signal to “go” is given by the US Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Under Trump, it was Alex Azar, and now with Biden, it’s Xavier Becerra. Essentially if the HHS Secretary believes a national medical emergency exists, then DARPA, the branch of the military dealing with biological threats, is activated, and the process starts.

Here is a quote from the DARPA website:

“As part of the ADEPT program in 2011, DARPA began investing in nucleic acid vaccines. The hypothesis was that rather than delivering antigens to the immune system, we could deliver genes that encode the antigen and allow the human body to produce the antigen from its own cells, triggering a protective immune response. In December 2020, former ADEPT performer Moderna’s RNA vaccine received FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) approval for the prevention of COVID-19.”¹

So, it is fully disclosed that the genetic vaccines were not a product of Operation Warp Speed and developed in just a few months, as portrayed by the White House. In truth, DARPA has been working on genetic vaccines with companies such as Moderna since 2011. What is the role of the FDA?² Latypova points out it is largely “theatre”. In other words, the FDA is giving sham approvals to versions of the vaccines as they move forward since they are powerless to stop it. This interview is gripping and a must-listen for those trying to comprehend the mild-blowing reality of forced vaccination resulting in record injuries, disabilities, and death. Our music contribution is from John Gouveia Psalm 2 – Why Do the Nations Rage?³

So let’s get real, let’s get loud; on America Out Loud Talk Radio, this is The McCullough Report!

The McCullough Report: Sat/Sun 2 PM ET Encore 7 PM – Internationally recognized Dr. Peter A. McCullough, known for his iconic views on the state of medical truth in America and around the globe, pierces through the thin veil of mainstream media stories that skirt the significant issues and provide no tractable basis for durable insight. Listen on iHeart Radio, our world-class media player, or our free apps on Apple, Android, or Alexa. Each episode goes to major podcast networks early in the week and can be heard on-demand anywhere in the world.

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Dr. McCullough is an internist, cardiologist, and epidemiologist managing the cardiovascular complications of both the viral infection and the injuries developing after the COVID-19 vaccine in Dallas, TX, USA.

Notes

¹ https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/covid-19

² https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/emergency-use-authorization-medical-products-and-related-authorities

³ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nXTL5iZDD8k

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***

For all of Apple’s talk about how private your iPhone is, the company vacuums up a lot of data about you. iPhones do have a privacy setting that is supposed to turn off that tracking. According to a new report by independent researchers, though, Apple collects extremely detailed information on you with its own apps even when you turn off tracking, an apparent direct contradiction of Apple’s own description of how the privacy protection works.

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***

Electricity and gas prices are soaring across Europe, with bills close to double from last year in most European capitals, according to new data from the Household Energy Price Index—a monthly tracker of energy prices for households across 33 European capitals, including the 27 EU member states and several non-members.

According to the data collected for the HEPI, natural gas bills in Europe have gone up by as much as 111 percent over the past year, with electricity prices up by an average of 69 percent. Taken together, Euronews calculates these two make for a total 90-percent increase in household energy bills over the past year.

“Significantly higher [energy prices] compared to one year ago … can be attributed to a combination of factors, such as increased demand connected to post-pandemic economic recovery and extraordinary weather conditions, the record-high prices for natural gas, and high CO2 emissions allowances,” the authors of the latest HEPI report noted.

The high energy bills are creating headaches for European governments: strikes and protests are multiplying and disgruntlement with energy policies is growing. The cost of living in most of Europe is already exorbitant because of the energy crisis and this crisis is only going to get worse after the EU embargoes on Russian oil and then fuels come into effect.

In some parts of Europe, according to the latest HEPI report, energy prices have reached record highs but in others, prices have actually fallen, at least in October. The news is not as good as it looks at first glance: the decline was a result of government intervention, i.e. energy subsidies.

There have been a lot of subsidies as European governments try to alleviate the financial pain on households and businesses to avoid further disgruntlement. Germany alone will be spending some $200 billion on such coping measures, including a cap on energy prices up to a certain level of consumption.

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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

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***

The commander of the US nuclear arsenal has stated unequivocally that the war in Ukraine is just a warmup exercise for a much larger conflict that’s already in the mail.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports:

The commander that oversees US nuclear forces delivered an ominous warning at a naval conference last week by calling the war in Ukraine a “warmup” for the “big one” that is to come.

“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said Navy Adm. Charles Richard, the commander of US Strategic command. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”

Richard’s warning came after the US released its new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which reaffirms that the US doctrine allows for the first use of nuclear weapons. The review says that the purpose of the US nuclear arsenal is to “deter strategic attacks, assure allies and partners, and achieve US objectives if deterrence fails.”

Not only does Richard appear to believe that a hot war between major world powers is a foregone conclusion, he has also previously stated that a nuclear war with Russia or China is now “a very real possibility.”

The US empire really is threatening all life on Earth with potential nuclear apocalypse:

The US military commander who oversees nuclear forces said, “This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup”

“The big one is coming,” he added https://t.co/6c1iLEDOEk

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 7, 2022

Again, this is not some armchair warrior opining from his desk at a corporate newspaper or DC think tank, this is the head of STRATCOM. Richard would be personally overseeing the very warfare he is talking about.

What I find most striking about remarks like these is how passive they always make it sound. Richard talks about “The Big One” like other people talk about California earthquakes, as though a hot war with China would be some kind of natural disaster that just happened out of nowhere.

This type of rhetoric is becoming more and more common. Describing an Atomic Age world war as something that would happen to the US empire, rather than the direct result of concrete A-or-B decisions made by the empire, is becoming its own genre of foreign policy punditry.

This passive, oopsy-poopsy narrative overlay that’s placed atop the US empire’s militarism is nothing new. Back in 2017 Fair.org’s Adam Johnson documented the way western media are always describing the United States as “stumbling” into wars and getting “sucked in” to military interventions, like a cheating spouse making up bad excuses after getting caught:

This framing serves to flatter two sensibilities: one right and one vaguely left. It satisfies the right-wing nationalist idea that America only goes to war because it’s compelled to by forces outside of its own control; the reluctant warrior, the gentle giant who will only attack when provoked to do so. But it also plays to a nominally liberal, hipster notion that the US military is actually incompetent and boobish, and is generally bad at war-making.

This is expressed most clearly in the idea that the US is “drawn into” war despite its otherwise unwarlike intentions. “Will US Be Drawn Further Into Syrian Civil War?” asked Fox News (4/7/17). “How America Could Stumble Into War With Iran,” disclosed The Atlantic (2/9/17), “What It Would Take to Pull the US Into a War in Asia,” speculated Quartz (4/29/17). “Trump could easily get us sucked into Afghanistan again,” Slate predicted (5/11/17). The US is “stumbling into a wider war” in Syria, the New York Times editorial board (5/2/15) warned. “A Flexing Contest in Syria May Trap the US in an Endless Conflict,” Vice News (6/19/17) added.

Syria the Latest Case of US ‘Stumbling’ Into War – https://t.co/uZV7Lu3VFf pic.twitter.com/FVPtSGeery

— FAIR (@FAIRmediawatch) June 22, 2017

So let’s get real clear about this here and now: if there is a hot war between the US and a major power, it will not be because that war was “stumbled into”. It will not be like an earthquake or other natural disaster. It will not be something that happens to or is inflicted upon the US empire while it just passively stands there in Bambi-eyed innocence.

It will be the result of specific choices made by the managers of empire. It will be the result of the US choosing escalation over de-escalation, brinkmanship over detente — not just once but over and over again, while declining off-ramp after off-ramp. It will be the result of real material decisions made by real material people who live in real material houses while collecting real material paychecks to make the choices they are making.

Another thing that strikes me about comments like those made by Charles Richard is how freakish and insane it is that everyone doesn’t respond to them with, “Okay, well, then let’s change all of the things we are doing, because that’s the worst thing that can possibly happen.”

And make no mistake: that absolutely is an option. The option to turn away from the collision course with potentially the most horrific war of all time is available right now, and it will remain available for some time into the future. This isn’t 1939 when war is already upon us; if anything it’s more like the early 20th century precursors to World War I and all the stupid aggressions and entanglements which ultimately gave rise to both world wars.

One of the many ways our cultural fascination with World War II has made us stupid and crazy is that it has caused us to forget that it was the worst single event in human history. Even if a hot war with Russia and/or China didn’t go nuclear, it would still unleash unspeakable horrors upon this Earth which would reverberate throughout our collective consciousness for generations.

That horror should be turned away from. And the time to start turning is now.

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

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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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***

CDC Director, Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, for the record, continues to make false claims about the COVID-19 vaccine boosters with the apparent motivation of getting more Americans “fully vaccinated.”  This is in the backdrop of an 8.4% rate of Americans over age 5 taking one of them.[i] 

No matter how hard the internal pressure is at the CDC to get a “needle in every arm,” what would be such a strong motivation for Walensky to blatantly deceive Americans with such obvious counterfactual information?  She states “COVID-19 vaccines may not prevent every infection (as apparent in her personal case), but they do provide use important protection against severe illness, hospitalization, and death…”

In order for that claim to be valid by US regulations, a COVID-19 vaccine would need to reduce the risk of adjudicated COVID-19 hospitalization and death as a primary endpoint in a prospective, double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial.  The benefit would need to be meaningful, e.g., ~20% relative risk reduction, and statistically significant, e.g., p<0.05. The conclusive study should have no significant threats to validity such as loss to follow-up.  There has been no pivotal randomized trial, and no one can claim COVID-19 vaccines reduce hospitalization and death.  The shortest section on the FDA Pfizer Fact Sheet is the “Benefits” section!  This is given with the consent form and makes no claims about severity, hospitalization, and death.[ii]

She goes on to promote a two-month period between the last injection (presumably legacy mRNA) and the new bivalent vaccine.  This schedule has never been tested and demonstrated to be safe in human beings.  Even more shocking, the bivalent boosters which failed in animal studies to stop Omicron, have never been tested for safety or efficacy in human RCTs with clinical outcomes.  In academic medicine and the pharmaceutical regulatory community, the question is WHY does Walensky cross the line into making false claims, an illegal act for fully FDA approved and marketed drugs/vaccines?   Only senate or congressional hearings with direct questions will get the truth out of her.   Here are some possibilities:  1)  she is following orders from higher governmental authorities, 2) she knows the claims are false but truly believes the only way for vaccination to work is to keep everyone vaccinated on a continuous basis no matter what the costs, 3) she is in a form of a trance or psychological state driven by fear in herself and for humanity where COVID-19 vaccination has become like a talisman with special powers and cannot be challenged. Indeed, Walensky has never comprehensively discussed safety of COVID-19 vaccination, and she has not disclosed who should NOT take a COVID-19 vaccine.   So, the next time someone in your circles claims you or your loved one should take a COVID-19 vaccine to be “safe” or “protected” from serious outcomes, ask them to take a look at the consent fact sheet and read the tiny benefit section.

If you find “Courageous Discourse” enjoyable and useful to your endeavors, please subscribe as a paying or founder member to support our efforts in helping you engage in these discussions with family, friends, and your extended circles.

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Notes

[i] CDC COVID Tracker, Accessed November 9, 2022

[ii] VACCINE INFORMATION FACT SHEET FOR RECIPIENTS AND CAREGIVERS ABOUT COMIRNATY (COVID-19 VACCINE, mRNA), THE PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 VACCINE, AND THE PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 VACCINE, BIVALENT (ORIGINAL AND OMICRON BA.4/BA.5) TO PREVENT CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019 (COVID-19) FOR USE IN INDIVIDUALS 12 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER, August 22, 2022

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***

This time it is CNN’s own report on its own exit polls that indicates a stolen election.

Today November 9, 2022, updated at 10:49 AM EST, CNN reporters Zachary B. Wolf and Curt Merrill remarked that the widely expected red wave did not materialize and then went on to present data that is inconsistent with the closeness of the voting.

The reporters compare the exit polls from the 2018 elections with those of the 2022 elections.  The comparisons show that the Democrats lost support in Tuesday’s elections among women, moderates, youth, people of color, urban voters, college graduates, and independents.

The Democrats’ support among women declined from 19 points favorable to Democrats to only 8 points.  Republican support among men rose from 4 points over Democrats to 14 points.

By age, the preference for Democrats over Republicans for 18-29 years of age declined from 35 points to 28 and for 30-44 years of age from 19 points to 4.  Republican support over Democrats rose from 1 to 10 points for those 45-64 years of age and from 2 to 12 points for those 65 and older.

White men’s preference for Republicans increased from 21 to 28 points. White women moved from a 50-50 split to an 8 point preference for Republicans.  Black women’s preference for Democrats declined from 85 points to 78.  Black men’s preference for Democrats declined from 76 points to 65.  Latina women’s preference for democrats fell from 47 points to 33; and Latino men’s preference for Democrats fell from 29 points to 8.  

Urban voters preference for Democrats declined from 33 points over Republicans to 17 points. Suburban and Rural voters preferences for Republicans rose by 6 points and 15 points.

Democrats also lost support among white and black college graduates.  Among white votes without college degrees the preference for Republicans rose by 10 points.

Among moderates, the preference for Democrats eroded from 26 points to 15. Among conservatives the Republican advantage rose from 67 points t 83. Among liberals there was essentially no change.

The CNN exit polls show substantial erosion of the Democrat voting base since the 2018 election.  How can such substantial erosion be consistent with the lack of any significant Republican gain on Tuesday?

The outcome of Tuesday’s election is made even more difficult to comprehend by CNN’s reporters when they report:

“Back in 2018, 37% of voters said they were Democrats, compared with 33% who said they were Republicans and 30% who said they were independents. In 2022, it was Republicans who have the edge. When they won control of the House in 2018, Democrats had an advantage among independent voters. That is nearly gone in 2022.

“Both Democrats and Republicans improved their performance among the party faithful. But Republicans built a lead among voters who don’t have a a favorable view of either party. Democrats lost their edge among voters who have a favorable view of both parties.”

There are many other indications that indicate that much is amiss in the vote count. Polls show that Biden suffers an approval rate of only 36% and that a large majority of Americans do not want Biden to run for reelection in two years.  How is this preference consistent with the vote count of Tuesday’s election?

Consider also that the party in power loses representation in midterm elections, but despite the substantial turn away from Democrats revealed by CNN, this normal result did not occur on Tuesday. 

Consider also public dissatisfaction with: record crime, record inflation with high food and gasoline prices, rising interest rates and falling home values, massive illegal immigration, forced indoctrination of school children with transgender theory and critical race theory, Biden’s Covid vaccination mandates that caused health injuries, deaths, and destroyed careers, Biden’s Covid lockdowns that destroyed businesses, jobs, supply chains and raised prices, Biden’s “Russian” sanctions that disrupted energy supply and raised the price of everything.  Considering all this dissatisfaction, how did Fetterman, a person impaired by a stroke and afflicted with problems speaking who wants to release criminals from prison, win a seat in the US Senate from Pennsylvania?  How did the same Georgia voter who returned Republican Gov. Kemp to office vote against black Republican and football star Herschel Walker in favor of black Democrat Warnock, who hates Trump and white people, for the US Senate?

Finally, consider the Diebold voting machines that malfunctioned in New Jersey, Arizona, and Texas, and Gateway Pundit’s report that in Detroit, Michigan, ballots were being delivered through the back door in the early hours of Wednesday morning long after the legal deadline.

Now, ask yourself, what is worse, a stolen US election or an American electorate so insouciant and out to lunch that they would keep a political party in office that is leading us into war with Russia and China, that hates white people and persecutes them, that has politicized the FBI and Department of Justice turning them into Gestapo agencies serving Democrat power, that fervently believes that parents are bad for children and should have no say in their education (brainwashing), that is demonizing normality and normalizing perversity, that . . . I could go on and on.   Here was a chance for voters to register their dissent, and according to the vote results they failed to do so.  If the vote count is honest, then the conclusion is that we must write off the American people as beings too stupid to survive as a free people.

This is why I much prefer to believe that the election was again stolen.

What can be done about stolen elections? Nothing.  Especially when a previously stolen election has left Democrats in control of the executive branch.  The executive branch is the police branch.  It is not going to enforce election or any law against itself.

The Democrat controlled cities are empires unto themselves. They can steal every election and nothing can be done about it.  The media is an appendage to the Democrat party.  The media supports whatever the official narrative is.  

This is tomorrow’s, Thursday, November 10, column.  I am posting it November 9 prior to the construction of the official narrative that we will soon receive so that at least my readers will have a chance to think before the official  explanation is forced on them.

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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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***

On November 9, Russian High Command announced it will retreat from the right-bank areas of the Kherson oblast (region). The current commander of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, Army General Sergei Surovikin, announced the plan in a report to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. Russian units will be relocated to new defensive lines along the Dnieper River. According to Surovikin, the move is aimed at preserving the lives and fighting capacity of Russian soldiers engaged in this area of the frontline.

“We will save the lives of our soldiers and the fighting capacity of our units. Keeping them on the right [western] bank [of the Dnieper River] is futile. Some of them can be redeployed on other fronts,” the Russian general stated.

The announcement, although shocking to many, was hardly unexpected as the new authorities of the Kherson oblast have been conducting the evacuation of civilians for weeks, indicating that the area was likely expected to see intensive fighting. Various Western media outlets are already reporting that the move is a “major setback” for Russia and a “big win” for the Kiev regime.

However, top-level Kiev regime officials are cautious about the announcement, with some even calling it a possible trap. According to Reuters, Mykhailo Podolyak, the senior adviser to the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky, stated that it was “too early to talk about a Russian troop pullout from the southern city of Kherson.”

“Until the Ukrainian flag is flying over Kherson, it makes no sense to talk about a Russian withdrawal,” Podolyak said in a statement.

Expectedly, other Kiev regime officials and the Neo-Nazi junta’s propaganda machine are already boasting that the event is an “absolute triumph.” The Kiev regime forces have been targeting the infrastructure in the area for months, including all the bridges and transport vessels on the Dnieper River and even dams, in particular the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, risking a major disaster if the floodgates were to be destroyed.

The US-supplied HIMARS MLRS and other Western weapons are also often used to target residential areas, killing dozens and wounding hundreds of civilians. General Surovikin himself also warned that the Neo-Nazi junta troops launching numerous rocket strikes on the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant and dam could cause thousands of civilian casualties.

“There will be an additional threat to the civilian population and a complete isolation of the group of our troops on the right bank of the Dnieper [River]. Under these conditions, the most rational option is to establish defense along the barrier line of the Dnieper [River],” Surovikin said, adding that the possible destruction of the dam would cause “an intensive discharge of water and a massive flooding of both banks of the Dnieper River.”

The right (western) bank of the Kherson oblast, although strategically important for possible future offensive operations toward Nikolayev, is certainly difficult to defend while also preserving the lives of civilians and preventing major damage to local infrastructure. Still, there are other possible problems that could arise if the Kiev regime forces gain uncontested control of the area, including putting Crimea within reach of artillery and missile units of the Neo-Nazi junta. Given their lack of concern for causing massive civilian casualties, this could become a major issue if not properly addressed. The main fresh water supply for the Crimean peninsula could also be in jeopardy, as it comes from the Kakhovka Reservoir which could end up becoming a direct frontline area.

However, it’s expected that the Russian military is already prepared for such contingencies. The Dnieper River is one of the largest in Europe, both by volume and in terms of width, making it an almost perfect defensive barrier and a major obstacle for the Kiev regime forces. Conducting offensive operations across the river could prove to be a deadly endeavor, one which the Neo-Nazi junta troops are hardly prepared for. Both sides are now sending additional reinforcements to the area, with the Kiev regime vowing to continue offensive operations despite suffering heavy casualties for months.

\

For its part, the Russian military has been conducting successful defense, but as General Surovikin stated, it wants to reduce military and civilian casualties as much as possible. However, the Kiev regime forces’ increasingly intensive shelling of the Kherson city in recent weeks is creating complications for the Russian military’s logistics, which might be one of the reasons for the withdrawal. Western media and intelligence sources claim that approximately 40,000 Russian soldiers are now being evacuated to the left (eastern) bank of the Dnieper River. It can also be expected that the Russian military has already set up a large number of new artillery positions and that it will use them to target any Kiev regime units attempting to approach the Dnieper River.

As previously stated, although the withdrawal is being hailed as a “victory”, the reaction from Volodymyr Zelensky’s office implies that the fighting is still ongoing and that “this could be a staged retreat meant to soften Ukrainian resolve at a decisive moment…” The aforementioned statement by Podolyak is a clear indicator of this. Many geopolitical and military experts are also puzzled by such a public announcement, as withdrawals are usually conducted without giving the enemy time to prepare for an all-out advance against retreating forces. This would explain the Kiev regime’s caution, as many of the top-level officials are afraid that the move could soon prove to be a trap.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

The Arab Tayy tribe has called for an end to the illegal occupation of Syria by US troops and says it is refusing to attend any gathering under the auspices of the US in Hasakah Governorate.

In a statement published by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) on 9 November, tribe leaders said they remain one of the “major pillars of confronting terrorism, rejecting all its forms, financiers and supporters represented by the American occupation forces.”

The statement goes on to say that the US army “came under the cover of fake democracy to pass its looting policy and spreading the culture of murder in the region to hide its crimes.”

Syria has been ravaged by 11 years of war and faces constant attacks by Turkey and Israel, on top of Washington’s ongoing oil smuggling campaign.

In August, the Syrian government reported that Syria’s oil sector has incurred losses of at least $107.1 billion since the start of the US-sponsored war.

As a result of this, the Arab Tayy tribe says it stands firmly alongside the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“We will remain loyal to the homeland and affiliation to Arabism, preserving its approach to the Syrian Arab Army, loyal to our leader, Dr. Bashar Hafez al-Assad, to preserve one united Syria with its land, people and sky,” the statement added.

The Emir of the tribe, Muhammad Abdul Razzaq al-Tayy, stressed that resistance is the only way to expel the foreign troops from the country.

“We call for targeting the American occupier on any part of the land in which it is located within Syria because it is understood only in the language of force, and just as the Ottoman and French occupiers expelled us, we will expel everyone who entered intending to occupy our land and plunder our resources.”

The presence of US occupation troops has stirred up sentiments of patriotism among Arab tribes in Hasakah and Deir Ezzor governorates, who have begun blockading roads and confronting US troops.

On 4 November, the Bakkara tribe prevented a US military convoy from passing through their village, forcing them to return to where they came from and throwing stones at some of the vehicles.

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***

Israeli politicians from the Religious Zionism bloc which secured 14 seats in the Knesset, making it third largest, in last week’s election are expected to demand potentially flashpoint  ministerial posts in the government to be formed by Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu.

The coalition is set to be comprised of Netanyahu’s Likud, ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, and the far-right Religious Zionism bloc led by Bezalel Smotrich, which has formed an alliance with extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit faction. As all these parties hold a combined 64 seats in the 120-member Knesset, it is certain that Netanyahu will succeed this time around to form the government, which will be the most far-right in Israel’s nearly 75-year history.

Following his first post-election meeting with Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir said that the coming colition will be “a full right-wing government” and declared “a big change is coming”.

While it is not clear what ministries will be offered to Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, education, internal security have been rumoured. Netanyahu has confirmed Ben-Gvir is a candidate for an “expanded” role of the security ministry, which controls the police. In this post, he could become a major provocateur, particularly over Al Haram Al Sharif, the mosque complex in occupied Jerusalem.

Having led settlers storming the complex, Ben Gvir has called for the extension of Israeli sovereignty over the compound, unprecedented access for Israelis and Jewish prayers there. Ben Gvir and others in the Religious Zionism alliance have long pushed for changes to the status quo, under which only Muslims are allowed to worship within the compound while Jews may visit but not pray. If Ben-Gvir were to be given the security ministry, he could ignore the ban on public Jewish prayer in the compound, thereby inflaming Palestinian Muslims, Arabs and the world-wide Muslim Umma.

This could violate the understanding with Amman following Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in June 1967. At that time, then Israeli Chief-of-Staff Moshe Dayan agreed that Jordan would continue to be custodian of Islamic and Christian sites in Jerusalem. Under this deal, non-Muslims are not permitted to perform religious rituals or display religious symbols in these sites.

Non-Muslims could visit the Haram, which Jews claim is the site of their first and second temples, under the supervision of the Waqf, the joint Palestinian-Jordanian Islamic trust which manages the mosque complex.

According to Israeli historian Amnon Ramon, Dayan sought to “to neutralise…the religious aspect of the Israeli-Arab conflict”. He feared an Israeli-Jewish take-over of the management of Al Haram Sharif could provoke an uprising in the occupied Palestinian territories and a backlash in Muslim countries already shocked and angered over Israel’s conquest of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

The idea of a status quo agreement for Muslim and Christian holy sites in Israeli-occupied Jerusalem has a historical precedent. In 1852, the Ottoman sultan decreed that there should be no changes to the ownership and status of Christian religious sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. This was internationally recognised in 1878 in the Treaty of Berlin, which was signed by European powers and the Ottoman Empire following the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1988.

Under Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel, it agreed to “respect the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem”.

Although the peace treaty upheld the status quo. Israel has over time breached the terms and spirit of the deal. In 2003, the Waqf’s management of Israeli visits was rescinded by the Israeli authorities and since then settlers and far-right militants have been allowed to force their way into the compound at will. Once inside they are allowed to roam and are usually protected by the police and troops even if they attack Palestinians, forcing them to seek refuge in Al Aqsa mosque. Ignoring who are the aggressors here, Ben-Gvir has called Waqf officials “terrorists”.

The most extreme of the Israeli religious zealots, the Temple Mount Faithful, seek to replace the Muslim places of worship with a Third Jewish Temple. The Temple of Solomon, the second said to occupy the site, was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD following a Jewish revolt in Palestine.

Having consistently breached the status quo agreement at the Haram Al Sharif, this spring Israel also restricted to 4,000 the number of Christian worshippers in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the Holy Fire service during Easter, when 11,000 normally attend. Writing on May 3 on the Washington-based the Arab Centre website, Jonathan Kuttab observed, “There seems to be no rational reason for these restrictions other than to flex muscles and assert power and exclusive sovereignty, reflecting the increasing influence of religious Zionism within the Israeli political sphere.”  This influence is certain to expand and deepen with Netanyahu’s coming far-right-religious coalition.

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***

During his first visit to Moscow since the military operation in Ukraine began, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov that his country will continue buying cheap oil from Russia. The two foreign ministers also discussed initiatives to boost cooperation in agriculture, defence and infrastructure.

Jaishankar met with Lavrov on November 8 with senior officials in charge of agriculture, petroleum and natural gas, ports and shipping, finance, chemicals and fertiliser, and trade accompanying him, thus demonstrating the long and strong relationship between India and Russia.

“Russia has been a steady and time-tested partner. Any objective evaluation of our relationship over many decades would confirm that it has actually served both our countries very, very well,” Jaishankar said in a joint news conference.

“As the world’s third-largest consumer of oil and gas, a consumer where the levels of income are not very high, it is our fundamental obligation to ensure that the Indian consumer has the best possible access on the most advantageous terms to international markets,” the Indian foreign minister stressed. “We have seen that the India-Russia relationship has worked to advantage… I would like to keep that going.”

New Delhi, despite Western pressure, has not condemned Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and is now Moscow’s largest oil customer after China. India traditionally purchases its oil from Iraq and Saudi Arabia, but Russian imports have surged due to its favourable prices offered to countries that have not imposed sanctions.

Russia became India’s main supplier of oil in October, exporting 946,000 barrels per day, according to energy analytics firm Vortexa. Before the war in Ukraine, Russian oil accounted for very little of India’s imports. However, with western-imposed sanctions on Russian oil and gas, Moscow has become an obvious partner for a New Delhi that is happy to take advantage of low-cost oil supplies. Russian oil prices have been highly competitive with Middle Eastern and African crude, leading India to deepen ties with Moscow even further.

Although New Delhi is massively benefitting from the current situation, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told news outlet PTI ahead of her upcoming trip to India on November 11 that the country could benefit from a price cap on Russian oil.

“Our objective is to hold down the price that Russia receives for its oil and keep that oil trading. The gainers from this will be particularly those countries that do buy cheap Russian oil, and our hope would be that India would take advantage of this price cap, though its firms are bargaining with Russia,” Yellen told PTI.

“If they (India) want to use Western financial services like insurance, the price cap would apply to their purchases. But even if they use other financial services, we believe the price cap will give them leverage to negotiate good discounts from world markets,” she added.

She is expected to discuss with Indian officials a G7 plan to cap the price of Russian oil. US officials and G7 countries have been in intense negotiations in recent weeks over the imposition of a price cap on sea-borne oil shipments that are expected to begin on December 5. This is to ensure that sanctions do not throttle the global oil market.

During the meeting of the Indian and Russian foreign ministers, Lavrov hailed his “Indian friends” for their position on the Ukraine crisis and accused Western countries of trying to consolidate a “dominant role in world affairs” and prevent “the democratization of international relations.” Lavrov also said during his fifth meeting with Jaishankar this year, “We discussed in detail the state and prospects of military-technical cooperation, including joint production of modern arms.”

It is recalled that the two countries in 2021 agreed to a $677 million deal to produce AK-203 assault rifles in India. Russia for decades has assisted New Delhi in its push for self-reliance in defence manufacturing, especially as the South Asian country is one of the world’s largest buyers of defence equipment. India in the decade between 2011 and 2021 imported a massive $20 billion worth of Russian defence equipment.

According to Lavrov, Russia and India also want to cooperate more closely in the fields of nuclear energy and space travel. Russia is also the fourth-biggest market for Indian pharmaceutical products. Given all these points of mutual interest, it is little surprise that Lavrov and Jaishankar have met five times in a single year despite significant efforts by Washington, London and Brussels to isolate Moscow. It is also unlikely that Yellen will convince New Delhi to abandon its current energy policy.

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

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***

Dozens of children in Afghanistan were killed following actions by British forces, with each child’s death paying out – on average – just £1,656 in compensation, exclusively obtained data from Action on Armed Violence (AAOV) can reveal.

Between 2006-14, there were 64 confirmed child victims in Afghanistan where the British military paid compensation, although the number of children killed could be as high as 135.

Even the lower number is four times more than previously thought, since prior documents released by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) had only revealed 16 confirmed child fatalities. Subsequent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests by AOAV reveal the MOD had not included an additional ‘Notes’ column within the claims database. Access to this has provided far more information on hundreds of sparsely detailed fatality compensation cases.

An analysis of these compensation payments shows that, between April 2007 and December 2012, there were 38 incidents involving 64 confirmed child fatalities where the relatives of the children were paid compensation following UK military engagements.  These incidents specifically involved the mention of a child or the listing aged under 18.

However, if you include descriptions of the dead such as ‘son’, ‘daughter’ or ‘nephew’, the number of children impacted could be as high as 135 in some 47 incidents.

Of course, it is possible to be an adult son, daughter or nephew but Afghanistan has a young population, the median age is 18, so the likelihood of someone’s child being a minor is high. Even if just half of these additional victims were under 18, that would bring the number of children killed by British forces to 100.

In total, some 164 people (adults and children) were killed in those attacks involving confirmed or suspected children.

There is absolutely no evidence that there was a deliberate targeting of civilians or children by the British military, and these tragedies must be marked down as a consequence of poor targeting, over-use of heavy weaponry or fighting in populated areas. There was not enough evidence given by the MOD to detail the circumstances of each death, and sometimes the situation that led to a child’s death was treated as cursory in the documentation.

Ages of the children

We know that the average age of a child killed during British military operations, where an age was given, was six years old.  An age was given in some 27 recorded and compensated deaths.

The youngest child was one years old, the oldest was 15.

It is notable that no child (especially male) was aged 16, 17 or 18 and raises the question as to whether any male teenager killed in fighting in Helmand would have been seen as a combatant.

The youngest recorded victim was a one-year-old baby boy killed in March 2009. In September of the same year, an 18-month-old girl was also killed in Nad-e Ali, a district in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Both were killed alongside their mother or ‘father’s wife’; just over £3,000 was paid for their deaths.

Where the child’s age was recorded, 41% of the confirmed 64 child victims following British Forces’ attacks were aged 10 or under; 22% were five and under at the time of their death.

Gender

When gender was specified for known children killed in fighting, 20 boys and 18 girls were killed. When gender was specified for known children and suspected children, 79 boys and 33 girls were killed.

In nine cases, children were killed beside an adult woman.

Causes of death

Crossfire and airstrikes were the two most common specified causes of death, raising questions about the rules of engagement deployed by the British military in Helmand during that time.

Some 68 of the 135 confirmed and suspected child deaths were from air-strikes, constituting some 50% of all deaths.

An airstrike on a village in Nawa district of Helmand killed eight members of the same family. The man brought the claim in May 2009 for the death of his nephew, alongside his nephew’s two wives and five children. The case file reveals that the grieving uncle was “advised claim has to go [be referred] to London as it is above the limit we can pay in theatre”. He took the smaller but more immediate payment of $10,000 (£7,205) for the eight deaths. The claim had already taken 144 days to complete.

30 of the 135 confirmed and suspected child deaths were from small arms fire, such as cross-fire. These made up 22% of all deaths.

In one December 2009 case, four children were shot dead by British forces whilst they were battling the Taliban in Bolan Dasht in Nad Ali. Notes from the case file show the father: “Provided Photos of his deceased children and according to D.Commander his story fits with BritFor [British Forces’] action on that day”.

The father received the equivalent of £4,224 – just over £1,000 per dead child.

Payments

The total pay-out for the incidents involving confirmed child fatalities was £144,593, although this total includes other adults killed.

If we only include claims involving child fatalities, 36 deaths from 27 incidents, the average pay-out per victim is £1,656.

Notably, this is lower than the average for total fatality cases, £2,380, although both averages involve pay-outs that also included injuries and property damage.

Lack of detail

The total fatality figures will only be a fraction of those killed by British forces. The data only captures those Afghans who knew about and were capable of going through the arduous compensation process and had enough evidence for the claim to be accepted by personnel at the Area Claims Office.

The threshold for evidence of a claim was not insubstantial. Claimants were frequently asked for photos, medical reports, birth certificates and letters from local Mullahs and were formally interviewed by British personnel to confirm there was no Taliban affiliation. In one case, a man was given somebody else’s compensation. He then had the amount deducted from the compensation he received for the death of his three young children.

The majority of the 881 fatality claims that were brought to the ACO were rejected. Just one-quarter of those received any compensation.

A recent (2022) BBC Panorama and parallel AOAV investigation into SAS killings in Afghanistan revealed the death of at least one child. The secrecy around these 54 deaths meant they did not feature in any official compensation claims.

Tragic figures

The peak of British engagement in Afghanistan peaked at the turn of the decade. But even after the UK’s formal end to combat operations in 2014, the nation’s children continued to suffer.

Between 2016-2020, there were 785 children confirmed killed, and 813 children injured by US and Afghan aerial bombardments, meaning children made up 40% of the total civilian casualties during this period, according to UN data.

According to Brown University’s Cost of War project,about 243,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan/Pakistan warzone since 2001. More than 70,000 of those killed have been civilians, as of August 2022.

Notable cases

The following is a list of notable cases from the records:

• 16th October 2008, 18 killed including seven children: a mass casualty event in Nad-e Ali. 18 people killed, seven of whom were children. Incident location and description from claimant are found to match UK records. After the claimant hands over documents, confirms “names, ages, sex and relationship of all the deceased family members and also asked him to bring letter from Mullah confirming the deaths and medical report of the injured relatives”. The claimant is then interviewed twice more in January before compensation of £27,254.79 ($39,792 at the time) is agreed.  This is the highest casualty event, the most children killed in one event and the second highest payout by the MOD within this time period. 

• 6th November 2007, Kabul, one killed: records from earlier years are still sparsely detailed. This claim is described as “Shot when approaching checkpoint at high speed.” This is notable as it is the greatest sum of compensation awarded for any claim, including mass casualty events. The claimant received the equivalent of £54,347.83 ($100,000 at the time). 

• 4th May 2012, near checkpoint Pan Kalay, Nahr-e Saraj, six killed including five children: the MOD record reads: “6 Fatalities from the same family. Mother/wife  (Name Deleted) aged 25, Sons  (Name Deleted) (10),  (Name Deleted) (6), Daughters  (Name Deleted) (12),  (Name Deleted) (5) and  (Name Deleted) (2) killed after ISAF GRU-52 suffered a weapons malfunction and overshot target and impacted in compound where family were living. This was the entire family and only wife of the claimant. An officer “is due to travel back from LKG [Lashkar Gah] 8/5/12 with the funds and letters for a Shura to he held on Thursday 10/5/12 lead by CG [Commander General] ISAF who wishes to hand over the funds and apologise for ISAF’s involvement.” £19,317.45 ($31,101.09) was paid to the man who had lost his entire family. 

• 5th January 2010, Nahr-e-Saraj, five killed including four children: “Claims husband, 2 sons and 2 daughters killed by ISAF helicopter strike.” The claim was approved 42 days later for £6,580.65 ($10,200) after investigation.

• 24th June 2008, Sangin, three children killed: two sisters, aged four and two, and their eight year old brother “died whilst looking after sheep whose field was mortared by BF [British forces].”  The father, after being rebuffed for not bringing a letter from his local Mullah, was eventually given $5395 in compensation. A deduction was taken from his £5208.33 ($7,500) since he had received another claimant’s property compensation by mistake. He had also previously been given $600 in an ex gratia payment for funeral costs, which was also deducted from his total compensation. In total, it took 252 days for his claim to be completed.

MOD response

An MOD spokesperson said of this investigation:

“Any civilian death during conflict is a tragedy, more so when children and family members are involved. The UK Armed Forces works hard to minimise that risk, which regrettably can never be entirely eliminated. This is done through a package of rigorous targeting processes built upon committed intelligence work, strong engagement protocols, thorough training for those operating in conflict and clear-eyed assessments after an engagement.”

“We investigate reports of civilian casualties and are always open to re-examine where new information is submitted. We are following the US Department of Defence review in this field and will take into account any outcomes that may assist our own processes.”

Conclusion

The challenges faced by the British military in Afghanistan were substantial. AOAV’s 2020 report For All Was Lost analysed the deaths of 454 British soldiers in Afghanistan, and the years 2009 and 2010 proved to be the two deadliest for UK personnel. Often poorly equipped troops, faced with a dedicated and experienced fighting force, were caught in fierce firefights within civilian areas. Mistakes were inevitably made.

The UK Veteran Minister Johnny Mercer wrote in his book ‘We Were Warriors’ about civilians being killed by British failings. “At the point of his position being overrun,” Mercer wrote, a young bombardier “had requested the drop from a British Harrier and in doing so had killed some civilians.”

Mercer did not detail how many civilians died, but later wrote “if you create more mayhem than you need to, you are inevitably firing up the jihadists and creating more Taliban – which was not in line with the overall mission.”

The deaths of Afghan children could be argued to be a form of peak mayhem.

Iain Overton, Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence, said of the findings: “The number of children killed following British military action in Helmand should give pause for thought. War invariably leads to death and modern war will always bring civilian casualties, but not reporting on such deaths – however much it might be a source of regret and horror to the soldiers involved in the killings and however accidental such deaths were – would be an omission of responsibility and an erosion of truth.”

“This report hopes to give some details to the often-forgotten children killed in war and, in some way, to send a warning to future Westminster politicians who might consider sending troops into battle.”

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***

The US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s meetings with Ukrainian leaders, including President Vladimir Zelensky, in Kiev has created a lot of confusion and misperceptions. One one side, the White House maintains that the trip aimed “to underscore the United States’ steadfast support to Ukraine and its people.” The readout stated that Sullivan also affirmed “the continued provision of economic and humanitarian assistance, as well as ongoing efforts with partners to hold Russia accountable for its aggression.” 

However, unnamed US officials gave the spin that Sullivan’s real mission was to “nudge” Zelensky to negotiate with Moscow and urge that “Kyiv must show its willingness to end the war reasonably and peacefully.” Politico later reported that Zelensky indeed heeded Sullivan’s “soft nudging”. The US media also reported that the US officials have been nudging the Ukrainians for sometime. 

The Washington Post reported last week that the Biden administration privately encouraged Ukrainian officials to show they are willing to engage in dialogue with Russia, in an acknowledgment of the growing frustration in the US and some of its allies at the cost and duration of the war. But, apparently, the Ukrainians pushed back.  

Sullivan also added some spice to the media speculation by claiming on Monday that the US has channels to communicate with Russia at senior levels. The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported, citing unnamed US and Western officials, that Sullivan had allegedly held a series of confidential meetings recently with Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev on the conflict in Ukraine. (Moscow has not reacted to these reports.) 

The heart of the matter is that Sullivan has been on a PR exercise in the run-up to the midterms in the US (November 8) in a concerted strategy aimed at countering the growing criticism among the Democrats and Republicans that the Biden Administration is avoiding the diplomatic track to try to end the war in Ukraine. That apart, Sullivan’s theatrics also achieved the purpose of distorting the perception that it is Zelensky who is recalcitrant about dialogue and peace talks — not Biden.

In fact, all indications are that the Biden Administration is preparing for the long haul in Ukraine. Stars and Stripes reported on Wednesday that a three-star general will lead a new Army headquarters in Germany called the Security Assistance Group Ukraine, or SAGU, that will include about 300 US service members responsible for coordinating security assistance for Ukraine. On Sunday, The New York Times had reported last Friday that Lt. Gen. Antonio Aguto Jr., head of the First US Army headquarters at Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, was a leading candidate for the new job. 

The SAGU will be based out of US Army Europe and Africa headquarters in Wiesbaden. Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, told reporters the new command will “ensure we are postured to continue supporting Ukraine over the long term.” She added the US remains “committed to Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

It is improbable that Moscow has fallen for Sullivan’s dissimulation. There is reason to believe that Sullivan who is a thoroughbred neocon from the Clinton clan would only have urged Zelensky to expedite the planned Ukrainian offensive on Kherson, which has been in the making for quite a while as a decisive battle for the Crimea and control of the Black Sea/Azov Sea ports and is critical for Ukraine’s long-term viability as a prosperous nation and of vital interest to the US and NATO for the encirclement of Russia.

Above all, the Biden Administration is badly in need of a success story from Ukraine as the newly-elected Congress convenes in January with a likely  Republican Party majority in the House of Representatives. 

No doubt, the Russians are taking the Ukrainian offensive in Kherson seriously. In a stunning announcement in Moscow on Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered a troop pullout from the western side of the Dnieper River in the Kherson Region. The fact that the Kremlin is risking criticism from the Russian public opinion for ordering such a retreat (from a region that Putin decreed is an integral part of Russia) underscores the gravity of the Ukrainian military threat and the imperative needs to strengthen the defence line.

Zelensky is forcing Moscow to literally eat its words about the “demilitarisation” of Ukraine! He continues to be in a belligerent mood. On Monday, Zelensky did make a peace offer but with five conditions for a settlement:  

• Restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity; 
• Russia respecting UN Charter on sovereignty and territorial integrity;
• Russia paying off all war reparations; 
• Punishing each war criminal; and,  
• Guarantees that such an invasion and atrocities will not happen again.

The only “concession” Zelensky made is that he didn’t mention his earlier precondition that President Vladimir Putin should relinquish office before any negotiations. It is a non-starter. 

There is no end in view for the war in Ukraine. By the way, although the midterm elections are typically the point in a US presidential cycle where one expects to see top Cabinet members being replaced, but there is no sign of that happening to Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin. 

Austin, 69, being a critical voice in the Ukraine conflict, who mobilised billions of dollars worth of military aid from around the world for Kiev, Biden anticipates that the war effort may only become more entrenched and this is not the time to change the top ranks of the Pentagon.

Indeed, the ground situation shows that the ongoing Russian operations in the areas of Ugledar and Bakhmut in Donetsk have run into strong resistance from Ukrainian forces, contrary to the Russian narrative that Kiev’s military is in a shambles and is a demoralised lot. 

In particular, the advance of the Russians around Ugledar got stuck in the mud in the village of Pavlovka, located on the important crossroads, and in a fierce battle three days ago, reportedly, there were heavy casualties on both sides. Putin’s decision to retreat in Kherson was probably with the hope of avoiding a similar fate, as the Russians are experiencing logistical difficulties to supply their forces on the western side of Dnieper river. 

Of course, this seamy picture is not the whole picture insofar as the phase of regrouping and resupplying following the Russian mobilisation is still a work in progress and the ongoing fighting in Donbass and Kherson is at the tactical level and does not involve large movements of troops. 

Equally, the intensive Russian strikes on Ukrainian depots, command centres and artillery and air-defence systems plus the destruction of Ukraine’s military-industrial facilities and energy system are yet to impact Kiev’s capacity to wage the war.  

Meanwhile, the situation on the front lines in Kherson region remains extremely tense for the Russians. The Ukrainian forces are on the prowl poking the Russian defence line incessantly to break through to advance toward the city of Kherson. A large-scale Ukrainian offensive backed by western advisors and mercenaries is to be expected any day. So far, Russian are holding their positions, repelling the ongoing Ukrainian attacks and fortifying their defences. 

From Kherson city, Ukrainian artillery can threaten Crimea. In the prognosis of Moscow’s close ally, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, “Challenging times are ahead of us. Next winter will be even harsher than this one because we’re facing the Battle of Stalingrad, the decisive battle in the conflict in Ukraine, the battle for Kherson.” He predicted that both sides are likely to deploy thousands of tanks, aircraft and artillery pieces in the struggle for the key city.

Vucic said, “The West thinks it’ll be able to ruin Russia that way, while Russia believes it’ll be able to defend what it secured at the start of the war and bring it to an end.” 

*

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***

A trolley load of books, chapters and treatises have been written on the subject of sovereignty.  Usually, the concept entails control and power, the latter a corollary of the former.  In international law, sovereignty finds some form of expression in the Montevideo Convention of 1933 but can hardly be seen as exhaustive.  In truth, the concept is a fruit-salad and medley, an “organized hypocrisy”, as Stephen D. Krasner describes it.

All of this leaves some room for the pantomime element sovereignty might allow: the eccentric who declares his own principality; the refusenik determined to avoid the taxing authorities; the clerical error that might spawn a new creation.  That such entities are permitted to exist, however, lies in an enduring conceit.  No army in modern times – barring, exception – is going to expend its resources against daft declarations of sovereignty over randomly picked stretches of land.  The problem lies, however, in the risks, or lack of them, such declarations pose to the central authorities.

An exceedingly colourful personality, streaked with lunacy, is probably key to this.  Take Louis Marinelli, a figure long associated with efforts to make California secede from the United States.  Following the 2016 US election, Marinelli decided to open a foreign embassy in Moscow to represent the Independent Republic of California.  The embassy shares the same office building with the Russian Anti-Globalization movement, which has also thrown in a measure of support.

In creating the centre, Marinelli acknowledged its limitations.  It served no “diplomatic function” at the time and Russians wishing to travel to California had to go through the US Embassy.  But he dared dream of independence. “That notion is embedded in the very question we intend to put before the voters: ‘Should California become a free, sovereign, and independent country.’”  This remains, to put it mildly, a work in progress.

Marinelli’s efforts are hardly fleeting, nor remotely odd.  The micronation experiment flutters and snaps in the wind, a persistent phenomenon.  One need only recall the efforts of the Segway inventor Dean Kamen, self-proclaimed ruler of the Kingdom of Dumpling off the coast of Connecticut, to convince President George H.W. Bush to sign a faux non-aggression pact.

Sociologist Judy Lattas could only wonder in 2005 why there was “no significant study in the scholarly press on the micronationalism that is the contemporary phenomenon of ordinary people (however quirky), in long-established democracies, getting the idea to create their own countries”.

Of all the countries on planet Earth most addicted to the concept of micronations, Australia is exceptional, a truly idiosyncratic wonder.  Size, a blood-soaked frontier history and an addled penal past may account for why a third of them have found a home there, giving Australia the title of being “Micronation Central”.  Matt Siegel, writing for The Atlantic, suggested that such a micronation obsession might have arisen from that tired description of larrikinism supposedly inherent in the Australian character.

In 1970, perhaps the most famous of these colourful upstarts, the Principality of Hutt River, was founded by Leonard Casley.  A 76-square-kilometre property in Western Australia’s mid west became the subject of interest for Casley, who had bickered over wheat production quotas in 1970.

That year, in letters addressed to Australia’s Governor General, the West Australian Premier, and the Governor of Western Australia, Casley claimed to be formally seceding and called upon all parties to “resolve co-operatively and mutually successfully this problem”.  In time, his curious entity secured some 13,000 citizens worldwide, even though never having more than a population of 30 or so.  Hutt River currency was issued, along with entrance visas to curious visitors.  Residents were exempted from income tax, though this proved unenforceable.

In December 1977, Prince Leonard even made a declaration of war via telegram to the Governor-General of Australia, hoping that the gesture would grant his principality serious standing.  The true inspiration for that was his perennial bugbear, the Australian Tax Office.  The declaration was ignored in Canberra and withdrawn a few days later without a single shot fired.

In 2020, the Royal Hutt River Legion Major Richard Ananda Barton announced that his principality would rejoin the Commonwealth of Australia.  “His Highness, Prince Graeme, has informed me that the Government of the Principality of Hutt River has decided to dissolve the Principality, which will, once again, become part of the Commonwealth of Australia.”

Two legal academics, Harry Hobbs and George Williams, recently considered this curious subject and concluded that Australia, in contrast to many states, “largely ignores micronations (and Indigenous nations) provided they comply with taxation and other laws.”  They advance three reasons why this might be so: that Australia has a culture appreciative of those who thumb “their nose at authority”; that the country’s sense of sovereignty is secure and stable; and a combination of factors relating to demography and geography.

The implications of the last two factors should be clear enough.  Australia remains one of the most urbanised countries on the planet, with 89% of individuals concentrated in urban centres.  And given that there are 25 million or so individuals spread across a continent spanning 7.6 million square kilometres, the room for threatening and meaningful declarations of independence seems rather small.

This is not, however, to say that overt threats to secede have not ruffled a few feathers.  Western Australia’s effort in the 1930s, spurred on by the Dominion League and the Great Depression, was considered serious enough to require obstruction by both the Australian Commonwealth and Britain.  The 1933 state referendum result was overwhelmingly in favour of secession, emboldening a state delegation to journey to the British Parliament to make their case of becoming a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire.

Westminster’s response was fairly typical: the establishment of a Joint Select Committee that concluded that the delegation’s petition could not be legally entertained.  The 1931 Statute of Westminster had granted Australia dominion authority, thereby making Canberra the arbiter as to whether WA could secede.

In the end, the only reason why such micronations are tolerated must lie in their unthreatening, idiosyncratic nature.  Their ineffectualness is what saves them from destruction and prevents their official recognition.  President Abraham Lincoln showed the Confederate States how a threatening effort backed by force of arms to separate from the United States could play out.  The Civil War that followed cost 620,000 lives and entrenched the holy mystery of the compact that is the Union.

From Turkey to China, secessionist movements are targeted as genuine threats to the national unit, its advocates to be put down, incarcerated and crushed.  But in the absence of guns, a coherent ideology, and the presence of maddening humour, the micronations of the world can only multiply.

*

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

Featured image: Logo of the California National Party (Photo by California National Party (Q24908120), licensed under the Public Domain)

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***

First Washington supported a soft coup against Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. Then the unelected regime banned his speeches, charged him with “terrorism,” and banned him from politics. Now a failed assassination attempt may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Pakistanis have been out on the streets protesting in the millions over the past few months. Even though the country has been afflicted by the horrific floods, the political momentum for radical change has not abated.

An assassination attempt on former Prime Minister Imran Khan this November has brought matters to a tipping point. Today, Khan’s popularity as a political leader and public figure is at its peak – a fact even his detractors will concede.

And this is precisely what has got him into trouble.

Khan was ousted in a regime-change operation at the beginning of April. We can now conclusively say that the group responsible for the ouster included virtually the entire corrupt feudal-dynastic political class, the chief of army staff and some of his cohorts in the military high command, and of course the godfather overseeing it all: the United States.

It was a classic case of a “color revolution,” which unfolded within just a few weeks. Elite sections of civil society, including the ostensibly more “progressive” ones, as well as the entire mainstream media, set the stage for the powerful to do their dirty work through lawfare.

With political support from Washington, they organized a bogus vote of no confidence, with the help of huge sums of money coming from both inside and outside Pakistan to buy off members of Khan’s own party, the Movement for Justice (PTI).

What has followed has been nothing less than historic. Pakistan has seen many civilian politicians deposed unceremoniously, but the bulk of ordinary people have been fairly indifferent to such elite intrigues.

Imran Khan address a rally in Lahore, Pakistan in October

Imran Khan’s PTI broke the two-party dictatorship

The curse of the country has been that sometimes the civilian politicians in power, and their blatant plundering of the country, have actually made military rule seem better – or at least no different.

The ouster of Imran Khan engendered sadness and anger among large segments of the population, who believed that the “Khan experiment” was now dead.

But the former prime minister demonstrated an indefatigable resolve to fight back, which is frankly miraculous in a country where wealth and power are so obscenely monopolized by civilian and military elites who despise Khan.

From one city to the next, all across the country, Khan has held major rallies. His speeches have aroused a population that otherwise thought they would just have to live in despair, with the ancien régime coming back to power.

Over the past few months, in the scorching heat of the summer and through the devastating floods, Khan has not budged an inch on his simple core demand: elections to determine who should be governing the country.

But what seems like a fairly banal demand is anathema to the traditional mainstream political parties, especially the two which have played musical chairs in impoverishing the country, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

PML-N in particular, with its current unelected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, has gone into panic mode, because it has always been accustomed to dominating the most powerful and populous province of the country, Punjab.

The most fascinating and encouraging aspect of Khan’s PTI is that it is perhaps the first national political party that has constituencies and support in all of Pakistan’s provinces.

This is no small feat for a young political party that has broken the stranglehold of the two-party duopoly that has dominated Pakistani political life for the past three decades.

Surely, it seems to strongly indicate that Pakistanis desperately wanted political change – and a lot of it.

A rally in support of Imran Khan in Lahore, Pakistan in October

Pakistan’s military is internally divided

While Imran Khan was giving speeches at massive demonstrations throughout the country for the simple demand of elections to take place, it seemed like the new PDM (Pakistan Democratic Movement) regime was just interested in concocting ridiculous tricks to indict Khan.

The unelected government has tried pretty much everything: It sought to outlaw voting by overseas Pakistanis (who it knows overwhelmingly support Khan). It hit Khan with absurd “terrorism” charges. And it used its Electoral Commission to disqualify Khan from contesting elections.

Rather than addressing the gargantuan social and economic problems that Pakistan is confronting at the moment, it was obvious to any person that the regime is fixated on destroying Khan and quashing his overwhelming support among the population.

But of course the current government is not alone in this saga, nor is it perhaps the principal player. There are two national security states, one deep and another even deeper, involved in the attempts to crush Khan.

For the first time in the history of Pakistan, the majority of the armed forces, the middle and junior ranks of the officers, and especially the soldiers, support and believe in Khan much more than their chief of army staff and other sections of the top brass.

This is unprecedented. And this is why a heavily militarized national security state like Pakistan’s has been so reluctant to repress these popular mobilizations. Top General Qamar Javed Bajwa knows fully well that if he did implement such orders, the officers’ and soldiers’ guns may turn the other way – and a potential rebellion within the military could take place.

These are the same armed forces that for the past 20 years have been forced to sacrifice and die for America’s “War on Terror.” It seems fairly obvious that, by this point, they are more attracted to Khan’s pledge that he will be a friend with America in peace but not in war than they are to any new orders the military high command comes up with in connivance with Washington.

Khan knows this sentiment among the armed forces very well. In fact, a barrage of retired soldiers and officers, in addition to ordinary Pakistanis, are volunteering full-time as Khan’s security detail. The government “protection” that former prime ministers receive is more a threat to Khan than managing his welfare and safety.

Washington’s hand behind the scenes

It is in this context that Chief of Army Staff Bajwa has gone in full panic mode. Both he and the United States can see that the buffoons in charge of Pakistan have completely ruined their plans of eliminating Khan from the political scene.

Their regime change, in short, has blatantly backfired.

To relieve his stress and receive some “wise counsel,” General Bajwa made a trip to Washington for meetings with high-ranking US officials. This was highly unusual, as the chief of army staff (COAS) was expected to retire in just a few weeks.

Bajwa met with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and the second-in-command of the State Department, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of relations between the U.S. and 🇵🇰 Pakistan. It was my pleasure to host Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, to the Pentagon where we discussed our long-standing defense partnership and areas of mutual interest. pic.twitter.com/ptiZDiqc8I

— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) October 5, 2022

According to media reports and statements by multiple officials, including Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, four principal issues were underscored in those meetings:

1. The next COAS, to be determined by the end of November, should be pro-Washington and restart security cooperation, approving drone attacks and American military bases in Pakistan.
2. Pakistan must start distancing itself from its age-old ally, Beijing, by reducing CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) initiatives, especially in the port of Gwadar; and it should not interfere with terrorist actions undertaken by the extremist ETIM (East Turkestan Islamic Movement) from Afghanistan or Pakistan.
3. Islamabad should “normalize” relations with the Israeli apartheid regime, manufacturing consent with a massive psyops media campaign.
4. No elections should be held until Khan’s popularity decreases in some way or the other.

Perhaps feeling emboldened and empowered by his meeting with the mafia don in Washington, General Bajwa granted some authority to the military-intelligence apparatus to openly speak against Khan. That was a fatal mistake.

In a very foolish and infantile press conference by the Director-General (DG) of the ISI (Pakistan’s military intelligence, perhaps second only to the COAS himself in terms of power in the country), the DG went wild and loose with criticisms of Khan.

General Bajwa has maintained all along that the military is completely “neutral” in the country’s political process. This press conference demolished that myth.

Then, in another unprecedented move, Khan hit right back at the DG of the ISI, scathingly shaming him.

Messing with the DG of the ISI is just not done. Yet Khan did it.

Most importantly, and extraordinarily, this has led to widespread condemnation of the top echelons of the military-intelligence apparatus by ordinary Pakistanis.

This is despite the fact that the regime threatened people who criticize the military on social media with seven years in prison.

The genuine fear that Pakistanis have of their national security state seemed to have vanished overnight.

BEWARE FOLKS: FIA will now have powers to take action on tweets, vlogs etc available on social media that attempt to harm army, navy or air force–OR anything on social media that is likely to cause mutiny. The offender will get seven years imprisonment.pic.twitter.com/99fYi5IhF3

— Riaz ul Haq (@Riazhaq) October 26, 2022

Meanwhile, the political parties in government, which in the past showcased themselves as being at the forefront in the struggle against the military establishment, are not only silent but complicit in what that establishment is doing to critics.

Illegal detentions, torture, and murders are happening on this government’s watch. High-profile journalist Arshad Sharif, who had exposed corruption in the regime, was murdered in strange circumstances after he fled to Kenya.

But the PDM government, the so-called “anti-establishment” forces, are simply watching this all happen.

The only positive outcome of this is that these political groups have been thoroughly exposed for their hypocrisy, lies, and opportunism.

China makes rare criticism of Pakistan

After General Bajwa made his trip to reassure Washington that its demands would be met, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited China in a period of unusual friction between the two countries.

Though soundbites of being “all-weather friends” were regurgitated, President Xi Jinping, in a highly unusual fashion, stated that Pakistan needs to do more to protect Chinese workers.

“President Xi expressed his great concern about the safety of Chinese nationals in Pakistan, and conveyed his hope that Pakistan will provide a reliable and safe environment for Chinese institutions and personnel working on cooperation projects there,” Beijing’s Foreign Ministry reported.

This kind of public criticism had never been done before. It seems to indicate that Beijing knows very well how Islamabad is concerning itself with improving ties with Washington, rather than retaining the deep ties it has held over decades with China.

A series of terror attacks have killed and wounded Chinese citizens in Pakistan, especially targeting geostrategic infrastructure projects that are part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Beijing has asked for permission to send its own security detail to protect their citizens, but Islamabad has apparently taken Washington’s orders to reject this request.

Pakistan is arguably China’s most powerful ally, but we are seeing tensions emerge now that were never witnessed in the past.

Despite Prime Minsiter Sharif’s reassurances, Beijing knows very well that the real power lies in the hands of General Bajwa and the military high command. And the latter’s renewed love affair is with Washington, not Beijing.

Failed assassination of Imran Khan backfires

A gunman tried to murder Iman Khan on November 3 as he marched through Wazirabad in a protest.

The would-be assassin fired several shots; one hit Khan in his shin; one killed a PTI official; and several others were injured.

Khan himself claimed he had information from supporters inside the intelligence agencies that showed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his allies ordered the assassination attempt.

"How did I get the information? From within the intelligence agencies."

Former Pakistani PM @ImranKhanPTI tells me about the attempted assassination on his life:
1/2 pic.twitter.com/cQVHKsaE9I

— Becky Anderson (@BeckyCNN) November 7, 2022

At this point, one can only speculate about the thinking behind this atrocity. Many Pakistanis believe that, if a trained shooter from the intelligence agencies wanted to kill Khan, then he could have.

But General Bajwa is due to retire in just a few weeks, and is not too keen about the possibility of setting off a civil war, or at least significant social unrest.

Many observers believe the shooting was a warning to Khan and his supporters.

But this explanation seems weak because, by now, the whole world knows that Khan is as hard as a rock, and virtually nothing has deterred him from openly confronting the powers that be – be they in Islamabad or Washington.

This assassination attempt may, once again, backfire badly.

The grotesque action took place in the midst of the “long march” called by Khan, starting in Lahore and ending in Islamabad.

It is important to note that not only has Khan forcefully emphasized that his rallies and marches must remain peaceful, but that indeed these tens of millions of Pakistanis who have come out have been incredibly disciplined and peaceful in their protests.

This fact should silence Western orientalists who propagate the idea that large “Mozlem” crowds engage in frenzied violence when let loose.

The myth that Imran Khan was the military’s puppet

The routine mantra that has been repeated ad nauseum is that Imran Khan had previously been a darling of the military establishment, but that he later had a falling out with the high command at the end of 2021, and that is what led General Bajwa and his colleagues to dump Khan and punish him.

This line of thinking stems from the very useful term of propaganda employed to describe Khan’s ascent to power: the so-called “hybrid regime.”

Though it is virtually impossible to find a consistent definition of what this term actually meant, we can surmise that it was a liberal smear implicating Khan as a puppet of the military, who would obediently follow its script.

While it is undoubtedly true that the Pakistani military wanted to punish the other two political parties by reminding them who is really in charge of national security policy in the country, it is simultaneously true that Imran Khan was the most popular politician in the country – and by a long shot.

It is completely erroneous to claim that the army’s top brass felt like it was getting its puppet into power. In fact, the military needed Khan more than Khan needed it, given that Khan and his political party were the only ones popular enough for the army to retake power.

The important detail is that the military high command knew it was a gamble to empower a fiercely independent Imran Khan – but it was a risk they felt they had no choice but to take.

At the very least, the military top brass knew that Khan would not engage in conspiratorial plots with the Americans to undermine the military, as the other parties had done.

A rally in support of Imran Khan in Lahore, Pakistan

The fact that both Khan and the military had similar views on ending the war in Afghanistan hardly qualified Khan to be called a puppet.

In fact, well before the tussle between Khan and General Bajwa over who should be the next director general of the ISI at the end of 2021, the military and their friends in the Persian Gulf were irritated by Khan’s constant reference to the Chinese way of eliminating poverty and the need for a welfare state, as he spoke to crowds of rich Arabs in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

On top of this, Khan’s unflinching and vocal support for the Palestinians and his consistent condemnation of apartheid Israel led the establishment to consider him a “loose cannon” who could not be controlled, a civilian politician who would not simply take orders on issues of national security.

If the term “hybrid regime” simply meant civilian politicians unwilling to defy the military-intelligence apparatus of their states – or deep states – then virtually every US administration can be described as a hybrid regime.

The one American leader who did try to defy the consensus of the national security state during the Cold War was John F. Kennedy – and we know the price he paid for it.

Thus, this entire narrative was farcical. If anything, so-called hybrid regimes existed all throughout the 1990s and afterward in Pakistan.

The “progressive” government of the late Benazir Bhutto, for instance, was plundering the country along with her husband at home, while allowing the military establishment to fully support the rise to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan. That sounds like a hybrid regime more than anything under Khan.

Pakistan’s role in the US new cold war

It is difficult to write about these political developments that are unparalleled in the history Pakistan.

The sheer audacity of Imran Khan and the tens of millions of protestors who detest the current regime and sections of the top brass of the military is rather extraordinary.

Nevertheless, we must not lose sight of the larger geopolitical power plays at work here.

We have seen how Washington has been humiliated by its own former puppets, like Saudi Arabia and India, which have refused to go along with this “new cold war” that the US is waging against China and Russia.

#Kremlin: Vladimir Putin met with Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, who is in Russia on a working visit https://t.co/jrvKVN0fzX pic.twitter.com/WF7aupsZau

— President of Russia (@KremlinRussia_E) February 24, 2022

In such conditions, it seems that Washington wants to resuscitate its old Cold War relationship with the formidable Pakistani military.

In its crusade to halt the progress of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, to prevent the expansion of BRICS, and in general to impede Eurasian integration, Washington wants the new Pakistani chief of army staff to play old Cold War games of subversion, terrorism, and hybrid warfare.

Khan is no revolutionary socialist. But one doesn’t need to be a revolutionary socialist to believe your country has the right to have its own independent foreign policy.

And because Khan is committed to that, be it in defense of his relationship with China and Russia and especially his robust defense of Kashmiris and Palestinians, he will remain an impediment for the godfather in Washington.

The outcome of this chaotic situation in Pakistan is deeply uncertain. But there is one thing that is crystal clear: the political battle is between Khan and the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis on the one side; and the powerful and wealthy civilian and military Pakistani elites and their sponsor, Washington, on the other.

Despite legitimate criticisms of how Khan governed when in power, progressives clearly ought to be able to figure out where they stand now.

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Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Religion, Law, and Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decoloniality. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Imran Khan addresses a rally in Pakistan in October 2022 / All images in this article are from Multipolarista

Pfizer Appears to Have Corrupted the Entire Western World

By Dr. Robert Malone, November 09, 2022

The short clip above is important because Christine Anderson is getting at an important point, which must be researched. There is evidence that Pfizer and Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla have corrupted government leaders worldwide. That this corruption is deep and wide.

Italy Refusing Refugees – Human Rights Abuse? Or Pointing to Flaws in the System?

By Peter Koenig and Press TV, November 09, 2022

Anger is simmering over Italy’s refusal to let in migrants plucked from the sea. A German rescue charity organization says it will take legal action against the Italian government for violating international law.

The Kosovo Boomerang in International Relations

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, November 09, 2022

After February 2008 when Kosovo Albanian-dominated parliament proclaimed Kosovo’s independence (without organizing a referendum) with obvious US diplomatic support (unilateral recognition) with the explanation that the Kosovo case is unique in the world (i.e. it will be not repeated), one can ask the question: Is the problem of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo really unique and surely unrepeatable in some other parts of the world as US administration was trying to convince the rest of the international community?

Association Between Vaccines and Excess Mortality Getting Stronger — And Is Discussed in UK Parliament

By Igor Chudov, November 09, 2022

While we will be discussing the most unwelcome news of increased death rates, I am happy to report that a leading British Member of Parliament, Andrew Bridgen brought up, in the UK parliament no less, the relationship between vaccination and excess deaths.

The Shortages Are Coming

By Michael Snyder, November 09, 2022

In just a few short months, we will be three years away from the beginning of the pandemic in the United States. But instead of a “return to normal”, more shortages are on the way. And in some cases, they could even be life threatening.

Ukraine Would be “Just a Warmup” for Washington – US Strategic Command Head

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, November 09, 2022

According to a US official, the Ukrainian tragedy appears to be just a “warmup” in the face of challenges Washington will see in the near future. US Navy Admiral Charles Richard, head of US Strategic Command, recently stated that his country has been preparing for prolonged conflicts with Russia and China.

Nicaragua – A People as President and Their Municipal Elections

By Stephen Sefton, November 09, 2022

Above all, last Sunday’s municipal elections on November 6th, were an optimal consolidation of the Nicaragua’s now serene and stable electoral culture, ensuring extremely efficient, orderly elections, and increased confidence for voters.

The Funeral Business Is Booming. And Not Because of COVID. “Spike in Deaths in 2022”

By Alex Berenson, November 09, 2022

Today Service Corporation International, the largest for-profit funeral operator in North America, had its quarterly earnings call. SCI had another great quarter, you’ll be pleased to hear! So far in 2022 the company has made almost $500 million in profits – and its stock rose more than 10 percent today after its earnings report.

Chinese Governance and Diverse Paths to Modernization

By Peter Koenig, November 09, 2022

President Xi Jinping made history by opening the 20^th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), when he announced the beginning of a New Era of socio-political development with focus on the Global South.

Is the Federal Reserve Merely Incompetent or Is There a Dark Agenda?

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, November 09, 2022

I have never known the Federal Reserve make a good decision.  Indeed, disastrous decisions are the Fed’s hallmark.  There are many such disasters.  Among them the Great Depression, the decade long consequence of the Federal Reserve Board’s failure to prevent the shrinkage of the US money supply.

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PressTV Interview with Peter Koenig and Max Civili, PressTV Correspondent in Rome

Background

Anger is simmering over Italy’s refusal to let in migrants plucked from the sea. A German rescue charity organization says it will take legal action against the Italian government for violating international law.

The organization says it will file petition in courts in two Italian cities of Rome and Catania. That after Italy barred around 200 migrants to get off a rescue ship in Catania. Prior to that, Italian authorities let in 144 vulnerable passengers on board a German-flagged vessel, while refusing to accept others. Those allowed to disembark were children and the sick. The ship was then ordered to leave the port of Catania. Italy is now facing criticism for its selective approach toward receiving migrants. Human rights groups have called on Rome to stop discrimination. They say the law of the sea requires that all rescued migrants should be disembarked in a safe place. Hello hi

Introduction

Italy is being accused of Human Rights abuse by refusing the refugees of a migrant boat – German flagged – to disembark in Catania, Sicily.

In reality, the refugee question is much more complex than just one of human rights. Yes, HRs are always used to shut up critical analysts.  Because who would dare say anything against human rights? As presented with the refugee issue, human rights is a multifaceted issue.

The Meloni government has said from the beginning that Italy would accept refugees with health problems, women, especially pregnant women, and children.

Following government-ordered summary “vulnerability” assessments by two doctors selected by the authorities, 144 people from the rescue vessel “Humanity 1” and 357 people from the “Geo Barents” were allowed to disembark in Catania. They were mainly women, children, and men with physical health problems.

Not all of the refugees have health problems; and many of the refugees pay dearly to be rescued by so-called humanitarian NGOs, many of which are Europeans, to be ferried to southern European harbors.

This doesn’t mean, they are not suffering politically and / or economically. To the contrary. And they deserve a better future. But the EU refugee system is wantonly unequal.

Many of the NGOs behind these refugee boats are not even from the countries from where the refugees come. They are Europeans, some of them Germans.

The unelected EU Commission in Brussels – a band of shady politicians – is always dancing on various fiestas at the same time, they learned well from the US.

On the one hand, they want to debilitate / punish right wing EU governments, by directing refugees towards these countries, now Italy, but also Greece — and who knows maybe soon also Portugal and even Spain.

Why?

Because these countries do not follow the “neoliberal left”, meaning the Washington and WEF-imposed globalist agenda.

The “left” in the Global North has been hijacked by the globalists, and most of the left – and the rest of the people haven’t even noticed yet.

On the other hand – the refugee issue absorbs a lot of resources, money, infrastructure, care personnel… and it is debilitating countries. And that’s precisely what Brussels want. The refugee issues have always been used to divide countries, groups of countries, in this case the EU – and even continents.

As crazy as it may sound, the EU’s agenda is to destroy the EU – to follow the globalist dictate of Washington and the WEF.

A One World Order cannot tolerate a united block of 27 countries, whose combined GDP may be competing with the one of the hegemon, the US of A.

Then, there is the controversy of the European double standard.

Look at refugees from Ukraine. They have all the rights and get whatever they want in Europe and the Global North in general. Many – of course not all, by far – flee their war-torn country in luxury cars westwards – where they are received literally with open arms. They receive free housing, food, medical care. Many are way better off, then the poor of the recipient countries.

Ukraine has just been granted an 18-billion-euro grant for “budget support” — a subsidy for the country and her citizens. This is in addition to the almost 100 billion dollars in weaponry Ukraine received from the West to fight Russia.

Compare this with the nothing, zero, zilch – the poor and often destitute North African and Middle East countries, receive from where the refugee boats arrive at southern European ports.

If the size of “subsidies” Ukraine receives, was to flow to North Africa and the Middle East, maybe the refugee crisis could be resolved.

But the north doesn’t want to resolve it.  They want to continue exploiting it.

See this interview.

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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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After February 2008 when Kosovo Albanian-dominated parliament proclaimed Kosovo’s independence (without organizing a referendum) with obvious US diplomatic support (unilateral recognition) with the explanation that the Kosovo case is unique in the world (i.e. it will be not repeated), one can ask the question: Is the problem of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo really unique and surely unrepeatable in some other parts of the world as US administration was trying to convince the rest of the international community?

Consequences of recognition of Kosovo’s independence by one (smaller) part of the international community are already (and going to be in the future) visible primarily in the Caucasus because of the very similar problems and the situation in these two regions. In the Caucasus (where around 50 different ethnolinguistic groups are living together) self-proclaimed independence has already was done by Abkhazia and South Ossetia during their wars of 1991−1993 against the central authorities of Georgia but up to the mid-2008, both of these two separatist regions from Georgia were not internationally recognized by any state in the world. The region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which proclaimed its independence in 1991 from Azerbaijan with full military and political support from Armenia, was also not recognized before Kosovo’s independence. We must remember that separatist movements in the Caucasus in the 1990s occurred at the time when Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina proclaimed their independence from the rest of Yugoslavia (Montenegro and Serbia) and have been soon recognized as independent states and even became accepted members of the Council of Europe and the United Nations.[1]

However, only several months after the self-proclaimed independence of Kosovo on February 17^th, 2008 a wave of recognition of three Caucasus separatist states started as a classic example of a domino effect policy in international relations. It must be noticed that the experts from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed even in 2007 their real fear that in the case of the US and the EU’s unilateral recognition of Kosovo independence the same unilateral diplomatic act could be implied by Russia (and other countries) by recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as a matter of diplomatic compensation and as result of domino effect in the international relations. It is also known and from official OSCE sources that the Russian delegates in this pan-European security organization have been constantly warning before 2008 the West that such a scenario is quite possible, but with one peculiarity: from 2007 they stopped to mention the possibility of Russian recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh’s self-proclaimed independence in 1991. It was most probably because Moscow did not want to spoil good relations with Azerbaijan (and Turkey) – a country with huge reserves of natural gas and oil.[ii]

It can be said that the Albanian unilaterally proclaimed Kosovo independence in February 2008 is not at all a “unique” case in the world without direct consequences to similar separatist cases following the “domino effect” (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, South Sudan, East Timor[iii], Crimea, Donbas…). That is the real reason why, for instance, the government of Cyprus is not supporting “Kosovo Albanian rights to self-determination” as the next “unique” case can be easily the northern (Turkish) part of Cyprus which is by the way already recognized by the Republic of Turkey (in 1981) and under de facto Ankara’s protection. Or even better example: the Spanish government does not want to recognize Kosovo’s independence for the very “Catalan” reason as a domino effect of separatism can be easily spilled over to the Iberian Peninsula.

It must be noticed that there are around 200 territorial-national separatist movements around the world for whom the case of Kosovo’s “precedent” is going to serve as the best moral and legal foundation for their independence. Subsequently, the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh is recognized now by three non-UN member states according to Kosovo’s pattern: Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. Furthermore, in 2012 (four years after Kosovo’s independence proclamation), a member of Uruguay’s foreign relations committee stated that his country could recognize Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence. Further, the Parliament of New South Wales (Australia) called upon the Australian government to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh. Two other Transcaucasian separatist republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia became like Nagorno-Karabakh recognized after Kosovo’s independence proclamation in 2008 by several states and quasi-states: Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru, Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia (each other).[iv]

Kosovo’s independence proclamation in February 2008 became, in fact, not “precedent” as the US’s and the EU’s administrations declared: it became rather a boomerang example of a “domino effect” in international relations. The case of Crimea in 2014 was in this respect quite clear: the Crimean popular self-determination rights to separate the peninsula from Ukraine and to become part of Russia were at least formally founded on the same rights used by Kosovo’s Albanians (as a majority in the province) to proclaim the state independence from Serbia.

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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

[1] On the Caucasian geopolitics, see [Chorbajian  Levon, Patrick Donabedian, Claude Mutafian, The Caucasian Knot, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed., 1994; Jorge Heine, “The Conflict in the Caucasus: Causing a New Cold War?”, India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs, vol. 65, no. 1, 2009, 55−66].

[ii] On the issue of connection between geopolitics and energy, see [Klare Michael, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008].

[iii] A referendum on the independence of East Timor was organized on August 30^th, 1999, i.e. only 2.5 months after NATO aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (ended on June 10^th, 1999 by the Kumanovo Agreement). After the Kosovo War, this province of Serbia became de facto separated from the motherland and independent in relation to Serbia. The formal independence of East Timor from Indonesia was achieved on May 20^th, 2002.  

[iv] On quasi-states, see [Pål Kolstø, “The Sustainability and Future of Unrecognized Quasi-States”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 43, no. 6, 2006, 723−740].

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***

Christine Anderson: A member of the European Parliament. She represents the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is labelled as a “populist political party” in Germany. AfD is known for its opposition to the European Union, as well as the open border/immigration to Germany policies which the EU mandates. As she does not believe in open borders, Christine Anderson is labelled with such terms as “far-right,” and “anti-Islamic.” Near as I can tell, these are just more propaganda talking points by Wiki and their ilk.

Click here to watch the video.

The short clip above is important because Christine Anderson is getting at an important point, which must be researched. There is evidence that Pfizer and Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla have corrupted government leaders worldwide. That this corruption is deep and wide.

The people have been lied to. It was a gigantic lie. And on this lie, everything that governments, especially in the Western democracies did to infringe on people’s rights, to take away their freedom, to lock them in their homes, imposing curfews, all of this was based on that gigantic lie.

Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission president is now under a lot of pressure, and rightly so. The people have a right to know what went on in these contracts with her exchange of SMS with CEO Pfizer, Bourla. The people need to know who they can hold responsible and accountable for whatever may have gone on behind the scenes. Things are changing now, their house of cards is tumbling down, and it is doing so rightfully.

And you know what? One more thing though, I am sick and tired of being called a COV-idiot. And I’d much rather be a COV-idiot than being a GOV-idiot, because that’s what all these people that blindly trusted their governments turned out to be. And I will say it again, it was never, never, ever about public health, it was never about breaking any waves, it was always about breaking people. But, and that’s the good news, they failed. It didn’t work. And that I am very proud of, and I’m proud of the people that I am so honored to be allowed to represent. And I will continue to do just that. Thank you very much.

Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen is president of the European Commission since 2019. The European Commission is the leadership of the European Union. It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission headed by the President (now Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen). It includes an administrative body of about 32,000 European civil servants.

Leyen had been secretly communicating with the CEO of Pfizer about the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines via text messages. In early 2022, a journalist requested for copies of these texts and the European commission rejected the request. This has opened the door for widespread speculation of malfeasance and corruption.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in July that she is no longer in possession of text messages. The EU’s ombusman has determined that this is malfeasance.

Christine Anderson writes on the European Union:

The EU is elitist, aloof and distant from the citizens. With its tentacles, it takes a stranglehold on the sovereignty of the European nations and dictates to the citizens in every detail how they have to behave.

I want an honest and free Europe of free people and not a construct of political elites. I consider putting a stop to these false elites here in Brussels and Strasbourg to be the most urgent task in my political work.

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Pfizer’s chief financial officer has described the Covid pandemic as a ‘multi-billion dollar franchise’ — and expects profit to continue.

David Denton told investors in an earnings call last week his company’s vaccine and antiviral would still be ‘relevant for many years to come’.

The CFO said he expects the Covid virus to be ‘somewhat like a flu… but more deadly’ — meaning therapeutics will still have a massive role in controlling the virus.

So far Pfizer reaped about $80 billion in yearly revenue from sales of Covid vaccines and the antiviral drug Paxlovid.

The company announced last month it will triple the price of its shot to up to $130 per dose next year — a far cry from the roughly $19 to $30 per dose that the government paid.

Click here to read the full article on Daily Mail Online.

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While we will be discussing the most unwelcome news of increased death rates, I am happy to report that a leading British Member of Parliament, Andrew Bridgen brought up, in the UK parliament no less, the relationship between vaccination and excess deaths.

Even a casual glance at the data shows that there’s a VERY STRONG CORRELATION between excess DEATHS & the level of vaccine uptake in that country. Surely we must have an investigation? These are 10s of thousands of PEOPLE who are DYING.

Please watch his speech below.

UK MP @ABridgen:
“even a casual glance at the data shows that there’s a VERY STRONG CORRELATION between excess DEATHS & the level of vaccine uptake in that country. Surely we must have an investigation? These are 10s of thousands of PEOPLE who are DYING..”pic.twitter.com/EBwCV5Mncv https://t.co/JocCkR7MTO

— أبو عمّار (@MaajidNawaz) November 2, 2022

(After this speech, Andrew was suspended from Parliament for 7 days for a supposedly “unrelated offense.”)

Where did Andrew Bridgen get his (correct) idea? I am not sure, but I posted an original analysis statistically tying “excess mortality” to vaccination rate by country on August 30, 2022.

Obviously not claiming that he somehow got it through me — I hope that many other people performed similar analyses, and one of them was noticed by Mr. Bridgen. The more people analyze this data, the better. I am happy.

New Data Looks Even Worse.

I decided to re-do the calculation of excess mortality vs. vaccine, or booster uptake, using two more months’ worth of mortality data.

I use the same exact methodology as in my “proven relationship” article. Please read it if you are interested in details or want to replicate the results. Instead of weeks 10 to 35, I now analyze “excess mortality” in weeks 20 to 44 (to be precise, the max week available up to week 44 in the short-term mortality database – the data has a lag). Everything else stayed the same. The data is here:

A few notes on the data above:

• The least vaccinated country Bulgaria has NEGATIVE excess mortality (lowest of all).
• Chile really had more boosters given out than it has people due to multiple boosters per person, and is experiencing the HIGHEST excess mortality.
• Sweden, sadly, moved into positive excess mortality territory, although I am glad to say that it is still low.

The questions I want to explore is: Is there an association between vaccine or booster uptake and excess mortality in Weeks 20-44? Did the association get weaker or stronger compared to weeks 10-35?

Let’s look.

Excess Mortality vs. Vaccination Rate:

Excess Mortality vs. Booster Uptake:

We can see that both vaccination rates (number of fully vaccinated people per 100), as well as booster doses administered per 100 persons, are VERY STRONGLY ASSOCIATED WITH EXCESS MORTALITY. Both have very low P-values, which suggests that this association is highly unlikely to have happened by random chance.

Here’s the worst part: During weeks 10-35, the vaccination rate explained only 27% of the variation in excess mortality, and the booster rate explained only 40% of excess mortality. (the so-called R-Squared). (see the previous article on this topic for regressions)

During weeks 20-44, both vaccination and booster rates explain NEARLY HALF of excess mortality variation (49% for both). That’s a lot greater explanatory power!

This means that over time, the strength of the association between excess mortality and vaccination is INCREASING!

EDIT: Also note that the SLOPE of the line, for example, for vaccination rate, increased from 0.0024 in my August article to 0.0034 two months later! A 40% increase in slope. What does it mean? It means that the magnitude of the effect also increased, not just the explanatory power. Things are getting worse in a measurable way.

This is Counterintuitive and Concerning!

Please take a minute to understand that increasing the strength of association, as time passes after the event causing the association (vaccination), is

• very unusual
• very worrisome

What is going on? The clock is ticking; unvaccinated people are not really getting vaccinated anymore. And yet, as time goes on, more and more excess deaths are explained by vaccination rate (49% in weeks 20-44, instead of 27% 10 weeks prior). Vaccination rate, for the most part, refers to vaccinations that happened in the relatively distant past, a year ago or so. Something is happening in the bodies of people who were vaccinated over a year ago that increases the degree of that association of vaccines vs. deaths as time goes on!

Stop. This is NOT normal.

Consider a typical poison like rat poison. Let’s say that a careless cook accidentally sprinkled varying amounts of rat poison over the salads of restaurant visitors. Some received more, some less, so some would die of rat poison. It would be understandable to expect that “restaurant visit” was associated with “excess mortality” of unfortunate diners within the first week or two after the visit. A year later, though, we would not be expecting any such relationship as the effects of poison wear off.

However, the association of vaccination (distant past event) with mortality (present event) is increasing as time goes on!

What could explain it? To be honest, I am not certain. I can offer two explanations:

• Vaccination has a delayed effect that causes excess mortality to increase. Regular poisons do not do that. Carcinogens do exactly that. They set a chain of biological processes in motion that lead to increased mortality down the road.
• Vaccination had negative AND positive effects on mortality, and the protective effects are wearing out. Covid vaccines did, a while ago, provide some protection from Covid deaths. However, as time went on, that protection dwindled. So, as protective effects dwindle and negative effects continue, the explanatory power of vaccinations may be increasing.

Disclaimer: Correlation vs. Causation

Correlation is not causation. These linear regressions are showing correlation and not causation. They are an alarm that needs an honest and in-depth analysis.

Seeing a correlation is akin to seeing smoke. Is there a fire?

We Urgently Need an Investigation, Instead of Stonewalling and “Pandemic Amnesty”

An honest leader of a good country, upon hearing such concerning news, would hire new people who are not tarnished with the baggage and responsibility for recklessly vaccinating millions with an unproven new technology with a track record of failure, infertility, and death of lab animals.

These new people would include talented medics, sophisticated biostatisticians, experienced coroners, biologists, historians, detectives, etc. They would devise a public, open, and sophisticated process of looking at excess deaths on an individual level, as well as comparing outcomes of vaccinated or unvaccinated people, and so on.

They would examine the bodies of hundreds of young and healthy people who are dying suddenly to truly understand what exactly was the chain of events that caused their sudden and unexpected death. They would similarly try to understand why cancer rates are soaring far beyond typical levels.

Their findings and underlying data would be accessible to the community so that input could be provided by interested members of the public.

Lastly, such an investigation can save thousands, or millions of lives, if the mechanism of excess deaths is properly understood and the chain of deadly aftereffects is broken. I hope that these deaths can be somehow stopped!

None of this is happening.

All we have is increasing excess deaths, denial, and coverup. Google does NOT want you to search for “excess mortality 2022” in the “search suggestion” bar.

Google knows about “excess mortality 2022”; that’s why it is blocking search suggestions for this term. But Google does not want YOU to know.

Why the stonewalling? Because the powers-to-be are afraid of responsibility and are now begging for amnesty.

We do not need to give them amnesty — but we do need to find out what is happening and why people are dying.

Dear reader, please let me know: why do you think they are stonewalling all inquiries and suspending UK Parliament members? What is the reason? Misguided concern for continued vaccine uptake? Fear of responsibility? Or something worse?

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Do you remember in early 2020 when they told us that the shortages that we were experiencing would just be temporary?  Of course some of them were, but then more shortages just kept on erupting.  That wasn’t supposed to happen, and now it appears that our supply chain problems could potentially get a whole lot worse.  In just a few short months, we will be three years away from the beginning of the pandemic in the United States.  But instead of a “return to normal”, more shortages are on the way.  And in some cases, they could even be life threatening.

Let me give you an example.  We need Amoxicillin to treat some of the most common infections that our children experience.  Unfortunately, the FDA is warning us that we are now facing a very serious shortage of Amoxicillin…

Ear infections and strep throat.

Both are common childhood illnesses, for which the go-to prescription is in short supply, according to a recent nationwide alert from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The warning specifically involves the powder, which pharmacists use to mix liquid Amoxicillin for childhood infections.

This is a really big deal.

According to one recent survey, close to two-thirds of all pharmacies in the nation are having difficulty getting Amoxicillin right now, and the national shortage of Adderall is even worse…

Nearly 66% of pharmacies are having challenges obtaining amoxicillin, according to a new National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) survey of 8000 pharmacy owners and managers, whereas 89% are realizing a shortage of Adderall.

Of course we are dealing with lots of other drug shortages at this moment as well.

In fact, according to the official FDA drug shortage list there are nationwide shortages of a whopping 183 different drugs in the United States right now.

We truly are in unprecedented territory.

Up in Canada, things are even worse.

If you can believe it, at this point the Canadians are facing “an acute shortage of basic painkillers”…

The Canadian healthcare system is experiencing an acute shortage of basic painkillers, particularly acetaminophen and ibuprofen, which are commonly used to relieve pain and fever in children during flu season.

Canada’s Association of Medical Assistance in Dying Assessors and Providers (CAMAP) chose this perhaps awkward moment to roll out a webinar for healthcare professionals that advised them to offer assisted suicide to their suffering patients.

So why don’t the Canadians have enough Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen right now?

Well, we are being told that the primary reason is “a lack of raw ingredients to make the drugs”…

CBC News quoted health officials who blamed “a lack of raw ingredients to make the drugs,” “an uptick in respiratory viruses fueled by the relaxed [Chinese coronavirus] measures,” and “panic buying” for the shortage of painkillers for children.

As I have covered in previous articles, most of the basic ingredients that go into our pharmaceutical drugs come from China.

So if you think that things are bad now, just wait until war with China erupts.

Once that happens, our pharmacies will get really empty and our entire healthcare system will experience a historic meltdown.

Switching gears, with Thanksgiving coming up I wanted to talk about the fact that we are now facing a nationwide shortage of turkeys…

As CNBC reports, the price of turkey is up 73% from last year, a pretty astonishing figure. Experts attribute it to the bird flu, which has devastated turkey stocks this year. Apparently, the disease normally doesn’t flourish during the summer as farmers get their holiday flocks together. But, you know, the 2020s haven’t been easy so naturally, the flu hit hard right in the middle of the year when it could do the most damage.

The good news, if you want to call it that, is that you will still probably be able to get a turkey if you are willing to pay enough.

The bad news is that supplies of turkey just keep getting tighter and tighter.

One business owner in San Francisco recently stated that it is “like pulling teeth trying to get turkeys from the companies” at this stage…

But it’s not just the Thanksgiving bird that’s at risk — it’s your lunchtime turkey sandwich, too. San Francisco delis and butchers are already feeling the effects of the shortage.

“It’s like pulling teeth trying to get turkeys from the companies,” said Sal Qaqundah, owner of Arguello Market, a San Francisco cult favorite for its “world famous” turkey sandwich.

Unfortunately, we are also facing a shortage of butter in the weeks ahead.

The USDA is urging consumers not to “panic buy” butter so that there will be enough to go around for everyone…

Butter is another area where the war and cost of dairy products has affected supply, as the price of the condiment and baking ingredient has gone up a dollar per pound since January of this year, per Eater. Fearing a full-blown butter shortage, the USDA has asked consumers not to rush or panic buy, but simply secure what they need at a given time, per Best Life.

Did you ever imagine that we would be talking about a butter shortage in late 2022?

Things just keep getting crazier and crazier.

And if the diesel fuel shortages eventually get as bad as some are projecting, we could soon be facing severe shortages of countless products.

Our ships, our trains and our trucks run on diesel fuel.

So if there is not enough diesel fuel, we are going to have a real problem trying to fill up our stores with enough stuff for everybody.

Even now, supplies of diesel fuel are so tight that one big player in the industry just issued a major alert…

A major fuel supply and logistics company is raising a red flag on upcoming diesel fuel shortages.

Mansfield Energy issued the alert Friday stating there was a developing diesel fuel shortage in the southeastern region of the United States. The company speculated that the shortage could be generated from “poor pipeline shipping economies” and a historically low supply of diesel reserves.

“Poor pipeline shipping economics and historically low diesel inventories are combining to cause shortages in various markets throughout the Southeast,” the company said. “These have been occurring sporadically, with areas like Tennessee seeing particularly acute challenges.”

There are a number of reasons why supplies of diesel fuel have gotten so tight.

But the biggest is the fact that imports from Russia have been totally cut off…

But the primary reason is the cutoff of Russian imports. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. was importing nearly 700,000 barrels per day (BPD) of petroleum and petroleum products. Most of those imports were finished products and refinery inputs that boosted distillate supplies in the U.S.

The loss of those Russian imports have caused problems for refineries as they struggle to fill holes in their product slates. Refineries do have a small amount of flexibility in shifting gasoline production to diesel production. But it’s a relatively small amount (e.g., ~5% in a refinery I once worked in). That also means that if refiners do shift production, that also potentially creates shortages in the gasoline market.

So why don’t we just produce more ourselves?

Well, thanks to our politicians, the number of refineries in the United States has actually been declining in recent years even as our population has grown.

At this point we simply do not have enough refineries, and this is a problem that is not going away any time soon.

In the months ahead, we aren’t going to completely run out of diesel fuel as some people out there are suggesting.

But supplies may get so tight that it could potentially create widespread supply chain nightmares that are quite severe.

Let us hope that such a scenario does not materialize.

Because the American people are already angry enough about the economy.  In fact, a brand new survey has found that it is the number one issue for U.S. voters at this moment…

The Washington Post and ABC gave Americans eight top issues they will be considering when making their decision in a poll that showed likely voters split between the Democrats and Republicans.

The economy was cited by 26 percent of likely voters as one of the most important factors, followed by abortion with 22 percent and inflation and threats to democracy each by 21 percent.

For decades, we have been able to rely on our supply chains to continuously fill our stores with mountains of cheap goods.

But now our supply chains are breaking down.

In fact, our entire economic system is breaking down and most people are completely and utterly unprepared for the difficult times that are coming.

I know that many of you have been patiently waiting for a long time for life to “return to normal”.

Sadly, that isn’t going to happen.  The incredibly bad decisions that our leaders have been making are now catching up with us in a major way, and a great deal of pain is ahead.

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Michael Snyder has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News which are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. 

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***

My research team is currently monitoring online political content being sent to voters in swing states through more than 2,500 computers owned by a politically-diverse group of registered voters (our “field agents”), and we are concerned about what we’re seeing.

We are aggregating and analyzing search results on the Google and Bing search engines, messages displayed on Google’s home page, autoplay videos suggested on YouTube, tweets sent to users by the Twitter company (as opposed to tweets sent by other users), email suppression on Gmail, and more.

We have so far preserved more than 1.9 million “ephemeral experiences” – exposure to short-lived content that impacts people and then disappears, leaving no trace – that Google and other companies are able to use to shift opinions and voting preferences, and we expect to have captured more than 2.5 million by Election Day. 

In emails leaked from Google to The Wall Street Journal in 2018, Googlers (that’s what they call themselves) discussed how they might be able to use “ephemeral experiences” to change people’s views about Trump’s travel ban. The company later denied that this plan was ever implemented, but leaked content (including multiple blacklists) and startling revelations by Tristan Harris, Zach Vorhies, and other whistleblowers show that Google is indeed out to remake the world in its own image. As the company’s CFO, Ruth Porat, said in a November 11th, 2016 video that leaked in 2018, “we will use the great strength and resources and reach we have” to advance Google’s values.

Since early 2016, my team has been developing and improving Neilsen-type monitoring systems that allow us to do to Google-and-the-Gang what they do to us and our children 24/7: to track their activity, and, specifically, to preserve that very dangerous and persuasive ephemeral content.

Since 2013, I have been conducting rigorous controlled experiments to quantify how persuasive that kind of content can be. I’ve so far identified about a dozen new forms of online manipulation that make use of ephemeral experiences, and nearly all these techniques are controlled exclusively by Google and, to a lesser extent, other tech companies. 

These new forms of influence are stunning in their impact. Search results that favor one candidate (in other words, that lead people who click on high-ranking results to web pages that glorify that candidate) can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by up to 80 percent in some demographic groups after a single search. Carefully crafted search suggestions that flash at you while you are typing a search term can turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split with no one knowing they have been manipulated. A single question-and-answer interaction on a digital personal assistant can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by more than 40 percent.

In 2020, the 1.5 million ephemeral experiences we aggregated from the computers of our 1,735 field agents showed us manipulations that were sufficient, in theory, to have shifted more than six million votes to Joe Biden (whom I supported) – again, without people knowing they were being manipulated. Among other findings: Google was sending more go-vote reminders to liberals and moderates than to conservatives; that’s a brazen and powerful manipulation that would go completely undetected unless someone was monitoring. 

Our preliminary analyses of the data we have collected so far in 2022 are equally disturbing. In swing states, and especially in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Florida, we are finding a high level of liberal bias in Google search results, but not in search results on Bing (the same pattern we have found in every election since 2016). In several swing states, 92 percent of the autoplay videos being fed to YouTube users are coming from liberal news sources (YouTube is owned by Google). Unless Google backs down, it will shift hundreds of thousands of votes on Election Day itself with those brazen targeted go-vote reminders – and we will catch them doing so.

That brings me to some surprisingly hopeful news. Just before the November 3, 2020 Presidential election, I was so unnerved by the extreme bias we were seeing in our data that I decided to go public. Ebony Bowden at the New York Post wrote a powerful story about election rigging that might have made the front page, but on October 30, after a phone call between an editor and a Google official, the piece was killed – no doubt because the Post was getting 45 percent of its online traffic from the company in question. 

On November 5, however, three U.S. Senators sent an intimidating letter to the CEO of Google summarizing my preliminary findings, and the company instantly turned off all manipulations in the Georgia Senate races.

We were monitoring those races through more than a thousand computers owned by a diverse and undetectable pool of real voters in Georgia, and not one received a go-vote reminder. Even more striking, political bias in Google search results dropped to zero. I had thought that such a feat would be impossible, but Vorhies explained that Google can turn bias on and off “like flipping a light switch.” He also pointed me to leaked company documents such as the manual for the company’s Twiddler software, used for “re-ranking” search results. 

Will the article you are now reading change the course of history? Will it cause Google to take its digital thumb off the scales in our midterm elections? Whatever Mr. Pichai, its CEO, decides to do, we will know, and we will preserve the evidence.

And this time, we will continue to expand the monitoring system, and we will be monitoring content going not just to voters but also to America’s children. By late 2023, we will have a digital shield in place – a panel of more than 20,000 field agents in all 50 states – and we will shame Big Tech into staying clear of our elections and our kids for many years to come.

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Robert Epstein, Ph.D. (@DrREpstein), former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, is senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology. A Ph.D. of Harvard University, he has published 15 books and more than 300 articles on AI and other topics. His 2019 Congressional testimony on Big Tech’s threat to democracy can be accessed at https://EpsteinTestimony.com. You can learn more about his research on online influence at https://MyGoogleResearch.com.

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***

Russian forces are still on the defensive on almost all Ukrainian front lines but they continue storming Ukrainian strongholds in the Donbass region.

Heavy fighting continues in the Ugledar area, where Russian assault groups are trying to dislodge Ukrainian units from Pavlovka in order to take control of the strategically important belt road. After days of fighting, the battle for the village turned into positional clashes.

To the north, fighting is ongoing in Novomikhailovka, where Russian troops are trying to advance and cut the supply road between Ugledar and Mariinka. Over the past day, no Russian attempts to storm Ukrainian positions have been reported. The Russians began to dig in and strengthen the line of defense in the eastern part of the village.

The Russians also went on offensive on the eastern bank of the Kakhovka water reservoir. Russian troops launched assault operations towards the village of Shcherbaki in order to cut an important section of the road.

On the front lines of the Luhansk People’s Republic, fierce battles near Belogorovka have continued for several days. On November 7, the Wagner fighters reportedly broke through the Ukrainian defenses and launched the mop up operation in the town. If Russian forces succeed, they will pose significant problems for Ukrainian units on the right bank of the Seversky Donets River.

The Russian military has recently claimed control of the territory of the Donetsk airport. All airport facilities were taken by the DPR forces back in 2015 but Russians have finally repelled Ukrainian units from the runways on the western outskirts. Fighting is ongoing north of the Donetsk Ring road near the villages of Opytne and Vodyanoe.

To the south of Bakhmut, the Wagner fighters went on the offensive towards Andreevka in order to take control of the railway. To the north, they attacked Yakovlevka and cut off military supplies of Ukrainian units along the northern road.

The situation remains tense in the Kherson region. Despite the evacuation of civilians and claims of Russian military commanders about a possible retreat, there is still no evidence of the withdrawal of Russian troops from their positions on the front lines. The Russian military continues strengthening the defense and mine the area. The large-scale Ukrainian offensive is yet to come.

The pace of Russian advance on Donbass front lines is very slow. The ongoing offensive operations are still of a tactical importance. In its turn, the Ukrainian military is also yet to take any decisive measures to somehow change the situation on the front lines in other regions.

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***

U.S. military forces have been engaged in unauthorized hostilities in many more countries than the Pentagon has disclosed to Congress, let alone the public, according to a major new report released late last week by New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.

“Afghanistan, Iraq, maybe Libya. If you asked the average American where the United States has been at war in the past two decades, you would likely get this short list,” according to the report, Secret War: How the U.S. Uses Partnerships and Proxy Forces to Wage War Under the Radar. “But this list is wrong – off by at least 17 countries in which the United States has engaged in armed conflict through ground forces, proxy forces, or air strikes.”

“This proliferation of secret war is a relatively recent phenomenon, and it is undemocratic and dangerous,” the report’s author, Katherine Yon Ebright, wrote in the introduction. “The conduct of undisclosed hostilities in unreported countries contravenes our constitutional design. It invites military escalation that is unforeseeable to the public, to Congress, and even to the diplomats charged with managing U.S. foreign relations.”

The 39-page report focuses on so-called “security cooperation” programs authorized by Congress pursuant to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, against certain terrorist groups. One such program, known as Section 127e, authorized the Defense Department to “provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating authorized ongoing military operations by United States special operations forces to combat terrorism.”

According to the report, that “support” has been broadly — or, more accurately, too broadly — interpreted by the Pentagon. In practice, it has enabled the U.S. military to “develop and control proxy forces that fight on behalf of and sometimes alongside U.S. forces” and to use armed force to defend its local partners against adversaries (in what the Pentagon calls “collective self-defense”) regardless of whether those adversaries pose any threat to U.S. territory or persons, and, in some cases, whether or not the adversaries have been officially designated as legitimate targets under the 2001 AUMF.

In Somalia in 2016, for example, U.S. forces invoked “collective self-defense” to launch a strike against a rival militia of the Puntland Security Force, an elite brigade that had originally been recruited, trained, and equipped by the CIA and subsequently taken over by the Pentagon in 2011.

Moreover, the Pentagon deployed the PSF, which was largely independent of the Somali government, to fight al-Shabab and the Islamic State of Somalia, sometimes alongside U.S. forces, for several years before the executive branch designated al-Shabab as legitimate targets. It has never so designated the ISS.

Similarly, in Cameroon, U.S. forces accompanying a partner force on an “advise and assist” mission ended up shooting and killing an adversary. The Pentagon has used a Section 127 program there to pursue leaders of Boko Haram, a terrorist group that has “never been publicly identified as an associated force of Al-Qaeda, and thus a lawful target, under the 2001 AUMF,” according to the report.

Congress rarely hears of these incidents because, according to the report, DOD insists they are too minor or “episodic” to rise to the level of “hostilities” that would trigger reporting requirements under the 1973 War Powers Resolution.

An exception, however, came in October 2017 when four U.S. soldiers, who were deployed to Niger under a related “security cooperation” program known as Section 333, which authorizes the Pentagon to “train and equip” foreign forces anywhere in the world. Their presence in the field, however, was authorized under a standing executive order, or EXORD, that permits U.S. forces to engage in combat under particular circumstances, a parallel authority of which Congress had not been previously informed. The incident shocked lawmakers who were unaware that U.S. troops were operating in the field in Niger.

“I’ve got guys in Kenya, Chad, Cameroon, Niger [and] Tunisia who are doing the same kind of things as the guys in Somalia, exposing themselves to the same kind of danger and not just on 127 echoes,” bragged Brigadier Gen. Donald Bolduc (ret.), who commanded U.S. special forces in Africa until 2017 and is currently running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. “We’ve had guys wounded in all the types of missions that we do.”

The report, which relies on published work by investigative reporters, interviews with knowledgeable officials and congressional staff, official documents and records, as well as the author’s legal analysis, identifies 13 countries with Section 127e programs in addition to Somalia and Cameroon. They include Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Niger, Nigeria, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. But it stressed that the list is almost certainly not exhaustive.

Fifty countries, from Mexico to Peru in the west to Indonesia and the Philippines (where U.S. forces are known to have taken part in combat operation) in the east, and covering 22 countries in North and sub-Saharan Africa alone (not to mention Ukraine) had Section 333 programs in place as of mid-2018, according to the report.

Perhaps even more dangerous than the Section 127e counterterrorism programs, according to the report, are security cooperation programs undertaken pursuant to Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2018. Using language that mirrors Section 127e, that provision goes beyond the counterterrorism purposes of Section 1273e by authorizing “support” to partner forces “engaged in supporting or facilitating irregular warfare operations by the United States Special Operations Forces.”

“Irregular warfare” is defined by DOD as “competition …short of traditional armed conflict” or “all-out war.” Pentagon officials have described Section 1202 as “a highly useful tool for enabling irregular warfare operations…to deter and defeat …revisionist powers and rogue regimes.” They have also insisted that “irregular warfare is likely to be increasingly relied on as DOD begins to “prioritize great power competition.”

“Broadly speaking, the purpose of the [Section] 1202 authority is to take the department’s [Section] 127e approach of creating and controlling partner forces and wield it against countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” according to the report. “Section 1202, in short, raises the same potential as § 127e for hostilities that Congress has not authorized, but with far graver consequences because the enemy could be a powerful, nuclear-armed state.”

Given the increased risks, simply repealing or reforming “outdated and overstretched AUMFs …[is] insufficient,” the report concludes. “Congress should repeal or reform the Department of Defense’s security cooperation authorities. Until it does so, the nation will continue to be at war – without, in some cases, the consent or even knowledge of its people.”

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***

Of all the great tension both doctors and patients have faced in the COVID-19 crisis is the lack of assurances on long-term safety of COVID-19 vaccines.  Americans were told these genetic products were brought through testing at “warp speed.”  While that may be wonderful for the Starship Enterprise, warp speed should not be viewed as favorable in drug or vaccine development. 

Observation time in research is very important to evaluate the emergence of problems, particularly for the long-lasting mRNA vaccines and their biologic product, the coronavirus Spike protein.  For a typical live-attenuated, killed, or antigen-based vaccine, the minimum period for safety observation in clinical development is 2 years. For genetic products which includes mRNA and adenoviral DNA, the minimum time is 5 years.

Now with mass indiscriminate population, we have roughly two thirds of adult populations who have received a novel vaccine and the progression of their baseline medical problems is specific aim of research going forward at many centers. Canney et al studied 1105 patients who had stable glomerular kidney disease in 2020 before mRNA, and then followed them after receiving one or more of the COVID-19 vaccines.[i]

Glomerular kidney disease can worsen to complete kidney failure and dialysis, so the consequences are significant if there is a problem with mRNA, Spike protein, and progression of disease. As shown in the table, for the double vaccinated, there was more than a two-fold increase in progression of kidney disease.

That means a loss of renal function which is usually permanent for the vaccinated.  Using multivariable adjustment, this effect persisted.  The inference is the worsening of kidney disease is attributable to the vaccine and none of the other traditional risk factors (high blood pressure etc).  So if you or a loved one has kidney disease and was pressured into vaccination by a primary care physician or nephrologist, please share this Substack with them and suggest that they never again promote an experimental product without any long-term assurances on safety.   Such a product should only be considered by the patient as one would in a research trial, purely on the basis of personal preference and willingness to be involved in a form of clinical investigation.

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Note

[i] Canney M, Atiquzzaman M, Cunningham AM, Zheng Y, Er L, Hawken S, Zhao Y, Barbour SJ. A Population-Based Analysis of the Risk of Glomerular Disease Relapse after COVID-19 Vaccination. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2022 Nov 4:ASN.2022030258. doi: 10.1681/ASN.2022030258. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36332971.

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***

According to a US official, the Ukrainian tragedy appears to be just a “warmup” in the face of challenges Washington will see in the near future. US Navy Admiral Charles Richard, head of US Strategic Command, recently stated that his country has been preparing for prolonged conflicts with Russia and China.

Since 2018, Moscow and Beijing have played a central role in American international strategy, being seen as threats to the US-controlled world order. In this sense, major confrontations are expected, with the current conflict in Eastern Europe being a mere initial stage of this period of tensions.

Richard explains that the US would be entering a “great power competition”, in which the disputes with its two biggest geopolitical rivals would become intense. For him, Russia and China are the leaders in a process of overthrowing the American project for the post-Cold War world – and Washington seems really willing to take drastic measures to prevent the Chinese and Russian plans from materializing.

As head of the US nuclear arsenal, Richard analyzes the current global situation with concern and seeks realistic solutions to problems. The commander claims that the US is about to be “tested” in a very serious way. He believes that in the face of new dangers the quality of US military forces will not even matter, as there will simply not be enough resources to carry out US involvement in these conflicts. Therefore, Richard defends a rapid and effective reformulation of the American defense and security strategy, which adapts the country to the new geopolitical circumstances.

“We have to do some rapid, fundamental change in the way we approach the defense of this nation (…) This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup (…) The ‘big one’ is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested in a long time (…) It isn’t going to matter how good our [operating plan] is or how good our commanders are, or how good our horses are – we’re not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem”, he said during a recent interview.

Indeed, Richard seems pessimistic about his country’s ability to reverse its position in the power competition scenario. Currently, Washington is already behind China in terms of missiles. Beijing already has a new generation of ultra-long-range cruise missiles, in addition to a variety of ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons, in the face of which the US has no equivalent equipment.

In addition, the Chinese armed forces also have warships equipped with radars capable of detecting stealth aircraft, surpassing the potential of the American F-22 and F-35 fleets. Also, as far as space warfare is concerned, China seems to grow much more than Washington, with the Pentagon having several times expressed concerns about the modern Chinese system of fractional orbital bombing.

Although such data are not enough to say that China is “overcoming” the American military power, they point to a scenario of Chinese growth in war technology in front of which the US, with so many internal and external problems, does not seem able to respond with equivalent progress. Washington remains the main military power but has fewer and fewer intermediate weapons preventing the use of the nuclear arsenal, which makes the situation quite tense and worrying, since in the face of eventual intense and prolonged conflicts the US will quickly tend to resort to the use of the extreme force.

It must also be mentioned that during the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, the US encouraged an irresponsible escalation of the conflict by supplying Kiev with weapons, including modern long-range missiles, but they did not achieve any success in their objectives, as Russia continues to maintain absolute control of the military situation. For this reason, the West quickly escalated the rhetoric, appealing to clear nuclear blackmail, worrying the entire international society. The case accurately illustrates what may happen in any new conflict situations – such as a possible Chinese intervention in Taiwan, in which the US would certainly send weapons and mercenary troops to support Taipei.

In fact, Richard’s analysis is supported by the recent US government document establishing a National Defense Strategy focused on Russia and China as central adversaries in a major global competition. The US is willing to use all its resources to prevent emerging nations from questioning the unipolar world order. And, in this sense, regional conflicts, which could be resolved quickly without foreign interference, are prolonged so that Washington “warms up” and “tests its strength” for the new “challenges”.

Faced with the emergence of Multipolarity, the best thing for the US to do is simply accept it and adapt to it, consolidating it as a regional power and abdicating any role of “global police”.

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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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***

Last week in Ramallah, in a meeting with Canada’s mission to the Palestinian Authority, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) drew urgent attention to the issue of Israel’s violent repression of Palestinian human rights organizations. In a useful but frank meeting with Canada’s new Representative to the Palestinian Authority, David Da Silva, CJPME Vice President Michael Bueckert highlighted the existential threat faced by six of Palestine’s most prominent human rights organizations and urged Canada to denounce Israel’s criminalization of these groups. Bueckert is currently visiting Palestine on a delegation with representatives of the Ottawa Forum on Israel Palestine and the United Network for Justice and Peace in Palestine and Israel (UNJPPI).

“Canada’s ongoing silence as Israel escalates its persecution of Palestinian human rights defenders is unacceptable,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. Bueckert was told by Da Silva that instead of being vocal on various issues, Canada believes it is better able to leverage its friendship with Israel behind the scenes. However, CJPME notes that this means that Canada effectively does not take a public position on many serious human rights issues. “Canada should be open and direct in challenging Israel’s violations, instead of asking Canadians to trust that they are saying the right thing behind closed doors,” added Bueckert.

Earlier on the same day, CJPME and other delegation members had visited the Ramallah offices of Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) and Addameer, two of the organizations recently criminalized by Israel. Both organizations described the state of insecurity and uncertainty that Israel’s false “terrorism” designations have caused, with employees in constant fear of being arrested and prosecuted at any time. Both organizations stressed the need for Canada to demand that Israel revoke the designations, but confirmed that Canada has been “missing in action.” In contrast, many European states have publicly criticized Israel’s repressive actions and have offered support to the six organizations. CJPME and the delegation raised these concerns with Canada’s mission.

The delegation also raised the consensus in the human rights sector that Israel is practicing apartheid against the Palestinians, as detailed in multiple major reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN experts, and Israel’s largest human rights group B’Tselem. Canada has rejected all of these reports out of hand without offering any explanation. When pressed, however, Canada’s mission was still unable or unwilling to provide a single reason or explanation for rejecting the analysis of Amnesty International or the other organizations. CJPME emphasized that the government will have to engage with the reality of apartheid eventually, and looks forward to further consultations on these matters.

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Featured image: Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 [Nurphoto]

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Above all, last Sunday’s municipal elections on November 6th, were an optimal consolidation of the Nicaragua’s now serene and stable electoral culture, ensuring extremely efficient, orderly elections, and increased confidence for voters. The very high level of participation of Nicaragua’s young people and women in every aspect of the electoral process highlighted the profound democratization of Nicaraguan society that has taken place in the last fifteen years. Absent US and EU country interference, with its poisonous culture of corruption and violence, fear and hatred, last year’s national elections and these municipal elections of 2022 represent the triumph of Nicaragua’s sovereignty and the commitment of its population to Peace.

At an institutional level, the year-on-year progress of the Supreme Electoral Council in its increasing technical and administrative skills and in its communications and organizational capacity, have made both the voting process and the process of counting of votes highly efficient and reliable, a true model for the region. The collaboration of the country’s entire society, from the national universities to the National Police and the Nicaraguan Army and the various political parties, guaranteed the elections’ democratic integrity. The exceptional dedication, commitment and goodwill of the tens of thousands of people who provided their voluntary support to the electoral process ensured its undeniable sovereign legitimacy.

All day on that Sunday, tens of thousands of women and men voluntarily helped voters at the reception kiosks and at the polling stations or as electoral supervisory police. It is also important to note the essential role of the thousands of political party representatives who monitored the voting process for their respective political parties from the opening of the polls until their closure and then monitored the process of counting the votes. These municipal elections of 2022 have been the culmination in Nicaragua’s electoral history of the process of restitution of rights, of the People as President and the People as the protagonists of their local municipal authority.

After the controversial general elections of 1996, every municipal election exercise in Nicaragua has resulted in a progressive increase in support for the Sandinista National Liberation Front. In 2000, although it won in the municipality of the capital city, Managua, in the rest of the country the FSLN only won a total of 52 mayors nationwide. However, in the successive municipal elections that followed, the party’s popular support greatly increased. In 2004 the FSLN won 87 municipalities, in 2008, it won 109, in 2012 it won 127 and in 2017 it won 135.

The population of the municipality of Managua, with a third of the national population, has elected Sandinista mayors in every municipal election since 2000. Now in 2022, the FSLN has won all 153 municipalities in the country, even in the traditional strongholds of the national right wing parties, which , as usual, were hopelessly divided . The level of participation was 57% with an average vote in favor of the FSLN of around 74% and for the combined opposition parties an average of around 26%.

Throughout the past series of municipal elections and even more so with this latest electoral triumph of the FSLN, the population has come to rely more and more on the ability of the mayors and councilors of the Sandinista Front to improve the quality of life and the social and economic conditions of their communities. It is important to understand why the Nicaraguan people have demonstrated their confidence in the Sandinista Front in a progressively stronger way. The fundamental explanation is the revolutionary commitment of the FSLN to its historical program of 1969 and the development since January 2007 of a vision of the Common Good under a Government of Reconciliation and National Unity.

During the decade from 2007 to 2017, the government of President Comandante Daniel Ortega promoted and developed a successful consensus among virtually all sectors of Nicaraguan society. Everyone, apart from a small but vociferous recalcitrant minority, seemed to be in favor of social and economic stability and progress towards the much longed for realization of the Common Good. But, in 2017, the municipal elections of that year seem to have convinced the anti-patriotic opposition and their US and European owners that it would be impossible in the short or medium term to achieve an electoral defeat of the Sandinista Front and its alliance with other national political forces.

So the United States and its European Union allies encouraged their ciphers and pawns inside Nicaragua to mount the violent failed coup attempt of 2018. Then, during the following two years, repeated national surveys indicated that the vast majority of Nicaraguans wanted to resume the socio-economic course of the country set out by President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo before 2018. The November 2021 national elections overwhelmingly confirmed that sentiment.

The People as President, the vast majority of Nicaraguans, ratified in those national elections the decisions and actions of the government, the National Assembly and the other institutions of the country to strengthen national sovereignty and defend Nicaraguan society actively against foreign interference, internal subversion and treason. This is the political logic that Nicaraguan society has followed, overcoming in short order the very serious economic and social effects of the failed coup attempt. The country has also overcome the health and economic consequences of Covid-19 and the severe lockdown measures applied internationally, which caused so much damage to economic and social activity in general around the world.

So, on the one hand, it is indeed reasonable to evaluate the results of these 2022 municipal elections as a kind of referendum on Nicaragua’s national policies in the regional and international context. The results have been a forceful vindication of the government of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo. On the other hand, it is impossible to assess adequately these local election results in terrms of the People’s control over their local municipal authorites without taking into account the central government policies that have reinforced and complemented the municipal authorities’ capacity for implementing programs and projects promoting the economic, social and cultural development of their municipalities. National Assembly deputy Carlos Emilio López highlighted this in a recent article:

“The Development Model promoted by the Government of Reconciliation and National Unity (GRUN) has as its center the human person, their rights, needs, desires, aspirations, dreams and demands… This Development Model, in which the Municipality is the territorial epicenter, has been promoted by the Government of Reconciliation and National Unity since 2007, by means of the National Human Development Plan, national and sectoral policies and socio-economic and cultural programs.”

As Carlos Emilio points out in his article, Nicaragua’s Law 466 guarantees transfers from central government to the municipalities which now amount to 10% of the national budget, under rigorous control to ensure its efficient and transparent use. But it is also worth emphasizing the range of central government actions integrally linked to development at the local government level. There are many examples.

The installation, fitting out and equipping of 156 new fire stations in almost all municipalities of the country has greatly strengthened the capacity of local civil defense. Apart from allowing better control of fires and accidents, these emergency facilities strengthen the municipal structures of the National System for Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (SINAPRED). Similarly, the municipal authorities collaborate with the Ministry of Health in the maintenance of more than 180 maternity shelters. These shelters which accommodate and support rural women in the last weeks of their pregnancy and have been instrumental in achieving the dramatic reduction in the incidence of maternal mortality from more than 90 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006, to 31 in 2021.

Together with the National Institute of Technology (INATEC), the municipalities strengthen vocational training through their local vocational skills training programs. Endorsed by INATEC, these programs certify thousands of young and not-so-young people every year in new trades and skills. Local governments also coordinate closely in their respective municipalities with the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. Every year they build new road and bridge infrastructure and carry out maintenance of existing infrastructure. With the Ministry of Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy and the Nicaraguan Institute of Tourism, the municipalities promote the popular and creative economy.

They provide support to micro and small businesses, promote local fairs selling local products and developing the activities and initiatives of the Creative Cities Network. With the Nicaraguan Institute of Culture, the local municipal authorities have created more than 130 municipal choirs and an equal number of dance schools. The municipal authorities play a vital role, together with the Nicaraguan Sports Institute, in the development of the infrastructure and organization of recreational and sports activities across the whole country.

In all these areas of activity and various others, such as education, health or access to housing for low-income families, the municipal authorities work closely with the respective central government and State bodies to promote municipal development. So, in the context of the last 15 years of Sandinista government and given the centrality of municipal interventions for the current National Plan to Combat Poverty and for Human Development, it is very difficult, practically impossible, to distinguish between the national relevance of these municipal elections and their local importance.

In the national sense, winning the 153 municipalities nationwide reflects a tremendous, unquestionable affirmation of the People as President’s faith in the government of President Daniel Ortega, in Vice President Rosario Murillo, in their ministerial team and in the great institutional advances the country has made, especially in this context in relation to the Supreme Electoral Council. In the sense of the People as protagonists of their municipal authorities, these elections confirm popular satisfaction with the performance of the Sandinista municipal authorities and people’s confidence in the ability of their newly elected local governments to ensure the integral development of their municipality and so help guarantee the Christian, Socialist, Solidarity-based common good of all Nicaragua’s People. Following these municipal elections, the Sandinista Popular Revolution in Nicaragua is moving more united than ever towards yet more impressive advances and victories.

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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal, translated from Spanish.

Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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***

How bad is the rise in mortality?

So bad funeral companies are starting to worry.

Today Service Corporation International, the largest for-profit funeral operator in North America, had its quarterly earnings call. SCI had another great quarter, you’ll be pleased to hear! So far in 2022 the company has made almost $500 million in profits – and its stock rose more than 10 percent today after its earnings report.

(Death is your best investment!)

SCI’s management seems fairly open with investors. For many years, much of the company’s growth came from buying family-run funeral homes as their operators, umm, died out. The underlying funeral business is slow growth and very predictable.

At least it used to be.

As Thomas L. Ryan, Service Corporation’s chairman and chief executive, told investors Wednesday morning:

If you go back in this industry and particularly with SCI, year-to-year you would see the numbers of deaths — probably in one year you may be down 1% or 2%, in the next year you’re up 1% or 2% which you could predict was pretty good accuracy over a year and over a big footprint like ours what was probably going to happen… 2020 comes along, Covid, game-changer, right. We’re having to do at one point of time 20 percent more funerals which is unheard of in a year versus, let’s say, a year or two before.

So Service Corporation expected that once Covid passed, its business would go back to normal…

What we would have expected is, why wouldn’t we go back towards, let’s say, a 2019 level, maybe you get a percent or so growth of 2019, I would expect that. So that would be a reasonable level that we think would stabilize. And that’s kind of what we anticipated…

Only that’s not what has happened.

What we’re telling you is, the third quarter of this year, we did 15% more calls than we did in the third quarter of 2019. That is not what anybody would have anticipated and that has just a very de minimis amount of Covid deaths [emphasis added] in it.

Covid is gone. But people keep dying. Why?

Unsurprisingly, Ryan did not mention mRNA vaccines anywhere. Why would he? Doing so would only make for headaches he and Service Corporation do not need.

But, earlier in the call, he did point to “more cancer deaths” and more broadly a decline in overall health:

We believe these excess services are more permanent in nature into a combination of aging demographics, higher risk, less healthy lifestyle developed during the pandemic.

Ryan also suggested delayed medical care might be an issue.

These explanations are… strained, at best. Aging demographics are hardly new, and the lockdowns that drove a “less healthy lifestyle” ended as early as mid-2020 in most red states and by early 2021 almost everywhere. Opioids and overdoses generally remain a horrendous crisis, but deaths appear to have peaked in early 2022 and fallen slightly since. And for all the discussion of delays in medical care, hospitals and doctors offices have functioned essentially normally for at least 18 months.

In any case, the United States is hardly alone in seeing a large and so far unexplained spike in deaths in 2022. Countries from Germany to Australia to Taiwan are seeing similar trends.

They all have something in common. No points for guessing what.

In any case, Service Corporation is expecting business to stay good for years to come.

“These trends are hard to reverse quickly,” Ryan said. “I hope three, four, five years from now will subside a bit. But I don’t think it’s any time soon.”

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***

President Xi Jinping made history by opening the 20^th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), when he announced the beginning of a New Era of socio-political development with focus on the Global South.

The initiative embarks on a path of peaceful modernization and moderate prosperity, bringing more equilibrium to a world often beset by conflicts.

He made again history by having been confirmed for his 3^rd five-year term as China’s leader. This is good for continuity of a successful policy of growth and for the transformation of China as moderately prosperous society – a socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The next five years will focus on expanding the policy of growth and transformation with more emphasis on peacefully integrating the Global South.

President Xi pointed out, there would be no change in strategy vis-à-vis Taiwan, Hong Kong and China’s zero-Covid policy. Regarding Taiwan, China is aiming at a nonviolent unification. This is entirely an internal matter. China would not tolerate any foreign intervention.

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The new 7 member Standing Committee are poised to make a strong team to tackle the many challenges China will face during the next 5 years, envisaging an even longer horizon, until 2049, the Centenario of Modern China.

China has a stellar record of success stories during her 70-plus years of peaceful existence as a modern socialist country. Unfortunately, they are mostly ignored by western politicians and journalists.

Just to mention a few of the many achievements during President Xi’s 20-year tenure.

• Poverty reduction – lifting 800 million people out of poverty (equivalent to ten times the population of Germany);
• Health – impressive improvement in China’s health system; increasing China’s average life expectancy from about 71 years in 2000 to close to 79 years in 2021. This exceed many so-called developed countries (compare this to the US – 76 years life expectancy in 2021).

Most Chinese have access to FREE healthcare which is rare in the West.

• Dedollarization – is achieved through the gradual debunking of the sanction-prone US-dollar, by concentrating on developing internal and Asian regional markets and through a massive de-dollarization program, which includes:
  • Development of a Chinese digital central bank yuan, for use in international transactions;
  • China and ever more Asian and western countries are trading in Yuan and local currencies;
  • China’s economy and that of other Asian countries will be backed by their actual economic outputs – and most-likely by a basket of commonly used commodities;
  • Attracting many (former) “western orbit countries” into Asian regional organizations, such as (a) the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); (b) the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) of ASEAN+5 countries (15 altogether) – which is the worldwide largest free trade agreement; and (c) the BRICS+, …. to mention just a few. These countries will trade in other currencies than the US-dollar.
• The Belt and Road Initiative – BRI – may be the Crown Jewel of China’s achievements during the past two decades. It is a direct initiative of President Xi, launched in 2013. It will celebrate next year its tenth anniversary.

BRI has created already at least six land and maritime “roads” that are gradually spanning the globe to connect people of different cultures with infrastructure, with projects for joint research, learning, as well as the development of alternative sources of energies — and much more.

At present more than 150 countries and international organizations are connected to the Belt and Road.

The most recent addition of a BRI connection, may be the Port of Hamburg, a Chinese participation, for which the German Government has just given its Green Light.

Key elements of China’s projected and visionary New Era include

• Continuation and enhancement of the new autonomous monetary system – detached form the fiat “dollar world”. The new system could become a trailblazer for other countries. It might become the gateway for a sanction-free world economy.
• Embracing the Global South – proposing peaceful development and detachment from the fangs of western exploitation, while offering partner countries of the Global South technical assistance and development projects addressing their socioeconomic priorities.

The Belt and Road, beyond its worldwide expansion, may become a first-class instrument to implement a program of peaceful modernization of the Global South, preparing joint ventures and connections between countries and regions, including for trade, as well as research into alternative energy resources.

China’s Governance miracle is the result of a long-term strategic vision. Her peaceful and effective governance has successfully dealt with crises and problems. The path of the past will lead to successful governance into the future.

Key governance challenges ahead may include

• Peaceful integration of Taiwan into mainland China;
• Maintaining Hong Kong’s internal peace, protecting HK from foreign interference;
• Becoming rapidly self-sufficient in the semi-conductor production, for which the Biden Administration is attempting barring China from access to the needed technology.

This new US sanctions scheme seems to be an unrealistic endeavor. China is already master of these technologies. Besides, China disposes of the necessary raw materials, rare earths, for which the West depends largely on China’s exports.

In conclusion

China has been successful in her 70-plus years existence, because of her peaceful approach to development and to selective growth. China is pursuing a multipolar world, rather than hegemonic power.

China uses her peaceful governance to address injustices and irrationalities in the current international order, including in conflicts with the US and its western allies.

Peaceful global governance initiatives include the BRI, Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, BRICS+ Mechanism, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the world’s largest Free Trade Agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and more.

Enhancing global governance initiatives is China’s long-term vision, an important feature of what distinguishes the East from the West.

The 20^th CPC Congress outlines an outlook to 2035 – with a horizon 2049 – pointing to the 100^th anniversary of the “New Communist China” that successfully evolved to a socialism with Chinese characteristics.

As a momentum for closing, please allow me to present a brief 3-minute video:

Click here to watch the video.

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

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***

I have never known the Federal Reserve make a good decision.  Indeed, disastrous decisions are the Fed’s hallmark.  There are many such disasters.  Among them the Great Depression, the decade long consequence of the Federal Reserve Board’s failure to prevent the shrinkage of the US money supply. See this.

Image: Brooksley Born (Photo by the US Government, licensed under the Public Domain)

In more recent times we had Brooksley Born, head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), blocked from regulating over the counter derivatives and credit default swaps that resulted in financial panic and economic collapse.  Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt conspired to have Congress block Brooksley Born from doing her job.  The four dumbshit officials told Congress that “markets are self-regulating.”  Greenspan when later questioned by Congress admitted that his ideology “had a flaw.” See this. 

The Fed has abandoned effective financial regulation and helped to kill the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that had kept commercial and investment banking separate.  It is ironic that it was the formerly progressive Democrat Party in the clutches of the Clintons that repealed the progressive Glass-Stegall Act in 1999, thus setting up the line of financial troubles that caused the Fed to pump out money for 12 years in an effort to stabilize the financial system.  Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner’s 2011 book, Reckless Endangerment documents the failure of financial regulation.  Michael Lewis’s books, such as Flash Boys (2014), among others, demonstrate that the financial sector no longer serves any public purpose.  All the years while the Fed was printing money hand over fist to keep the financial system intact, Wall Street was making its money by front-running stock purchases.

In 1890 monopolies were regarded as restraints on trade and efforts were made to prevent them with the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, followed by the passage of two subsequent anti-trust acts.  Enforcement was spotty and the act was not always well applied, but monopoly was recognized as undesirable. Today that is not the case.  Globalization produced the view that only large corporations and banks could compete on a global basis.  Consequently, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act became a dead letter law.  US monopolization of finance became an important foundation of US world hegemony.

This brief account brings us to the present day.  The current Federal Reserve Board has confused a shortage of goods and services due to Washington-induced supply constraints with an excess demand inflation, and is raising interest rates in order to reduce aggregate demand.  This policy is nonsensical.  The incompetent Biden regime’s Covid lockdowns and Russian sanctions caused large reductions in supply.  Businesses were closed and many failed to reopen.  Supply chains were disrupted. Sanctions against Russia reduced the supply of energy, thus kicking up its price and the price of everything dependent on energy–essentially everything.  

The Fed’s policy of raising interest rates simply raises costs higher.  Everything dependent on credit costs more, including home mortgages. The Biden regime’s sanctions against Russia are the source of the largest part of the higher prices because of their impact on energy costs.

Far from reducing inflation, the Fed’s policy is benefitting private capital firms by driving prospective home owners out of the housing market by raising the interest cost of carrying a mortgage, thus aiding private capital companies to purchase housing for cash and turn them into rental units. The rental income is sheltered by depreciation, and when the properties are depreciated, they are sold, the money reinvested in new purchases, and the process begins again.  Home ownership by individuals cannot be depreciated, and home ownership by individuals has declined.  Is the Fed in bed with the private capital companies or just incompetent?

Washington’s Russian sanctions are being used to destroy European businesses, thus removing European competition with US firms.  Consider just two aspects of the sanctions:  European firms have been forced to break off profitable business relations with Russia and those with operations within Russia have had to abandon them.  Europe, especially Germany, is being cut off from energy, thus endangering not only living standards but the existence of domestic industries.  There are reports that the US is using the lure of plentiful and relatively cheap energy to recruit German car makers and other industries to relocate to the United States.  In other words, the US is trying to recover from the disaster of relocating its own industry offshore in Asia by using “Russian sanctions” to relocate Europe’s industry in the US.

Washington’s EU puppets long ago ceased to think and just follow orders. 

The German car companies want to survive, and if survival requires exiting Germany, they will exit.

The deindustrialization of Germany and Europe would greatly reduce the pressure of NATO on Russia.  Europe desolate of industry would have no money to purchase weapons from American weapons corporations and no means of equipping soldiers.  The Kremlin, of course, might again ruin things for itself by coming to Europe’s energy rescue.  The Russians will end up Goody Two Shoeing themselves to ruin.

If the Kremlin’s keeps its nose out of it, Washington will succeed in cutting Europe off from energy and relocating European industry to the US.

The great defect of Western peoples is that they always take their governments’ policies at face value.  It doesn’t occur to them that government is covering up a dark agenda with a moralistic campaign against Russia that requires sacrifices by the West.

Conservatives have tendency to attack real explanations as unpatriotic, and woke liberals attack the truth as misinformation.  As there is no media serving as watchdog, there is no obstacle to dark agendas.

Washington’s “Russian sanctions” are quickly destroying Europe.  See: Quarter of Europeans on the Brink of Ruin, New Survey Finds.

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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.

Video: The “Death Tsunami” Is Here. “You should never ever take any COVID shot anymore”. Dr. Sherry Tenpenny

By Dr. Sherri Tenpenny and Peter Koenig, November 08, 2022

We are living in an ever-more intense “Death Tsunami”, Dr. Sherry Tenpenny tells us. She says in the UK, 1 in 73 people who got the shot are already dead, according to US government data. She adds, about a 1,000 people a week die, as a result of the coerced vaxx campaign.

New Documentary Released: ‘The Origins of America’s Secret Police’

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, November 08, 2022

In this Canadian Patriot Review documentary produced by Jason Dahl, narrated by myself and based on the work of Cynthia Chung, you will be introduced to the ancient origins of the occult societies that penetrated the heart of America’s intelligence agencies after the murder of William McKinley in 1901.

Ukraine, Neocons, Lib Interventionists, and Blank Check Republicans

By Kurt Nimmo, November 09, 2022

Einstein was right when he said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Every two years, Americans vote for the same uniparty selected candidates expecting the serious issues of inflation, crime, drugs, etc. to be addressed, only to get broken campaign promises and more of the same.

Will You Survive the ‘Tripledemic’?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, November 09, 2022

According to mainstream media, hospitalizations for respiratory infections are on the rise and “experts” warn of a potential “tripledemic” this winter, as people contract COVID, seasonal influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Deeply Divided Arab League, Declaration Upholds Palestinian Rights, Clash with Israeli Election Outcome

By Steven Sahiounie, November 09, 2022

Arab leaders attending the meeting tip-toed around the Abraham Accords, which saw the United Emirates and Bahrain normalize their relations with Israel, with Saudi Arabia later allowing for over-flights of the Kingdom by Israeli aircraft, and is seen as a potential precursor to wider Arab normalization with Israel.

From Ireland to Crimea – A History of British-sponsored Terrorism

By Gavin OReilly, November 09, 2022

Indeed, Britain’s role in the current Ukraine crisis goes as far back as November 2013, when the Euromaidan colour revolution was launched in response to then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to suspend an EU trade deal in order to pursue closer ties with neighbouring Russia.

If You Say “Democracy” Often Enough the Voters Will Reward You

By Philip Giraldi, November 08, 2022

To be sure there is an election coming up today in the United States and President Joe Biden has clearly taken the low road in the lead up to it by speaking before friendly audiences and repeating over and over the bromides that cause the brain to go numb.

History of Nazism in Ukraine: The OUN during World War Two, 1941-1945

By Hugo Turner, November 08, 2022

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN is the most successful post-war fascist group.  During the war the OUN played a major role in helping the Germans carry out the Holocaust, which claimed 1.2 million Jewish lives.

Returning Man to Nature. Paul Thiry d’Holbach. “The essence of man is to feel, to think and to act”

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, November 08, 2022

The essence of man consists in feeling, thinking, acting, in short, in moving in a way that distinguishes him from other things with which he compares himself. 

As Lies Exposed, Lockdown Left Pleads for ‘Pandemic Amnesty’

By Ben Bartee, November 08, 2022

A Brown University professor has requested a curious accommodation for the governing class that has abused us with impunity for two and a half years. She terms it “pandemic amnesty,” which amounts to legal and social immunity for the Public Health© social engineers who orchestrated COVID-19 lockdowns and vaxx/masking mandates.

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***

As I write this, Americans are going to the polls to vote for this or that faction of the corporate uniparty. Einstein was right when he said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Every two years, Americans vote for the same uniparty selected candidates expecting the serious issues of inflation, crime, drugs, etc. to be addressed, only to get broken campaign promises and more of the same.

Ukraine is hardly on the radar—and yet tens of billions of dollars added to an astronomical debt, conservatively estimated at over 30 trillion, will not go to help the American people. It will be spent in one of the only growth sectors of the economy— “defense,” where death merchants embrace windfalls—and the destructive, poverty-inducing policies of the federal reserve and central bankers will continue to be explained away as corporate greed.

In fact, the neocons and “humanitarian (sic) interventionists” are pushing to increase weapons sales. “Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, said that he expects Congress to grant the authority to allow wartime purchasing power at a level not seen since the Cold War,” writes Dave DeCamp.

To continue arming Ukraine, LaPlante has been calling for the Pentagon to be granted the authority to lock in multiyear contracts for weapons purchases, which are typically reserved for procuring naval vessels and warplanes. The idea is to get arms makers the incentive to ramp up production.

Congress will not seriously address—except during elections—rising crime rates, an opioid crisis, the dissolution of the middle class, and out-of-control inflation (now 20%, not the “official” number of 8.6%). Inflation is driven by a “loose” monetary policy and the foolish injection of trillions of dollars into the economy to mollify an increasingly grumpy populace during a blown-out-of-proportion pandemic.

If you read the “news,” however, you get the impression inflation is created by greedy corporations. Democrats love this fallacious explanation peddled by the corporate media.

During a recent House oversight subcommittee hearing, Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., pointed to data from an Economic Policy Institute report which found that more than half of the increased prices people are paying are coming from increases in corporate profits, and not from higher overhead costs associated with operation and labor.

In other words, this Democrat suffers from either a) stupidity and an inability to comprehend economic theory—which you’d think would be part of her job—or b) lying to divert attention away from the real culprits, the ruling financial elite.

Bigger corporate profits account for *over half* of the higher prices people are paying. pic.twitter.com/RZr5O0X4oJ

— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) October 18, 2022

As Ron Paul noted last May as the lockdowns waned, the federal reserve enables the disastrous spending OCD affliction rampant across a bought-and-paid-for Congress.

[Fed Chairman Jerome] Powell does not want to admit that the real reason the Fed will continue to keep rates low is that increasing rates will cause the federal government’s interest payments to rise to unsustainable levels.

Congress will speed up the effort to impoverish the nation, and turn it into a third-world hellhole, by magically creating a mountain of devalued fiat dollars and steering it toward the insatiable maw of the death merchants—all in the deceptive name of saving non-existent “democracy” from the evil machinations of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, and other selected enemies.

The Senate has added an amendment to its version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act to grant the authority [to purchase an endless supply of death machines]. It would allow the Pentagon to make multiyear purchases through 2023 and 2024 of certain arms made by Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, and Raytheon, the former employer of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

LaPlante was ecstatic. “They [Congress] are supportive of this. They’re going to give us multiyear authority, and they’re going to give us funding to really put into the industrial base―and I’m talking billions of dollars into the industrial base―to fund these production lines,” he said during a press conference last week.

They are, of course, far less supportive of doing something about an economy that is turning vicious and threatening a recession (in fact, a depression) that will strip millions of Americans of their dignity and ability to maintain a modicum of security for their families.

Zelenskyy and his coterie of nasty Russophobic Nazis are far more important than the welfare of a public that only matters on a day like today, the first Tuesday in November, when ballots are counted, ignored, and stuffed.

In fact, the path we are on—a debt-financed primrose path terminating in poverty and want, to say nothing of thermonuclear war—is precisely what the original neocons called for: endless war and a population locked in serfdom to the state. During Bush’s war, Danny Postel interviewed the academic Shadia Drury, author of The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss and Leo Strauss and the American Right.

The ancient philosophers whom Strauss most cherished believed that the unwashed masses were not fit for either truth or liberty, and that giving them these sublime treasures would be like throwing pearls before swine.

Strauss and his followers embraced the philosophy of Plato, Nietzsche, Thrasymachus,  and Machiavelli.

[Strauss, Alexandre Kojève, and Carl Schmitt] were convinced that liberal economics would turn life into entertainment and destroy politics; all three understood politics as a conflict between mutually hostile groups willing to fight each other to the death. In short, they all thought that man’’s humanity depended on his willingness to rush naked into battle and headlong to his death. Only perpetual war can overturn the modern project, with its emphasis on self-preservation and “creature comforts.” (Emphasis added.)

And perpetual war is what we have endured decade after decade as the neocons wormed their way into the halls of government. The Obama administration, while initially campaigning to end neocon wars, embraced the big kahuna neocon Frederick Kagan to oversee the illegal and devastating (for civilians) war in Afghanistan. Obama made certain the neocon to-do list was accomplished—continuing and expanding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while laying the ground for additional horrors in Syria and Libya. Sanctions continued to be imposed on Iran for its fictional building of a nuclear bomb.

On the so-called Left, excuses were made for Obama’s neocon-ish foreign policy. “More than five years into his presidency, Barack Obama has failed to take full control over his foreign policy, allowing a bureaucracy shaped by long years of Republican control and spurred on by a neocon-dominated U.S. news media to frustrate many of his efforts to redirect America’s approach to the world in a more peaceful direction,” wrote the late Robert Parry in 2014.

The Obama administration’s Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, the wife of Robert Kagan, micromanaged the illegal coup in Ukraine that brought Russian-hating ultranationalists into the government.

The policy directives of the ruling elite span both factions of the USG uniparty. It does not matter who sits in the Oval Office (so long as it is not an outlier like Trump), foreign policy is set in stone, and decided by the likes of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the U.S. policy of support for Ukraine’s sovereignty has been strong across the U.S. political spectrum,” declares Sarah Dixon Klump, writing for the Kennan Institute at the globalist Wilson Center. (In order to put this statement in its proper context, do a non-Google search on Cold War architect George Kennan.)

The late William Green Miller, Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Ukraine, according to Dixon Klump,

…recommended that the Obama administration, like the Bush and Clinton administrations before it, voice its support for Ukraine’s eventual entry into NATO. In the meantime, however, Miller pointed out that the U.S.—through the signing of the Tri-Partite Agreement of January 14, 1994—is explicitly and formally obliged to support Ukraine in the event that its sovereignty, territorial integrity, or independence is threatened militarily, economically, or politically.

Russia considers Ukraine and NATO a red line, the same as the US would declare a violation of a red line if Russia placed its war machines and troops up against the US-Canada or Mexico borders. Hubris and double standards rule the day in the “indispensable nation,” as the advocate of child murder, Madeline Albright, who defended the engineered death of over 500,000 Iraqi children, described the USG.

The wishes of the American people have nothing to do with such foreign policy decisions and their needs are routinely dismissed. The wisdom of spending trillions of dollars to overturn elections, invade foreign countries, kill disfavored people abroad, and build a police and surveillance state at home is rarely discussed.

Democrats and Republicans put on a good show, making millions of Americans believe there are distinctive differences between what are in reality two factions of a uniparty that takes marching orders from the likes of the Council on Foreign Relations (as Hillary Clinton admitted.)

Millions of Americans are sadly misinformed on the growing daily prospect of thermonuclear war. Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis, there is no Robert Kennedy behind the scenes arranging diplomatic exchanges between the USG and Russia. The neocon and lib interventionists have left the decision to negotiate the fate of humankind up to a man threatened with murder if he does not tow the neo-nazi line on Russia.

The neocons are not and never have been interested in diplomacy. They sincerely believe they make their own reality and thermonuclear war is not on the agenda.

As an adviser to George W. Bush (said to be Karl Rove) declared in 2004 during an interview with Ron Suskind of The New York Times,

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

However, if we follow the rationale of neocons and liberal interventionists—that Russia is an evil empire and the USG must depose Putin—the new reality will be nuclear winter and the extinction of life on planet Earth.

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***

The Arab League met in Algeria for the first time in two years, and their final declaration called for freedom for the Palestinian people who have suffered under a brutal Israeli military occupation for almost six decades.  The meeting of nearly 22 nations across the Middle East and North Africa coincided with Israeli elections, which has brought to power a far-right party that wants to annex the West Bank and deport Palestinians from their homes.

Arab leaders attending the meeting tip-toed around the Abraham Accords, which saw the United Emirates and Bahrain normalize their relations with Israel, with Saudi Arabia later allowing for over-flights of the Kingdom by Israeli aircraft, and is seen as a potential precursor to wider Arab normalization with Israel.

Although the Arab world is deeply divided and polarized, the League managed to deliver a final declaration focused on the core issue of Palestinian human rights and freedom.

The Arab League General Secretariat affirmed its rejection of all Israeli settlement plans, condemned what it described as the annexation of Palestinian territory, stressed the need to compel the Israeli occupation to implement the relevant UN resolutions and work toward a comprehensive and fair two-state solution under the 2002 Arab peace initiative.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said,

“Our main and first cause, the mother of all causes, the Palestinian issue, will be at the heart of our concerns and our main priority.”

United Nations 

Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, attended the meeting and appealed for unity across the Arab world.

“Division opens the door to foreign, non-Arab, interference, terrorism, manipulation, and sectarian strife. But united, your leadership can shape a region that makes the most of its enormous potential and contributes to global peace and security,” Guterres said.

Foreign intervention in the Middle East has mainly come from the US. Muammar Gadhafi of Libya famously addressed the Arab League in 2008 and held up a paper that was sent to him and all other Arab leaders from the US telling them what their agenda was to be, and the expected results of that Arab League meeting.  Gadhafi went on to prophetically warn his counterparts that the US had eliminated Saddam Hussein, and they could all expect they would be next.

Guterres focused attention on the continued suffering of the Palestinian people, underlining the UN’s explicit position that the occupation must end.

“Our shared goal remains two States – Israel and Palestine – living side by side in peace and security, with Al-Quds/Jerusalem as the capital of both States,” he said.

“We must do all we can to ensure the continued success of the Black Sea Grain Initiative to provide relief to those in need, including countries in the Middle East and North Africa relying on accessible and affordable food and fertilizers — both from Ukraine and the Russian Federation,” he said.

The UN is concerned with global famine due to the Ukraine war, but where was the UN when the huge wheat stores in northeast Syria were stolen by the Radical Islamic terrorists utilized by the US-NATO attack on Syria for ‘regime change’?  The wheat was taken to Turkey and then sold to the EU where France used it for their croissants, and Italy for its pasta.

Syria was not invited back

Syria’s participation in the Arab League has been suspended since November 2011, which demonstrates a large group of Arab nations supported the US-NATO attack on Syria using the Muslim Brotherhood ideology and terrorist foot soldiers.

In July 2022, Algeria’s foreign minister decried Syria’s decade-long suspension from the Arab League during a visit to Damascus, indicating support for the war-torn country’s return to the organization under President Bashar Assad.

Arab countries have inched closer toward restoring ties with Syria in recent years, most notably the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. In October 2021, Jordan’s King Abdullah II received a call from President Assad, the first between the two leaders in a decade.

“Syria’s absence from the Arab League harms cooperation between Arab countries,” said Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, speaking at a news conference with his Syrian counterpart, Faisal Mekdad, and having met with President Assad while delivering a letter from Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboun.

Israeli elections and far-right move

While the Arabs were meeting in Algeria, Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, on trial on corruption charges, was engineering his return to power in Israel through an unusual alliance with an ultra-nationalist party.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of Israel’s Jewish Power faction, lives in the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Palestinian city of Hebron. The far-right extremist leader appears likely to take a senior role in government after the Religious Zionism bloc he co-heads, with Bezalel Smotrich, became the third-largest in parliament with 14 seats, the largest gain of any religious party in Israel.

Ben-Gvir has demanded to be appointed as a public security minister in the new Netanyahu government.  That position is problematic because of the history of Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted in 2007 of racist incitement and support of a terrorist group on both the US and Israeli terror blacklists. In the past year, he led a settler storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosquecompound and has previously acted as a legal defense for Lehava, a racist group, which has called for the full expulsion of Palestinians, and a ban on Christmas. It views Christian churches as places of idol worship.  The Israeli government has long had the plan to convert churches and Bethlehem into tourist attractions devoid of any connection to practicing Christianity.

Besides deporting all Palestinians, Ben-Gvir also plans to expel Palestinians who are Israeli citizens and have been democratically elected to the Knesset, along with leftist Israeli Jews who are MPs.

“When we form the government, I will promote the Deportation Law, which will deport anyone who acts against the State of Israel or IDF soldiers,” Ben-Gvir said in an interview last August.

Ben-Gvir pulled his gun and admonished police officers responding to an altercation with Palestinians,

“If they are throwing stones, shoot them.”

The path forward for Netanhayu’s government may depend on the upcoming November 8 elections in the US, where Republicans may make gains, which may be a green light for Netanyahu and extremism.

The settlements

The 1949 Geneva Convention, which Israel signed, it is prohibited for an occupying power to move its own population into the territory. Since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, numerous UN resolutions affirm that Israel’s occupation is illegal, and the settlements on the West Bank have no legal basis.

Despite the international consensus, Israel continues to build illegal settlements on the West Bank, which currently number over 100, with 450,000 Israeli settlers living there, and another 220,00 Jewish settlers living in East Jerusalem.

Israel is an apartheid state

On March 25, 2022, Michael Link, UN Special Rapporteur, concluded that Israel met the conditions of an apartheid state. His findings reported that an institutionalized regime of systematic racial oppression and discrimination has been established, a system of alien rule had been established with the intent to maintain the domination of one racial-national-ethnic group over another, and the imposition of this system of institutionalized discrimination with the intent of permanent domination had been built upon the regular practice of inhumane acts.

The question for liberal western democracies is, “Can democracy, religious extremism, and apartheid policies co-exist?” A follow-up question is, “Can the west continue to support Israel?”

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

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***

Thursday’s report by investigative website The Grayzone, that British Military Intelligence is planning to train Ukrainian insurgents in order to carry out a terrorist campaign in Crimea, comes at a time of increasing tensions between Moscow and London.

The Kremlin has already accused Downing Street of being involved in the Nord Stream explosions on the 26^th of September, the Kerch Bridge explosion on the 8^th of October, and last Saturday’s drone attack on the key Crimean port of Sevastopol, with UAVs being a key component of a recent military aid package gifted to Kiev by London.

Indeed, Britain’s role in the current Ukraine crisis goes as far back as November 2013, when the Euromaidan colour revolution was launched in response to then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to suspend an EU trade deal in order to pursue closer ties with neighbouring Russia.

Britain’s history of arming and training terrorist groups however, as outlined in last week’s report, goes back even further.

In 1971, the occupied north of Ireland had been in the grip of violence for two years.

Inspired by the civil rights campaign taking place in the United States at the same time, the north’s Nationalist community – those in favour of Irish reunification and generally descended from the indigenous Irish population – had begun a campaign in 1967, demanding equal rights within the British-created statelet.

Though peaceful in nature, the civil rights movement would be violently beaten and teargassed every time they took to the streets, by a police force composed almost entirely of Unionists, those in favour of remaining under British rule and generally descended from English and Scottish settlers, planted in the region in the 17^th century.

As a result, support for militant Irish Republicanism was quickly growing and the Provisional IRA would be formed in December 1969.

The British Army, deployed to the region earlier in the year in order to enforce London’s rule, would quickly take sides in the emerging conflict.

To this end, the Military Reaction Force (MRF) was formed; a clandestine special forces unit intended to trigger a civil war between the IRA and Loyalist factions in order to draw Republican attention away from Crown Forces.

In order to implement this strategy, the MRF would carry out the murders of unarmed Nationalist civilians, usually in drive-by shootings, in the hope that the IRA would blame Loyalist groups such as the UVF and UDA.

The Unit would directly with Loyalist terrorists on the 4^th of December 1971 however, when they arranged for British army checkpoints to be cleared from the New Lodge, a staunchly Republican area of Belfast, thus allowing a UVF team to bomb a local pub, McGurk’s Bar, leaving 15 civilians dead. This attack would mark the beginning of formal relations between British Military Intelligence and Loyalist death squads, a relationship that would soon escalate.

In 1974, relations between London and Dublin had been placed under significant strain owing to British atrocities in the north such as the Ballymurphy massacre, the 1971 murder of nine civilians by British paratroopers over the space of two days in Belfast, and Bloody Sunday in Derry, when British paratroopers again opened fire on a civil rights demonstration in January 1972, leaving 14 men dead.

Indeed, following the initial outbreak of hostilities in 1969, then-Taoiseach Jack Lynch had mooted the possibility of sending troops to the north, and in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, Irish police stood by as demonstrators burned down the British Embassy in Dublin.

Britain, fearing that the southern state would dissent from its traditionally pro-British stance and become a state sponsor of the IRA, decided that a message had to be sent.

On the 17^th of May 1974, a Friday, three no-warning car bombs would detonate during rush hour traffic in Dublin, killing 27 people and injuring 300. A further seven people would be killed 90 minutes later when another bomb detonated in the border country of Monaghan, intended as a diversion to allow the bombing team to escape back into the occupied north. The death toll would be the largest of any single day during near 30 years of conflict.

The bombings, carried out by the UVF under the direction of the MRF’s successor, the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU) would ultimately result in the 26 County administration returning to its pro-British stance, and no further attacks would be carried out in the southern state on the same scale. In the north however, British Military Intelligence would continue to work hand in glove with Loyalist death squads, a relationship that would grow to accommodate the UDA as the 1980s dawned.

Although it had not yet carried out attacks on the same scale as the UVF, the UDA dwarfed its more well-known counterpart in terms of membership, counting 40,000 at its peak. It was not long before British Military Intelligence saw the group’s potential for use as a proxy, thus the Force Research Unit (FRU) was born.

A clandestine unit in the same vein as the MRF and SRU, the FRU’s purpose was to turn the UDA into a more ‘professional’ force, one that targeted IRA members, rather than the Nationalist civilians that both the UDA and UVF were known for killing in indiscriminate attacks.

To this end, the FRU would send Brian Nelson, a senior UDA figure, to South Africa in 1985, where a weapons deal was organised with Armscor, the official defence contractor of the-then Apartheid state. An arrangement that would lead to a deadly escalation of the UDA’s murderous campaign and would ultimately result in the killing of human rights lawyer, Pat Finucane.

Finucane, a Belfast native, had rose to prominence in the 80s through his representation of high-profile Republican prisoners, including IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. Quickly becoming a thorn in the side of the British establishment, the final straw would come in November 1988, when he successfully defended an IRA Volunteer against charges related to the deaths of two British soldiers.

On the 12^th of February 1989, a UDA unit smashed down the front door of Finucane’s family home and shot him 14 times as had Sunday dinner with his wife and children. Less than a month beforehand, senior Thatcher cabinet member Douglas Hogg had given a speech in the House of Commons, where he spoke of solicitors in the north of Ireland who were ‘unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA’, effectively sanctioning Pat Finucane’s murder at the highest level of government.

Indeed, official British sponsorship of terrorist groups was not a tactic confined solely to Ireland at the time, with Downing Street also supporting the Afghan Mujahideen during the same period, a strategy they would also use in Libya and Syria during the past decade, and now, as the new decade dawns, Russia now appears to be the latest target in the long history of British-sponsored terrorism.

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Gavin O’Reilly is an activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism. Secretary of the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee, a campaign group set up to raise awareness of Irish Republican political prisoners in British and 26 County jails. His work has previously appeared on American Herald Tribune, The Duran, Al-Masdar and MintPress News. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. Support him on Patreon.

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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***

As the COVID lies are now being exposed at exponential speed, some of those proven wrong are getting nervous — so nervous, in fact, they’re now pleading for amnesty and to just let bygones be bygones

While some now argue ignorance as their defense, there was no lack of data proving their positions were wrong, dangerous, destructive and deadly, right from the start

Health and government officials weren’t just wrong once and then changed course. No, they’ve doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on errors, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they’re wrong. Granting amnesty to individuals who have been wrong from Day 1, without a single apology, is an untenable proposition. The price society has paid for their errors is far too great for that

• They were wrong about masks working and natural immunity not working,
• they were wrong about asymptomatic spread,
• lockdowns,
• and the safety and effectiveness of the COVID shots.
• They were also wrong about SARS-CoV-2 jumping naturally from bats to humans by way of a wet market in Wuhan, China,
• and they were wrong when they insisted that mandating an experimental gene therapy was within legal bounds.

Demanding that officials be held accountable for these errors is not gloating. It’s reestablishing a baseline of conduct and accountability to the public.

There can be no amnesty for COVID narrative pushers as people proven right are still being persecuted as “misinformation spreaders,” and illegal government censorship continues without abatement. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security now views censorship and controlling the information space as one of its core duties

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As the COVID lies are now being exposed at exponential speed, some of those proven wrong are getting nervous — so nervous, in fact, they’re now pleading to just let bygones be bygones.

The Atlantic¹ has come under fire for suggesting that all the terrible pandemic-era decisions over lockdowns, school closures, masking and punishing an entire class of people who questioned the efficacy and wisdom of taking a rushed, experimental vaccine — for a virus with a 99% survival rate in most — should all be water under the bridge.

Brown University economist Emily Oster writes in The Atlantic,²

“We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.”

Brendon Marotta in his Substack Hegemon Media³ recounts:

“I believe perpetrators call for forgiveness because they fear punitive justice. If the perpetrators were held accountable in our current justice system, the scale of the wrongdoing would result in punishments the perpetrators could not bear.

These punishments would also not give those who lost their jobs, businesses, friends, family, health, or freedom anything back. What if there was another way that would be better for both victims and perpetrators?

The wrongdoing of the pandemic has not been acknowledged. Those responsible have made no apologies. Calls for ‘forgiveness’ appear dishonest when those responsible haven’t apologized, which is usually a prerequisite to asking for forgiveness.

Creating equity would mean taking the ill-gotten gains of perpetrators and redistributing them to the people who lost their jobs and businesses during the pandemic. In short, it would mean reparations. Equity is not just about money. Losses during the pandemic were not just financial.

Oster’s plea for the decency that she and the mainstream media and public health officials failed to offer Americans during the throes of the pandemic comes at a point when the COVID narrative has been all but lost by the current administration and the mainstream media.

Their Lies Have Been Exposed

For nearly the last three years, I have been exposing and documenting all of the lies that the global cabal has been promoting in their mainstream media propaganda. As expected they have now been exposed to be falsehoods, cluelessness and lies:

Their Crimes Must Be Reconciled

You weren’t allowed to say goodbye to your loved ones or attend their funerals, but the chosen ones dined at extravagant restaurants and allowed liquor stores and Wal-Mart to stay open. Your small business was destroyed, while Amazon made billions.

These murderous hypocrites killed thousands of seniors by knowingly putting infected patients into old age homes.

They killed thousands more by putting treatable patients on ventilators and Fauci’s remdesivir, and additional thousands were killed by not allowing safe and effective treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to be prescribed by doctors.

They have killed and injured hundreds of thousands through coercion, threats, mandates and a never-ending stream of lies that forced people into taking a dangerous and untested, toxic concoction — a Big Pharma bioweapon.

These “experts” seeking forgiveness, ostensibly because they were just caught up in the “hysteria” of the moment, weren’t wrong. They were lying from the outset and need to pay dearly for their crimes against humanity.

We were scorned, ridiculed, ostracized, censored, fired, deplatformed and wished dead by the authoritarian-minded sheep who demanded compliance, and treated like outcasts by family members who believed the narrative hook, line and sinker.

They pushed their agenda too far and too fast out of desperation, as the financial underpinnings of their fake world order began to strain and crumble. This desperation exposed their blatant lies to a vast array of critical thinkers across the world who have not been deterred in exposing the falsehoods on social media, blogs and free-speech websites.

Why We Must Reject Amnesty Plea

The reasons we must reject Oster’s amnesty plea are manifold. First and foremost, while some now want to argue ignorance as their defense, there was no lack of facts and data, right from the start, proving their positions were wrong, dangerous, destructive and deadly.

Since data were readily available, the real question they need to ask themselves is: “Why did I believe all the lies and propaganda?” Self-reflection is needed here. Related to this is Oster’s ridiculous claim that “getting something right had a hefty element of luck.” Absolutely not. Give me one example where luck played a role.

People who got it right did so because they exercised their critical thinking skills and a) read the data, b) correctly analyzed that data and c) drew rational conclusions based on that analysis. Analysis and reason are not reliant on luck.

No luck was needed to know that masks were useless. The published science told us as much. Ditto for the conclusion that natural immunity is superior to vaccine-induced immunity. No luck was needed to know there was no such thing as asymptomatic spreaders, because again, science. Not only can you not have a “hot” infection without symptoms, but research looking at millions of individuals confirmed what we already knew from basic virology.

No luck was needed to correctly predict that lockdowns would have a dramatically negative effect on health, education and the economy. That was just plain rational, but early cost-benefit analyses also confirmed it.

No luck was needed to know that the COVID jab was useless because data from around the world rapidly grew to show that case rates rose in tandem with the shots. Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden and CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky have also demonstrated this.

All were jabbed more than once, and all got COVID — more than once! Seventy percent of jabbed CDC employees also got COVID, and on several occasions, ships where 100% of crew and passengers were jabbed reported outbreaks. None of this would occur if the shots actually prevented infection and spread, and you need no special skills other than clear-headed reason to come to that conclusion.

You also don’t need special skills to see that the COVID shots are killing healthy people. Just look at all the sudden deaths of professional athletes and children. It’s so common they’ve even given it a new name: Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. Look at the excess mortality statistics and the skyrocketing life insurance claims.

Oster’s proposition that luck was behind correct analyses is a cop-out and a sign that she’s not ready to accept that she was gullible and irrational — and possibly cruel toward others. Recall, threatening the lives of the unvaccinated and mocking their deaths was basically part of the public policy.⁴

Forgiving the ignorant because they don’t know what they’re doing may be the spiritual imperative, but social etiquette demands that if you WANT someone to forgive you, you FIRST apologize and THEN ask for forgiveness. What’s missing from Oster’s call to forgive her and everyone else who’s been proven wrong is an apology.

Government Officials Must Be Held Accountable

This is even more important when it comes to media and our health and government officials. Granting amnesty to individuals who have been wrong from Day 1, without a single apology, is an untenable proposition. The price society has paid for their errors is far too great for that.

They may ask for forgiveness, and they may be forgiven by many, but they STILL must be held accountable for their errors. Demanding that officials be held accountable for errors is not gloating. It’s reestablishing a baseline of conduct and accountability to the public — something we seem to have lost.

Their reckless behavior has caused people to lose their businesses, their livelihoods; they’ve lost family members to reckless medicine; they’ve lost out on weddings and funerals; drug use and suicides have skyrocketed; children have fallen years behind on their schooling and the economy has been destroyed. The list goes on. Being wrong has a price, and society will be paying it for quite some time.

What’s more, our health and government officials weren’t just wrong once and then changed course. No, they’ve doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on errors, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they’re wrong, and we’re just supposed to “let bygones be bygones”? Not a chance.

First, we have to set the record straight, so everyone actually knows what the truth is, and then we have to make sure these kinds of errors cannot be committed again. A truce is a distant third on the list of how to move forward.

Those Proven Right Are Still Persecuted

Setting the record straight starts with ending the persecution of those proven to be right. It also requires putting an end to censorship and the promulgation of propaganda.

With regard to the propaganda, this will require rewriting the law. The use of state propaganda against the American public was illegal until 2012, when then-president Obama legalized it through an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).⁵ That amendment must be repealed so that media can again be held accountable for the illegal dissemination of government propaganda.

Moving forward, we also likely need to either abolish or radically reassess the role of medical boards. As it stands, medical boards have been weaponized to silence doctors who go against the state propaganda and tell the truth about COVID.

The latest victim of this government orchestrated persecution is Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the most well-credentialed and respected cardiologists in the world. He’s now being stripped of his medical credentials for the crime of speaking truth to the public (and thereby contradicting the legalized propaganda).⁶

He’s also been terminated from his position as editor-in-chief of Cardiorenal Medicine and Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine (RCM) — all without due process. RCM was even so cowardly to publicly claim he “stepped down” as his term of office had ended. As noted by McCullough, there are “powerful dark forces” at work in academic medicine “to expunge any resistance” to the COVID jab.

Editor Forced to Resign Over McCullough’s COVID Paper

Anyone who dares publish McCullough’s research also skates on thin ice. Dr. Jose Luis Domingo, editor-in-chief of the science journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) for the past seven years, was recently forced to resign for that very reason. As reported by the Epoch Times:⁷

“Though Domingo has himself received three vaccinations (two AstraZeneca and one Pfizer), he told The Epoch Times that he has been bombarded with insults, threats, and accusations of being ‘anti-vaccine’ ever since he approved the publication of a scientific paper⁸ [by McCullough, Stephanie Seneff, Greg Nigh and Anthony Kyriakopoulos] that explores potential mechanisms of harm of injected synthetic mRNA …

This research was co-authored by a team of preeminent scientists, including Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. Peter McCullough, an internationally known cardiologist who has published over a hundred peer-reviewed articles during his 40-year career; and Dr. Anthony Kyriakopoulos, a Greek clinical microbiologist, medical doctor, and researcher who has a Ph.D. in medical and molecular microbiology.

Their research proposed that alterations in the vaccine mRNA may ‘hide the mRNA from cellular defenses and promote a longer biological half-life and high production of spike protein.’ In doing so, these scientists posited, mRNA vaccines may interfere with the body’s natural immune response.

They described this interference as ‘profound impairment,’ which, they believe, comes about specifically because the spike protein interferes with a critical early innate immune response mechanism, called the type I interferon response.

If they are correct, injected synthetic mRNA will have a variety of negative consequences on human health, including making our bodies less able to control infections and suppress cancer …

About a month after the paper was published, Domingo said, he began receiving angry emails and messages. These included insults, calls to resign, demands to retract the paper, and even threats … The angry messages, he said, were filled with ad hominem attacks against him and against the paper’s co-authors, but did not specify their scientific objections to the contents of the paper …

Though he would have preferred to stay at the helm of the journal until the end of 2023 … Domingo has issued his resignation from the journal to maintain his scientific independence.

He told us he is first and foremost a scientist, and that he does not regret publishing the paper. Despite the attacks, he was not willing to give in to the pressure from the journal’s publisher … Jagna Mirska …

Domingo said that the journal has already picked a successor for his position — someone with clear ties to the pharmaceutical industry: Bryan Delaney, Ph.D. According to his LinkedIn page, Delaney is a toxicologist who currently works for Haleon. Haleon is pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKlein’s new brand name for its consumer health unit.”

What Else Have They Been Wrong About?

The list of so-called “errors” is a long one. They were wrong about masks working and natural immunity not working, they were wrong about asymptomatic spread, lockdowns and the safety and effectiveness of the COVID shots. They were also wrong about SARS-CoV-2 jumping naturally from bats to humans by way of a wet market in Wuhan, China.

Not even a month has passed since we witnessed the stunning revelation that Pfizer never tested its COVID shots for transmissibility before proclaiming publicly that the vaccine protected against transmission. Then they had the CDC put the bioweapon on the childhood vaccine schedule and the same day increased the price of their jab by 400%.

As reported by Rising host Robby Soave (video above) and Vanity Fair,⁹ a report by the Minority Oversight Staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, released in October 2022, concluded that “a research-related incident is the most likely explanation for COVID-19.”

The COVID jab tyrants were also wrong when they insisted that mandating an experimental gene therapy was within legal bounds. Such mandates have since been overturned in a number of districts. Most recently, a New York judge ruled that New York City’s COVID jab mandate for municipal workers was enacted illegally and any employee fired for noncompliance must be immediately reinstated — and receive back pay.¹⁰

According to Supreme Court Justice Ralph Porzio, the Health Commission’s jab mandate “violates the separation of powers doctrine” enshrined in the state constitution, as well as workers’ due process rights. In his ruling, Porzio noted:

“The vaccination mandate for City employees was not just about safety and public health; it was about compliance. If it was about safety and public health, unvaccinated workers would have been placed on leave the moment the order was issued. If it was about safety and public health, the Health Commissioner would have issued city-wide mandates for all residents.”

The New York City law department immediately filed an appeal, which blocked the reinstatement of the workers. Time will tell, but I suspect that in the end, the city will just end up having to pay out even more in back pay.

US Government Still Plans to Police Wrong-Think

As mentioned earlier, amnesty for COVID dictators is impossible in light of continued censorship, and there’s no sign of that ending any time soon. On the contrary, leaked documents show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has every intention of policing wrong-think.

Biden’s “Ministry of Truth” may have been disbanded in the wake of public mockery, but the plan for such an entity was not shelved. As reported by The Intercept:¹¹

“Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms …

Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse.

According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information …

In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government …

There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time of writing, the ‘content request system’ at facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live …

According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target ‘inaccurate information’ on a wide range of topics, including ‘the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.’”

As you can see, censorship is not restricted to COVID issues alone. They include a variety of national politics and geopolitical issues as well. In other words, Americans’ views of the world and our country are being shaped by a propaganda arm of the U.S. government itself — not another country — and the reason they have no qualms about doing this is because Obama legalized the use of government propaganda against Americans during his presidency.

Censorship Is Now a Core Duty of the DHS

In addition to abolishing or radically reforming medical boards, the FDA and CDC, we probably need to do the same to the DHS. As reported by The Intercept, documentation shows the “DHS views the issue of tackling disinformation and misinformation as a growing portion of its core duties.”

I don’t know about you, but when I think about what Homeland Security should be doing, policing and punishing my personal views about health, medicine, climate change, political actors and geopolitical actions is not at the top of the list. Yet that’s precisely what they’re doing, and will be doing more of in the years to come.

To control the information space, the DHS intends to “leverage advanced data analytics technology” and work with nongovernmental agencies and other civil society organizations “to build resilience to the impacts of false information.”

Government Censorship by Surrogate Is Still Illegal

For now, Schmitt is combating this tyrannical and unconstitutional overreach in court. As reported by The Intercept:¹²

“In May, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt took the lead in filing a lawsuit to combat what he views as sweeping efforts by the Biden administration to pressure social media companies to moderate certain forms of content appearing on their platforms.

The suit alleges governmentwide efforts to censor certain stories, especially ones related to the pandemic. It also names multiple agencies across the government that have participated in efforts to monitor speech and ‘open collusion’ between the administration and social media companies …

October 21, the judge presiding over the case granted the attorneys general permission to depose Fauci, CISA officials, and communication specialists from the White House.

While the lawsuit has a definite partisan slant, pointing the finger at the Biden administration for allegedly seeking to control private speech, many of the subpoenas request information that spans into the Trump era and provides a window into the absurdity of the ongoing effort.

‘There is growing evidence that the legislative and executive branch officials are using social media companies to engage in censorship by surrogate,’ said Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, who has written about the lawsuit.

‘It is axiomatic that the government cannot do indirectly what it is prohibited from doing directly. If government officials are directing or facilitating such censorship, it raises serious First Amendment questions.’”

No Chance of Amnesty for US Leadership

To bring us back to where we started, with Oster’s plea for amnesty for those who ignorantly chose to be on the wrong side of history, I am not alone in my view that her proposition is an unworkable one.

Sure, on a personal level, many are likely willing and able to bury the hatchet and join hands again with friends and family who shunned and berated them as “conspiracy theorists” and “anti-science anti-vaxxers” (although following the science and the data was precisely what we were all doing).

But on the leadership level, amnesty is out of the question. Leaders must be held accountable for decisions based on lies. They must be held accountable for their fraud and deception.

Agency heads must be held accountable for their data manipulation and obfuscation, Big Tech leadership must be held accountable for their efforts to aid government in the circumvention of our Constitutional rights, and mainstream media, including individual hosts and reporters, must be held to account for their propaganda role, which has injured and killed hundreds of thousands of Americans who trusted them.

A court recently ruled Alex Jones must pay nearly $1 billion in damages to families for falsely claiming that no children died in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting,¹³ an event that many in alt media suspected was a false flag operation at the time. Now, that fine is quite a precedent.

What would be the appropriate fine for journalists who claim no one has died from the COVID shot? Or that COVID jab injuries are “exceedingly rare”? What would be the appropriate fine for tech platforms that censor the personal testimonies of the injured and families of the dead, thereby perpetuating the lie that injuries and deaths don’t occur?

What would be an appropriate payout by federal agencies that falsified data to hide adverse effects and deaths? If you guessed in the trillions you would have profoundly underestimated the damage they have done.

No Chance of Amnesty for Enforcers of False COVID Narrative

The American Conservative had this to say about the “Soviet blue-check media” in the United States:¹⁴

“There can be no amnesty for the unthinking enforcers of the narrative of the regime. I don’t know how to put this gently to my fellow members of the blue-check media class, so I will say it bluntly. You guys resemble nothing so much as the info apparatus of some failing ideological state — late-Soviet apparatchiks, only without the erudition that was demanded of regime intellectuals in Moscow back in the day …

In February 2020, the Washington Post published a news story with the headline: ‘Tom Cotton Keeps Repeating a Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory That Scientists Have Debunked.’

More than a year later … the paper ‘rewrote the article’s headline, softening ‘conspiracy theory’ to ‘fringe theory’ and noting that scientists have ‘disputed’ it rather than ‘debunked’ it.’ How generous. How scrupulous …

If the lab-leak theory were a rare instance in which blue-check media abdicated basic journalistic responsibility in favor of elite narrative enforcement, one could forgive and forget, as the Atlantic now demands.

But such lapses are utterly commonplace — systemic, you might say. Remember when Big Tech and Big Media and Big Intelligence teamed up to frame the New York Post’s Hunter Biden reporting in October 2020 as ‘misinformation’ — only to concede, once the election was safely over, that it was, in fact, entirely accurate?

Remember the absolute unanimity with which blue-check media defended the efficacy of COVID vaccines in stopping transmission — before begrudgingly admitting that, erm, actually, they really don’t work as advertised?

Remember when blue-check media were dead-certain that Jussie Smollett was the victim of a racist attack? And on and on and on. Once the falsity of the old narrative is definitively established, most blue-checks shamelessly move on to the next elite narrative in need of media reinforcement — no apology, no introspection.

The few willing to acknowledge their errors, meanwhile, insist they were merely following the ‘expert’ consensus at the time. This is risible. The job of the reporter isn’t to parrot what the experts say at any given moment: it is to question what anyone in power claims.

‘If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out,’ used to be the journalistic motto. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Pfizer, WHO, and 50 former intelligence officials deserve far more exacting scrutiny than Mom.”

Rhetorical Constructs of Manipulative Language

Another rebuttal to Oster’s call for amnesty that I want to highlight is from the anonymous Substack writer known only as “A Midwestern Doctor,” who dissects the “manipulative language” used by Oster in her article. The anonymous doctor writes:¹⁵

“When I read through this article, I realize the author highlighted a very common problem … The author is demanding to receive forgiveness for their conduct, but … is refusing to admit they did anything wrong.

In order to accomplish this, they utilized a variety of manipulative rhetorical constructs that are relatively simple and frequently utilized. Because it is so common to encounter propaganda pieces like this, I thought there might be some value in illustrating my thought process as I read this article.”

The doctor goes on to share screenshots of Oster’s article, with arrows to sentences and thoughts inserted in red. Below are a few of those screenshots. For the rest, please see the original Substack article.¹⁶

Take Control of Your Wealth

Financial collapse is an inevitable outcome of the COVID plandemic. In the video above, finance guru Catherine Austin Fitts and attorney Carolyn Betts review the tools you need to take control of your finances at this critical time in history. We must reclaim our independence from the central banks and denounce their planned digital currency, as both are part of a massive control and slave system.

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Notes

^1, 2 The Atlantic October 31, 2022

³ Brendon Marotta Substack November 1, 2022

⁴ Dana Loesch Substack October 31, 2022

⁵ Business Insider May 21, 2012

⁶ Steve Kirsch Substack October 29, 2022

⁷ Epoch Times October 30, 2022 (Archived)

⁸ Food Chemistry and Toxicology June 2022; 164: 113008

⁹ Vanity Fair October 28, 2022

¹⁰ New York Post October 25, 2022

^11, 12 The Intercept October 31, 2022 (Archived)

¹³ Reuters October 12, 2022

¹⁴ American Conservative November 1, 2022

^15, 16 A Midwestern Doctor Substack October 31, 2022

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A new scientific study published in the sociological journal Minerva details how medical professionals with views contradicting the mainstream narrative on COVID-19 were censored and suppressed. The study, titled “Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy,” also covers how medical professionals pushed back against censorship.

The study was co-authored by a group of scholars from Australia and Israel, and the Yaffa Shir-Raz of the University of Haifa, who leaked a video of an internal meeting at the ministry of health in Israel about how some findings on the relatively rare adverse effects of the Pfizer vaccine were hidden.

On Substack, Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Josh Guetzkow, one of the authors of the study, explained how the study was conducted. The study is “based on in-depth interviews with scientists and doctors around the world who have faced censorship and suppression due to their views on COVID-19.”

He said the scientists and doctors could be familiar to his audience, but everyone interviewed was kept anonymous in the report. He continued to say that “the current stark reality of censorship and suppression is also undoubtedly familiar to most people reading this, it will be news to many outside our circles.” Therefore, they “felt there would be value in having it documented and discussed in a peer-reviewed academic literature.”

The summary of the report states that “the emergence of COVID-19 … led to numerous controversies over COVID-related knowledge and policy” and a “perceived threat from doctors and scientists who challenge the official position of governmental and intergovernmental health authorities.”

Supporters of the “official position,” which the authors referred to as “orthodoxy,” responded by moving “to censor those who promote dissenting views.”

The researchers found out that the media and Big Tech played a central role in “attempting to stifle debate over COVID-19 policy and measures.” That was followed by “widespread use” of censorship and “tactics of suppression that damaged the reputations and careers of dissenting doctors and scientists, regardless of their academic or medical status and regardless of their stature prior to expressing a contrary position.”

The censorship and suppression tactics that respondents of the study described included

“exclusion, derogatory labeling, hostile comments and threatening statements by the media, both mainstream and social; dismissal by the respondents’ employers; official inquiries; revocation of medical licenses; lawsuits; and retraction of scientific papers after publication.”

The report states that “mainstream media, which until then had seen them as desirable interviewees, stopped interviewing them and accepting opinion pieces from them.”

Another tactic of suppression was official inquiry, including being threatened with license revocation, lawsuits, and even police searches at private healthcare centers.

Others had their research “retracted by the journal [which had originally published it] after publication,” while many others had their submitted papers “rejected from journals (often multiple times) without peer review” or with the publication process taking longer than usual.

Respondents of the study said they were “shocked and surprised,” but they did not give up. The censorship made them “even more determined and eager to expose the information that was being censored.”

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Before both, Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany, and unelected President of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, two Germans, were chosen to economically destroy Europe, beginning with Germany, they were indeed vetted for months by the neoliberal hegemons in Washington and the Pentagon / NATO.

When eventually they “qualified”, they enhanced the media lie-machine, betraying and lying to the people in Europe about energy shortages, food shortages, astronomical inflation – and fear-mongering about the multiple disastrous consequences of these calamities.

They imposed stern energy savings program under threat of severe punishment, including fines and imprisonment. This, despite the fact that German gas tanks are full to about 94 %, the most they have ever been in the last 5 years. The energy situation in other EU countries is similar – it would appear, not at all disastrous.

Yet, the dumbfounded European public went along – with fear and anxiety.

But the German industrialists did not.

They didn’t and still don’t agree with the German – and by association, the European industry-destruction, also called deindustrialization policy. They had in the past already heavily lobbied with Madame Merkel, making semi-secret deals with Russia.

German industrialists know that the divide-and-conquer policy is being imposed by Washington – to reach eventually a unipolar world, which is only possible with a fractured Europe, not with a “United Europe”. The US GDP is estimated to reach in 2022 about US$ 20 trillion, as compared to a fast-catching-up European GDP of some US$ 17 trillion (2022 est.).

German business leaders didn’t go along with official German economic policy. Destroying their country economically is going too far. Knowing that Europe in the long-run needs Russia and with an even longer vision, also China, German industrialists made semi-clandestine pacts with Moscow.

German Chancellor Scholz’s one-day visit to Beijing, meeting with President Xi Jinping, consisted of a large delegation – several dozen representatives of German key businesses and industries. To the delight of Washington, Scholz told the world: “The world needs China.”

It’s now European economic leaders who call the shots; Olaf Scholz has little choice. The WEF, Washington and Brussels appear to be sidelined.

Germany, the people, is very much interested in becoming part of the Xi-Initiative, the Belt and Road. The 25% concession in the port of Hamburg to the Chinese company, Cosco, was a first step – a sign that Germany was ready to sign up to the New Silk Road, the same as did Italy and Greece with Piraeus, already years before.

The original proposal was a Chinese participation of about 35% to 40%. Political pressure from Brussels and from within Germany reduced the Chinese share to 25%. The reduction is unimportant. What counts is Germany’s “entry” into the BRI.

Washington, Brussels and NATO may not like it. But what can they do, if the EU-lead country, Germany, decides to resist the planned collapse?

Europe Signs US$ 17 billion Trade Deal with China

In agreement with France and other EU countries, Olaf Scholz entered into a Trade Deal with China for the equivalent of about US$ 17 billion. See video below.

Finally, prompted by German industrialists, Europe may see the US for what it is. Officials in the Biden Administration are attempting to raise issues about the Sino-German trade, claiming that China wants to separate Europe from the US. Talks about “sanctions” are already emerging. But sanctioning Europe and China — where would it leave the US? Alone and isolated.

Therefore, Washington is thinking twice before applying their usual weapon of mass destruction, sanctioning “misbehaving” partners.

Chancellor Scholz apparently made it clear that the visit to China is the right decision. Washington, NATO and Brussels won’t be able to decouple Germany from China. No way should the United States be able to intervene and interfere.

At the same time, preceding the Scholz visit to Beijing, Germans revealed fears for financial survival in a recent poll (RT, 7 Nov 2022). 

Half of the respondents are afraid, they might not have enough money to financially survive the coming winter, according to the BILD journal of last Sunday (6 November). Most people believe the government’s relief measures to alleviate the industrial fallout of the ongoing energy crunch are not enough.

According to the INSA polling agency (Institute for New Social Answers), only about a third of respondents believe that government measures will help them get by. Another third admitted they would not be able to afford any Christmas presents for their loved ones this season. They also believe that Scholz is not up to the task facing him in the coming years.

Chancellor Scholz’s approval rating is with 25% the lowest of any German Chancellor duirng the past 50 years. His trip to China may improve his popularity.

This negative reaction was triggered by fear that Germany may not be able to handle the announced “energy crisis”. This is clearly a fear reaction by people unaware of the hoax behind the crisis; not knowing that Germany’s, like most European countries’ energy reserves, are at their highest for years, and before Chancellor Scholz’s trip to Beijing.

Their fear was also driven by inflation and the ever-increasing cost of energy, combined with worries about a potentially “chilling winter” across Europe.

Will the revelation of the new German-China connection ease the tension?

Time will tell. Of special importance will also be the response of other EU countries. Will they return to sovereign nation states – moving away from the imposed globalist concept?

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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.

Featured image: Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping. (Photo: Federal Government/Imo)

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***

To be sure there is an election coming up today in the United States and President Joe Biden has clearly taken the low road in the lead up to it by speaking before friendly audiences and repeating over and over the bromides that cause the brain to go numb. During the past week it was all about saving “American democracy” from the MAGA barbarians. And Democracy is, inevitably, tied to the Democratic Party etymologically, which, in a sense, makes it the presumed sole possessor of the right stuff when it comes to delivering freedom to all, including most recently a truly delusional pledge by Biden to “free Iran.”

The problem for the president is that Bidenspeak is being seen by some as devoid of content, choosing to skip over any discussion of the actual policies that have benefitted or harmed the American people over the past two years. That omission is convenient as many voters look around and see high inflation, a struggling economy, surging crime rates and an open border that may have produced, according to Tucker Carlson, a tidal wave of as many as five million illegal immigrants in the country. And, of course, there is also the war threatening to go nuclear over the Russian intervention in Ukraine, a conflict that threatens no American interest but which nevertheless has been elevated into a genuine saga of good versus evil through the combined efforts of the US and British governments ably assisted by the western mainstream media.

And it has become a real war, thanks to the joint UK-US bombing of one of the Nord Stream pipelines that connect Russia to northern Europe. Washington has warned repeatedly that it would take steps to shut down the pipeline, which it regards as a security threat in that it makes Europe dependent on Russia for energy, and it appears that the plucky Brits did the dirty work. Britain’s then Foreign Minister Liz Truss reportedly texted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken immediately after the pipeline blew up, telling him “It’s done!” Neither Truss nor Blinken were apparently aware that Russian intelligence had penetrated the security on the connection and recorded the communication.

And, of course, it is all about Ukraine even if the ultimate objective by the US is to weaken Russia militarily while also removing President Vladimir Putin. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has emerged as some kind of puppet master in his control of the White House, the US Congress and the mainstream media, drawing an estimated 60 billion dollars in economic and military aid from the US Treasury and also committing Washington to support his country until it “wins” against Putin. Zelensky, whose middle name must be Svengali, reportedly was involved recently in a phone call with Biden in which the US president expressed frustration over Zelensky’s frequently repeated demands for more money and weapons. Biden vented and even shouted but Zelensky wound up with the cash, some of which will certainly go to support the Ukrainian president’s various real estate holdings in Israel and Florida.

And then there is the “dirty bomb” story making the rounds. It has two components. First is the technology of a dirty bomb itself, which is a high explosive device that is seeded with radioactive waste that is lethal and contaminates a large area when it is detonated. A dirty bomb is considered a weapon of mass destruction and its use is categorized as a war crime, much like using a chemical or biological weapon. Second, there is the false flag aspect to the tale that is circulating. The Russian government, the source of the report, is claiming that Zelensky’s government is preparing to put together and detonate a dirty bomb somewhere inside Ukraine and before blaming the development on Putin and his government. That attribution of an action falsely to a country or government that was not involved is a false flag and the intention is to create a perception that someone is breaking the rules on what is allowed even during wartime.

False flags attacks were used most recently in the western supported insurgency in Syria, most notably at the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in 2013, where a chemical-weapons claimed attack that may have killed as many as 1700 people took place. The attack was inevitably attributed to the Syrian government by the United States but it was in fact, much more plausibly carried out by the rebels who controlled the area at that time.

So why would Zelensky detonate a dirty bomb within the area he controlled? Well, Zelensky has long sought increased and direct US and NATO involvement on his side in the fight against Russia. Being able to point to a major war crime that he would attribute to the Russians through a false flag operation might just be enough to do the trick and bring in larger scale western involvement. It is certainly something that Zelensky and his neocon advisers would consider an acceptable ruse de guerre. Given the effective neocon control over foreign policy and the media outlets in the US it would also in all likelihood involve the United States in a major war that was avoidable with devastating consequences for all parties involved.

So, if Joe Biden wants to talk about his achievements in the run-up to elections, why doesn’t he explain his reasons for enabling and expanding the war with Russia over Ukraine? That war has not only brought about a flow of billions of dollars in aid for the most corrupt country in Europe, it has also resulted in a worldwide energy crisis that has fueled inflation and disrupted trade. More to the point, it has led to a global movement to confront the United States over its presumption that it is the hegemonistic power that sets the rules for everyone else. That is also contributing to increasing rejection of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which will have an incalculable impact on the American economy and the country’s standard of living.

Has it all been worth it, Joe, to craft a narrative that ignores the real issues just so you can stay in power? The America that you and I were brought up in is sliding down into a deep dark hole, and you and your delusional neocon and neoliberal friends have been largely responsible for the descent even as you use your bully pulpit to cry about “democracy” at every opportunity.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN is the most successful post-war fascist group.  During the war the OUN played a major role in helping the Germans carry out the Holocaust, which claimed 1.2 million Jewish lives.

They also attempted genocide against the Polish population in Volhynia and Galicia in what is today Western Ukraine. These mass murders were carried out in the most brutal manner imaginable.

Jews were beaten to death with iron bars. Poles were chopped up with axes or cut in half with saws. The OUN took a sadistic delight in humiliating their victims and torturing them to death. Russians were sometimes skinned alive.

The 2014 CIA coup in Ukraine made the OUN ideology the official ideology of the Ukrainian state. Even Ukraine’s current Jewish president Zelensky, whose family were victims of the mass murder in Ukraine, said of Stepan Bandera “He is a hero for a certain percentage of Ukrainians, and it’s normal, and it’s cool.”  Ukrainian history has been falsified to portray the OUN as heroes who battled both the Nazis and the Soviets. 

Yet it is not only in the madhouse that is post-Maidan Ukraine that the history of Ukraine has been falsified. Because of the close ties of the OUN to the American, British, German, Polish and other governments the OUN have also been able to make their twisted mythology into the accepted mainstream version of events.

The OUN were considered too valuable by the CIA and other intelligence agencies to have their wartime crimes exposed. Equally importantly the OUN became a major source for anti-Soviet propaganda, which then became mainstream history. During the Cold War academia became a major weapon in the battle between capitalism and communism.

Today nothing has changed and in the new cold war with Russia Ukraine is currently the most important battleground. Shielding Western publics from the truth about the insanity and cruelty of the Ukrainian fascists the West are supporting is the main goal of the media and academia when it comes to Ukraine.

Ukraine is only the most extreme example of the “memory wars” being waged across the former Soviet Union and the former Warsaw pact countries of Eastern Europe where pro-western governments seek to turn Nazi collaborators into heroes, demonize the Soviet Union, and destroy all monuments to the role the Soviet Union played in defeating fascism. I will be relying mainly on the brilliant work Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist Fascism, Genocide and Cult by Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, the first critical and scholarly account of the history of the OUN. Ironically his book was released just before the start of the 2014 civil war and Ukrainian nationalists did everything they could to prevent the book from being published, waging a public campaign against the author.

In part one of this series I described the origins of Ukrainian nationalism and its transformation into a fascist movement. I explained how present day Ukraine had long been divided with Central and Eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia. Western Ukraine, which was originally part of Poland, became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when Poland was dismembered in the 18th century. After World War One it became part of a reborn Poland known as the Second Republic, which had absorbed the short, lived Republic of Western Ukraine.

I traced the origins of the OUN and its terrorist campaign within Poland. The OUN engaged in assassinations, massacres, arson and other crimes. This landed the leader of the OUN’s Homeland executive Stepan Bandera in prison although his two trials made him famous. The OUN was controlled by its leaders in exile. After Stepan Bandera escaped from prison, thanks to the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, he tried to seize the leadership of the OUN. This led the organization to split into an OUN/M answering to Andrei Melnyk and an OUN/B answering to Bandera. During the brief two-week window after the German invasion of Poland, but prior to the Soviet invasion, the OUN massacred thousands of Jews and also murdered many of the defeated Polish army who were trying to escape or return home. The OUN leaders then headed for Western Poland.

Eastern Poland became Western Ukraine. Once the Soviets arrived they reunified Ukraine and cracked down hard on Polish nationalists as well as on the OUN.

The exiled OUN leaders in German-occupied Poland, known as the General Government, along with tens of thousands of their supporters who had fled the Soviets, were busy working closely with the Germans, who had been their sponsors for decades, to plan the invasion of the Soviet Union. Stepan Bandera and the other OUN/B leaders wrote down their plans in the months before the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

It was known as the “Struggles and Activities” plan. It called for the OUN/B to activate its networks to give a welcome the Nazis and form militias for elimination of Jews, Poles, and all non-Ukrainians as well as any Ukrainians who opposed the OUN. The OUN/B came up with a bunch of fascist anti-communist and anti-Semitic slogans with which to blanket the country.

The OUN/B and OUN/M were both working closely with the Abwehr, German military intelligence, who provided military training, police training, and political training. 800 OUN/B members joined special task forces who were to follow the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union and mobilize Ukrainians to support their planned Nazi puppet Government. 800 other OUN/B members joined the Nachtigall battalion, which was controlled by the Abwehr.

The OUN/B also had a network of 20,000 active members in Soviet western Ukraine along with 1.5 million supporters that could be mobilized. The OUN/B planned to declare an “independent” Ukrainian state with Stepan Bandera as its Providnyk or fascist dictator. Hitler however had other plans for Ukraine.

Hitler viewed Ukrainians as sub-human Slavs, like the Russians, who would have to be massacred or enslaved to make way for German settlers. Ukraine’s rich black soil would feed the German Reich.

Hitler thought Ukraine would be for Germany what India was for the British or America was for the U.S. who wiped out the Native Americans. The OUN did have a major Nazi ally in the form of Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories.   Rosenberg saw the potential of an OUN-controlled Ukraine as a valuable ally.

This was the situation on the eve of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on 22 June 1941.

The war would lead to the death of 27 million people in the Soviet Union. 5.2 million civilians would die in Ukraine. 2.3 Million Ukrainians would be deported to German slave labour camps.

Of Ukraine’s 2.7 million Jews 1.6 million would be killed. 700 cities and town were destroyed in Ukraine along with 28,000 villages.

The impact of the OUN on the success of the Nazi plans to exterminate the Jews was dramatic.

In areas that had been long subjected to OUN propaganda in Western Ukraine local Jews had much less chance of survival. In Ternopil in Western Ukraine 97% of the Jews were killed. In contrast, in Kharkov in eastern Ukraine 91% of the Jews managed to survive.

The OUN/B had been warned in advance of the invasion date and had smuggled the “Struggles and Activities” plan into Ukraine with its blueprint for the coming genocide.

OUN activists spread out across the countryside setting up militias, and local governments. On 25 June 1941, the OUN/B tried to stage an uprising in Lvov but it was crushed by the Soviets. Sometimes the OUN/B forces would attack the retreating Red Army.

However they usually waited until after the Red Army retreated before entering an area. On 30 June 1941, the Wehrmacht entered the city including the Ukrainian Nachtigall battalion whom locals greeted with flowers, calling them the Stepan Bandera battalion.

The Nachtigall battalion seized control of the radio station and began broadcasting Nazi and OUN propaganda.

That morning the Germans and the OUN discovered that the Soviet secret police the NKVD had massacred its political prisoners when the German invasion began to prevent them from collaborating with the Germans. Many were doubtless OUN members killed before they could carry out horrific crimes, like Roman Shukhevych’s brother.

This happened in a number of areas and was used by the OUN to scapegoat the Jewish population for the killings. They were falsely accused of being NKVD informants and blamed for the victims’ deaths.

This would be the pattern across western Ukraine and where there had been no recent executions those executed in the terror years earlier were dug up to enflame the masses. Thus already on 30 June 1941 small-scale massacres of the Jews of Lvov began. That night at 8 PM Yaroslav Stetsko held a ceremony in which he declared a new Ukrainian state under the leadership of Stepan Bandera.

The day would be celebrated by OUN exiles until today as a national holiday. With Stetsko were the Metropolitan of the Greek Catholic Church in Lvov Andrei Sheptyts’kyi, clergyman and Nachtigall battalion member Ivan Hryn’okh and two officers in the German Abwehr Hans Koch and Wilhelm Ernst zu Eikern.

Metropolitan Sheptys’kyi endorsed the idea of a Ukrainian state led by Bandera but paid lip service to the idea of tolerance for minorities. His church would later be implicated in inciting genocide against both the Jews and Polish Catholics. The German Abwehr officers welcomed the celebration but warned that it was not time to declare independence and that only Hitler could decide.

Hitler had already decided against an “independent” Ukraine, which was why Stepan Bandera had been forbidden from returning to Ukraine.

According to OUN mythology and to the OUN’s western apologists Stepan Bandera was immediately sent to a concentration camp because of Stetsko’s premature declaration of independence. Actually he and Stetsko were placed in “honourable confinement” which initially meant simply that he was confined to Berlin where he could roam freely and was even allowed to carry a pistol for self-defence.

It was the later OUN/B murders of leaders of the OUN/M carried out in broad daylight that then provoked a mild German crackdown on the OUN/B. I will return to this topic later. Even when Bandera was sent to a concentration camp he was incarcerated in a special section reserved for prisoners who might prove useful later, like the leader of the Romanian Iron Guard or Stalin’s son. Bandera was given special privileges and needless to say was not treated like the other inmates in a concentration camp. He was not gassed, enslaved, shot, tortured, experimented on or starved to death. On the contrary he was allowed conjugal visits from his wife who served as his go between to the OUN.  Bandera received weekly care packages, and was not even confined to a cell.

To return to Lvov by 1 July 1941 the OUN/B and the Germans had whipped the populace up into a fury directed at the city’s Jews. An angry mob rounded up thousands of Jews and brought them to the prisons where the NKVD’s victims had been found. The Jewish men were made to move the rotting corpses while they were brutally beaten to death. Jewish women were made to wash the rotting corpses and kiss their hands before being beaten to death, often after being raped. Others were shot by German military units.

The OUN/B had formed a Ukrainian militia to conduct the executions on the day they arrived. They would soon be transformed into the Ukrainian police on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS.

They would answer to the SS but remained loyal to Stetsko. It was in their role as auxiliary police recruits that the OUN/B would play a major part in the Holocaust. It was their role to round up the victims, to enforce all the anti-Jewish laws. They often also acted as executioners. Much of the killing in Lvov was carried out by angry mobs fired up by OUN propaganda.

They loved to humiliate their victims before killing them. Women were stripped naked and often raped in the streets.

Jews were forced to clean up broken glass, with their bare hands and clean streets in front of jeering crowds, whipping them with steel cables.

Jews were forced to sing communist songs before being shot or they were forced to shout Slava Ukraini before being beaten to death.

Everywhere there were Nazi and Ukrainian flags and the walls were plastered with genocidal OUN slogans. The pogrom would last until 3 July 1941.

On 2 July, the Germans took thousands of Jews out to the forest for a mass execution.

Ukrainian peasants streamed in from the countryside with carts to carry the loot they planned to steal from their victims. Greed is often a major motivator in genocide.

At the high end it involved German corporate takeovers of Jewish-owned business, often financed by American investors.

In the Soviet Union there were no big businesses. Yet genocidal Ukrainians and other collaborators or German soldiers were able to loot their victims’ personal property.

Robbery and extortion were a constant in these Ukrainian pogroms. Always the victims were threatened into turning over their valuables then murdered anyway.

Banderites became synonymous with bandits in the view of their potential victims. Around 8,000 Jews were killed in a couple days during the first Lvov Pogrom but the Nazis and the OUN were just getting started. During the Lvov Pogrom the OUN/B also supplied a death list of Polish professors, their families and hundreds of their students. The professors were shot along with some of their family members and 100 Polish students. A month later to please the OUN/B, angry about Germany’s refusal to recognize Ukraine’s independence and the arrests of Bandera and Stetsko, the Germans gave them permission to hold a second Lvov Pogrom from 25-28 July 1941, known as the Petliura days in honour of the mass murdering Symon Petliura. Petliura was infamous for his army’s massacres of Jews during the Russian Civil War, which I discussed in Part 1.

Image: Emblem of OUN-B (Photo by Alex Tora, licensed under CC BY 3.0)

All across the countryside the same pattern was repeated. The OUN/B held Independence Day ceremonies, destroyed all communist symbols, put up Ukrainian flags and Nazi Swastikas and then launched pogroms. There were up to 140 Pogroms in Western Ukraine in July 1941 and they claimed 35,000 to 39,000 victims. The biggest pogroms besides Lvov were in Ternopil and Zolochiv. During this period the OUN/B were not merely carrying out German orders but were enthusiastically carrying out genocide in line with their own ideology.

They conducted massacres of Jews in places where there was no German presence. When the Hungarian forces forbade the OUN from carrying out a big pogrom, they defiantly carried out a little one and then complained to the Germans. Across the countryside the OUN erected triumphal arches welcoming the Nazis and praising Stepan Bandera and Adolf Hitler. The Nazis were greeted by adoring crowds and their invasion was blessed by the Greek Catholic clergy. OUN/B activists had the crowds sign “plenipotentiary letters” which praised Hitler and the German Army while also asking for the release of Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko.

During the early days of the German invasion, Stepan Bandera had set up his headquarters close to Ukraine and used couriers to communicate his orders to the OUN/B. He had ordered and approved of the massacres of Jews. Stetsko’s 30 June 1941 declaration of independence had angered the Germans.

Bandera did his best to repair relations with the Nazis. On 3 July 1941, Bandera attended a meeting in Cracow with the Undersecretary of State for the General Government Ernst Kundt (German occupied Poland). Bandera argued that as leader of the OUN it was the will of the people that he head Ukraine. Kundt countered that only Hitler could decide such matters. Bandera conceded that he could only create a Ukrainian state with German permission. On 5 July 1941, Bandera was sent to Berlin and placed in “Honourable Captivity”.

On 8 July 1941, someone tried to assassinate Yarsolav Stetsko and on 9 July 1941, Stetsko was arrested and escorted by the Abwehr to Berlin. On 12 July 1941 Stetsko was freed. On 14 July 1941 Bandera was freed.

They were confined to Berlin and lived together in an apartment. Bandera was allowed to carry a gun and held an ID issued by the RSHA (Heidrich’s “Homeland Security” department). These two networked with the Lithuanian fascists in exile and the Japanese ambassador. Stetsko kept busy writing his autobiography for his German handlers: writing that, while he considered Moscow his main enemy, he fully endorsed exterminating the Jews since he considered them tools of Moscow.

On 19 July 1941, Hitler decided to incorporate Eastern Galicia into the General Government.

This offended the OUN/B who wanted to rule a united Ukraine.

Now their territory was being absorbed back into German-occupied Poland.

Actually it turned out to be beneficial to the OUN/B’s interests as Ukrainians in Galicia were favoured over the Poles and Jews and they were allowed to continue to carry out Ukrainization of Polish educational institutions.

Ukrainians in East Galicia were treated like fascist allies Slovakia and Croatia.

The Nazis set up UTSK in the Ukrainian Central Committee run by Volodymyr Kubiiovych in the General Government area. Kubiiovych had been a close ally of the OUN in the 1930s and shared their ideology while being more flexible. He lobbied for the creation of a Ukrainian National Army to fight alongside the Nazis and argued that all Jewish property should be turned over to Ukrainians.

In 1943 he would get his wish with the creation of the Waffen-SS Galizia division, composed of Ukrainians. Ukrainians in the former Soviet Ukraine on the other hand were mercilessly exploited. All education beyond the 4th grade was banned. The Germans modelled their behaviour in Soviet Ukraine on American plantation owners treating Ukrainian peasants like Black slaves who could only be kept in check with whips and clubs. The main goal was to loot Ukraine’s grain. The result would be very different attitudes towards the memory of the Nazis in Western and Eastern Ukraine.

On 30 August 1941, the OUN/B assassinated the OUN/M leaders Melina Senyk and Mykola Stibors’kyi in broad daylight on the streets in Zhytomyr. This outraged the Germans and other Ukrainian nationalists. The Germans were further outraged when the OUN/B tried to blame Germany for the killings. The OUN/M provided the Germans with names and addressees of OUN/B leaders who were then arrested.

The Germans also shot some OUN/B members as looters and closed their offices in Berlin and Vienna.

They tried and failed to purge the administration and police of OUN/B members. On 13 September 1941, Bandera and Stetsko were arrested again.

Despite this both continued efforts to repair relations with the Germans. Both sent orders to the OUN/B not to resist the Germans and to continue to supply recruits for the police and the puppet government.

Even after being sent to a cushy concentration camp and even after two of his brothers died in a concentration camp, Bandera never ceased attempts at reconciliation with the Germans. Even when it became clear the Germans were losing in 1944, Bandera was more committed then ever to allying the OUN/B with the Nazis. The German purge was totally ineffective. The OUN/B was continually flooded with new recruits and continued to grow in power. The head of the Ukrainian police simply ignored orders to get rid of OUN/B members. In other words even when the Nazis turned on the OUN/B the organization continued to supply recruits for the police, which would play a major role in carrying out the holocaust. Many Ukrainian police would also go on to join the Waffen SS Galizia division. Others would later join the UPA, using their experience in mass murder to massacre Poles.

The Ukrainian police were formed from the Ukrainian militias that the OUN/B had recruited in the wake of the German invasion. They were known as the Schutzmannschaften or auxiliary police. In March 1942, despite the Nazi’s earlier crackdown, the OUN/B ordered its members to join the police en masse. The Ukrainian police answered ultimately to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, overall commander of the SS. It was ordered that they be given two hours of Nazi indoctrination every day.

In the cities the Ukrainian police assisted in raids, deportations, and shootings. They also patrolled the ghettoes. They enforced the anti-Jewish laws, forced Jews to wear identifying arm bands, created death lists by interviewing locals, rounded up the victims, guarded the prisoners, escorted them to the site of the execution and often shot the victims, especially if they were children. The Nazis had their own killing squads, the Einsatzgruppe C that also carried out many of the mass executions.

In the countryside there were few German forces or German police and the Ukrainian Police played the leading role in destroying the Jews and then spent years hunting down the survivors. The Ukrainian police often displayed the same sadistic brutality the OUN/B had shown in the Lvov pogroms.

One survivor recounted being locked in a bathhouse with dozens of victims who were forced to desecrate their holy books. Some had had their beards set aflame. The fire then spread to their clothes and they were burned alive. Others were beaten to death. Throughout it all the victims were forced to sing to entertain their Ukrainian tormentors. The Ukrainian police were used not only to terrorize Ukraine but also to terrorize Belarus, Poland, Slovakia and other areas. Particularly infamous was Battalion 201, which included Roman Shukhevych.

He would also join the Waffen-SS Galizia division and become leader of the UPA.  Shukhevych, a monster like Bandera, is now widely promoted as a “Hero of Ukraine.” In addition to carrying out mass murders of Jews, Byelorussians and Poles; Shukhevych loved to have Eastern Ukrainian’s shot for little or no reason and privately contemplated exterminating them all. Many recruits to Battalion 201 like Shukhevych had been part of the Abwehr’s Nachtigall and Roland battalions and carried out mass murders of Byelorussian civilians as part of their anti-partisan warfare in 1942.

Early in 1943 Heinrich Himmler created the Waffen-SS Galizia division, also known as the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen-SS. It was called Galician instead of Ukrainian to pander to Hitler.

Hitler, born in Austria-Hungary, felt that since Galicia had once been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there was probably some German blood in them. Over 80,000 Ukrainians volunteered to join the SS Galizia but only 8,000 were accepted.

It soon expanded to 14,000 men by recruiting members of the Ukrainian police.

The Ukrainian general commanding the SS Galicia was Pavlo Shandruk. The SS Galicia was established to battle the Red Army. It was also deployed to crush the Slovakian national uprising and played a major role in the destruction of Warsaw after the Warsaw uprising.

On 22 July 1944 the Waffen SS Galicia division, by then much larger, was encircled and destroyed by the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army under the command of Pavel Rybalko.

They were decimated by the Soviet artillery and Katyusha rocket batteries. However the Germans were able to replace the units by recruiting more members and the SS Galicia division went on to wage dirty wars against partisans and civilians in Italy, Yugoslavia, France and Czechoslovakia. They surrendered to the British two days after the war ended and with the help of the Vatican were able to avoid deportation back to the Soviet Union by claiming to be Polish citizens.

Eventually they would end up in Britain before being resettled in Canada and America strengthening the OUN diaspora during the Cold War. Unknown to most citizens of Canada and the US there are public monuments to these Waffen SS veterans in both countries.

In 1943 at the same time that the OUN/B were joining the Waffen SS en masse, and while they were setting up the UPA to exterminate the Poles, the OUN/B was publicly distancing themselves from the Nazis and secretly trying to forge an alliance with the western allies for a future struggle with the Soviet Union. Here the considerations were the Soviet victory at Stalingrad foreboding Germany’s ultimate defeat. The more farsighted Nazis were already planning their escapes, and their deals with Western intelligence agencies. The hardliners in American and British Intelligence like Allen Dulles were already gearing up for a covert war against the Soviet Union using committed anti-communists and anti-Russians among their current fascist “enemies” (for men like Dulles they were friends and business partners).

When Poland was investigating the Pieracki assassination in the mid-1930s, it discovered that the OUN had ties to MI6 as well as the German Abwehr. When it comes to such matters the historical evidence is always a sanitized version or some sort of limited hang out. The CIA spent decades destroying incriminating records and declassifying misleading or altered records. Which is my way of saying we will never know the early history of the ties of the OUN with MI6 and the OSS and US military intelligence during the war.

The OUN/B was already trying to improve their image in the west in April 1942. At their second OUN/B conference they claimed that they would no longer take part in anti-Jewish actions. At the same conference they still condemned Jews as “a tool of Russian Bolshevik Imperialism. In addition the OUN/B did not quit the police and so continued to be a vital element in carrying out the mass murder of Jews. By 1943 the Jews had largely been eliminated in western Ukraine. The survivors were being hunted by the Ukrainian police, which was full of OUN/B members. At their third Conference from 17-21 February, the OUN/B was now claiming that it would fight both Germany and the USSR and that they were now democrats ruled by a triumvirate, led by the (war criminal) Roman Shukhevych. In July 1944 the OUN sent emissaries to attempt to make a deal with the Western allies, including Mykola Lebed, head of the OUN internal security branch or SB, known for its bloodthirsty assassinations of alleged OUN traitors. Lebed would later receive decades of backing from the CIA. In July of 1944 the OUN/B furthered their “Democratic” rebranding, creating the front group UHVR, the Supreme Liberation Council of Ukraine. It would later provide many recruits for the CIA and MI6.

A few months before the February 1943 OUN conference, the OUN started what was to become the UPA.  Contrary to myth the UPA only attacked Germans when it needed to steal arms. It made a secret deal with the German military to avoid confrontations. The UPA was formed for the purpose of exterminating the Poles and despite the OUN’s public statements that it would fight the Germans, the UPA was secretly funded by the Abwehr (German military intelligence). When the Germans retreated the Abwehr secretly turned over the Wehrmacht’s huge arms stockpiles to the UPA. Still the OUN’s two-faced strategy to win Western support would be very useful later for muddying the historical record and creating the myth that the OUN had battled both the Nazis and the Soviet Union. The UPA would later become a CIA proxy army run with the help of war criminal Reinhard Gehlen. It would wage an anti-Soviet war for five more years after the end of World War 2. Seventy years later the return of Ukrainian fascism to power via the Maidan coup would be universally celebrated as the triumph of “Democracy.”

Cover of Bandera’s OUN II Conference Resolutions which legalize the existence of Bandera’s OUN. OUN leader Andriy Melnyk denounced it as “saboteur”. April 1941 General Government (Licensed under the Public Domain)

The UPA was founded at the November 1942 OUN conference although it originally was called the UVV the Ukraine Liberation Army. The OUN/B stole the name UPA or Ukrainian Insurgent Army from a rival group of Ukrainian fascists lead by Taras Bulba-Borovets who led his own armed group in Ukraine with a similar ideology and methodology to the OUN/B. It too shared responsibility for mass murders of Jews and other Ukrainians. The OUN/B waged war on this rival group assassinating Bulba-Borovets’ wife and many of his top officers. When he went to the Germans for help they instead sent him to the same cushy concentration camp as Bandera and Stetsko. In March and April of 1943 OUN/B sent out word that its many members in the Ukrainian police should quit and join the UPA. Of 12,000 police, 5000 quit to join the UPA. Other Ukrainian police joined the Waffen-SS Galizia division. The new UPA recruits brought their experience in mass murder of Jews to the new plan for ethnic cleansing of Volhynia and Galicia of Poles. Poles were given the ultimatum leave or die. Often the threat was posted on a murdered Pole who had been unspeakably tortured and mutilated.

In February and March of 1943 the UPA began experimental massacres that claimed hundreds of lives. Whole Polish villages were wiped out. Soon Mykola Lebed ordered the complete cleansing to begin. The UPA would arrive in carts to carry away the loot and often recruited local Ukrainian peasants to join their massacres. The massacres were often carried out in the most horrific way possible with axes, pitchforks and saws. The UPA would sometimes spend hours sadistically torturing their victims to death. The aim was both to save bullets and to terrorize the Poles into fleeing. Another of their favourite methods was to attack churches with hand grenades or set them on fire when the whole town was attending. They also liked to gather all their victims up for a town hall meeting and burn them alive. The UPA would usually return again a couple days after their massacre so that they could kill all the survivors. They even slaughtered nuns who were caring for Polish orphans. On 11 July 1943, the UPA launched attacks on 96 different Polish villages in a single day killing 10,000 Poles. The UPA killed between 100,000 and 250,000 Poles during this genocidal campaign. The UPA would often pretend to be Soviet partisans and in addition to carrying out false flag attacks that could be blamed on the partisans they were probably playing their role for German intelligence, gathering information on which villages were sympathetic to the partisans.

The UPA also continued to hunt the few remaining Jews who were hiding out in the forests or in Polish villages. The UPA had learned from the Germans how to exploit their Jewish victims. Some were kept as slave labour working the farmlands of massacred Poles and then killed before they could be liberated by the Red Army. Others Jews who were doctors, dentists, nurses or tailors were conscripted into the UPA and then murdered when the Red Army was approaching. Later these facts would be spun by OUN apologists into the myth that the UPA wasn’t allied to the Nazis because it had Jewish members or that the UPA had acted to “save” the Jews. By 1944 the UPA had grown to 25,000-30,000 members. With Soviet forces advancing the UPA was now openly allied with Nazi Germany. The UPA attacks on the Jews hiding in the forests were so terrible that some Jews actually fled to German concentration camps believing their chances of survival would be better as slave labourers. In the summer of 1944 the Red Army would liberate Western Ukraine. The UPA would continue to kill Poles and increasingly began to target any Ukrainians who submitted to Soviet authority. Anyone who paid their taxes or joined a collective farm could be killed or have their home burnt down by the UPA. The UPA would become a sort of proto-Gladio, a stay-behind network behind enemy lines, created first by the Nazis and then absorbed by MI6 and the CIA. The UPA war with the Soviet Union would continue until 1950. Their network would survive into the 1960s. The UPA war was not only waged in Ukraine but also in Poland, Byelorussia, and Czechoslovakia. The story of the UPA will be continued in Part 3 of this series dealing with the Cold War.

As the war turned in favour of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany faced defeat, the Germans increasingly realized that they needed the OUN/B. The Nazis granted an OUN/B request to be allowed to meet with Stepan Bandera. The details of Bandera’s imprisonment are clouded in mystery. It is not clear when exactly he was transferred from Gestapo custody following the OUN/M murders to his cushy Sachenhausen concentration camp, where he received care packages and visits from his wife. Stetsko claimed it was in January 1942.

Bandera claimed it was in 1943. Records claim it was October 1943. On 28 September 1944, the Germans released Stepan Bandera and soon thereafter also released Stetsko, Melnyk, Bulba-Borovets and 300 more OUN/B prisoners. Melnyk had been arrested when the OUN/M tried to contact Western intelligence in 1944.

The OUN/M had had much better relations with the Nazis and was appointed to serve in the puppet government. It had supplied many recruits to the Waffen SS Galicia division.

Bandera would spend the rest of the war working with the Nazis to recruit Ukrainian support to their cause. However Bandera would refuse to merge OUN forces with the Vlasov army’s KONR- the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia- created 14 November 1944.

Bandera claimed they were “Russian Imperialists.”

Instead Rosenberg set up the separate Ukrainian National Committee (UNK), which included Bandera, Melnyk, Kubiiovych and was headed by Shandruk, the general commanding the Waffen SS Galicia division on 23 February 1945. Prior to this, in December 1944, Bandera and Stetsko helped train the Abwehr Commando’s unit of Ukrainian paratroopers who were to be dropped into Lvov with one million rubles for UPA head Roman Shukhevych to continue the fight against the Soviet Union. Bandera sent the message that he would return soon, a promise he never kept. Stetsko claimed that he was still Prime Minister of Ukraine because of his earlier declaration back in 30 June 1941; the one that had unleashed a wave of OUN/B massacres.

Bandera’s next stop, after celebrating Greek Catholic Christmas with his family, was Weimar, Germany. Bandera argued that the OUN/B must give its “Full Support” to Nazi Germany until the end. He was busy recruiting for the soon to be created Ukrainian National Army (UNA). Bandera spent three weeks in Berlin. He then headed for Vienna where he was elected head of the Foreign Units of the OUN (ZCh OUN). On 5-6 February 1945, the OUN in Ukraine elected Bandera as their leader but decided he should remain in exile. On 17 March 1945, the Germans announced the creation of the Ukrainian National Army (UNA).

The Waffen SS Galicia division was rebranded the 1st division of the UNA and its commander, Shandruk, was named commander of the UNA. Meanwhile Bandera fled Vienna as the Red Army approached, escaping to Czechoslovakia and then Innsbruck in Austria. Eventually Bandera would end up under the protection of the infamous Reinhard Gehlen, the first president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the espionage service founded by the US Forces in the American occupation zone. Gehlen had been recruited by the US intelligence services because he had been responsible for occupied Eastern Europe in the Abwehr.

When German forces fled the Red Army back in the first half of 1944 over 120,000 Ukrainian collaborators and war criminals fled west with them. During the Cold War many of these escaped Ukrainian war criminals would work for Western intelligence services. Many would eventually be resettled in the US and Canada. Ukrainian fascism would live on in exile for decades. Eventually with the help of its Western sponsors it would seize power in Ukraine yet again sparking a new covert war and triggering the on-going proxy war between NATO and Russia.

For Ukraine the war would not truly end until 1950. However that is the subject for Part 3. This is only a scratch to the surface of the history of Ukraine during the war. The crimes of the Nazi Germany would require their own articles or books. The Nazis created massive machinery for genocide. However they relied on Ukrainian collaborators every step of the way. An article also needs to be written just about the German conquest of Ukraine and the Soviet liberation of Ukraine. These were huge battles between millions of men.

However the crimes of the OUN are clear. They propagandized the Ukrainians to carry out mass murder. The OUN/B created militias that carried out genocide in 1941 and again in 1943. They supplied recruits to the Ukrainian police, which played a major role in the Holocaust. They joined the Waffen SS Galicia division along with the OUN/M. They formed the UPA to carry out genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Poles.

Bandera was unable to supervise this directly but he came up with the plans before being imprisoned and after his release he worked enthusiastically for the Nazis. Bandera never admitted to the OUN/B’s crimes, let alone apologizing or condemning them. His OUN followers took an active role carrying out unspeakable atrocities. Banderite became a synonym for murderous bandits. There has been shamefully little written about the history of the OUN and much of what was written was from a pro-OUN perspective. Sadly due to the nature of academia the more relevant the story of the OUN becomes the fewer people will dare to tell it for fear of being labelled “Russian propagandists.”

After the Orange revolution of 2004 Stepan Bandera was declared a “Hero of Ukraine”. Even a postage stamp was issued commemorating him. During the 2014 Maidan coup, a huge poster of Stepan Bandera hung on the stage. Few in the west had ever heard of Stepan Bandera or the OUN back in 2014. Now in 2022 the world is on the brink of nuclear war and the global economy is collapsing all because CIA and other western intelligence agencies have been using Ukrainian fascists as proxies for nearly 80 years. In Parts 3 and 4, I intend to trace the history of the OUN and its ideological heirs through the Cold War and post-Cold War eras up to the Maidan coup and the Ukrainian civil war.

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With special thanks to T.P. Wilkinson.

Sources

My main source is Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide and Cult, an in depth history of Stepan Bandera and the OUN. It is a must read although written with the standard academic anti-Soviet bias.

I also read “Children of the Borderlands” by Lucyna Kulinska, a collection of survivors’ testimonies from the Polish victims of the UPA genocide. An English translation is available on EBay. It gives a vivid and horrifying picture of events. However it is edited from a strongly anti-Soviet perspective. Still the author should be applauded for exposing a forgotten genocide, which the strongly pro-Ukrainian Polish government is intent on covering up.

Hitler’s Shadow Nazi, War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence and the Cold War by Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda has a chapter on Mykola Lebed and the CIA ties to the OUN. Based on declassified U.S. intelligence files, it provides a limited hangout version of events.

Nazi Empire Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine by Wendy Lower provides a horrifying picture of the German occupation and the complex machinery that carried out the genocide.

However it is extremely misleading whenever discussing the OUN/B, always portraying it as hostile to the Nazis. Perhaps that is because the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute funded her work. Worse still, she worked closely with the archetypical Cold War propagandist/historian Timothy Snyder, who helped her edit the book. Generally if you want to uncover an author’s shady connections look in the acknowledgments section which most people skip.

Moss Robeson on the history of the OUN

One of my favourite documentary series the Unknown War had an episode on Ukraine while it doesn’t mention the OUN/B it does describe the epic battle to liberate Ukraine

Evan Reif on the history of the OUN Part 1, Part 2

Evan Reif on the true heroes of Ukraine the Soviet Partisans

Gerald Sussman on the OUN and the CIA

I’ve done a number of articles that intersect with the story of the OUN during the Cold War

Nazis and the CIA

Operation Gladio

The World Anti-Communist League Part 1

The World Anti-Communist League Part 2

Ratline: the Vatican, The Nazis, and the CIA

Old Nazis, New Right

The Zelensky quote is from here

Featured image: An OUN-B leaflet from the World War II era. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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***

We are living in an ever-more intense “Death Tsunami”; Dr. Sherry Tenpenny tells us.

SCROLL DOWN TO VIEW VIDEO

She says in the UK, 1 in 73 people who got the shot are already dead, according to government data. She adds, about a 1,000 people a week die, as a result of the coerced vaxx campaign.

About 900 professional athletes have already died – and the number is rapidly increasing, mostly from myocarditis, a result of the vaxxes.

When they first started with the shots in early 2021, Dr. Tenpenny says, we saw hundreds of people with electronic charges – Instagram pics with keys and other metal pieces, clinging to arms and foreheads. You may remember having seen such photos.

This is clearly the result of heavy doses of Graphene Oxide in the shots.

She suggests, they may have changed the formula of the injections, as such pics have largely disappeared – but the substance is still there.

This looks like the first lots were sort of “trial balloons”. They got away with them. Nobody stopped them.

Graphene Oxide, when exposed to hydrogen, takes on a magnetic charge. Dr. Tenpenny refers to hundreds of scientific documents testifying to this.

She reminds us that “they” want 3 to 5 billion people to be eliminated from the planet.

It’s a “slow killing”– sometimes very, very painful. Most people don’t connect the dots.

What Dr. Tenpenny says is substantially the same as expressed as a warning to the world earlier by Dr. Mike Yeadon, former VP and Chief Science Officer of Pfizer.

Dr. Tenpenny ends by recommending that anybody who is listening to this – or gets the message otherwise, should never ever take any Covid shot anymore.

Definitely NO BOOSTERS!

This cautioning also applies to simple flu shots, or combinations of flu-Covid shots – which are now being marketed. Because all these shots – “they” don’t tell you – will contain killer formulas.

See this.

Conclusion, yes, indeed, just about a year after the extremely forced shots began – mass-dying started – the death tsunami is flooding humanity, literally.

See this brief 2-minute video.

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

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

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***

The enemies of the most honest and most popular political leader in Pakistan’s history tried to assassinate him. Since they suffered major defeats in election after election, could not succeed in their repeated efforts to have him declared ineligible for election, they realized that they could not beat Khan electorally. So they tried to kill him. He and many of his party leadership were injured, and one of them, sadly, did not survive.

The assassin’s statement that he was acting alone and not influenced by anyone could have been credible if, just recently, a prominent investigative journalist, Arshad Sharif, had not been assassinated in Kenya, where he was trying to hide after numerous threats to his life by Pakistan’s establishment. Those very people who had Arshad Sharif assassinated are responsible for this cowardly assassination attempt on Khan’s life. Their action signals a clear and decisive end to their decades long corruption and looting of the country’s wealth because now every Pakistani except a very few people have united behind Khan and expressed an unshakable resolve to rid the country of the foreign-installed imported government, murderers, and mafia leeches, who have been sucking the blood of the masses for decades.

The Day of Reckoning Is Fast Approaching in Pakistan

I am still grappling with the reality of what is happening in Pakistan. It continues to unroll like scenes from a nightmare. It is shocking that whereas anyone can file an FIR (First Information Report) with police for the most trivial of reasons, Imran Khan is not being allowed that basic protection from further attempts on his life. The Supreme Court has to intervene here.

If Pakistan’s judiciary fails to do its duty and safeguard Pakistan’s constitution and the rule of law, the criminals in all branches of the government, including the traitors in the army, will be tried in the People’s Court, consisting of nearly 90% of the country’s population, in a revolution that has already been forced on Pakistan’s people by the dastardly assassination attempt on their leader, Imran Khan.

In addition, the murders of the journalist Arshad Sharif and numerous other killings of honest government officials who unveiled the mafia’s corruption will not go unpunished. The Day of Reckoning is fast approaching. Loyal Pakistanis are confident that their brethren, the overwhelming majority in all branches of the government, including the army, who are controlled by just a handful of villainous, self-seeking, and country-betraying oppressors, will get rid of them in a peaceful transfer of power to those who have the people’s mandate and trust.

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Prof. Abdul Jabbar has been teaching for more than half a century in San Francisco, California. He is a specialist in world literatures and the politics of the Muslim world.

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***

Do leading members of secret societies managing many of the levers of influence throughout history wield genuine “knowledge known only to the inner elites”… or is something else at play?

In this Canadian Patriot Review documentary produced by Jason Dahl, narrated by myself and based on the work of Cynthia Chung, you will be introduced to the ancient origins of the occult societies that penetrated the heart of America’s intelligence agencies after the murder of William McKinley in 1901.

This journey will take you into the heart of ancient occult societies that managed wars, financial and cultural policies over two millenia ago. You will learn of the underlying methodology of manipulation used to induce foolish kings and generals into self destruction during the days of the Persian Empire which continue to be used to this very day.

With this overview, you will be introduced to

1) the British roots of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry founded in 1801 by British grand strategists in South Carolina,

2) a figure named Albert Pike who led in the largest expansion of this foreign agency within the USA after Lincoln’s victory in 1865 and

3) the “seat of government” which 33rd degree FBI director J. Edgar Hoover managed in the USA during the course of eight presidencies.

This dark history is contrasted to the courageous efforts of men who devoted their lives resisting the growth of this occult agency including President Franklin Roosevelt, Senator Thomas J Walsh, Congressman Hale Boggs, Attorney General of New Orleans Jim Garrison, Martin Luther King Jr, Bobby Kennedy and his brother John F Kennedy.

This documentary was based on the essay

“The Origins of America’s Secret Police” by Cynthia Chung, whose new book on the growth of 20th century fascism can be purchased here.

Watch the full movie on Rumble, Youtube, Bitchute and don’t forget to share it far and wide.

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This article was originally published on Matthew Ehret’s Insights.

Matthew Ehret the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas trilogy. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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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.

Click here to order.

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***

We are now two months into the bivalent booster vaccination campaign, and interest remains more lukewarm than ever:

Family physicians are seeing less interest in vaccination against Corona, according to data from a physicians’ professional organisation. “Vaccination is our best sword in the fight against severe outcomes. It’s therefore that much more regrettable that the vaccination campaign is currently stagnating,” the national chairman of the German General Practitioners’ Association, Markus Beier, said …

Doctors no longer receive nearly as many requests for vaccination from patients as the Standing Commission on Vaccination recommends be vaccinated, Beier said. “Of course, our doctors use every opportunity in their practices to educate patients about vaccination, but the results is now rather meagre.” The truth must be told: “The run on Corona vaccinations has now slowed to a crawl.”

This is rough news especially for the vaccinators in the German Health Ministry, who rolled out their truly dismal “Ich schütze mich” (“I protect myself”) ad campaign less than a month ago – to absolutely no effect whatsoever.

Screen grab from one of the bafflingly bad Ich schütze mich ads. The student Marla explains that she’s chosen to protect herself so that she can maintain her sense of taste and smell.

As with many of the most important stories, this one has been carefully downplayed by the press. The only commentary I can find is this tepid piece in FAZ, which complains about “the aggressive counter-campaign from the ranks of the antivaxxers.” Maybe vaccine critics have changed a few minds here or there, but it’s nothing in comparison to what the vaccinators have done to their own cause. Never before in history have Germans been so rapidly and so widely exposed to a new pharmaceutical as they have to the Corona vaccines, and now that personal experience of the jabs is at an all-time high, enthusiasm could hardly be lower. This is the final repudiation of the vaccinators, and the one that matters the most.

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***

Just who are the stakeholders that are being consulted?

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The future is here.

What we all should be asking is what do they have planned for 2023 and beyond or even to 2030?

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***

Recently leaked information obtained by The Intercept has validated the fact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is engaged in illegal activities designed to censor and deny the basic human right of free speech. DHS is engaged in an operation to influence social media to remove and censor content that runs contrary to its views. Facebook even created a direct portal to allow DHS to pull down truthful information, that would be information the DHS deems false. Censorship targeted information related to the Afghanistan withdrawal, election integrity, and information related to the apparent Covid 19 bioweapon, and Covid gene therapy shots, which also appear a biological weapon unleashed on humanity.

As The Intercept points out even Tom Ridge, former head of DHS, has stated that the United States government routinely lies whether it is about the Vietnam or Iraq wars, or the origination of Covid 19. DHS coordinated with Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking platforms. It is unclear of the level of interaction between DHS and other government agencies, and other private sector companies, although, based on the sudden engagement in politics and censorship by corporations, it is a safe bet that the DHS and other agencies are integrated with them.

The whole premise of government is to protect the Natural Rights of the individual. Some of these Natural Rights are codified in the Bill of Rights. Any government agency with an express purpose to undermine any of the Bill of Rights, or other obvious Natural Rights (I say obvious because we could get into levels of abstraction when conceptualizing rights) is in fact an enemy of the people. The government or its agencies can’t assault the Constitution and the Bill of Rights without becoming an enemy of the United States. When I say the United States, I mean the constellation of states that have entered into a compact and the people that those states they are designed to represent. Such actions by the DHS are literally illegal as they are a direct assault on the law and the essential purpose of government.

Many people consider treason to a betrayal of the State/Government. That is not actually necessarily the case. Let’ take a peek at a dictionary definition of treason:

1 the offense of acting to overthrow one’s government or to harm or kill its sovereign.

2 a violation of allegiance to one’s sovereign or to one’s state.

3 the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery.

Treason can be construed as betraying the legitimate authority of the government or its sovereign, which in the case of the United States is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In our republic, treason can be considered the betrayal of the rights of the people since the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect those rights.

The DHS and its private sector collaborators appear to be violating the first, second, and third definition above. This becomes clear when it is recognized that the sovereign is the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. The legitimate government is bound by the Constitution. The DHS is behaving in a treacherous way and has violated all trust and its allegiance to the legitimate Constitutionally bound government. The DHS may be engaging in treason. The actions of the DHS in censoring information related to election integrity after the fraud committed in the 2020 election would certainly appear supportive of a coup.

The scam response to 911 included the Patriot Act, a couple stupid wars, DHS, TSA, and so on. The level of government involvement in 911 is murky at best. The scam response to 911 created an authoritarian environment at the airport and the template for a police state. The level of government involvement in Covid and Covid shots is obvious. The difference is that the scam response to Covid is to make the whole country the airport.

The DHS should be disbanded immediately. It was created in a lie after 911. It is an unnecessary organization whose purpose was clearly to target American citizens at its inception. If that was not clear at the time it should be now. The DHS website states that the organization was created in the dark hours after the 911 attacks and its mission includes counterterrorism and homeland security, protecting the nation’s borders, cyber security and critical infrastructure, and preserve and uphold the nation’s prosperity and economic security.

Don’t let that dribble about prosperity and economic security get your hopes up. DHS is not going to start promoting and teaching the Austrian school of economics…..

The DHS has grossly failed in protecting and policing the borders and this is because it is largely spying on and policing American citizens and engaging in violating Free Speech rights. We’ll leave alone the Fourth Amendment here, although the DHS is clearly trampling that one too. If it was effective at counterterrorism, it would have shut down the Covid shots immediately. Instead, it has engaged in a campaign of misinformation and censorship and apparently has actually been supporting terrorism by censoring information about potential risks associated with Covid shots. In the world of the DHS, it isn’t much of a leap to interpret cybersecurity as meaning reading your emails and social media posts.

The government and any of its agencies are not capable of determining truth. Any government that conceptualizes itself as being capable of doing so is a dangerous threat. Such a position runs contrary to the First Amendment. It is often difficult to discern truth. The idea of allowing many perspectives does not denigrate truth, it allows truth to flourish. If a position actually represents the highest truth in any given context this will become more evident as other fallacious views are presented. Take the concept of a scientific hypothesis as an example. A hypothesis can’t be proven. It can only be supported or not supported by the evidence. Over time it often becomes apparent what the truth is. I say often because this is not always the case. Scientific orthodoxy can seem supported by the evidence for decades if not centuries only to be upended with new discovery.

How the hell can the DHS determine truth?

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***

The USS Rhode Island, the world’s largest nuclear submarine, left the Port of Gibraltar on Spain’s south coast last week. It was last seen entering the Mediterranean and headed south towards the Black Sea as a warning to the Kremlin.

British newspaper Daily Express said the nuclear submarine, which is also called “the rider of the apocalypse”, is under “intense protection” from the Royal Marines as it reportedly heads towards the Black Sea. The USS Rhode Island’s departure comes as fears grow over what Vladimir Putin will do after what the mainstream media is continuing to call a retreat.

🇺🇸⚔️⚡⚓ The US nuclear-powered submarine USS Rhode Island, dubbed the "rider of the apocalypse", has entered the Mediterranean Sea.
The submarine is capable of carrying 24 Trident II intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of engaging targets at ranges of up to

1/ pic.twitter.com/goAvJZsAED

— J. Malkova🇷🇺♥️ (@CanadianKitty1) November 5, 2022

Captain John Craddock, the commander of the US Navy’s Task Force, commented earlier this week:

“Rhode Island’s port visit to Gibraltar reinforces our ironclad commitment to our allies and partners in the region.”

“The US and UK share a strong history of cooperation, through exercises, operations, and cooperation activities such as this, that enhance our combined capabilities and partnership. The complexity, lethality, and tactical expertise of Rhode Island epitomizes the effectiveness and strength of the submarine force,” Craddock added.

Yesterday, the Russian President called for civilians to leave Kherson in the south of Ukraine due to the advancing counter-offensive on the occupied city. Officials and Russian commanders who had been installed by the Kremlin in the occupied region were seen fleeing as the Ukrainian counter-offensive pushed south.

Putin’s regime has repeatedly claimed Ukraine was planning to set off a dirty bomb – an explosive laced with radioactive material – which intelligence officials believe may be a precursor to a false flag operation.

The USS Rhode Island is an Ohio-class sub, and can, therefore, patrol continuously as a highly-effective tool for the NATO nuclear deterrence force and could be headed to a strategic position near the Black Sea.

It could be an obvious outward visible show of the advancement of this war, and the insistence by the United States and the United Kingdom to ignite into something bigger than it already is.

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

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ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

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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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***

Tomorrow is election day and polls suggest that Americans are going to overturn Democratic Party control of the House and Senate. Politicians and the media always say that this is the most important election ever, but all too often once the voting is over and the smoke has cleared, not much changes. The Washington uni-party takes over and makes sure the status quo is maintained.

It doesn’t have to be this way. An incoming Republican House and Senate, for example, could take early steps to reassure their supporters that their votes weren’t wasted on Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum in Washington. Here are three suggestions to get things off to a good start.

First, Republican Party Leadership must vow to end the massive money spigot opened by the last Congress for Ukraine. By some estimates some $60 billion dollars have been authorized for Ukraine to fight a proxy war between the US/NATO and Russia.

This would be a move strongly supported by the Republican base. A recent Wall Street Journal poll showed that only 37 percent of Republicans support sending more US aid to Ukraine. Republican firebrand Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene said recently that under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. While I am skeptical that her party leadership would support such a move, it’s clear Republican voters would.

Plus, ending this proxy war would carry with it the benefit of reducing the dangerously high possibility of global nuclear war. That’s not a bad trade-off.

Second, Republicans can signal that they will de-fund the Department of Homeland Security. At the time this monstrosity was created, I said this on the House Floor:

“The list of dangerous and unconstitutional powers granted to the new Homeland Security department is lengthy. Warrantless searches, forced vaccinations of whole communities, federal neighborhood snitch programs, federal information databases, and a sinister new ‘Information Awareness Office’ at the Pentagon that uses military intelligence to spy on domestic citizens are just a few of the troubling aspects of the new legislation.”

Unfortunately all of these things came to pass…and more. As we recently learned, the DHS has been colluding with social media companies to try and prevent Americans from being able to say or post opinions the government doesn’t want others to hear.

They promised that a Department of Homeland Security would keep us safer, but there is nothing that makes us less safe than the destruction of our Constitution.

Finally, the third task an incoming Republican House and Senate can take is maybe the easiest one: pass the Audit the Fed bill. Ten years ago the US House voted in a bipartisan manner to pass my Audit the Fed legislation only to see it stall in the Senate. With Republican control of both houses of Congress there is no reason a broadly-supported bill to open the books at the Federal Reserve cannot find its way to President Biden’s desk. We all support transparency, right?

Inflation is out of control and causing real harm to the American middle class. The Biden Administration seems determined to lead us to a potentially life-ending war with Russia. The Department of Homeland Security has turned into a weapon mobilized against the American people and our Constitution.

A Republican-controlled House and Senate can actually do something to fix these problems and thus make us more safe and more free. Will they?

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***

While the Arab Summit in Algeria affirmed its adherence to the so-called ‘Arab Peace Initiative’ as a final solution to the Palestinian issue, Israel’s response came quickly and resolutely with the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu and the anti-Arab religious Likud bloc.

In the 1 November legislative elections, Israelis voted in large numbers for the anti-Arab, racist, religious parties, which openly embrace a policy of killing and expelling Palestinians from all of occupied Palestine, and promote a solely Jewish-Zionist identity of the country.

The “Jewish Power” party, which won 15 seats, and is led by the two most racist figures in the short history of the Jewish state, Bezael H. Cherish and his deputy Itamar Ben Gvir, will be the backbone of Netanyahu’s coalition government.

The leader of this party, which will be the most prominent partner of the Arab monarchs who signed peace agreements with Israel, has called for killing Arabs, expelling them and wrapping the bodies of the martyrs in pigskin “in honor” of them.

Normalization the new norm

Nonetheless, it is likely that red carpets will be laid out for Ben Gvir and Netanyahu in Arab capitals, where they will enjoy Arab hospitality and drink from their gilded goblets. Indeed, there is no difference between the winning Israeli coalition and the defeated one (Lapid-Gantz).

Both converge on their mutual hostility and hatred of Arabs and Muslims. General Benny Gantz, the Israeli Minister of Defense in the previous government, used to boast that he was the Israeli who killed the largest number of Arabs – and this is true, as his government has killed 166 Palestinians since the beginning of this year.

There is a silver lining, however: This racist government will hasten Israel’s demise and lead to its inevitable end, not at the hands of the battered Arab armies, but at the hands of the Palestinian resistance and their regional allies, their missiles and drones.

There are three steps that the Netanyahu government and his extremist coalition may take upon assuming power:

First, a return to reviving the Trump-era ‘Deal of the Century,’ the annexation of the West Bank, and the deportation of most of its Palestinian residents to Jordan as an “alternative homeland.”

Second, the escalation of incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the consolidation of Jewish control over East Jerusalem, and the obliteration of its Arab and Islamic identity. The first step may be dividing it on the model of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, then demolishing it, and erecting the alleged “temple” on its ruins.

Third, the canceling or freezing of the maritime border demarcation agreement with Lebanon, similar to what happened to the Oslo Accords with Palestinians. Netanyahu announced his intent to do so openly in his election campaign.

This option appears especially likely given that extraction of gas and oil from the Karish field has already begun, while the Qana field, which was “partially” recognized as Lebanese, remains untouched, with no surveys or exploration conducted until this moment.

It is likely that the Lebanese gas fields will lay dormant for the foreseeable future. The same US mediators did not guarantee the implementation of even 1 per cent of the Oslo Accords, and they will most likely not guarantee the rights of the Lebanese people.

Renewed Palestinian armed resistance

But Netanyahu is set to assume control over a very different state of affairs, both domestically and internationally. For starters, Israel is facing an escalating internal conflict, and most importantly, a revived intifada in the form of West Bank armed resistance.

We cannot talk about West Bank resistance without discussing the phenomenon of The Lions’ Den whose political and military influence is expanding, while the Palestinian public’s embrace of the movement is growing. Not a day passes without witnessing a commando operation in various parts of the West Bank; in Nablus, Jenin and Hebron – later in Ramallah, and then in the pre-1948 occupied Palestinian territories.

Netanyahu may succeed in including one or two more Arab governments in the Abraham Accords, which was signed under his last premiership. However, such political acrobatics will have no value in light of the “awakening” of the Palestinian people and their return to armed resistance.

The returning Netanyahu will not forget the May 2021 battle of the “Sword of Jerusalem” that humiliated him, and its missiles that isolated the occupying state for more than 11 days, forcing millions of Israeli settler-colonizers into shelters and bunkers.

These missiles are still present and ready, along with hundreds of armed drones. Perhaps it is also worth reminding the incoming Israeli Prime Minister of how he ended an electoral meeting in the city of Ashdod (my ancestors’ hometown) and fled in terror from the 400 missiles launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement in retaliation for the assassination of its leader, Baha Abu al-Atta.

Just another day in the office?

The “Israel” to which Netanyahu returns is not the same Israel he left, and the world he knew when he was last in power, is not the same world today. His US supporter is mired in an unprecedented proxy war of attrition with Russia in Ukraine, where his co-religionist, Volodymyr Zelensky, has so far lost about a fifth of his country’s territory, and has plunged it into darkness and despair.

While Netanyahu is viewed as as being close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, that friendship had deepened before the Ukraine war. The situation has now changed dramatically, and he will be forced to choose between Washington and Moscow in an era of multipolarity.

As for the Lions’ Den, they have effectively changed all the equations and rules of engagement in occupied Palestine – and perhaps in the Arab world as well – and within this context will actually “welcome” the hardliner Netanyahu’s return to power.

*

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***

A mere few days after the major electoral upset of the right-wing Sweden Democrats becoming the second largest party in the country, and the leader of the winning right-wing bloc, it was Italy’s turn to select as their future prime minister the leader of the “post-fascist” party, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), who may be more accurately called “neo-fascist”.

The reactions of western governments, elected officials, and media have been strangely muted and accommodating when one considers that two more European Union member states, including one of its original founding members, Italy, have consecutively fallen to the far right, this time putting in power nothing less than, first, a party founded by neo-Nazis in the 1980s, and then the direct descendants of Mussolini’s fascists.

The embarrassed timidity of the reactions is understandable. The elections being perfectly democratic and legitimate, it is hard to criticise Italy’s choice without interfering directly in the internal political affairs of an ally, as EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen quickly realised.

The ‘business as usual’ spin 

Pundits, but also experts in Italian politics and academics, had for months largely diminished the notion of a “fascist threat” by pointing out that Italian neo-fascist parties had for long been incorporated into democratic parliamentary and electoral politics, or that the Brothers of Italy was actually not a fascist party but a traditionalist, conservative, populist-nationalist, or even “techno-sovereignist” one.

Commentators have worked overtime to reassure us that Brothers of Italy is not extremist but moderate, realist, and pragmatic on issues like EU relationships, the economy, and foreign policy; that there will be strong continuity with the previous Mario Draghi government; that Meloni will have her hands tied anyway by her coalition and the EU itself; and that this coalition may not even survive more than a year or two.

Major newspapers like France’s Le Monde have soothed us by reminding us of the capacity of a supposedly fundamentally “centrist” Italian system with strong counter-powers to force compromises and tame radicalism, while Meloni herself went out of her way to moderate her image, assuring the public that there was nothing to fear and that she would serve as a “uniter” who would “govern for everyone”, not just those who voted for her.

Finally, it is well known in political science that the electorate of a party does not necessarily share its ideological orientations or even know its programme.

This particular Italian vote was indeed largely a protest vote where people rooted for the “anti-system” candidate, the “outsider”, the “underdog” in order to express their profound dismay at the traditional government parties, starting with their inability to improve everyday life on bread-and-butter issues.

Meloni capitalised on that popular discontent and on her (false) outsider image. In other words, people voted for her not because she is a fascist but because she is not the establishment.

Historical fascism 

Many media outlets thus helped Meloni polish her image and present her as business as usual, often to the point of functioning as her own communications agency. Yet, her efforts to separate herself from her previous statements or Italy’s historical fascism by claiming it is a thing of the past are also not at all convincing.

Her party is in direct affiliation with the Italian Social Movement (MSI) created by Mussolini’s own ministers, regime officials, and hard-core partisans. Far from disavowing this affiliation, Meloni has always proudly touted those roots.

The tricoloured flame she chose as the logo of her party comes from the MSI movement; her headquarters in central Rome are located at the same address where the MSI set up its offices in 1946; and Meloni has campaigned with Mussolini’s own granddaughter Rachele Mussolini, herself a member of Brothers of Italy.

Her discourses on “God, Family, Country” and rhetoric on minority communities are all fully congruent and in direct continuity with those of historical fascism. Meloni is no new Mussolini, but her party represents a toxic, right-wing ideology.

This is evidenced by her support for Eric Zemmour, who is viewed by many as France’s “preacher of hate”, and the main advocate of the “Great Replacement Theory”.

Enthusiastically greeted by the entire European far right from Russia to France (and beyond), Meloni’s accession to power is just the latest evidence of a dramatic political groundswell across the whole continent: the mainstreaming of right-wing forces who not so long ago were fringe, even taboo parties, have in a mere two decades become genuine mass movements increasingly capable of reaching power.

Continuous ‘waves’

It would be a mistake to consider the latest Swedish and Italian elections as anomalies, exceptions, or aberrations. They are on the contrary in full continuity with the rise of the far-right across not just Europe and the West but throughout the world.

This is furthermore not a new trend but one that already spans decades, dating back to the pre-war fascist era of the 1930s and 1940s and even the 19th century. For example, Zemmour’s Reconquest Party found its ideological roots in writings of Edouard Drumont (1844-1917) and Action Française leader Charles Maurras’s (1868-1952) political movement.

He even named his party after Mediaeval Europe’s Reconquista moment. Books and articles about “the rise of the far-right across Europe” and ultra-nationalist populism were already filling shelves in the early 2000s, and political scientists have demonstrated that what we have here is not a rupture with the past but a series of continuous “waves”, each new one larger than the previous.

Despite this strong historical continuity, this latest phase of the far-right success presents five major novelties.

First, it consecrates the electoral victories and accession to power of parties and ideologies that postwar Europe had for decades managed to keep marginalised and excluded from the mainstream.

In countries like Poland, Hungary, Sweden, and now Italy, this last protection barrier has now yielded, and the far-right parties now control their governments. Second, despite unique contexts, the similarities are even stronger regarding their nativist and xenophobic ideology.

Global Islamophobia 

Third, we are now seeing these right-wing movements coalescing, emulating each other, and finding inspiration in one another. They are increasingly establishing trans-border connections and institutionalised political alliances.

Meloni, the Polish and Hungarian governments, the United States’ GOP, the Sweden Democrats, and others, strongly support each other. In 2020, Meloni herself was elected president of the European Conservatives and Reformists, an alliance that brings together more than 40 parties.

Fourth, the far right wins even when it loses at the polls by imposing its discourse in national debates and by forcing other conservative, centrist, and sometimes even leftist parties to adopt their themes and policy proposals in their own programmes in the hope of hedging electoral losses.

That is especially true for the hostile fixation on Islam and Muslims; the policies this racism generates are now being advanced more by other parties than by the far right itself.

Fifth, this far-right, exclusionary “new Nativism” particularly targets Muslims whose lifestyle and belief system is seen as antithetical to the “national identity” of those European countries.

Islamophobia has now become one of the most prominent ideologies shared by all those parties.

The dramatic expansion of the far-right, itself a sub-set of an even larger de-democratising trend or “democratic deconsolidation” is generating a veritable Islamophobia International that is casting Muslims even more than they already are in the position of both internal and external threats, with Islam itself as the principal enemy against which society must supposedly mobilise.

In many of those countries, this positioning is actually relatively new. Yet, in a short amount of time it has already placed Muslims in the structural “outsider” position including most dramatically in their own countries of birth and citizenship.

That process is already well underway, but because of the explosion of the far-right across entire continents, anti-Muslim sentiments have intensified to generate this historically novel global Islamophobia.

*

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Dr Alain Gabon is Associate Professor of French Studies and chair of the Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures at Virginia Wesleyan University in Virginia Beach, USA. He has written and lectured widely in the US, Europe and beyond on contemporary French culture, politics, literature and the arts and more recently on Islam and Muslims. His works have been published in several countries in academic journals, think tanks, and mainstream and specialized media such as Saphirnews, Milestones. Commentaries on the Islamic World, and Les Cahiers de l’Islam. His recent essay entitled “The Twin Myths of the Western ‘Jihadist Threat’ and ‘Islamic Radicalisation ‘” is available in French and English on the site of the UK Cordoba Foundation.

Featured image: Meloni speaking at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida (Photo by Vox España, CC0)

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***

The bipartisan project of dismantling our democracy, which took place over the last few decades on behalf of corporations and the rich, has left only the outward shell of democracy. The courts, legislative bodies, the executive branch and the media, including public broadcasting, are captive to corporate power. There is no institution left that can be considered authentically democratic. The corporate coup d’état is over. They won. We lost.

The wreckage of this neoliberal project is appalling: endless and futile wars to enrich a military-industrial-complex that bleeds the U.S. Treasury of half of all discretionary spending; deindustrialization that has turned U.S. cities into decayed ruins; the slashing and privatization of social programs, including education, utility services and health care – which saw over one million Americans account for one-fifth of global deaths from Covid, although we are 4 percent of the world’s population; draconian forms of social control embodied in militarized police, functioning as lethal armies of occupation in poor urban areas; the largest prison system in the world; a virtual tax boycott by the richest individuals and corporations; money-saturated elections that perpetuate our system of legalized bribery; and the most intrusive state surveillance of the citizenry in our history.

In “The United States of Amnesia,” to quote Gore Vidal, the corporate press and the ruling class create fictional feel-good personas for candidates, treat all political campaigns as if it is a day at the races and gloss over the fact that on every major issue, from trade deals to war, there is very little difference between Democrats and Republicans. The Democratic Party and Joe Biden are not the lesser evil, but rather, as Glen Ford pointed out, “the more effective evil.”

Biden supported the campaign to discredit and humiliate Anita Hill to appoint Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. He was one of the principal architects of the endless wars in the Middle East, calling for “taking Saddam down” five years before the invasion of Iraq. He rehabilitated the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, after vowing to make the country a pariah because of the assassination of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden is a fervent supporter of Israel, calling the apartheid state “the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East” and declaring “I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.” His campaigns have been lavishly funded by the Israel lobby for at least two decades.

In the 1970s, he fought school busing, arguing that segregation was beneficial for Blacks.  He and South Carolina’s racist senator, Strom Thurmond, sponsored the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which eliminated parole for federal prisoners and limited the amount of time sentences could be reduced for good behavior. Biden sponsored and aggressively pushed the 1994 crime bill, which he also helped draft, calling for its passage because “We have predators on our streets that society has in fact, in part because of its neglect, created.” The bill expanded the death penalty for dozens of existing and new federal crimes and mandated life imprisonment for a third violent felony, also known as the “three strikes and you’re out” rule, more than doubling the nation’s prison population. The bill provided funds to add 100,000 new police officers and build new prisons, on the condition that prisoners serve their entire sentences. He pushed through the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which gutted the federal writ of habeas corpus, abolished the rights of death row prisoners and mandated harsh federal sentencing rules.

Biden takes credit for writing the 2001 Patriot Act, which expanded the government’s ability to monitor anyone’s phone and email communications, collect bank and credit reporting records, and track activity on the Internet. He backed austerity programs, including the destruction of welfare and cuts to Social Security. He fought for NAFTA and other “free trade” deals which fueled  inequality, deindustrialization, a significant drop in wages and the offshoring of  millions of manufacturing jobs to underpaid workers who toil in sweatshops in countries like Mexico, Malaysia, China or Vietnam.

He also backed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act that, as Human Rights Watch writes, “eliminated key defenses against deportation and subjected many more immigrants, including legal permanent residents, to detention and deportation.”

Biden long opposed abortion, writing in a letter to a constituent: “Those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them. As you may know, I have consistently — on no fewer than 50 occasions — voted against federal funding of abortions.”

He was at the forefront of deregulating the banking industry and the abolition of Glass-Steagall, which contributed to the global financial meltdown, including the collapse of nearly 500 banks, in 2007 and 2008. He is a favorite of the for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical industry, which contributed $6.3 million to his 2020 presidential campaign, almost four times more money than they channeled to Donald Trump’s campaign. Biden and the Democrats annually increase the military budget, approving $813 billion for fiscal year 2023. He and the Democrats have provided over $60 billion in military aid and assistance to the war in Ukraine, with no end in sight. In the Senate, Biden abjectly served the interests of MBNA, the largest independent credit card company headquartered in Delaware, which also employed Biden’s son Hunter.

The decisions of politicians like Biden have a staggering human cost, not only for the poor, workers and the shrinking middle class but for millions of people in the Middle East, millions of families ripped apart by mass incarceration, millions more forced into bankruptcy by our mercenary for-profit medical system where corporations are legally permitted to hold sick children hostage while their frantic parents bankrupt themselves to save them, millions who became addicted to opioids and hundreds of thousands who died from them, millions denied welfare assistance, and all of us barreling toward extinction because of a refusal to curb the greed and destructive power of the fossil fuel industry, which has raked in $2.8 billion a day in profit over the last 50 years.

Biden, morally vacuous and of limited intelligence, is responsible for more suffering and death at home and abroad than Donald Trump. But the victims in our Punch-and-Judy media shows are rendered invisible. And that is why the victims despise the whole superstructure and want to tear it down.

These establishment politicians and their appointed  judges promulgated laws that permitted the top 1 percent to loot $54 trillion from the bottom 90 percent, from 1975 to 2022, at a rate of $2.5 trillion a year, according to a study by the RAND corporation. The fertile ground of our political, economic, cultural and social wreckage spawned an array of neo-fascists, con artists, racists, criminals, charlatans, conspiracy theorists, right-wing militias and demagogues that will soon take power.

Decayed societies, such as Weimar Germany or the former Yugoslavia, which I covered for The New York Times, always vomit up political deformities who express the hatred a betrayed public feel for a corrupt ruling class and bankrupt liberalism. The twilight of the Greek, Roman, Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian empires were no different.

These political deformities play the role of the Snopes clan in William Faulkner’s trilogy “The Hamlet,” “The Town” and “The Mansion.” The Snopeses wrested control in the South from a degenerate aristocratic elite. Flem Snopes and his extended family — which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality — are fictional representations of the scum that hijacked the Republican Party.

“The usual reference to ‘amorality,’ while accurate, is not sufficiently distinctive and by itself does not allow us to place them, as they should be placed, in a historical moment,” the critic Irving Howe wrote of the Snopeses. “Perhaps the most important thing to be said is that they are what comes afterwards: the creatures that emerge from the devastation, with the slime still upon their lips.”

“Let a world collapse, in the South or Russia, and there appear figures of coarse ambition driving their way up from beneath the social bottom, men to whom moral claims are not so much absurd as incomprehensible, sons of bushwhackers or muzhiks drifting in from nowhere and taking over through the sheer outrageousness of their monolithic force,” Howe wrote. “They become presidents of local banks and chairmen of party regional committees, and later, a trifle slicked up, they muscle their way into Congress or the Politburo. Scavengers without inhibition, they need not believe in the crumbling official code of their society; they need only learn to mimic its sounds.”

Biden and other establishment politicians are not actually calling for democracy. They are calling for civility. They have no intention of extracting the knife thrust into our backs. They hope to paper over the rot and the pain with the decorum of the polite, measured talk they used to sell us the con of neoliberalism. The political correctness and inclusivity imposed by college-educated elites, unfortunately, has now become associated with the corporate assault, as if a woman CEO or a Black police officer is going to mitigate the exploitation and abuse. Minorities are always welcome, as they were in other species of colonialism, if they serve the dictates of the masters. This is how Barack Obama, whom Cornel West called “a Black mascot for Wall Street,” became President.

Freedom for millions of enraged Americans has become the freedom to hate, the freedom to use words like “nigger,” “kike,” “spic,” “chink,” “raghead” and “fag;” the freedom to physically assault Muslims, undocumented workers, women, African-Americans, homosexuals and anyone who dares criticize their Christian fascism; the freedom to celebrate historical movements and figures that the college-educated elites condemn, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Confederacy; the freedom to ridicule and dismiss intellectuals, ideas, science and culture; the freedom to silence those who have been telling them how to behave; the freedom to revel in hypermasculinity, racism, sexism, violence and patriarchy.

These crypto-fascists have always been part of the American landscape, but the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans, especially white Americans, has inflamed these hatreds. Voting for the architects of what political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of “inverted totalitarianism” will not make them go away; in fact, it will further discredit liberal ideas and liberal democracy. This puts liberals in a terrible bind. They have every right to fear the far right. All the dark scenarios are correct. But by backing Biden and the ruling corporate party, they ensure their political irrelevance.

The Democratic Party has spent millions funding far-right “pied piper” candidates assuming they would be easier to defeat, a tactic foolishly copied from the Clinton campaign, which secretly “elevated” Trump in the hopes that he would win the Republican nomination. They have worked to censor critics from the left and the right on social media. They claim they are the last bulwark against tyranny. None of these subterfuges will work. America will descend into a Viktor Orbán-type of authoritarianism without profound political, social and economic reform.

After the Iraq war went sour, I, as someone who publicly opposed the invasion and had been the Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, was often asked what we should do now. I answered that Iraq could no longer be put back together. It was broken. We broke it. Those who ask if we should support the Democrats as a tactic to halt our descent into tyranny are in a similar dilemma. My answer is no different. We should have walked out on the Democratic Party while we still had a chance.

*

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

Featured image: The Body Politic – by Mr. Fish

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***

A number of US troops and logistics forces have been arriving in the Syrian city of Raqqa recently, and are in the process of establishing a new military base in the area, in Hasakeh Province.

The location makes some sense, though no official announcement has been made yet. The US has an estimated 1,000 troops left in Syria, and 28 declared military sites. They are mostly in Hasakeh, so it makes sense that the new base would be there too.

The timing is particularly telling, however. Just over a week prior, the US said they had “no plans” to withdraw from Syria militarily, and the National Security Council’s John Kirby said the US presence is “solely to combat ISIS.”

There is an ISIS presence around Raqqa, mostly lingering remnant forces in and around the desert area. Those forces often end up fighting Syrian and Russian forces, and sometimes the Kurdish YPG.

The US military intervention in Syria mostly began around 2011 with support for anti-Assad rebels, though late in the Bush Administration the US had launched some attacks. It was President Obama who started the deployment of troops on an official basis in 2015 to fight ISIS but also with a close eye on regime change as a secondary goal.

The US has imposed growing sanctions against the Syrian government, again meant to harm their ability to resist the rebels and to push regime change. This has had little impact, but US officials say there is no plan to remove any of those sanctions. That’s unsurprising, as the US tends to make sanctions a permanent fact of international diplomacy.

Obama’s escalation led to US and YPG forces chasing ISIS out of most of its cities, and into the wilderness areas they presently occupy. President Trump began a pullout from Syria, though he ultimately reversed course and announced the remaining troops would stay to “take the oil.”

The remaining presence is centered on two bases, the base on the Jordanian border at al-Tanf, and a smaller base at one of the Syrian oilfields meant to facilitate a US company taking the oil. Locals say the new Raqqa base has a similar design to the smaller oilfield base.

This ends questions about the US pullout, and now it looks like re escalation is again the order of the day. Though we don’t know how many troops will be stationed in Raqqa, it looks relatively small. The troops are not invited by the Syrian government, and may find themselves at odds with Syrian forces.

This area is also in YPG territory, which normally wouldn’t be a problem since the US and Kurds are on good terms. Turkey has been fighting the Kurds and threatening bigger invasions. This could put the US into a deconfliction issue with the fellow NATO member.

Lacking any vision for what the US end to Syria involvement would look like, it has seemed the US was keeping troops in Syria just for the sake of keeping troops there. That has long risked unintended consequences, and the addition of more US troops and another base only increases that risk.

*

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Jason Ditz is senior editor of Antiwar.com.

Featured image: Syrian General Aktham at the bridge to Raqqa, one of many destroyed by US planes (Photo by Tim Anderson)

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***

Libertarian Robert Murphy emphatically emphasizes the crucial matter of the destructive nature of war as the principle issue the American electorate faces on Election Day next Tuesday. The insane madmen and women in governments who have enabled this catastrophic war of confrontation between Ukraine and Russia have us at the very brink of nuclear annihilation and destruction.  While there are dozens of extremely serious issues facing the nation to consider for this November election, this should be the ultimate litmus test, the definitive line in the sand for all candidates.

Libertarian Candidate for US Senate Robert Murphy’s Statement on War

For well over a century there have been factions within our government that have viewed the United States – and themselves – as leaders of a world empire. From the Spanish-American War to the war in Ukraine, these factions have done their best to convince us that their motives are pure, that they are acting to protect us from foreign enemies, as well as to secure the blessings of liberty for people around the world. The fact is that these acts have mostly benefited financial elites, international corporations, and the egos of neoconservative policymakers. All this while leaving behind a legacy of corruption, death, and destruction.

Nowhere is this stark reality more evidently displayed than with the recent sabotage of the Nordstream 1 and 2 gas pipelines from Russia to Germany. These pipelines were to transport relatively cheap Russian gas to Europe, bypassing existing pipes through Poland and Ukraine. They had been shut down by Germany due to US-sponsored sanctions against Russia because of Russian military operations in Ukraine. Their destruction ensures that there’s no chance that Germany and Europe can compromise with Russia and end the sanctions.

This action will be devastating to the people and economies of Europe. They will freeze in the dark this winter. Industries will be shuttered, electricity will be rationed, cell phones and internet access will be intermittent, and people may starve in unheated homes. This amounts to an act of war by the United States against our European allies.

There can be no doubt that the Pentagon and the CIA were the prime movers in this sabotage. The technology involved to accomplish it was available on US Navy vessels recently engaged in maneuvers in the Baltic Sea. Poland and Ukraine, who gain transport fees from the pipe going through their lands, may have helped. Norway, whose pipeline was reopened the next day, may have also been involved. The only certainty is that Europe will now be dependent on US and international corporations for gas supplies, global gas prices will increase, and Americans will not be immune to these higher prices.

The price inflation we are enduring now is a direct result of generations of constant warfare paid for with borrowed money. Trillions of dollars and thousands of lives have been sacrificed for the egos of unelected Pentagon and State Department bureaucrats. Our Congress seems helpless to even question the reasons for these sacrifices for fear of seeming unpatriotic. It is well known that the US Media is owned and controlled by the Deep State. Any dissent from the war narrative is met with scorn and accusations of domestic terrorism. War propaganda is relentless.

Republicans and Democrats both, financed by billions in campaign donations, are complicit in this terrifying betrayal of the American people. As a Congressman my Republican opponent in this election, Markwayne Mullins, has continually slavishly approved the NDAA that allows the government to engage in military operations overseas without a formal declaration of war. Kendra Horn, my Democrat opponent, did the same when she was in Congress.

History has shown that warfare bankrupts nations, enriching elites while the people suffer. It is time to end the idea of American global hegemony and bring our troops home.

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***

The international crisis over the status of the Crimean Peninsula was in February-March 2014 when the peninsula became returned to the state’s territory of Russia from Ukraine. The Western Russophobic narrative immediately accused Russia of illegitimate annexation of the peninsula as well as of the occupation of the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. 

However, the same narrative is not telling that Crimea became, in fact, illegally annexed by Ukraine from Russia even in 1956 by the personal decision of the Ukrainian boss of the USSR – Nikita Khrushchev (1894−1971).

At that time as of 2014, 2/3 of the Crimean population have been ethnic Russians while ethnic Ukrainians all the time were a tiny minority of the peninsula. In 1956, however, it was no organized referendum about the political destiny of Crimea different from the case in 2014 when a majority of the peninsula’s population expressed their free will to join Russia instead of the Russophobic Ukraine. A new Russophobic course of the government in Kiev as well as provoked the (Russian) people of Donbas to secede from undemocratic Ukraine which the government took an open neo-Nazi course.

In fact, the Ukrainian crisis in general came from the decision by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in December 2013 in Vilnius (Lithuania) not to support the deal to bring Ukraine closer to the EU and, of course later to NATO. Instead of the Western economic, political, and military structures he rationally and practically decided to support traditional good ties with Russia for the sake of a general benefit to all people of Ukraine. Nonetheless, a such decision sparked (by Western support) the Euromaidan protest in the Ukrainian capital Kiev – a protest which led to violent clashes with regular security forces. The protest spread out to other Ukrainian cities where in some of them like Odesa it took the form of pogroms against the local Russian speakers. The “sniper massacre” happened in Kiev when pro-Euromaidan Georgian snipers shot the civilians with the purpose to accuse the Yanukovych government of the bloodshed on the streets. According to Western sources, some 80+ people have been killed in Kiev in and around Maidan Square during the protest.

Nevertheless, it became obvious that the final aim of the Euromaidan protesters was to overthrow legally elected President V. Yanukovych and his administration in order to install a puppet pro-Western government that will seek membership of Ukraine in both the EU and NATO followed by the oppression of the Russians in East Ukraine.

President Yanukovych, therefore, was simply forced to flee from Ukraine to neighboring Russia. Soon, for the sake of both protecting Russians in Crimea and her national interests, the Russian military started with a covert military operation that was called by the Russophobic Western media the aggression of “little green men” – Russian soldiers in uniforms with all insignia removed.

However, for the pure matter of comparison, for instance, the US Army invaded the independent state of Grenada in 1983 with all US Army insignia on the soldiers’ uniforms, occupied the whole country (island), and finally changed the government which was previously democratically elected. In addition, in Grenada was living no one American except several students but in Crimea, a qualified majority of people have been ethnic Russians living there for decades and centuries.

In Crimea, in Sevastopol on the Black Sea, Russia for decades had a major naval base according to the agreement signed with Ukraine. According to Western sources, on February 27^th, 2014 the Crimean Parliament building became occupied by the Russian military “little green men” in Simferopol. On March 6^th, 2014, Crimean policymakers authorized a vote for independence from the Russophobic Ukrainian Euromaidan regime in Kiev. Ten days later (on March 16^th, 2014) was organized a referendum on which 97% of people voted for Crimea as a part of Russia (i.e., for the reunification with a motherland). The West (USA, NATO, and the EU), except official critics of Moscow in the case of the Crimean crisis, in fact, did not launch any counteracting military operation with the purpose to return Crimea under the Ukrainian administration.

The situation in 2014 concerning the international relations, truly speaking, was opposite to the case of the Crimean War in 1853−1856 when against Russian action contra the Ottoman Empire several West European countries created a coalition and launched a successful war on Russia. Obviously, during the last 170 years, the position of Russia in global politics and international relations is cardinally changed to the direction that the Russophobic West now has to fully respect Russian power and influence what they did not do even in 1999 during NATO aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). Nonetheless, since March 2014 and the reunification of Crimea with Russia, Russia actually transformed the Black Sea into the “Russian lake” that is quite visible now during the Russian special military operation in Ukraine for the matter of its denazification.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a Former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Read Part I:

Bringing People Back to Nature. Paul Thiry d’Holbach

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, November 02, 2022

Paul-Henry Thiry d’Holbach (1723-1789), one of the leading figures of the French encyclopaedists, in his book “System of Nature”, published in 1770, wants to lead man, who is the “work of nature, exists in it and is subject to its laws”, back to nature (1). On this, see Part I: “Men must know the truth.” (2)

Holbach’s book is still acknowledged today as one of the key works of the Enlightenment because of its radically sensualist argumentation, which attributes all knowledge to sensory perceptions alone. With it, he openly declared war on the ruling ideology and powers.

For the sensing, thinking and acting human being, Holbach’s “discoveries” from the time of the “Enlightenment” can still lead to the purification of human consciousness from individual and collective prejudices. The “enlightened mind” is capable of envisaging healthy life goals. 

Quote from Pliny as dedication

Holbach dedicated a quotation from Pliny (“Natural History”) to his book. This is presumably a quotation from the Roman historian and writer Gaius Plinius Secundus Maior (also Pliny the Elder) (23-79) from his encyclopaedic work on natural history “Naturalis historia”. This “natural history” deals with topics that today would be assigned primarily to the natural sciences. It is the oldest completely preserved systematic encyclopaedia. It comprises 37 books with a total of 2493 chapters. According to the bibliography, nearly 500 authors were involved (3): 

“Naturae rerum vis atque majestas in omnibus momentis fide caret, si quis modo partes eius, ac non totam domplectatur animo.” (The power and dignity of nature always remain incomprehensible, if one grasps only its parts and not its totality). (4)

The essence of man consists in feeling, thinking, acting, in short, in moving in a way that distinguishes him from other things with which he compares himself. 

The following is a selection of quotations from the 1st chapter “Of Nature” (5):

“Men will always err if they abandon experience for the sake of such systems as have been created by imagination. Man is the work of nature, he exists in nature, he is subject to its laws, he cannot free himself from it, he cannot even get away from it by thinking; in vain does his spirit strive beyond the limits of the visible world, he is always forced to return to it.

(…)

Let man, therefore, cease to seek beings outside the world he inhabits, which are to provide him with a happiness which nature denies him: let him study nature, learn its laws, and contemplate its energy and the unchanging way in which it acts; let him use his discoveries for his own happiness, and tacitly submit to laws from which nothing can escape him; let him refrain from inquiring into the causes which are surrounded for him with an impenetrable veil, let him bear without grumbling the decisions of a universal power which can neither turn back nor ever deviate from the rules which its nature prescribes for it.

(…)

It is also because man has insufficiently studied nature and its laws, and has made insufficient attempts to discover its auxiliary sources and properties, that he is profoundly ignorant or takes such slow and uncertain steps to improve his lot. His indolence finds satisfaction in preferring to be led by example, by conventionality, by authority, rather than by experience, which requires action, and by reason, which requires deliberation.

Hence that aversion which men show to everything which seems to them to deviate from the rules to which they are accustomed; hence their stupid and fearful respect for everything old and for the most nonsensical institutions of their fathers; hence the fear which seizes them when the most advantageous changes or the most promising experiments are proposed to them.

For this reason we see the peoples caught in a shameful lethargy and groaning under abuses dragged along from century to century. They tremble at the very idea of what might remedy their sufferings. It is through the same inertia and lack of experience that medicine, physics, agriculture, in a word all useful sciences, make so little perceptible progress and remain so long in the fetters of authority: those who practise these sciences prefer to follow the paths marked out for them rather than to blaze new ones; (…).

(…)

In short, by renouncing, either through laziness or fear, the testimony of their senses, men have been guided in all their actions and undertakings only by imagination, by rapture, by habit, by prejudice, and especially by authority, which has known how to use the ignorance of men to deceive them. Systems created by imagination took the place of experience, reflection, reason: (…).

(…)

In this way the human race (…) has remained in a long childhood, from which it costs it so much effort to free itself. (…).

(…)

So let us rise above the mists of prejudice. (…). Let us distrust a fickle imagination, let us take experience for our guide; let us ask nature for advice; (…. ); let us go back to our senses, which we have been falsely led to regard as suspect; let us consult reason, which has been shamefully slandered and degraded; let us look attentively at the visible world, and see if it is not sufficient to enable us to judge of unknown realms of the spiritual world; perhaps we shall find that no right has been had to make a distinction between the two, and that two kingdoms have been separated without reasons, which are equally under the dominion of nature. “

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a teacher (retired headmaster), doctor of education (Dr. paed.) and graduate psychologist (Dipl.-Psych.). He taught and trained professionals for many decades. As a retiree, he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and educational-psychological articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral values education as well as an education for public spirit and peace.

Notes

(1) Holbach, P.-H.T. (1978). System der Natur oder von den Gesetzen der physischen und der moralischen Welt. Frankfurt am Main

(2) https://www.globalresearch.ca/bringing-people-back-nature-paul-thiry-dholbach/5797669 and http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=28317§css

(3) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plinius_der_Ältere and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalis_historia

(4) Holbach, P.-H.T. (1978). System der Natur oder von den Gesetzen der physischen und der moralischen Welt. Frankfurt am Main, p. 16

(5) Holbach, P.-H.T. (1978). System of nature or of the laws of the physical and moral world. Frankfurt am Main. Part I: “Of nature and its limits, Of man, Of the soul and its faculties, Of the doctrine of immortality, Of happiness”. Chapter 1: “Of Nature”, pp. 17-25

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***

During the days after former Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted from office, there was jubilation by the Pakistani liberal-left. But they figured out quickly that they had to go into overdrive to produce and police a narrative of what happened. But bizarrely, that narrative wasn’t being constructed for Pakistanis, but for some mysterious ‘Western Left.’

The Pakistani Left’s success was given a tremendous boost by the incredibly biased coverage this Pakistani Left wanted the Western Left to hear in a few segments of Democracy Now. Apparently, only socialist and communist party cadres who report to their politburo represent all of the people of Pakistan for Democracy Now. However, Democracy Now was so thoroughly embarrassed itself after receiving a plethora of highly critical email feedback indicting its incredibly biased and shallow coverage of some of the largest popular mobilizations in the country. It thankfully stayed away from the subject from that time onwards.

But this began a pattern. A Pakistani Left which normally is involved in or at least supportive of the most important social struggles in the country all of a sudden became obsessed with a ‘Western Left’ that may consider these mobilizations and the figure of Imran Khan as something meaningful, as an important political development that clearly entailed massive numbers of protestors against the new regime.

Sadly, the Pakistani Left seemed to prioritize how the Western Left sees Imran Khan over everything and everyone else. As Prof. Sher Ali Tareen (is this Quetta-born outstanding Pakistani scholar a part of the Western Left to?), Imranophobia was at its peak at this point.

Bewildered by how a man whose period of governance was less than desirable could mobilize millions throughout the country, the Pakistani Left – rather than trying to engage in a period replete with possibilities of bringing more radical proposals to the table – turned its attention to privileged Western Left academics and activists rather than millions of ordinary Pakistanis out in the streets.

It was rather comical how the Pakistani Left had to keep changing their script: oh, well Khan just has an urban educated base of support. Oh wait, there is huge support among the Pashtuns as well. And perhaps he also some significant support in the Punjab and in Karachi. They were trying every trick in the book to downplay mass support for Khan, and resentment for the new regime.

In fact, Pankaj Mishra’s deployment of the term resentiment seemed very appropriate in capturing the mood in the country. A profoundly angry population was tired of sitting on the sidelines as spectators to the shenanigans of the power elite of their country.

But the Pakistani Left ensured that these were footnotes to be ignored and that these popular mobilizations entailed either fascists, youthful idiots, and whatever other condescending (very of often vulgar and abusive) term you want to use for them. Massive rallies in city after city taking place, incredibly disciplined and peaceful, were taking place and the Pakistani Left’s concern was how to bury these developments, hot to veto them out of history as Chomsky often says.

The Pakistani Left, just like any other Pakistani, is correct to be critical of Khan on many fronts. But this insidious game they played to police and discipline different narratives about what’s happening in the country was Stalinism and McCarthyism at its finest.

The Obsessive Compulsive Disorder involved in their relationship with the Western Left seemed utterly outlandish. It was a colonized mind at its finest, concerned more with what the White Man thinks of you than you think of yourself and your people.

We also wondered who the heck is this ‘Western Left’ that our Pakistani leftist luminaries kept referring to. Is it the International Socialist Organization (ISO), white Antifa-type anarchists, BLM activists, the DSA, who? Or an individual here and there sitting in their basement tweeting away. Regardless, the obsession seemed farcical.

A ‘Western Left’ that is barely relevant in their own countries is now being bombarded by an equally impotent Pakistani Left to regurgitate a tight script on political developments in Pakistan: Khan is no ‘anti-imperialist hero,’ he’s a demagogue, he doesn’t really have mass support (unlike us Pakistani leftists of course), and the people you do see who are coming out are buffoons or fascists. We are the Pakistani Left, even though half of us will reside most of our lives living in the West, so we know best and the ‘Western Left’ better just shut up about anything concerning Pakistan.

That also was a comical component of this saga: the constant criticisms of expat Pakistani intellectuals and ordinary Pakistanis for not being and living in Pakistan (and therefore having warped views of Pakistan) by many Pakistani Leftist intellectuals who themselves are not working and living in Pakistan! Now that’s something to chuckle about. These Pakistani Leftist intellectuals are more or less genuine in their progressive politics, so I would rather not use the term ‘hypocrites’ for them. But in any other case, hypocrisy is the only word one can think of to describe such behavior.

Indeed, the entire saga over the past few months has been highly instructive. Instead of trying to join and engage popular mobilizations to radicalize the movement even further, fairly privileged and elite Pakistani Left intellectuals and activists, either sitting abroad or at campuses which are virtual extensions of the US embassy or the Pakistani military establishment, were fixated on one thing and one thing alone: how this amorphous, undefined, supposedly monolithic ‘Western Left’ must view Pakistan, Khan, the popular mobilizations, etc. The Pakistani Left could have cared all this time about how a Kashmiri thought of Khan, or a Palestinian, or a Pashtun – but no, the Western Left controls independent and alternative media and hence, they are a far more important audience to target. These Western Leftists are the ones that are going to turn to ‘us’ and give us global standing and legitimacy, even though that legitimacy rarely exists in Pakistan itself!

Meanwhile, elderly women, working class students, displaced persons from the ‘War on Terror’ – all a part of these mobilizations, mattered nothing to the Pakistani Left because the latter had a more important job: ensuring that the Western Left continues to anoint them as the saviors of Pakistan, and not be distracted by Khan or these millions of people rallying for change.

The saddest part is that genuine organic left movements in the Global South mostly don’t give a damn about what some mythical ‘Western Left’ thinks about them. They are busy in the struggle to shape their societies for the better. And while the Pakistani Left is usually doing incredibly laudable work and activism, since April their intellectual twitteratis have had nothing better to do than to condemn some phantom ‘Western Left’ for being bamboozled into believing that Washington or the Pakistani military may have had something to do with Khan’s ouster.

Rarely do we see genuine organic left movements in countries so obsessed not with what their own countrywomen and men think of them, or the most oppressed, but with how the ghosts of the ‘Western Left’ perceives them, and more importantly, Imran Khan.

It is sad that a much-needed Pakistani Left has abandoned genuine political criticisms, and has propelled Imranophobia (thanks SherAli Tareen) on overdrive. It is a shame that psychological envy (why can Khan mobilize tens of millions while we can only mobilize tens) has replaced meaningful political engagement within the Pakistani Left. Nevertheless, it does seem like psychoanalysis would possibly reveal more about the Khan and Khan-supporter hatred among the Pakistani Left. And that is very unfortunate when we are at a very rare but exciting moment when transformational politics can be advanced and radicalized to take on a military establishment in panic mode.

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Azhar Imran teaches law and politics at the University of Punjab, Pakistan.

Zerrish Khan is a progressive national student activist with an international relations background.

Featured image is from Countercurrents

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***

A Brown University professor has requested a curious accommodation for the governing class that has abused us with impunity for two and a half years. She terms it “pandemic amnesty,” which amounts to legal and social immunity for the Public Health© social engineers who orchestrated COVID-19 lockdowns and vaxx/masking mandates.

Via The Atlantic:

“We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID… There is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high. The latest figures on learning loss are alarming.  But in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information.”

“Spring and summer 2020”?? Schools in Democrat-controlled cities remained closed well into 2021. And they would’ve remained so much longer if the Zero COVID people had their druthers.

Data became available early on that children’s risk from COVID was so low as to be statistically irrelevant. Still, schools and businesses in regions run by Democrats remained shuttered at the behest of the Public Health© technocrats who now attempt to absolve themselves of guilt.

The people who did this want “pandemic amnesty” now. Hard no pic.twitter.com/5AGg2XrMlb

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 1, 2022

The sole reason the Brown University professor is doing the mea culpa, “how-could-anyone-have-known?” routine now over the school closures — which, by the way, The Atlantic aggressively promoted — is because the data on their devastating impacts is in:

“Across the country, math scores saw their largest decreases ever. Reading scores dropped to 1992 levels. Nearly four in 10 eighth graders failed to grasp basic math concepts. Not a single state saw a notable improvement in their average test scores, with some simply treading water at best.”

The social engineers responsible for this are likely worried about the looming GOP takeover of Congress and what that might mean in terms of investigations, assuming the GOP pharma cucks aren’t sufficiently bribed.

Every facet of the Public Health© COVID narrative is crumbling in real time and they’re panicking. This is them trying to weasel their way out of accountability. That’s all this abrupt about-face is.

The vaxxes don’t work as promised to prevent transmission and new data emerges weekly on just how useless and counterproductive they are. Pfizer and Moderna rushed them through clinical testing and got them approved by captured regulatory agencies based on verifiable fraud.

The school closures were unnecessary and, in fact, as we see here, totally counterproductive.

The worldwide economic shutdown wrecked the global economy, perhaps beyond repair.

Nonetheless, just a few months ago, when the lockdown left felt invincible with the corporate media and Public Health© bureaucracy at their backs, they were enthusiastically demanding ostracization, imprisonment, and worse for the unvaccinated.

For the Unvaccinated it's Never Forgive, Never Forget and Never Again!👇👇 pic.twitter.com/O37FGsHuru

— MilkBarTV (@TheMilkBarTV) November 1, 2022

Their vicious totalitarianism requires a response from a free people, lest they similarly transgress during the next Current Thing™. They should not be permitted to skate without a reckoning.

We ought to ignore the crocodile tears shed by sociopathic technocrats because they can’t maintain their murderous narrative anymore. This is performative and not an expression of sincere remorse.

They can feel the rising popular rage. Their only recourse now is to plead for mercy — as if their misdeeds were innocent mistakes, as if they were just making the best decision possible based on the information they had at hand.

Their narrative is belied by the fact that millions, perhaps billions, of free-thinking people worldwide with fewer information resources and professional credentials than the elites did not cave to the orchestrated manipulation, fearmongering, and cajoling.

If the COVIDians could have managed to keep the hysteria going strong, further suppress dissent, and sustain the lockdowns/vaxx mandates indefinitely, the US would more closely resemble “Zero COVID” China than it currently does.

Justin Trudeau: "There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime." pic.twitter.com/Vxwn2DhpgZ

— Harrison Faulkner (@Harry__Faulkner) April 11, 2022

Unless examples are made – including hardcore prosecutions – there is no substantial disincentive to engage in the same malfeasance in the future.

The corporate state will introduce a series of new permanent emergencies in the coming months and years. And, when it does, if it doesn’t pay any price this go-’round, the Brown University professor who now requests clemency will be back at it. And so will all of her colleagues in the managerial class.

You can put that pandemic amnesty where the sun don’t shine. pic.twitter.com/NGIaMvLb5L

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) November 1, 2022

Nothing short of Nuremberg II will suffice. If the GOP won’t do it when the party assumes Congressional power in 2023, it’s up to the people to force their hand.

pic.twitter.com/APqEh3Ht5G

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) October 31, 2022

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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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