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Watch Mislav Kolakusic, Croatian lawyer and Independent MEP talks about Mrs Von der Leyen, President of the EUC, known as Mrs 4.5 billion doses.

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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said on Wednesday that he sees an opportunity for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine now that Moscow has announced its retreat from Kherson and that the two sides should “seize the moment.”

“When there’s an opportunity to negotiate when peace can be achieved, seize it,” Milley told the Economic Club of New York. “Seize the moment.”

Milley thinks Russia is digging in for the winter and that the battle lines won’t change much over the next few months. He said lessons should be learned from World War I, when European powers’ refusal to negotiate led to millions more casualties in trench warfare.

Milley said Russia may be using the withdrawal to rest its troops for a future spring offensive but believes “there’s also an opportunity here, a window of opportunity for negotiation.”

The top US military officer said that the two sides need to reach a “mutual recognition” that victory “is maybe not achievable through military means, and therefore you need to turn to other means.”

Milley said that if a diplomatic solution isn’t reached, the US would continue arming Ukraine, and the US and NATO have big plans to support Kyiv for years to come. But Milley reiterated his view that negotiations are possible in an interview with CNBC the following day. “Now, what the future holds is not known with any degree of certainty, but we think there are some possibilities here for some diplomatic solutions,” he said.

His comments came after NBC News reported that some US and Western officials believe this winter will bring an opportunity for peace talks. But The New York Times reported on Thursday that Milley is at odds with other high-level US officials over his stance.

The Times report said that President Biden’s advisors have concluded that the moment is not ripe for peace talks and that the US shouldn’t be pressuring Ukraine to negotiate. The White House has been careful to maintain that it’s not nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table, with Biden repeating on Wednesday that the US won’t pursue anything about Ukraine “without Ukraine.”

But National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan did visit Kyiv last week and reportedly asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to soften his stance on negotiations. Zelensky previously ruled out talks with Russia as long as Vladimir Putin is president, but he dropped that position this week, although he is maintaining maximalist demands as preconditions for talks.

The comments from Milley and Sullivan’s request of Zelensky mark a significant shift in the US’s stance on negotiations. Up to this point, the Biden administration had discouraged diplomacy even when a deal was within reach after Ukraine and Russia held in-person peace talks in Istanbul at the end of March.

After the Istanbul talks, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kyiv and urged against negotiations with Russia. Once it was clear there would be no deal, the US said its goal was to “weaken” Russia, and Congress passed a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine.

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

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Government orchestrated attacks against high-profile physicians successfully treating covid patients with early treatment protocols and warning about the dangers of covid vaccines continue, with world renowned cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough as one of their latest targets.

In this interview, Dr. McCullough, who describes himself as the first physician in the U.S. to face losing his board certifications for political reasons, lays out the details of his experience.

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This video was originally published on The Whistleblower Newsroom.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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

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The federal government is throwing away more COVID-19 vaccines, with nearly eight million doses of the Moderna vaccines discarded due to drying-up demand in Canada and around the world.

The National Post reported in June that the government had thrown away 1.2 million doses of Moderna’s shot that had expired, along with 13.6 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. The number of expired Moderna shots has now risen to 7.7 million and the government has also now disposed of 3.1 million doses of the Novavax vaccine. About 7,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine has been thrown away.

The federal government’s data for discarded vaccines are current as of the end of October this year and don’t include vaccines that may have expired and were discarded after they were sent to provincial governments.

Canada ordered tens of millions of doses from seven different manufacturers before any of the vaccines had cleared clinical trials, at a cost of more than $9 billion.

Click here to read the full article on National Post.

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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Since the summer of 2018, Haiti has been experiencing mass protests. Thousands of Haitians have taken to the streets to express their frustration and anger regarding the current social conditions on the island. The social upheavals are a cause of concern for all progressive people, especially since the unrest has increased since August 22 of this year.

What is more troubling is that acting President of Haiti Ariel Henry, addressing the country, remarked that the government intends to request international “assistance” to deal with the social crisis in Haiti. Ariel Henry officially wrote to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres that the UN should intervene militarily to bring the situation back to normal. Secretary-General Guterres on October 10 urged the international community to review deploying military forces to Haiti to resolve the crisis situation.

Haiti’s Sovereignty Always Under Attack

Shortly after the comments from Ariel Henry, the United States Government sent a delegation to Haiti supposedly to “review” Henry’s request; on Monday October 17, the UN Security Council met to discuss a suggestion from the United States and Mexico to send in non-UN forces and later announced the imposition of sanctions against “gang” leaders. These developments are troublesome and the erroneously misleading narrative of “gang violence” is establishing an ideological justification for military intervention—United States military intervention.

The United States and Canada have delivered military machinery to Haiti under the suspicious title of “security equipment”; this “security equipment” includes armored and tactical vehicles to be used to strengthen the police to fight “criminal gangs.” It is reported that, by October 28, Haiti will receive additional delivery of military machinery.

This request by Ariel Henry is tantamount to treason and António Guterres’s comments are not only suggestively racist but also an affront to the sovereignty and independence of Haiti. To request outside military intervention, to solve problems of your country, is a sellout of the sacrifices the enslaved Africans made to achieve their freedom and set up their own independent state.

Underlying the call for intervention is the age-old erroneous premise that Black people are incapable of governing themselves and hence need white people to guide and manage their affairs. This is without question an infringement on International Law and the UN Charter regarding the non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries. I strongly doubt that Guterres would make such a suggestion were Haiti a white country.

The Crisis in Haiti Is Imperialist-Made

In 1791 the enslaved people of Haiti carried out the first successful slave revolution and in 1804 established the first Black Republic in the Western Hemisphere. For the next 218 years the people of Haiti have been engaged in a constant struggle to further develop and carry out the intent of their revolution for self-determination, social justice and socio-economic independence.

These goals have become unattainable because of occupation, dictatorship, destabilization, theft by Wall Street financial interests aided by the United States military, governmental corruption, natural disasters and, most critically, the payment of reparations to their former enslavers. Haitians have had to pay in cash for their freedom from enslavement and subsequent independence; the imperialist powers and the local and foreign oligarchs have all benefited from this immoral, ridiculous and treacherous policy.

Since the establishment of the Republic of Haiti, the response from the colonialists and international imperialism has been to punish Haiti and crush the revolution and its original goals of a just and equitable society and self-determination. In May 2022 The New York Times published an expose that lays bare the genesis of Haiti’s problems.

In a series titled “The Root Of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers,” the article in part says:

“The colony made many French families fabulously rich.…It was also…the world’s most brutal.…But for generations after independence, Haitians were forced to pay the descendants of their former slave masters…The burdens continued well into the 20^thcentury.”

The piece continues:

“The wealth…coaxed from the ground brought wild profits for a French Bank that helped finance the Eiffel Tower…Haiti’s riches lured Wall Street, too, delivering big margins for the institution that ultimately became Citigroup.”

According to the Times the financial loss to Haiti is approximately $115 billion, “eight times the size of its economy in 2020.” The United States invaded and occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934; prior to this, in 1914 the United States stole $500,000 worth of gold from the National Bank of Haiti, which was then transported to the United States by the military vessel USS Machias. The gold ended up in the vault of Hallgarten & Co. a City Bank (later known as CitiBank) affiliate.

Added to this, the country was also devastated by the U.S.-instigated and supported dictatorship of François Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) and later his son Jean-Claude Duvalier “Baby Doc” from 1957 to 1986, who both ruled the nation with iron fists.

Corruption by the Duvaliers and other government officials, and murderous repression through the para-military group the Tonton Macoute, tortured and killed opponents including ordinary citizens. Haiti’s woes were not over as the country suffered two U.S.-orchestrated and executed military coups against democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, first in 1991 and again in 2004.

U.S. Imperialism’s Attempt to “Destroy” Haiti

Haiti’s attempt both to feed itself and improve the social conditions of its citizens were directly thwarted by the United States government by flooding Haiti with rice grown by U.S.-subsidized farmers and sold much cheaper than that locally produced.

The Canada-Haiti Information Project has reported that “since 1995 the U.S. has given over $13 billion in subsidies to American rice farmers…That keeps the price of American rice exported to Haiti significantly lower than rice produced by Haitian farmers.” This arrangement puts the local farmers at a great disadvantage because they cannot compete with such an unfair and disproportionate arrangement and eventually forces many of them out of business.

The Haitian parliament made an attempt to raise the standard of living for the citizens by raising the minimum wage to $5 per day; the United States on behalf of the textile companies intervened and had the bill blocked.

Haiti was part of the PetroCaribe Agreement that was set up in 2005 by Venezuela under late President Hugo Chávez. The Agreement in part offered affordable prices on petroleum products and to promote socio-economic development by eliminating inequality and improving the quality of life in the partner countries. The illegal and immoral sanctions imposed on Venezuela prevented Haiti from participating in the program and receiving affordable petroleum products, hence the increase and scarcity of fuel in the country.

What Is to Be Done

The current social crisis in Haiti has extraordinarily little to do with “gangs” but is a result of machinations carried out by the Core Group led by the United States and their allies: Canada, France, the European Union (EU) and the lackey Organization of American States (OAS).

The citizens of Haiti have taken to the streets across the country to protest their frustration against economic misery: food insecurity; increasing inflation; high fuel prices and shortage; and an end to foreign interference and intervention in the internal affairs of the country.

Most importantly, the protesters are demanding the resignation of acting President Ariel Henry, who they say is incapable of addressing the socio-economic issues and bringing peace and stability to the country.

In order for Haiti to begin the long and arduous road to recovery the following needs to be done:

• The United States and its allies—especially Canada, France and Britain—must immediately stop interfering in the internal affairs of Haiti.
• There must be NO military intervention, UN or otherwise.
• There must be NO support for foreign intervention in Haiti, disguised as “assistance” by organizations such as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Organization of American States (OAS), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), or the African Union (AU).
• The United States and its allies must stop supporting a repressive, corrupt and illegitimate regime represented by Ariel Henry and the local oligarchy.
• Progressive forces, internationally and within the African diaspora especially, must demonstrate solidarity with the people of Haiti by engaging their respective elected officials and participatory social action to thwart any impending military action and allow the people of Haiti to solve their own problems, in their own way.

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Richard Dunn is a retired construction professional, trained in Architecture and Energy Management. He’s been a social justice activist since 1968 and was particularly active with the Walter Rodney defense demonstrations. Richard is an author, a contributing columnist to newspapers, an editor for a music industry magazine and operates a social justice website. Richard can be reached at: [email protected].

Featured image: It took Haiti 122 years to pay off its debt of independence, a neocolonial strategy that remains in place and leads to chronic underdevelopment. Photo: Juvenal Balán

Since the union of Crimea with Russia in March 2014, the entry into the sea of Azov is fully controlled by Russia. (see image below).

The following article is a revised and update of an earlier GR article by Michel Chossudovsky   It provides a brief summary of the Geopolitics of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov as well as observations on the Ukraine War.

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An Act of sabotage of the Kerch Strait bridge was perpetrated (October 8, 2022). The Kerch bridge  is strategic: it links Crimea (by road and rail) to Russia’s Krasnodar region. 

This article first published on June 5, 2022 provides a geopolitical analysis of the Kerch straight, focussing on strategic waterways. 

Our brief assessment of the Ukraine War in early June (largely confirmed by subsequent reports) was the following (for details scroll down):

• Ukraine is not in a position to win this war. 
• Ukraine is without a Navy and without an Air Force which was destroyed at the outset in late February 2022.
• Ukraine has no maritime access to the Sea of Azov and Eastern Ukraine, nor does it have naval power in the Black Sea.
• The Peace Negotiations initiated in Istanbul in late March, which were the object of political sabotage constitute the only solution. 
• All major ports on the Sea of Azov are under Russian control.
• While Russia decided for strategic reasons to retreat from Kherson (November 11, 2022) it remains partially in control of the access of Ukraine’s major river-way the Dnieper to and from the Black Sea
• The Dnieper is in some regards a seaway. The Dnieper is a major corridor for grain cargo transportation.

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Introduction

Historically, the Kerch strait in Eastern Crimea has played a strategic role.

It constitutes a narrow maritime gateway which links the Black Sea via the Sea of Azov to Russia’s major waterways including the Don and the Volga.

It also ensures maritime transit from the Black Sea to Moscow not to mention the strategic maritime route between the Caspian Sea (via the Volga-Don Canal) to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. 

Map: The United Deep Waterway System of European Russia.

The Volga also links the Caspian Sea to the Baltic Sea as well as to the Northern Sea route, via the Volga–Baltic Waterway.  (See above)

The Volga is connected to a system of canals (via lakes Onega, Ladoga) to the Neva River and St Petersburg. (See map below)

What is at stake is an integrated system of waterways which connects the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea to the Baltic and the Northern Sea Route.

In this regard the narrow Kerch Strait in Eastern Crimea is strategic.

Since 2014, the reunion of Crimea to the Russian Federation, represented a major setback for US-NATO, whose longstanding objective was to integrate Ukraine into NATO, while extending Western military presence in the Black Sea basin. (See details below)

Brief Observations on the Ukraine War: The Sea of Azov is Strategic. Ukraine Has No Maritime Access. 

In regards to the Ukraine War, Russia’s control of the Kerch Strait plays a key role. In recent developments (June 2022), Russia now controls the entire basin of the Sea of Azov.

Ukraine has no maritime access to the Sea of Azov and Eastern Ukraine, nor does it have naval power in the Black Sea.

Without a navy (and without an Air Force which was destroyed at the outset in late February), Ukraine is not in a position to win this war. The Peace Negotiations initiated in Istanbul in late March, which were the object of political sabotage constitute the only solution. 

Ukraine’s Naval Base Berdyansk (a 2020 initiative of Zelensky) on the Western Azov coastline is under Russian control. All major ports on the Sea of Azov are under Russian control.

Russia largely controls the access of Ukraine’s major river-way the Dnieper to and from the Black Sea  (see second map below: The Dnieper is in some regards a seaway.) The Dnieper is a major corridor of grain cargo transportation.

In the context of the Ukraine War, through their military deployments in Donetsk and Lugansk, Russian forces have  consolidated their control over the entire Sea of Azov basin.

The map below (June 2, 2022) indicates the areas of deployment and Russian control from the North of Lugansk (territories opposite Kharkov) to Kherson on the Dnieper.

Update, November 13, 2022

The map below describes the situation on November 11, 2022 following the strategic withdrawal of Russian forces from Kherson, which is situated on the western coastline of the Dnieper River. The entrance of the Dnieper to the Black Sea remains “partially” controlled by Russia.

Flashback: The 2014 Treaty between Russia and Crimea

With the March 18, 2014 Treaty signed between Russia and Crimea, the Russian Federation has extended its control over the Black Sea as well as over the Sea of Azov.

Under the agreement between Russia and Crimea announced by president Putin in 2014, two “constituent regions” of Crimea joined the Russian Federation: the “Republic of Crimea” and the “City of Sevastopol”. Both have the status of “autonomous regions”. The status of Sevastopol as an autonomous entity separate from Crimea is related to the location of Russia’s Naval base in Sevastopol.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia retained its naval base in Sevastopol under a bilateral agreement with Ukraine. With the signing of the March 18th 2014 Treaty, that agreement became null and void. Sevastopol including the Russian naval base became part of an autonomous region within the Russian Federation. Prior to March 2014, the naval base was not within Ukraine under a lease agreement. Moreover, since 2014, Crimea’s territorial waters belong to the Russian Federation.

Following the union of Crimea to Russia, The Russian Federation now controls a much larger portion of the Black Sea, which includes the entire coastline of the Crimean peninsula. The Eastern part of Crimea –including the Kerch strait– are under Russia’s jurisdiction. On the Eastern side of the Kerch strait is Russia’s Krasnodar region and extending  southwards are the port cities of Novorossiysk and Sochi. 

The Geopolitics of  Oil and Gas Pipelines

Novorossiysk is also strategic. It is Russia’s largest commercial port on the Black Sea, at the cross-roads of major oil and gas pipelines between the Black Sea and the Caspian sea.

While the main strategic oil pipeline route is between Novorossiysk and Baku, there is a nexus of gas pipelines between Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkmenistan, linking up with China.

Prior to Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Putin signed “a wide-ranging agreement” with the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.

Kerch Strait: History

Historically, the Kerch strait has played a strategic role. It constitutes a gateway from the Black Sea to Russia’s major waterways including the Don and the Volga.

During World War II, the Kerch peninsula was occupied by Nazi Germany (taken back by the Red Army) was an important point of transit by land and water.

In the coldest months of Winter, it became an ice bridge linking Crimea to the Krasnodar region.

The Kerch strait is about 5 kilometers in length and 4.5 km. wide at the narrowest point between the tip of Eastern Crimea and the peninsula of Taman. Kerch is a major commercial port linked to railway, ferry and river routes.

image right: Kerch strait, photo taken from Crimean side, (prior to the construction of the bridge) narrow width, aerial view of strait and Taman peninsula. 

The Sea of Azov: Geopolitical Hub

Of significance, as a result of the integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation in 2014 Moscow gained full control of the Kerch Strait linking the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. The bilateral agreement between Russia and Ukraine governing the maritime route through the Kerch straights was scrapped.

The strait also constitutes an entry point into Russia’s major river waterways.

The Sea of Azov connects with the Don River and the Volga, through the Volga Don Canal. In turn, the Volga flows into the Caspian sea.

The Kerch strait is strategic.  The Kerch-Yenikalskiy Canal allows large (ocean) vessels to transit from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov.

As outlined above, the Kerch Strait links the Black Sea to the Volga via the sea of Azov and the Volga Don Canal which in turn connects to Saint Petersburg and the Baltic Sea. The Volga also connects to Moscow, via the Moscow river through the Volga-Moskva canal.

Note: The Caspian sea basin is in sense “landlocked”. It’s only access to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean is via the Volga. The same applies to its access to the Atlantic via the Baltic Sea, or via the White Sea, the Barents Sea and the Northeast Arctic Passage to the Pacific.

Strategic waterways. In Summary

1. Caspian Sea- Volga, Volga-Don Canal, Don, – Sea of Azov -Black Sea, Mediterranean
2. Black Sea- Sea of Azov -Don- Volga Don Canal -Volga -Volga-Moskva Canal, Moscow River, Moscow
3. Black Sea- Sea of Azov -Don- Volga Don Canal -Volga -Neva, St Petersburg, Baltic Sea
4. Caspian Sea, Volga, Neva, Svir, Onega Lake, White Sea Canal, North Sea and Northeast Arctic Passage

Volga-Don Canal

Russia-Ukraine Relations Regarding the Kerch Strait

In December 2013, Moscow signed a bilateral agreement with the Yanukovych government in Kiev pertaining to the construction of a bridge across the Kerch Strait, connecting Eastern Crimea (which was part of Ukraine) with Russia’s Krasnodar region.

That agreement was a followup to an initial agreement signed in April 2010 between the two governments.

The Russia-Ukraine 2013 agreement pertaining to the construction of the bridge had, for all purposes already been scrapped before March 16, 2014.

Image right: new Kerch bridge links Eastern Crimea (road and rail transportation) to  Russia’s Krasnodar region. (image right).

Crimea’s union to Russia was already in the pipeline prior to the referendum, it was a fait accompli.

Less than two weeks before the March 16 2014 Referendum, at the height of the crisis in Ukraine, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the state-road building corporation Avtodor, or “Russian Highways” “to create a subsidiary company that would oversee the building of a bridge across the Kerch Strait”.

This bridge is geared towards train transport routes linking Western and Eastern Europe to the Caspian Sea basin, Kazakhstan and China. It is therefore an integral part of the Eurasian Project (linking up with China’s Belt and Road initiative).  

To our readers and contributors,

We appreciate all the support you have shared with us, especially in the last two years when disinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic imperiled the lives of all mankind. Thank you for holding the line.

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky has recently released his eBook entitled The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity.

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First published on September 7, 2022

Suggest you consult the updated report on the deaths of Canadian Doctors (November 14, 2022) (click below)

Video: 90 Sudden or Unexpected Canadian Doctor Deaths: Dr. William Markis Interview

By William Markis, November 13, 2022

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La rassegna stampa internazionale di Byoblu | 72° puntata

Il presidente ucraino Zelensky, recitando il copione scritto da Washington, annuncia come precondizione per l’apertura di un negoziato con la Russia che questa ripristini l’integrità territoriale dell’Ucraina, ossia rimetta nelle mani di Kiev la Crimea e il Donbass abitati da popolazioni russe, paghi a Kiev i danni di guerra e si sottoponga a un processo internazionale per crimini di guerra. Allo stesso tempo Washington, recitando il ruolo di mediatore di pace, dichiara di voler mantenere la porta aperta ai negoziati di pace, mentre continua ad alimentare la guerra con massicce forniture di armi a Kiev del valore, fino ad oggi, di 18 miliardi di dollari.

In Ucraina il capo della Chiesa ortodossa di Kiev, che ha rotto con il patriarcato di Mosca, dichiara che chi uccide i russi è perdonato e che Vladimir Putin è l’anticristo. Su questa base è in corso in tutta l’Ucraina un attacco alle chiese delle parrocchie ortodosse russe, rimaste collegate al Patriarcato di Mosca, effettuato da formazioni armate neonaziste che sfondano le porte delle chiese e picchiano i fedeli. Mentre tutto ciò è in corso in Ucraina, uno dei massimi esponenti neonazisti del battaglione Azov, presentato come eroe, è in tournée nelle scuole degli Stati Uniti e riceve premi internazionali.

Su questo sfondo si colloca l’intervista, effettuata a Mosca da Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti per conto di Grandangolo, a Olga Zinoviev, responsabile del Centro internazionale di ricerca e formazione Zinoviev all’Università Statale di Mosca, copresidente del Club Zinoviev.

Manlio Dinucci

This incisive article by Shane Quinn was first published on July 27, 2020

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The First World War showed plainly that the resort to armed conflict is the most devious and damaging of all policies. Even in the heart of militaristic Europe, the folly of war had long been noted by prominent and shrewd commanders, such as the Prussian General Hans von Seeckt, one of the most powerful men in Germany from the early 1920s. After taking a neutral stand in Berlin during the failed March 1920 Kapp Putsch, von Seeckt became head of the new German Army, the Reichswehr, and he was responsible for its reorganisation, tactics, training, etc.

Von Seeckt had devoted his life to military affairs and somebody, one can assume, would have represented the very embodiment of armed violence. However, by the early 1930s von Seeckt came to the opinion that “war, far from being a continuation of policy, had become rather the bankruptcy of policy”. Looking back, he drew some obvious conclusions from the bloodletting of the First World War, when he had been Chief of Staff to Field Marshal August von Mackensen. Von Seeckt’s concern was not so much of an ethical nature, but simply because he felt “war was no longer an intelligent way to conduct a nation’s policy”.

The military theorist and historian, Lt. Col. Donald J. Goodspeed, wrote how,

“General von Seeckt knew his subject thoroughly well. Far better, unfortunately, than did Corporal Hitler who was soon to assume command of Germany’s defence forces. Even before the invention of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons, war had become too dangerous and uncertain for responsible men to embark on willingly. If force was still to be used in national and international affairs, it was obvious to people like General von Seeckt that it would have to be in some other form than conventional war”.

Von Seeckt was supported previously in his misgivings about war by Vladimir Lenin, another astute observer and, like von Seeckt, hardly a soft touch. The Russian leader believed that fighting wars was “a survival from the bourgeois world” and “should be replaced by the class struggle and the seizure of power by the Communist minority”. Lenin expounded that military combat would have to be discarded once and for all.

By the 1920s and 1930s it was indeed clear that war, not only morally redundant, had also become too unpredictable and costly for rational heads of state to pursue. Sadly, there have not been too many of these in power since the early 20th century. A generation after Lenin and von Seeckt, stern trepidations regarding war were expressed by Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. These esteemed figures were a little late to the party with their forebodings in 1955, a decade into the nuclear age, when they stated, “Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”

Nevertheless their concerns remain entirely relevant, as humanity has done anything but renounce war. The realities of conflict have been disregarded; most frequently of all by the irresponsible leaders of the Western powers, principally America, the nation which has fought the most wars in living memory.

From the early 1950s Washington was centrally involved in the Korean War, through which its air force levelled great swathes of Korea and also destroyed dams. Subsequent to that came the invasion of Vietnam, initiated by president John F. Kennedy, then escalated from the mid-1960s to Laos and Cambodia by his successors Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

During the past three decades alone, the US has invaded other countries such as Panama, Iraq on two occasions, the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. Since the disappearance of the Soviet bloc, much of Washington’s focus has been on the Middle East, which may not be surprising considering this region holds almost 50% of the world’s known oil sources. The US strategy of military means in the Middle East is self-defeating, costly (most of all to the local inhabitants) and has contributed to America’s decline as a world power.

China on the other hand, mainly through its vastly ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has proceeded in its foreign ventures for the large part with due care, and through non-military actions; as Beijing attempts to overtake US power in the Middle East and surrounding territories. China’s Belt and Road policy is centred on financial investments, dialogue and mutual understanding, rather than intimidation by arms.

China is consequently the Middle East’s largest investor, and its trade there is increasing year-on-year. There are indications that Beijing’s influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf will rise continually in the time ahead, and this will have significant repercussions for Washington. The Middle East’s leaders, wearied by war, terrorism and US drone strikes, have responded to Beijing’s financial plans “with open arms”. The Middle East already accounts for over 40% of China’s oil imports.

Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Secretary of Defense, said in June 2003 that Iraq “floats on a sea of oil”, unlike North Korea as he pointed out. Yet in attacking an Iraq undermined by a decade of Western sanctions, the Bush administration and its oil industry bosses finished up with nothing. Worse was to come as the occupation pushed Iraq closer to its neighbour Iran – and Iraq’s biggest trading partner today is none other than Iran. Together, Iraq and Iran possess almost 20% of the planet’s oil reserves, so the scale of US decline in the Middle East becomes apparent.

Following the Iraq fiasco, Washington has turned much of its gaze towards its primary foe, China. Although the attempted military encirclement of China was enacted by Barack Obama, the level of US arms expenditure – already much larger than any other nation – has increased under Donald Trump as US-Chinese relations worsen. In February 2020 the US president said “we have invested a record-breaking $2.2 trillion in the United States military” including the purchase of “the finest planes, missiles, rockets, ships, and every other form of military equipment”.

Washington’s dependence on its strength of arms is a double-edged sword, as experienced generals like von Seeckt would surely have recognised. The US Army is a colossus with feet of clay, and this became clear with the inability to bend Iraq to its will, or Afghanistan. The threat of force once more involves ominous dangers, not only to China but to the United States. Both being nuclear powers, any war which descends to a nuclear one is unthinkable.

In recent weeks, heavily armed US destroyers have been advancing northwards closer to Beijing, along the East China Sea and Yellow Sea, within short distance too of Shanghai, China’s biggest port and most populous city. In mid-April 2020 an American guided-missile destroyer, the USS McCampbell, was spotted in the Yellow Sea less than 50 miles from the coastal city of Weihai, in Shandong province – and fewer than 500 miles from Beijing, with its 20 million residents. Two months ago another American destroyer, the USS Rafael Peralta, was seen early in the morning advancing to within 135 miles of Shanghai.

In greater frequency since 2018, US destroyers have also sailed through the Taiwan Strait beside China’s south-eastern coastline. The Beijing-based military analyst Zhou Chenming, perplexed with the thinking behind these actions, asked of the Americans, “Are they gathering intelligence to destroy China’s developed industrial regions along the east coast in the future? Are they showing their support for Taiwan’s separatist forces? Or are they preparing to fight a war with China?” Nor have these occurrences been limited to naval exercises. Since the start of this year, there have been dozens of American warplane flights over the South China Sea, East China Sea, Yellow Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

The US military patrols astride China’s shores may be in response to Beijing’s growing assertiveness, for instance in the South China Sea; which has changed in status from US-controlled channels to clearly contested waters. Beijing’s annual military spending has risen from almost $40 billion in 1999 to $266 billion by 2019, a near seven-fold increase. The latter figure is still a fraction that of the US arms outlay.

Washington’s encirclement strategy of China has notable limitations. A map of Asia reveals that China is overall far from surrounded. Northwards lies Russia, the world’s largest country. China is the Kremlin’s biggest trading partner, and investment between these neighbours is steadily increasing. Chinese-Russian bilateral trade rose from $69 billion in 2016 to $110 billion by 2019 and their respective leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, seem to have a warm relationship. Long forgotten is the era of the Sino-Soviet split. Dan Coats, Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence, said in early 2019, “China and Russia are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s”.

In December 2019 the Sino-Russian relationship grew closer again, with the opening of the Power of Siberia gas pipeline; on which construction began seven years before and has cost $55 billion. This 1,800 mile long pipeline funnels natural gas from Siberia and southern Russia to north-eastern China. Plans are well advanced to begin assembling a second Power of Siberia pipeline, which would distribute further volumes of Russian gas to China, across nearby Mongolia.

Russia contains the largest gas reserves in the world by some distance, and Moscow has traditionally relied on Europe for its gas exports where US interference is rising. The Power of Siberia pipeline, which is to be extended in future, was laid across some formidable terrain such as swamp land and mountain passes. This feat of engineering may encourage Beijing to overcome its own challenging logistics, pertaining to the proposed Kashgar-Gwadar oil pipeline between China and Pakistan.

Through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is a key element of the Belt and Road, China has been easily the largest investor in Pakistan for years. Pakistan is a strategically important country situated beside the Middle East and Strait of Hormuz. These areas are some of the most crucial on earth, and central to the Belt and Road’s development. It is hoped that the CPEC will spur industrial development across Pakistan.

China is neither hampered by US forces along its western frontiers – in resource rich Central Asia – after the Pentagon, six years ago, was removed from its last remaining Central Asian base in Kyrgyzstan. Had the US military been able to retain its presence at the Manas Air Base, near the Kyrgyzstan capital Bishkek, and less than 200 miles from China’s vital Xinjiang province, it would have stood as an obstacle to the Belt and Road’s expansion. The Americans were instead evicted from this important base in 2014 after a Kyrgyz parliament vote, news that was no doubt welcomed in Beijing. China has since moved in and become Kyrgyzstan’s largest trading partner.

Central Asia is a region where Chinese power has increased beyond all measure, and it is clear that Washington has underestimated Central Asia’s significance. In cooperation with Russia, China is the dominant force and biggest investor in Central Asia through which Chinese pipelines criss-cross, and the Belt and Road continues its construction.

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This article was originally published on Global Village Space.

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

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Updated on November 20, 2022 at 10:14 AM ET.

On the outer edges of the World Wide Web, it isn’t difficult to find people making outlandish claims about ingredients contained in the mRNA and DNA forms of COVID-19 vaccines. As a science-based organization, while strongly disputing assertions that these injections are supposedly proven to be ‘safe’, our Foundation steers a strict course well clear of such speculation. A few days ago, however, an interesting article in the Australian edition of The Spectator, a mainstream British magazine focusing on politics, culture, and current affairs, came to our attention. Authored by journalist Rebecca Weisser, it describes how when examining droplets from the Pfizer mRNA vaccine under a dark-field microscope, Dr. David Nixon, a Brisbane GP, observed what appear to be mechanical arms assembling and disassembling glowing rectangular structures resembling circuitry and microchips. Captured on video, what Nixon filmed is certainly thought-provoking, to say the least.

As The Spectator article describes, the structures Nixon observed in the droplets of vaccine he examined seemed motionless at first. It was only when using time-lapse photography, condensing hours of footage into minutes, that the structures’ movement was revealed. Nixon says the formation of crystals in the droplets seems to be stimulated by electromagnetic radiation, and that this stops when the slide containing the vaccine is shielded by a Faraday bag (a container made from a conducting material that blocks external electromagnetic fields from reaching its interior). The Spectator article suggests Nixon’s findings are similar to those made by other teams from New Zealand, Germany, Spain, and South Korea.

Nixon has apparently shared what he saw with Wendy Hoy, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Centre for Chronic Disease at the University of Queensland in Australia. Recognized internationally for her multidisciplinary research and work in kidney and related chronic disease, Hoy has reportedly called on the Australian government and its health authorities to explain the apparent spontaneous formation of chips and circuitry in mRNA vaccines, and the abnormal objects that are claimed to have been seen in the blood of vaccinated people. It will be interesting to see what response she gets.

Mounting controversy

Nixon’s findings seemingly heap still further controversy on the mRNA and DNA forms of vaccines used against COVID-19. Serious side effects now attributed to the injections include severe liver damage; very low platelet counts (thrombocytopenia); high rates of severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reactions (anaphylaxis); inflammation of the heart muscle (myocarditis); blood clots (thrombosis); and even death. With analysis by British Medical Journal senior editor Peter Doshi and colleagues showing the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are statistically more likely to cause serious adverse events than they are to prevent hospitalization, it is long since time that their use should have been suspended.

Do Nixon’s bizarre videos really show mechanical arms assembling and disassembling circuitry and microchips? Frankly, without further evidence, it is impossible to say for sure. But whatever the structures filmed by Nixon are, one thing seems for sure in that the controversy surrounding mRNA- and DNA-based COVID-19 vaccines is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

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Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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For the past two and a half years humanity has been in the grip of a global psychological and economic war. Unlike the two world wars of the twentieth century, which mainly affected the belligerent nations and their neighboring countries, the corona crisis is truly global in scope. No matter where one resides on this planet, one cannot escape either the economic or mental health implications of this crisis.

In The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Michel Chossudovsky succinctly and methodically pierces through the numerous layers of lies surrounding the “pandemic.”

From his thorough analysis the reader comes to understand that nothing about the crisis, including its origins, occurred by chance but was purposefully designed to be a war against humanity. As he points out, every aspect of this war—from the fear campaign to the fraudulent use of the RT-PCR test to the experimental injections masquerading as vaccines to the Great Reset with its proto-eugenical agenda—has been carefully orchestrated.

While most economists, including those considered to be on the political left, continue to blame COVID-19 for the destabilization of the global economy, Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. Chossudovsky’s matter-of-fact approach reveals in no uncertain terms who and what organizations are behind the manufactured COVID-19 crisis.

This meticulously researched chronicle is a must-read for anyone wanting to truly understand world events of the past two-and-a-half years.

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David Skripac has a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aerospace Engineering. He served as a Captain in the Canadian Forces for nine years. During his two tours of duty in the Air Force, he flew extensively in the former Yugoslavia as well as in Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Djibouti.

He is the author of a recently published e-book, “Our Species Is Being Genetically Modified,” and a regular contributor to Global Research.

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As a means to reaching out to millions of people worldwide whose lives have been affected by the corona crisis, we have decided in the course of the next few weeks to distribute the eBook for FREE.

Price: $11.50. FREE COPY Click here to download.

Incisive study by Shane Quinn first published on June 6, 2019

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By 1961 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, a group of senior military figures advising the president, had concluded that proposed nuclear attacks across China, the USSR and Warsaw Pact allies would result in over half a billion deaths. Approximately 600 million fatalities.

Yet the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deliberately or subconsciously, were compiling an estimate that was not a complete reflection of reality. The true death toll would have soared towards one billion, quite likely even passing that number and reaching about 1.2 billion dead, double the original calculation.

In 1961, the USSR possessed almost 2,500 nuclear weapons, and had long since developed the far more powerful hydrogen bombs; though at this time, unknown to almost everybody but the Soviet leadership, Moscow held ownership of just four intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of hitting the US mainland with nuclear warheads. The US military then had 170 such long distance missiles in their arsenal.

However, American intelligence had grossly underestimated the number of Soviet nuclear-armed, mid-length missiles and bombers, which were within comfortable striking distance of every NATO state across Europe. The Kremlin had many hundreds of intermediate and medium-range ballistic missiles, along with jet aircraft, primed in responding to a US first strike upon Soviet soil. Even a full force American nuclear attack had the means to take out a mere fraction of the USSR’s ability in retaliating through its own nuclear capabilities.

In riposte to a US first strike, a significant proportion of the Soviets’ surviving nuclear devices would be fired at most, or all, of the following NATO countries: West Germany, France, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece and Turkey – each of which would face annihilation, either from precision hits through Soviet warheads, or via radioactive fallout dispersed on the wind.

By the early 1960s, there were more than 4,000 US nuclear weapons positioned in the above European NATO states, something that Moscow was aware of due to continuous intelligence reports.

It may be important to note that Britain – which first tested an atomic weapon in October 1952 – agreed to take more powerful US nuclear bombs on its territory from September 1954. This “nuclear sharing” policy was far from limited to the UK.

Britain was thereafter copied by the following NATO members, all of which became de facto nuclear powers from these dates, when they accepted US nuclear weapons upon their soil: West Germany in March 1955, Italy in April 1957, France in August 1958, Turkey in February 1959, the Netherlands in April 1960, Greece in October 1960, and lastly Belgium in November 1963.

In an event of nuclear conflict between our planet’s superpowers, the list of countries to face extinction would not be limited to militarized nations. Britain, a key NATO and nuclear power, constituted particularly high priority scope in Soviet and later Russian nuclear war planning. Kremlin reprisal strikes over the UK would most probably have resulted in extensive fallout spreading westwards over neutral Ireland, with less than 400 miles distance between London and Dublin.

Finland was expected to be one of the first to face destruction following US nuclear attacks on Leningrad and her submarine pens.

This radioactive poisoning was anticipated to fan out across neighbouring Sweden, destroying this separate neutral country. NATO state Norway, to the west of Sweden, could also expect wide-scale ruin due to enlarging fallout.

Switzerland, a secretive nation bordering France and Germany, was directly in harm’s way and because of nearby fallout that country would have faced desolation. Likewise neutral Austria, which shared frontiers with Germany and Warsaw Pact states like Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

From 1960, American military plans were formulating to wipe all of the USSR’s Warsaw Pact allies off the face of the earth. This included not merely Czechoslovakia and Hungary but also East Germany, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. In 1960, the population of Warsaw Pact countries (minus the USSR) comprised of 93 million people.

As the plans were developing General Thomas Power, the 55-year-old chief of Strategic Air Command, said in December 1960 that,

“I just hope none of you have any relatives in Albania, because they have a radar station there that is right in our flight path, and we take it out”.

Albania was to be obliterated early, with others to quickly follow. The Warsaw Pact’s destruction with nuclear attacks would, in addition, result in radiation reaching southwards over NATO states Greece and Turkey. These two countries, sharing borders with Warsaw Pact rivals, were likely to face devastation regardless; as Moscow responded to US first strikes with assaults of their own against NATO members and de facto nuclear powers, that were holding American warheads pointed towards Russia.

Furthermore, Tito’s Yugoslavia, also bordering various Warsaw Pact states, would face eradication following close-range fallout from US ground-burst nuclear explosions.

Virtually the whole of the European continent would have been decimated – either from direct hits or through the devastating aftermath – had Pentagon nuclear programs undergone execution as envisaged by its commanders. This included all of Washington’s NATO allies in western and southern Europe.

Come 1961, every urban area in the USSR containing 25,000 people or more was earmarked to be struck with a nuclear warhead.

To put the scale of these plans into perspective, the Soviet Union was a landmass greater in size than both America and Canada put together. Russia by itself is easily the biggest country in the world; but the USSR consisted of another 14 nations spanning thousands of miles across eastern Europe and Central Asia, from Estonia and the Ukraine to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

It was possible for the Pentagon with its new long-range, jet-powered bombers to strike each urban centre in the USSR. In 1961, Washington’s nuclear cargo had climbed to 22,200 bombs, a significant rise from the 18,600 such weapons in 1960. The Kremlin held an aforementioned 2,470 nuclear bombs in 1961, just over a tenth the size of Washington’s arsenal.

A 1959 Soviet census revealed that the USSR was home to almost 210 million people. Large-scale nuclear attacks would have killed off the vast majority of Soviet citizens – again from either the direct impact of scores of cities being razed to the ground, or from fallout spreading far and wide.

Primarily due to budgetary purposes the scheme for conflict with Soviet Russia, as outlined by outgoing president Dwight D. Eisenhower, was for direct escalation to first strikes with nuclear weapons. Conventional or “limited warfare” would be bypassed.

Eisenhower was aware of Pentagon death estimates regarding hundreds of millions of fatalities, but though understandably appalled he accepted the proposals, as too did his fresh-faced successor John F. Kennedy.

Communist China, the fourth largest country in the world, was to be attacked in synchronization with the Soviet Union. After 1950, this stratagem became firmly embedded in US nuclear conflict designs, and war planners were loathed to alter it. General Power himself, when asked at a conference in December 1960 if the Chinese could be spared, dismissed the suggestion when he said,

“I hope nobody thinks of it because it would really screw up the plan”.

In 1961, the US military had over 1,000 jet fighters positioned within striking range of the great USSR and Chinese land spaces; while further hundreds of jets could promptly be called upon if required. The planes were stationed in airfields like those at Kunsan in South Korea and Kadena in Japan, while many more were placed on aircraft carriers surrounding the Sino-Soviet bloc. Other US jets were located at American bases such as in West Germany.

Many of America’s B-47, B-52 and B-58 aircraft were armed with hydrogen bombs, containing an explosive force ranging from five to 25 megatons.

The latter figure, 25 megatons, equates to 25,000 kilotons of explosive power. By comparison, the Nagasaki bomb consisted of 21 kilotons. In this case, the most destructive hydrogen bombs were well over 1,000 times more powerful than the weapon which brought ruin to Nagasaki.

By 1962, Washington held about 500 of these 25 megaton mammoths. One 25 megaton weapon contained within it more firepower than all of the bombs and shells dropped throughout the combined wars in human history.

Elsewhere, China’s population in 1961 comprised 660 million people, dwarfing the Soviet populace. In late 1960, a US military briefing calculated that proposed nuclear attacks against China, along with ensuing fallout, would kill around 300 million people.

Pentagon war plans also entailed hitting every Chinese city. China was less than half the USSR’s size, and so could be attacked en masse more rapidly, with the inevitable fallout not having as large a distance to travel. A true death toll in China was most likely closer to 600 million. China was already under threat, as from January 1958 US nuclear-armed missiles were being stockpiled on the island of Taiwan, less than 200 miles from China’s eastern coast. These Matador cruise missiles were within range of big metropolitan areas like Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Blowing up hundreds of Chinese and Soviet cities would have grave consequences for many other Asian states. The most notable of these was India, which shares a border with China to the north, and was home to over 450 million people in the early 1960s. Following nuclear attacks throughout China, radioactive material was anticipated to move southwards over India, killing untold more millions.

Afghanistan, sharing frontiers with China and the USSR, would face large-scale ruin from enveloping fallout – while neighbouring Pakistan, bordering China and India, could expect its fair share of radioactive substance. Further Asian countries resting upon China’s boundary to the south may likely have experienced widespread radiation, such as Nepal, Bhutan, Burma (Myanmar), Laos and Vietnam, five nations with a combined population of 65 million in 1960.

Significantly, the USSR’s broad military apparatus would also have responded to US nuclear attacks upon her soil, emanating from the western superpower’s air bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam, etc. In 1961, Okinawa alone was hosting almost 800 American nuclear bombs, while the nation of South Korea had about 600 such weapons. Guam, a tiny island in the western Pacific, was at the time holding 300 US nuclear warheads.

As relating to Europe, the Soviets had growing numbers of medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) and bombers focused on US military bases in the Pacific region – a reality further escaping the attention of American intelligence services.

US first strikes, this time on the southern and eastern USSR, cannot have been remotely sufficient in eliminating a major Russian nuclear reply against US allies like South Korea and Japan. Both these latter countries would have been blown into dust during a nuclear war. As a consequence, North Korea could have faced destruction due to close-in fallout expanding quickly from the devastated South Korean capital Seoul.

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

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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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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The same swing states where the last presidential election was stolen are again showing the mysterious sharp upward readjustment of the vote count for Democrat candidates.  In Arizona where election day vote counting is on hold, mysterious tranches of votes keep arriving days after the election for the Democrat candidate for governor–17,000 here, 5,000 there.  Tucker Carlson asked who benefits from long delays in vote counting.  He investigated and reported that a Democrat won in 12 out of 13 delays in arriving at the outcome.

Here is a report showing the same spikes in votes for Democrats in last Tuesday’s election that we saw in the stolen presidential election.  These spikes don’t happen for Republicans except when computer adjustments of the margins of victory for Democrats become too large to be believable.  Then there is a spike in the red vote to eliminate the unbelievable margin of Democrat victory. See this. 

The fact of the matter is that power, not democracy, is the Democrats’ goal.  Their goal of revolutionizing society and over-riding parental authority, the traditional family, and Constitutional rights such as the First and Second Amendments leaves no room for self-government by the people.  The American people are being coerced into the revolution by the education system that is used to indoctrinate children and by “crises,” such as the “war on terror” and “covid pandemic,” that are used to vitiate the US Constitution. 

The revolution is gradual but steady.  Younger generations are born into “the new normality” and think that all that is being erased is “white racism” and an unfounded belief that some sexual preferences are perverse.

Every week that passes brings new restraints on liberty.  We have reached the point where challenges to official narratives are censored and MAGA Republicans are fired and refused jobs by a new generation of Woke business executives. 

The FBI and Department of Justice (sic) are politicized and used with impunity as weapons in the hands of Democrats.

And still Americans vote for Democrats?   

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has publicly warned that COVID is one of the Top 10 causes of death in children aged 5 to 11, yet when asked to produce the data, they admitted they never conducted an analysis for that age group

The CDC has also lied about Pfizer’s study results. While claiming the Pfizer jab was 92% effective for those with previous COVID infection, the actual trial data found NO evidence of efficacy in those with previous infection

In July 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration quietly disclosed finding an increase in four types of serious adverse events in elderly people who received Pfizer’s COVID jab: acute myocardial infarction, disseminated intravascular coagulation, immune thrombocytopenia, and pulmonary embolism. However, more than a year later, that study still has not been published

The FDA is also hiding other studies. Buried inside a study protocol, the FDA discusses findings from an unpublished “cohort study of the third dose safety in the Medicare population where historical controls were used.” In that Medicare study the FDA found a significant risk for immune thrombocytopenia and acute myocardial infarction among those with prior COVID-19 diagnosis, as well as an increased risk of Bell’s palsy and pulmonary embolism in general

Analysis of the CDC’s Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Reports (MMWR) reveals the CDC is systematically (and automatically) hiding jab-related deaths, particularly in categories like cancer, cardiac deaths and strokes, to make the shots appear unrelated to excess deaths

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention jointly run and, allegedly, monitor the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) for safety signals.

Both agencies have been blatantly derelict in their duties in this regard, as the safety signals in VAERS have been screaming for attention since the first quarter of 2021. Yet both the FDA and CDC claim they’ve found nothing of concern. Nothing at all.

They’re so unconcerned they even added the COVID jabs to the childhood vaccination schedule, with the first jab series to be given to toddlers and babies as young as 6 months. Meanwhile, data from around the world, including data in VAERS,¹ V-Safe and the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), suggest these shots are the deadliest in the history of vaccines. No other product comes even close.

CDC Invents Facts to Drive a Narrative

In the video above, Megyn Kelly interviews Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the difficulty in determining how many lives may have been saved by the COVID shots, versus how many lives have been lost because of them, and highlights some of the outright false statements issued by the CDC.

For example, the CDC has publicly warned that COVID is one of the Top 10 causes of death in children aged 5 to 11, yet when asked to produce the data, they admitted they never conducted an analysis for that age group.

So how did they conclude that COVID is a top cause of death in an age group they’ve never analyzed mortality data for? The rational conclusion is that they just made it up.

As noted by Kennedy, the CDC is also discouraging autopsies of people who die post-jab, and they’re engaging in a whole host of other obfuscation tactics that make good data hard to come by, and this has been going on since the very beginning of the pandemic.

FDA Is Withholding Crucial Study Findings

The FDA is also guilty of massive data obfuscation. In a recent BMJ article,² investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi discusses the FDA’s failure to follow up on and release data showing an increase in serious adverse events in elderly individuals who received the Pfizer shot:

“In July 2021 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quietly disclosed findings of a potential increase in four types of serious adverse events in elderly people who had had Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine: acute myocardial infarction, disseminated intravascular coagulation, immune thrombocytopenia, and pulmonary embolism.

Little detail was provided, such as the magnitude of the increased potential risk, and no press release or other alert was sent to doctors or the public. The FDA promised it would ‘share further updates and information with the public as they become available.’

Eighteen days later, the FDA published a study planning document (or protocol) outlining a follow-up epidemiological study intended to investigate the matter more thoroughly.

This recondite technical document disclosed the unadjusted relative risk ratio estimates originally found for the four serious adverse events, which ranged from 42% to 91% increased risk. (Neither absolute risk increases nor confidence intervals were provided.)

More than a year later, however, the status and results of the follow-up study are unknown. The agency has not published a press release, or notified doctors, or published the findings by preprint or the scientific literature or updated the vaccine’s product label.

The BMJ has also learnt that the FDA has not publicly warned of similar signals detected in a separate observational cohort study³ it conducted of the third dose (first booster dose) in the elderly …

[Nor] has the agency publicly acknowledged other published observational studies or clinical trial reanalyses reporting compatible results. Experts spoke to The BMJ about their concerns about the data and have called on the FDA to notify the public immediately.”

Serious Side Effects in Seniors Are Being Hidden

As explained by Demasi,⁴ the July 2021 findings came from a surveillance system called Rapid Cycle Analysis (RCA), which provides “near real-time” monitoring of 14 “adverse events of special interest.” Like VAERS and other surveillance tools, the RCA cannot establish causality, but unlike the others, its strength lies in detecting potential safety signals more rapidly.

The FDA’s protocol document for the planned follow-up study indicates that a manuscript of the original RCA study is being prepared, but more than a year later, neither the original RCA study nor the follow-up study have been published. Why?

The FDA is also hiding other studies. Buried inside yet another study protocol, the FDA discusses findings from “a cohort study of the third dose safety in the Medicare population where historical controls were used.” In that Medicare study, the FDA found:

“… a statistically significant risk for immune thrombocytopenia (incidence rate ratio 1.66, confidence interval 1.17 to 2.29) and acute myocardial infarction (IRR 1.15, CI 1.02 to 1.29) among people with prior COVID-19 diagnosis as well as an increased risk of Bell’s palsy (IRR 1.11, CI 1.03 to 1.19) and pulmonary embolism (IRR 1.05, CI 1.0001 to 1.100) in general.”

Why were those results buried in a study protocol and never published or announced to the public? As noted by Dr. Joseph Fraiman, an emergency medicine physician in New Orleans, “If the FDA is stating publicly that they’re collecting [data], then they should be publicly reporting it. They shouldn’t be burying the results in protocols as they’ve done.”⁵

Dutch epidemiologist and president of the International Society of Drug Bulletins, Dick Bijl, agrees, telling Demasi that any warning signals found in July 2021 “should have been analyzed and published within months.”

Reanalysis of Trial Data Confirms Safety Problems

Fraiman is particularly concerned as his team recently reanalyzed data from the Pfizer and Moderna Phase 3 trials, finding results that match those that the FDA are now hiding.

Their reanalysis,⁶ which focused on serious adverse events highlighted in a World Health Organization-endorsed ‘priority list⁷ of potential adverse events relevant to the COVID-19 shots, found Pfizer’s shot was associated with an increased risk of serious adverse events at a rate of 10.1 events per 10,000. The rate for Moderna’s jab was 15.1 events per 10,000.

Fraiman’s analysis stressed that this level of risk for a post-injection event was significantly greater than the risk reduction for COVID-related hospitalization found in both trials, which was only 2.3 per 10,000 participants in the Pfizer trial and 6.4 per 10,000 in the Moderna trial.

In short, the shots are far more likely to land you in the hospital than COVID-19 itself. For every 800 jab recipients, one person will suffer a serious injury. Meanwhile, some 5,000 must get the Pfizer jab to prevent a single COVID hospitalization. This is what risk-benefit analysis is all about — comparing and weighing the benefit against the risk — and in this case, the jab clearly does more harm than good.

Scandinavian Study Confirms Cardiovascular Risks

Demasi also cites an observational study⁸ from Denmark, Finland and Norway, which found “statistically significant increases in thromboembolic and thrombocytopenic outcomes following both Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines.” As reported by the authors:

“In the 28-day period following vaccination, there was an increased rate of coronary artery disease following mRNA-1273 [Moderna] vaccination: RR, 1.13 … There was an observed increased rate of coagulation disorders following all 3 vaccines (AZD1222 [AstraZeneca]: RR, 2.01]; BNT162b2 [Pfizer]: RR, 1.12; and mRNA-1273: RR, 1.26) …

There was also an observed increased rate of cerebrovascular disease following all 3 vaccines (AZD1222: RR, 1.32; BNT162b2: RR, 1.09; and mRNA-1273: RR, 1.21 …

For individual diseases within the main outcomes, 2 notably high rates were observed: 12.04 for cerebral venous thrombosis and 4.29 for thrombocytopenia, corresponding to 1.6 and 4.9 excess events per 100 000 doses, respectively, following AZD1222 vaccination.”

Christine Stabell Benn, a vaccinologist and professor in global health at the University of Southern Denmark told Demasi:⁹

“The safety signal seems to be gathering around cardiovascular and cerebral vascular events, things to do with circulation and our larger organs, and these are the same signals that appear to be popping up in the FDA surveillance data as well …

It seems to me that doctors have a much higher tolerance for COVID vaccine side effects because there’s been this sense that if you don’t take the vaccine, you die. Obviously, that is completely the wrong way to think about it.

We don’t want to create a lot of unnecessary anxiety and we can’t say there is now proof that the vaccines cause these events because the data are of poor quality, but we can say there is a danger signal, and the medical profession needs to be alerted to this.”

Jab Makers Intentionally Botched Trials

The primary reason for why the data is of “poor quality” is the fact that the COVID shots “were not tested properly” from the start, Stabell Benn notes. The control groups were eliminated by giving them the real shots a few months into the Phase 3 trials, which makes it near-impossible to evaluate long-term side effects — problems that might arise many months or years later. This seems to have been done intentionally, for that very reason.

Without a proper control group, any and all side effects can be written off as normal, as there’s no documented unjabbed group to compare with. Many of us did not get the jab, but there are no data about us (our health status and so forth) in the trial, so true comparisons become problematic.

Are Data Withheld to Prevent Establishment of Causation?

Earlier this year, the CDC admitted it was deliberately withholding data for fear they may be “misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective” and/or be misconstrued as confirming causation.¹⁰ This is not how real science should be conducted.

To ever reach the conclusion that the shots are causing injury, data are needed, and lots of it. By withholding crucial data, the CDC is effectively preventing that conclusion from being reached. Its excuse so far has been that there are “no data” to indicate there’s a problem. Meanwhile, they’re sitting on data that indicate just that!

CDC Lied About Pfizer Study Results

In addition to hiding data, the CDC has also lied about trial results. As noted in an October 31, 2022, tweet from Rep. Thomas Massie:¹¹

“Pfizer’s original vaccine trial, which contained 1,200 participants with evidence of prior infection, showed no benefit from their shots for those who had evidence of prior infection. CDC lied, said study showed it was 92% efficacious for those w/ evidence of prior infection.”

Massie — a Republican Congressman for Kentucky and an award-winning scientist — initially revealed the CDC’s error in January 2021, after having tried, in vain, to get the CDC to correct it. I detailed Massie’s efforts in “Why Do Public Health Agencies Reject Natural Immunity?” At the time, Massie said:^12,13

“There is no efficacy demonstrated in the Pfizer trial among participants with evidence of previous SARS-CoV-2 infections and actually there’s no proof in the Moderna trial either … It [the CDC report] says the exact opposite of what the data says.”

Latest COVID Variant Favors the Jabbed 3 to 1

In related news, October 25, 2022, the Ethical Skeptic — a data analyst and fraud investigator — tweeted¹⁴ out a graphic showing the latest COVID variant, dubbed BQ, is infecting the jabbed at a rate of 3-to-1 compared to the unjabbed. It also appears to favor those who got jabbed more recently.

CDC Has Automated Data Falsification

A day earlier The Ethical Skeptic posted the second installment¹⁵ of his “Houston, the CDC Has a Problem” series, in which he details how the CDC is systematically manipulating the data to hide signs of COVID jab dangers.

Using data from the CDC’s Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Reports (MMWR), he shows how the CDC hides and deletes excess jab-related deaths, particularly in categories like cancer, cardiac deaths and strokes. In June 2022, the CDC temporarily paused its MMWR reporting to perform a “system upgrade.” That lasted two months.

When it came back online, large numbers of deaths jab-related categories had been moved, either into the COVID death category or a “holding” category for undetermined deaths, thereby making it appear as though deaths from cancer, heart attacks and strokes are far lower than they are. This gaming of the algorithm appears to have been automated as of that system update. Here’s an excerpt from Part 2, in which The Ethical Skeptic summarizes his findings:¹⁶

“The principal concerns with regard to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ‘Weekly Provisional Counts of Deaths by State and Select Causes’¹⁷ and ‘Wonder: Provisional Mortality Statistics’¹⁸ are that the reports have begun to exhibit two primary apparent goals on the part of the CDC and its agency:

Please note that we will not resolve an answer to either of these issues in this article, rather herein we will only outline the efforts in disinformation, misinformation, and deception on the part of the CDC which are foisted in an attempt to achieve both goals. Accordingly, four key issues are entailed inside this two-sided-coin deception:

22-Sigma Increase in Cardiac Deaths

The article contains loads of charts and graphs and extra details for those who want to dig in. But in summary, the analysis performed by The Ethical Skeptic raises serious questions about the CDC’s handling of mortality data, as it appears to be manipulating statistics specifically for the purpose of hiding post-jab deaths.

On the upside, The Ethical Skeptic believes the CDC’s mirage will soon fall apart, as the data is already starting to get misaligned to the point that fraud is self-evident.

For example, since the system upgrade, 25% of all weekly COVID deaths just so happen to also be dying of cancer. “Such constitutes an impossibility in this important mortality account ledger, one which is analogous to the same species of mistake an embezzler might make,” he writes.

Similarly, the temporary “holding” bucket has grown by 70% since the introduction of the COVID shots, and the CDC is simply leaving them there. At present, there are 35,600 pericarditis, myocarditis and conductive disorder deaths that remain unaccounted for in U.S. cardiac mortality statistics.

If just 18% of these deaths were properly coded back into their heart-related deaths, there would be a 22-sigma increase in cardiac mortality. Based on the CDC’s data, having properly recategorized the miscategorized deaths, The Ethical Skeptic estimates there are now 385,000 excess deaths related to the jabs.

Justice for Vaccine Victims Act

Marjorie Taylor Greene, House representative for Georgia’s 14th Congressional district, recently introduced HR 7308, the Justice for Vaccine Victims Act of 2022, which would require an investigation into COVID jab injuries reported to VAERS to be completed within three months of the bill’s enactment.

The bill would also remove liability protections “that apply to the administration or use of certain medical countermeasures (e.g., vaccines) during the public health emergency.”¹⁹

Last but not least, November 1, 2022, Judicial Watch announced²⁰ it is suing the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) for all of its safety studies relating to vaccines and gene therapies to treat or prevent COVID.

All in all, it seems the wheels are coming off the COVID jab bus. Sparks are already flying. The FDA and CDC could have saved themselves by coming clean a few months into the COVID jab scam. At this point, there’s no way to save face, let alone anyone’s career. Both agencies are doomed, as are their leadership.

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Notes

¹ OpenVAERS

^{2, 4, 5, 9, 10} The BMJ 2022; 379: o2527

³ FDA CBER Surveillance Program August 31, 2022

⁶ Vaccines September 22, 2022; 40(40): 5798-5805

⁷ SPEAC October 26, 2021

⁸ JAMA Network Open June 1, 2022; 5(6): e2217375

¹¹ Twitter Thomas Massie October 31, 2022

¹² Full Measure After Hours Podcast January 30, 2021

¹³ Full Measure News January 31, 2021

¹⁴ Twitter Ethical Skeptic October 25, 2022

^15, 16 The Ethical Skeptic, Houston, the CDC Has a Problem Part 2

¹⁷ Weekly Provisional Counts of Deaths by State and Select Causes

¹⁸ Wonder: Provisional Mortality Statistics

¹⁹ Coffee & COVID November 3, 2022

²⁰ Judicial Watch November 1, 2022

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The US Department of Homeland Security (HSA) is conducting medical censorship while hiding in plain sight.  The website for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has resources to engage vigilante “disinformation” police to assist HSA in their mission of silencing opinions on COVID-19 and pandemic response. 

The main stated target is disinformation defined as information deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country.  Their toolkit allows any user to use “products” and tailor them with official logos to spread the government propagandized message:[i]

“COVID-19 DISINFORMATION TOOLKIT

These Toolkit resources are designed to help State, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) officials bring awareness to misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories appearing online related to COVID-19’s origin, scale, government response, prevention and treatment. Each product was designed to be tailored with local government websites and logos.

Download and share these resources—talking points, FAQs, outreach graphics, and posters—to help spread awareness.”

The toolkit directs well-intended users to use images, talking points, and documents to deliver a message.  There is only ONE source of trusted information—you guessed it—state and local agencies who rely upon the CDC!

So, the picture is becoming more clear on how the US government operationalized a propaganda campaign on its own people from the very beginning of the COVID-19 crisis.

They took these steps:

1) establish a single source of truth—the CDC,

2) weaponize CISA to declare “disinformation” their target,

3) enlist a legion of volunteer deputies without any official authority or accountability to operate within social media and all walks of life, giving public service messages telling Americans the CDC is the only trusted source of information.

The converse of this assertion–anything else must be considered untrue and up for being nailed as “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “malinformation.”  Don’t be surprised if FOIA-obtained documents demonstrate CISA and CDC were operating as partners in established campaigns with social media, mainstream television, print media, corporations, schools, and every aspect of life.  Nothing can be more dangerous to public health.  Directing all trust to a single source of medical information that is not contemporary, has no regular schedule of review or public briefings, is not transparent with data (e.g., the withheld V-Safe dataset), and has woefully lagged on major scientific developments (contagion control, testing, vaccine safety).  It’s a mind-blowing reality that our government agencies, in a planned and coordinated manner, have operationalized a plan to control information and spread propaganda in order to influence behavior. They pitted agencies against citizens and individuals against one another and set social media as the main battleground.  The CDC and DHS CISA should be prime targets of US Senate and Congressional Investigations into our disastrous pandemic response.

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Note

[i] DHS CISA Publication: “We’re in This Together. Disinformation Stops With You.”

Featured image is from Red Voice Media

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In April 2023, Dr. Hassan Diab will face an unfair trial in France for a crime he did not commit. This is despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence. All the so-called “evidence” that was presented by France to justify Hassan Diab’s extradition in 2014 has been withdrawn, discredited, or rejected. France has offered NO new evidence against Hassan. On the contrary, the alibi evidence, proving that Hassan was not in France at the time of the 1980 Paris bombing, has proven unshakable.

We are marking the 8th anniversary of Hassan’s extradition with a series of public actions. These include a rally at the Human Rights Monument in Ottawa on November 13, a press conference on November 14, and a petition to be delivered to PM Trudeau.

1. Join the Rally in Ottawa on Sunday November 13 

Please join the rally in Ottawa on Sunday November 13, at 1:00 pm ET, demanding that the Canadian Government protect Hassan Diab from further injustice, stop the relentless persecution he is facing, and refuse any future request for Hassan’s extradition.

• What: Rally Demanding that the Canadian Government Protect Hassan Diab from Further Injustice
• When: Sunday November 13, 2022, at 1:00 pm ET
• Where: At the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights monument, 220 Elgin St, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Matthew Behrens (Social justice advocate; coordinator of the Homes not Bombs non-violent direct action network) will be MC.

Speakers will include:

• Rev. Eric Meter (First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa)
• Eric Schiller (Retired Professor from the University of Ottawa, human rights advocate, and member of the Quakers in Ottawa)
• Susan Spronk (Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Board Member, Associate Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies at Ottawa University)
• Michelle Weinroth (Independent Jewish Voices Canada, Writer)
• Students from Professor Deborah Conners’ class, Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University

Also, statements will be read from:

• Don Davies (NDP Member of Parliament for Vancouver Kingsway since 2008)
• Diana Ralph (Member and learning coordinator of Or Haneshamah Synagogue and co-cofounder of Independent Jewish Voices)

The Ottawa Raging Grannies will sing.

2. Attend the Press Conference (Zoom) on Monday November 14

Join the press conference on Hassan’s situation and the urgent need for the Canadian government to protect Hassan from any future request for his extradition to France.

• What: Press Conference on Hassan Diab
• When: Monday November 14, 2022, at 10:00 am ET
• Where: Online (Zoom)

The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) will carry a livestream of the press conference on their Facebook page.

Speakers include:

• Don Bayne (Hassan Diab’s Canadian lawyer)
• Roger Clark (Former Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada,1988-1999, and member of the Hassan Diab Support Committee)
• Rob Currie (Professor of Transnational Criminal Law at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University)
• Tim McSorley (National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group)
• Alex Neve (Former Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada, 2000-2020, and Senior Fellow at the University of Ottawa, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs)
• Jo Wood (Member of the Hassan Diab Support Committee)

3. Sign the Petition Addressed to PM Trudeau

Please sign the petition urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to protect Hassan Diab from further injustice, and say NO to a potential second extradition to France for a crime he did not commit.

• Petition in English 
• Pétition en français

Please share the petition widely among your family, friends, and networks, and on social media.

If you have already signed, a BIG THANK YOU. Hassan and his family are deeply grateful for your support!

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This week’s Big Event – the US midterm election result, it’s proven to be yet another likely scam election. But then how can we honestly expect a different result if the identified problems that rigged the stolen 2020 election have never been fixed or resolved?

The definition of stupidity is repeating the same mistakes over and over again, expecting a different outcome each time. We learned the pathetic evidence in detail how the Democrats stole the 2020 election.

A majority of Americans even agree that election results were illegally altered and flipped by fraud, yet have the evidence of stuffed ballots and proven mail-in fraud, the tampered Dominion electronic vote flip at 4AM from overseas switching votes via unprotected internet access so that a repeated debacle is inevitably doomed to be painfully repeated on November 8^th to even further make more a mockery of the United States as the one-time beacon of democratic freedom. Sadly, the only democratic freedom still alive in America today is the freedom of the Democratic Party to steal yet another national election. Why hasn’t America bothered to even correct these identified election crimes?

Because the Deep State cabal consisting of the Democrats in collusion with the RINO Republicans, the GOP establishment of Bush-McCain-Romney-McConnell types has been allowed to steal yet another super important US election to ensure that our constitutional republic is totally destroyed. And unbelievably, the same swing states identified in 2020 for unlawfully swinging the election are all at it once again – Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania and Michigan, making certain that the leftist overthrow of America is complete, that fraud will forever rule and that the US has been turned into a bloated, corrupt beyond repair banana republic.

Despite numerous campaign professionals, pollsters, and even MSM pundits conceding strong Republican gains across the country were expected, the 2022 election appears rigged from the start.

Early Tuesday morning in Arizona’s Maricopa County, the Phoenix area again, the same notorious county guilty of fraud in 2020, reported that dozens of its electronic voting machines had “printing issues.” And of course, wouldn’t you know it, the 20% of the dysfunctional Maricopa County machines reporting tabulating problems were primarily in precincts that consistently vote Republican. On Wednesday night November 9^th, Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake spoke to Tucker Carlson on Fox News:

I feel 100% certain I am going to win. The question is how big will that win be? Can you believe this, Tucker?  We still have 650,000 votes that have not been counted. And guess who these voters are? They’re the people who showed up on election day. They’re the people, 275,000 of them are people who brought their ballot to polls on election day because they don’t trust the mail and they don’t trust the drop boxes. So guess who those voters are? They’re our voters. And we’re only down by a few thousand votes right now. When those votes come in, we’re going to see a lot of liberal minds kind of blowing up. 

Kari Lake maintains confidence in victory, boldly vowing as priority #1 to remedy all these dubious voting improprieties racking her state. On top of this Southwest sabotage, after initially claiming that all vote counts would be completed this week by Friday, the latest from the Maricopa County election officials is that they may be working through to Thanksgiving or even Christmas.

Kari Lake was being diplomatic when she questioned the tabulating machines unable to count votes on Tuesday morning as “incompetence,” when such hugely significant elections are repeatedly botched every time out by the same county notorious as a Democratic stronghold for causing setbacks that harm the GOP chances, a pattern that cannot be by coincidence alone.

The Gateway Pundit reported that in Detroit ballots were moved in the middle of the night well after the deadline.

Also, after trailing all evening, there were two distinct ballot drops suddenly that permitted incumbent Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to soar to victory by the familiar “drop and roll” method, with each subsequent drop containing nearly every ballot another vote for Whitmer.

Recall that this same overly familiar tactic was used at 4AM on the night of November 3^rd, 2020 to falsify Biden’s illegit election. So-called “glitches” in electronic voting machines in 2020 along with suspicious illegal ballot drops, long after deadlines were the exact same fraudulent methods used to steal the 2020 election. The Democrats logically figure if their methods of cheating were successful to overturn every past election, reasoning that if it ain’t broken, why fix it?

And ever since, Democrats have been calling anyone who questions the legitimacy of stolen contests “election deniers,” now increasingly deemed threats to democracy, criminalized as enemies of the state.  With history appearing to repeat itself here, unless we stop these ruthless would-be killers of free democratic elections now, the global tyranny of their one world governance will soon be irreversible.

In the meantime, current Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy just sent a letter to his caucus announcing his intention to run for the Speaker of the House position to replace the scandalous, soon retiring current holder Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Though McCarthy was hoping to make his big public announcement on Tuesday night, instead he waited till after 2AM in a four-minute speech to claim that when they wake up Wednesday morning, Republicans will be the majority party in the House.

But even as late as Thursday night, still too many races remain too close to call.

That said, the GOP is expected to have more members in Congress than Democrats, but just barely more. The “red tsunami” expected never materialized, and in January, McCarthy will take an ever-so-thinnest sliver of a majority to the new 2023 House session, having to make concessions along the way as the new Speaker. It appears that the big red wave dried up to a mere drip drop due to the infamous ballot drops the Dems pulled in the 2020 Trump steal.

The Senate also is even less certain for a GOP majority. In the contentious battleground swing state of Georgia, on December 6^th Republican Herschel Walker and Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock will face off in a runoff, both pulling under 50% with less than 1% between them due a libertarian candidate playing the spoiler with 2% of the total vote. A suspicious ballot drop and roll in Georgia may have forced the runoff to deny Herschel’s victory outright.

Though the Ebenezer Baptist Church Pastor Warnock may have less personal baggage, Herschel was the Heisman Trophy winner who took his Georgia Bulldogs to the championship and played a few years in the NFL. His star power backed by Trump lifted him from a field of half dozen hopefuls in the primary. With Trump backed Republican challengers in both Nevada and Arizona giving the Democrat incumbents a race down to the wire, it may still be days or even weeks before the final votes are counted and Americans will know which party holds the majority. With 78% of the Nevada votes tallied, Republican Adam Laxalt holds a 2% edge while Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly is just ahead of GOP challenger Blake Masters. It’s quite feasible that the Georgia runoff in December will determine the Senate majority party.

With all the recent polls leading up to Tuesday’s election showing that 3 out of 4 Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction under the current Biden regime, the consensus was that the Republicans would do far better than they have. As more information comes in, it’s apparent that the Democrats have been repeatedly caught again, sneaking more drop and roll of illegal ballots in Georgia, and the incumbent Democratic governor races in Michigan and Minnesota. So why would the most unpopular president in all US history that according to the official Big Lie we’re supposed to actually believe received in 2020 the most votes of all presidential candidates in all American history, why would Biden’s midterm election turn out any different, when the political party with majority power being so publicly rebuked by US citizens would miraculously once again defy all odds, and the GOP barely picks up seats in Congress.

Again, it defies all logic, all reason and all of history, more than strongly indicating that what they did to steal the 2020 election, they did again to repeat another steal in this week’s midterm, treasonous fraud committed by the exact same method of fake ballot dumps all going to the Democratic candidates. The answers to the questions below are all obvious…

Why are 49 out of 50 states still using proven unreliable, easily tampered with electronic voting machines?

Unlike many other nations around the world, like France that switched over to paper ballot voting only, why does the US refuse to fix this problem? Unless it wants to make sure that voter fraud continues?

Why is the same criminal Democratic Party in all the same states allowed to steal yet another election? Unless the powers-that-shouldn’t-be want the party that is fast destroying America to finish the job.

In this modern day and age, there is absolutely zero excuse to keep failing to fix the known preventable problems from recurring over and over again, unless powers-that-shouldn’t-be want America destroyed.

Despite so much irrefutable proof of treasonous election fraud already from the last illegitimate national election, yet again DNC traitors are rearing their ugly heads, trying to steal yet more crucial midterm elections, perhaps even America’s last. If We the People fail to stop them this time, the leftist Democrats realize their power to completely demolish the US may well be vanquished and averted if the Demon-Crats lose their present majority in both the House and Senate. Thus, they’ve resorted to frantic desperation tactics that are already being uncovered and exposed, to preserve their majority power in the legislative branch at all cost. Our Founding Fathers’ brilliant checks and balances system allows us to stop the weak, controlled puppet president only if a Republican majority is achieved in the legislative branch to effectively counter and oppose the Democrats’ destructive treasonous agenda.

However, with infiltration by so many RINO Republicans voting alongside the Democrats, even a GOP majority in Congress may not prove enough to stop the criminal cabal’s controlled demolition of the US. Washington is so compromised by embedded treasonous fraudsters, captured completely through sexual blackmail and bribery, puppets continue doing what they’re told, totally owned by the genocidal bloodline controllers.

Days ahead of this week’s election, the legacy media whores were hyping that “security officials are concerned about claims of a hacked (or stolen) election.” The November 4^th USA Today lead sentence fears:

Fake cyber narratives about a stolen or rigged election are an acute concern, according to authorities who fear they could undermine the process and lead to more Jan. 6-style political violence… What cyber analysts fear most is fake narratives about hacked elections undermining integrity.

The cabal criminals will be closing in on all of us who speak the truth, calling the truth “misinformation” and the truthtellers “enemies of the state,” in order to continue spewing out their false narrative lies. It’s very predictable now. So, when crooks rig more elections and smart enough people are catching on, daring to confront the authorities’ lies as a vain attempt to cover up so many blatant anomalies and inept desperado mistakes, building up overwhelming evidence of election fraud, truthtellers will be cast as dangerous criminals for daring to question their thoroughly corrupt government’s illegal tyranny.

The Deep State cabal is trying to cover all its bases, because the perps want to be cocksure their crooked ways are protected with impunity. Through their deceptive divide and conquer Modus Operandi, the bloodline controllers are pressing for a full-blown civil war in America between the criminal puppet elite buffered by their dumbed down robots fighting against the growing number of honest citizens, mostly comprised of patriots and veterans joined by law enforcement and military personnel determined to restore and defend America’s constitutional rights and oaths. As law abiding citizens on the right side of history, we’re protecting our constitutional rights, liberties and freedom against traitors and miscreants.

Again, from the USA Today article, Suzanne Spaulding, former top Department of Homeland Security official that headed its election security efforts, states:

Conspiracy theories will take hold in a substantial segment of the population and could lead to additional political violence.

Never mind that so many conspiracy theories have proven far more accurate accounts of history than countless government false narratives or that nefarious criminal organizations like the CIA invented the term “conspiracy theory,” solely to undermine the credibility and reputation of those intelligent enough to know that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone gunman behind the JFK assassination. Yet by their factual misdeeds, it’s too often these 3-letter government agencies like the DHS, the CIA and FBI that are the criminal handlers of blamed patsies that wantonly at will violate constitutional laws with impunity and themselves a far more menace to society than conspiracy theorists. Let’s start either abolishing them or at least start prosecuting them for their endless litany of crimes.

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Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate, former Army officer and author of “Don’t Let the Bastards Getcha Down,” exposing a faulty US military leadership system based on ticket punching up the seniority ladder, invariably weeding out the best and brightest, leaving mediocrity and order followers rising to the top as politician-bureaucrat generals designated to lose every modern US war by elite design. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In Los Angeles he found himself battling the largest county child protective services in the nation within America’s thoroughly broken and corrupt child welfare system.

The experience in both the military and child welfare system prepared him well as a researcher and independent journalist, exposing the evils of Big Pharma and how the Rockefeller controlled medical and psychiatric system inflict more harm than good, case in point the current diabolical pandemic hoax and genocide. As an independent journalist for over the last decade, Joachim has written hundreds of articles for many news sites, like Global Research, lewrockwell.com and currently https://jameshfetzer.org.   As a published bestselling author on Amazon of a 5-book volume series entitled Pedophilia & Empire: Satan, Sodomy & the Deep State, his A-Z sourcebook series exposes the global pedophilia scourge is available free at https://pedoempire.org/contents/.  Joachim also hosts the Revolution Radio weekly broadcast “Cabal Empire Exposed,” every Friday morning at 6AM EST (ID: revradio, password: rocks!) 

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***

Children’s Health Defense on Monday filed a summary of its appeal in a lawsuit against Rutgers University over the university’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Last week, Rutgers announced it will recruit children under age 5 for a joint trial with Pfizer for its pediatric COVID-19 bivalent vaccine.

The attorney representing Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and 13 Rutgers University students in a lawsuit challenging Rutgers’ COVID-19 vaccine mandate policy said the District Court of New Jersey didn’t follow the legal standard when it dismissed CHD’s case.

In an interview this week with The Defender, Julio C. Gomez of Gomez LLC, lead counsel in the case, said U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi’s argument for granting the university’s motion to dismiss “failed to accept the facts as alleged in the plaintiffs’ complaint as true,” as required under the legal standard on a motion to dismiss.

CHD on Oct. 19 appealed the decision and on Monday filed a summary of its appeal.

Gomez also spoke with The Defender about Rutgers’ Nov. 4 announcement that it is partnering with Pfizer on a new clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine in children under age 5.

“Rutgers should be keenly aware that so far, the studies that are being used to support COVID-19 vaccination of children are deeply flawed and that the risks of experimental vaccination are too great for children who face negligible risks from COVID-19, especially when so many are already naturally immune,” Gomez said.

The new clinical trial is the latest evidence of Rutgers’ conflicts of interest related to its COVID-19 vaccine policies, Gomez said.

“As we alleged in our lawsuit [filed in August 2021], Rutgers was selected by all three vaccine manufacturers — Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson — to run clinical trials. Rutgers knew or should have known none of these studies showed that these vaccines prevent transmission, yet Rutgers rushed to be one of the first universities in the country to mandate COVID-19 vaccines on its students.”

History of the case

On Aug. 16, 2021, CHD sued Rutgers University, its board of governors, Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway and others over the university’s decision to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for students attending school in the fall.

At the time, the mandate applied only to students. Faculty and staff were exempt. The policy was since updated to include faculty and staff. The updated policy also requires all eligible faculty, staff and students to provide proof of receiving a COVID-19 booster shot.

CHD’s lawsuit alleged Rutgers’ policy is a violation of the right to informed consent and the right to refuse unwanted medical treatments.

The complaint also alleged the policy is a breach of contract because, in January 2021, Rutgers assured students COVID-19 vaccines would not be required in order to attend school — but just two months later, the university flip-flopped and issued new requirements for taking the shot prior to attending classes.

Mary Holland, CHD president and general counsel, and Ray Flores, special counsel to CHD, provided legal support to Gomez LLC.

On Aug. 30, 2020, CHD filed a temporary restraining order against Rutgers seeking to prevent the university from coercing students, including those attending class remotely, to get the vaccine by blocking the email accounts of unvaccinated students. Judge Quraishi denied the request.

More than a year after CHD sued the university — on Sept. 9 of this year — Judge Quraishi granted Rutgers’ motion to dismiss.

At the time, Gomez told Law360:

“Colleges and universities do not and should not possess the legal authority to mandate experimental vaccines, especially those colleges and universities like Rutgers that have financial skin in the game and are working with the vaccine manufacturers to develop and test these experimental products with no liability and no accountability.”

Judge Quraishi had previously refused CHD’s request to recuse himself from the case on the basis that as a former Rutgers University law professor, he would not be impartial.

Rutgers ‘crossed a line it shouldn’t have crossed’

CHD’s appeal of appeal of Judge Quraishi’s dismissal of the case means the case will now go to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

According to Monday’s filing of a summary of appeal, CHD’s appeal will address:

(1) Whether the District Court committed legal errors, including misapplying the motion to dismiss standard.

(2) Whether Rutgers University had the legal authority to mandate COVID-19 vaccination and other unsafe and ineffective measures as a condition of attendance (“COVID-19 Policy”), or whether Rutgers’ COVID-19 Policy was preempted by federal law, 21 U.S.C. Section 360bbb-3, or is ultra vires under state law.

(3) Whether Plaintiffs adequately pled causes of action:

(a) That Rutgers’ COVID-19 Policy violated the right to informed consent and to refuse unwanted medical treatment guaranteed by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the New Jersey Constitution.

(b) That Rutgers’ COVID-19 Policy violated the right to equal protection of the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment and New Jersey Constitution.

(c) That Rutgers’ COVID-19 Policy violated 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 and/or the New Jersey Civil Rights Act.

Gomez told The Defender he believes the case is strong and that, as evidence mounts that COVID-19 vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission, the tide is turning against mandates.

Rutgers “crossed a line it shouldn’t have crossed,” he said.

According to Best Colleges, a “still-expanding group of U.S. colleges and universities say students must receive a COVID-19 vaccine before arriving on campus.” The Best Colleges website provides a list of U.S. colleges and universities that, as of Sept. 9, still require the vaccines.

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***

A total of 636 oil and gas lobbyists have registered to attend the COP27 event in Egypt, 25% more than the number that attended COP26 climate summit in the UK and more than the combined delegates of the ten countries most impacted by climate change. 

The oil and gas lobby is larger than any single national delegation apart from the United Arab Emirates, who are slated to host next year’s conference.The oil and gas lobbyists will be aiming to protect the interests of the fossil fuel industry. For instance, they could push back against measures that ban new gas projects and urge delegates to accept development of oil fields in developing nations.

They will have their work cut out for them.

Leaders of island nations have already called on countries to pay for climate reparations by taxing big oil. Oil industry lobbyists are likely to try to water down any agreements to this effect.

Dubbed the African COP, COP27 is likely to simultaneously address the dire climate impacts on the continent and showcase the continent’s fossil fuels potential, rendering the lobbyists’ inclusion understandable.

Back in March, Vijaya Ramachandran, director for energy and development at the Breakthrough Institute, proposed that Germany and Europe should look to Africa, if they are serious about achieving energy security. Ramachandran noted that the continent is endowed with substantial natural gas production, reserves, and new discoveries in the process of being tapped. Very little of Africa’s gas has been exploited, either for domestic consumption or export.

Algeria is already an established major gas producer with substantial untapped reserves and is connected to Spain with several undersea pipelines. Germany and the EU are already working to expand pipeline capacity connecting Spain with France, from where more Algerian gas could flow to Germany and elsewhere. Libyan gas fields are connected by pipeline to Italy.

New pipelines under discussion currently focus on the Eastern Mediterranean Pipeline Project, which would bring gas from Israel’s offshore gas fields to Europe. Senegal has recently discovered major offshore fields. Meanwhile, Mozambique is already developing its vast natural gas resources.

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Alex Kimani is a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer and researcher for Safehaven.com. 

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

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***

During a bumbling speech Wednesday, a reporter had to remind Joe Biden where Russia is currently engaged in conflict after the President suggested Putin’s troops were about to pull out of a city in Iraq.

Biden was asked about reports that the Russian military is to leave the city of Kherson in Ukraine, one of the only major cities they have successfully occupied since the invasion began.

“I think the context is that whether or not they’re pulling back from Fallujah,” Biden said before racking his brain to try and recall where Russian troops really are.

Fallujah is in Iraq.

It’s not even on the same continent.

Biden: “Whether or not [the Russians are] pulling back from Fallujah and the, I mean…”

Reporter: “Kherson.”

Biden: “Kherson, the city of Kherson.” pic.twitter.com/v6ee2VJ62g

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 9, 2022

Elsewhere during the speech Biden’s brain shut down as he attempted to say the word ‘apocalyptic’:

What just happened? pic.twitter.com/gs6keZbihE

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 9, 2022

During the press conference Biden pulled out a list of pre-approved reporters that he was told to call on for questions:

BIDEN: "Now I've been given a list of ten people that I'm supposed to call on and you're all supposed to ask me one question." pic.twitter.com/UKFFBWcPLg

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 9, 2022

When he was asked one of those questions, he said he plans to change “nothing”:

Q: “What in the next two years do you intend to do differently to change people’s opinion of the direction of the country?"

BIDEN: “Nothing.” pic.twitter.com/FNyj7TrGcI

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 9, 2022

Biden also admitted he plans to sneak off on holiday, despite the fact that he’s spent 40% of his presidency on holiday already.

BIDEN: "I hope Jill and I get a little time to actually sneak away for a week around between Christmas and Thanksgiving."

Biden has spent 40% of his presidency on vacation. pic.twitter.com/KwoZ8k4ETd

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 9, 2022

During the speech following the midterm elections, Biden said he “will veto any attempt to pass the national ban on abortion,” will “ban assault weapons, or try like the devil,” said he will not back down on climate policies, and refused to support Republican-backed efforts to make cuts to Social Security and Medicaid to bring down inflation.

In the same breath he vowed to work with Republicans after the elections.

Biden, " I will veto any attempt to pass the national ban on abortion." pic.twitter.com/LhW5fYLQXU

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) November 9, 2022

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***

The midterm elections delivered to the American people a stark, stark message. The Republican and Democratic Parties have been reduced to play toys for billionaires and multinational corporations that carry out an intriguing puppet show for us, one that spins further and further away from any concern for citizens, and buries the Constitution and the rule of law in a shallow grave.

The unexpectedly strong showing of the Democratic Party, a criminal syndicate that pushed the deadly COVID19 vaccine on the American people in the largest act of genocide since the killing of the natives in the 18th and 19th centuries, was made for corporate TV. Everyone knows that although the Republican Party is just as corrupt and just beholden to corporate finance and militarists, that many citizens intended to vote Republican as a protest, if nothing else.

The election was clearly rigged, and both progressives and conservatives know this fact. The rigging of the tallies, and the contrived nail-biting final counts were but icing on the fascist cake.

This new Congress is entirely incapable of serving its constitutional role as the legislative branch of government because it functions as a mere appendage of Wall Street. No one really cares if the politicians are red, or blue, or purple. We were fed an alternative between a globalist, techno-fascist, gender blending, identify politics covert operation run by BlackRock and Israeli private intelligence firms and a reactionary, isolationist, racist, and militarist FBI-led operation funded by Koch Industries, Lockheed Martin, and real estate speculators.

But as bad as that false choice may have been, it was not the worst part. It is clear now that global finance, in order to create enough of economic and political chaos in the United States to justify military rule is intentionally destroying our society, crushing all functional institutions, shutting down logistics and transportation, in a horrific betrayal of our citizens—that will reap great profits for premium investors.

Do not waste time gawking at the followers of Donald Trump. Leave them alone as they try to do their best.

Let us focus on the global investment banks and the handful of billionaires, American and otherwise, who lurk behind them. This Democrat Republican cultural identity show has gone far too far.

The time has come to focus on class warfare, on the efforts of a tiny number of the super-rich to reduce the citizens of the United States, and of the world, to slavery so that they will be managed by AI, by robots and drones through elaborate geo-fencing and digital currency scams. None of that agenda was mentioned by the candidates that we voted for.

This is not the first time that we have fought against slavery in the United States.

What will the consequences of this election be? Increased political power for the Republican Party will most likely result in a further decline of rational debate but, at the same time, threats of globalism and of bio-fascism will receive a little more attention than under the Democrats.

The drive for world war, for the control of money by the superrich, and for the controlled demolition of the economy will go ahead as scheduled.

Let me conclude by saying a few words about the military in the United States.

There can be no question that if this election did anything, it has completely discredited both of these so-called political parties and that the policies for congress will be fed to its portly inhabitants by lobbyists, bankers and intelligence operatives from abroad.

There is only one party, but grab a beer because this sure is one hell of a party!

Because the executive has been entirely outsourced to private contractors also controlled by global finance, and the judiciary has been stripped of all checks on external influence, in effect all three branches of government are rotten to the core.

What are the implications?

It means that in effect the only functional part of the government will be the military and that, at the same time, Wall Street will have no choice, facing looming hyperinflation, but to drive for a military economy using imagined threats from Russia and China as an excuse.

Why must we have a military economy? The answer is quite simple. We have been fed a lie that the stock market, money printing, and radical waste and overproduction are necessary for a healthy economy and for the good of citizens when in fact they are but tools used by the rich to exploit us all.

Now that the nation is in shambles, now that it is no longer possible to prop up growth with stock buybacks financed by money printing (that is quantitative easing and COVID relief for financial speculators) there is no longer a choice—even for Wall Street. The United States must turn to a planned economy to avoid massive losses for the speculators because money printing will no longer work.

But the speculators most certainly do not want a planned economy that might be focused on helping ordinary citizens, or on ending the rule of the billionaires. No, that sort of a planned economy, following the Constitution, establishing a regulated national bank, promoting the rule of law, that sort of planned economy is taboo. Not even the pay-to-play progressives are allowed to talk about overproduction or planned economies.

But a planned economy is exactly what we need and the only planned economy the financiers can accept is a military planned economy. That means even more of a drive for war because only war can create the demand that is needed now that most of the economy has been reduced to a fraud, to a series of bogus numbers in cyberspace cooked up by Goldman Sachs and back up by private intelligence contractors.

Back to the military.

Now that the Congress has been reduced to clown house, a house of mirrors for our amusement, the military is the only remaining part of the government that is functional, and, like it or not, its role in politics will only increase.

There is a profound paradox here. We need men and women of bravery to fight for justice and for the Constitution at home against the billionaires. Sadly, most intellectuals have run away in fear.

It is not a surprise that the military, where at least a few brave souls remain, would be the last part of the system to collapse. And we must appeal to the better angels of those within that system.

But the risk of sliding into world war so as to avoid exposing the devious machinations of the billionaires only increases every day. That is exactly how the First World War got started.

We must work with those brave souls in the military, and among citizens, who are ready to form a provisional government, to restore the Constitution, and to wash the bankers, the corporate lobbyists, and the pawns and pets of the billionaires, out of Washington D.C. without exception.

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

A US special forces unit has stepped up its operations inside the Arctic Circle in Norway while admitting it is trying to get Russia’s attention by testing an experimental new weapons delivery system there.

“It puts this thing within range of Russia,” Special Operations Command Europe’s Lt. Col. Lawrence Melnicoff was quoted as saying of the new parachute dropped long-range missile which was tested. “We are intentionally trying to be provocative without being escalatory.”

“We’re trying to deter Russian aggression, expansionist behavior, by showing enhanced capabilities of the allies,” he added in the comments given to military magazine Stripes.

The experimental weapon system and program is called Rapid Dragon, and on Wednesday it was successfully test-fired at Norway’s Andoya Space Range, which is the country’s premiere far-northern weapons testing site.

Rapid Dragon is a new cruise missile delivery method which begins by parachuting a long-range missile from the back of a C-130 plane. A guided missile then shoots out during the descent of the large crate containing the projectile, as video of this week’s successful deployment shows…

#BREAKING video from 352nd Special Operations Wing successful test fire of a palletized Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM). Successful extraction of deployment box, release of JASSM with wing extension, and motor engagement during exercise #ATREUS22 #SOFinEurope pic.twitter.com/3hLcXDJ3bl

— US Spec Ops Europe (@US_SOCEUR) November 9, 2022

According to a brief explanation of how the unusual delivery system works:

The Red Dragon system uses a steel cage and can be loaded with Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missiles, which have a range of up to 1,200 miles depending on the variant.

“The way it works is it drops out of cargo aircraft like a heavy equipment air drop, so it’s completely a roll-on, roll-off package,” Melnicoff said.

After rolling out, the cage stabilizes under parachutes. Then a sling gate opens and the missiles drop out.

Other weapons like swarming drones can be deployed utilizing this method as well, the US military says. The unusual delivery is in part designed to disguise a long-range missile launch as but a typical battlefield airdrop from a cargo plane, thus catching the enemy off-guard until the missile is already well on its way to target.

Melnicoff described further of the unconventional delivery method: “It complicates Russian decision-making because we know that they’re targeting very, very large specific aggregations of allied power… Ramstein Air Base, RAF Lakenheath, things like that.” He added: “We’re survivable. If worse comes to worst and somebody takes out these power hubs, we can forward-project precision artillery fire across the alliance with our partners.”

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Featured image: Artistic rendering of “Rapid Dragon” deployment system. (Source: Zero Hedge)

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***

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, along with rising tensions between NATO and Russia, have drawn comparisons to the outbreak of World War I.

In 2014, back when the open hostilities in Ukraine really began, the journalist Eric Margolis said “We can stumble into a war with Russia. This reminds me of 1914 all over again.”

This “stumbling” of course refers to the “sleepwalking thesis of war” that is part of both popular and scholarly narratives of World War I.

The International Relations realist Stephen Walt warned “the West is sleepwalking into war in Ukraine” the day before Russia invaded. The World Health Organization (yes, that one) has warned the world could be sleepwalking into a nuclear war. And the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network is concerned the world might be “sleepwalking into nuclear Armageddon.”

Unfortunately, it’s much worse than that. The United States is marching wide awake toward general nuclear war.

Princeton University historian Stephen Kotkin has criticized the sleepwalking thesis of war as a comforting myth that remains “close to people’s hearts” to this day.

“Nobody ever sleepwalks into war,” he says.

Kotkin points out that the government and military archives of the Great Powers contain thousands of orders to move horses, hay, and weapons systems into place to prosecute the war years before Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. The Great Powers also imposed military conscription to ensure they would have a wealth of young men to feed into the slaughter.

Kotkin says:

You go into the archives, and you see nothing but decisions being made towards war. And somehow this is known as sleepwalking towards war. There was no sleepwalking to World War I. There was only preparation for war. There was nothing but incessant preparation to war.

Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton agrees; “You call it sleepwalking but everybody’s wide awake. It’s just, they’re stupid.”

The stupidity continues. This time it isn’t horses and Maxim machine guns being ordered into Europe, it’s “highly accurate guided tactical nuclear weapons.” That’s right, the United States is sending B61-12 tactical, air-dropped gravity bombs to NATO bases. According to Bryan Bender, Paul McLeary, and Erin Banco in Politico, the nuclear arsenal upgrade was originally planned for Spring 2023, but is being accelerated. The new bombs should arrive in time for Christmas.

According to the Politico piece:

Asked for comment, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder responded via email that “while we aren’t going to discuss details of our nuclear arsenal, modernization of US B61 nuclear weapons has been underway for years and plans to safely and responsibly swap out older weapons for the upgraded B61-12 versions is part of a long-planned and scheduled modernization effort. It is in no way linked to current events in Ukraine and was not sped up in any way.” [emphasis added]

Should we believe him? Sure, why not? The United States has been incessantly preparing for nuclear war for years. That sounds about right.

Here are some other American made decisions that have been marching us toward Armageddon:

• Expanding/enlarging the NATO military alliance
• Placing anti-ballistic missile systems that can also fire nuclear tipped cruise missiles in NATO countries
• Backing an anti-Russian coup in Ukraine in 2004
• Backing an anti-Russian coup in Ukraine in 2014
• Integrating the Ukrainian military into the NATO alliance structure
• Shipping hi-tech weapons systems to the Ukrainian military
• Sabotaging peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia
• Assisting the Ukrainian military with war strategy and enemy targeting

War is a massive production. It doesn’t just happen like a bar fight (bar fights don’t just happen either). In the French film Pierrot le Fou, an American director compares film to a battleground. We can reverse the idea and compare war to a film production. There are the financial backers: the taxpayers. There are the producers and directors: the politicians, generals and spy masters. And there are the extras: the soldiers.

There are also all the people who make the costumes and the weapons and the vehicles. The people who build the military bases and cook the meals and provide security and do the laundry and run the logistics.

As the American historian Daniel Immerwahr described the U.S. military during World War II:

Think of a GI, and you’re more likely to imagine a soldier on the front lines than a construction worker. But in the case of the United States, the construction worker is the better mental image. During the war, fewer than one in ten U.S. service members ever saw a shot fired in anger. For most who served, the war wasn’t about combat. It was about logistics.

This is true today. Sadly, there are no stars in war. Unless of course we count the fictions generated by the war propaganda.

Are all these people sleepwalking? Of course not. They are awake and they are working hard to make war possible. From a certain level of analysis, it is a tremendous feat of human cooperation and ingenuity. Hot biscuits! But since they are preparing for the annihilation of the human species, it is a truly horrific spectacle.

The American people are the ones who are asleep. We must wake up and push for peace.

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John is a member of the Society for Consciousness Studies, where he researches literary theory. Whereas dominant academic literary discourse revolves around Marx, Lacan and Derrida, he prefers Mises, Horton and Woods.

Featured image is from TLI

“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

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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***

No doubt, none of us can recall a time when the world at large has faced so many problems and crises that impinge upon the well-being and mortality of billions of people.

The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us that for the average person the human psyche is extraordinarily fragile and can easily be overwhelmed with anxiety, dread, depression and anger. People desperately sought solutions to ameliorate an all-pervading angst as society was being completely reconfigured in the image of those who hold power, influence and wealth. There was a time in the past when we believed our elected officials would enact laws to protect the citizenry and provide a climate for sustaining a normal, productive life.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, those who could capitalize on its opportunities found the means to push forward non-democratic agendas to displace normalcy. In its place the masters of government and industry assured us that existential angst is our new fate. Faith in any institutional security has collapsed into a tragic theater as the younger generations face an uncertain future and life loses its purpose and meaning.

The majority of people’s beliefs are grounded and conditioned upon the input and information they receive. Through a compromised media, the consuming public is spoon-fed a heavy dose of fear and confusion. Those who make efforts to pull back the curtain to expose the wizard of a dystopian globalist Oz are marginalized and officially canceled by Silicon Valley and an army of faux fact checkers. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that the culture of non-transparency draping the halls of Washington, the international health institutions, professional medical associations, and the pharmaceutical complex has sparked public suspicions about conspiratorial opertions to shred democracy and individual rights and freedoms.

Objective skepticism, the ability to turn towards the mind’s faculty for critical thought, has rapidly declined in American society for several decades. Yet a healthy skepticism is necessary for questioning both the rhetoric and misinformation of “official” views and propaganda, including hints of what is commonly ridiculed as conspiracy. The word “conspiracy” has lost its meaning and credibility in the American lexicon. Rarely does mainstream media, professional associations and think tanks, and official federal public relations and propaganda contextualize the term to simply implicate wrongdoing and corruption. When used by authorities, “conspiracy” is almost always pejorative, a means to slander, accuse and marginalize people as loons and quacks. As a result we are led to believe the gospel word of officialdom: the Warren report, the 911 Commission, and everything spouted from Anthony Fauci, the White House and federal health agencies regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and the wave of pro-vaccine mania.

Very often conspiracies are ridiculous, bordering on the surreal and absurd. However, past examples of politically motivated black flag operations and secretive agendas created in corporate boardrooms and government halls cannot rule out that conspiracies don’t exist or never have. When there is sound reason to question the integrity of a politician, health official, media pundit, or a corporate executive, it is natural for the inquisitive mind to explore more deeply the hidden motivations and goals underlying the thoughts and actions of conspiracies’ physical footprints. In most cases it is the evidence of contradictions, hypocrisies and confirmed blatant lies by individuals in authority that give birth to the conspiratorial mind.

Conspiracies conducted by the government, which resulted in unnecessary violence and death, are proven to have occurred or at least certainly planned:

the Gulf of Tonkin, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the CIA staged coup to oust Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and the failed Operation Northwood scheme by the CIA and Pentagon to launch acts of terror against Miami residents.

Before the 2001 anthrax scare identified any individual or group behind the toxic letters, according to an FBI whistleblower, the Bush White House instructed the FBI to blame the attacks on al-Qaeda; later it was revealed that the threats were carried out by one or more US government employed scientists. In addition, the US government frequently launches conspiratorial misinformation campaigns throughout the major corporate media and Silicon Valley complex in order to support its clandestine and long term agendas. Furthermore, the media makes every effort to seduce us into believing that we don’t have conspiracies in the banking system, the pharmaceutical industry, and the government intelligence apparatus.

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander claimed publicly that intelligence surveillance of the American public “foiled” 54 terrorist attacks by extremists. Independent research confirmed that in fact only one, and a possible second, attack could be directly associated with the war on terrorism. The media never questioned the accuracy of Alexander’s claim nor provided evidence to the contrary. Repeatedly Obama lied to the American people about the largess of the national security state and its infiltration into the lives of average citizens, including massive data collection of private phone calls, emails and internet activity. The federal government is a vast sea of conspiracies operative at any given moment. Edward Snowden documented proof that intelligence surveillance is far more extensive than officially reported. But others can be cited throughout the recent activities of the FBI, CIA, Pentagon, FISA courts, USDA and FDA and CDC, and the Justice Department. Additional confirmed conspiracies planned by our executive branch, the CIA, military and other federal agencies include:

• A US Congressional committee acknowledged that the CointelPro campaign included the FBI employing provocateurs from the 1950s to 1970s to carry out terrorist acts in order to blame civil political activists.
• Bush’s justice department Attorney General John Yoo recommended that the US create a false terrorist organization for the purpose of conducting terrorist attacks that could be blamed on al-Qaeda.
• Overwhelming scientific evidence now can debunk the official report that the three World Trade buildings could not have collapsed in free fall from jet-fuel fires alone.
• Government has covered up conspiracies waged against Americans by other nations. The Israeli bombing of the USS Liberty and the planting of bombs in US diplomatic facilities in Egypt by Israeli terrorist cells are two examples.
• State Department documents show the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff planned to bomb the US consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to win popular support for an invasion of the country.
• During the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, American soldiers were instructed to leave weapons near bodies of innocent civilians they killed in order to make the claim they were terrorists.
• The Tuskegee Syphilis Study conducted by the US Public Health Service between 1932 to 1972, which experimented with unknowing poor African American men in violation of the Nuremberg Code.
• The 2000 Simpsonwood meeting convened by the CDC with major health agencies and executives of vaccine makers to cover-up scientific evidence that mercury in vaccines were contributing to the increase in autism.
• The whistleblower document dump by a senior CDC epidemiologist, Dr. William Thompson, revealing that the health agency under Julie Gerberding’s directorship destroyed internal research proving the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine contributed to a 250 percent higher rate of autism in African American boys. Gerberding went on to become president of Merck’s vaccine division with a $2.5 million salary and $38 million in stock options.
• The thirty-year asbestos covered up of prior knowledge about asbestos’ association with respiratory illness and cancer in order to avoid lawsuits
• The CIA’s mind control operations known as MK Ultra from the 1950s into the 1970s before being exposed by the Church Committee.
• The Iran-Contra Affair in 1985 to secretly sell arms to Iran in order to fund Nicaraguan Contras.
• The October Surprise during the Carter-Reagan presidential election when Reagan insiders met with Iranian revolution leaders in Europe to prevent the release of American hostages until after Reagan’s inauguration if he won the election.

These are only examples indicting factions within the federal government with treason to conduct conspiratorial acts. When the brilliant journalist I.F. Stone wrote, “Every government is run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed,” he could have been speaking about the entire gamut of federal agencies. Examples of legalized terror are aplenty and reveal actions solely for the pursuit of profit at the cost of Americans’ health. This has become particularly epidemic in private industry:

• Merck’s withholding evidence from the FDA that its blockbuster drug Vioxx had serious health risks, including heart attack, stroke and death. The drug was responsible for at least a very conservative toll of 60,000 deaths.
• In 2009, Pfizer was fined $2.3 billion for what was then the largest healthcare felony settlement in US pharmaceutical history for illegally promoting its drugs, including its painkiller Bextra. $1.2 billion was for the criminal fine then the largest imposed in the US.
• The US Justice Department charged Johnson and Johnson $2.2 billion in criminal fines for marketing its autism and anti-psychotic drug Risperdal for unapproved uses. Forty-five states filed civil lawsuits against J&J in the scandal
• Lawsuits continue to pile up against Merck for punitive damages, negligence, strict liability with failure to warn, manufacturing defects and common law fraud due to injuries associated with its HPV vaccine Gardasil.
• A group of CDC scientists who called themselves SPIDER (Scientists Preserving the Integrity, Diligence and Ethics in Research) turned anonymous whistleblowers after releasing a written complaint criticizing the agency for operating as a tax-funded subsidiary of the drug industry in partnership with the FDA.
• The legal suits against the agricultural giant Monsanto hid years of research and evidence of its active Round Up chemical glyphosate being responsible for DNA damage, birth defects, and a variety of cancers
• Federally funded researchers forcefully administered highly toxic AIDS drugs in experiments on foster care children in a New York children’s center;

Besides withholding truthful claims, individuals, groups, companies or governments targeted in conspiracy theories share an atmosphere perceived as clandestine and secret. In the private sector, conspiracies are voluminous and are permitted to continue behind the backs of federal crime authorities. For decades independent voices have suggested that Wall Street has undue influence over the Federal Reserve and government economic policies. On the contrary, tens of thousands of articles, books and opinion essays, reinforced with solid scholarship, reveal we do in fact have an epidemic of conspiracies in our midst. Yet there is barely a legislator or journalist in corporate media with the courage to independently investigate the leads behind current events.

The corporate media is also complicit in our nationwide conspiracy of corruption and criminal behavior. The media wonks of public opinion, at the behest of federal and corporate pressure, control the issues that the public should or should not hear. Consequently our media engages in campaigns of psychological terror by keeping the public in doubt and fear. Something is terribly wrong when there is such disparity between official rhetoric and the destruction of civil freedoms, justice, sovereignty and constitutional guarantees now decimating human rights and the quality of life across the US. For example, the Biden White House instructed the justice department on the behalf of local school boards nationwide to consider any and all parents who challenge school board’s policies and rules. Instead such parents should be identified and pursed as domestic terrorists, thereby stifling all free speech that challenges government policies.

America is awash in conspiracy. Every firm on Wall Street and in the large private industrial complexes—oil and fossil fuels, nuclear energy, military and national security contractors, the pharmaceutical industry, agro-chemical firms—regularly and repeatedly engage in legal and illegal conspiracies against the American public. Private corporations and their employees have settled many thousands of lawsuits.

On occasion accused individuals, usually propped as patsies and fall guys, have gone to jail. But in the majority of cases companies negotiate settlements and walk away without remorse and are able to retain their ill-gotten gains. JP Morgan settled on $13 billion for mortgage fraud, which left thousands of families homeless. Wachovia was slapped for a mere $800 million for money laundering hundreds of billions of dollars including dark money associated with the illegal drug trade. In every private industry we discover numerous resolved class action suits with underlying conspiratorial intentions to deceive the public and federal regulators. Corruption is systemic throughout corporate America and increases with every bill to further deregulate.

A seductive characteristic of many reasonable conspiracy theories is that they cannot be ruled out entirely. For this reason they gain popular traction and proliferate. Research conducted by psychologists Michael Wood and Karen Douglas at the University of Kent in the UK, and findings by political scientist Lance DeHaven in his book Conspiracy Theory in America, indicate that conspiracy theorists are more sane and intellectually mature than our naïve leaders in government and the major two political parties who more fanatically attach themselves to anti-conspiracy beliefs.ⁱ  For example, the Kent studies showed that two of three viewers of mainstream media reporting on the events of 9/11 disbelieved the networks.

The full throttle efforts to enforce experimental Covid mRNA vaccines and threaten jobs and educations generated a flurry of conspiratorial charges leveled against the vaccine makers, Anthony Fauci, the NIAID, the CDC and the Biden administration. Since conspiracies arise due to observable inconsistencies, contradictions and obvious misstatements, there is every reason for a critical thinking person to realize that the official narrative is contrary to the growing number of first person accounts of deception at every level. Words don’t match reality. Numerous medical professionals and physicians have spoken out against:

• The accuracy of PCR testing to track the pandemic and determine case counts;
• The manner in which Covid-19 deaths were recorded, which included deaths caused by other medical conditions including pneumonia and other infectious diseases;
• Unwarranted changes in the World Health Organization’s definition of a pandemic and herd immunity;
• The violation of international laws by enforcing an experimental vaccine on the public;
• Suppression of accurate data and reports of Covid vaccine injuries and deaths;
• The suppression of effective and inexpensive lifesaving drugs such as Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine;
• Years of scientific evidence against the effectiveness of masks and social distancing and lockdowns;
• Confirmed lies that the vaccines prevented infection and transmission of the SARS-2 virus and its variants

The widespread censorship of scientific voices within the orthodox medical community is only the tip of the iceberg; however, it provides certainty that the policies and strategies being endorsed are by no means science-based. Similar to the worst kinds of religious fundamentalism that represses and engages in violence against non-believers, the commercial based medicine advocated by Fauci and the government’s network of medical institutions, drug companies and philanthropists like Bill Gates are determined to excommunicate those who criticize their dogma. In every worse possible way the medical establishment is emulating religious institutions that have been totally intolerant of dissenters. We can and should have enormous respect for science when it is conducted in an objective methodological manner aligned with ethical intent; however we should pay no respect for science that is dogmatic, fundamentalist and intolerant. A growing body of evidence now shows that official propaganda about the SARS-2 virus’ origins, the vaccines, and the demonization of safe, cheap and effective treatments has been antithetical to real science. The federal medical complex’s handling of the crisis was an utter failure from the start. And now we are witnessing the larger cost of this incompetence appearing in unexpected harm such as enormous spikes in mental health disorders, suicides, and an epidemic of Covid vaccine-induced injuries and deaths.

Yet the more disconcerting problem is that the CDC and WHO have been in complete denial about the facts on the ground and persist in giving false information and disingenuous excuses to avoid accountability.

Fortunately the pandemic has now been firmly exposed as a scam as federal inconsistencies and new information further implodes their narrative. The public will then need to rise up, along with the dissenting medical community, and demand legal accountability for the perpetrators of this pandemic terrorism.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Note

i Kevin Barrett, “New Studies: Conspiracy Theorists Sane; Government Dupes Crazy, Hostile,” Press TV, July 12, 2013. http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/07/12/313399/conspiracy-theorists-vs-govt-dupes/

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The Department of Defense has announced that it will send Avenger air defense systems and a number of other weapons to Ukraine, bringing US security assistance to Kiev to over $1 billion in the last month alone.

A Pentagon press release issued Thursday says President Joe Biden approved a $400 million weapons transfer to Ukraine. The White House claims it can directly send arms from American stockpiles to foreign governments under the Presidential Drawdown Authority, insisting it requires no congressional authorization for the massive arms shipments. While the military has warned its weapons supplies are dwindling after the White House greenlit 25 rounds of security assistance for Kiev since Russia invaded in February, the aid appears to be set to continue into the foreseeable future.

The latest weapons package will include four Avenger air defense systems, self-propelled platforms capable of firing Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Boeing assembles the Avenger vehicle, while Raytheon – the former employer of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin – manufactures its munitions.

This round of arms assistance also includes HAWK missiles, ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), over 100,000 artillery rounds, 100 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs), 400 grenade launchers, small arms, demolition equipment for obstacle clearing and cold weather gear. The HAWK missiles will receive upgrades before being sent to Kiev, with all funding pulled from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan discussed the weapons package at a White House press briefing, saying

“This increased air defense will be critical for Ukraine as Russia continues to use cruise missiles and Iranian-made drones to attack critical civilian infrastructure.”

Deputy Defense Department spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters that Washington is seeking to establish an overlapping network of defensive weapons to protect Ukraine from Russian strikes.

“We’re basically creating … a net of air defense systems of different ranges,” she said. “Whether it’s the Hawk missiles or the [IRIS-T medium range infrared homing missile] that the Germans provided or what we are providing today with the four Avenger air defense systems – all of them have different ranges, all of them contribute differently on the battlefield, which makes the Ukrainians effective.”

The Biden administration has accused Tehran of selling drones to Moscow for deployment in Ukraine. While Iran has acknowledged sending UAVs prior to the war, it maintains no weapons have been delivered to Russia since the invasion began, and that it will not take sides in the conflict.

As of Thursday, the Pentagon reported that total military aid to Ukraine since Biden took office stands at $19.3 billion, with the vast majority of that authorized after Russia’s attack commenced last winter. However, the Germany-based Kiel Institute for the World Economy has disputed that figure, instead claiming that overall US military support for Ukraine had surpassed $28 billion by October 3. For several months, Washington has announced new weapons packages for Kiev on a weekly basis.

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Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute.

Will Porter is the assistant news editor of the Libertarian Institute and a staff writer and editor at RT.

Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter host Conflicts of Interest along with Connor Freeman.

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Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan joins Piers Morgan Uncensored just five days after an attempt was made on his life while he was rallying with his political party. The former cricketer survived with gun shot wounds to his legs after a failed assassination attempt which he believes he “should not have survived”.

Imran tells Piers Morgan that he knew an assassination attempt was in the works from the Intelligence Services and opens up about these deadly plans being formulated within a corrupt government. Piers also asks him about the assailants and Imran says he believes one of the shooters is still at large. He also expresses his thanks to the “heroes” who bravely intervened in the assassination attempt – one of whom it cost his life.

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The defense sector spent over $101 million on federal lobbying during the first three quarters of 2022 and affiliates of these companies have contributed $17.5 million to members of Congress during the 2022 midterm election cycle as of Oct. 19, a new OpenSecrets analysis found.

Congress is expected to pass the largest Pentagon spending bill in history after the midterm election. A huge share of the potential $858 billion package passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee – which still needs to be approved by both the House and Senate – will likely go to companies in the defense sector. One-third to half of the money allocated to the Department of Defense and related programs went to defense contractors from 2001 to 2020, the Brown University Costs of War Project found.

The lion’s share of Pentagon contracts have historically gone to five companies – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics. These five companies spent $44.5 million of the total $101 million the sector has spent on federal lobbying during the first nine months of 2022.

Aerospace and defense prime contractors –those that bid to work directly with the government on certain contracts – dramatically consolidated from 51 in the 1990s to just these five companies today, according to a February report from the Department of Defense.

From 2016 to 2021, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamic raked in more than $765 billion from the federal government, including $704.8 billion from the Department of Defense.

These five contractors received more money from the Department of Defense and the federal government than any other government contractor since 2016 – only Pfizer breached the top five Department of Defense contractor ranks during 2021 amid the coronavirus vaccine rollout that year.

The defense sector is spending less money on federal lobbying this year than it has in prior years as demand for weapons to Ukraine continues and the U.S. flirts with “great power competition” against Russia and China. Inflation is also helping to drive Pentagon budget increases.

“I really think inflation is driving this thing,” said Stephen Semler, the co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, a grassroots think tank that promotes U.S. foreign policy reform.

Inflation is at the highest level in decades, and defense contractors and industry groups including the Aerospace Industries Association and the National Defense Industrial Association have pushed for a higher Pentagon budget and adjustments to fixed price contracts to account for higher costs.

Members of armed services and appropriations committees attract most defense sector contributions

Of the $19.5 million the defense sector – plus Boeing, which OpenSecrets codes as part of the transportation industry – contributed to congressional candidates during the 2022 election cycle, $17.5 million went to incumbent members of Congress.

The largest recipients of contributions from affiliates of those defense companies serve on the House or Senate armed services and appropriations committees, which are responsible for crafting the annual National Defense Authorization Act. That act funds the annual defense spending – and, by extension, a substantial part of these defense contractors’ coffers – every year.

One leading voice in Congress calling for the Pentagon budget to rise with the rate of inflation is Rep. Mike Rogers (R–Ala.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. He’s also the top recipient of contributions from the defense sector this cycle, having received over $444,000 from individuals and PACs affiliated with defense contractors during the 2022 election cycle.

The defense sector also contributed more money to Rogers’ campaign this election cycle than any other sector since 2012, according to OpenSecrets’ data.

“Remember: At the end of the day, getting the inflation number right is important, but it’s only part of the story. If we want to protect our country and meet national security needs, we need 3 to 5 percent real growth above inflation. We plan to accomplish this goal in this year’s NDAA,” said a May press release from Rogers and Sen. James Inhofe (R–Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

While affiliates of the defense sector typically give about equally to support incumbent Democrats and Republicans, individuals and PACs have contributed three times as much money to Republican non-member candidates as Democratic ones. Republican candidates who are not currently members of Congress have collectively received just under $1.5 million, while Democratic non-member candidates have received $486,500.

Defense sector cites inflation to justify increased Pentagon budget

In a letter to leaders of the appropriations and armed services committee this May, the Aerospace Industries Association, a defense industry trade group, urged them to pass defense spending and authorization bills before the end of the fiscal year to show “resolve in the face of Russian and Chinese aggression.”

“Three to 5 percent growth above the inflation rate is the level of investment required to support America’s global force, maintain our competitive edge over adversaries, and catch up technologically in areas where we are falling behind,” wrote Aerospace Industries Association President and CEO Eric Fanning.

The National Defense Industrial Association also claimed that the Department of Defense will lose more than $110 billion in buying power between fiscal year 2021 and 2023.

The Pentagon spending package passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee at the end of June added $45 billion to President Joe Biden’s initial request.

But defense spending has never been tied to inflation, and economy-wide inflation rates are a poor indicator of price changes for defense-specific purchases, Heidi Peltier, director of the Costs of War Project and a senior researcher at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Public Affairs, wrote in May.

“If inflation were the only concern, the NDAA would be at most a few billion over the original proposal, nothing like $45 billion, which far surpasses not only Biden’s request but also any reasonable amount of inflation that the DoD would actually experience,” Peltier said in a written statement to OpenSecrets.

Boeing reported a significant $2.8 billion loss on its defense programs during its third quarter earnings call, primarily due to cost overruns on the KC-46 tanker and new Air Force One, Defense One reported. While the company cited inflation as one of several challenges facing Boeing and the industry, Boeing’s cost overruns for the KC-46 program had already exceeded $5 billion in January 2021.

Under the firm fixed-price contract, Boeing paid those cost overruns out-of-pocket. But leaders from the Aerospace Industries Association and the National Defense Industries Association reportedlypressed the Pentagon and members of Congress to increase the ceiling on firm-fixed-price contracts to account for inflation.

“There’s a myth that’s perpetuated by the arms industry and also establishment figures like [President Joe] Biden that military spending equals security, that there’s a causal link between the two as if security is a commodity that can only be purchased through Pentagon appropriations,” Semler told OpenSecrets. “Now, because of inflation, under that logic, it means we can buy less, so we’re buying less security unless we increase the budget.”

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Featured image: President Joe Biden delivers remarks to Department of Defense personnel at the Pentagon on February 10, 2021. (DoD/Lisa Ferdinando)

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This week in The Bunker: the Pentagon is on the verge of spending $1 trillion a year; honoring vets by incorporating their care into the defense budget; a dirty little secret that boosts defense spending; and more.

Fitting the Pentagon to a ‘T’: The nation’s first trillion-dollar defense budget looms

It’s not here yet, by most accounting, but we’re within spitting distance of spending $1 trillion annually on the U.S. military. This might actually be a good thing, if more spending made us safer. But it doesn’t. It only makes us feel safer, which is a devil’s bargain.

The Senate version of the 2023 defense authorization act earmarks $857 billion (PDF) for national defense. The slackers in the House only want $850 billion (PDF), which may be why it’s known as the “lower house.” Both bills are well beyond President Biden’s $813 billion request. Differences between the two versions will be ironed out in the coming weeks, but the bottom line is that the Pentagon is bound to break the trillion-dollar barrier relatively soon.

Even let’s-spend-more conservatives are split on this gusher. “We need a $1 trillion defense budget,” argued Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, earlier this year. “We need more and better weapons for a newly threatening security environment,” he wrote shortly after Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine. “Russia’s aggression underlines the potential of the U.S. having to fight simultaneous wars in Europe and Asia, to defend NATO and to stave off a China attack on Taiwan or elsewhere, when our forces currently may not be adequate to winning one fight.” Simultaneous wars in Europe and Asia? Be thankful he didn’t enlist the Star Wars’ Sith to inflate the threat even more.

But Lowry’s colleague Philip Klein shot the notion down. “We can’t afford a $1 trillion defense budget,” Klein maintained, citing the fiscal challenges facing the nation and bipartisan stupor when it comes to dealing with them. And, as always, there is the political angle: “If conservatives get behind the idea of massive hikes in the military budget, it gives them a lot less credibility in arguing against the massive social spending being proposed on the left.”

The Pentagon budget generally rides an up escalator, as former Assistant Secretary of Defense Larry Korb spells out (WARNING: Math Alert, Including Percentages) as he details the Biden administration’s creation of the 2023 defense budget:

The administration had to choose a base starting point: the $753 billion it originally requested for FY [fiscal year] 2022 or the $770 billion it projected it would request in FY 2023. Alternatively, the administration could use the $780 billion that Congress authorized for FY 2022, which was $37 billion — 5% — more than President Biden’s proposal for FY 2022 and $10 billion more than he intended to request for FY 2023.

Instead of choosing either of these base amounts in its FY 2023 budget proposal, the Biden administration requested $813 billion, which went far beyond what it proposed in FY 2022. This was a result of pressure from Congress — including from many Democrats, who objected to several of President Biden’s proposed reductions, particularly to the Navy — and the impact of inflation on pay for active duty, reserve, and retired military personnel. This is $33 billion — about 4% — more than what Congress approved in FY 2022 and about $45 billion — 10% — more than the administration projected it would propose in FY 2023.

And that was all before Congress further fattened it up.

Estimates of when U.S. defense spending will top $1 trillion range from next year to 2027 to 2030 depending on gobs of variables. Toss in elements like homeland security and the Pentagon’s share of interest paid on the national debt — as Mandy Smithberger, the former director of the Center for Defense Information here at the Project On Government Oversight has done — and a case can be made that the nation crossed that $1 trillion threshold five years ago.

Speaking of which…

Accounting for veterans

Technically speaking, of course, we do already spend well over $1 trillion annually on national defense, even before adding in national debt interest. You can get there simply by adding what we pay to care for our veterans to the Pentagon’s purse. This year, we’ve authorized $778 billion for today’s military, and appropriated another $271 billion to spend in 2022 for those who fought yesterday’s wars (total: $1.05 trillion). VA spending has more than doubled over the past decade. Its proposed $301 billion 2023 budget is more than the $298 billion the Pentagon spent in 1999.

The Defense Department pays to mothball ships, store warplanes in the desert, and clean up its environmental messes. Why should soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Guardians be treated any differently?

We owe our veterans a lot. That’s something to keep in mind every day, not just this week when Veterans Day comes around. One way of acknowledging that debt is to incorporate the cost of caring for them into the U.S. defense budget.

How Contractors Make More Money by Refusing to Share Their Blueprints

The Bunker regularly comes across contract awards earmarked for a weapon’s developer because that original builder is the only one who has the detailed specs and drawings needed to build spare parts. William LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top civilian weapons buyer, was speaking at a weapons-buying conference November 4 when he recalled what an unnamed defense industry official told him about contractors’ reluctance to share such data.

“To be honest with you, you’re going to have to make us do it,” the contractor told LaPlante. “We will not do it on our own, because it actually puts us at a disadvantage to our competitor. If my stuff is interchangeable with another company’s stuff, then I’ve just lowered the barrier of entry.”

Take this recent contract (PDF) to Bell Helicopter for chopper maintenance. “The Government does not currently own the technical data, nor possess the requisite license rights necessary to compete the efforts anticipated,” the Pentagon said in justifying its award to Bell without competition. “The estimated timeframe to qualify another source and develop the technical data for the requirements herein is eight (8) years.”

The type of helicopter involved first flew 66 years ago.

That’s another reason why the annual U.S. defense budget will soon top $1 trillion.

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

Secret wars

The Brennan Center for Justice published a November 3 investigation into the clandestine combat the U.S. military has been waging in more than a dozen nations around the world since 9/11.

Submarine race to the bottom

After the USS Connecticut rammed the sea floor because its crew failed to follow existing rules, the service has rolled out an armada of new rules they can ignore, Navy Times reported November 2.

Count your blessings…

Not a single word about the 2022 mid-term elections in The Bunker this week. You’re welcome.

Thanks for hanging out with The Bunker. Consider forwarding this on to acquaintances so they can sign up here.

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Mark Thompson writes for the Center for Defense Information at POGO.

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The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is monopolizing the Asian and Global South spotlight for no fewer than 10 days, this week and the next, across a flurry of regional and international summits. 

First stop is Phnom Penh for the 25th China-ASEAN summit, the 25th ASEAN Plus Three (APT) summit, and the 17th East Asia Summit, all the way to Sunday.

Next week will be Bali for the Group of Twenty, followed by Bangkok for the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit.

No wonder the diplomatic spin across Southeast Asia is all about global governance entering the “Asia moment” – as coined by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. It’s a moment that may be set to last a century – and beyond.

In parallel, Chinese diplomacy is also predictably on a roll. Premier Li Keqiang – who will step down next March, after two terms in office – heads Beijing’s delegation in Cambodia after two key Southeast Asian interactions: the visit by Vietnamese leader Nguyen Phu Trong to China and Chinese Vice-Premier Han Zheng’s visit to Singapore.

All that fits the pattern of increasing China-Southeast Asia integration. Since 2020, ASEAN has been China’s largest trading partner. China has been ASEAN’s top trading partner since 2009. Total China-ASEAN trade reached $878 billion in 2021, up from $686 billion in 2020. It had been $9 billion in 1991. China-ASEAN investment was more than US$340 billion by last July, according to the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing.

Interests particularly converge on deepening RCEP – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the largest trade deal on the planet. That translates in practice as closer integration of supply chains, infrastructure connectivity and the building of a new international land-sea trade corridor.

So it’s no wonder all the slogans for these 10 days of summits reflect closer integration. The ASEAN 2022 theme is “ASEAN A C T: Addressing Challenges Together.” The Indonesians defined the G20 as “Recover Together, Recover Stronger.” And the Thais defined APEC as “Open. Connect. Balance.”

Now bend that bamboo

Timing is everything. After the Communist Party Congress defined the parameters of “peaceful modernization” and how Beijing will develop globalization 2.0 with Chinese characteristics, diplomacy was ready to go on the offensive. And not only across Southeast Asia.

On South Asia, Beijing hosted Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Regardless of who holds power in Islamabad, Pakistan remains strategically crucial, with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) connecting to the Western Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and beyond toward Europe.

Pakistan cannot be left to implode under severe financial constraints. So it’s no wonder that Xi Jinping promised that “China will continue to do its best to support Pakistan in stabilizing its financial situation.”

Image: Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif visited Beijing. Photo is licensed under Creative Commons

They were very specific on CPEC: Priorities are the construction of auxiliary infrastructure for Gwadar port in the Arabian Sea and to upgrade the Karachi Circular Railway project.

On Africa, Beijing hosted Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu.

Beijing is constantly inviting African leaders to discuss trade and investment in a “South-South” format. So it’s no wonder the Chinese find receptivity to their ideas and necessities to an extent that’s absolutely out of the question in the West.

China-Tanzania is now a “comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.” This is quite significant, because now Tanzania is on the same level as Vietnam and Cambodia, as well as Kenya, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, in China’s ultra-complex “friendship” hierarchy. Tanzania, incidentally, is a crucial source of soybeans.

On Europe, Beijing received German Chancellor Olof Scholz for a lightning-fast visit, leading a caravan of business executives. Beijing may not “save” Berlin from its current self-enforced predicament; at least it’s clear that German business will not go for “decoupling” from China.

It’s crucial to remember that Vietnam, Pakistan and Tanzania are all key partners in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And the same applies to Germany: The Ruhr Valley is the privileged Belt and Road terminal in the European Union.

All that leaves the Quad, AUKUS, the “Indo-Pacific Framework” and the “Partners for a Blue Pacific” – different denominations of isolation/demonization of China – trailing in the dust. Not to mention the imperial drive to impose “decoupling.”

Beijing knows full well Singapore’s role as the essential Southeast Asian finance/tech node. Hence the signing of 19 bilateral deals, some related to high tech.

But as far as optics go, the key visitor may have been Vietnam. Forget about their South China Sea tensions. For Beijing, what matters is that Nguyen Phu Trong came to visit immediately after the Communist Party conference – somehow echoing the centuries-old tribute system. Hanoi may have no interest whatsoever in being strategically dominated by Beijing. But demonstrating respect – and neutrality – is the Asian diplomatic way to go.

Trong made a point to note that “Vietnam considers its friendly cooperation with China the first priority of its foreign policy.”

That may not necessarily mean that Hanoi is privileging Beijing over Washington. The meaning of “first priority” seems to be clear: China and Vietnam agreed to turbocharge work on the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea. That also happens to be a key Chinese priority – as it keeps the process as an inter-Asian matter without the predictable “foreign interference.”

It was Trong himself who first came up with the fascinating idea of “bamboo diplomacy“: soft, clever, persistent and resolute. The concept may be easily applied to the whole of China-Southeast Asian relations.

Round up the jargon

This week in Phnom Penh, there are serious discussions on deepening the RCEP; problems on the food and energy front; and speeding up the negotiation of what is billed as the 3.0 version of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area.

All that involves a key issue: the interconnection of BRI projects and ASEAN’s so-called Outlook on the Indo-Pacific – a series of ASEAN  development strategies.

A good example is the endless high-speed-rail saga related to connecting Yunnan province in southern China to Singapore.

The building of the Thai section was proposed even ahead of the Laos section. Yet Kunming-Vientiane was ready in record time – and is rolling – while the Thais have been endlessly haggling and lost in corruption and internal infighting: Only part of their section at best will be finished by 2028.

The same applies to Malaysia and Singapore still not finding an agreement. This is the case of a key connectivity corridor across Southeast Asia hobbled by internal and bilateral trouble. In parallel, the construction of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway has proceeded with only a few bumps.

As much as China and ASEAN established an official comprehensive strategic partnership in 2021, several key BRI projects are intimately connected to Southeast Asia. After all, Xi Jinping launched the Maritime Silk Road concept in Jakarta more than nine years ago.

The same applies to solving the seemingly intractable issues of the South China Sea. The Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea was signed by Beijing and ASEAN 20 years ago.

In geopolitical terms, the 10-headed ASEAN hydra is a unique beast: a living lab of peaceful – civilizational – co-existence.

Trade has always been the secret weapon. It has always been a two-way road between China and Southeast Asia. History tells us that the willingness of Southeast Asian rulers to submit – even if symbolically – to China explains the predominant Make Trade Not War ethos.

The main exception was Vietnam, occupied by China from 111 BC until AD 963-979. But even as Vietnam became independent from China a millennium ago, it always remained deeply influenced by Chinese culture. In contrast, the Chinese who were assimilated into Thai culture gave up Confucianism and ended up adopting Indian court rituals.

In parallel, as Professor Wang Gungwu in Singapore always noted, paying tribute and requesting protection from the Chinese imperial dynasties never meant that Beijing could do what it wanted across Southeast Asia.

In the current incandescent geopolitical juncture, China is definitely not interested in playing divide and rule in Southeast Asia. Chinese strategic planners seem to understand that ASEAN carries a lot of soft power smoothing the big power play across Southeast Asia, offering a platform for all to engage with each other.

No one seems to mistrust ASEAN. That also explains why the Southeast Asians have come up with an acronym fest that basically hails cooperation – from ASEM and ASEAN+3 to APEC.

So it’s enlightening to remember that “China is prepared to open itself to ASEAN countries,” as Xi himself said when he launched the Maritime Silk Road in Jakarta in 2013. “China is committed to greater connectivity with ASEAN countries” – and “China will propose the establishment of an Asian infrastructure investment bank that would give priority to ASEAN countries’ needs.”

The bilateral relationships between China and each of the 10 members of ASEAN may carry their own particular complications. But there seems to be a consensus that no bilateral will determine the future of China-Southeast Asian relations.

The discussions this week in Phnom Penh and next week in Bali and Bangkok suggest that Southeast Asia has ruled out either extreme: paying tribute or demonizing China.

Across Southeast Asia the Chinese diaspora has been informally referred to for decades as “the bamboo internet.” The same metaphor would apply to China-Southeast Asia diplomacy: Gotta go the bamboo way. Soft, clever, persistent – and enduring.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will head Beijing’s delegation in Cambodia for regional meetings. Photo: CCTV screen grab

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***

My title comes from a song sung by soldiers as they marched to hell in the trenches of World War I and the same song my sisters and I sang in the car as our parents drove us to our summer vacation in paradise at Edgewater Farm.

I think of this as we march to WW III.

The soldiers, who would be slaughtered by the millions as pawns in the great game, sardonically sung it to the tune of Old Lang Syne to express their bewilderment at why they were fighting in the so-called “War to End All Wars” or “the Great War.”

We children sang it because we had heard the words but had no idea where they came from, yet they seemed playful and weird and easy to remember and we were celebrating our good fortune in leaving the city and arriving at the farm for a week’s country idyll.

War and peace absurdly juxtaposed.  Because?  Because everyone needs to be somewhere even if they don’t know why.

Yet today so many people feel lost in a world gone mad, a nowhere land, far further from somewhere than when John Lennon penned the words to “Nowhere Man” in 1965.  It is no wonder he was assassinated in 1980, for he was a man growing into a profound anti-war consciousness.

Now we’re again celebrating Armistice/Remembrance/Veteran’s Day on November 11 in a world forever at war and with nuclear annihilation staring us in the face.  Always the bitter Old Lie told by the depraved political and economic elites to suck the masses into death.  Wilfred Owen, killed in action on November 4, 1918 one week before the Armistice, murmurs to us from his French grave:

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

But what do dead poets know?  Only everything important.

What child would want such gory glory as dulce et decorum est pro patria moriun less it was pounded into its head by men in love with death?

Do they think the dead can hear the cheers?

Can we hear the songs of the poets who link us back to contemplate the atrocities of the battles of The Somme, Passchendaele, Marne, Gallipoli, Verdun, etc. with all the official lies told by the political jackals responsible for these slaughters?

At the farm, my many sisters and I, despite not knowing what we had sung, did know why we were where we were; our “because” had a clear answer.  We were there to choose life, not death, to enjoy living, which we knew was a precious gift from parents who could barely afford the expense.  We walked barefoot down the sandy dirt road between the green pasture where the cows lolled dreamily and the quiet waters of the limpid creek to the swimming hole where we would float for hours with the fish as turtles eyed us from their log perches in the sun.

What child would want to wallow in blood and gore for a posthumous medal?

What parent would want their child to march to war to die, rather than swim in the waters of life and love?

We’re here because we’re here because nihilism is celebrated as patriotism and the love of death masquerades as love of life.  The nations that celebrate these war days do not do so to foster peace but to remind people that it is indeed sweet to die for one’s country.  And God too, of course.  Because?  The poet Dylan sings the truth.  Just listen: “With God on Our Side”  or hear Phil Ochs’ “Is There Anybody Here.”

But all of this was once upon a time in the 1960s when many people were realizing that war was a racket, as Marine General Smedley Butler told us long ago.  Today sleep has descended on most people while the disease of war is injected into the public’s bloodstream in a manner learned well from the massive propaganda campaign of WW I.  In the USA then, it was the Committee on Public Information, led by George Creel, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann, et al. who “manufactured the consent” of the public to hate the “Huns,” keep their mouths shut, and spy on their neighbors, all in the service of a jolly-good war “over there.”  Today the spying and propaganda apparatus dwarfs those efforts exponentially with its electronic, digital technology.

But poets don’t text the truth.  They sing it and think it and tell it, even when nobody’s listening.

We’re all lucky to still be here.  If we continue to celebrate past wars and the soldiers who fought them in a sly homage to the greatness of war, we are doomed.  We won’t be here because….

Here’s Liam Clancy singing of one man’s story of war’s greatness.

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

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

Featured image is from Free the People

He is the author of Seeking the Truth in a Country of Lies

To order his book, click here.

“Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is a dazzling journey into the heart of many issues — political, philosophical, and personal — that should concern us all.  Ed Curtin has the touch of the poet and the eye of an eagle.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Edward Curtin puts our propaganda-stuffed heads in a guillotine, then in a flash takes us on a redemptive walk in the woods — from inferno to paradiso.  Walk with Ed and his friends — Daniel Berrigan, Albert Camus, George Orwell, and many others — through the darkest, most-firefly-filled woods on this earth.” James W. Douglass, author, JFK and the Unspeakable

“A powerful exposé of the CIA and our secret state… Curtin is a passionate long-time reform advocate; his stories will rouse your heart.” Oliver Stone, filmmaker, writer, and director

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***

Even as Pakistan grapples with the fallout from severe flooding, throngs of people have continued to take to the streets to push for radical change. The shooting earlier this month of former Prime Minister Imran Khan at one of these protests has brought the country to a tipping point. 

Today, Khan’s popularity as a political leader is at its peak – and this is precisely why he is now in trouble. Removed from office in April after losing a no-confidence vote orchestrated by his political enemies, he has displayed an indefatigable resolve to fight back.

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. The nation’s curse 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.

Khan’s ouster engendered anger among large segments of the population, who believed that the “Khan experiment” was now dead. His decision to fight back is frankly miraculous in a country where wealth and power are so obscenely monopolised by the civilian and military elites who despise Khan.

Across the country, Khan has held rallies to reinvigorate a population that otherwise might have fallen into despair over the restoration of the old political order. In the scorching heat of the summer and through the devastating floods, Khan has not budged an inch on his simple core demand: that the country holds elections to determine who should govern.

Desperately seeking change

Yet, what seems like a fairly banal demand is anathema to the traditional mainstream political parties. The Pakistan Muslim League (N) in particular, whose leader Shehbaz Sharif has been appointed prime minister without a mandate from the people, is in panic mode. It has long been accustomed to dominating the most powerful and populous province of the country, Punjab, which was reclaimed in July by-elections by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

The rise of Khan’s PTI has been no small feat, with the relatively young party breaking the stranglehold of the two-party duopoly that dominated the country’s political life for decades. Clearly, Pakistanis desperately want change.

Pakistan’s ruling elites have tried pretty much everything to curb this trend, seeking to outlaw voting by overseas Pakistanis, who overwhelmingly support Khan. Police hit Khan with absurd “terrorism” charges, and the state’s election commission recently disqualified him from contesting elections. Rather than addressing the gargantuan social and economic problems facing Pakistan, the regime is clearly fixated on destroying Khan.

But the government is not the only player in this saga. Khan enjoys widespread support within the ranks of the Pakistani military, perhaps explaining why the heavily militarised national security state has been so reluctant to repress popular mobilisations. If such orders were issued, there is a real risk that soldiers’ guns could turn the other way, sparking a rebellion within the military.

These are the same armed forces that for the past two decades, have been forced to sacrifice and die for the American “war on terror”. By this point, they are surely more attracted to Khan’s pledge to be a friend of the US in peace but not in war, than to any new orders the military high command might devise in connivance with Washington.

Meanwhile, 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 killed last month in strange circumstances after he fled to Kenya. Pakistan’s political groups have been thoroughly exposed for their hypocrisy, lies, and opportunism.

Uncertainty ahead

At this point, we can only speculate as to the motivation for Khan’s shooting last week. He was wounded in the leg, in what his supporters have called an assassination attempt. If a trained shooter from Pakistan’s intelligence agencies wanted to kill Khan, many observers believe, then that would have been the outcome.

Rather, some say the shooting might have been a warning to Khan and his supporters, one of whom died in the same incident after sustaining bullet wounds. But this explanation seems weak because the whole world knows by now that virtually nothing could deter Khan from openly confronting the powers-that-be, whether in Islamabad or Washington.

Whatever the motivation, this could backfire badly, adding momentum to Khan’s push for change. The former prime minister has emphasised that his rallies and marches must remain peaceful, and indeed, the demonstrations thus far have been incredibly disciplined.

At the same time, we must not lose sight of the larger geopolitical power plays at work here. Khan has accused Washington of being behind a conspiracy to keep him from the halls of power. At a time when the US has been humiliated by its former puppets – including Saudi Arabia and India, which have refused to go along with the “new cold war” that the US is waging against China and Russia – Washington apparently wants to revive relations with the formidable Pakistani military.

Khan is no revolutionary socialist, but he believes that Pakistan has the right to maintain its own independent foreign policy. For that reason, he will remain an impediment to Washington.

While the outcome of this chaotic situation is deeply uncertain, one thing is crystal clear: The political battle is between Khan and the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis on one side, and the powerful and wealthy civilian and military elites (sponsored by Washington) on the other. Despite legitimate criticisms of how Khan governed when in power, progressives must be able to figure out where they stand now.

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This article was originally published on Middle East Eye.

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

Featured image is from IRF

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***

One of the more tiresome experiences for anyone engaged in long-term solidarity work with the Palestinians is encountering the same old Zionist myths, churned out year after year despite having been conclusively disproved by any objective standard. Anyone who watched “The X-Files” will recall the poster in Mulder’s room of a UFO beneath which were the words, “I want to believe.” The doggedness with which veteran Israel supporters cling to myths suggests a similar commitment of faith.

Perhaps the most obviously discredited myth is that the majority of Palestinian Arabs fled their homes in 1948 at the call of their leaders. It still surfaces fairly often, although it looks set to fade away in the not too distant future, not because its adherents are convinced that it is unfounded, but mainly because of age taking its toll.

After 1948, generations of Americans perceived Israel to be an enlightened, democratic and humane country. Blaming the Palestinians for their own exile and dispossession was necessary to preserve that image. The essential vindication of the Palestinians’ own accounts of 1948 over the past 30 or so years has occurred while Israel has increasingly embraced the most racist, nationalistic forms of Zionism without any pretense of liberalism or enlightened values. Israel’s current political leaders are less inclined to worry about denying Israel’s responsibility for the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 than their predecessors. According to a 2016 Pew poll, nearly half of Israeli Jews openly wish that the rest had been expelled and express the desire that the Palestinians might still be removed, one way or another. How is it possible to support Israel today without endorsing or at least enabling the policies to which such outlooks give rise?

Yet some propaganda themes have already bitten the dust. I was reminded of this while sorting through some old papers from the 1960s. Some capitalized on Westerners’ general lack of knowledge of the Middle East. We were told that Israelis greet each other with the word shalom, peace, and this showed the value they attached to that concept. The fact that Arabs greeted each other with salaam ‘alaykum, translated into English as “peace be unto you,” was not mentioned, although it could equally well be cited as evidence of their appreciation of peace.

In 1967, Israel could still rely on Westerners’ ignorance of the Palestinians and their history. When addressing U.S. audiences, Israel’s proponents used maps that showed all the lands of the Arab countries; by comparison, Israel looked very small. “The Arabs have all this territory, and the Jews only want this tiny scrap of land as a state,” was the accompanying description, with minor variations. The size of the Arab world was actually irrelevant: the territory in contention was the land of Palestine, home to a people who were not Egyptians, Algerians or Iraqis, but Palestinians. Denying the national identity and history of the Palestinian people and subsuming them into “the Arabs” not only obscured the nature of the conflict, but reinforced the Zionist contention that the “Arab refugees” should be resettled in Arab countries. It’s rather as if an invader of say, Peru or Costa Rica, had offered the justification for displacing their people by pointing to a map of Latin America and saying, “Look at all the land these Latinos have!”

News commentaries on Israelis killed in the late 1960s would sometimes say that the loss of life was deeply felt at a national level because the population of Israel was small. By implication, the more numerous Arabs did not feel the loss of life as deeply, as if numbers diluted grief. Few people outside the region would have made a comparison with the Palestinians and realized that the size of the Palestinian population was comparable to Israel’s. Why would Palestinians not deeply feel the loss of their fellow nationals in conflict? In fact, any reporter who bothered to visit Palestinian communities was able to confirm that they did.

One story that rapidly evaporated was that of the boots. Just after the Israeli attack on Egypt in June 1967, photographs appeared in some Western newspapers and magazines (including Life) showing lots of military boots scattered upon the ground. It was reported that they had been discarded by Egyptian soldiers who, as simple peasant farmers, were not used to wearing boots and had taken them off so that they could run away more easily.

There were problems with this story from the start: more perceptive observers might have wondered whether people who knew how hot a desert could get underfoot would actually have done this. The story suggested that the Egyptian soldiers were easily vanquished and put to rout. Over the following months, a fuller picture emerged of what happened.

Under assault by a well-prepared and strong adversary who took total command of the skies through a surprise attack, the Egyptian forces in the Gaza Strip and Sinai took heavy losses but initially fought determinedly. Their cohesion broke down when their panicky high command ordered them to retreat, at a time when their communications were badly disrupted. Those retreating in the area of the Mitla Pass in central Sinai were sitting ducks for Israeli air strikes.

Israeli tanks and soldiers encountered thousands of demoralized Egyptian soldiers. Around 5,000 were taken prisoner. Scattered reports told of soldiers who’d abandoned their weapons being shot down by Israeli soldiers when they approached and pleaded for water. While some Israeli soldiers acted humanely, others simply saw the taking of prisoners who would need to be guarded, given water and fed as a burden that they should not bear. Weaponless and disorganized, the Egyptians could be left to try to walk back toward the Suez Canal or die of thirst in the desert. Some Arab sources later claimed that Israeli troops forced Egyptian soldiers to take off their boots before turning them loose: it diminished both their ability to resume fighting and, in some cases, their chances of survival.

Stories of Egyptian incompetence and unmartial qualities ultimately backfired on Israel. Such stories encouraged the Israeli soldiers to assume that Israel enjoyed military superiority over Egypt and to underestimate the determination and ability of the Egyptian army to rebuild its strength and recover its lost territory. They were shocked by the initial successes of the Egyptian armed forces in October 1973, which crossed the Suez Canal under heavy bombardment and drove Israeli soldiers from their well-fortified positions. Disparaging the courage and fighting ability of Egyptian troops no longer seemed like a good idea to Israeli publicists.

Some old Zionist myths have lost their utility to their makers and others have been so badly discredited that they have ceased to be reiterated. New ones are brought into service, old themes given a new coat of paint, but they are, if anything, even less credible than the preceding ones and will meet the same fate. It is no wonder that present-day Israel and its supporters put great effort into shutting down arguments over Palestine through the accusation of “anti-Semitism.” They don’t have a case that can be validated by logical arguments based on facts, international law and basic principles of humanity.

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John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.

Featured image: Israeli warplanes attacked hundreds of towers and civilian ‘targets’ in the Gaza Strip. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

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***

Speculation is rife that U.S/NATO are winning the military war in Ukraine (by arming and commanding Ukraine’s armed forces — it’s a proxy-war on the U.S. side), and also is rife that Russia is winning the military war in Ukraine (using its own forces), but “the fog of war” and propagandistic agendas dominate the military war on both sides (both the U.S.-and-allied side that gets its ‘information’ from Ukraine’s Government and the Russian side that gets its ‘information’ from Russia’s Government).

It’s a two-front war: the military front, and the economic front. And that “fog of war” pertains ONLY to the military aspect of the war. It does NOT pertain to the economic front.

The ‘fog of war’ is almost 100% uncertainty on the military front, and nobody yet really knows which side is actually winning this war militarily.

BY STARK CONTRAST: The economic front is 100% controlled by investors and is indisputably shown in the changes in the respective values of the currencies on the two sides: the value of the ruble relative to the dollar, and to the pound, and to the euro, today versus on 1 January 2022, which initial date was before anyone had any clear knowledge that Russia would invade Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and would promptly be hit by an all-out economic war against Russia: intense primary and secondary sanctions to create an economic iron wall between East and West, an economic blockade (by “The West”) against Russia.

Here are those economic changes, and the victor, thus far, in the war’s ECONOMIC front is clearly and unambiguously shown in each of these three graphs: see this.

See this

Nazis overwhelmingly support Ukraine against Russia, and now are leading throughout The West. Consumers and industries in UK and in Europe — and even in America itself — will be paying hefty prices for the nazi policies by their leaders. Are they democracies? One might also ask: Is Russia a democracy?

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

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

Featured image is from The Unz Review

“Oni koji zaborave prošlost su osudjeni da je ponove” – George Santayana, španski pisac

“Zadati udarac onima koji ometaju realizaciju plana …” – istorija se ponavlja, seljacima koji se ne pridržavaju vladinog plana se ponovo preti oduzimanjem imanja

Prije sto godina Sovjetske komunističke vlasti su – pod izgovorom opšteg dobra – započele konfiskaciju imovine kulaka (seljaka zemljovlasnika) i time uništili milione života i godinama unazadili sopstvenu privredu. Njihovi ideološki naslednici u 21. vijeku koriste iste metode pod okriljem UN Agende 2030 koju su potpisale sve 193 zemlje članiceUjedinjenih Nacija – iz uvjerenja da to čine za opšte dobro.

Komunistička stranka Kine je 1958-1962 pod sloganom Veliki skok naprijed sprovodi prinudnu kolektivizaciju zbog koje je 50 miliona umrlo od gladi; danas “Veliki reset” zamjenjuje Veliki skok

17 Laznih Ciljeva

Agenda 2030 se sastoji od 17 SDGs – Sustainable Development Goals (Ciljeva za održivi razvoj) koji utiču na sve aspekte života na zemlji. Iza njenih atraktivnih deklaracija se krije jedna mračna kontrolna ideologija koja stavlja kolektivni interesispred ličnih prava, uz potpunu uzurpaciju proizvodnih lanaca hrane.

Taj kolektivizam je potvr]en na prošlogodišnjem UN Samitu o Ishrani čija je platforma bila “iskoristiti moć prehrambrenih sistema radi postizanja 17 ciljeva održivog razvoja do 2030.” kao i uvodjenje CO2 naknada zbog borbe protiv ”klimatskih promjena”. Ta agenda podrazumijeva prelazak sa fosilnih goriva na ”zelenu energiju” za šta je koncipirana ESG – Environmental, Social, and Governance (upravljanje životnom sredinom i društvom), metrika usklađenosti sa ciljevima agende.

Šta ako jedna mala grupa svjetskih lidera zaključi da glavni rizik Zemlji potiče iz aktivnosti bogatih država?… Da bi spasili planetu, ta grupa odlučuje: Zar nije jedina nada za planetu da industrijske civilizacije dožive krah? Zar naša obaveza nije da to ostvarimo? – Maurice Strong, mentor Klausa Schwaba i osnivač UN Svjetske Komisije za životnu sredinu i razvoj 1983. godine

”Klimatske promjene” je ključna alatka – uz terorizam i pandemije – u rukama elite koja jača svoju moć stvaranjem globalnih problema koji zahtijevaju globalna rješenja. Njihovo rješenje za ”klimatske promjene” je Net Zero plan za redukciju ”atmosferskih zagađivača” ugljenika i azota, čime se namjerno ignoriše fakat da je ugljenik primarna komponenta života na zemlji koji predstavlja polovinu biomase na planeti i da je azot neophodna supstanca za rast biljaka.

Drveće brže raste uz višu koncentraciju CO2 / Generator za obogaćivanje CO2 na 1500 ppm

Atmosferski nivo ugljen-dioksida je bio višestruko veći u periodima kada je zemlja bila značno zelenija nego danas i kao osnovni nutrijent za biljke je optimalni nivo CO2 višestruko veći od sadašnjih 420 ppm tako da bi njegova drastična redukcija mogla ugroziti život na planeti.

Koncentracija CO2 u atmosferi je iznosila iznad 5,000 ppm (parts per million/delova na milion) u Kambrijskom periodu,pre 550 miliona godina; tokom zadnjih 150 miliona godina taj nivo je pao za 90 % i sada iznosi 420 ppm

U zadnjih pola miliona godina zemlja je prošla kroz četiri ledena doba koja su u prosjeku trajala stotinak hiljada godina i zadnjih 11.500 godina zemlja se nalazi u interglacijalnom periodu koji je omogućio ljudima da se bave poljoprivredom i da izgrade civilizacije; ne zna se kada dolazi sljedeće ledeno doba, jedino da je ono neizbježno.

U prethodna četiri interglacijalna razdoblja su globalne temperature, bez industrije i automobila, bile 2 do 4 stepena više od sadašnjih; prije 120.000 godina nilski konji su šetali Evropom

Teza da ugljen-dioksid predstavlja opasnost za klimu je zasnovana na pseudonauci koju mediji promovišu na isti način kao i Covid narativ u vezi s kojim se poslušno prenosi svaka laž koju emituju vlasti i korporacije, dok se ignorišu glasovi 900.000 zdravstvenih stručnjaka iz Velike Barringtonske Deklaracije koji osudjuju pandemijsku histeriju i samoubilačke pandemijske mjere. Na isti način se zanemaruje Oregonska peticija iz 2007. i stav 32.000 klimatskih stručnjaka koji tvrde da “ne postoji naučni dokaz da ljudsko oslobadjanje ugljen-dioksida, metana ili drugih gasova može izazvati katastrofalno zagrijavanje Zemljine atmosfere i poremećaj klime. Ograničenje stakleničkih gasova bi oštetilo životnu sredinu, poremetilo napredak nauke i tehnologije i naudilo zdravlju i dobrobiti čovječanstva… štaviše, postoje značajni naučni dokazi da bi povećanje atmosferskog ugljen-dioksida imalo puno korisnih efekta na prirodno biljno i životinjsko okruženje zemlje.” Taj stav je nedavno potvrdio norveški Nobelovac, fizičar Ivar Giaever i još 1200 naučnika: “Ne postoji klimatsko vanredno stanje; klimatska nauka je degenerisala u raspravu zasnovanu na uvjerenjima, a ne na zdravoj nauci.”

PLANETARNO ZAHLAĐIVANJE → GLOBALNO ZAGRIJAVANJE → KLIMATSKE PROMJENE

KLIMATSKI ALARMIZAM SLAVI NESLAVNIH 50 GODINA POSTOJANJA:

70-ih godina zasnovan na zahlađenju planete, da bi u sljedećoj deceniji prešlo na zagrijavanje kako bi se okrivili ljudi; sada se koristi termin “Klimatske promjene” pošto se ni jedna prognoza nije obistinila

Jedini koji vjeruju u klimatske promjene su oni koji od nje profitiraju, kao i učenici koji zbog Grete Thunberg imaju izgovor da izostanu iz škole: uprkos neprestanog napora da se javnost ubijedi u suprotno, Gallup anketa potvrdjuje da svega 3 % Amerikanaca gleda na klimatske promjene kao problem, dok anketa New York Times bilježi da 1 % upitanih navodi klimu kao najvažnije pitanje sa kojim se zemlja suočava. Iz tog razloga klimatska propaganda nastavlja raditi punom parom, koristeći Big Tech da aktivno cenzuriše sve suprotstavljene klima – i naravno Corona – stavove. Nedavno je izbilo u javnost da su prije dvije godine WEF i Ujedinjene Nacije ujedinili snage i angažovali 110.000 “informacionih ratnika” da regulišu internet kako bi “zaštitili svijet od dezinformacija”.

1989: visoki UN zvaničnik za zaštitu životne sredine tvrdi da zbog rasta nivoa mora cijele nacije mogu biti izbrisane sa lica zemlje do 2000. godine, ako ne zaustavimo trend globalnog zagrijavanja. Sva mjerenja pokazuju da je nivo mora svugdje stabilan ili u opadanju

Elite ulažu veliku nadu u mladu generaciju kojoj je predodređeno da, uz pomoć školske indoktrinacije i studentskih pokreta kao što su Fridays for Future, prihvati ”zelenu agendu”. Mladi takođe trebaju naučiti da na ljudski rod gledaju kao pošast planete i akceptirati da će bolni koraci biti potrebni za rješavanje ”klimatske krize” – kao na primjer da će oni biti prva generacija u zadnjih sto godina koja neće moći da posjeduje automobil.

Armada Pentagona emituje više CO2 od 140 svjetskih država ali se ipak ne nalazi na meti Grete Thunberg, alatke globalista kao i američka vojska

Ti bolni koraci na nivou države su vidljivi na primjeru Šri Lanke čiji je ministar životne sredine Mahinda Amaweera, slijepo jureći ESG ciljeve, proglasio inicijativu za “spas zemlje od naše zloupotrebe od geoinženjeringa, pohlepe i sebičnosti” i poslije usvajanja ”taksonomije zelenih finansija” je prošle godine zabranio vještačka gnojiva, za šta je ta zemlja nagrađena ESG ocjenom od 98,1.

Na rezultate tih mjera se nije dugo čekalo pošto su prinosi pirinča ove godine prepolovljeni, privreda zemlje pred kolapsom, a stanovništvo na rubu gladi. To je primoralo Svjetski Ekonomski Forum da sa WEF sajta ukloni članak iz 2018. u kojem se Šri Lanka hvali zbog uspješne ekološke kampanje i prognozira da će se ona do 2025. pridružiti klubu bogatih zemalja.

Lenjinov sledbenik Klaus Schwab i njegov kartel globalista žele u svojim rukama objediniti svu vlast i kontrolu nad cjelokupnim životom na zemlji: “Nećete imati ništa i bićete sretni”

Agenda 2030 – zvanični ciljevi: 1. Eliminacija siromaštva 2. Nula gladi 3. Dobro zdravlje 4. Kvalitetno obrazovanje 5. Rodna ravnopravnost 6. Čista voda i sanitacija … 17. Partnerstvo za postizanje ciljeva

Agenda 2030 – stvarni ciljevi: 1. Eliminacija niže klase 2. GMO hrana/Codex Alimentarius 3. Prinudno cijepljenje 4. Propaganda/Ispiranje mozga/Indoktrinacija 5. Razaranje porodice 6. Privatizacija vode/Racioniranje … 17. Globalna vlada

Svijet bez zagađenja zvuči primamljivo ali se iza te agende krije plan za uvođenje globalnog komunizma u kojem UN/WEFupravljaju svim resursima i populacija zavisi od vlade za životne potrebe.

Novinar Alex Newman upozorava na rat za hranu: “Globalisti žele da uklone male i srednje farmere da bi sve stavili pod kontrolu fašističkog privatno-javnog partnerstva. Ko kontroliše snabdijevanje hranom, kontroliše sve. Jedna stvar koju su komunisti voljeli je stvaranje oskudice da bi svi zavisili od države. Ideja korišćenja hrane kao oružja je bilo obilježje komunističkih režima prije sto godina, i to je obilježje onih koji promovišu Agendu UN-a 2030 i ciljeve održivog razvoja.”

Autor G. Edward Griffin potvrdjuje tu skrivenu agendu: “Prljava tajna Agende je da je to master plan UN za promjenu svjetskog političkog i ekonomskog sistema u totalitarni kolektivizam; da bi se to sprovelo, ljudi se moraju oslanjati na državu za sve, inače se teško mogu kontrolisati. To znači ukidanje privatne svojine da bi se svi sakupili i složili u gradove gde će živjeti u stanovima koje će im država dodijeliti. Niko ne smije posjedovati zemlju i izvor vode pošto oni koji su u stanju uzgajiti hranu predstavljaju prijetnju kolektivističkom društvu jer im tada pomoć države nije potrebna.“

Veliki koraci ka realizaciji Agende su napravljeni zahvaljujući razaranju malih i srednjih preduzeća tokom Covida i odavno planiranom Ukrajinskom ratu koji je smanjio isporuke gnojiva i plina ka Evropi čija privreda ulazi u recesiju. Njemačkoj industriji sada prijeti kolaps, dok je u SAD ove godine uništeno preko stotinu fabrika i distribucionih centara za hranu.

Velika Britanija isplaćuje farmere da napuste svoja imanja – čime vlada koristi sredstva poreskih obveznika da bi osigurala da će se poreski obveznici suočiti s glađu…

…što potvrdjue gradonačelnik Londona Sadiq Khan: “Ovako nešto nikada nismo vidjeli. Ove zime milioni ljudi u Velikoj Britaniji tragično neće moći da priušte ni grijanje ni hranu. To ne smije da se desi. Vlada mora da uskoči u pomoć za njihove osnovne potrebe“

Diktatura Digitalnog Novca

Da bi se se Net Zero agenda mogla sprovesti u djelo prvo se gotovina mora eliminisati kao sredstvo plaćanja i uveo ”digitalni novčanik” koji će pratiti svu potrošnju. Švedska, koja je 1661. bila prva Evropska zemlja koja je uvela papirne novčanice, će marta iduće godine postati prva zemlja na svijetu koja će ih potpuno zabraniti a širom svijeta se punom parom radi na kreaciji CBDC – digitalnih valuta centralnih banaka koje će vremenom zamijeniti sav novac u opticaju.

Za sada samo informativnog karaktera: NatWest banka iz Velike Britanije računa mjesečni karbonski otisak svojih klijenata na bazi njihove svakodnevne potrošnje

Nature.com studija otkriva da “PCA – personal carbon allowances (lične karbonske naknade) su ključ za postizanje ambicioznih ciljeva redukcije klimatskih promena. Napredak vještačke inteligencije u toku Covid-19 krize nam otvara novu priliku za PCA baziranu na SDG principima.”

Direktor holandske RaboCarbon banke Barbara Baarsma otkriva način funkcionisanja tog digitalnog novčanika: “Trebamo osigurati da svaki gradjanin Holandije dobije fiksnu količinu prava na emisiju ugljenika. Na taj način možemo biti sigurni da ne emitujemo više od našeg godišnjeg limita. Vaše pravo na emisiju će biti smješteno u karbonskom novčaniku. Dakle, ako želim da letim, otkupila bih pravo na CO2 emisiju od nekoga ko sebi ne može priuštiti letenje. Na ovaj način ta siromašna osoba može dodatno zaraditi. Ili ako neko živi u maloj kući, može prodati svoja prava na emisiju nekome ko živi u velikoj kući, na ovaj način siromašni ljudi mogu imati koristi od zelene ekonomije.”

Maldivi su prva zemlja koja je uvela multinamensku ličnu kartu po nacrtu UN Agende 2030 koja zamenjuje pasoš, platnu karticu, vozačku dozvolu i  zdravstvenu knjižicu, što će dozvoliti vlastima da karticu deaktiviraju ako se na primer propusti obavezno cijepljenje

Elita računa da, ako su većinu čovječanstva uspjeli da preplaše lažnom pandemijom, zašto ne ponoviti isti scenario sa imaginarnom klimatskom apokalipsom? Njemački ministar zdravlja Karl Lauterbach već nagovještava lockdown mandate za klimu: “Vakcina protiv CO2 nikada neće postojati. Zato su nam neophodne mjere koje su uporedive sa restrikcijima lične slobode u borbi protiv pandemije da bi prebrodili klimatske promjene.”

Zdravstvene mjere kao izgovor za fašizam: u junu su Kineske vlasti volšebno promijenile QR kodove iz zelenog u crveno za više hiljada osoba iz provincije Henan kako ih spriječile da sudjeluju na protestu protiv nesolventnih banaka koje su im zamrzle depozite

Kanadski lekar Dr. Kyle Merritt se prvi u svijetu dosjetio da pacijentu postavi dijagnozu ”pati od klimatskih promjena’‘, čime je pokrenuo globalnu inicijativu ”Doktori i medicinske sestre za planetarno zdravlje” koja poziva vlasti da proglase ”klimatsko i ekološko vanredno stanje”.

Dok se milioni maski svakodnevno isporuče sa jedne strane planete na drugu, svijet nije u stanju dostaviti hranu siromašnima: 800 miliona osoba gladuje dok se na putu od polja do stola baci dovoljno hrane da se nahrani tri milijardeusta; veliki dio 130 milijardi maski koje se godišnje iskoriste završe u moru gdje se razgrade u mikroplastiku koja ulazi u lanac ishrane i potom u naše organizme

Krave Nisu Problem

Geoinženjering u akciji: svaka poplava, suša, toplotni talas i oluja su sada ”neosporivi dokazi za klimatske promjene” 

Ljudske emisije gasova i zagađenost atmosfere ne predstavljaju opasnost za opstanak planete, već je to zagađivanje ljudskih mozgova od strane propagande koju emituju globalisti zahvaljujući njihovom medijskom monopolu i kontroli naučnih publikacija.

Nezadovoljni kontrolom većine svjetskog bogatstva, oni žele da iz haosa koji su prouzrokovali stvore novi svjetski poredak u kojem posjeduju i diriguju apsolutno sve – prirodne resurse, proizvodnju hrane, ljudski DNK i Zemljinu atmosferu i potom natjerati čovječanstvo da živi u ”pametnim gradovima” gdje će svaki sekund života biti pod nadzorom.

Net Zero, ili u prevodu: Nula energije kada nestane vjetra, nula hrane kada nestane gnojiva i na kraju nula života kada nestane slobode

To će im jedino uspjeti ako mi svi to dozvolimo i dobra vijest je da se poslije Covid debakla sve veći broj ljudi polako ali sigurno budi i dolazi do realizacije da nas čeka pakao ako nastavimo ovim putem. Pitanje je samo, nakon primjene 12 milijardi Covid inekcija, da li će nas ostati dovoljno sposobnih da bi se spriječila ta satanistička, anti-ljudska agenda?

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In Maricopa County Arizona it appears that the Democrats’ attempt to steal the election is being explained away as a “printer issue.” Somehow the machines that worked in the primaries “malfunctioned” in the election.

In Arizona there seems to be an effort to disappear the votes for Republican Kari Lake.  Vote counting has been stopped when 600,000 votes remain to be counted.  The uncounted votes are “day of election” votes cast in person mainly by Republicans who vote in person as they have learned not to trust alternative voting methods.  The “day of election” votes will be for Republican Governor candidate Kari Lake.  Is that why the voting has stopped?  The hundreds of thousands of uncounted “day of election” votes could also give the Senate seat to Republican Blake Masters.

How do we reconcile Florida’s red wave with the absence of one elsewhere?  The answer is that Florida doesn’t permit all the voting ways that make it easy to steal.  I voted in Florida on a paper ballot that was counted immediately prior to my departing the site, and I was given a confirmation of my counted vote.  Gov. DeSantis and Senator Rubio won by overwhelming margins.  DeSantis defeated Democrat Crist by 59% to 40%.  Even heavily Democrat Miami-Dade County voted 55% for Republican DeSantis.  Rubio defeated his Democrat challenger by a double-digit margin. Of Florida’s contingent of 28 members of the House, 20 are Republican.  Why only in Florida were Democrats rejected as was expected to happen in many states?

For Democracy to work, those who control election procedures and vote counting must believe in a fair vote.  They must believe in democracy. If instead they believe in power, which Democrats do, there cannot be a fair election.  The Democrats are more addicted to power, because unlike Republicans they have a revolutionary ideology that seeks to normalize perversity and demonize normality–thus Democrats  normalize sexual perversion and teach critical race theory and transgender theory to school children in order to confuse them about their natural gender and to inculcate guilt for being a white racist.  By indoctrinating the young, the Woke Democrats remove people from opposing their gradual and ongoing revolution.

Another feature of the Democrats’ revolution is open borders that are flooding the US population with non-whites, essentially turning the US into a non-white country, thereby dispensing with the “reactionary values of Western civilization.”  At the hands of Democrats, white Americans are facing civilizational genocide.  Is it possible that white people are too stupid to see this and take no action at the voting booth to protect themselves?  Or has Democrat control of many major cities precluded change by voting?  In the large cities the Democrats control the voting. They control who votes and how many times. Republicans don’t want to embarrass America by making a scandal.  The mentality is “let it go, don’t rock the boat, it won’t happen next time, the media will skewer us for questioning America’s righteousness.”

I know the Republicans are far from perfect.  But they are not anti-white.  If white Americans don’t start paying close attention, they are history.  The British didn’t pay attention, and now they are ruled by an Indian Hindu Prime Minister and their capital, London, is ruled by a Pakistani.  Both might be good and capable politicians, but they are not British. The “British” prime minister has already held a Hindu religious celebration at 10 Downing Street. As weak as Christianity and the Church of England already are, with only mosques and not Christian churches, being built in England  and Europe, how much longer will Christmas be celebrated in the West?  Public manifestations of Christmas celebration have already been eliminated in America, thus placing us well on the way to complete cultural and religious deracination.  Is America becoming a country that serves an armaments industry, Jewish bankers, immigrant-invaders, and abandons the moral high ground to LGBT sexual perversity?

The entirety of the West is becoming a culture like the bar scene in the first  Star Wars film (1977).  As days past, less and less remains of Western Civilization  to be defended.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Russian warplanes shelled positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, on November 6 in Idlib province.  Some of the terrorists killed were: Abdul Minam Muhati, Radwan Hussain Muhayer, Abu Dawoud al-Filistini, Mohammad Ali al-Kadour, Abu Hussein al-Raddad, Abu Hajat al-Chad, Amro abu Layth al-Askandarani, and Mohammed Suliaman al-Ali.

The Syrian air force targeted positions of HTS and destroyed a drone factory in the suburbs of Idlib.  This attack was in response to an earlier HTS attack on the suburbs of Latakia causing the deaths of SAA soldiers including, Mohammed al-Sharaa, Mohammed al-Atiyah, and Jafar Ibrahim.

Idlib is the last terrorist occupied area in Syria, with many different terrorist groups present, ranging from the Turkish backed terrorists to those formerly supported by the US-NATO attack on Syria which began in 2011. Some of the 3 million people have attempted to leave, but were prevented by the terrorists, who hold civilians as human shields, benefitting from the humanitarian aid being delivered to support the civilians.

All the various terrorist groups have one common denominator: they all follow a political ideology known as Radical Islam, which French President Macron has declared war on in France. Al Qaeda came to light after September 11, 2001, and since then many other terrorist groups have arrived on the international stage: such as Free Syrian Army (FSA), HTS, and culminating in Islamic State (IS).

A truce was reached in March 2020 between Turkey and Russia concerning the security in Idlib.  Turkey had promised to guarantee the safety of the M4 highway, which links the port of Latakia with the industrial city of Aleppo.  Turkey had promised to reign in the terrorist groups they support in Idlib, but never fulfilled the agreement.  The M4 remains closed to commercial and civilian traffic because of terrorist attacks on any movement on the highway.

In the agreement with Turkey, it was stipulated that Russia and Syria would continue to fulfill their UN mandated policy of identifying and targeting any Al Qaeda, or related terrorists, including IS. It was Turkey’s responsibility to remove civilians from terrorist outposts and weapons storage areas.

HTS responded to the attack by targeting SAA positions with military and missiles in the area of Saraqib, which had been a commercial and civilian traffic junction for Latakia to Aleppo traffic.

Russia’s role

Major General Oleg Yegorov, deputy head of the Russian Ministry’s Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria, said HTS, which was formerly named Jibhat al-Nusra and banned in Russia, had shelled Idlib’s de-escalation zone five times in 24 hours.

“Three attacks in Idlib province, one in Latakia, one in Hama,” he said recently while confirming a Syrian soldier’s death and another’s injury.

He said Russian military police units conducted patrols in the provinces of Aleppo, Hasakah and Raqqa.

The Russian Defense Ministry’s Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides and Control over the Movement of Refugees in the Syrian Arab Republic was established in February 2016.  The office has negotiated dozens of agreements with terrorists and the Syrian administration, allowing for terrorists to surrender, or be removed safely, so that civilians could return to their homes across the country. The office also coordinates the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Turkey’s role

Lately, Turkey has been deporting Syrian refugees back home.  Turkish President Erdogan is facing a presidential election in June 2023.  His opposition has promised to send home all the Syrian refugees, which has caused Erdogan to match their promise.  The border crossing at Kessab has seen activity, as well as others, with Syrians being forcibly deported from Turkey.

The Syrian National Army (SNA) is a Turkish-backed mercenary group made up of former FSA fighters after the demise of the group which had been promoted and defended by the late Senator John McCain.  Turkey had been keeping a distance between SNA and HTS in the Azaz and Afrin areas; however, Turkey has recently allowed HTS to freely move.

The future status of HTS depends on the changing positions of Russia and Turkey concerning the Idlib region.  Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has suggested an advanced agreement might be reached which would see HTS eliminated in Idlib, while the US backed Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) would be shut down in the northeast.

This possibility would need Turkey to repair its relationship with Syria, which has been hinted at over a few months.  Turkey and Syria are both keen to remove the US backed SDF from the northeast.

On November 8, the Turkish occupation forces and their SNA mercenaries attacked Abu Rasin town, northwest of Hasaka.

The US role

US President Obama planned and found the Arab funding for the US-NATO attack on Syria for ‘regime change’ in 2011.  Many US Democrats blame him for not militarily intervening in Syria, but in fact he did.  The US administration, through the CIA and Pentagon, supported the terrorist groups as their ‘boots on the ground’ which utilized assets available without having to convince the US Congress to send US troops to Syria.  The US does have an illegal military occupation force in Syria, but not in Idlib.  However, the US exerts control over Idlib through the UN humanitarian aid delivered which not only feeds civilians, but also feeds the terrorist groups and their families.  HTS and IS in Idlib are used by Washington to prevent the end of the Syrian conflict.  The American foreign policy on Syria is to maintain the status quo in Idlib: an uneasy truce where Syrians are prevented from rebuilding by threat of terrorists and Congressional sanctions.

HTS

Abu Mohammad al-Jawlani is the leader of HTS, and the defacto ruler of Idlib.  He is a ‘shape shifter’, able to change his political colors to align with issues shifting on the ground.  Recently he broke out of Idlib and engaged in a power shift in the north of Aleppo.

He distanced HTS from his former ally IS, and broke off his former alliance with Al Qaeda in an effort to re-brand his image.

Afrin had been controlled by the US-backed SDF, later the Turkish backed SNA took the area known for olive crops and olive oil production.  HTS has entered the area despite a lack of local support.  Jawlani developed alliances with hard-core extremists like al-Hamza and the Shah Brigade, which managed to allow HTS into northern Aleppo recently.

Jawlani was interviewed by Martin Smith of PBS Frontline, in which the terrorist cleaned up his image in a suit pandering to a Western audience, and seeking their acceptance.

Jawlani and his HTS are terrorists, but businessmen as well.  By controlling border crossings, they took advantage of the trade of oil, fuel, wheat, and cotton, as well as the sale of land and opening of money exchanges.  He calls his administration “Salvation Government.”

His prisons such as al-Zanbaqi, al-Eqab, and Harem are full of his former comrades, such as Al Qaeda and IS terrorists.

In the past few weeks, HTS has approached the borders of Azaz, an extremely important city in the orbit of the Turkish backed SNA and the Turkish occupation forces.  Jawlani is attempting to control from Idlib province all the way to the northern section of Aleppo. This could only be accomplished by some agreement between HTS and the SNA.

Astana meeting

The next Astana Format international meeting on Syria will take place on November 22-23, says Russian Special Presidential Envoy on the Middle East and Africa Mikhail Bogdanov.

According to Bogdanov, Iran and Turkey agreed to take part in the meeting. In addition, the meeting will be attended by representatives of Syrian sides, as well as observer states.

“[Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov was in Amman, where they also discussed Jordan’s participation as an observer state. The same is true for Iraq and Libya as Syria’s neighbor states that have high interest in what is happening in Syria, because there are present issues of borders, refugees and security. We welcome these countries’ participation,” the diplomat said.

The previous, 18th international meeting on Syria, took place in Astana on June 15-16.

The road to peace in Syria and the rebuilding of lives and homes there can only be done with the help of neighbors.  Absent from the peace process in Astana is the US and the EU, although it is their sanctions which keep the Syrian civilians held hostage, as human shields protecting Western foreign adventures to create a ‘New Middle East’.

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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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***

Three large insurance databases showed sharp increases in cases of severe brain inflammation after the Covid mRNA shots, according to a new peer-reviewed paper.

People who received the Pfizer jab or booster had a 40 to 70 percent higher chance over the next six weeks of encephalitis or encephalomyelitis. The Moderna jab carried an even higher risk after the second primary dose or a booster.

Encephalitis is inflammation of the brain itself, while encephalomyelitis is inflammation of nerve sheaths in the brain or spinal cord. Both can range from relatively mild conditions to serious or even fatal illnesses. The researchers reported 47 cases following Pfizer’s jab; they did not disclose an exact figure for Moderna’s.

Though the finding was published in the peer-reviewed journal Vaccine, it has received little attention – in part because the authors presented the findings in a way that made them seem less statistically robust than they were.

The paper’s finding comes after a stream of case reports in medical journals of brain inflammation following the mRNA shots.

The reports have come from physicians worldwide, including Belgium, Japan, Taiwan, Peru, and Thailand – and even the United States, an unusual development since American physicians are often reluctant to publicize serious mRNA vaccine side effects.

SOURCE

VAERS, the federal vaccine adverse events reporting system, also contains scores reports of severe cases of encephalitis or encephalomyelitis shortly after Covid shots, although those are not peer-reviewed.

SOURCE: VAERS case report 2057411-1

Encephalitis and encephalomyelitis are rare conditions that can occur following infections or auto-immune reactions. Both can be fatal in serious cases if untreated.

The most likely mechanism for potential mRNA vaccine encephalitis is that the shots overstimulate the immune system and cause the body to attack its one tissues in what physicians sometimes call a cytokine storm. As Taiwanese physicians explained in describing two cases:

Exposed mRNA or vaccine components may also be detected as antigens [substances that stimulate the immune system], further resulting in aberrant proinflammatory cytokine cascades and activation of immune signaling pathways…

Some patients in the case reports have had complete recovery after treatment with with steroids or other immunosuppressants. Others remained injured or even comatose, according to the case reports.

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The Vaccine paper appeared online on September 27 and in print October 26. It draws on the Food and Drug Administration’s Biologics Effectiveness and Safety database, which tracks insurance claims in people who have received vaccines or other treatments.

In this case, the researchers followed claims for 17 different potential side effects, including myocarditis, in three large commercial insurance databases including more than 16 million vaccinated people. They they compared the results to the background rates of the conditions before the shots.

This method probably substantially understates the risk of short-term post-vaccine side effects, because people who are ill or feeling ill – seriously or not – are likely to delay being vaccinated. Thus vaccines tend to be given to people at times when they are at lower risk for illness or death.

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That problem is common to all vaccine safety analysis outside of randomized clinical trials, and essentially unavoidable. But this paper had another issue, one that came directly from its design.

The researchers failed to pool the results from the three different databases. Instead, they analyzed each separately. They also analyzed the Pfizer and Moderna shots separately, rather than together.

As a result, the researchers were examining the post-shot risks using data that they had sliced into relatively small pools. In five of the six pools they checked, the researchers found that people who had received the mRNA shots had a notably increased risk of brain inflammation – ranging from 43 to 89 percent. (The only exception was after the first Moderna shot.)

But the scientists then dismissed those findings. Why? The smaller the pool of data, the more easily researchers can dismiss a finding as due to chance. Scientists generally say a finding is not necessarily real if statistical analysis confirms more than a 5 percent chance that it is due to chance.

Thus the writers simply ignored the excess risk they had found, claiming that it “did not meet the threshold for statistical signal in any of the three databases.”

Their refusal to pool and reanalyze the data was particularly odd in the case of Pfizer’s jab, which showed a remarkably consistent excess of encephalitis and encephalomyelitis not just among the various insurers but after each shot. (Inevitably, the researchers made those numbers available only deep in the paper’s appendix.)

The FDA researchers offered no clear explanation for their failure to pool the claims databases – especially since they noted that all they had analyzed all three databases “using the same protocol, analysis, and programming specifications.”

But if their goal was to make safety signals as hard as possible to find, they succeeded.

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Buoyed by the successful global marketing of its COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer is teeing up to dominate the maternal vaccine market even as OB-GYNs on the front lines of maternal care sound the alarm about the COVID-19 shots’ infanticidal fallout.

On Nov. 1, Pfizer issued a press release about an investigational vaccine for pregnant women the company said will protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Not coincidentally, RSV is the latest viral bugaboo to hit the headlines, with frantic news accounts of “overwhelmed” hospitals sounding eerily reminiscent of the early coronavirus fear-mongering.

Buoyed by the successful global marketing of its COVID-19 jabs — an estimated 49% of pregnant women worldwide reportedly views the vaccines favorably and almost 1 in 4  pregnant women in the U.S. took them — Pfizer is hoping to hit another home run with the RSV vaccine.

The vaccine maker said it intends to seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval by the end of the year.

The FDA, meanwhile, has been busy handing out “Breakthrough Therapy” designations to Pfizer as if they were papal dispensations, signaling a regulatory willingness to speed up approval not only for Pfizer’s RSV vaccine but also for a maternal Group B Streptococcus (GBS) vaccine the company is developing.

To this expedient end, the FDA allowed Pfizer to “stop the [RSV] study short,” halting enrollment at about 7,400 participants — though the trial was supposed to involve 10,000 pregnant women.

Researchers devoted to vaccine orthodoxy pay lip service to the need for an extra-high evidentiary bar for pregnancy vaccines — stating that such vaccines should not only prove they reduce illness, with minimal reactogenicity in the woman, the fetus and the neonate, but should also “demonstrate safety or lack of evidence of harm.”

However, those turn out to be empty words.

In fact, the influenza and Tdap (tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis) vaccines that public health agencies have long recommended for pregnant women never underwent any clinical trial safety testing in that population, and the FDA never licensed those vaccines specifically for pregnant women.

Moreover, flu shots and Tdap shots have never even resulted in any statistically significant reduction in the outcomes they are supposed to address.

With the advent of Emergency Use Authorization COVID-19 vaccines, the FDA, Pfizer and other manufacturers barely made any pretense of assessing maternal safety, and likely “colluded together to conceal damaging data” about high rates of fetal death.

Other researchers, however — and even vaccine insiders — began to speak out in 2021.

For example, Canadian researchers writing in late 2021 worried that many of the systemic reactions commonly reported after COVID-19 vaccination might be “sufficient to affect fetal/neonatal development.”

Those authors included vaccinologist Byram Bridle, Ph.D., who earlier in 2021 characterized the COVID-19 vaccines’ disturbing biodistribution and accumulation in vital organs as “a big mistake,” and neurology professor Dr. Steven Pelech, who expressed repeated concerns about myocarditis and the vaccines’ risks to young people.

Now, as horrified pregnant women who took the COVID-19 jabs experience skyrocketing miscarriages, stillbirths and fetal malformations, they are wondering why regulators issued no warnings.

But as Pfizer’s exuberant RSV press release and the FDA’s complacent endorsement of clinical trial shortcuts suggest, vaccine makers and regulators not only intend to ignore or bulldoze even the most outsized safety signals but are clearly positioning themselves to go after pregnant women in an even bigger way.

‘Quibbles’ and questions

The details provided — or omitted — about Pfizer’s RSV clinical trial exemplify manufacturers’ and regulators’ cavalier approach toward pregnant women.

Commenting on Pfizer’s announcement, family physician Dr. Buzz Hollander — who clarified that he is predisposed to celebrate the new RSV vaccine offering — nonetheless noted a number of serious criticisms:

• Pfizer released “just a press release” but no data, making it “impossible to pick [the vaccine’s declared efficacy] apart.”
• Pfizer offered no explanation as to how it defined “severe” disease, its primary endpoint.
• A year into the trial, Pfizer fishily altered an important endpoint, defying a fundamental clinical trial design principle that “involves setting out in advance the endpoints that will be assessed.”
• In Hollander’s words, Pfizer “switched their secondary (critical!) endpoint of RSV hospitalizations to 360 days from 180 days… and then inspired my suspicion by not reporting any hospitalization data, interim or otherwise, in their breathless press release.”
• Researchers have published only one small safety study for the RSV shot, about which Hollander said: “I quibble with studies finding >40% of placebo participants reporting systemic symptoms; when queried enticingly enough, half of us might recall a headache or some fatigue the day after our placebo shot, and that can bury a difference in real adverse reactions compared to the vaccine group.”
• Curtailing study enrollment was unwise, Hollander said, because “bigger is better when it comes to … finding safety signals.”
• Earlier this year, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) “stopped cold” a three-times-bigger trial of a similar RSV vaccine for pregnant women after detecting a safety signal, yet there has been no discussion as to why Pfizer’s maternal RSV vaccine is “fine” while GSK’s was deemed “untouchable.”

Hollander’s modest conclusion: “We should have all learned by now that even the appearance of cutting corners in the vaccine approval process will carry its own unknown costs.”

Readers reacting to Hollander’s post were less circumspect. One acerbically remarked, “The problem here is Pfizer. They’ve paid billions in fines for shady practices and data manipulation. And that was before the Covid vaccines (for which they’re indemnified).”

Another reader expressed his reservations even more succinctly: “Trust Pfizer numbers? You must be joking.”

Adverse pregnancy outcomes after COVID vaccination — no joke

As Pfizer, with the FDA’s help, tees itself up to “dominat[e] the maternal RSV vaccine market,” OB-GYNs on the front lines of maternal care are stepping forth to sound the alarm about the COVID-19 shots’ infanticidal fallout.

Dr. Kimberly Biss recently tweeted, “Since the vaccine rollout started, we have seen in our practice a decrease in new OB numbers, which would be infertility, by about 50%; we’ve also seen an increase in miscarriage rate by about 50%, and … probably about a 25% increase in abnormal pap smears as well as cervical malignancies.”

Similarly, Dr. James Thorp, in multiple interviews, described an “off-the-charts” rise in sudden fetal death and other adverse outcomes, including fetal malformation and fetal cardiac arrest.

Asked to comment on information recently leaked from a California hospital, Thorp characterized the uptick in fetal deaths — from under 6 per 1,000 in 2020 to more than 29 per 1,000 following the rollout of COVID-19 injections — as being “way way beyond” what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordinarily would consider a safety signal.

Thorp published a preprint in September (along with co-authors who include Children’s Health Defense’s Megan Redshaw) describing “significantly more frequent” pregnancy-related adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, after COVID-19 shots than in the aftermath of flu shots — which themselves are far from benign.

Cataloging significant increases in “miscarriage, fetal chromosomal abnormalities, fetal malformation, fetal cystic hygroma, fetal cardiac disorders, fetal arrhythmia, fetal cardiac arrest, fetal vascular mal-perfusion, fetal growth abnormalities, fetal abnormal surveillance, fetal placental thrombosis, low amniotic fluid, and fetal death/stillbirth” and also menstrual abnormalities, Thorp and co-authors called for a “worldwide moratorium on the use of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy.”

For children who survive, Thorp suggested they may suffer from lifelong “vaccine-induced acquired immune deficiency syndrome.”

In Scotland, meanwhile, the government ordered an investigation into the “spike in newborn baby deaths” in 2021 and 2022, an increase “larger than expected from chance alone.”

Even in a gerrymandered study clearly designed to exonerate the COVID-19 shots during pregnancy — focusing on immediate reactions after a first or second dose and hampered by “limited perinatal outcome assessment” — researchers found that 4.4-7.5% of pregnant women reported obstetrical symptoms.

Careless and worse

As Substack writer Etana Hecht wrote last May, “The topic of pregnant and nursing moms getting vaccinated under encouragement and coercion is painful,” particularly once one becomes aware of “how carelessly the most precious among us are being treated.”

That carelessness is evident as we witness some of the same players involved in the COVID-19 vaccine fiasco now circling back around to help build the case for Pfizer’s RSV vaccine.

That includes figures such as Dr. Robert Frenck, the Pfizer-beholden principal investigator of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital clinical trial that tested the company’s COVID-19 shot in children. Frenck reported 12-year-old Maddie de Garay’s serious vaccine injuries to the FDA as a mere “stomachache.”

Graphs clearly show that none of the vaccines pushed on pregnant women are safe for babies or moms — but given that from one-fourth to one-half of pregnant women acquiesce to getting them, those who know the truth need to work even harder to get the word out.

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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

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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.

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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.

Featured image: Voters at a polling location in Londonderry, New Hampshire. The Senate seat of the state was tightly contested. (Photo by Sdkb, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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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.

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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.

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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***

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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