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Some analysts have been claiming that Beijing is “breaking” with Moscow over the issue of Ukraine. In June this year the Chinese government conducted military drills in its northeastern border with Russia, while Moscow was mostly preoccupied with its own military operations in Ukraine. This event led some Western observers to speculate, albeit there is no evidence, that this could be a sign China has unfinished business in that border area.

The 1858 Treaty of Aigun established much of the modern border between Manchuria (Northeast China) and the Russian Far East. From a Chinese Perspective, especially since the rise of Chinese nationalism in the 1920, it was an “unequal treaty”, having been signed, as it was, when the Chinese Empire was a weakened state: it gave the neighboring Russian Empire over 600,000 square km from Manchuria.

As a legacy of the 19th and the 20th century, the Eurasian great powers often have border disagreements. Japan historically has variances with Russia over the Kuril islands, for example, as it has with its other “neighbors” China and South Korea as well. India and China notoriously have theirs too, which, by the way, has not stopped both of them from cooperating with one another, as is exemplified by the fact that they have recently withdrawn their troops from the disputed Ladakh region’s border area, thus moving one step towards the Asian century.

Indian-Chinese cooperation in fact is particularly remarkable, considering the former’s position within the QUAD, which is seen by many as Western anti-Chinese “new NATO”. Yet even amid serious bilateral disagreements, Eurasian states have shown that there is plenty of room for cooperation on a number of levels, and, in the same way, New Delhi has also maintained close ties with Moscow, while getting closer to Washington. The same logic must apply to Sino-Russian cooperation, notwithstanding their differences over the Northeast China-Russian Far East border region.

In 1969, in this very region, near the Amur river, there was a seven-month undeclared military conflict between China and the Soviet Union, shortly after the so-called Sino-Soviet split. After the conflict, the United States sought to strengthen ties with Beijing by secretly sending Henry Kissinger to China for his now famous 1971 meeting with Zhou Enlai, which in turn paved the way for then US President Richard Nixon visiting China and meeting with Mao Zedong the next year. And yet even with the Sino-Soviet split, the two states managed to stabilize their relations in the late seventies.

In the more recent past, on 21 July 2008, then Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, signed in Beijing an additional Sino-Russian Border Line Agreement, thus marking the acceptance of the eastern portion of the Chinese-Russian border’s demarcation.

On February 4, in Beijing, a joint statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping famously declared that the friendship between the two states “has no limits”. Such a statement, somewhat hyperbolic as it may be, in any case, from an American perspective, is quite terrifying as it poses a direct challenge to Washington’s ambitions of maintaining unipolarity.

No friendship is really absolute, but the truth is that Chinese-Russian relations have entered a new era, and Beiing’s trade and investment in the Russian Far East, such as in the Vladivostok Port – Trans-Siberian Railway, must also be seen in this context, as the Belt and Road Initiative investments into the Russian Federation go on. Chris Devonshire-Ellis, publisher of Asia Briefing, writes that both powers view the Heihe-Blagoveshchensk border cities (which sit opposite each other on the Amur River opposing banks) as key strategic development hubs in an access point to the Trans-Siberian railway. That being so, maintaining peace at the border is in the best interests of both Moscow and Beijing, contrary to the wishful thinking of some Western analysts.

In any case, much has been done, in the US-led West, in terms of PR and diplomacy to try to “counter” the “no-limits” friendship concept, and to promote and explore Russian-Chinese points of contention. Thus, in the same way Washington inflates India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments to Putin on Ukraine, it tries to do the same pertaining to Moscow and Beijing and it will certainly try to explore the issue of Manchuria.

Although, under American influence, Japan has changed its stance on Russia partly over the aforementioned Kuril islands, this of course does not in any way mean that China would behave similarly. Chinese-Russian Eurasian strategic interests converge very deeply and both states have sophisticated diplomacy apparatuses to bilaterally pursue collaboration, bilateral disputes apart, while also employing the framework of forums such as the SCO and the BRICS group to coordinate their perspectives together so as to maximize benefits for all.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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The substance of  this Daily Mail article raises the broader issue of the cancelling of the paypal accounts of numerous independent media (largely funded by readers) as a contiguous act of online censorship.

The payment system is destabilized.

It’s a despicable act directed against online Freedom of Expression, which Global Research experienced more than 5 years ago when paypal decided to suspend our account.  (M.Ch.)

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MPs have hit back at PayPal after it cancelled the account of a parents group which fought hard to keep schools open during Covid just days after doing the same to the Free Speech Union.

UsForThem was ‘shocked’ to discover that it could not access thousands of pounds of donated money after PayPal suspended its account ‘in accordance with’ the company’s user agreement.

Just last week, PayPal, co-founded by Elon Musk, had controversially shut the accounts of Toby Young’s Free Speech Union as well as his news website, the Daily Sceptic.

Musk, who made around $175.8 million after PayPal was sold to eBay, has since been trying to buy social media giant Twitter as he looks to promote ‘free speech’.

But in the latest backlash that PayPal has faced, MPs have hit back insisting that financial technology firms should not lock people out of accounts based on ‘perfectly legal political views’.

At Business Questions, Conservative MP for Devizes Danny Kruger asked: ‘Does she share my deep concern about the decision of PayPal, the online payments company, to cancel the accounts of certain organisations including Us for Them, who campaigned against the Covid lockdowns, and perhaps most ironically the Free Speech Union, who appear to have been targeted because of their views on sex and gender.

Mr Kruger added that as society is moving towards a cashless economy, financial technology firms will form part of the ‘essential infrastructure of ordinary life.’

He added: ‘Will the Government take steps to ensure they cannot discriminate against individuals or organisations on the basis of perfectly legal political views?’

Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt replied: ‘He may have further information than I do about why PayPal have cancelled the account and that facility from the organisations that he mentions, but from what I understand the Free Speech Union and other organisations are also still in the dark about exactly why they have had those services removed from them despite making great efforts to find out.’

Ms Mordaunt described the unexplained withdrawal of services by companies as a ‘common theme amongst our casework’ for many MPs.

Arabella Skinner, director of UsForThem told MailOnline the group was ‘really shocked to receive the email from Paypal’.

‘And given that it has taken the same penal action against a number of prominent non-profit advocacy, campaigning and journalistic groups in the UK it gives the distinct impression that this was a politically motivated coup against campaigning groups who had taken a particular view on controversial topics,’ she said.

‘Reasoned, two-sided debate is essential to a functioning democracy, and there should be no room for censorship by way of denial of services.’

Read the full article here. Our thanks to the Daily Mail for having brought this article to our attention

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Featured image: PayPal Operations Center in La Vista, Nebraska (Photo by Michael Sauers, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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In his speech to the international community at the 77th session of the UN General Assembly, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky demands for punishment for Russia for “trying to steal the Ukrainian territory” and for the “catastrophic turbulence that Russia provoked with its illegal war and not only for the Ukrainians, but for the whole world”.

While ruling out neutrality in times of aggression by saying “those who speak of neutrality, when human values and peace are under attack, mean something else. They talk about indifference – everyone for themselves,” Zelensky enumerated five items in his alleged  ‘peace formula’:

• punishment for aggression;
• protection of life;
• restoration of security and territorial integrity;
• security guarantees;
• and determination to defend oneself.

Below is a transcript of his speech taken from president.gov.ua

Greetings to all people of the world who value peace and unity between different and equal nations!

I wish you all peace!

I thank you that we are united in our striving to restore peace and to guarantee peace for any nation that has become a victim of the armed aggression.

A crime has been committed against Ukraine, and we demand just punishment.

The crime was committed against our state borders. The crime was committed against the lives of our people. The crime was committed against the dignity of our women and men.

The crime was committed against the values that make you and me a community of the united nations.

And Ukraine demands punishment for trying to steal our territory. Punishment for the murders of thousands of people. Punishment for tortures and humiliations of women and men.

Punishment for the catastrophic turbulence that Russia provoked with its illegal war and not only for us, Ukrainians, but for the whole world. For every nation that is represented in this Hall of the UN General Assembly.

I am speaking on behalf of the state, which is forced to defend itself, but has the formula for peace. I am speaking to everyone who wants to hear how to achieve peace.

I will present a formula that can work not only for us, but for anyone who may find themselves in similar circumstances as we did. It is a formula that punishes crime, protects life, restores security and territorial integrity, guarantees security, and provides determination.

There are five preconditions for peace.

Dear Mr. President of the General Assembly!

Dear Secretary-General of the United Nations!

Dear heads of states and governments!

Dear journalists! 

Nations of the world!

Ukraine wants peace. Europe wants peace. The world wants peace. And we have seen who is the only one who wants war.

There is only one Entity among all UN Member States who would say now, if he could interrupt my speech, that he is happy with this war – with his war. But we will not let this Entity prevail over us, even though it is the largest state in the world.

Ukraine showed strength on the battlefield, using its right to self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. And no one will reproach us now or in the future with weakness or inability to fight for ourselves, for our independence.

We are achieving a result in this fight and we see what the end of this war will be, and what will be the guarantees of a stable peace.

The UN Charter proclaims the equality of nations – and we proved that Ukraine is equal among the equals.

The UN Charter protects the inviolability of borders – and we confirm our state borderline by expelling the occupiers outside.

The UN Charter stipulates the value of human rights, dignity and life, and we also stipulate them – with every Ukrainian city freed from Russian occupation.

We did not provoke this war. We held 88 rounds of talks in various formats to prevent this war, just from the beginning of my presidency until February 24 this year.

But Russia – instead of stopping the crime of aggression, which it started back in 2014 – turned it into a full-scale invasion. And we have no choice but to defend ourselves. We do it. We push the aggressor beyond the internationally recognized border of the Ukrainian state.

And this is the first item of our peace formula. Comprehensive item. Punishment.

Punishment for the crime of aggression. Punishment for violation of borders and territorial integrity. Punishment that must be in place until the internationally recognized border is restored. Until the aggression stops. And until the damages and losses for the war are fully compensated.

Therefore, sanctions against the aggressor are part of the peace formula. Blocking the trade and relations with the aggressor is part of the peace formula. All this is a punishment.

So long as the aggressor is a party to decision-making in the international organizations, he must be isolated from them – at least until aggression lasts. Reject the right to vote. Deprive delegation rights. Remove the right of veto – if it is a Member of the UN Security Council. In order to punish the aggressor within the institutions.

We should not turn a blind eye to propagandists who justify aggression, but apply a full package of personal restrictions against them. That is a punishment for lying.

Citizens of the aggressor state should not be allowed to enjoy tourism or shopping in the territory of those who value peace, but should be encouraged through visa restrictions to fight against the aggression of their own state. Punish for abetting the evil.

A Special Tribunal should be created to punish Russia for the crime of aggression against our state. This will become signal to all “would-be” aggressors, that they must value peace or be brought to responsibility by the world.

We have prepared precise steps to establish such Tribunal. They will be presented to all states.

Ukraine will appeal to the UN General Assembly to support an international compensation mechanism.

We count on your support.

Russia should pay for this war with its assets. It is also a punishment. This is one of the most terrible punishments for Russian officials, who value money above everything else.

The second item of the peace formula is the protection of life. The most concrete item.

Now, while the sessions of the General Assembly continue, in the Ukrainian town of Izyum, Kharkiv region, the exhumation is under way… of bodies from a mass burial, which happened when the territory was controlled by Russian troops. The bodies of women and men, children and adults, civilians and soldiers were found there. 445 graves.

There is a family that died under the rubble of a house after a Russian airstrike – father, mother, 6- and 8-year-old girls, grandparents. There is a man who was strangled with a rope. There is a woman with broken ribs and wounds on her body. There is a man who was castrated before the murder, and this is not the first case.

Ask, please, the representatives of Russia why the Russian military are so obsessed with castration. What was done to them so that they want to do this to others?

The only thing that differs the mass burial in Izyum from what the world saw in Bucha is, in fact, the burial. The Russian army was in Izyum for a longer time, and therefore the bodies of the killed people were buried, and not scattered on the streets.

So, how can we allow the Russian army somewhere on Ukrainian soil, knowing that they are committing such mass murders everywhere? We cannot.

We must protect life. The world must protect life. Every state suffering the armed aggression needs the opportunity to protect its citizens and liberate its territory.

If it requires help with weapons or shells – they should be provided. If you need financial help for this, it should be given. If for this, it is necessary to help with the intelligence data – just do it. But what is not needed is lies.

We can return the Ukrainian flag to our entire territory. We can do it with the force of arms.

But we need time.

We tried to speed it up. We tried to implement the basic provisions of the UN Charter for Ukraine through negotiations.

But Russia is afraid of real negotiations and does not want to fulfill any fair international obligations. It lies to everyone. As it is typical for aggressors, for terrorists.

Even now, when Russia talks about negotiations, it only wants to slow down its retreat. Russia wants to spend the winter on the occupied territory of Ukraine and prepare forces to attempt a new offensive. New Buchas, new Izyums… Or at least it wants to prepare fortifications on occupied land and carry out military mobilization at home.

We cannot agree to a delayed war. Because it will be even hotter than the war now.

For us, this is a war for life. That is why we need defense support – weapons, military equipment and shells. Offensive weapons, a long-range one is enough to liberate our land, and defensive systems, above all, air defense. And we need financial support – to keep internal stability and fulfill social obligations to our people.

Physical and social protection are two elements of any nation’s life. So, the second item of our peace formula is the protection of life. By all available means – allowed by the UN Charter.

The third item of our peace formula is restoring security and territorial integrity.

Look at how many elements of global security Russia has undermined with its war – maritime safety, food safety, radiation safety, energy safety and safety from weapons of mass destruction.

We are already restoring maritime safety and food security. And I thank Mr. António Guterres for his personal involvement. Algeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Israel, India, Iran, Yemen, Cyprus, China, Korea, Lebanon, Türkiye, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Romania and France have already received Ukrainian agricultural products.

And we have to increase the supply by sea. Both under market conditions and within the UN Food Program, for which Ukraine is always a reliable partner.

By the way, despite all the difficulties caused by the war, we decided to provide humanitarian aid to Ethiopia and Somalia, so we will send them an additional amount of our wheat.

But it is more difficult with other security elements.

On the eve of the General Assembly meeting, Russia fired missiles at the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant. The explosion hit the station buildings – windows were broken, walls were damaged. The rockets exploded only three hundred meters from the walls of the reactors!

And this is after the IAEA’s clear appeal to Russia to stop any hostile activity against any nuclear facilities of Ukraine and, in particular, against the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station – the largest one in Europe, which Russia has turned into a target.

And that makes all of you a target.

Russian radiation blackmailing is something that should concern each and every one of you, because none of you will find a vaccine against radiation sickness.

The cost of living crisis continues in dozens of countries, it roots in the destabilization of the energy market. It is necessary to remove the main factor of global price turbulence, namely: Russian energy blackmailing.

It is necessary to cap the prices at which Russia exports its energy resources. It is necessary to make Russian oil and gas – just ordinary goods again. Currently, oil and gas are Russia’s energy weapons. And that is why it manipulates the markets so that electricity, gas, petrol and diesel become the privilege of few instead of being a common good available to all.

Limiting prices is safeguarding the world. This is the way to restore energy and price security.

But will the world go for it? Or will it be scared? Will it be scared of Russian threats?

It is necessary to take only one strong step, after which everything will become clear. The time has come for this.

This step will put everything in place. After the Russian missile terror. After the massacres. After Mariupol. After the burning of Ukrainian prisoners in Olenivka by the Russian military. After blocking the ports. After the strikes of Russian tanks and missiles on nuclear power plants. And after threats to use nuclear weapons, which have become the rule, not the exception, for Russian propagandists…

We must finally recognize Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. At all levels. In all countries that confess the values of peace and protection of human life. Legally. Politically.

If you don’t have a legal mechanism, you can make a political decision – in the parliaments. This is the foundation for restoring global security. If this strong step is taken, doubts will disappear – whether to take other important steps.

And what is very sensitive – is the border, the territorial integrity.

When one country tries to steal the territory of another state, it puts all world nations under attack.

Global security cannot be restored without restoring the territorial integrity of the nation which suffered the armed aggression.

So, the third item of the Ukrainian peace formula is the restoration of security and territorial integrity. The fourth item is security guarantees.

Every nation has the right to security guarantees. Not only the largest nations. Not only the most fortunate ones.

We have proposals to upgrade the security architecture for Ukraine, and for Europe and the world, which will not allow any more aggression against us. We are already presenting them to partners.

Proposals for legally binding multilateral and bilateral treaties. These are the conditions for the guarantors to act, and the timeline for their actions to bring results – results on land, at sea and in the air; in diplomacy and politics, in economy and finance, in providing weapons and intelligence. Each of you, who will receive the text of our peace formula will also see the details of what we offer as security guarantees.

I do not want to compare our offers with the guarantees of any alliances that exist on the planet now. I want to stress that it is always much better to guarantee the security of a nation, preventively, rather than to stop a war after it has already begun.

And the fifth item of the Ukrainian peace formula is determination. Something without which the other four items will not work.

This is our determination to fight. This is the determination of the partners to help us, and also themselves. And this is the determination of the world to unite around the one who fights against armed aggression and to call to order the one who threatens all.

So, all five items of our formula: 

• punishment for aggression;
• protection of life;
• restoration of security and territorial integrity;
• security guarantees;
• and determination to defend oneself.

This is the formula of crime and punishment, which is already well known to Russia. And this is the formula of justice and law and order that Russia has yet to learn. As well as any other potential aggressors.

What is not in our formula? Neutrality.

Those who speak of neutrality, when human values and peace are under attack, mean something else. They talk about indifference – everyone for themselves. Here’s what they say. They pretend to be interested in each other’s problems. They take care of each other formally. They sympathize only for protocol. And that is why they pretend to protect someone, but in reality they protect only their vested interests. This is what creates the conditions for war. This is what needs to be corrected in order to create conditions for peace.

All you need is determination.

There was a lot of talking about reforming the UN. How did it all end? No result.

If you look carefully at our peace formula, you will see that its implementation is already becoming a de-facto reform of the United Nations. Our formula is universal, and unites the North and the South of the world. It calls for the world’s majority, and encourages to expand the representation of those who remained unheard.

This is an imbalance when Africa, Latin America, most of Asia, Central and Eastern Europe comply with the right of veto, that they themselves never had.

And this is what Ukraine is talking about. And have you ever heard such words from Russia? But it is a permanent member of the Security Council. For some reason. For what reason, not Japan or Brazil, not Türkiye or India, not Germany or Ukraine. The day will come when this will be resolved.

As for the talks between Ukraine and Russia.

Probably you have happened to hear different words from Russia about the talks – as if they were ready for them. But. They talk about the talks but announce military mobilization. They talk about the talks but announce pseudo referendums in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

What is true then? The military mobilization in Russia is true. Sham referendums are also true. Russia wants war. It’s true. But Russia will not be able to stop the course of history. Mankind and the international law are stronger than one terrorist state. Russia will be forced to end this war. The war it has started.

I rule out that the settlement can happen on a different basis than the Ukrainian peace formula. The further the Russian terror reaches, the less likely it is that anyone in the world will agree to sit at one table with them.

And if my words will be followed by new Russian missiles and acts of terrorism it will only prove the weakness. Russia’s weakness. Its inability to prevail over us, its inability to prevail over the world.

It will only prove that 5 items of the Ukrainian peace formula must be implemented as soon as possible.

We are ready for peace. But true, honest and fair peace. That’s why the world is on our side.

And finally.

I want to thank one hundred and one countries that voted for my video address to take place. It was a vote not only about the format. It was the vote about principles.

Only seven countries voted against: Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Russia and Syria.

Seven. Seven who are afraid of the video address. Seven who respond to principles with a red button. Only seven.

One hundred and one – and seven.

Friends! If this coalition is against our determination, then I congratulate you all. Because this means that peace will prevail over any aggression, and that there is no obstacle for us to implement the peace formula.

I thank you for your attention!

Once again, I wish you all peace!

Glory to Ukraine!

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Featured image is from president.gov.ua

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Upon the accession of Charles III as King of the United Kingdom and 14 other realms, questions have emerged over the continued relevance of the wider Commonwealth of Nations headed by the British monarch. The Commonwealth is a grouping of 56 nations with a total combined population of 2.2 billion people. Among these nations, only Australia, New Zealand and Canada enjoy a special relationship with the UK through the Five Eyes (FVEY) intelligence alliance (which also includes the United States).

Commonwealth membership benefits for the most part are pretty much nonexistent. This begs the question of why an aspiring superpower like India would demean itself by remaining in a colonially-defined international compact. A quick glance at the Commonwealth map will reveal a scattered morass of mediocrity, inequality and/or poverty.

The members of the Commonwealth shaded according to their political status. Commonwealth realms are shown in blue, while republics are shaded pink, and members with their own monarchies are displayed in green. (Photo is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

Some may rebut this observation by citing Singapore as a stellar example of a successful ex-British colony. In that case, name one (1) world-class product, scientist, intellectual, chess grandmaster, musician or writer from that nation? Or a comedian for that matter?

Now, compare Singapore to Israel with whom the former is often linked. There is absolutely no comparison in any field. Israel is light years ahead in terms of science, technology, music, arts and even urban agriculture. If one needs other comparative examples, repeat this juxtaposition with other small nations such as the Netherlands and Denmark.

Singapore thrives as Southeast Asia’s hub – and nothing more – and its wheels are constantly greased by a perennial supply of foreign talent and capital. Ironically, this infusion has led to a yearly brain drain from among its native-born population. But no one denies that Singapore is a well-run city-state known for its efficient government machinery; one that also keeps the public discourse and dissent in permanent check.

The colonial criteria for Commonwealth membership also provokes the neutral observer to wonder whether “national independence” was nothing more than a shambolic passing of batons from foreign overlords to a pliant local management. If there is any merit to this line of thinking, then the local management will predictably ensure that their nation may never emerge as another Japan, South Korea or Taiwan. Industries from these nations have obliterated once-dominant British brands. Surely, it is also coincidental that these technological powerhouses were never colonized by Britain. South Korea and Taiwan had incidentally suffered under Japanese yolk but their rebound from colonial oppression was simply spectacular.

Tawdry Colonial Legacy

There are several sociopolitical malaises bedeviling the British Commonwealth today. These include intellectual timidity due to mass censorship; suppression of native talent; lack of national cohesion; a corrupt judicial system; and politics of mass distraction. High-value developmental initiatives in these nations have historically been nipped in the bud by Commonwealth agencies and pseudo-nationalist political parties that were planted by the British deep state. The net result has been gross national underperformance.

When Britain granted “independence” to these colonies, they made sure that only British assets were placed in positions of authority. Anti-British hissy fits were occasionally engineered to allay suspicions whenever and wherever they emerged. Despite the apparent vitriol, the children of such politicians often ended up in British universities and enjoyed London’s patronage. This neocolonial cycle would repeat itself at the expense of national development.

To borrow elements from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, why should an orangutan – who, contrary to the natural order, and upon whom millions of pounds were spent on its Oxbridge credentials and political ascendancy – be willing to nurture a formidable intelligentsia in its domain? If it ever does so, it may be challenged over the validity of eternal white elephant projects and an unending stream of worthless policy papers which often benefit British geoeconomic interests.

And since 2020, the orangutan would have predictably resorted to the Covid hysteria to keep its domain locked down or more precisely locked out of critical productive endeavors. This is where the “politics of mass distraction” come into play, leading naturally to the other Commonwealth malaise, “lack of social cohesion”. Many Commonwealth states are hopelessly mired in deep ethnoreligious clefts, thanks to Britain’s divide and conquer policy. Another colonial legacy, namely a corrupt judicial system binds the whole racket together. The never-ending child sex trafficking scandals, involving those in positions of authority in Britain, Canada and Australia, epitomize the wider Commonwealth malaise.

As for membership benefits, consider the billions in British scholarship funds that were spent on tens of thousands of Commonwealth students since 1945. How many Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences has this magnanimity produced? How many game-changing patents, innovations, platinum records or best-selling texts? One would be hard-pressed to find even one (1) impressive Op-Ed from these cultivated scholars.

Britain’s “human capital policy” in its domains arguably took a turn for the worse after the formation of the Indian National Congress (aka Congress Party) in 1885 by a colonial administrator named Allan Octavian Hume. The Congress was originally envisioned to be a consultative platform for gentlemanly colonial authorities of “good breeding” and gentlemanly Indians of “good breeding” and education. To the horror of the British establishment however, the unruly Indians rapidly discarded their colonial trappings to demand outright independence.

The British responded swiftly and with trademark brutality, entailing decades of mass incarcerations, enforced famines, and mass murders like the Jalianwalla Bagh massacre. After all, this was the era of British racial supremacists such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Rudyard Kipling. Chamberlain was once described as “Hitler’s John the Baptist” while Kipling’s swastika-stamped Jungle Book was much-beloved by the Nazi party. Here is where the colonial orangutan analogy comes into play once again.

Colonial hostility towards the Indian independence movement was accompanied by a skillfully-executed divide and conquer strategy which pitted Muslims against Hindus, ultimately leading to the partition of India.

The ongoing Hindu-Muslim riots in Leceister, UK, is a legacy of that strategy. A similar game was played out in the Levant, pitting Arabs against their Jewish neighbors. Historians rarely investigate the underlying denominator between the 1921 Mappila Rebellion in India and the 1929 Hebron Massacre. But then again, the mainstream narrative was hijacked long before any of us were born.

London would never repeat the same mistake it made with the Indian National Congress. There would be no more cultivation of the best and brightest in its realms. A new generation of Indian leaders would be cultivated; ones hooked on the giddy fantasies of Fabian socialism, sleazy nepotism, and the wonders of petty bureaucracy. When India gained independence in 1947, a vacant chair was reserved at cabinet meetings for the ghost of Harold Laski – the father of Fabian socialism. The other chairs were occupied by his proteges and sympathizers. Louis Mountbatten, a notorious pedophile and Britain’s last viceroy to India, was appointed as the newly-independent nation’s first Governor-General.

But one should not fall into the trap of singling out India as an example of colonial masochism. It continues to have its fair share of genuine nationalists, the freest press in the Commonwealth (freer than even Britain), a commitment to geopolitical multipolarity and publicly-available records and debates on the path to independence. Records of this sort do not exist elsewhere in the British Commonwealth. Furthermore, the Bombay High Court is the only entity of its kind to have served legal notice to Bill Gates over alleged vaccine deaths caused by his “philanthropic” activities in India.

Cui Bono?

Commonwealth leaders never, ever publicly spell out the benefits of remaining in an anachronistic grouping that reeks of neocolonial subservience. Do citizens from the wider Commonwealth enjoy fee discounts in British universities or preferential job visas in the UK? Is there even a Commonwealth university for students from its 56-member states? Are there preferential trade tariffs for Commonwealth goods and services? There is however a British government-funded program for Commonwealth journalists – a reason why I have only had success with the US, Russian and Chinese media.

Of course, if the Commonwealth shows any sign of breaking up prematurely, a few symbolic shadow plays can be arranged. The Koh-i-Noor diamond, for example, could be returned to India as a magisterial gesture from Charles III. Imagine the euphoria in New Delhi? But if Indians need some real inspiration for the VUCA period ahead, they only need to look southwards to Sri Lanka. When its economy crumpled, Sri Lankans banded together to tar and feather politicians who had sold out their nation. This show of unity was simply remarkable, especially when one considers the 25-year-long Sri Lankan civil war that only ended as recently as 2009. Contrast this to the ongoing, dehumanizing food fights in Pakistan even as its citizens rally around British-linked politicians who have given them nothing but porkie pies. The mayhem witnessed in Pakistan will likely be repeated across the Commonwealth in the months and years to come.

The misnomer called the Commonwealth was built on enslavement, exploitation and bloodshed. Divisions festered by colonial rule have yet to heal. Yet, power structures in the Commonwealth need their British deep state lifelines now more than ever. But how will Charles III treat the increasing irrelevance of this fossil construct? Being a proponent of population control and centralized world government, he may use his position as head of the Commonwealth to integrate his floundering subject nations into the Great Reset agenda of the World Economic Forum. After all, the internal pre-conditions for this transition were established decades ago…

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This article was originally published in RT.com.

Dr. Mathew Maavak is a Malaysian expert on risk foresight and governance. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Commonwealth House, the headquarters of the Royal Commonwealth Society (Photo by Steve Evans from Citizen of the World, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

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In his classic nineteenth century novel ‘War and Peace’ Russian writer Leo Tolstoy observed that “the strongest of all warriors are…time and patience.”

I was reminded of these words recently when coming across an article in the Dutch newspaper NRC which called for the drug industry to be abolished.

The article echoed words from a quarter of a century ago, contained in a speech given in the city hall of Chemnitz in Germany, in which physician and scientist Dr. Matthias Rath called for the pharma business to be outlawed.

Explaining how its profits depend upon the maintaining and expanding of health problems on a global scale, Dr. Rath accused the ‘business with disease’ of being incompatible with the fundamental principles of human rights.

Back in 1997, this type of open criticism of the drug industry and its unscrupulous business model was almost unheard of. Today, however, with the passage of time, the publication of the NRC article illustrates that it is becoming mainstream.

Authored by Dutch political scientist Joost Smiers, the NRC article describes how society is now at the mercy of the pharma business and its shareholders. “As far as I am concerned,” Smiers writes, “it is high time to break the societal feeling of powerless towards Big Pharma.”

Asking whether we still need drug companies, Smiers says that in his opinion the answer is “no.” Clearly, when such thoughts are published in a mainstream European daily newspaper, there can be no doubt that we are living in changing times.

Making pharma obsolete

Pointing out that research into medicines can be done separate from the pharma industry, at universities and other independent research institutes, Smiers argues that substantial research funds should be established, fed from public funds, with independent committees deciding which diseases and researchers funding should be directed towards. Smiers stresses the importance of these committees functioning at arm’s length from governments. Crucially, he also proposes that alternative health therapies such as vitamins could benefit from this approach.

Just as importantly, Smiers stresses that all knowledge resulting from medicines research should be publicly and freely available. Mirroring the long-time position held by Dr. Rath and our Foundation, he adds that there should be no more patents involved – thus avoiding the present situation whereby patent owners have a monopoly on the use, or non-use, of scientific knowledge.

Smiers further addresses another key barrier to the ethical functioning of healthcare systems, namely, the sale price of medicines. Here, he proposes that companies paid to manufacture medicines resulting from independently funded research should provide them at cost. A levy could then be added on top of this low price to help fund future research projects. In this way, Smiers explains, the commercial weight of pharma industry shareholders and marketing can be eliminated. Ultimately, he sees the pharma industry being bought out or expropriated, and essentially being made obsolete.

Smiers readily acknowledges that drug firms based in the major pharmaceutical manufacturing countries will not let any of these things happen silently. He points out however that today’s pharmaceutical companies are “horrifyingly powerful monopolists,” adding that “they are not loved, to put it mildly,” and that this creates opportunities.

“If we make Big Pharma obsolete,” writes Smiers, “we kill several birds with one stone. Healthcare becomes more affordable. All the knowledge needed to develop medicines will no longer be surrounded by patents but will return from private to public ownership. Moreover, access to medicine will once again become a human right, and no longer the plaything of Big Pharma shareholders. They have no business in our health care system. They should stay far away from it.”

A new era in medicine

Smiers’ article clearly echoes some of the key ideas and concepts contained in Dr. Rath’s 1997 Chemnitz speech. Prior to Dr. Rath giving this speech, it was practically unheard of for anyone to publicly accuse the drug industry of being the main obstacle to medical breakthroughs in the control of diseases. As a result, the fact that pharmaceutical companies have a direct financial interest in the continued existence of diseases was simply not widely appreciated at that time.

Not only did Dr. Rath’s Chemnitz speech open the floodgates to more widespread criticism of the drug industry and its business model, however, it also introduced people to the possibility that, by taking advantage of new discoveries in the field of cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and strokes were now preventable through natural health approaches based on the use of vitamins and other micronutrients.

In doing so, this laid the foundations for a new system of healthcare in which, as a first step, the preservation and improvement of health should be declared an inalienable human right. Towards achieving this goal, Dr. Rath stressed the importance of subjecting medical research and the licensing of drugs to a comprehensive system of public control.

Following the publication of Joost Smiers’ article in the Dutch newspaper NRC it is now clear that, a quarter of a century after Dr. Rath gave his historic Chemnitz speech, we stand on the verge of a new era in medicine. Abolishing the pharmaceutical industry is a prerequisite for transforming healthcare and making access to it a human right. The sooner we can reach this worthy goal, the better it will be for all of humankind.

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This article was originally published on Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

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.

Featured image is from Dr. Rath Health Foundation

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Just a coincidence, right?

Under Public Law 117-128, the U.S. Congress is funding an organization called Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), whose professed purpose, according to its website, is to “counter Russian disinformation.” But its real purpose may be to create the equivalent of a “fatwah list” of alleged traitors whom patriotic Americans and/or Ukrainians will feel they have a green light to assassinate.

The fatwah list includes such “traitors” as writers Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald, political scientist John Mearsheimer, Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, conservative military analyst Edward Luttwak who was placed on the list for suggesting that referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions concerning their relations to Ukraine, and Henry Kissinger, who is worried about the prospects of a war between the U.S. and Russia.

Source: unherd.com

The profiles of many people targeted under the “hit list” has been posted on a website, Myrotvorets (meaning “peacemaker” in Ukrainian), whose domain name is listed as being in Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the CIA.

Kissinger’s Myrotvorets profile. [Source: mronline.org]

Source: mronline.org

Established in 2014 following the Maidan coup with assistance from a U.S. army intelligence officer, Joel Harding, Myrotvorets aims to out Russian intelligence service (FSB) agents and Wagner mercenaries alongside pro-Russian propagandists and features gruesome photos of dead Russians. Its welcome message advertises itself as a “CIA project.”

Image of dead Russians on CIA-linked website, Myrotvorets. Above the photos, the website proclaims: “Death to the Russian Fascist Invaders and Occupiers.” [Source: myrotvorets.center]

Sadly, many on the Myrotvorets enemies list have already been assassinated. When this occurs, the Ukrainian word ЛИКВИДИРОВАН (“LIQUIDATED”) is stamped across their picture in big red letters—as happened when Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli was murdered.

Source: twitter.com

In an indication of its foul character, Myrotvorets has listed the names of more than 300 children, among them 13-year-old Faina Savenkova who has written on social media about the terror meted out by the Ukrainian Army in eastern Ukraine.

Faina Savenkova: An Enemy of the Ukrainian State. [Source: mronline.org]

Craven Acts of Terrorism

The expansion of the Ukrainian government’s assassination campaign—modeled after the CIA-run Phoenix operation in Vietnam—was exemplified with the killing of Sergey Gorenko, the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) Prosecutor General, and his deputy, Yekaterina Steglenko, after a Kyiv bomb rocked the headquarters of the Prosecutor General’s office in Luhansk on September 16.

Source: tvpworld.com

The New York Times earlier reported on Ukrainian commando teams who admitted to planting car bombs targeting pro-Russian police officers and politicians behind Russian lines.

Also on September 16, at least five U.S.-made HIMARS missiles hit the civil administration building in Kherson city in an assassination attempt on Kirill Stremousov, the deputy chair of the military-civilian administration. Ekaterina Gubareva, a government employee who was wounded, (a driver was killed), called the strike a “craven act of terrorism.”^[1]

Scott Ritter Speaks Out

Scott Ritter, the former Marine Intelligence Officer who exposed the fraud surrounding the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq, is among those on the CCD’s list of traitors who has been listed as an “enemy of Ukraine” on the Myrotvorets website.

Scott Ritter on death list. [Source: consortiumnews.com]

On September 7, Ritter participated in a press conference hosted by the Schiller Institute, a German-based economic think tank, where he criticized New York’s congressional delegation for supporting House Resolution 7691, the Additional Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022, which became Public Law 117-128 on May 21, 2022.

In a July letter to Democrats Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand and Paul Tonko, Ritter wrote that Public Law 117-128 violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution which asserts that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

Public Law 177-128 abridges freedom of speech and a free press by supporting the Government of Ukraine’s publication of the “blacklist,” which singles out U.S. citizens as “Russian propagandists” for exercising their constitutional rights pertaining to free speech and a free press.

At the press conference on September 7, Ritter reiterated his disdain for the fact that U.S. taxpayer funds that are subsidizing the Ukrainian government are “being used to target and intimidate American citizens voicing their constitutional rights to freedom of speech.”

Particularly dangerous, Ritter said, is the use of the label “information terrorist” by the CCD, which “basically gives a green light for critics of government policy to be adjudicated as terrorists,” and could “mean sanctioning the murder of Americans abroad or at home.”

According to Ritter, the threat of Ukrainian state terrorism extending into the U.S. is very real.

There are many Ukrainians living near him in upstate New York, he said, who worship Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator in World War II.

According to historian Norman J.W. Goda, Bandera’s lieutenants launched a pogrom that killed 4,000 Lvov Jews in a few days, using weapons ranging from guns to metal poles.

What kind of message does it send, Ritter asked, for the U.S. government to be supporting these groups and to label critics of its policies as “information terrorists”?

“If you think the website is a joke, ask Alexander Dugin who had to attend the funeral of his daughter [Darya Dugina who was killed in a car bomb by terrorists in Moscow on August 23].”

Darya Dugina is labeled as “liquidated” on the Myrotvorets website. [Source: mronline.org]

Ritter considers himself an American patriot who served his country for years in the military and as a weapons inspector in Iraq.

He recalled being called “Saddam’s shill” and all kinds of other names for reporting the truth about the mythic WMD, and said that if people had absorbed what he said, the war in Iraq could have been avoided and millions of lives saved.

With regard to Ukraine, Ritter said he is again being denounced, this time for making factual statements, such as that a) NATO has bases on Ukrainian soil; b) the war is a proxy conflict between the U.S. and Russia; and c) sanctions have harmed the U.S. and EU countries more than Russia.

Ritter said that he is further being attacked because he undertook a careful forensic analysis of the atrocity in Bucha in March/April, which concluded that it “seemed to have been carried out by forces subordinate to the Ukrainian government.”^[2]

Source: theparadise.ng

Ritter says that he invites debate and disagreement about his assessments—including from people working at the CCD.

“If people disagree with my facts and conclusions, then debate me—but don’t seek to silence me through intimidation or label me an information terrorist which could potentially mark me for death.”

Geoff Young, Democratic Party Nominee from Kentucky, Also on Hit List

Geoff Young, the Democratic Party nominee in Kentucky’s 6^th Congressional District, is also on the Ukrainian government hit list—though few in his party have stood up for him.

Young says that he is on the list because he has adopted the position that, since 2014, Ukraine has not been a functional democracy.

Rather, it has been largely controlled by the U.S. State Department and CIA and has been shelling innocent civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk, killing more than 10,000 civilians—three times more than were killed in the U.S. on 9/11.

Geoff Young [Source: multipolarista.com]

Ukraine has further sent well-armed Nazi groups to attack ethnic Russians in acts of ethnic cleansing that have been unreported in U.S. media.

Young says that his inclusion on the hit list is a form of election meddling—they are trying to discredit his name and ruin his chances of unseating Republican Party incumbent Andy Barr, against whom Young is running.

LaRouche Candidate for New York Senate Diane Sare Attacked

Another person on the hit list is Diane Sare, a Burlington, Vermont, native who is challenging Chuck Schumer for his Senate seat in New York in the November midterms.

A former classical musician and choral conductor, Sare is a founder of the Schiller Institute and worked for 32 years with Lyndon LaRouche until his death in 2019.

LaRouche was a controversial figure in U.S. politics who is regarded by some as a cult leader, CIA creation or even fascist.

Many of his ideas were visionary nevertheless, including in his support for U.S.-Russia cooperation and the development of a new world security architecture and economic system that would be more democratic, equitable and prevent future wars.

Sare said at the September 7 press conference that the death list and demonization campaign has been successful in silencing debate over the U.S. arming of a fascist regime in Ukraine—a regime that has banned 13 opposition parties, shut down Russian media, outlawed collective bargaining and threatened anyone who plans to vote to rejoin Russia in referenda being set up in eastern Ukraine.

Sare also said that Payton Gendron, the Buffalo, New York, shooter who shot up Black people in a grocery store earlier this summer, wore logos on his jacket that were similar to ones worn by members of the Azov Battalion.

Mass murderer Payton Gendron with black sun insignia used by the Azov Battalion. [Source: mronline.org]

Every American in her view should demand that their elected representatives take a stand and dissociate the U.S. from the Ukrainian government and its neo-Nazi army regiments.

Colonel Black:

The first speaker at the September 7 press conference was Colonel Richard Black, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and former State Senator from Virginia, who emphasized like Ritter how the U.S. Congress was attempting to control freedom of speech in the U.S. in violation of the U.S. Constitution by having a foreign entity—the CCD—do it.

According to Black, the Department of Homeland Security tried earlier in the year to establish a disinformation governance board headed by Nina Jankowicz, a Ukrainian linguist and adviser to former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Her presentation to the public was so extreme and off-putting that the center’s formation was paused—at least for the time being.

Black said that, among those targeted by the CCD, are patriotic Americans with well-informed views on foreign policy like Senator Paul and former Congresswoman Gabbard.

Black said that U.S. policy in Ukraine is disastrously courting the risk of all-out nuclear war. The labeling of dissenters as “information terrorists” potentially exposes them to the death penalty, with many people on the Myrotvorets website having been assassinated.

Though the facts remain speculative, a Rio de Janeiro newspaper reported that the assassination attempt on September 1, 2022 directed against Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner may have even resulted from her refusal to condemn Russia’s special military operation and her calls for peace talks to end the war.

Was Cristina Fernández de Kirchner targeted for assassination because of her support for peace in Ukraine and refusal to condemn Russia? [Source: nypost.com]

The Problem When People Know What Ain’t So

The final speaker at the September 7 press conference, CIA veteran Ray McGovern, a founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), quoted from humorist Will Rogers who said “it isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.”

Among the things Americans claim to know that ain’t so is that Russia is the aggressor in the conflict with Ukraine, and that Russia’s annexation of Crimea was “unprovoked”—which is patently untrue.

Crimeans in fact voted to rejoin Russia right after the U.S.-backed Maidan coup in 2014—which academics like Timothy Snyder of Yale along with mainstream media analysts, McGovern said, continue to deny.

In 2013, McGovern said, Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote an op-ed in The New York Times after he had backed a deal that prevented U.S. military intervention in Syria in which he expressed his happiness at the increasing trust between the U.S. and Russia.

Putin also wrote that he did not agree with Obama’s speeches about American exceptionalism—which is what made him a target of U.S. regime-change and destabilization efforts in which Ukraine has been used as a proxy.

Earlier this year, former president George W. Bush gave a speech in which he said that one man had “decided to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq—I mean of Ukraine”—and his audience in Texas laughed.

Source: youtube.com

The propaganda in the U.S. has generally become so thick, McGovern said, that people are convinced “they know what ain’t so.” In turn, they end up supporting the deadliest policies—like they did with Iraq and are now doing with Ukraine.

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

1. Leaked audio records show Ilya Bondarchuk, a Ukrainian intelligence official who coordinated the assassination program in Crimea and Kherson, trying to pay an assassin who was told to carry out the dirty deed “before everyone’s eyes, so that they see it.” 
2. Ritter has also recently helped expose, through careful investigation, that Ukraine and not Russia was responsible for the attacks around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant—Europe’s largest nuclear power plant—using the cover of an international inspection mission in violation of international law. 

Featured image is from schillerinstitute.com

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In today’s world a clear understanding of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel is important – this is not the work to clear it up.  Walter Mead’s hypothesis is that Israel does not control U.S. governance, but that many other forces have shaped the relationship.  With that he is correct and in an overly long convoluted manner he is able to make that sort of clear.   “The Arc of the Covenant,” for the arguments presented could have been well worked in half of its almost six hundred pages.

Instead the book is a mix of theology, sociology, geopolitics, domestic politics, history, and biographical analysis of – mostly – various presidents of the U.S.  It really succeeds with none of them.  It contains far too much theorizing and conjecture, discusses at length beliefs and morals, and has far too many unanswered rhetorical questions (okay, rhetorical questions really seek no answer, but there are far too many of them).  The reader will not come away with a good understanding of Israel as the vast majority of the discussion is centered on U.S. political maneuvering.

To his credit Mead is quite critical of many U.S. failures around the world but mostly  in the Middle East.  Unfortunately that comes from a perspective, unstated but implied, that the U.S. is the indispensable nation and acts with good intentions because of its moral strength and liberal beliefs.  He does use “exceptionalism” frequently, implied or directly, giving support to the thought that Mead, without stating it directly, is a firm believer in the U.S. being the world’s global policeman, “by the courageous use of necessary force.”

Omissions

There are far too many problems with the arguments presented in this work to counter them here, but it is what is missing that makes the arguments so weak.

While he discusses “national interests”  and the ability of the U.S. to use force to maintain peace (a lot of an oxymoron) he never discusses the U.S. as an empire.  Certainly the evil Russians and Chinese, and before World War I the Germans, Russians, and Ottomans were all the cause of that war as contending empires.  British, French, Dutch, and other European empires are mentioned in passing, but he does not accept, or will not articulate, that the U.S. is the largest empire the world has seen – militarily and economically, the two going hand in glove. The massive 750 military bases around the world, mostly surrounding Russia and China, and that ability to use the global reserve currency, the petro-dollar (never mentioned in the book although oil is continually mentioned as a strategic value) and its associated institutions (WTO, BIS, World Bank, SWIFT et al) to impose destructive sanctions on countries that do not abide by its wishes is the modern form of imperialism.

He reiterates several times the U.S. role in decolonization without recognition that it was the U.S. that denied Vietnam its fair and democratic elections, denied Korea the right to vote for its post war government, created the CIA with its initial successes overthrowing governments in Iran and Guatemala in 1953.  He admits U.S. errors in Iraq, Libya, and – well not quite Syria, it was the “brutal” Russians that destroyed Syria, even while U.S. forces remain in large parts of the country to this day.  There is no mention of Operation Gladio, the occupation of Japan and Germany that continues today, nor the seemingly endless list of interventions to overthrow unfriendly regimes either through economic or military power.

Israel

When it comes to discussing Israel there are equally large omissions.  A reasonable essay on Herzl’s machinations is given, but after that, he generally uses only passing mention of Israel’s settlements and the wall as the main components of Palestinian strife.  He accepts that some people think of Israel as a “colonial-settler” enterprise but dismisses that thought as being on the radical left and of little importance.

He dismisses the idea that Israel is a racist (actually he never mentions that with Israel) and an apartheid state.  The book is recent enough that the author is surely aware of the major institutional labels of Israel as apartheid, including Israel’s own B’etselem.

Nor does he get into the details of the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people as an ongoing process.  The many discriminatory laws and policies, house destructions, the imprisonment, and the torture as an everyday occurrence of Palestinian life are never considered.

At the same time, Mead does not create a coherent history of Israel.  In his concluding remarks Mead states, “….for both Israelis and Palestinians, two peoples whose fates have become intertwined in ways that neither side wanted or foresaw.”   This is absolutely not true, as Jabotinsky, Herzl, Weismann, Ben Gurion and others – including most of the British political establishment – knew that depositing Jewish immigrants on land owned by Palestinians was a source of major problems as obviously the Palestinians recognized it as well.  He continues with “their private quarrel must be fought out in the glare of global publicity.”  That at least is good news, as the balance of power, out of sight of global publicity, hugely puts Israel in a dominating position.

Finally he concludes “I have tried to shine a useful light on the relationship between the ways Americans think about the world and the approaches they develop to act in it.”  Mission not accomplished as per the errors and omissions mentioned above among many others.

Current events

“The Arc of a Covenant” was published shortly before the Russian invasion in Ukraine to prevent the ongoing shelling of the Donbas people by Ukrainian forces. Since then, it is clearly demonstrated that the “prime directive” (p. 13) of the U.S. empire is the destruction of the Russian state and the containment of the power of China. We are entering a new era where “the ways American think about the world and the approaches they develop to act in it” are clearly global dominance through financial and military means.  All the purported values and morals are worthless when the true history of U.S. imperial adventures are understood.

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Jim Miles is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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This year, parents and guardians stood together in opposition to the COVID-19 shot being required for their children to attend school. As a result of their coming together, the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) decided to rescind the mandate for Louisiana students. As of yesterday, it has officially been repealed.

In light of this victory for parents and their children, Attorney General Jeff Landry has filed a motion to dismiss the Crews v. Edwards case, wherein he sought to have the vaccine mandate enjoined and issued the following statement:

“Today is the culmination of hard work by so many concerned parents throughout Louisiana. This is the direct result of moms, dads, grandparents, and guardians fighting for what is right. I thank Representative Raymond Crews, Health Freedom Louisiana, the Bayou Mama Bears, Town Hall Baton Rouge, Children’s Health Defense, and all those from across Louisiana that stood with us for parental choice.

Child medical decisions should be made by their guardians, not the government. I hope this health freedom victory reminds everyone what can happen when we all work together. When citizens are engaged and get involved, their government will listen.” -Attorney General, Jeff Landry, Sept 21, 2022

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Some history on this historic event:

December, 2021 – I went down to Baton Rouge Louisiana with the Children’s Health Defense team on short notice to help Health Freedom Louisiana, the physician and nurses’ advocacy group Louisiana for Medical Freedom, Representative Kathy Edmonston, and Attorney General Jeff Landry by supporting testimony opposing the Louisiana Department of Health move to mandate the unlicensed and still experimental Pfizer vaccine be taken by Louisiana school children. I wrote about that trip here.

Then last April, Health Freedom Louisiana wrote about their continuing fight to stop the mandates, with a pleas for everyone to reach out to state legislators.

I went back down to Baton Rouge in early May, 2022. to testify in front of a Senate Committee hearing about vaccine mandates for children, in support of HCR 3, which would stop the governor’s mandated COVID vaccination – the only one left in the country. At that time, the bill did pass.

But the Governor that state continued pushing the mandates through the Louisiana Department of Health … until finally they didn’t.

I think we can all take this as a win. A BIG WIN!

It took a huge effort on the part of AG Jeff Landry, who never gave up. Louisiana for Medical Freedom and Representative Kathy Edmonston who has continued in this fight to stop the mandates and frankly, so many of us. Children’s Health Defense and Robert F Kennedy, Jr. who has also been there working behind the scenes to make this happen.

Thank you everyone.

One step, one state, one nation – medical freedom. Medical Freedom is just part of being free. Freedom for all was what this great nation was founded on. Never forget.

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Titled “Defending peace and freedom in Europe — Supporting Ukraine resolutely with heavy weapons now,” the German Bundestag is set to approve the resolution to deliver weapons to Ukraine. Debate around this topic has also exposed cracks in the governing coalition, and many deputies from the Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) are in favour of providing more military assistance to Ukraine.

Berlin will likely supply Ukraine with tanks and heavy armored vehicles. This is despite the fact that the supply of these weapons will not change the course of the war and will instead lead to an even greater shortage of weapons in European warehouses and the German military.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called on the government and NATO members to provide Kiev with tanks and heavy armored vehicles. According to her, the delivery of weapons cannot be delayed since “Ukraine is at the turning point of the military campaign.”

As the German tabloid Bild writes, a large part of the government is in favour of supplying Ukraine with additional weapons, including Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 tanks, Marder armored vehicles, and Fuchs armored personnel carriers. With the delivery of this military equipment, it is evident that Berlin plans to supply Kiev with old weapons.

Leopard 1 are extremely old tanks, which were produced in the 1960s. As for Leopard 2, these are slightly better and more modern tanks, which is not only in service in Germany, but also in Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Turkey.

The Marder is a light armored vehicle that has been in service with the German army since the 1970s, with its high speed being its main feature. However, Marder cannot withstand the impact of shells and is used exclusively for transporting infantry as it only has a 20 mm automatic cannon, two 7.62 mm machine guns and a Milan anti-armor system.

For the transport of infantry, Berlin plans to deliver the Fuchs armored personnel carriers, which have been in use since 1979. The German military has about 360 vehicles of this type in various modifications. They were actively used in Afghanistan to transport soldiers and equipment on the battlefield, reconnaissance and electronic interception.

The problem is that Germany does not have enough of these weapons to deliver to Ukraine without affecting its own stock and European security. All arms deliveries are made from European warehouses. Previously, weapons were taken from warehouses for use in various armed conflicts, in which many countries participated under the auspices of the US, such as in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The Germans are under intense US pressure, which has led to their capitulation to deliver tanks and armored vehicles to Ukraine. These tanks though, as well as self-propelled artillery carriers, have yet to be produced in large quantities as it takes a lot of time. It takes 65 months to produce 100 tanks, meaning that the Germans could only start supplying Ukraine with modern heavy weapons in a serious or game changing manner in about three years, when the war is likely to be long over.

It is recalled that in an interview with Bild am Sontag newspaper, Baerbock stated that Germany intends to help Ukraine as much as necessary, but for now it cannot deliver everything that Kiev wants. Baerbock added that she understands that Ukrainians want faster and larger deliveries.

“But our inventory does not have the large quantities of currently needed functional, modern systems ready to ship. We also promised our partners in the Baltics that we will protect every corner of NATO territory,” the minister stressed.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, publicly shamed Berlin, asking why it was backtracking on a pledge made to send these weapons to Ukraine.

“Disappointing signals from Germany while Ukraine needs Leopards and Marders now — to liberate people and save them from genocide,” Kuleba said on Twitter on September 13, adding that there was “not a single rational argument on why these weapons can not be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses.”

“What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not?” he added.

It is recalled that in April, Berlin promised to give Leopard tanks and Marders to Ukraine. This evolved into a swap scheme that would see NATO members, such as Poland and Slovakia, send Ukraine their old Soviet-era tanks so Germany could replace their stocks with modern equivalent weapons. The logic behind this is that the Ukrainian military were used to operating Soviet-era weapons.

The plan has largely failed to materialise and Berlin is now being criticised domestically and externally, particularly from a Ukraine acting in an entitled manner. It now seems like Berlin has capitulated to the pressure and the humiliation and will deliver the weapons, but this comes at the price of risking its own security.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

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See highlighted passage & numbers and you can see why this study was hidden by Fauci & NIH cabal for with the flawed NIH study, it showed that Remdesivir FAILED in cutting deaths & it increased harms.

My take:

There is evidence that Fauci and NIH et al. tampered with the study protocol so that they could claim some benefit as the drug was showing ineffectiveness and safety failures. So if you look at the protocol adjustment below, they made a non patient important outcome (time to recovery), the primary outcome. These are real crooks!

Remdesivir has emerged as liver and kidney toxic and a failed EBOLA drug, failed! It was a drug in search of a disease and found one here due to Fauci and his ‘standard of care’!

Remdesivir emerged as one of these ineffective and potentially harmful drugs yet was championed by the NIH/NIAID/US government as a prominent treatment. The LANCET’s Wang et al. clinical trial results (below) were released on the very same morning that the US government’s NIH trial results (Beigel et al., https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2007764) on remdesivir were released, and showed a failure of remdesivir and even skewed heavily towards harms.

The key Wang et al.’s findings was that in adult patients admitted to hospital for severe COVID-19, “remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits.” Furthermore, and very alarmingly, adverse events were reported in “102 (66%) of 155 remdesivir recipients versus 50 (64%) of 78 placebo recipients. Remdesivir was stopped early because of adverse events in 18 (12%) patients versus four (5%) patients who stopped placebo early.” In addition, the Kaplan-Meier hazard ratio was not statistically significant, reported as HR 0.73; 95% CI, 0.52 to 1.03 (final report).3

Yet the NIH highly touted and flaunted study that did not report or focus on patient-important objective outcomes and only on reduced time to recovery, was deeply flawed methodologically. The reported primary outcome was time to recovery (discharge from the hospital or hospitalization for infection-control purposes). Why was the reported primary outcome in the NIH study not mortality? Did researchers at NIH (including Dr. Anthony Fauci) use a secondary outcome such as time to recovery as the primary outcome because they were looking at the data and saw no benefit for patient-important outcomes such as mortality?

This is very serious if the NIH researchers tampered with the trial’s protocol so that they could declare efficacy yet for a secondary ‘less important’ outcome. Moreover, the legacy media and the NIH/NIAID officials completely disregarded the key findings (including strong signals of harms) from the LANCET Wang et al. trial released on the very same day.  Why? When the glorified NIH study’s outcome was not patient-important and there was indication of harms: “serious adverse events were reported in 131 of the 532 patients who received remdesivir (24.6%) and in 163 of the 516 patients who received placebo (31.6%).”

SOURCE: Wang et al.

NIH tampered with the protocol:

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Amid all of its virtue signaling and moralizing over the alleged actions of its perceived enemies around the world, the American Deep State is ever vigilant to cover-up its own litany war crimes.

This week we learned that a US federal judge has ruled that a massive congressional report on the CIA’s illegal ‘War on Terror’ torture program will remain classified, claiming American citizens have no right to see the controversial document, portions of which have already been leaked to the public by a Democratic senator in 2014.

“The Report contains highly classified information about the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies and procedures that would compromise national security if released, far outweighing the public’s interest in disclosure.”

Another incredible miscarriage of justice…

The US government used cruel and unusual methods to torture innocent detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan (Image: Wikicommons)

LA Times reports…

The U.S. Senate does not have to release its full report detailing the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation and detention program following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Journalist Shawn Musgrave sought the 6,700-page document, citing a “common law right of access” to public records. The legal argument is conceptually similar to the Freedom of Information Act. Congress is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in 2016 that the report was a congressional record. Musgrave’s legal argument was made in an attempt to get around that limitation.

Common law right of access is decided in the District of Columbia Circuit based on a two-part test that requires a determination that the document is a public record and then balancing the government’s interest in keeping the document secret against the public’s interest in disclosure.

District of Columbia District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the report “does not qualify as a public record subject to the common law right of public access” because although it was part of the committee’s investigation, it was aimed at gathering information and did not make recommendations or propose legislation. Therefore, she said, it falls under the protections of the 1st Amendment‘s speech and debate clause protecting legislators’ speech while crafting legislation.

The government interest in keeping the information secret outweighs public interest, Howell wrote.

“The Report contains highly classified information about the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies and procedures that would compromise national security if released, far outweighing the public’s interest in disclosure,” Howell said in her opinion dismissing the case…

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Featured image: By 2006, at least 100 prisoners had died in US custody in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of them violently, according to government data. (Photo: US torture Image by Witness Against Torture)

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The World Economic Forum (WEF) is boasting that mass compliance with draconian COVID-19 mandates “demonstrated the core of individual social responsibility” and helped pave the way for upcoming “climate”-related restrictions.

Headed by German engineer, economist, and “COVID-19: The Great Reset” author Klaus Schwab, the WEF made the connection in a September 14 report associated with its ongoing 2022 Sustainable Development Impact Meetings.

BREAKING: Davos launching new push for permanent "climate change" lockdowns: "The lockdowns aren't for them, the lockdowns are for YOU."

pic.twitter.com/nweQNmVqqN

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 20, 2022

The WEF report suggested moves to track and restrict personal carbon usage has had “limited success due to a lack of social acceptance, political resistance, and a lack of awareness and fair mechanism for tracking ‘My Carbon’ emissions.”

However, the document noted that the unprecedented response to COVID-19 has created an environment in which that “lack of social acceptance and political resistance” may be overcome.

“A huge number of unimaginable restrictions for public health were adopted by billions of citizens across the world,” the report read. “There were numerous examples globally of maintaining social distancing, wearing masks, mass vaccinations and acceptance of contact-tracing applications for public health, which demonstrated the core of individual social responsibility.”

According to the report, that compliance “could help realise ‘My Carbon’ initiatives for shaping the future towards smart and sustainable cities.”

The authors of the paper pointed out that the ascendency of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and “Smart” technology emerging from the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution have provided platforms whereby personal consumption of energy can be monitored and limited.

The document cited “major advances in smart home technologies, transport choices with carbon implications,” and “the roll-out of smart meters” that the WEF said helps people choose “to reduce their energy-related emissions.”

The WEF also touted “the development of new personalized apps to account for personal emissions, and better personal choices for food and consumption-related emissions.”

While the language used in the WEF’s report suggests that individuals will be able to voluntarily opt into programs limiting their alleged carbon emissions, the notion has generated concern that consumers might not always have the choice.

Earlier this month, roughly 22,000 Colorado residents were prevented from adjusting their thermostats after their opt-in “smart” thermostat company locked the devices at 78 degrees F° during a heat wave, citing a local “energy emergency.”

While the “smart” thermostat company, Xcel, emphasized to the media that the program was voluntary and incentive-based, residents said they were surprised and upset to find they couldn’t control their home temperature.

“To me, an emergency means there is, you know, life, limb, or, you know, some other danger out there — some, you know, massive wildfires,” a customer told ABC 7 Denver. “Even if it’s a once-in-a-blue-moon situation, it just doesn’t sit right with us to not be able to control our own thermostat in our house.”

22,000 people in Colorado had their thermostats locked by their utility company in 90 degree weather due to an 'energy emergency.'

People will read stories like this, still want a refrigerator that connects to the internet, and somehow believe our grid is ready for 100% EVs.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) September 5, 2022

This week, The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown author Marc Morano told LifeSite’s John-Henry Westen that lockdowns, restrictions, and even planned economic collapse are all part of the “climate” agenda.

“The COVID lockdowns were literally a version of what they’ve called for for decades in the climate movement,” Morano said. “I attend every United Nations climate summit, and I’m going to the one in Egypt this year … and what these summits call for … is the ‘degrowth movement,’ or ‘planned recessions’ … to fight global warming. And what that means is the government imposes slower economic growth or forces a recession to lower emissions.”

Over the summer, the WEF argued that pushing forward an “clean energy transition,” partly by hiking up already record-breaking gas prices, would be necessary for both saving democracy and staving off environmental catastrophe.

U.S. President Joe Biden, who has presided over skyrocketing inflation and historically high gas prices, drew backlash in May when he suggested that the high cost of fuel was part of an “incredible transition.”

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Featured image is from The Libertarian Institute

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When political commentator Kim Iversen read, “Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better” — an article published in 2016 on the World Economic Forum (WEF) website — she waited for the punchline, assuming the article was satire.

But there wasn’t a punchline. The author of the article was serious.

Iversen devoted a recent episode of “The Kim Iversen Show” to dissecting the WEF article, whose “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy” message resurfaced amid growing interest in the WEF’s Great Reset.

Iversen highlighted some of the article’s key statements, which she labeled “absurd” and “insane”:

• “I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.”
• “It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes.”
• “In our city we don’t pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.”
• “Environmental problems seem far away, since we only use clean energy and clean production methods.”
• “Shopping? I can’t really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.”
• “Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.”

The article, published Nov. 10, 2016, was written by Ida Auken, a member of the Danish Parliament (2007-present) and formerly Denmark’s minister for the environment.

Auken wrote the article in preparation for the WEF’s Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils which took place November 13-14, 2016, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The WEF in early 2017 nominated Auken as a Young Global Leader and promoted her article in a tweet:

Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better @IdaAuken https://t.co/SJjAQkYeYH pic.twitter.com/eujshuqRJo

— World Economic Forum (@wef) January 16, 2017

“They [WEF leaders] were not joking around,” Iversen said. “This is the future that they envisioned. Everything will move to robotics, everything will be monitored in the name of saving climate.”

Iversen said although she historically called herself an environmentalist — “That’s really where my first foray into politics was, in the environmental movement” — she’s now “questioning the motivation of all of this.”

She added:

“I’ve seen them [WEF global leaders] claim a lot of things are really bad and they’re not. They were exaggerated greatly in order to use those [things] to make us afraid and control us.”

According to Iversen, the WEF is “marching us toward” a life of passive obedience to a centralized system of authorities who control and own everything.

Their message, she said, is “‘just be a good citizen and you have nothing to worry about so long as you don’t speak out against the government, so as long as you follow all the rules … Yes, you won’t have any privacy … You won’t own anything but you will be very, very happy. You just need to do as you’re told.’”

Iversen added:

“Thank goodness more and more people are reporting on this and waking up to this saying, ‘No. We are not going to go along with this agenda.’”

Watch the video here:

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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

Featured image is from CHD

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The United States has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to dismiss a case by Iran which claims that Washington breached a treaty and allowed courts to freeze assets of Iranian companies.

“Iran’s case should be dismissed in its entirety because of the principle of ‘unclean hands’,” Richard Visek, acting legal adviser at the US State Department, said on Wednesday, as the US set out its opening arguments in the case at The Hague.

In using the legal term “unclean hands”, Visek argued that Tehran cannot complain about US courts confiscating assets because the actions that led to the asset freeze were the result of Iran’s own illegal conduct.

Iran first brought the case against Washington in 2016, accusing it of breaching a 1955 friendship treaty by allowing American courts to freeze assets of Iranian companies, including $1.75bn from Iran’s central bank which is now held in a Citibank account in New York.

The friendship treaty was signed decades before Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, which toppled US-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The revolution led to the severing of US-Iranian relations and Washington eventually withdrew from the treaty in 2018.

In October 1983, a suicide bomber in a truck loaded with military-grade explosives attacked US Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American troops and 58 French soldiers. Iran has long denied being involved. However, in 2003 a US judge found Tehran responsible and a 2012 US law ordered Iran’s central bank to hand over the frozen Iranian assets to the families of those killed in the Beirut bombing.

In 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled it had jurisdiction to hear the case, rejecting an argument from the US that its national security interests superseded the 1955 treaty.

“The freedom of navigation and commerce guaranteed by the treaty have been gravely breached,” Tavakol Habibzadeh, head of international legal affairs for Iran, told the ICJ on Monday, as reported by the Associated Press.

Iran’s case against the UK

The ICJ, also known as the World Court, is the UN’s highest court dealing with disputes between countries.

While its rulings are binding, the court has no power to enforce them, and Washington and Tehran are among a number of countries to have disregarded its decisions in the past.

Iran had previously brought up another case with the ICJ when it called on the United Kingdom to pay more than $500m in debt to Tehran from before the Iranian revolution.

Shortly before the 1979 overthrow of the shah, the British government struck an arms deal to sell more than 1,500 Chieftain tanks and 250 repair vehicles to Iran.

Iran paid £600m ($795m) for the tanks in advance, but having delivered only 185 tanks, Britain refused to deliver the remaining equipment when the shah was deposed.

The international court of arbitration in The Hague ordered Britain to pay the debt in 2001, a ruling upheld in 2009. However, the two countries have been locked in a prolonged legal battle in the British courts over the exact sum owed, and whether or not the UK should pay interest on it.

In 2017, Iran also filed a lawsuit at the ICJ demanding the court order the suspension of renewed US sanctions, which it says are devastating its economy.

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Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, has warned of the serious threat spyware programmes like Pegasus pose to the UN’s work on human rights in a damning report set to be debated next week.

Expanding digital surveillance by states and non-state actors has impacted the ability of civil society actors to submit information to the UN and has made them more vulnerable to intimidation and reprisal, Guterres cautions.

“United Nations actors have pointed to growing and concerning evidence of online surveillance, privacy intrusion, and cyberattacks by state and non-state actors of victims and civil society communications and activities,” the UN chief writes.

“The lack of trust in the digital sphere among those sharing information and testimony with the United Nations on sensitive issues can discourage future cooperation.”

His findings are part of an annual report that monitors the challenges faced by those seeking to cooperate with the organisation and focuses on April 2021 to May 2022.

During this period, much of the UN’s work was conducted digitally in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, making threats of surveillance and spyware especially concerning.

In particular, he singles out the potential repercussions that Pegasus, the military-grade spyware made by the Israel-based NSO Group, has had for Palestinian, Bahraini, and Moroccan organisations and human rights defenders who have cooperated with the UN.

He notes that staff at three prominent Palestinian NGOs – Addameer, Al-Haq, and Bisan Center for Research and Development – were surveilled and had their phones hacked with Pegasus in 2021. The hacking came two weeks after the Israeli government had designated the organisations and three others as “terrorist associations”.

Israel did not respond to the allegations highlighted in the report.

Repercussions for cooperating with UN

In Bahrain, the report highlights two human rights defenders, Ebtisam al-Saegh and Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, in relation to spyware.

This January, investigators found that al-Saegh’s mobile phone had been hacked at least eight times between August and November 2019 with Pegasus. Alwadaei’s mobile number was discovered on a leaked list of numbers identified as targets by NSO Group’s government clients between 2017 and 2019.

Both have allegedly experienced earlier repercussions for their cooperation with the UN, Guterres notes.

As Middle East Eye has previously reported, al-Saegh, who is based in Bahrain, was detained in March 2017 for seven hours at Bahrain International Airport on her return from the UN Human Rights Council, where she spoke out about violations in the kingdom.

She was interrogated for five hours and had her passport and mobile phone confiscated.

A couple of months later, interrogators from Bahrain’s National Security Agency abused her physically and verbally, and sexually assaulted her at Muharraq police station. She was told that if she did not cease her activism she would be raped.

“As someone who has been unable to heal from the torture and sexual assault experienced by Bahraini security due to the culture of impunity that allows my abusers to walk free, I feel deep pain in knowing that malicious spyware has now been used against me,” al-Saegh told MEE.

Alwadaei, director of advocacy for the UK-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird), who lives in exile in London, and several of his relatives have faced reprisal, including arbitrary arrest and removal of citizenship, as a result of his continuous engagement with the UN, Guterres notes.

The Bahraini government, in response to the report, said that neither al-Saegh, nor Alwadaei and his family had been targeted because of their human rights activity or cooperation with the UN, but did not respond to the spyware allegations.

In Morocco, Guterres reports on the case of veteran Sahrawi human rights defender Aminatou Haidar, who has allegedly faced threats, physical attacks, constant police monitoring, legal action, and online surveillance for her ongoing cooperation with the UN.

In March 2022, forensic evidence from an investigation reportedly showed that Haidar’s mobile phones were targeted and intercepted by Pegasus in October and November 2021.

“I also blame the NSO Group, which I consider to be a company that profits from human rights violations with espionage technology provided to authoritarian countries such as Morocco,” Haidar told MEE in March.

Guterres also writes that the UN received information that Claude Mangin-Asfari, the wife of imprisoned Sahrawi human rights defender Ennaama Asfari, and her husband’s lawyer were targeted with Pegasus in 2021.

‘The price human rights defenders pay’

In a response to the report’s allegations, Moroccan authorities categorically denied that Haidar, Mangin-Asfari, or her husband’s lawyer were hacked with Pegasus, and also said that they categorically rejected that Haidar had been subject to constant police surveillance or physical violence during the reporting period.

Alwadaei said the report reveals “the price human rights defenders pay for cooperating with the UN” and the extent to which repressive goverments will go to intimidate activists.

“This important recognition by the UN secretary-general on governments’ misuse of Pegasus spyware is an important step. The UN should follow up by calling for greater scrutiny of surveillance technology and its misuse by states, coupled with improved regulation,” he said.

“As someone named in this report who has been targeted by the Bahraini government, the state’s response fails to even acknowledge their use of surveillance technology against human rights activists. This should not go unchallenged by the UN.”

The report is scheduled to be debated on 29 September at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

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What in the hell were those bloody-minded Washington/NATO neocons thinking? At any time in the last nine months they could have had a diplomatic settlement with Russia that would have:

• Avoided/ended the war in Ukraine, thereby saving tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives and hundreds of billion of economic cost and destruction;
• Allowed the Russian speaking population of the Donbas a substantial degree of self-governance and autonomy from the hostile government in Kiev;
• Permitted the historic Russian territory of Crimea to remain under Russian control per the wishes of the overwhelming share of its Russian-speaking population;
• Kept NATO out of Ukraine and its missiles away from Russia’s doorstep;
• Removed NATO missile bases from the the old Warsaw Pact countries, where NATO had expanded in breach of Washington’s solemn promise made at the time of the German reunification to not extend NATO “one inch to the east” .

Would this have furthered the national security of the US and Europe, permitted Europe’s then flourishing peaceful commerce with Russia to continue and avoided the current global plague of soaring energy and food prices caused by the Sanctions War?

Yes, it would have. In spades!

So the question recurs. What alternative path did Washington/NATO envision and how could the likely consequences have improved upon either the above summarized settlement, which has been possible all along or, far worse still, the disastrous end game which is now unfolding?

The fact is, after Putin’s speech of yesterday the phrase “disastrous end game” is barely adequate to describe the scenario ahead. That’s because it signaled that the relative restraint of Russia’s “Special Military Operation” (SMO) is now over, and what lies ahead is full scale political and military warfare that can only end in calamity for Ukraine, NATO and indeed the world:

The heart of the matter is that Putin is now :

• Mobilizing Russia’s entire GDP, which is at least 15X greater than what’s left of Ukraine’s;
• Mustering 300,000 fresh reserves or double the number of Russian forces now deployed in the SMO;
• Abandoning the policy of not attacking Ukraine’s civilian electric power grid and railroad system, which has been crucial to Ukraine’s survival to date and the West’s massive supply of weapons across the western border and through the interior rail network;
• Preparing to annex the two breakaway Donbas republics in the east and the Kherson and  Zaporizhzhia regions in the south after hurriedly called referendums, which will transform the war into an explicit NATO-enabled attack on Russia proper.

To be sure, Kiev and Washington are screaming loudly that these referendums are “shams”, and it’s probably the case that the ballot counting will be no better than what occurred in the state of Georgia in 2020.

But the fact is, these regions are populated by Russian-speakers who have no love for or loyalty to the anti-Russian government in Kiev; who have already lined-up for Russian citizenship in large numbers; and who, in any case, fear the retribution of the Ukrainian military and secret service far more than they fear the Russians.

Stated differently, the populations of the Donetsk (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republics (LPR) and those of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions are not begging to be “liberated” by Ukrainian armies, which are every bit as brutal and vindictive as the Russian military has been alleged to be, and surely don’t give a whit about Washington/NATO’s hypocritical malarkey about the rule of law and the sanctity of borders.

In fact, the overwhelming share of the populations (75-90%) of these regions have voted for the pro-Russian candidate in every presidential election held in the Ukraine since the Soviet Union’s mailed fist was lifted from their governance in 1991.

That is to say, they have implicitly voted for partition of a country that never existed until it was nailed together by the tyrannical rule of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev after 1922. So doing, they effected an arbitrary rearrangement of borders that plopped what had been “New Russia” for upwards of 200 years into the commie designed Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine for no better reason than it suited their whims and convenience of rule.

But now, within a matter of weeks, Ukraine’s borders will be restored to the pre-WWI status quo ante. Whether fair and square or not, the vote will be overwhelmingly in favor of separation and upon the request of the peoples of “Novorussiya”, Putin has indicated that these regions will once again become formal Russian territories.

What that means, in turn, of course, is that NATO’s war in support of the Kiev regime will become an explicit war on the territory of Russia. And that surely portends a bloody and disastrous end game because the only way it does not end up in an armistice after untold more deaths and destruction, followed by secession of the new “Russian” territories , anyway, is if Ukraine wins the war.

That’s not going to happen. Not in a blue moon.

Once Moscow takes the gloves off and savages Ukraine’s electric power grid and railway system it will be all over except the shouting. The massive flow of western armaments, which has kept Kiev in the game to date, will be drastically curtailed; and the civilian population in the Kiev-controlled areas will be left high and dry, preparing to shiver in the dark as the severe Ukrainian winter approaches.

Nor does the alleged surprise victory of Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv area in recent weeks change the scenario. What that actually accomplished was the sacrifice of thousands of Ukrainian troops in the apparent faint attack on Kherson in the south in order to regain a few thousand square miles of lightly populated open steppe around Kharkiv.

Even then, the alleged hastily retreating Russian army was not that at all. The area had been mostly occupied and defended by the lightly trained volunteers of the Republic of Luhansk, not the trained professionals of the Russian armed forces.

Now that the Ukrainian army has driven out the Luhansk volunteers and occupied the open steppe lands, it remains for Russian dominance of the air and artillery war to encircle the alleged victors and pulverize them from the air and via long-range artillery that is even now being brought into position.

That is to say, in a few weeks the Ukrainian “victory “will disappear from the MSM, just as have so many other alleged setbacks to the Russian cause.

Instead, the news will be about the brutality of the Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy and transport infrastructure; the roadblocks it will put in front of what has been the demolition derby of US/NATO supplied weaponry to the battle front; and the fact that without massive new aid from Washington beyond the $50 billion already authorized, civilian life in the Kiev-controlled portions of the country will be on the verge of collapse and the regime in Kiev will be on virtual life-support from Washington.

In short, the end game in lieu of the diplomatic settlement which could have been had long ago will be either a more unfavorable partition of Ukraine, leaving Kiev and the western regions as a bankrupt landlocked rump state and ward of the west, or an escalation that involves direct military engagement by NATO and leaves the world teetering on the edge of nuclear war.

So much for using Ukraine as cannon fodder to drastically “weaken Russia” and to force the demonized Vlad Putin from power. To the contrary, by the time Europe’s cold and dark winter is underway, it will be European governments, which slavishly did Washington’s bidding, that will be falling like dominoes.

More importantly, it will also be the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill asking our opening question of Biden’s infinitely foolish national security team: Indeed, what in the hell were you thinking?!

*

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David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America and TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.

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***

SGS developed a new simulation for a plausible escalating war between the United States and Russia using realistic nuclear force postures, targets and fatality estimates. It is estimated that there would be more than 90 million people dead and injured within the first few hours of the conflict.

This project is motivated by the need to highlight the potentially catastrophic consequences of current US and Russian nuclear war plans. The risk of nuclear war has increased dramatically in the past two years as the United States and Russia have abandoned long-standing nuclear arms control treaties, started to develop new kinds of nuclear weapons and expanded the circumstances in which they might use nuclear weapons.

This four-minute audio-visual piece is based on independent assessments of current U.S. and Russian force postures, nuclear war plans, and nuclear weapons targets. It uses extensive data sets of the nuclear weapons currently deployed, weapon yields, and possible targets for particular weapons, as well as the order of battle estimating which weapons go to which targets in which order in which phase of the war to show the evolution of the nuclear conflict from tactical, to strategic to city-targeting phases.

The resulting immediate fatalities and casualties that would occur in each phase of the conflict are determined using data from NUKEMAP. All fatality estimates are limited to acute deaths from nuclear explosions and would be significantly increased by deaths occurring from nuclear fallout and other long-term effects. The simulation was developed by Alex Wellerstein, Tamara Patton, Moritz Kütt, and Alex Glaser with assistance from Bruce Blair, Sharon Weiner, and Zia Mian. The sound is by Jeff Snyder.

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Featured image is from Princeton Science and Global Security

---

“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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***

The televised speech yesterday morning by Vladimir Putin and the follow-up remarks by his Minister of Defense Shoigu announcing the partial mobilization of Russia’s army reserves to add a total of 300,000 men to the military campaign in Ukraine have been widely reported in the Western press.  Plans to hold referendums on accession to the Russian Federation in the Donbas republics this weekend and also in the Kherson and Zaporozhie oblasts in the very near future also were reported by the Western press.  However, as is very commonly the case, the interrelationship of these two developments has not been seen, or, if seen, has not been shared with the general public. Since precisely this interrelationship has been highlighted on Russian state television talk shows these past two days, I use this opportunity to bring to my readership the key facts on what turn the ongoing conflict in Ukraine will now take and an updated view of when it will end and with what results.

The very idea of referendums in the Donbas has been ridiculed by mainstream media in the United States and Europe. They are denounced as ‘sham’ and we are told that the results will not be recognized.  In fact, the Kremlin does not at all care whether the results are recognized as valid in the West.  Their logic lies elsewhere. As for the Russian public, the only critical remark about the referendums has been about the timing, with even some patriotic folks saying openly that it is too early to hold the vote given that the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Zaporozhie and Kherson oblasts have not yet been fully ‘liberated.’ Here too, the logic of these votes lies elsewhere.

It is a foregone conclusion that the Donbas republics and other territories of Ukraine now under Russian occupation will vote to join the Russian Federation. In the case of Donetsk and Lugansk, it was only under pressure from Moscow that their 2014 referendums were about declaring sovereignty and not about becoming part of Russia. Such annexation or merger was not welcomed by the Kremlin back then because Russia was not ready to face the expected massive economic, political and military attack from the West which would have followed.  Today, Moscow is more than ready: indeed it has survived very well all the economic sanctions imposed by the West from even before 24 February as well as the ever growing supply to Ukraine of military materiel and ‘advisers’ from the NATO countries.

The vote over joining Russia will likely hit 90% or more in favor.  What will immediately follow on the Russian side is also perfectly clear:  within hours of the declaration of referendum results, the Russian State Duma will pass a bill on ‘reunification’ of these territories with Russia and within a day or so, it will be approved by the upper chamber of parliament and immediately thereafter the bill will be signed into law by President Putin.

Looking past his service as a KGB intelligence operative, which is all that Western “Russia specialists” go on about endlessly in their articles and books, let us also remember Vladimir Putin’s law degree. As President, he has systematically stayed within domestic and international law. He will do so now.  Unlike his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin has not ruled by presidential decree; he has ruled by laws promulgated by a bicameral parliament constituted from several parties.  He has ruled in keeping with international law promulgated by the United Nations. UN law speaks for the sanctity of territorial integrity of Member States; but UN law also speaks of the sanctity of self-determination of peoples.

What follows from the formal merger of these territories with Russia?  That is also perfectly clear. As integral parts of Russia, any attack on them, and there certainly will be such attacks coming from the Ukrainian armed forces, is a casus belli. But even before that, the referendums have been preceded by the announcement of mobilization, which points directly to what Russia will do further if developments on the field of battle so requires. Progressive phases of mobilization will be justified to the Russian public as necessary to defend the borders of the Russian Federation from attack by NATO.

The merger of the Russia-occupied Ukrainian territories with the Russian Federation will mark the end of the ‘special military operation.’ An SMO is not something you conduct on your own territory, as panelists on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show remarked a couple of days ago.  It marks the beginning of open war on Ukraine with the objective of the enemy’s unconditional capitulation. This will likely entail the removal of the civil and military leadership and, very likely, the dismemberment of Ukraine.  After all, the Kremlin warned more than a year ago that the US-dictated course of NATO membership for Ukraine will result in its loss of statehood. However, these particular objectives were not declared up to now; the SMO was about defending the Donbas against genocide and about de-nazification of Ukraine, itself a rather vague concept.

Adding another 300,000 men at arms to the force deployed by Russia in Ukraine represents a near doubling and surely will address the shortages of infantry numbers that has limited Russia’s ability to ‘conquer’ Ukraine. It was precisely lack of boots on the ground that explains Russia’s painful and embarrassing withdrawal from the Kharkov region in the past two weeks. They could not resist the massive concentration of Ukrainian forces against their own thinly guarded hold on the region. The strategic value of the Ukrainian win is questionable, but it greatly enhanced their morale, which is a major factor in the outcome of any war. The Kremlin could not ignore this.

At the press conference in Samarkand last week following the end of the annual gathering of heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Vladimir Putin was asked why he has shown so much restraint in the face of the Ukrainian counter offensive. He replied that the Russian attacks on Ukrainian electricity generating plants which followed the loss of the Kharkov territory were just ‘warning shots’ and there would be much more ‘impactful’ action to come.  Accordingly, as Russia moves from SMO to open war, we may expect massive destruction of Ukrainian civil as well as military infrastructure to fully block all movement of Western supplied arms from points of delivery in the Lvov region and other borders to the front lines. We may eventually expect bombing and destruction of Ukraine’s centers of decision-making in Kiev.

As for further Western intervention, Western media have picked up on President Putin’s thinly veiled nuclear threat to potential co-belligerents. Russia has explicitly stated that any aggression against its own security and territorial integrity, such as has been raised by generals in retirement in the USA speaking to national television in the past several weeks about Russia’s break-up, will be met by a nuclear response. When Russia’s nuclear threat is directed at Washington, as is now the case, rather than at Kiev or Brussels, the supposition till now, it is unlikely that policy makers on Capitol Hill will long remain cavalier about Russian military capabilities and pursue further escalation.

In light of all these developments, I am compelled to revise my appreciation of what transpired at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting.  Western media have focused full attention on only one issue: the supposed friction between Russia and its main global friends, India and China, over its war in Ukraine.  That seemed to me to be grossly exaggerated. Now it appears to be utter nonsense. It is inconceivable that Putin did not discuss with Xi and Modi what he is about to do in Ukraine. If Russia indeed now supplies to its war effort a far greater part of its military potential, then it is entirely reasonable to expect the war to end with Russian victory by 31 December of this year as the Kremlin appears to have pledged to its loyal supporters.

Looking beyond Ukraine’s possible loss of statehood, a Russian victory will mean more than an Afghanistan-like bloody nose for Washington. It will expose the low value of the U.S. military umbrella for EU member states and will necessarily lead to re-evaluation of Europe’s security architecture, which is what the Russians were demanding before their incursion into Ukraine was launched in February.

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***

Three months after the Russian invasion, Ukraine is no longer talking specifically about NATO, but rather a series of “binding” security guarantees now being sought from its Western partners. 

Last week, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak, the co-chairs of the Working Group On International Security Guarantees for Ukraine, published the Kyiv Security Compact. The elaborate document includes a “multi-decade effort of sustained investment in Ukraine’s defence industrial base, scalable weapons transfers and intelligence support from allies” through “binding” bilateral agreements between Ukraine and a “core group of allied countries” including the U.S., UK, Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, and Turkey, as well as Nordic, Baltic, Central and Eastern European countries.

So far the response in the West to the proposed compact has been muted, but it triggered a belligerent retort from Leonid Slutsky, the chair of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs of the Russian Federation. He charged that “this is not a security guarantee, it is a draft pact on the involvement of NATO countries and their allies in the conflict. The proposal is against Russia, against a nuclear state. I hope that all of Kyiv’s Western partners are well aware of what they are being asked to sign up for.”

The laundry list of security guarantees envisioned by Rasmussen and Yermak comes at a time when support for the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy of sending arms, financing, and intelligence sharing has found strong support in both houses in Congress, in the U.S. media, and among the public at large.

Yet worryingly, the relation between unanimity of opinion and sound judgment tends toward the inverse. The Rasmussen-Yermak report would require a boost in U.S. resources beyond the billions that it is already sending to the Ukraine war effort, as well as a commitment that falls just short of the kind of NATO guarantees that played into Russia’s break up with the West in the first place.

While not taking on the proposal for new security guarantees directly, a new report from Brown University’s Cost of War project, published on September 15, takes aim at the current escalation dynamics, and makes the critical  case for a far more cautious approach than envisioned by either the Rasmussen-Yermak report or the U.S. bipartisan foreign policy consensus (aka ‘the Blob’).

The report,

“Threat Inflation, Russian Military Weakness, and the Resulting Nuclear Paradox: Implications of the War in Ukraine for U.S. Military Spending,” counsels against an increase in U.S. and NATO defense spending as a response to Vladimir Putin’s illegal war on Ukraine.

“It is important that the U.S. not succumb to threat inflation in regards to public and official perceptions of Russia,” because “historically, threat inflation has led to disastrous and unnecessarily costly U.S. foreign policy decisions,” writes the report’s author, Lyle Goldstein, visiting professor of International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute at Brown University.

Goldstein ably and succinctly takes the reader through the long history of threat inflation by the U.S. foreign policy establishment with regard to Russia, including the fictitious “missile gap” coined by then-Sen. John F. Kennedy during the late Eisenhower years.

The reason Goldstein, who for 20 years served on the faculty at the U.S. Naval War College, counsels restraint is due to what he calls the “nuclear paradox.” Namely, “if the U.S. and NATO increase their military spending and conventional forces in Europe, the weakness of Russian conventional military forces could prompt Moscow to rely more heavily on its nuclear forces.” After all, on the conventional weapons front, the Russians are far outspent by their rivals in the West. As he points out:

…the Russian defense budget amounts to less than 1/10 of the U.S. defense budget, just 1/5 of NATO (non-US) spending and a measly 6% of the NATO defense spending on aggregate.

Given Russia’s poor performance on the battlefield and its clear inability to militarily threaten NATO territory, Goldstein says “the Russian invasion of Ukraine, however tragic from a humanitarian point of view, does not justify the massive increase in U.S. defense spending that is currently being contemplated.”

Indeed, the report shows how Russia’s inferiority in conventional weapons has incentivized it to focus on its nuclear deterrent. And here Goldstein cites an unclassified report from the Naval War College on “nuclear use”:

“Moscow is unlikely to use nuclear weapons … unless the Putin regime judged that an impending defeat during conflict would undercut the government’s legitimacy and create an existential threat via domestic upheaval (through loss of territorial integrity or other pivotal wartime event).”

“Thus,” writes Goldstein, “the paradox of Russia’s conventional weakness is fully revealed in the above prediction.”

To get off the current escalatory ladder on which the Biden administration has set us (and which the Rasmussen-Yermak report wants to institutionalize as a decades-long project), Goldstein sensibly recommends “direct talks, reviving the arms control agenda, and pursuing military confidence building measures between NATO countries and Russia.”

Senators, members of Congress, their staffs, and policymakers at the highest levels of the Biden administration ought to treat the new Cost of War report with the seriousness it deserves.

*

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Featured image: Photobank.kiev.ua/shutterstock

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***

The President of Serbia has warned that the planet is entering into a “great world conflict” that could take place within the next two months.

Aleksandar Vucic made the alarming comments during the first day of the UN General Assembly session in New York.

“You see a crisis in every part of the world,” Vucic told the Serbian state broadcaster RTS.

“I think realistic predictions ought to be even darker,” he added. “Our position is even worse, since the UN has been weakened and the great powers have taken over and practically destroyed the UN order over the past several decades.”

The Serbian leader cautioned that the war between Russia and Ukraine had moved on to a far deadlier phase.

“I assume that we’re leaving the phase of the special military operation and approaching a major armed conflict, and now the question becomes where is the line, and whether after a certain time – maybe a month or two, even – we will enter a great world conflict not seen since the Second World War,” he said.

Aleksandar Vucic, President of Serbia:

Within a month or two, the world may enter into a military conflict not seen since World War II. pic.twitter.com/Ma0mIS1bkv

— Спринтер (@Sprinter88000) September 21, 2022

Vucic’s remarks were made on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an immediate “partial mobilization” of troops amounting to 300,000 soldiers.

In a public address to the nation, Putin warned that he wasn’t bluffing and that he was prepared to use “all the means at our disposal” to protect Moscow’s territorial integrity.

“Now they (the West) are talking about nuclear blackmail,” said Putin.

“The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was shelled and also some high positions – representatives of NATO states – who are saying there might be possibility and permissibility to use nuclear weapons against Russia,” he added.

Putin ominously asserted that western powers should “be reminded that our country also has various weapons of destruction, and with regard to certain components they’re even more modern than NATO ones.”

As we highlighted last month, a study conducted by Rutgers University found that nuclear war between the United States and Russia would cause two-thirds of the planet to starve to death within two years.

5 billion people would perish, primarily as a result of nuclear detonations causing huge infernos that inject soot into the atmosphere which blocks out the sun and devastates crops.

One wonders how a generation that thinks words are “violence” and misgendering someone is stochastic terrorism will react to an intercontinental nuclear war.

The mind truly boggles.

*

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Climate Instability Worldwide: Does the US Military “Own the Weather”? “Weaponizing the Weather” as an Instrument of Modern Warfare?

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For eight years, NATO has backed puppet rulers in Ukraine, funded attacks on Donbass, repeatedly violated the Minsk Treaties, outlawed the speaking of Russian in the Luhansk and Donetsk Republics, and has destroyed democratic opposition and free media in Ukraine, leaving it a one-party government, essentially owned and financed by the US and administrated by US operatives.

Will the United States and NATO Wake Up to What Happened at the Meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?

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In May, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly had called for a “thorough investigation” into the incident, but Israel’s recent military probe has failed to find any responsibility, despite admitting that Israeli forces most likely killed her. CJPME argues that Canadian support for an ICC investigation is necessary due to the inability and unwillingness of Israel to hold itself accountable.

Twilight of the Tigris: Iraq’s Mighty River Drying Up

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All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is reiterating its call for Canada to support an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into the killing of veteran Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, amid growing and overwhelming evidence of Israeli responsibility. In May, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly had called for a “thorough investigation” into the incident, but Israel’s recent military probe has failed to find any responsibility, despite admitting that Israeli forces most likely killed her. CJPME argues that Canadian support for an ICC investigation is necessary due to the inability and unwillingness of Israel to hold itself accountable.

“The evidence that Shireen Abu Akleh was deliberately killed by Israeli forces is overwhelming and undeniable. This was an assassination,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME.

“If Canada’s words are to mean anything, it must give its full support to the efforts by Abu Akleh’s family and others to seek justice at the ICC,” added Bueckert.

Earlier this month, an Israeli military probe admitted that there was a “high probability” that Israeli soldiers killed Abu Akleh, but declined to open a criminal investigation. In response, Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid reaffirmed that he would “not allow” any soldier to be prosecuted. Meanwhile this week, Forensic Architecture and Al-Haq published the results of a forensic investigation which concluded that Israeli soldiers had targeted Abu Akleh “deliberately and explicitly,” and found that there were no Palestinian gunmen or crossfire in the area – completely debunking Israel’s claims that the incident could have been an accident. These findings reinforce the conclusions of previous investigations by Bellingcat, CNN, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press, which indicated that Abu Akleh was targeted by Israeli forces on purpose.

In another development this week, an official complaint over Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing was submitted to the International Criminal Court by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), and Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), on behalf of Abu Akleh’s family. Similar initiatives have previously been announced by the Palestinian foreign ministry and Al Jazeera. CJPME notes that while Canada has formerly opposed the ICC investigation into alleged war crimes in Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), it has offered enthusiastic support to the ICC’s investigation in Ukraine, including by sending a team of RCMP officers. CJPME urges Canada to drop this double standard and accept the jurisdiction of the ICC over the OPT, and to give its full support to an ICC investigation into Abu Akleh’s death.

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Featured image: Shireen Abu Akleh was an icon in Palestine and throughout much of the Arabic speaking world for her reporting from the occupied territories (Illustration/MEE)

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***

Read Part I, II and III:

The Netherlands: Government Sponsored Behavioral Control and Social Engineering Experiments

By Elze van Hamelen, September 20, 2022

Mindspace – A Guide to Behavioral Manipulation

By Elze van Hamelen, September 19, 2022

COVID Measures: Biggest “Social Conformity Event” in History. Corona Policy Was Aimed at “Changing Behavior”, Not at Improving Health.

By Elze van Hamelen, September 21, 2022

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NATO has added to the traditional domains of warfare – land, sea, air, space and cyberspace – a new one: “the cognitive domain.” This is not just about imposing certain ideas or behaviors, as in traditional propaganda and psy-ops, but about modifying cognition – influencing the process by which we ourselves arrive at ideas, insights, beliefs, choices and behaviors. The target is not primarily an enemy army, but the citizen. Winning the war is no longer determined by moving a border on a map, but by ideological conversion of the target.

“Cognitive warfare is one of the most debated topics within Nato,” researcher François du Cluzel told a panel discussion on Oct. 5, 2021. He wrote a foundational paper “Cognitive Warfare” for the Nato-affiliated think tank Innovation Hub in 2020. Although cognitive warfare overlaps with information warfare, classical propaganda and psychological operations, du Cluzel points out that cognitive warfare goes much further. In information warfare, one “only” tries to control the supply of information. Psychological operations involve influencing perceptions, beliefs and behavior. The goal of cognitive warfare is “to turn everyone into a weapon,” and “the goal is not to attack what individuals think, but how they think.”  Du Cluzel: “It is a war against our cognition – the way our brains process information and turn it into knowledge. It directly targets the brain”. Cognitive warfare is about “hacking the individual,” allowing the brain to be “programmed.”

To achieve this, almost every domain of knowledge imaginable is applied: psychology, linguistics, neurobiology, logic, sociology, anthropology, behavioral sciences, “and more.” “Social engineering always begins with an understanding of the environment and the target; the goal is to understand the psychology of the target population,” du Cluzel writes. The basis remains traditional propaganda and disinformation techniques, enhanced by current technology and advances in knowledge. “Behavior, meanwhile, can be predicted and calculated to such an extent,” according to du Cluzel, “that AI-driven behavioral science ‘behavioral economics’ should be classified as a hard science rather than soft science.”

Because almost everyone is active on the Internet and social media, individuals are no longer passive recipients of propaganda; with today’s technology, they actively participate in its creation and dissemination. Knowledge of how to manipulate these processes “is easily turned into a weapon.” Du Cluzel cites the Cambridge Analytica scandal as an example. Through voluntarily submitted personal data to Facebook, detailed individual psychological profiles had been created of a large population. Normally such information is used for personalized advertising, but in the case of Cambridge Analytica it was used to bombard doubting voters with personalized propaganda. Cognitive warfare “exploits the weaknesses of the human brain,” recognizing the importance of the role of emotions in driving cognition. Cyberpsychology, which seeks to understand the interaction between humans, machines and AI (artificial intelligence) will be increasingly important here.

Other promising technologies that could be used are neuroscience and technologies, or “NeuroS/T,” and “NBIC” – nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, cognitive science, “including developments in genetic engineering. NeuroS/T can be pharmacological agents, brain-machine couplings, as well as psychologically disturbing information. Influencing the nervous system with knowledge or technology can produce changes in memory, learning ability, sleep cycles, self-control, mood, self-perception, decisiveness, confidence and empathy, and fitness and vigor. Du Cluzel writes, “The potential of NeuroS/T’ to create insight and the capacity to influence cognition, emotions and behavior of individuals is of particular interest to security and intelligence agencies, and military and war initiatives.”

Waging war on individuals’ cognitive processes represents a radical shift from traditional forms of warfare, where one tries, at least in principle, to keep civilians out of harm’s way. In cognitive war, the citizen is the target and his or her brain is the battlefield. It changes the nature of warfare, the players, the duration and how the war is won.

According to du Cluzel, “cognitive warfare has universal reach, from the individual to states and multinational corporations.”

A conflict is no longer won by occupying a territory, or by adjusting borders on a map, because “the experience of warfare teaches us that although war in the physical realm can weaken an enemy army, it does not result in achieving all the goals of war.” With cognitive war, the end goal shifts: “whatever the nature and purpose of war itself, it ultimately comes down to a clash of between groups that want something different, and therefore victory means the ability to be able to impose desired behavior on a chosen audience.” In effect, then, it is about bringing about an ideological conversion in the target population.

The enemy is not only civilians in occupied or enemy territory – but also their own civilians, who, according to NATO’s estimates, are easy targets for cognitive operations by enemy parties. “Man is the weak link this must be recognized in order to protect the human capital of NATO.”

This “protection” goes a long way: “The goal of cognitive warfare is not merely to harm militaries, but societies. The method of warfare resembles a ‘shadow war,’ and requires the involvement of the entire government in fighting it.”  War can thus be waged with and without the military, and du Cluzel continues: “Cognitive warfare is potentially endless, what for this type of conflict you cannot make a peace treaty, or sign a surrender.”

Dutch citizens are also targeted

According to the Cognitive Warfare report, China, Russia and non-state actors (non-state actors) also value cognitive war. Therefore, NATO sees it as an important task to be able to face this form of warfare. According to correspondence that emerged from FOIA requests, the doctrine of cognitive warfare is allready strongly entrenched in the Dutch military. The independent news site Indepen. nl reports, “The Lieutenant General of the Land Forces Command writes on August 4, 2020 in a memo to then Minister of Defense Ank Bijleveld that ‘information-driven action’ (IGO) takes place in 3 dimensions: the physical, the virtual and the cognitive. Acting in the land domain involves operating within these three dimensions to achieve desired effects achieve within a political-strategic objective. Because country action takes place, by definition, among human actors and groups, effectiveness is in the cognitive dimension is crucial.

At its core is taking away the will to fight at or impose our will to opponents. By the way with this, we are following the NATO doctrine for the land domain’.” This modus operandi, in which the entire government is involved in information and cognitive war, and seeing the citizen as a possible enemy, who must be manipulated toward correct behavior must be manipulated, we see strongly in the corona period. Not for nothing did the Netherlands organize in the spring of 2020 organized a Navo Innovation Challenge, focused on Covid-19. “We are looking for innovative solutions to identify, assess and identify, assess and manage biological threats, so that NATO forces, allies and civilian units are protected are protected,” the announcement reads read. It specifically seeks for “surveillance, inclusive measures to monitor health monitoring” and “collaborative opportunities between military, civilian health and research institutions, officials at the local and national level and surveillance analysts.”

The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported in November 2020 that, without legal basis, the Land Information Maneuver Centre (LIMC) had been established – a department that is under the land forces that surveilled Dutch civilians during the corona period, using Behavioral Dynamics Modeling. BDM is an approach developed by the British SCL group, the parent company of the aforementioned Cambridge Analytica, and with which the military gained experience during missions in Afghanistan, civilians were not only monitored but also actively influenced. FOIA documents released in early 2022 revealed that the LIMC worked closely with police and the NCTV (Unit combatting terrorism, similar to Homeland security).

The invisible war

How is it possible that for some it is very clear that we are facing a coup, revolution or even Third World War, while for others everything is seeming ‘normal’?

“My father prepared me for the previous war,” Sebastian Haffner writes shortly before his escape from Nazi Germany in 1938. In the book ‘Defying Hitler’, he describes how he experienced World War I as a boy of seven, growing up during the interwar period and how he experienced the rise of Nazism. He imagined by war a trench warfare, and was not prepared for terror, mass hysteria and demagoguery.

We imagine war as a demagogue. For example, look at all the unwanted leaders that are demonized- Trump, Putin, Assad, etc. – who are branded “a new Hitler” by the mass media. War is an army invading, soldiers in the streets, cities being bombed.

We are now in the midst of a revolution – in the classic sense – a radical upheaval of the organization of the state system and power relations. Kees van der Pijl clearly explains in his book “States of Emergency” how this revolution, unlike, for example, the French and American revolutions, has not been initiated from below, but from above, by the oligarchy.  They implement policy through co-opted governments and organizations such as the U.S. government, the EU, WHO and WEF, supported by Big Tech companies. The system being worked toward is totalitarian, technocratic and centralized. Relatively few people realize how radical the upheaval we are living through, probably because this war has not been initiated by direct physical force, but by cognitive war, directed at civilians. The doctrine of cognitive warfare shows that modern war is waged primarily as an advanced psyop. It does not conform to the classical image of warfare. That is why it is not visible to most.

Do they remember what freedom is?

None of the documents on cognitive warfare shows any sign of awareness of how far this methodology diverges from the basic values that are the foundations of a free society: centering on the rights and freedoms of the individual to do, think, organize his or her own life, without external interference.

Cognitive warfare is sold as a way to “win war without fighting,” so that there will be fewer (civilian) casualties. This seems positive at first, but, this approach, especially when applied on a large scale AND to its own citizens, does not give any space to the individual to gather information for himself, assess it and act accordingly. The citizen is no longer an independently thinking human being, but a vulnerable subject with “limited rationality.” Behavior that deviates from what the NATO, the LIMC or the government identifies as problematic should be “corrected.” Is the government or the military rational? Is rationality a prerequisite for making choices, decisions or beliefs? Why is a citizen not allowed to have a dissenting opinion without being labeled as “potentially state dangerous”? Wanting to correct “state dangerous” citizens with “wrong” beliefs are reminiscent of the literature on Soviet Russia, Mao-China, Pol-Pot. It has no place in a free society.

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This article was previously published in the reader-funded Dutch newspaper De Andere Krant.

Sources

https://www.innovationhub-act.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/20210122_CW%20Final.pdf

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/10/08/nato-cognitive-warfare-brain/

Cognitive Warfare Project – Reference Documents https://www.innovationhub-act.org/cw-documents-0

https://hcss.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Behavior-Oriented-Operations-March-8th.pdf

NRC – Soft maar gevaarlijk wapen https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/06/26/een-soft-maar-gevaarlijk-wapen-moderne-oorlogsvoering-richt-zich-op-beinvloeding-van-de-bevolking-a4004227

NATO Innovation Challenge focuses on COVID-19 crisis (in NL) https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_175199.htm

https://indepen.nl/ontluisterend-de-landmacht-beschouwt-haar-eigen-volk-als-vijand/

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/11/15/hoe-het-leger-zijn-eigen-bevolking-in-de-gaten-houdt-a4020169

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/25/books/chapters/defying-hitler.html

https://vanhamelen.eu/uncategorized/pandemie-van-de-angst-als-reactie-op-een-wereldwijde-revolutionaire-crisis/

Featured image is from Graphene Flagship

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***

I am certain that most Americans do not have a clue what transpired this week at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (aka SCO). It is a clarion call, a defiant declaration, that the countries, which account for over half of the world’s population, are no longer going to defer to the United States. The attendees included Russia, China, India, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The speeches by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are especially noteworthy. Both countries put the United States on notice that the United States and NATO will be treated as a sponsor of terrorism because they supply weapons to Ukraine that are being used to attack civilian targets. You may accuse me of exaggerating because neither Putin nor Xi mention the United States or NATO by name. But the actions of the NATO allies in Ukraine are seen by both Russia and China as acts of terrorism. I am reprinting the salient portions of each speech below.

Russia and China also put the west on notice that Iran is no longer going to be treated as a pariah state. Iran is welcomed emphatically by both Putin and Xi as a member of the SCO. Going forward, this means that Iran will do business with all members of the SCO under the rubric of a new financial order being organized by Russia, China, India and Brazil.

I am sure this is jarring news to the western allies. They have enjoyed the luxury of the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the international reserve currency. It was the Golden Rule at work–those with the gold make the rules. The United States faces a dilemma because it insists on levying international sanctions on any nation or leader who refuses to toe Washington’s line, but the blow back effects of those sanctions are savaging the European economies and will hurt America as well.

China and Russia now realize and affirm that the United States is no longer a reliable, trustworthy partner. They see the United States as a petulant child that, in the past, coerced others by throwing temper tantrums and launching ill-conceived, foolish foreign military operations.

Most important, but not said, the leaders of the SCO realize that Washington is leaderless. Biden is a demented buffoon. Putin demonstrated this in his press conference. He did not have a podium to lean on. He did not have a cheat sheet of journalists that instructed him who to call on. And he spoke intelligently off the cuff. Pay attention to what he says:

President Xi’s speech lays out in detail the future of the SCO:

Under these new conditions, the SCO, as an important constructive force in international and regional affairs, should keep itself well-positioned in the face of changing international dynamics, ride on the trend of the times, strengthen solidarity and cooperation and build a closer SCO community with a shared future.

First, we need to enhance mutual support. We should strengthen high-level exchanges and strategic communication, deepen mutual understanding and political trust, and support each other in our efforts to uphold security and development interests. We should guard against attempts by external forces to instigate “color revolution,” jointly oppose interference in other countries’ internal affairs under any pretext, and hold our future firmly in our own hands.

Second, we need to expand security cooperation. A proverb in Uzbekistan goes to the effect that “With peace, a country enjoys prosperity, just as with rain, the land can flourish.” The Global Security Initiative put forward by China is to address the peace deficit and global security challenges. It calls on all countries to stay true to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security and build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture. We welcome all stakeholders to get involved in implementing this initiative.

We should continue to carry out joint anti-terrorism exercises, crack down hard on terrorism, separatism and extremism, drug trafficking as well as cyber and transnational organized crimes; and we should effectively meet the challenges in data security, biosecurity, outer space security and other non-traditional security domains. China is ready to train 2,000 law enforcement personnel for SCO member states in the next five years, and establish a China-SCO base for training counter-terrorism personnel, so as to enhance capacity-building for law enforcement of SCO member states.

Third, we need to deepen practical cooperation. To deliver a better life for people of all countries in the region is our shared goal. The Global Development Initiative launched by China aims to focus global attention on development, foster global development partnership, and achieve more robust, greener and more balanced global development. China is ready to work with all other stakeholders to pursue this initiative in our region to support the sustainable development of regional countries.

Fourth, we need to enhance people-to-people and cultural exchanges. Exchanges promote integration among civilizations, which, in turn, enables civilizations to advance. We should deepen cooperation in such areas as education, science and technology, culture, health, media, radio and television, ensure the continued success of signature programs such as the youth exchange camp, the women’s forum, the forum on people-to-people friendship and the forum on traditional medicine, and support the SCO Committee on Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation and other non-official organizations in playing their due roles. China will build a China-SCO ice and snow sports demonstration zone and host the SCO forums on poverty reduction and sustainable development and on sister cities next year. In the next three years, China will carry out 2,000 free cataract operations for SCO member states and provide 5,000 human resources training opportunities for them.

Fifth, we need to uphold multilateralism. Obsession with forming a small circle can only push the world toward division and confrontation. We should remain firm in safeguarding the UN-centered international system and the international order based on international law, practice the common values of humanity and reject zero-sum game and bloc politics. We should expand SCO’s exchanges with other international and regional organizations such as the UN, so as to jointly uphold true multilateralism, improve global governance, and ensure that the international order is more just and equitable. . . .

China supports advancing SCO expansion in an active yet prudent manner, and this includes going through the procedure to admit Iran as a member state, launching the procedure for Belarus’ accession, admitting Bahrain, the Maldives, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Myanmar as dialogue partners, and granting the relevant applying countries the legal status due to them. We need to seize the opportunity to build consensus, deepen cooperation and jointly create a bright future for the Eurasian continent.

Here I wish to express China’s congratulations to India on assuming the next SCO presidency. We will, together with other member states, support India during its presidency.

Putin’s speech is short and to the point:

I fully share the statements made by my colleagues and their positive assessments of the work of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and its growing prestige in international affairs. Indeed, the SCO has become the largest regional organisation in the world.

However, I would like to repeat that global politics and economy are about to undergo fundamental and irreversible changes. The growing role of new centres of power is coming into sharp focus, and interaction among these new centres is not based on some rules, which are being forced on them by external forces and which nobody has seen, but on the universally recognised principles of the rule of international law and the UN Charter, namely, equal and indivisible security and respect for each other’s sovereignty, national values and interests.

It is on these principles, which are devoid of all elements of egoism, that the joint efforts of SCO member states are based in politics and the economy. This opens up broad prospects for continued mutually beneficial cooperation in politics, the economy, culture, humanitarian and other spheres.

Fighting terrorism and extremism, drug trafficking, organised crime and illegal armed formations remains a priority of our cooperation. Other key areas include providing assistance in the political and diplomatic settlement of conflicts along our external borders, including in Afghanistan. . . .

In this context, Russia, no doubt, favours the earliest possible accession of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the SCO, which is what the documents and the memorandum that will be signed today are designed to accomplish. We are convinced that Iran’s full-fledged participation will be beneficial for the association, as that country plays an important role in the Eurasian region and the world at large.

We also fully stand behind the decision submitted for approval by the Heads of State Council to start the process of admitting the Republic of Belarus as an SCO member. Let me be clear that we have always advocated that Belarus, which is Russia’s strategic partner and closest ally, should participate fully in the SCO. This will undoubtedly improve our ability to advance unity in politics, the economy, security and humanitarian matters.

In the past, the United States controlled the ball and set the rules for the game. The countries of the SCO are no longer going to let the United States dictate where, when and how the game is played. They are bringing their own ball and setting up their own rules. I apologize for the poor metaphor in advance, but this is bit like the PGA Tour being shocked and outraged by the emergence of an alternative professional golf tour, LIV. There is a new and potentially more powerful player on the world stage and the United States may be relegated to the peanut gallery and forced to watch.

*

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***

It was the river that is said to have watered the biblical Garden of Eden and helped give birth to civilisation itself.

But today the Tigris is dying.

Human activity and climate change have choked its once mighty flow through Iraq, where—with its twin river the Euphrates—it made Mesopotamia a cradle of civilisation thousands of years ago.

Iraq may be oil-rich but the country is plagued by poverty after decades of war and by droughts and desertification.

Battered by one natural disaster after another, it is one of the five countries most exposed to climate change, according to the UN.

From April on, temperatures exceed 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and intense sandstorms often turn the sky orange, covering the country in a film of dust.

Hellish summers see the mercury top a blistering 50 degrees Celsius—near the limit of human endurance—with frequent power cuts shutting down air-conditioning for millions.

The Tigris, the lifeline connecting the storied cities of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, has been choked by dams, most of them upstream in Turkey, and falling rainfall.

An AFP video journalist travelled along the river’s 1,500-kilometre (900-mile) course through Iraq, from the rugged Kurdish north to the Gulf in the south, to document the ecological disaster that is forcing people to change their ancient way of life.

Kurdish north: ‘Less water every day’

The Tigris’ journey through Iraq begins in the mountains of autonomous Kurdistan, near the borders of Turkey and Syria, where local people raise sheep and grow potatoes.

“Our life depends on the Tigris,” said farmer Pibo Hassan Dolmassa, 41, wearing a dusty coat, in the town of Faysh Khabur. “All our work, our agriculture, depends on it.

“Before, the water was pouring in torrents,” he said, but over the last two or three years “there is less water every day”.

Iraq’s government and Kurdish farmers accuse Turkey, where the Tigris has its source, of withholding water in its dams, dramatically reducing the flow into Iraq.

According to Iraqi official statistics, the level of the Tigris entering Iraq has dropped to just 35 percent of its average over the past century.

Baghdad regularly asks Ankara to release more water.

But Turkey’s ambassador to Iraq, Ali Riza Guney, urged Iraq to “use the available water more efficiently”, tweeting in July that “water is largely wasted in Iraq”.

He may have a point, say experts. Iraqi farmers tend to flood their fields, as they have done since ancient Sumerian times, rather than irrigate them, resulting in huge water losses.

Central plains: ‘We sold everything’

All that is left of the River Diyala, a tributary that meets the Tigris near the capital Baghdad in the central plains, are puddles of stagnant water dotting its parched bed.

Drought has dried up the watercourse that is crucial to the region’s agriculture.

This year authorities have been forced to reduce Iraq’s cultivated areas by half, meaning no crops will be grown in the badly-hit Diyala Governorate.

“We will be forced to give up farming and sell our animals,” said Abu Mehdi, 42, who wears a white djellaba robe.

“We were displaced by the war” against Iran in the 1980s, he said, “and now we are going to be displaced because of water. Without water, we can’t live in these areas at all.”

The farmer went into debt to dig a 30-metre (100-foot) well to try to get water. “We sold everything,” Abu Mehdi said, but “it was a failure”.

The World Bank warned last year that much of Iraq is likely to face a similar fate.

“By 2050 a temperature increase of one degree Celsius and a precipitation decrease of 10 percent would cause a 20 percent reduction of available freshwater,” it said.

“Under these circumstances, nearly one third of the irrigated land in Iraq will have no water.”

Water scarcity hitting farming and food security are already among the “main drivers of rural-to-urban migration” in Iraq, the UN and several non-government groups said in June.

Map of Iraq showing the Tigris River and density of population. (By AFP via phys.org)

And the International Organization for Migration said last month that “climate factors” had displaced more than 3,300 families in Iraq’s central and southern areas in the first three months of this year.

“Climate migration is already a reality in Iraq,” the IOM said.

Baghdad: sandbanks and pollution

This summer in Baghdad, the level of the Tigris dropped so low that people played volleyball in the middle of the river, splashing barely waist-deep through its waters.

Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources blame silt because of the river’s reduced flow, with sand and soil once washed downstream now settling to form sandbanks.

Until recently the Baghdad authorities used heavy machinery to dredge the silt, but with cash tight, work has slowed.

Years of war have destroyed much of Iraq’s water infrastructure, with many cities, factories, farms and even hospitals left to dump their waste straight into the river.

As sewage and rubbish from Greater Baghdad pour into the shrinking Tigris, the pollution creates a concentrated toxic soup that threatens marine life and human health.

Environmental policies have not been a high priority for Iraqi governments struggling with political, security and economic crises.

Ecological awareness also remains low among the general public, said activist Hajer Hadi of the Green Climate group, even if “every Iraqi feels climate change through rising temperatures, lower rainfall, falling water levels and dust storms,” she said.

South: salt water, dead palms

“You see these palm trees? They are thirsty,” said Molla al-Rached, a 65-year-old farmer, pointing to the brown skeletons of what was once a verdant palm grove.

“They need water! Should I try to irrigate them with a glass of water?” he asked bitterly. “Or with a bottle?”

“There is no fresh water, there is no more life,” said the farmer, a beige keffiyeh scarf wrapped around his head.

He lives at Ras al-Bisha where the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates river, the Shatt al-Arab, empties into the Gulf, near the borders with Iran and Kuwait.

In nearby Basra—once dubbed the Venice of the Middle East—many of the depleted waterways are choked with rubbish.

To the north, much of the once famed Mesopotamian Marshes—the vast wetland home to the “Marsh Arabs” and their unique culture—have been reduced to desert since Saddam Hussein drained them in the 1980s to punish its population.

But another threat is impacting the Shatt al-Arab: salt water from the Gulf is pushing ever further upstream as the river flow declines.

The UN and local farmers say rising salination is already hitting farm yields, in a trend set to worsen as global warming raises sea levels.

Al-Rached said he has to buy water from tankers for his livestock, and wildlife is now encroaching into settled areas in search of water.

“My government doesn’t provide me with water,” he said. “I want water, I want to live. I want to plant, like my ancestors.”

River delta: a fisherman’s plight

Standing barefoot in his boat like a Venetian gondolier, fisherman Naim Haddad steers it home as the sun sets on the waters of the Shatt al-Arab.

“From father to son, we have dedicated our lives to fishing,” said the 40-year-old holding up the day’s catch.

In a country where grilled carp is the national dish, the father-of-eight is proud that he receives “no government salary, no allowances”.

But salination is taking its toll as it pushes out the most prized freshwater species which are replaced by ocean fish.

“In the summer, we have salt water,” said Haddad. “The sea water rises and comes here.”

Last month local authorities reported that salt levels in the river north of Basra reached 6,800 parts per million—nearly seven times that of fresh water.

Haddad can’t switch to fishing at sea because his small boat is unsuitable for the choppier Gulf waters, where he would also risk run-ins with the Iranian and Kuwaiti coastguards.

And so the fisherman is left at the mercy of Iraq’s shrinking rivers, his fate tied to theirs.

“If the water goes,” he said, “the fishing goes. And so does our livelihood.”

*

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Featured image: Sun setting on the Tigris: Iraqi fisherman Naim Haddad plys the Shatt al-Arab near Basra. (Source: phys.org)

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***

This week’s Lebanese bank strike can only deepen the country’s multiple crises, causing the currency to hit an all time low in value against the US dollar as the state-owned electricity company shut down its plants and fuel subsidies were cancelled.

Meanwhile, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, in business-as-usual mode, attended the funeral of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II in London before heading to New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly. He excused his absence by promising to return home immediately if there was any chance of forming a cabinet. As French and Saudi diplomats met in Paris to discuss Lebanon,  Army chief General Joseph Aoun was said to be the leading candidate to replace President Michel Aoun (no relation) who is set to step down at the end of next month. He has vowed to stay on in the presidential palace if the situation is not “normal” when his term ends. No one knows what he means by “normal”. Lebanon has not been “normal” since the second civil war (1975-1990) ended.

The banks are certain to compound the misery of the population by imposing fresh security measures when entering premises.  Bankers have been alarmed by of last week’s raids by depositors demanding dollars from their accounts.  The raids began mid-week with black-clad Sali Hafez, armed with a toy gun, who held up a Beirut bank to secure $13,000 for cancer treatment for her seriously ill sister. Hafez became an instant hero when video of the raid was broadcast on social media by accompanying activists from Depositors Outcry. The group also helped organise a second nearly simultaneous raid by a man armed with an unloaded shotgun on a bank in the mountain town of Aley. Depositors Outcry spokesman Ibrahim Abdullah warned that these heists are part of a “revolution is against all banks”. Lebanese blame both the Central Bank and private banks for the financial collapse of the country which has precipitated total economic melt-down.

On Friday, there were five raids on banks in Beirut, the south, and Mount Lebanon. The first man extracted $19,000 from his savings before being detained. The second, an indebted businessman was arrested before accessing accounts containing $300,000. Holding another toy gun, a third raider recovered a combined total of $70,000 from two Beirut banks before surrendering to police. The final heist involved an army lieutenant whose attempt was foiled when shots were fired. What is significant about these raids is that they were mounted by depositors from different backgrounds and with different motives two days after Sali Hafez was celebrated for her daring action.

The latest raids were “copy cat” operations modelled on the first heist in January mounted by a man, armed with a gun and a jerry can of petrol to burn down the bank.  He withdrew $50,000. This incident was followed in August, as the financial collapse deepened, when a food delivery truck driver held staff hostage for seven hours before getting $35,000 from his deposit of $210,000 to pay for his father’s medical treatment. He was cheered by anti-bank protesters who assembled outside the bank while the raid went on. Both these men were arrested and released without being charged due to popular outrage over their detention.

In the wake of last week’s raids, the Bankers Association has demanded both protection and accountability for raiders and their enablers and cheerleaders. Protests erupted outside the Justice Ministry after members of Depositors Outcry were detained.

Lebanon’s 2019 financial crash compelled banks to block $100 billion in deposits and impose impossible limits on withdrawals in both dollars and Lebanese pounds. Unfortunately, Lebanese are reminded every time they want to pay for anything, including fruit and vegetables, as prices are fixed in dollars and payment in Lebanese pounds fluctuates with latest exchange rates. Before the crisis, the dollar was valued at 1,500 Lebanese pounds. The black dollar rate has now hit an unprecedented 39.500 to the dollar and 40.000 is predicted.

Due to Lebanon’s lack of foreign currency to pay for fuel, the country’s thermal power plants have shut down. Therefore, there is no electricity from the state-run company which awaits a late delivery from Iraq under a barter arrangement. A US-endorsed deal to import electricity from Egypt and Jordan via Syria has not been implemented for more than a year. The power cut coincides with the end of fuel subsidies although consumers are dependent on generators compelled buy fuel priced at the black-market rate. Since 80 per cent of Lebanese are living below the poverty line, many if not most will not be able to pay for electricity even if Electricite du Liban resumes supplies.

The financial/economic/power/fuel crisis has ballooned since Mikati’s government resigned in March before securing reforms needed to secure international aid amounting to $21 billion from foreign sources and the International Monetary Fund. Although he has been designated to form a new technocratic Cabinet since June, president Aoun has refused to accept prospective ministers.

He has recently put forward a demand for the appointment of six political ministers whose presence would prevent the injection of foreign funds which depends on the appointment of expert ministers charged with effecting reform, combatting corruption, and fixing broken services. Parliament is meant to choose a candidate to replace President Aoun when his term ends on October 31. Although Gen. Joseph Aoun is mentioned as a replacement, no one can predict anything with any certainty in chaotic Lebanon.

*

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***

There are arguments for and against each of the primary participants in the conflict agreeing to the scenario of Donbass referenda ending the military phase of the conflict before the coming winter.

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***

Mohammed Burgess of Latakia, Syria is the sole survivor of the deliberate murder of his entire family by the Greek Coast Guard on Tuesday, September 13.  Burgess and his wife and two children boarded a migrant ship in Lebanon and were headed toward Italy when the ship began having problems and finally ran out of diesel fuel.  As they were drifting on the Mediterranean Sea, the Greek Coast Guard approached the ship, came alongside, and tied their ship to the Greek ship.  The Greek sailors ordered the passengers to disembark and board the Greek ship.  After coming on board, the Greek sailors took all the passengers’ cell phones, money, gold jewelry the women were wearing, and luggage.  They also beat several of the men without cause.

The Greek ship then began sailing for about five hours, but Burgess did not know the exact direction they were headed because the Greeks refused to have any communication with the passengers.  During the five hours, no water was offered to any passenger, including children.

When they finally stopped sailing, the Greek soldiers began taking out and blowing up small plastic dinghies, the type used by vacationers, not military grade.  They threw the dinghies into the sea and then pushed four to five passengers into the sea after each dinghy. The passengers were to climb into the dinghy from the sea after leaving everything they had with the Greeks.

Burgess was on the last dinghy, and as he jumped off the Greek ship they accelerated at high speed, which immediately sent up a huge wave in the wake of the Coast Guard vessel, which engulfed the last dinghy which held all of Burgess’ family.

As he jumped toward his family, he saw his wife, their two small children, his wife’s sister, her child, Burgess’ cousin, his wife, and their child floundering in the dinghy as the air valve was not shut properly by the Greeks, and in moments the dinghy was deflating and his family was in the sea.

Burgess began a frantic struggle in the sea trying to hold up his son, while his wife’s heroic actions were to try to keep their other child above water.  In her desperate attempt to get her child above the waves, her head was pushed under water and she began to drown.  Once she was lost to the sea, her child was helpless and disappeared beneath the waves. Burgess was torn between trying to keep his son alive or trying to turn toward diving beneath the waves to try and rescue his wife or child.  He was in an impossible position of not being able to do anything other than concentrate on survival.

He remained swimming until the next morning, but in the night very high waves pulled his son away from him.  Burgess had then lost his entire family because of the deliberate and planned actions of the Greek Coast Guard.  The Turkish Coast Guard rescued him from the sea later in the morning, and they also retrieved bodies from the sea. The Italian Coast Guard also retrieved some bodies from the sea.

Burgess gave his eyewitness testimony in a video interview to online media.  Further details were given by the mother-in-law of Burgess, who had lost two of her daughters and three grandchildren in the tragedy. In other YouTube videos dating from 2020 and 2021, the Greek Coast Guard is documented leaving migrants adrift in the sea without help, and also one video shows the Greek sailors beating the migrants and shooting at them.

The Greek Coast Guard has a long history of human rights abuses and breaking international maritime laws. On July 7, the European Court of Human Rights issued a ruling against Greece’s illegal and deadly practice of pushing back boasts of asylum seekers.

Eleven women and children, including infants, died off the Greek island of Farmakonisi on January 20, 2014, in what survivors describe as a pushback operation after the Greek Coast Guard was towing their boat, which resulted in death.

At least 32 more cases of alleged pushbacks by Greece are pending before the Court, and the charges include violating the right to life of the applicants and their relatives and subjecting survivors to degrading treatment when they strip-searched them in public.

Human Rights Watch and other groups have repeatedly documented how the Greek Coast Guard has abandoned migrants at sea by violently transferring individuals from Greek islands, or from the dinghy upon which they were traveling, to motor-less inflatable rafts, and leaving them adrift near Turkish territorial waters. They have also intercepted and disabled boats carrying migrants by damaging or removing the engines or fuel and towing them back to Turkey, or puncturing inflatable boats.

The Turkish Defense Minister stated on July 17, that the Greek Coast Guard is confirmed to have pushed two dinghies with migrants to Turkish waters on the western side of the Aegean Sea.

“One of our drones has recorded LS-930, a Greek Coast Guard vessel, pushing back irregular migrants’ boats to Turkish waters,” it said.

The migrants were saved by the Turkish Coast Guard responding to the information sent back by the drones.  The ministry stressed that the practice of pushing migrants in dinghies was a violation of territorial waters.

The report “Pushbacks and Drowning Human Rights in the Aegean Sea,” exposes the violation of international immigration law by Greece, documenting that Greek forces pushed back a total of 41,523 asylum seekers between 2020 and May 31, 2022, according to Turkey’s Ombudsman Institution.

“Some 98 percent of the pushbacks involved torture and ill-treatment, and 88 percent of the 8,000 asylum seekers who came to the Greek border were beaten,” the report said.

*

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

Featured image is from Steven Sahiounie

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***

In a rational environment, the 77th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) would discuss alleviating the trials and tribulations of the Global South, especially Africa.

That won’t be the case. Like a deer caught in the geopolitical headlights, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued platitudes about a gloomy “winter of global discontent,” even as the proverbial imperial doomsayers criticized the UN’s “crisis of faith” and blasted the “unprovoked war” started by Russia.

Of course the slow-motion genocide of Donbass russophone residents for eight years would never be recognized as a provocation.

Guterres spoke of Afghanistan, “where the economy is in ruins and human rights are being trampled” – but he did not dare to offer context. In Libya, “divisions continue to jeopardize the country” – once again, no context. Not to mention Iraq, where “ongoing tensions threaten ongoing stability.”

Africa has 54 nations as UN members. Any truly representative UNGA meeting should place Africa’s problems at the forefront. Once again, that’s not the case. So it is left to African leaders to offer that much-needed context outside of the UN building in New York.

As the only African member of the G20, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently urged the US not to “punish” the whole continent by forcing nations to demonize or sanction Russia. Washington’s introduction of legislation dubbed the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, he says, “will harm Africa and marginalize the continent.”

South Africa is a BRICS member – a concept that is anathema in the Beltway – and embraces a policy of non-alignment among world powers. An emerging 21st century version of the 1960s Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is strengthening across the Global South – and especially Africa – much to the revulsion of the US and its minions.

Back at the UNGA, Guterres invoked the global fertilizer crisis – again, with no context. Russian diplomacy has repeatedly stressed that Moscow is ready to export 30 million tons of grain and over 20 million tons of fertilizer by the end of 2022. What is left unsaid in the west, is that only the importation of fertilizers to the EU is “allowed,” while transit to Africa is not.

Guterres said he was trying to persuade EU leaders to lift sanctions on Russian fertilizer exports, which directly affect cargo payments and shipping insurance. Russia’s Uralchem, for instance, even offered to supply fertilizers to Africa for free.

Yet from the point of view of the US and its EU vassals, the only thing that matters is to counter Russia and China in Africa. Senegal’s President Macky Sall has remarked how this policy is leaving “a bitter taste.”

‘We forbid you to build your pipeline’

It gets worse. The largely ineffectual EU Parliament now wants to stop the construction of the 1,445 km-long East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) from Uganda to Tanzania, invoking hazy human rights violations, environmental threats, and “advising” member countries to simply drop out of the project.

Uganda is counting on more than 6 billion barrels of oil to sustain an employment boom and finally move the nation to middle-income status. It was up to Ugandan Parliament Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa to offer much-needed context:

“It is imprudent to say that Uganda’s oil projects will exacerbate climate change, yet it is a fact that the EU block with only 10 percent of the world’s population is responsible for 25 percent of global emissions, and Africa with 20 percent of the world’s population is responsible for 3 percent of emissions. The EU and other western countries are historically responsible for climate change. Who then should stop or slow down the development of natural resources? Certainly not Africa or Uganda.”

The EU Parliament, moreover, is a staunch puppet of the biofuel lobby. It has refused to amend a law that would have stopped the use of food crops for fuel production, actually contributing to what the UN Food Program has described as “a global emergency of unprecedented magnitude.” No less than 350 million people are on the brink of starvation across Africa.

Instead, the G7’s notion of “helping” Africa is crystallized in the US-led Build Back Better World (B3W) – Washington’s anaemic attempt to counter Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – which focuses on “climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality,” according to the White House. Practical issues of infrastructure and sustainable development, which are at the heart of China’s plan, are simply ignored by the B3W.

Initially, a few “promising” projects were identified by a traveling US delegation in Senegal and Ghana. Senegalese diplomatic sources have since confirmed that these projects have nothing whatsoever to do with building infrastructure.

B3W, predictably, fizzled out. After all, the US-led project was little more than a public relations gimmick to undermine the Chinese, with negligible effect on narrowing the $40-plus trillion worth of infrastructure needed to be built across the Global South by 2035.

Have YALI, will travel

Imperial initiatives in Africa – apart from the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), which amounts to raw militarization of the continent – brings us to the curious case of YALI (Young African Leaders Initiative), widely touted in the Washington-New York axis as “the most innovative” policy of the Obama years.

Launched in 2010, YALI was framed as “empowering the new generation of Africa leadership” – a euphemism for educating (or brainwashing) them the American way. The mechanism is simple: investing in and bringing hundreds of young African potential leaders to US universities for a short, six-week “training” on “business, civil leadership, entrepreneurship, and public management.” Then, four days in Washington to meet “leaders in the administration,” and a photo op with Obama.

The project was coordinated by US embassies in Africa, and targeted young men and women from sub-Saharan Africa’s 49 nations – including those under US sanctions, like Sudan, Eritrea, and Zimbabwe – proficient in English, with a “commitment” to return to Africa. Roughly 80 percent during the initial years had never been to the US, and more than 50 percent grew up outside of big cities.

Then, in a speech in 2013 in South Africa, Obama announced the establishment of the Washington Fellowship, later renamed the Mandela-Washington Fellowship (MWF).

That’s still ongoing. In 2022, MWF should be granted to 700 “outstanding young leaders from sub-Saharan Africa,” who follow “Leadership Institutes” at nearly 40 US universities, before their short stint in Washington. After which, they are ready for “long-term engagement between the United States and Africa.”

And all that for literally peanuts, as MWF was enthusiastically billed by the Democrat establishment as cost-efficient: $24,000 per fellow, paid by participant US universities as well as Coca-Cola, IBM, MasterCard Foundation, Microsoft, Intel, McKinsey, GE, and Procter & Gamble.

And that didn’t stop with MWF. USAID went a step further, and invested over $38 million – plus $10 million from the MasterCard Foundation – to set up four Regional Leadership Centers (RLCs) in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, and Senegal. These were training, long distance and in-class, at least 3,500 ‘future leaders’ a year.

It’s no wonder the Brookings Institution was drooling over so much “cost-efficiency” when it comes to investing “in Africa’s future” and for the US to “stay competitive” in Africa. YALI certainly looks prettier than AFRICOM.

A few success stories though don’t seem to rival the steady stream of African footballers making a splash in Europe – and then reinvesting most of their profits back home. The Trump years did see a reduction of YALI’s funding – from $19 million in 2017 to roughly $5 million.

So many leaders to ‘train’

Predictably, the Joe Biden White House YALI-ed all over again with a vengeance. Take this US press attache in Nigeria neatly outlining the current emphasis on “media and information literacy,” badly needed to tackle the “spreading of disinformation” including “in the months leading up to the national presidential election.”

So the US, under YALI, “trained 1,000 young Nigerians to recognize the signs of online and media misinformation and disinformation.” And now the follow-up is “Train the Trainer” workshops, “teaching 40 journalists, content creators, and activists (half of whom will be women) from Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Zamfara, and Katsina how to identify, investigate, and report misinformation.” Facebook, being ordered by the FBI to censor “inconvenient,” potentially election-altering facts, is not part of the curriculum.

YALI is the soft, Instagrammed face of AFRICOM. The US has participated in the overthrow of several African governments over the past two decades, with troops trained under secrecy-obsessed AFRICOM. There has been no serious Pentagon audit on the weaponizing of AFRICOM’s local “partners.” For all we know – as in Syria and Libya – the US military could be arming even more terrorists.

And predictably, it’s all bipartisan. Rabid neo-con and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, in December 2018, at the Heritage Foundation, made it crystal clear: the US in Africa has nothing to do with supporting democracy and sustainable development. It’s all about countering Russia and China.

When it learned that Beijing was considering building a naval base in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, the Biden White House sent power envoys to the capital Malabo to convince the government to cease and desist. To no avail.

In contrast, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was received like a superstar in his recent extensive tour of Africa, where it’s widely perceived that global food prices and the fertilizer drama are a direct consequence of western sanctions on Russia. Uganda leader Yoweri Museveni went straight to the point when he said, “How can we be against somebody who has never harmed us?”

On 13-15 December, the White House plans a major US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington to discuss mostly food security and climate change – alongside the perennial lectures on democracy and human rights. Most leaders won’t be exactly impressed with this new showing of “the United States’ enduring commitment to Africa.” Well, there’s always YALI. So many young leaders to indoctrinate, so little time.

*

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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 is from The Cradle

COVID Measures: Biggest “Social Conformity Event” in History. Corona Policy Was Aimed at “Changing Behavior”, Not at Improving Health.

By Elze van Hamelen, September 21, 2022

Corona policy was primarily focused on directing citizen behavior such as wearing mouth masks, keeping a distance, staying home, and test and vaccination readiness – experimental measures with no scientific basis. This is evidenced by the large-scale use of behavioral scientists in implementation and communication of corona policy.

Offence by Another Name: Suppressing Anti-Royal Protest in Britain

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, September 22, 2022

The right to protest, fragile and meekly protected by the judiciary in Britain’s common law tradition, did not really hold much force till European law confirmed it.  In the UK, condemning other countries for suppressing rights to protest is standard fare.

Staking Out Strands of the Web. “Who Is Offering the Bribes and Enforcing the Threats?”

By Nowick Gray, September 21, 2022

It’s distressing to find, in the cause of championing human freedom, infighting among the freedom fighters. Naturally this conflict sabotages the common cause. Factions and prominent advocates accuse each other of being “controlled opposition,” agents provocateurs, dupes, or self-serving egotists advancing platforms of personal gain.

Our Final Stand Against the Globalist Powerbrokers

By Dr. Emanuel Garcia, September 21, 2022

In a recent essay on the nature of Power, I posited that the most pressing philosophical and practical question of the day – and, as I now further reflect upon it, the most moral – is what might transpire if no further scientific advances could be made.  If, in fact, humankind would have to make do with only the currently available technology, what would happen? What would happen if we put a halt to the never-ending quest for material control of the natural world?

How Billionaires Become Billionaires

By Prof. James Petras, September 21, 2022

America has the greatest inequalities, highest mortality rate, most regressive taxes, and largest public subsidies for bankers and billionaires of any developed capitalist country. In this essay we will discuss the socio-economic roots of inequalities and the relation between the concentration of wealth and the downward mobility of the working and salaried classes.

Could Armenia Really Ditch the CSTO Sometime Soon?

By Andrew Korybko, September 21, 2022

US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Armenia and the very warm welcome that she received while in that country prompted speculation among some that America is attempting to “poach” this Russian ally from the CSTO mutual defense pact.

Europe’s Energy Armageddon from Berlin and Brussels, Not Moscow

By F. William Engdahl, September 21, 2022

On August 22 the exchange-traded market price for natural gas in the German THE (Trading Hub Europe) gas hub was trading more than 1000% higher than a year ago. Most citizens are told by the Scholz regime that the reason is Putin and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The truth is quite otherwise.

Video: The Corona Crisis and the Criminalization of Justice. Reiner Fuellmich and Michael Swinwood

By Reiner Fuellmich, Michael Swinwood, and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 18, 2022

Two outstanding guests on GRTV: Dr. Reiner Fuellmich and Dr. Michael Swinwood on the Corona Crisis and the Criminalization of Justice, interviewed by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky.

Beware of the QR Code, Remember Agenda ID2020?

By Peter Koenig, September 18, 2022

What we are confronted with now is much worse. It’s Agenda ID2020 on steroids. It’s the worldwide invasion of the QR code – QR coding of everything, including Agenda ID2020 – and all of your most intimate data, health, personal behaviors, habits – track records of where we have been and even where we may be planning to go. Nothing will escape the QR code.

Ukraine, It Was All Written in the Rand Corp Plan. “The U.S. Plan Against Russia Was Formulated Three Years Ago”

By Manlio Dinucci, September 18, 2022

The strategic plan of the United States against Russia was elaborated three years ago by the Rand Corporation (the manifesto, Rand Corp: how to bring down Russia, May 21, 2019). The Rand Corporation, headquartered in Washington, DC, is “a global research organization developing solutions to policy challenges”: it has an army of 1,800 researchers and other specialists recruited from 50 countries, speaking 75 languages, spread across offices and other locations in North America, Europe, Australia, and the Persian Gulf. Rand’s U.S. personnel live and work in more than 25 countries.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

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***

The right to protest, fragile and meekly protected by the judiciary in Britain’s common law tradition, did not really hold much force till European law confirmed it.  In the UK, condemning other countries for suppressing rights to protest is standard fare.  So it was with some discomforting surprise – at least to a number of talking heads – that people were arrested for protesting against the monarchy after the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.

Such surprise is misplaced.  In the UK, protestors can be marched away before the operation of vast, and vague discretionary powers wielded by the police.  An old, ancient favourite is the breaching of the peace, something many a blue-clad officer is bound to see in any gathering of human beings.

In addition to that general power available to the police, the Public Order Act 1986 UK also covers public order offences.  Section 5 enumerates instances where a person is guilty of such offences: where “they use threatening or abusive words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour or disorderly behaviour” or display “any writing, sign or visible representation which is threatening or abusive.”

An additional, emotive ingredient is also added to the legislation.  Such conduct should take place “within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.” During times of government declared mourning, the abuse of such wording is nigh boundless, despite the imprecise defence of “reasonable accuse” available to the accused party.

It is precisely in such wording that suppression of protest can take place with relative ease.  The conditions of grieving were so utterly total in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death as to be sinisterly oppressive.  The slightest show of disagreement with the grievers was treated as abnormal and offensive.  It was, as Jonathan Freedland wrote, “our collective moment of madness, a week when somehow we lost our grip.”

The police can count upon another weapon in their already vast armoury of quelling protest.  The latest Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act of 2022 is yet another tool, adding “noise-related” provisions.  It grants police powers to limit public processions, public assemblies and one-person protests “where it is reasonably believed that the noise they generated may result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation carried on in the vicinity or have a significant impact on people in the vicinity of the protest.”

The public nuisance element in the legislation is also troubling.  Police powers are granted to enable arrest and charging of individuals responsible for knowingly or recklessly doing something that risks or causes serious harm to the public.  This also covers obstructions to the public “in the exercise or enjoyment of a right that may be exercised or enjoyed by the public at large”.  The legislation defines serious harm as death, personal injury or disease; loss of, or damage to, property, or; serious distress, serious annoyance, serious inconvenience or loss of amenity.”

While the degree of mourning for the Queen’s passing has lacked the intense and grotesque mawkishness shown at Diana’s death, those wishing to sport a different view have also been singled out for their dissent.  There are a good number who see little merit in the monarchy continuing and have expressed disagreement with the new occupant.  One anti-Royal protester, holding the sign “Not My King” in a peaceful and dignified manner, was removed by police in an incident that caused a flutter of concern.

A protestor in Edinburgh was also arrested for holding up the somewhat spicier “Fuck imperialism, abolish monarchy” placard in front of St. Giles Cathedral.  According to a police spokeswoman, the arrest was made “in connection with a breach of the peace”.  Conservative commentator Brendan O’Neill saw it rather differently, calling it “an alarming, almost medieval act of censorship” and “an intolerable assault on freedom of speech.”

Despite initiating a number of arrests the Metropolitan Police insist, as they tend to, that, “The public absolutely have a right to protest and we have been making this clear to all officers involved in the extraordinary operation currently taking place.”

For those believers in Britannic exceptionalism, this was disturbing.   It troubled University of East Anglia academic David Mead, who found it difficult to identify “what criminal offences protesters might have committed by shouting ‘not my king’ or ‘abolish the monarchy’ as the royal procession of the casket made its way along the streets”.

Mead poses a few questions.  Was there threatening or abusive language likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress within the meaning of the Public Order Act?  Seemingly not.  Were the chants or placards in question threatening or abusive?  Again, the case did not stack up.  Even the public nuisance charge would fail to stick.

Perhaps the only ground left was that unclear power of taking proportionate action to prevent breaches of the peace.  Even in an absence of violence, the police might still decide that violence to a person or property might imminently arise.  Best step in before it’s too late.

This is hardly a satisfactory state of affairs, showing, yet again, that the Sceptred Isle can hardly be counted as an impregnable bastion of free speech and public dissent.  “If people are not allowed to quietly, if offensively, protest against the proclamation of a king,” reflects O’Neill, “then clearly our country is not as free as we thought.”

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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: Police officers on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Police confirmed the arrest. (Source: The Scotsman)

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Carmen Obeso was pulling weeds at a strawberry field in Ventura County, California when she smelled something strange. Nearby she spotted a machine spraying pesticides; soon, her eyes were watering and she felt sick to her stomach. Obeso, a Latina farmworker, reported the incident to her crew leader and was evaluated at an on-site health care clinic. A doctor there reassured her that she had not been exposed to anything harmful, and the company expected her back at work the following Monday.

But Obeso didn’t feel better by the next week, nor in the weeks that followed. Her eyes continued to water and felt gritty, and her vision was changing. She knew something was wrong, but the on-site physician still insisted she was fine. Finally, Obeso went to see a different doctor, who confirmed that her eyes had been affected.

It has been two years since the spray incident, and Obeso said in a recent interview that her vision continues to worsen. She is almost blind in sunny conditions unless she wears shaded glasses, she said.

Image: Carmen Obeso stands in a strawberry field in Ventura County. Photo by Teresa Gomez.

Now, instead of working in the fields, she volunteers with farmworker advocacy groups, and is one of a growing number of Hispanic/Latino farmworkers pushing for improved working conditions, including protections for pesticides.

“I feel there are other farmworkers in similar situations and they’re not able to voice it,” she said in Spanish during an interview aided by a translator. “When [the company] sprays the fields, they don’t put up postings. People go in and work and accumulate whatever was sprayed there. They might not always have acute reactions, but in the long run that’s when the consequences can be seen.”

Ventura County is known for its year-round production of roughly $2 billion worth of fruits and vegetables that feed people throughout the US and more than 70 other countries. Strawberries are the top crop, but workers also produce peppers, tomatoes, blueberries, avocados, and more.

But while these farms produce foods many consider staples of a healthy diet, the profusion of pesticides used on the fields pose significant risks to already vulnerable populations living and working in the area, according to research published this month in the journal Science of the Total Environment. These include thousands of mostly Latino farmworkers, many of which live below the poverty line and lack health insurance.

The study found that 17.1 million pounds of pesticides, or an average of 5.7 million pounds per year, were sprayed in Ventura County from 2016 to 2018. The pesticides used included more than 60 types known to be carcinogenic and 74 types linked to endocrine disruption. Another 85 pesticides used in the county were linked to developmental and reproductive toxicity.

In terms of volume, pesticides linked to cancer accounted for nearly a quarter of the total pounds of pesticides applied in the county, the researchers documented.

Notably, the study found that township sections where people of color were the majority had not just the most pesticide use, but also the most toxic pesticide use. More than half of the population in these areas was Latino or Hispanic. In contrast, areas that were relatively free of pesticides were overwhelmingly white communities.

The work adds to a growing body of research underscoring how communities of color face disproportionate exposure to pesticides and bear the brunt of adverse health impacts.

“Pesticide use is a known environmental justice issue,” said Alexis Temkin, a toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group (EWG) who helped lead the research. “But this study really adds a lot more data to show more specific impacts, potentially, on individual communities and individual areas.”

Monitoring the air 

The researchers used sociodemographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, layering over pesticide use data from 2016-2018 for Ventura County and then grouping together the most harmful types of pesticides.

The researchers highlighted two fumigants – metam potassium and sodium and 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D) – as examples of chemicals sprayed in the county that are both highly used and highly toxic.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified 1,3-D as “likely carcinogenic to humans” from 1985 to 2018, but in 2019 downgraded the classification to a “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential,” a decision that essentially allowed for expanded use and greater human exposure to the chemical often referred to by the trade name Telone. The EPA’s Office of Inspector General castigated the regulator for failing to properly consider cancer risks. But the EPA has not changed its position.

Anne Katten, pesticide safety specialist at the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation (CRLAF), said the foundation has been calling on state officials to tighten restrictions on use of soil fumigants such as Telone. But the opposite has happened: while there used to be a cap on Telone use at 90,250 lbs per 36-square-mile area, the cap is now at 136,000 lbs.

DPR says it plans to propose Telone regulations later this fall and adds that it is developing a statewide pesticide notification system that will give the public advance notice about pesticide applications.

Air monitoring stations in Ventura County have detected high levels of Telone as well as a fumigant called chloropicrin, commonly used in producing strawberries, according to Katten. “Quite high levels” of chloropicrin were detected last year at an air monitoring station at a high school in the county, exceeding levels deemed safe by the California DPR, she said.

“It’s a problem for people working in the application of fumigants, but also people in nearby fields and people who live in the area are exposed to the drift,” she said.

The new study builds on work published in April in the journal BMC Public Health that examined how disparities in exposures and harms from pesticides impact disadvantaged communities in both rural and urban settings and how those disparities are perpetuated by a range of factors, including inadequate worker protections.

Concerns for children

As many as 500,000 children work as farmworkers in U.S. fields and orchards, according to the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs. But even children not in the fields still face significant risk from the agricultural chemicals, according to Bob Gunier, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Gunier has spent more than a decade working on a birth cohort study of mostly Latino children born in the Salinas Valley, another coastal farmworker community.

“The strongest association we have seen between pesticide exposure during pregnancy and effects on children’s brains are with cognition, so like IQ and attention, ADHD,” said Gunier. “We have also looked at respiratory health, like asthma and lung function. For that, we actually see stronger associations [with exposure] during their childhood.”

California DPR adopted a regulation in 2018 creating a quarter-mile buffer zone for schools and daycares near fields that use pesticides, saying they are “working to improve grower field-level pesticide use reporting to more accurately track compliance with the school regulations.”  But Gunier questions whether the measure is enough to protect communities, saying that pregnant women might be more sensitive and susceptible to pesticide exposure problems than other adults.

“If we really want to protect children’s health, we need to start there,” Gunier said.

Image: A farmworker picks strawberries in Ventura County. Photo by Amadeo Sumano

Rosario Castañeda, a former Ventura County farmworker who has long suffered from a skin condition she developed while working in the fields, says she has seen many farmworker women suffer miscarriages. She believes they were caused by pesticide exposure.

“We see miscarriages happen a lot with women working in the field,” said Castañeda, who now works with a women’s farmworker advocacy organization called Lideres Campesinas. “Women who maybe don’t know they are pregnant and are exposed to dangerous pesticides end up having miscarriages.”

Avital Harari, an endocrine surgeon at the University of California, Los Angeles, is concerned about the role pesticide exposure might play in hormone function and cancer.

“We believe [pesticide exposure] can be both an endocrine disruptor, which can basically alter the hormone function of the thyroid, and potentially cause an increase in neoplasm, leading to thyroid cancer,” said Harari.

As Harari began researching risk factors for advanced thyroid cancer at UCLA, she noticed that a lot of her referrals were coming from Bakersfield in Kern County– one of the top agricultural counties in the U.S. In a recent case-control study using thyroid cancer cases from the California Cancer Registry, Harari and colleagues found that 10 of the 29 pesticides they analyzed were associated with thyroid cancer.

No voice, no vote

Despite scientific evidence for pesticide links to diseases and other health problems, many farmworkers are not aware of the extent of the risk they face, worker advocates say.

“On a daily basis, there are still immigrants coming to the U.S. that have no idea,” said Mily Trevino-Sauceda,executive director of the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, which translates to the National Alliance of Farmworker Women.

However, those who have learned about pesticide health risks firsthand and managed to leave agricultural work behind are speaking out. And last month, hundreds of farmworkers made a 24-day, 335-mile march from Delano to Sacramento to urge California Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would help enable farmworkers to unionize – an ability that would help empower them to fight back against pesticide exposure and other injustices.

Image: Pesticides are sprayed in a field near farmworkers. Photo by Amadeo Sumano.

“It’s more important for them to preserve the fruit than the wellbeing of the workers,” said Claudia Quezada, a former farmworker who now coordinates Lideres Campesinas’ projects in Oxnard. Quezada recalled that the company she used to work for would spray pesticides without regard for the weather. On humid mornings, when the chemicals would linger on the plants, the workers would sometimes develop rashes, she said.

Teresa Gomez, the Ventura County Community Organizer for Californians for Pesticide Reform, echoed the complaints, saying rashes and headaches are common among those working fields where pesticides are sprayed.

“We couldn’t complain… they would just tell us that we were being problematic and that we were just looking for a lawsuit,” said Gomez. “And so, we would just have to keep on working. Farmworkers don’t have a voice nor a vote and if they do speak up, they are threatened with being laid off or fired.”

Amadeo Sumano said he was fired from his job on a Ventura County farm after sharing a photo and a video on social media that showed pesticides being sprayed close to several farmworkers. He said his efforts to share the video have made it difficult for him to find other farm work in the area.

Nathan Donley, a researcher with the Center for Biological Diversity who was a co-author on the April study published in BMC Public Health, said the EPA needs to take several steps to better protect farmworkers, including establishing a national monitoring system to analyze the scope of harm they face just doing their jobs.

“I think it would be relatively easy for EPA under this administration to make some significant gains,” said Donley. “It would be nice to see this agency put the values of people over those of the pesticide industry.”

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Read Part I and II:

The Netherlands: Government Sponsored Behavioral Control and Social Engineering Experiments

By Elze van Hamelen, September 20, 2022

Mindspace – A Guide to Behavioral Manipulation

By Elze van Hamelen, September 19, 2022

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Corona policy was primarily focused on directing citizen behavior such as wearing mouth masks, keeping a distance, staying home, and test and vaccination readiness – experimental measures with no scientific basis. This is evidenced by the large-scale use of behavioral scientists in implementation and communication of corona policy. The government and media are supported in this behavioral management by the RIVM (the Dutch CDC) Corona Behavior Unit and the government-wide Corona Behavior Team.

The application of behavioral insights is taking off during corona, and various government departments are working together to develop “interventions” that make citizens more compliant with corona rules. “This is the first policy topic on which the government has deployed relatively large amounts of behavioral expertise,” BIN NL writes in report “Rich in Behavioral Insights” (2021). This behavioral expertise focuses on fueling autonomous and unconscious behavior by acting on emotions such as fear, shame, guilt, wanting to maintain a positive self-image, or wanting to belong to the group. Or, by presenting information or possibilities in such a way that the ‘right’ choice is automatically made.

At the beginning of the crisis, in March 2020, the RIVM Corona Behavior Unit will be established. The behavioral unit aims to “promote the physical, mental and social health of the population,” and is supported in this by an advisory board and several expert teams including 40 professors and 19 doctors. They conduct research with which they support government communication and policy. The unit reports to, among others, the National Coordinator for Terrorism and Security (NCTV, the Dutch version of ‘Homeland Security’) and the National Crisis Communication Core Team (NKC). In addition to BIN-NL, the RIVM Corona Behavior Unit, the government-wide Corona Behavior Team is was established. They cooperate on developing interventions to promote compliance. The NKC coordinates press and public communications, drawing on the behavioral recommendations of the RIVM Corona Behavior Unit and the Corona Behavior Team.

The commitment to behavioral guidance is very explicit in a memo released under a FOIA request from the Ministry of Health dated May 12, 2020: “It takes more to guide behavior. But it also takes more than nudging. It’s about thinking about the whole journey that people make in certain situations, contexts, moments in the day, and so on. And what choices they make in the process. What is difficult or easy to do? What can we do to help people exhibit the right behavior? You want people not to have to think. How do actions and choices come about? Key questions then are:

• How can we properly engage the unconscious part of people with cues and prompts (e.g., washing hands, how does a new ritual arise?)?
• How do people stay intrinsically motivated?
• How can people themselves become experts in making good judgments?”

The RIVM Corona behavior unit is asked in the memo for advice and support: “In what way can we, in the very short term, give nudging a better place in the communication of the national government when it comes to monitoring measures?” The NKC applies these insights, by “rewarding exemplary behavior or speaking from ‘we’.” They are asked, “what need is there at the local and regional level, for example, a toolkit, or an overview of principles of nudging?”

The report “Rich in Behavioral Insights Edition 2021” that was published by BIN-NL, shows how efforts were made to manipulate citizen behavior, and that the focus was not on health outcomes. The research and interventions focused on whether citizens stay home after a positive pcr test, on willingness to test regularly, and on stimulating large-scale testing even when there are no symptoms. The behavioral scientists overlook the fact that the tests have no diagnostic value, and that asymptomatic transmission has not been scientifically proven – and that staying home when you have no symptoms but a positive test is of no medical benefit. Meanwhile, without context, the “infections” resulting from large-scale testing are presented day in and day out in the media as a measure of the pandemic, thus creating lingering fear.

Additionally, investigations documents that were released under FOIA, show even more explicitly that government interventions were focused behavior change. For example, in the summer of 2020, experiments were be conducted in Amsterdam and Rotterdam investigating the effect of wearing masks on distancing, a measure that the RIVM notes has “modest scientific support.” It was already known that wearing masks would not prevent the spread of the virus. The experiments measure do not measure any health indicators. One behavioral expert substantiates masking as follows: “Masks have become the most visible evidence of Covid”.  Seeing the masks causes anxiety, in addition they signal the “social norm,” who follows the rules, and who does not. They are very effective for continued obedience.

Fear

Similar to the Netherlands, the British government has several departments that advise on the application of behavioral knowledge. One such department is “SPI-B,” the “Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavior,” was concerned in March 2020 because a large number of citizens see did not feel sufficiently threatened by the virus because they knew it posed no risk to their age group. Therefore, the behavioral unit recommended that ” The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard‐hitting emotional messaging based on accurate information about risk.” The British government followed with a campaign featuring images of elderly people on respirators with the messaging “Look her in the eyes. And tell you never bend the rules”. In Germany, a similar recommendation leaked out from the Interior Ministry. This recommendation to increase fear in became known as the ‘panic paper’. It is known that manipulating fear is one of the most effective ways to instell obedience.

Although no “panic paper” came out in the Netherlands, communication campaigns surrounding corona played on fear, for example by presenting images of mass graves and headlines and through headlines or advertisements such as:

• “Nearly 170,000 new infections a day as British variant engulfs Netherlands” (AD, January 2021)
• “British variant more than 60 percent deadlier” (NRC, March 2021)
• “1.5 meters can save your mom’s life” (Amsterdam, 2020)
• “Keep your grandmother out of the ICU” (Amsterdam, 2020)
• “A corona test is free. Your grandma priceless” (Do What Must Campaign, The Hague).

Behavioral guidance for vaccination readiness

“What kinds of messages are most persuasive for increasing vaccination willingness?”, this question was investigated by five scientists affiliated with the prestigious American University of Yale. They developed and tested messages aimed at self-interest, guilt and shame, anger, courage, trust in science, regaining personal freedom and economic freedom, and published their findings in the article “Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions,” in the scientific journal Vaccine. The scientists write, “Persuasive messages evoke a sense that vaccinating is social, address concerns about how others see you, and also help convince others to get vaccinated, and condemn those who don’t.” The first part of the study was be conducted between May and July 2020, well before the first corona vaccine is developed, let alone temporarily authorized. The scientists do not address whether concerns about vaccine safety or effectiveness may be justified. The assumption is that vaccinating is the solution to the crisis, and the use of behavioral knowledge is desirable to increase vaccination willingness – an assumption that we also find among behavioral units and government in the Netherlands.

Examples of recommended messages include:

• “Stopping covid is important because you can get sick, and die from it. It is dangerous for people of all ages. Getting vaccinated is the most effective way not to get sick.”
• “By getting vaccinated you can protect everyone around you, it reduces the risk of your family or people around you getting sick.
• “Imagine how guilty you feel when you make someone else sick…”
• “Imagine how embarrassed you feel when you make someone else sick…”
• “Those who do not take a vaccine are not brave, but reckless… they are putting their family’s health at risk.”
• “The only way to defeat covid is to follow scientific approaches… the people who refuse a vaccine are not aware of the science”
• “Every person who gets vaccinated reduces the likelihood that we will have to go back into lockdown.”

The messages are echoed almost one-to-one in the Dutch campaign to encourage vaccination readiness:

Hugo de Jonge: “Either you get vaccinated, or you get sick” (July 2021)

• “Corona vaccination: ‘we roll up our sleeves. To protect yourself and those around you, vaccination is the most important step” (Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport)
• “Do you want to embrace the other again? Will you get vaccinated against corona?” (Poster in retirement home).
• “Slow vaccination suspected cause of high excess mortality in the Netherlands” (2022, Trouw)
• “An unvaccinated person in the ICU costs four to ten people their operation” (Trouw, October 2021)
• “Mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema: vaccine refusers often ill-informed” (AT5, December 2021)
• “Unvaccinated people are egoists. Thanks to them society remains locked. (Noordhollands Dagblad).

In the Netherlands, there is a particularly strong commitment to regaining (!) freedom:

• “Vaccination makes more and more possible” (Tv spot, Ministry of VWS)
• “OMT: end of January room for relaxations, provided enough booster shots are taken” (January, 2022).
• “Camping with my grandfather again, that’s what I do it for. Daan, 22 years old”. (Campaign Only Together)
• “I want to be able to just go to school again. That’s why I got the shot. Get your vaccinations without an appointment” (Girl year at 14, advertising GGD Amsterdam)
• “I feel like going to a festival again. Just give me the jab!” (GGD Amsterdam)
• “This weekend DJs at vaccination location NDSM to win over young people” (AT5, July 2021)
• “Heineken: the night belongs to the vaccinated” (Advertisement)

Later, pressure to get “vaccinated” has been greatly increased by stepping up pressure, coercion, threats of exclusion and intimidation:

• “Non-vaccinated are often poorly educated, ‘right-wing Christian’ or immigrant” Trouw, November 2021)
• “Majority vaccinated think people without vaccinations can be refused entry to public places” (EenVandaag July 2021)
• Minister of Health Hugo de Jonge: “We continue to vaccinate, neighborhood by neighborhood, door by door, arm by arm” (Press conference, 2021)
• Minister of Health Hugo de Jonge: “I do not resign myself to the right to say no to vaccine” (Press conference, December 2021)

The slogans and messages play purposefully on automatic, unconscious processes. As a result, an image forms, under the radar, that if you get vaccinated you care about your family, are fulfilling your social duty, are helping society come out of lockdown, you are smart – because you understand the science, and that those who don’t participate are particularly antisocial, evil and stupid. None of the slogans provide real information that helps you make an informed, educated choice, worse, the unconscious image that is created causes a resistance to do go look at that information.

Replacing political debate with social engineering

The behavioral influence campaigns rest on the assumption that we are dealing with a potentially apocalyptic virus that justifies the extreme measures. But it was clear very early on in the crisis, in part because of the research of Stanford’s top virologist John P. A. Ioannidis, that we are dealing with a disease similar to severe influenza, which is primarily a risk to the elderly. Nor are the measures — such as 1.5-meter distance, wearing masks, mass testing, lockdowns, or achieving maximum ‘vaccination’ coverage — to prevent the spread of the virus that for most gives a 99 percent survival rate, had a good scientific foundation. What we now know, based on the investigation of documents that have been released under FOIA, is that this was also known to the government.

This shows the real problem with behavioral influencing: rational exchange based on scientific, factual information was not possible within the public domain. Indeed, it is actively censored, suppressed, blackballed and excluded. At the same time, the social engineers assume a consensus therefore behavioral control would be justified. Politics is replaced by social engineering.

Had real open discussion of alternatives been possible, the money spent on behavioral control, communication and surveillance could have gone instead to expanding care and supporting caregivers. Where the justification for manipulation starts with the assumption that citizens have “limited rationality,” and that the government must therefore ‘guide’ them in their choices, it morphes into the desire that those citizens should rather stop thinking for themselves altogether.

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This article was previously published in the reader-funded Dutch newspaper De Andere Krant.

Sources

Stappenplan overheidscommunicatie en interventies

RIVM Corona Gedragsunit https://www.rivm.nl/documenten/stappenplan-overheidscommunicatie-interventies

https://danielvdtuin.substack.com/p/wob-documenten-mondkapjesplicht

https://deanderekrant.nl/nieuws/alles-wat-je-over-covid-zou-moeten-weten–en-je-nooit-wordt-verteld-2021-12-27

Jullie gedragsexperiment was in opdracht van het rijksbrede Corona Gedragsteam. https://www.binnl.nl/community/in+gesprek+met/in+gesprek+met+maureen+turina-tumewu+en+freek+smit/default.aspx

State of Fear. Laura Dodsworth. (staat ook de Biderman coercion chart in) https://www.amazon.com/State-Fear-government-weaponised-Covid-19-ebook/dp/B08ZSYN14J

Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavior (SPI-B), a subcommittee that advises the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) in the U.K.

SPI-B warned in March last year that ministers needed to increase ‘the perceived level of personal threat’ from COVID-19 because ‘a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened.’

Then, the so-called “Panic Paper” was leaked, which was written by the German Department of the Interior. Its classified content shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that, in fact, the population was deliberately driven to panic by politicians and mainstream media. https://foreignaffairsintelligencecouncil.wordpress.com/tag/panic-paper/

Crowdsourced verzameling van nudge boodschappen: https://twitter.com/ElzevH/status/1549652827466874880

We blijven vaccineren, wijk voor wijk, deur voor deur, arm voor arm

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/manipulation-guilt-shame-vaccine-compliance/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X21013682?via%3Dihub

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/coronavirus-covid-19/documenten/rapporten/2021/08/31/rapportage-campagne-effectmonitor-coronavaccinatie-augustus-2021

Featured image is from The Dossier

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There are four possible scenarios for how everything could unfold:

1) Armenia remains in the CSTO and doesn’t receive US military equipment;

2) Armenian remains in the bloc but ends up receiving such aid;

3) Armenia announces its withdrawal from the bloc;

4) Armenia unilaterally hosts US forces and is kicked out of the CSTO.

US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Armenia and the very warm welcome that she received while in that country prompted speculation among some that America is attempting to “poach” this Russian ally from the CSTO mutual defense pact. Secretary of the Security Council Armen Grigoryan expressed dissatisfaction with the bloc’s response to Azerbaijan’s undeclared “special military operation” from earlier this month, declaring that his country’s expectations weren’t met despite having thought that an intervention similar to the one carried out in Kazakhstan in January could be in the cards.

Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan, meanwhile, compared the CSTO to a gun that doesn’t fire and said that Azerbaijan therefore isn’t deterred by it.

He ominously noted that Armenia has drawn conclusions from the latest events, but just like Grigoryan, Simonyan also downplayed the possibility of withdrawing from the bloc. In response to Pelosi’s quip in the Armenian capital that her hosts “were disappointed they got fact-finders and not protection”, mission chief Col. Gen. Anatoly Sidorov stated that the organization “prioritizes political-diplomatic methods” and is “not in a rush to draw the saber.”

It’s against this contentious backdrop of newly reinvigorated Great Power competition between Russia and the US over Armenia’s military loyalty that observers have begun to once again speculate about the future of that South Caucasus country’s membership in the CSTO. There are four possible scenarios for how everything could unfold:

1) Armenia remains in the CSTO and doesn’t receive US military equipment;

2) Armenian remains in the bloc but ends up receiving such aid;

3) Armenia announces its withdrawal from the bloc;

4) and Armenia unilaterally hosts US forces and is kicked out of the CSTO.

The first and second are the most likely of these four, with everything leaning closer to the latter. Regarding the first, Armenia’s top officials have already signaled that they’re planning to gradually diversify from their military-security dependence on Russia. To not go through with that to some extent would be akin to pulling a gun that doesn’t fire, which is exactly how Simonyan criticized the CSTO. This leads to the second scenario of receiving US military aid, which is possible in spite of its continued membership in the CSTO as proven by the Turkish precedent with Russia’s Central Asian allies.

That West Asian NATO member, which boasts the bloc’s second-largest military, is rapidly becoming a strategically significant security partner for CSTO members Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as documented in this detailed piece from May. It therefore wouldn’t be the first time that a NATO country makes military-security inroads in a CSTO one upon the latter’s request in the event that the US begins sending equipment to Armenia. That, however, would worsen Washington’s already fraught relations with Ankara and contribute to its sense of encirclement considering recent US inroads in Cyprus and Greece.

Moving along to the third scenario of Armenia announcing its withdrawal from the CSTO just like Uzbekistan did a while back, this is unrealistic to expect since it would create a dangerous window for Azerbaijan and/or Turkey to unilaterally employ military means against it. After all, Russia wouldn’t care in that case what happens to Armenia afterwards and would thus be unlikely to protect it after being ditched for the US. Plus, Azerbaijan and/or Turkey could attack in the time before US troops arrive, which would doom Armenia since there’s no way that it could defend itself without a Great Power ally.

The fourth scenario is the most dramatic and is probably the path that Armenia would take in the very unlikely event that it decides to leave the CSTO. This would see it unilaterally hosting US forces in contravention of the CSTO’s 2011 agreement that the deployment of military infrastructure on their territory must be consensually approved by all the bloc’s members. By dropping such an unpleasant surprise on everyone, Armenia can immediately replace Russian troops with American ones without the dangerous window that the third scenario could create for enticing an Azerbaijani and/or Turkish attack.

Seeing as how the second scenario of receiving US military aid while remaining in the CSTO per the Central Asian-Turkish precedent is the most likely, especially since Armenia might rightly be reluctant to place full trust in America by unilaterally hosting its troops and thus being kicked out of the Russian bloc that it presently participates in, Russia must urgently correct their growing differences of perception. It’s incumbent on its officials and influencers to explain to their counterparts and their society that there’s no comparison between their earlier Kazakh mission and their current Armenian one.

The first was a hybrid anti-terrorist and peacekeeping mission while the second is a fact-finding mission that’s implemented at the gradual pace that it presently is in order to avoid a major regional war by miscalculation. It would be unwise for the CSTO to immediately enter into conflict with Azerbaijan, which is NATO-member Turkey’s de facto mutual defense ally after June 2021’s Susha Agreement, hence the need for calmly and carefully gathering all the facts about what just took place. Of course, they’d promptly defend themselves if attacked by Azerbaijan while doing so, but Baku is unlikely to do that.

Over the years, Armenian leaders took advantage of the public’s lack of understanding about what exactly the CSTO is and how it operates to manipulate their perceptions in such a way as to get them to oversimplify its purpose by imagining that the bloc is a so-called “geopolitical fire brigade”. What’s meant by this is that people wrongly assumed that it’ll rush to their rescue if Azerbaijan attacked them even a single time regardless if their side was the one that provoked it, which would lead to a Russian-Azerbaijani war that they expected Moscow to soundly win.

The reality is altogether different since the Kremlin never had any such intentions of the CSTO functioning in such a way, but it can nevertheless be constructively critiqued for failing to compellingly articulate this to Armenian society over the years, which regrettably resulted in wishful thinking and the false expectations associated with them proliferating through that population. The inevitable outcome of such wishful thinking is that those who held such unrealistic views ended up sorely disappointed and thus became very emotionally susceptible to weaponized infowar narratives from hostile third parties.

America immediately realized that it could maximally exploit Armenians’ wishful thinking, false expectations, and subsequently deep disappointment with the CSTO by dispatching Pelosi to that country to explore the possibility of US arms shipments to this Russian ally. There wouldn’t have been any fertile ground for this latest Hybrid War plot to take root had Russia preemptively and compellingly clarified its military-strategic calculations vis a vis Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the CSTO. This politically tough takeaway should therefore hopefully incentivize it to make up for lost time as soon as possible.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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***

The unilateral sanctions that Western countries unleashed on Russia have caused energy supply disruptions and energy hyperinflation across the world. Europe is rejiggering its energy supply chain away from Russia as it sources energy products elsewhere. EU countries are scrambling for tankers to import energy products from abroad, which has led to a surge in global tanker shipping rates.

Since slapping Russia with sanctions, the West has realized that global supply chains are fragile. Even before the Ukraine war, supply chains struggled due to uneven Covid economic recovery, trade war conflicts, and increasing geopolitical risks.

As such, the decision to rejigger Europe’s entire energy supply chain away from Russia amid all the chaos in the world has created a shortage of vessels to carry essential fuels to energy-stricken regions this winter.

Bloomberg reported that Europe is importing liquefied natural gas, diesel, and crude from far away regions that keep tankers in transit for extended periods and delay return to service for other critical shipping lanes. Shipping experts warn this is sparking the latest surge in global tanker freight rates.

LNG freight rates are at elevated levels for this time of year and threaten to surpass last year’s winter peak. The cost of shipping a US oil cargo to China is at the highest since 2020, while transporting a cargo of naphtha petrochemical feedstock from the Middle East to Japan costs more than twice as much as it did in March, according to data from the Baltic Exchange.

The ship shortage threatens to impact Asian economies that import oil and gas from the US, as they may find it difficult to get spare cargoes at short notice if the weather turns extremely cold this winter, said traders and shipowners. Even petrochemical feedstock shipments are becoming more expensive to transport, further burdening buyers grappling with sluggish demand for chemicals as the pace of manufacturing slows.

Concerns are growing that the limited availability of LNG vessels this winter may cause cargo disruptions.

Shipowners are demanding LNG carriers back to the Freeport facility in Texas ahead of restarting operations in November after a fire shuttered the plant in early June.

“What we’ve seen in shipping this year has been remarkable as a result of the war in Ukraine,” said Peter Sand, chief analyst at Xeneta, a freight market analytics platform.

Western sanctions on Russia is the culprit behind energy chaos worldwide and soaring tanker rates, and risks increase of limited ship availability to hire this winter. What a mess this has become. 

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***

In a recent essay on the nature of Power, I posited that the most pressing philosophical and practical question of the day – and, as I now further reflect upon it, the most moral – is what might transpire if no further scientific advances could be made.  If, in fact, humankind would have to make do with only the currently available technology, what would happen? What would happen if we put a halt to the never-ending quest for material control of the natural world?

I personally believe that given the scientific and technological ability we currently possess, which is quite considerable, problems of resource distribution, infrastructure, poverty and malnutrition are perfectly soluble, with determination and work. In short, the resolution of such global problems is contingent only upon human will, not human technological capacity.  After all, we have thousands of sophisticated satellites encircling the globe, all manner of machinery, sources of energy and computing power, and both robotic and human labor. What cannot humankind achieve with such an armamentarium if obstacles inherent in human psychology, group and individual, can be overcome – obstacles such as greed, selfishness and the sadistic use of Power?

In the past, when the world was not so globally united, and when our technological capabilities were much less, the march towards further control via scientific discovery appeared to be essential, and human morality and psychology were weighted perhaps less prominently in this equation.

In the context of pondering these issues I happened to revisit a psychoanalytic classic, a paper which I regard as one of the most significant contributions to psychoanalytic thought after Freud’s own work: “The Fall of Man,” by K. R. Eissler.  Eissler’s essay, published in 1975, ranges from the origins of life to the development and potentialities of the human psyche, and concludes in essence that the twin pillars of aggression and narcissism would overcome the restraint needed to prevent the large-scale deployment of nuclear weapons, making human extinction ultimately unavoidable.

Enveloped as we are within the Corona War in the Age of Covid, nuclear annihilation has been relegated to the shadows while another lethal agenda plays out. Yes, we now find ourselves in the midst of a concerted attempt at genocide at the hands of a cabal – planned purposeful murder – accomplished via a many-pronged and highly sophisticated operation that has kept the global population in thrall, eviscerated individual rights, and that has imposed a lethal and unnecessary injection in violation of body and soul, as part of an even more ambitious plan to control us all with further restrictions, surveillance and social credit systems in an ostensibly ‘new world order’ whose chief characteristic will be depopulation and slavery on a scale never imagined.

Every advance in understanding the natural world has been accompanied by an appropriation of knowledge in the service of Power.  We speak of ‘grasping’ or ‘comprehending’ something, and our very language betrays the aggressive drive inherent in the pursuit of science. The word ‘science’ itself is derived from an Indo-European root meaning ‘to cut, to split’, the psychological implication being that we must take apart the object we study in order to possess it. And for every pacific use of technology, there is a corresponding martial one, inevitably.  Knowledge is pursued, psychically speaking, for purposes of control and possession, even if such possession and control appear to result in no immediately apparent practical benefit other than satisfaction at having solved a riddle.

The penetration of the atom and the exploitation of nuclear forces constituted a watershed moment in the history of the species. The manipulation of the human genome constitutes another. Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed a glimpse of the devastating potential of the former, and the Covid so-called vaccines are showing us, in real time, the destructive capabilities of the latter.

I suspect our world would have been the better if such barriers had never been crossed.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Neurotechnology could help people with disabilities use their thoughts to control devices in the physical world. It may also be useful in weapons systems. Private companies, militaries, and other organizations are funding neurotechnology research. Credit: US Army.

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***

The gas bill of a bakery in Germany increased by more than 1,200% amid a worsening energy crisis in the country.

The managing director of the Vatter bakery told local media that he was shocked when he received the new gas bill, showing that his monthly bill has risen to €75,000 ($75,000).

“A year ago, it was €5,856 a month for our large ovens and heating. We had a contract with a price guarantee until the end of 2023, but it was suddenly terminated,” Eckehard Vatter, the owner of the family-run business, told Bild daily.

The supplier is now demanding €75,000 a month, and it is an increase of 1,200%, he noted.

The last gas bill for the company amounts to €330,000 for four-and-a-half months, payable in the next 14 days.

The Vatter bakery chain has 35 stores and 430 employees in the northern state of Lower Saxony.

Eckehard Vatter said the family business has weathered every crisis since 1955, but things have never been as bad as they are now.

He also criticized the government for failing to protect them.

As the bakery has several branches, it is considered a craft enterprise, and unlike industrial bakeries that produce cheap bread, it does not receive any subsidies. Yet the company has paid €19.9 million in taxes over the past 10 years, according to its owner.

Skyrocketing energy prices, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, are fueling panic among many German small- and medium-sized enterprises.

On Wednesday, hundreds of bakery owners and employees protested in downtown Hanover to draw attention to their worsening situation.

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Hundreds of the radical Nazis and right-wing extremists online are actually German domestic intelligence agents, and many of them may be responsible for “inciting hatred” and even violence. These agents, who once needed to drink and directly socialize with members of the extreme right to gain information on their targets, are now running right-wing extremist accounts online in Germany.

Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) argues that these accounts are needed to effectively monitor the extreme right, but critics say that they may also be promoting and actively encouraging radicalism, according to a report from German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

“This is the future of information gathering,” an unnamed head of a relevant state office told Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Hunderte rechtextremer Fake Accounts führt der #Verfassungsschutz inzwischen.
 
„Das ist die Zukunft der Informationsbeschaffung“, sagt ein Leiter eines Landesamts für Verfassungsschutz.
 
Kleiner Recherche-🧵

— Ronen Steinke (@RonenSteinke) September 18, 2022

According to research by the newspaper, the authority has invested heavily in “virtual agents” since 2019, which it finances with taxpayers’ money. Both the federal office and the federal states employ spies, who besides right-wing extremists, are also tasked with keeping an eye on left-wing extremists, Islamists, and the “conspiracy-ideological” scene.

However, the activities of the BfV running hundreds of right-wing extremist accounts have come to light at the same time that Germany’s left-wing government has labeled right-wing extremism the biggest threat to the country, despite data showing that left-wing extremists and radical Islam pose bigger threats. The country’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, has launched a 10-point plan to fight “right-wing extremism,” and much like the Biden administration in the United States, has turned the domestic security state against political opponents as well as labeling them terrorism threats and a danger to democracy. In Germany’s case, the opposition conservative Alternative for Germany party (AfD) is actively surveilled in certain federal states, with membership in the party the only prerequisite for agents being able to read emails and listen in on telephone calls of these private citizens.

With the BfV operating hundreds of right-wing extremist accounts, the agency argues that it is about “playing a little right-wing radical yourself” in order to gain the trust of other users. The employees of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution are likely to conduct “propaganda” for this and sometimes also commit crimes such as “incitement to hatred.”

However, what exactly these extremist accounts are posting that involve “incitement to hatred” is unclear, as there is little to no public oversight regarding these activities.

“In order to be really credible, it is not enough to share or like what others say, you also have to make statements yourself. That means that the agents also bully and agitate,” says the report of an agent who claims to have joined the agency to “do something against right-wing extremists.” This involves actively encouraging people in their worldview, but she says it is her job to “feed” the scene.

In fact, there are now so many accounts operated by different German authorities that a nationwide agreement has become necessary. Otherwise, these different agents would be targeting each other with surveillance and monitoring.

Germany’s new government has taken an aggressive stance against anonymity on the web and free speech, and has targeted apps like Telegram, which is one of the few tech companies openly supporting free speech. Under a new regime, the German government is expected to open thousands of hate speech cases against the public every year.

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***

 

The State Department announced in August that it will no longer publish World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (WMEAT) reports, which have been released by the US government since the 1960s.

The WMEATs detail US global military spending, arms transfers, and related data for each country in the world. The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) included an amendment that repealed a 1994 provision requiring the State Department to publish a WMEAT each year.

“Section 5114(b)(4) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 repealed the 1994 statutory provision that required the Department of State to publish an edition of WMEAT every year. Consistent with this repeal, the Department of State will cease to produce and publish WMEAT,” the State Department said on its website.

The State Department said that the report it published in 2021 was the “final edition” of the WMEAT. The 2021 WMEAT covered an 11-year period from 2009 through 2019 and found that the US was by far the world’s largest arms dealer. During that period, about “79 percent of world arms trade by value appears to have been supplied by the United States.”

The discontinuation of the WMEAT reports, which reduces the US government’s transparency, comes as the US is shipping billions of dollars worth of arms into Ukraine with virtually no oversight. Since Russia invaded on February 24, the US has pledged $15.1 billion in weapons for Kyiv.

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

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***

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Samarkand on September 16 after the SCO Summit turned into a media scandal. The Western media zeroed in on six words culled out of context in the PM’s opening remarks — “today’s era is not of war” —  to triumphantly proclaim that India is finally distancing itself from Russia on Ukraine issue, as the US and European leaders have been incessantly demanding.

Of course, this motivated interpretation lacks empirical evidence and is, therefore, malicious. Besides, Modi also spoke with a rare interplay of emotions by underscoring the quintessence of the Indian-Russian relationship, as well as his two decade-long association with Putin. 

The steamy part cooked up by the US media shows the desperation on the part of the “Collective West” to isolate Russia at a time when even western leaders have candidly admitted that the bulk of the non-western world does not identify with the western narrative on Ukraine and refuses to roll back their relationship with Russia. 

Many countries are, in fact, stepping up their cooperation with Russia —Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, for example. Curiously, even western companies are loathe to leave the highly attractive Russian market where business returns are high. A report in the Atlantic Council magazine on September 18 highlights that although something like 1,000 multinational corporations had announced that they would be leaving Russia in the wake of the western sanctions, “the unfortunate reality is that… three-quarters of the most profitable foreign multinationals remain in Russia.” Thus, statistically, while 106 western companies exited the Russian market, over 1,149 internationals still remain and simply keep silent about it. 

The giant Sakhalin-2 oil-and-natural-gas project in the Russian Far East is a celebrated case where two big Japanese energy investors Mitsui and Mitsublishi, with government support, simply refused to quit, as the Russian project supplies 9 percent of Japan’s energy needs. The G7 has no option but to exempt Japan from the purview of sanctions when it comes to Sakhalin-2! 

Again, the West continues to import fertiliser from Russia and to that end, lifts the restrictions on shipping, insurance, etc. But the restrictions continue against Russia’s exports of food grain and fertiliser to the non-Western world. Russia has now offered to distribute the fertiliser held up in European ports free of charge to the poorest countries in Africa if only the restrictions for exports are waived, but Europe would rather use it for own needs. 

It has recently been exposed that the brouhaha about a “global food crisis” (which India too mouthed) was basically a cheap hoax perpetrated by the Biden Administration to get Russia to allow the sale of wheat held up in Ukrainian silos to the European market by American companies, who have apparently bought up Ukraine’s farm lands and control that country’s grain trade! Only a fraction of the grain shipments from Ukraine went to poor countries threatened by famine. Suffice to say, the US and the European Union pressure on India’s purchase of Russian oil was nothing but bullying.

That said, India should know that in a situation where Russia faces an existential threat to its security, it will not be deterred while firmly, decisively responding, no matter what anybody says. Will India be deterred if any foreign country gets agitated over state repression in Kashmir? Violence and bloodshed are abhorrent features of the contemporary world situation and is a painful reality all over the world. 

That is why, PM Modi’s awkward reference to war and peace in his initial remarks to Putin at Samarkand was way out of place in what turned to be a “wonderful” meeting otherwise. There was simply no need to have characterised, at PM’s level, the Ukraine conflict as a “war”. It betrayed ignorance, since the whole world knows that what is going on is a proxy war between the US and Russia in the Ukrainian arena that had been incubating through the past quarter century ever since NATO began its eastward enlargement with an agenda to encircle Russia. Moscow seriously erred by tolerating the US interference in Ukraine for so very long until NATO appeared on its doorstep. It is doubtful if India would have shown such strategic patience if an adversarial power advances a project to encircle and weaken it. 

Against such a complex backdrop, the litmus test of India’s “neutrality” will, perhaps, lie in EAM Jaishankar at least speaking up on the NATO’s eastward expansion, about the US stoking the fire of conflict by pumping tens of billions of dollars worth weaponry into Ukraine, and with reference to the Biden Administration’s diabolical role in undermining nascent peace moves between Moscow and Kiev. 

If Turkey’s Recep Erdogan and Hungary’s Viktor Orban can speak up, although NATO leaders, why can’t India’s EAM? But, never mind, there is no question of Jaishankar even remotely embarrassing  Biden. 

The big question, nonetheless, remains: Why is it that a country like India has lost its voice? Does it prefer the unipolar world order that the West tries to foist on the world community? Has it forgotten the colonial past? Does it accept that the “rules-based order” means acting the John Wayne way — appropriating other countries’ financial assets entrusted with the Western banks in trust? Does it condone, for whatever reasons, the US’ stated intention to destroy Russia’s economy? If Modi Govt has thought through these issues by now, six months after the sanctions from hell against Russia, does it have any views at all? When India was much weaker, it still had a mind of its own? What happened to India? 

From the Kremlin readout, Putin actually acknowledged right at the outset of the conversation with Modi that Russia and India are not on the same page on Ukraine. To be sure, Putin must be knowing that India’s behaviour is guided by its narrowly defined self-interests and conditioned by an itch to do cherrypicking. He is immensely experienced in diplomacy to know how countries behave in self-interests and how it is necessary to cooperate with such countries.

But Moscow has never been and will never be a demanding partner. Mutual interest and mutual respect are the hall marks of Russian diplomacy toward India. Despite its own reservations over what India was attempting to do by splitting Pakistan into two halves, an unprecedented act by international law, when the crunch time came in 1971, Moscow not only stood by India but even despatched its warships and submarines to guard Indian waters from a potential US military attack against India — and this, while on the diplomatic front, Moscow bought time for India to conclude its military operations to cut  Pakistan down to size. It is, therefore, all the more reason for us to be discreet at the very least. 

India must be one of the few countries that benefits out of the Ukraine conflict. Aside oil, coal and what not at low prices from Russia, paradoxically, even the rupee has commenced its indeterminate journey towards becoming a “world currency.” No patriotic Indian will criticise the Modi government for such sophistry. However, confusion arises when morality is needlessly injected into all this with a tedious attitude of preachiness. 

The meeting in Samarkand took place in the context of the SCO’s annual summit. The summit was not about Ukraine but about the profound issues that have surfaced in its wake that will shape the contours of the world order. This SCO summit was special, as it took place amid large-scale geopolitical changes, triggering a rapid and irrevocable transformation of the entire complex of international ties, relations, policies, economy, when a new model based on the real multi-polarity and dialogue is being built. 

Everyone understands that the SCO, which represents half the world’s population, will help forge the new world order. Unlike the case with NATO, where all decisions are made in Washington and imposed on America’s  “allies”, there is no Pied Piper in the SCO tent. Modi could easily have played a meaningful role at the summit instead of meandering his way aimlessly through the pandemic, supply chains, et al, at a juncture when such profound issues were being discussed by his peer group in Samarkand. 

The word “multipolarity,” which was on everyone’s mind in Samarkand, did not even figure in Modi’s speech at Samarkand. Whoever drafted that speech must have done it with an eye on Washington. Therefore, don’t blame the US media. They happened to notice all these aberrations and decided to cull out those six sharply-etched words to put India on the mat, mocking it for doublespeak and rank opportunism. All that hand-wringing subsequently by the apologists of our government cannot wash away the stain. 

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Featured image: Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Samarkand, Uzbekistan, September 16, 2022 (Source: Indian Punchline)

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First published on September 16, 2022

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The push for “green” energy alternatives is causing a shortage of sulfuric acid, a resource critical for the production of food and lithium-ion batteries, according to a new report from the University College London.

The paper, published in Geographical Journal, explains how over 80 percent of the global sulfur supply currently comes from the desulfurisation of fossil fuels. Pushes for decarbonization, however, which seek to ban the use of fossil fuels, will create a “shortfall” in the annual supply of sulfuric acid between 100 and 320 million tonnes by 2040, researchers estimate.

This dramatic decrease would occur, however, amidst a rising demand for sulfuric acid, which could reach up to 400 million tons by 2040.

“With increased farming and the world moving away from fossil fuels, geographers estimate global demand for sulfuric acid will rise to 246 to 400 million tons by 2040. However, depending on how quickly decarbonization happens, there may only be 100 to 320 million tons available for use,” explains the paper.

Shortages of sulfuric acid would have far-reaching ramifications, as it is an essential resource for producing phosphorus fertilizers that help maintain the global food supply.

“Additionally, phosphorus fertilizers are used for extracting rare metals, such as cobalt and nickel. Those metals are used in lithium-ion batteries that power up numerous electronic devices from cell phones to laptops,” explains the paper.

“Our concern is that the dwindling supply could lead to a transition period when green tech outbids the fertilizer industry for the limited more expensive sulfur supply, creating an issue with food production,” adds Simon Day, a researcher at the University College London’s Institute for Risk & Disaster Reduction and study coauthor.

In the study, researchers project three different sulfuric acid demand scenarios occurring from 2021 to 2040. Using data from historic and forecast demand with an annual growth rate ranging from 1.8 percent to 2.4 percent, researchers constructed the graph below, demonstrating how demand for the resource is consistently above the available supply of sulfuric acid.

The findings come amidst concern over groups like the World Economic Forum (WEF) attempting to exploit issues like COVID-19 and climate change to advance their own social and political agenda. Their allies, such as Bill Gates, have also purchased massive amounts of farmland in the U.S. amidst ongoing food shortages.

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Natalie Winters is the Lead Investigative Reporter at the National Pulse and co-host of The National Pulse podcast.

Incisive analysis by James Petras first published by Global Research on October 5, 2017

America has the greatest inequalities, highest mortality rate, most regressive taxes, and largest public subsidies for bankers and billionaires of any developed capitalist country.

In this essay we will discuss the socio-economic roots of inequalities and the relation between the concentration of wealth and the downward mobility of the working and salaried classes.

How the Billionaires become Billionaires

Contrary to the propaganda pushed by the business press, between 67% and 72% percent of corporations had zero tax liabilities after credits and exemptions … while their workers and employees paid between 25 – 30% in taxes. The rate for the minority of corporations, which paid any tax, was 14%.

According to the US Internal Revenue Service, billionaire tax evasion amounts to $458 billion dollars in lost public revenues every year – almost a trillion dollars every two years by this conservative estimate.

The largest US corporations sheltered over $2.5 trillion dollars in overseas tax havens where they paid no taxes or single digit tax rates.

Meanwhile US corporations in crisis received over $14.4 trillion dollars (Bloomberg claimed 12.8 trillion) in public bailout money, split between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve, mostly from US tax payers, who are overwhelmingly workers, employees and pensioners.

The recipient bankers invested their interest-free or low interest US bailout funds and earned billions in profits, most resulting from mortgage foreclosures of working class households.

Through favorable legal rulings and illegal foreclosures, the bankers evicted 9.3 million families. Over 20 million individuals lost their properties, often due to illegal or fraudulent debts.

A small number of the financial swindlers, including executives from Wall Street’s leading banks (Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan etc), paid fines – but no one went to prison for the gargantuan fraud that drove millions of Americans into misery.

There are other swindler bankers, like the current Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin, who enriched themselves by illegally foreclosing on thousands of homeowners in California. Some were tried; all were exonerated, thanks to the influence of Democratic political leaders during the Obama years.

Silicon Valley and its innovative billionaires have found novel way to avoid taxes using overseas tax havens and domestic tax write-offs. They increase their wealth and corporate profits by paying their local manual and service workers poverty level wages. Silicon Valley executives ‘earn’ a thousand times more than their production workers..

Class inequalities are further reinforced by ethnic divisions. White, Chinese and Indian multi-millionaires exploit Afro-American, Latin American, Vietnamese and Filipino workers.

Billionaires in the commercial conglomerates, like Walmart, exploit workers by paying poverty wages and providing few, if any, benefits. Walmart earns $16 billion dollar a year in profits by paying its workers between $10 and $13 an hour and relying on state and federal assistance to provide services to the families of its impoverished workers through Medicaid and food stamps. Amazon plutocrat Jeff Bezos exploits workers by paying $12.50 an hour while he has accumulated over $80 billion dollars in profits. UPS CEO David Albany takes $11 million a year by exploiting workers at $11 an hour. Federal Express CEO, Fred Smith gets $16 million and pays workers $11 an hour.

Inequality is not a result of ‘technology’ and ‘education’- contemporary euphemisms for the ruling class cult of superiority – as liberals and conservative economists and journalists like to claim. Inequalities are a result of low wages, based on big profits, financial swindles, multi-trillion dollar public handouts and multi-billion-dollar tax evasion. The ruling class has mastered the ‘technology’ of exploiting the state, through its pillage of the treasury, and the working class. Capitalist exploitation of low paid production workers provides additional billions for the ‘philanthropic’ billionaire family foundations to polish their public image – using another tax avoidance gimmick – self-glorifying ‘donations’.

Workers pay disproportional taxes for education, health, social and public services and subsidies for billionaires.

Billionaires in the arms industry and security/mercenary conglomerates receive over $700 billion dollars from the federal budget, while over 100 million US workers lack adequate health care and their children are warehoused in deteriorating schools.

Workers and Bosses: Mortality Rates

Billionaires and multi-millionaires and their families enjoy longer and healthier lives than their workers. They have no need for health insurance policies or public hospitals. CEO’s live on average ten years longer than a worker and enjoy twenty years more of healthy and pain-free lives.

Private, exclusive clinics and top medical care include the most advanced treatment and safe and proven medication which allow billionaires and their family members to live longer and healthier lives. The quality of their medical care and the qualifications of their medical providers present a stark contrast to the health care apartheid that characterizes the rest of the United States.

Workers are treated and mistreated by the health system: They have inadequate and often incompetent medical treatment, cursory examinations by inexperienced medical assistants and end up victims of the widespread over-prescription of highly addictive narcotics and other medications. Over-prescription of narcotics by incompetent ‘providers’ has significantly contributed to the rise in premature deaths among workers, spiraling cases of opiate overdose, disability due to addiction and descent into poverty and homelessness. These irresponsible practices have made additional billions of dollars in profits for the insurance corporate elite, who can cut their pensions and health care liabilities as injured, disabled and addicted workers drop out of the system or die.

The shortened life expectancy for workers and their family members is celebrated on Wall Street and in the financial press. Over 560,000 workers were killed by opioids between 1999-2015 contributing to the decline in life expectancy for working age wage and salary earners and reduced pension liabilities for Wall Street and the Social Security Administration.

Inequalities are cumulative, inter-generational and multi-sectorial.

Billionaire families, their children and grandchildren, inherit and invest billions. They have privileged access to the most prestigious schools and medical facilities, and conveniently fall in love to equally privileged, well-connected mates to join their fortunes and form even greater financial empires. Their wealth buys favorable, even fawning, mass media coverage and the services of the most influential lawyers and accountants to cover their swindles and tax evasion.

Billionaires hire innovators and sweat shop MBA managers to devise more ways to slash wages, increase productivity and ensure that inequalities widen even further. Billionaires do not have to be the brightest or most innovative people: Such individuals can simply be bought or imported on the ‘free market’ and discarded at will.

Billionaires have bought out or formed joint ventures with each other, creating interlocking directorates. Banks, IT, factories, warehouses, food and appliance, pharmaceuticals and hospitals are linked directly to political elites who slither through doors of rotating appointments within the IMF, the World Bank, Treasury, Wall Street banks and prestigious law firms.

Consequences of Inequalities

First and foremost, billionaires and their political, legal and corporate associates dominate the political parties. They designate the leaders and key appointees, thus ensuring that budgets and policies will increase their profits, erode social benefits for the masses and weaken the political power of popular organizations.

Secondly, the burden of the economic crisis is shifted on to the workers who are fired and later re-hired as part-time, contingent labor. Public bailouts, provided by the taxpayer, are channeled to the billionaires under the doctrine that Wall Street banks are too big to fail and workers are too weak to defend their wages, jobs and living standards.

Billionaires buy political elites, who appoint the World Bank and IMF officials tasked with instituting policies to freeze or reduce wages, slash corporate and public health care obligations and increase profits by privatizing public enterprises and facilitating corporate relocation to low wage, low tax countries.

As a result, wage and salary workers are less organized and less influential; they work longer and for less pay, suffer greater workplace insecurity and injuries – physical and mental – fall into decline and disability, drop out of the system, die earlier and poorer, and, in the process, provide unimaginable profits for the billionaire class. Even their addiction and deaths provide opportunities for huge profit – as the Sackler Family, manufacturers of Oxycontin, can attest.

The billionaires and their political acolytes argue that deeper regressive taxation would increase investments and jobs. The data speaks otherwise. The bulk of repatriated profits are directed to buy back stock to increase dividends for investors; they are not invested in the productive economy. Lower taxes and greater profits for conglomerates means more buy-outs and greater outflows to low wage countries. In real terms taxes are already less than half the headline rate and are a major factor heightening the concentration of income and power – both cause and effect.

Corporate elites, the billionaires in the Silicon Valley-Wall Street global complex are relatively satisfied that their cherished inequalities are guaranteed and expanding under the Demo-Republican Presidents- as the ‘good times’ roll on.

Away from the ‘billionaire elite’, the ‘outsiders’ – domestic capitalists – clamor for greater public investment in infrastructure to expand the domestic economy, lower taxes to increase profits, and state subsidies to increase the training of the labor force while reducing funds for health care and public education. They are oblivious to the contradiction.

In other words, the capitalist class as a whole, globalist and domestic alike, pursues the same regressive policies, promoting inequalities while struggling over shares of the profits.

One hundred and fifty million wage and salaried taxpayers are excluded from the political and social decisions that directly affect their income, employment, rates of taxation, and political representation.

They understand, or at least experience, how the class system works. Most workers know about the injustice of the fake ‘free trade’ agreements and regressive tax regime, which weighs heavy on the majority of wage and salary earners.

However, worker hostility and despair is directed against ‘immigrants’ and against the ‘liberals’ who have backed the import of cheap skilled and semi-skilled labor under the guise of ‘freedom’. This ‘politically correct’ image of imported labor covers up a policy, which has served to lower wages, benefits and living standards for American workers, whether they are in technology, construction or production. Rich conservatives, on the other hand, oppose immigration under the guise of ‘law and order’ and to lower social expenditures – despite that fact that they all use imported nannies, tutors, nurses, doctors and gardeners to service their families. Their servants can always be deported when convenient.

The pro and anti-immigrant issue avoids the root cause for the economic exploitation and social degradation of the working class – the billionaire owners operating in alliance with the political elite.

In order to reverse the regressive tax practices and tax evasion, the low wage cycle and the spiraling death rates resulting from narcotics and other preventable causes, which profit insurance companies and pharmaceutical billionaires, class alliances need to be forged linking workers, consumers, pensioners, students, the disabled, the foreclosed homeowners, evicted tenants, debtors, the under-employed and immigrants as a unified political force.

Sooner said than done, but never tried! Everything and everyone is at stake: life, health and happiness.

Featured image is from Common Dreams.

United Nations, Democracy and Terrorism

By Stephen Sefton, September 20, 2022

This week sees the opening of the 77th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization in the most conflict ridden international environment since World War II. In effect, NATO is attacking the Russian Federation in Ukraine and the United States is provoking China over Taiwan.

Jackson Water Crisis Reflective of National Pattern in Urban Racism

By Abayomi Azikiwe, September 21, 2022

Water systems throughout the United States are in serious disrepair and decline while corporate interests continue to dominate the political priorities of municipal and state governments.

More Disinformation From Israel. Biden Caves to Jewish Pressure, As Usual.

By Philip Giraldi, September 21, 2022

To be sure, weakening Iran and possibly even replacing its government is the most compelling issue for Israel and its powerful US domestic lobby, but the Israeli plan is much broader than that, to make the United States the junior partner providing the money and weapons in an effort to militarily dominate the Middle East.

Law of Neutrality: Just When Is a State a Belligerent in a War?

By Michael Doliner, September 20, 2022

The laws of war are to some extent a farce. When states come to the point of war the niceties of codified law will likely influence them very little. Nevertheless, there are such laws and lawyers specializing in such niceties, and this very little might turn out to be a whole lot.

The Netherlands: Government Sponsored Behavioral Control and Social Engineering Experiments

By Elze van Hamelen, September 20, 2022

A government-wide network of behavioral experts – the Behavioral Insights Network Netherlands (BIN NL) – has been supporting all departments in conducting behavioral experiments since 2014. The experiments aim to use behavioral knowledge from the social sciences to steer citizens toward “right” solutions and choices.

1350 Athlete Cardiac Arrests, Serious Issues, 919 of Them Dead, Since COVID Injection

By Real Science, September 21, 2022

t is definitely not normal for so many mainly young athletes to suffer from cardiac arrests or to die while playing their sport, but this year it is happening. Many of these heart issues and deaths come shortly after they got a COVID vaccine. While it is possible this can happen to people who did not get a COVID vaccine, the sheer numbers clearly point to the only obvious cause.

Pakistan High Court Drops ‘Terrorism’ Charges Against Ex-PM Imran Khan

By The Cradle, September 21, 2022

On 21 August, on top of the highly controversial charges under section 7 of Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) banned the transmission of Khan’s speeches for being “prejudicial to the maintenance of law and order and likely to disturb public peace and tranquility.”

Haiti’s January 12, 2020 Earthquake: Disaster Relief Scenario Tested by US Military One Day Before the Earthquake

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 21, 2022

While Environmental modification (ENMOD) techniques have been available to the US military for more than half a century, there is no concrete evidence that these techniques have been used to trigger extreme weather conditions.

The Shelling of Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP): International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Takes Ukraine Side, Making UN Secretary-General Guterres Either a Liar or a Fool

By John Helmer, September 20, 2022

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) decided this week to take the side of Ukraine in the current war; blame Russia for the shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP); and issue a demand for Russia to surrender the plant to the Kiev regime “to regain full control over all nuclear facilities within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, including the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant.”

Dr. Paul Offit, One of the World’s Most Respected Vaccine Experts, Is Now Officially an Anti-vaxxer!

By Steve Kirsch, September 20, 2022

I learned about Paul’s conversion to anti-vaxxer status from reading Brucha Weisberger’s substack article. First, watch this TV news clip paying very close attention starting 50 seconds into the clip.

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***

Water systems throughout the United States are in serious disrepair and decline while corporate interests continue to dominate the political priorities of municipal and state governments.

Jackson, Mississippi, the capital and the largest municipality in the state which is 83% African American, has been under siege for many years as the water system continues to deteriorate endangering public health and the economic future of the entire region.

Extreme weather events throughout the southern U.S. have adversely impacted many communities as the administration of President Joe Biden has failed to address the infrastructural upgrades needed to both prevent the disastrous impacts and to also rebuild after the damage is done. An infrastructure bill passed by the Congress and signed by the president earlier this year seemed to be designed to provide cash infusions into the private construction industry along with local and state treasuries.

Nonetheless, there needs to be a comprehensive plan to rebuild essential infrastructure in the urban and rural areas of the U.S. as a matter of urgency. The impact of climate change is compounded by the debilitating political divisions within local and national governmental administrative and legislative structures. These circumstances portend much for the capacity of the country to solve its burgeoning problems.

The capital of the state of Mississippi has an estimated population of more than 150,000 people representing a decline over the last several decades. The phenomenon of “white flight” to the suburbs has taken place in various regions of the U.S.

Large amounts of rainfall during August which resulted in flooding from the Pearl River worsened the already existing problems at the water treatment facility. Pressure was lowered to the extent that the composition of the water for public consumption was altered. There was a boil water alert for several weeks while the National Guard was deployed to hand out bottles to the population.

Jackson water treatment plant installs new pump (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Residents in Jackson and its environs served by the treatment plant do not trust the safety of the water for drinking, washing and cooking. Any medium and long-term solutions to the water crisis in Jackson will require billions of dollars in investments to construct a new system and hire technical personnel.

Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba has said that the problems are decades in the making. The state government in Mississippi is almost exclusively white and does not express much sympathy to the residents of Jackson.

After assessing the situation involving strained relations between the state government and Jackson, Lumumba held separate meetings with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss the situation in the city. The mayor says that he was assured by the White House that recently allocated infrastructure funding would be sent to assist in the repair of the water treatment system.

Lumumba noted in a recent statement to the press that:

“Both (Biden and Harris) assured me that the eyes of Washington are watching the city of Jackson. They wanted us to know that we should expect the full arm of support from the federal government in every way that they possibly can. And they assured me their support was going to be demonstrated through long-range and long-term efforts through the EPA. I was delighted to hear that call, it was very encouraging.”

Several civil rights and environmental groups in Mississippi are considering alternative strategies designed to place the federal government as the direct supervisor over the water systems in Jackson and throughout the state. Funding from the infrastructure legislation will undoubtedly be allocated to the state government. Many in Jackson and other majority African American communities feel they have been systematically disenfranchised in regard to the allocation of state and federal funds.

According to an official of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Abre Conner, who is director of environmental and climate justice:

“The state is in a place, it’s got a lot of power to either make things easier for Black communities or to make things harder, and what we feel like has happened in Mississippi is that the state has used its power to make things harder for Black folks. This is why there needs to be more effort in order to have funding flow straight into Jackson and for the state to not have complete control over the decisions about federal funding.”

An article in Politico reports that $75 million in funding from the infrastructure bill will be sent to the state of Mississippi. This will be added to another $450 million from previous COVID-19 relief funding from the federal government. However, under the current political situation many African Americans have expressed distrust of the intentions of the Republican-controlled state government.

Class Action Lawsuit Targets City Officials

On September 20, media reports indicated that four residents on behalf of the people of Jackson have filed a class action lawsuit against the current and former city administrations along with the water treatment facility. The legal action appears to disregard the role of the state government in Mississippi in creating the existing crisis.

The private engineering firm Siemens Corporation, which signed a $90 million contract with the City of Jackson to improve its water system and Trilogy Engineering Services LLC, who in 2016 was hired to study the city’s O.B. Curtis treatment facility, are also targets of the litigation.

Jackson water treatment plant (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

The lawsuit claims that the City of Jackson has the responsibility of providing clean and consistent water resources to its residents. The plaintiffs cite damages related to public health, child welfare and economic distress.

An ABC News dispatch on the recent legal developments says:

“Mississippi ended its boil water notice for all of Jackson’s residents on Sept. 15, nearly two weeks after water pressure returned to the state capital’s residents after days of a water shortage crisis that impacted thousands of Jacksonians. The complaint names the City of Jackson; Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba; former mayor Tony Yarber; former public works directors Kishia Powell, Robert Miller and Jerriot Smash; Siemens Corporation, Siemens Industry and Trilogy Engineering Services as defendants. Spokespersons for Lumumba, Powell, Miller, and Siemens declined to comment when reached by ABC News. Yarber, Smash, and Trilogy Engineering did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.”

A scandal involving Southern Mississippi University (SMU) alumni and professional football player Brett Favre indicates the level of corruption related to federal funding in the state. Favre, in cooperation with well-connected state officials redirected millions in what was described as “welfare money” to build a volleyball stadium at his alma mater as well as direct cash payments to the sports personality of more than $1 million to make speeches which were never delivered. Although this incident occurred under a previous state administration, many believe that such schemes are commonplace in the state.

The only real solution to the crisis is what local social justice organizations are advocating and that is for a federal government intervention to ensure the rehabilitation of the water system in Jackson. State officials have demonstrated for decades an indifference and hostility towards majority African American municipalities.

National Water Crisis Worsening in the U.S.

What has taken place in Jackson during the last several years is representative of a national problem related to providing clean and affordable water resources for the people. There was much attention focused on the massive water shutoffs in Detroit during the contrived illegal bankruptcy of 2013-2014. During the summer of 2014, the Republican right-wing governor’s appointed emergency manager ordered the termination of water services to tens of thousands of residents in the 80% African American populated municipality over alleged arrears in bill payments.

Flint, Michigan, which had received its water supply from the Detroit Water & Sewage Department (DWSD) for decades, was suddenly disconnected in 2014 under the same emergency management regime. The city’s water supply was then taken from the abandoned industrially contaminated Flint River. What resulted was the poisoning of an entire majority African American municipality where thousands were sickened resulting in numerous deaths.

Several years ago, the Berkey water filter company pointed out that it will require substantial investments by the U.S. to address the national crisis. Already two years behind, Berkey emphasized:

“The American Society of Civil Engineers or the ASCE stated that the government needs to invest around $3.6 trillion in the infrastructure alone by 2020. With such an investment, it can increase the support system of America at the standard levels. This investment can also repair the nation’s stormwater and wastewater systems over the next 20 years. In some parts of America, unmanaged stormwater systems affect the streams and the rivers and cause health problems. Furthermore, the majority of the drinking infrastructure is aging and is almost falling apart. According to studies, there are about 240,000 water main breaks annually in America. For every pipe that needs to be replaced, the cost in the coming years to come can reach up to $1 trillion, according to the American Water Works Association (AWWA).”

The necessity of bringing into existence these infrastructural improvements are a matter of life and death. Such a monumental set of priorities can only be realized through a mass movement which confronts local, state and federal entities in a concerted organized campaign to save and improve the water systems throughout the U.S.

*

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

Featured image: Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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***

Joe Biden ran for president in 2020 with a pledge to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, which Donald Trump had withdrawn from in May 2018 under pressure from Republican Party Jewish donors, most notably underwritten by an estimated $100 million coming from now deceased Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas casino fortune. The JCPOA might plausibly be regarded as the only major diplomatic success for the Barack Obama Administration, which featured Biden as Vice President, and it was good for the US due to its curb on proliferation, as well as being a benefit for the entire Middle East region as it made less likely a “weapons of mass destruction” arms race involving the Egyptians and Saudis.

Predictably, however, the pledge did not please the state of Israel. For three decades, Israel has been urging the United States to use force to eliminate what it refers to as the Iranian nuclear weapons program, a program that does not exist and might never have existed. The nuclear weapons threat raised by Israel might be seen as a disinformational wedge issue to bring about the complete destruction of the Iranian military capability by the United States. Israel seeks to exploit its influence over the US government and media to bring that about.

To be sure, weakening Iran and possibly even replacing its government is the most compelling issue for Israel and its powerful US domestic lobby, but the Israeli plan is much broader than that, to make the United States the junior partner providing the money and weapons in an effort to militarily dominate the Middle East. Knowing that both Donald Trump and Joe Biden were willing to concede actual US national interests in response to Israeli pressure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his replacement Yair Lapid have sent waves of top-level officials to cajole both Congress and the White House into giving Jerusalem whatever it wants.

This flow of “experts” arriving with their maps and charts in hand has increased as the realization that a politically weak and clueless Joe Biden will cave under even the slightest pressure has grown. Biden has demonstrated particular gutlessness in his recent failure to seek a full investigation and consequences for the Israeli Army murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, deferring to Israel’s complete unwillingness to establish some form of accountability and Prime Minister Lapid’s declaration that the current level of his army’s use of force against the Palestinians will continue. Biden has also backed down on rejoining the JCPOA, declaring that the issue is now “off the table.” Secretary of State Tony Blinken has confirmed that decision, declaring that any new arrangement with Iran is “unlikely.”

Preceding the Administration’s decision to ignore American interests in deference to Israeli concerns, there were frequent visits to Washington by Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz and also by other senior officials who arrived in DC to sell a product. The latest pitch involves the Iranian threat and the continuation of a free hand to attack neighboring Syria but there also has been a bizarre drive to have the US State Department declare that the Palestinian civic and human rights organizations that Israel has been shutting down are “terrorist organizations.” Even though a US intelligence and law enforcement agency review has declared that not to be the case, the Biden team is predictably waffling under Israeli pressure. This is how State Department spokesman Ned “Pencil Neck” Price responded to a question regarding the Israeli claims:

“Our Israeli partners have in recent days provided us with additional information. They provided this information not only to the department but also to a range of our interagency partners. We are continuing to review this and that process is ongoing.”

Price added that he didn’t want to “prejudge” the information. Pretty gutless Ned, huh? Even for you, who also excused the killing of Abu Akleh, saying “it was a horrific tragedy, but not one that should be prosecuted. This was not an intentional, targeted killing. This was the tragic result of a gunfight in the context of an Israeli raid in the West Bank.” Interestingly, Ned surely knew that there was no gunfight anywhere near where she was killed, which makes him a liar as well as a man bereft of any morality. And I love the fact that Ned declares we Americans are “partners” with Israel. Junior partners, clearly.

Israel has never provided any actual hard intelligence to back up its claims, though it has several times been caught fabricating evidence. Senator Bernie Sanders’ Foreign Policy Advisor Matt Duss tweeted after the latest round of pressure to call the Palestinians “terrorists” that

“This isn’t about intel sharing or security. It’s political pressure to justify political repression. The admin knows, as our allies do, that the designations are false. The question is whether [the Biden Administration is] willing to do anything about it.”

This isn’t about intel sharing or security. It’s political pressure to justify political repression. The admin knows, as our allies do, that the designations are false. The question is whether they’re willing to do anything about it. https://t.co/MZXtHMkbsd

— Matt Duss (@mattduss) September 14, 2022

One should consider that what for Israel, the United States, Russia, Ukraine and nearly everyone else what is passed off as intelligence is anything but. It is instead more often than not a tightly woven argument to convince other countries, the public and the media that something that is supportive of one’s policies is true and should be considered corroborative. This is how we the people have now come to see global events through the prism of an official lie factory. Another recent ploy by Israel to enable its continued bombardment of neighboring Syria is a tale of how Israeli intelligence has developed information that Iran is using Syria to construct technically sophisticated weapons that will be used against the Israelis. Defense Minister Benny Gantz, speaking in New York City last Monday, claimed that Iran has used “10 military facilities in Syria to produce advanced missiles and weapons for its proxies.”

One might observe that Gantz’s use of a map to show where the alleged facilities are located was convincing of nothing as it was a graphic produced by the Israeli government, somewhat like the dreck that is flowing out of Ukraine at the moment. And there is a bit of logical inconsistency in the tale in that Iran has its own arms industry and does not need to build weapons in Syria. There is also the question of why is Gantz speaking in New York? The answer is obvious. Israel is speaking to a gullible American audience about the alleged Iranian threat and Syrian culpability. Predictably, nothing was said about Israel’s recent war crime bombing of the international airport in Aleppo.

And there’s more, as there always is with Israel. The Israeli government is also running full speed with brand new claims about an alleged secret Iranian nuclear weapons program. The information was presented to the US and German governments by Prime Minister Yair Lapid with the claim that it “proves the Iranians are cheating as we speak.” Lapid told the Germans that the Biden Administration had hardened its stance against Iran vis-à-vis the JCPOA negotiations in response to the new information. What the new intelligence consists of might lead to some speculation, but Israel’s claims along those lines have been frequent for the past twenty years and also regularly found to be both malicious and fabricated.

Finally, who says that the Israelis and their rabid Jewish supporters in the United States don’t have a sense of humor? A story making the rounds in the Jewish media in the US and featured in the Jewish News Syndicate asks the question “[Why] 21 years later, [the] US still doesn’t recognize Iran’s role in 9/11.?” The discussion features Caroline Glick and David Wurmser, two noted neocons and Israel-firsters. Wurmser is of course described as “an expert on Middle East affairs” rather than as a Zionist extremist while Glick, who lives in Israel, is among the most rabid journalists calling for “deterrence and containment” of Iran, with the US military doing the heavy lifting. Glick also recalls 9/11, stating that “America’s willful blindness to Iran’s role in global terrorism, including in the September 11 attacks, is part of the collective amnesia about the events of September 11.” When I stopped laughing, I continued reading to see if the two honorable Zionists would also mention the Israeli art students who were all over the place spying on the US and the five Israeli dancing Shlomo “movers” who clearly had prior knowledge of what was about to take place and were seen celebrating the sight of the burning twin towers. And then there was the quote by then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concerning 9/11 that “We [Israelis] are benefitting from one thing, and that is the attack on the twin towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” So, Israel actually had a motive. Makes you wonder… Who really did 9/11?

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

Philip is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

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***

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) dropped the “terrorism” charges against former Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday 19 September. 

“It only proves that these are trumped-up charges and just a tool for political victimization,” said Babar Awan, one of Imran Khan‘s lawyers.

Awan added that the decision of the IHC is “actually an order to quash the charges.”

Khan was charged with terrorism on 22 August, after he allegedly made threats against police and judicial officers during a rally in Islamabad. 

“We will not spare you … We will sue you,” Khan said during his rally in support of Dr. Shahbaz Gill, a close ally and communications advisor of the 69-year-old head of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party. The rally occurred after Gill was arrested without a warrant and allegedly tortured and sexually assaulted.

On 21 August, on top of the highly controversial charges under section 7 of Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) banned the transmission of Khan’s speeches for being “prejudicial to the maintenance of law and order and likely to disturb public peace and tranquility.”

“There is no law. They are trying to arrest the leader of the biggest party in the country. They are scared of the popularity of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf,” Khan responded to the charges. 

Imran Khan is the head of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party, and was removed from his office as prime minister in April following a no-confidence motion. The motion passed with a majority of 174 votes out of 342, in what his supporters described as a “parliamentary coup”.

Since his removal from office, Khan gathered his supporters in massive rallies to call for early elections, which are originally scheduled for October 2023.

The former prime minister has described running government authorities as “fascist”, who plotted with “foreign powers” to oust him from his position.

The fascist Imported govt sunk to a new low today by banning live coverage of my speeches on TV & then blocking YouTube temporarily during my speech at Liaquat Bagh. All this after continuous intimidation of mediapersons & taking channels off air earlier.

— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) August 21, 2022

Despite the political persecution, Khan’s PTI party swept local elections in Karachi, causing further concern for his political opponents. 

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***

While environmental crises are predominantly caused by the West and industrialized countries, vulnerable groups across the whole world are carrying a disproportionately large burden while they lack the power over decisions that affect their lives. This has been coined environmental racism.

Entangled with racism is the problem of speciesism, as there’s a clear classification of animals. Exotic and charismatic wild animals are given a higher precedence, and both humans and other animals make way for their conservation.

The speciesist and racist tendencies get intertwined and become apparent in our dealing with environmental issues. These have been influencing policies, laws, conservation efforts, and funds.

This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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The EU and Northern countries tend to push for market-based mechanisms to solve environmental crises while Southern countries emphasize the environmental and social risks of these mechanisms (Global Forest Coallition 2010). We need to emphasize the climate debt of industrialized countries who are responsible for climate change.

I reflected on the unease I felt and came to think that what bothered me about our reactions to the crises we face, is that some of our responses tend to be overarchingly racist and speciesist. The COVID-pandemic is the perfect example. When the news came out about COVID-19 potentially having started in a wet market in China, from a person who ate a bat, there was an international push for an enforcement of the ban on wildlife trade (Gorman 2020; Reuters 2020). There were judgments, because eating bats “is cruel,” and there was disgust, because wild animals were being handled in “unhygienic conditions” at some “shady market.” The reason we felt these things is because we have a belief that we – the “civilized white people” – would never have done such a thing, because eating wild bats is “cruel and disgusting.” I am not suggesting that hunting an animal species that has a superior ability to host a myriad of diseases and selling it at a market with poor hygiene is a great idea, but would we have reacted the same way if the pandemic started at a chicken farm in Switzerland? Would we have judged it so harshly? Would we have advocated for a blanket ban on chicken farming?

Whiteness is the ownership of the Earth (Du Bois 1920). The dominant discourses that drive policies are white. We need to be reflective about understanding which culture is respected above others, and, without romanticizing cultures of the global South as purely ecological, create a diversity-friendly justice.

Entangled with racism is the problem of speciesism, as we surpass our distinction between animals and humans to our distinction between different groups of animals. This explains why some of us will find it intuitively crueler to eat a bat than a chicken. We have a clear classification of animals in the West. Exotic wild animals on top, local wild animals next, farmed animals last.

Exotic wild animals are valued highly. We believe they should have space to live in dignity. We create documentaries on them. Most people have an ambiguous feeling seeing a lion in a small cage. We are uncomfortable with the idea that wild exotic animals are hunted. We try to reintroduce wild animals and enhance their populations by creating national parks and minimizing contact between exotic wild animals and the people who live in or near their habitats. We also try to put laws in place that ban the hunting and trading of these animals, to protect them and to prevent disease transmission between humans and animals. One example of this that I have been exposed to is a gorilla conservation project in Uganda, where a national park was created with complete access restriction for local people to the park so as to protect disease transmission from humans to the endangered gorillas. However, paying tourists, mostly from Europe and North America, were allowed to enter for a 600-dollar fee, to go see the gorillas at close proximity.

A gorilla conservation project in Uganda, where a national park was created with complete access restriction for local people so as to protect disease transmission from humans to the endangered gorillas, allows paying tourists, mostly from Europe and North America to enter and see the gorillas at close proximity. Image by futureatlas.com via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Local wild animals are also valued, but not as much as exotic wild animals. They are hunted locally, but under certain restrictions. In some cases, disease risks arise from either the facilitation of the hunting and eating the hunted animals itself. Most European predators are extinct because of intensive hunting in the past, but we are hesitant to reintroduce predators, as we need to consider the shepherds and farmers who would experience economic losses if we were to do so. We occasionally farm these wild animals (i.e., deer) for consumption. We try to create wildlife corridors, bridges and tunnels so that wild animals do not get killed on the road. Here, we carefully balance the interest of people with the interest of the animals. My PhD research serves as an example. In the Scottish Highlands, a large portion of the land is owned by individuals who run trophy hunting estates. The managers of these estates feed deer in order to keep their populations artificially high, so that paying customers can shoot deer at a higher success rate. The high deer populations cause tick populations to rocket, and as a result, Lyme disease (which is transferred through ticks to humans) cases have gone up 10-fold in the last decade. There are no predators to keep the deer populations at bay (Yalden 1999), and the reintroduction of the wolf, once part of the landscape but now hunted to extinction, is being debated since the 1960s. That has not happened though, as the few hunting the deer are against it.

Farmed animals are valued for their products. We make regulations for their humane rearing and killing. We understand fully which environmental and disease risks arise from rearing and transporting billions of animals, and we are preventing disease outbreaks by administering high amounts of antibiotics to animals. We are also aware of the environmental hazards of animal consumption, including the water usage, the space needed for their rearing and for their feed and the direct pollution of cows through methane. We are also conscious of the suffering of these animals, but here we also consider our taste buds and nutritional needs. I have not done any personal research in this field, but I have lived through some outbreaks of avian influenza that resulted in the slaughtering of entire farms of chickens. Yet, no bans on chicken farming were introduced as a consequence. Another example is the issue of antimicrobial resistance we are fighting against, which is a direct result of intensive animal farming.

Speciesism is a form of discrimination based on species (Ryder 1970). First it was formulated to show that we as humans find ourselves superior to other animals, but then speciesism also took on board the differences that people attribute to different species (Sueur 2019). Peter Singer, among others, questions the premise that one species should be prioritized above another, stating that all animals are equal meaning that they should have equal rights (Singer 1995).

A deer in the Scottish Highlands, where their populations are kept artificially high for trophy hunting. Image via Max Pixel (Public domain).

The speciesist and racist tendencies get intertwined and become apparent in our dealing with environmental issues. We are very comfortable donating money to charities that provide opportunities or money to local people to stop their unsustainable hunting/agricultural practices that threaten wild animals. We think lions should be protected even on the lands of people who live as nomadic shepherds, because wildlife needs space. We do this in the name of conservation and to prevent disease transmission between wildlife and humans. We are less comfortable putting such policies in place locally. There is plenty of evidence of the negative environmental consequences of keeping grazer populations high or breeding and releasing animals to be hunted. We are also fully aware that we hardly have any predators left in Europe and that ecosystem management is compromised. However, here, we value local wildlife less and local people more. We, therefore, give more consideration to local people. In terms of eating animals, we think it is fine for us to eat wild and domestic animals, but not so for people across the globe. We think that just because we breed an animal, it is fine to cause it suffering. However, next to the unjustified suffering, we create environmental problems and potential epidemiological risks due to large-scale animal agriculture.

Our way of thinking is infused by speciesism and racism, which are both a product of our current categorization of the world, our current paradigm. We need to unlearn the concept that there are different cultures that are separate from nature (Kohn 2015; Viveiros de Castro 2014) and the very existence of the culture-nature divide and relearn to see the world as simply a product of many kinds of human and non-human agencies, none of which is necessarily more important than the other (Bryant 2011).

This is a plea to start with ourselves. To use our privileges for something more meaningful than buying a sweater from a company that will plant a tree for us. To push for stricter climate change and conservation policies in our own countries, cities, neighborhoods, families and friend groups. To hold each other and ourselves accountable for the way we think about conservation and climate change. To value all beings on this planet equally and respect their agency, will to live and right to take up space and have a dignified life, including all humans, animals and plants. And to question every point in this article, so you can make up your own mind.

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Featured image: Earlier this year in northern Tanzania, more than 70,000 Indigenous Maasai residents were evicted from their ancestral lands to make way for trophy hunting and elite tourism. Image by Anita Ritenour via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

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A team of psychological researchers from Australia is delving into the mindset of those who refuse to buy the notion that man-made climate change is quickly creating an unlivable, barren wasteland on Earth. Researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast looked to explain why such “cranks” continue to deny what they call “the reality of climate change, its causes, impacts and the need for mitigatory action.”

The study’s authors — Breanna Fraser, Patrick Nunn, and Rachael Sharman — set out to discover why climate change skeptics think the way they do, beyond what they call “sociodemographic and value factors.” Instead, the study proposed to look at psychological factors involved in climate change skepticism. The study asked 390 Australian participants why they refused to buy the climate change narrative.

“This mixed-methods study investigated whether more malleable psychological factors: locus of control; information processing style; and anti-reflexivity, predicted climate change scepticism above and beyond socio-demographic and value factors,” the study’s abstract declares.

According to the researchers, climate change skeptics were guilty of using “mental gymnastics” in order to deny what they called “the near-universal agreement among scientists on the reality and impact of climate change.”

Near universal? Really? What about the 1,100 scientists — including a Nobel laureate — who recently signed a declaration proclaiming “there is no climate emergency?” Among those scientists were 134 signatories from Australia, the same nation the participants in the survey were from.

The researchers found one very interesting result: Those who actually study an issue instead of blindly relying on government propaganda were actually more likely to be skeptical of so-called climate change.

“Contrary to our predictions, people with high analytical abilities were even more likely to be sceptical about this,” stated study authors Nunn and Sharman in a piece for The Conversation.

Imagine that — people who take the time and effort to study the issue of climate change have a tendency toward skepticism.

Also, in the study’s view, people who value individual liberty are less inclined to buy into the notion of a full-blown climate crisis.

“Those with stronger individualistic worldviews — their priority is individual autonomy as opposed to a more collectivist worldview — were more sceptical about humans causing climate change,” the authors stated.

Or, put in other words, people who are less inclined toward communism and globalism are also less likely to swallow the climate emergency narrative.

Among the study’s other findings:

Older people were more likely to be sceptical of the reality of climate change.

So, older people, set in their ways and unable to change their minds, are a large part of the reason why so-called climate action is taking so long to begin.

Conservatives were more likely to be sceptical of the reality, causes and impacts of climate change.

So, conservatives, in the view of the researchers, are simply unable to see the “reality” of climate change.

Lower environmental values were strongly linked to all types of scepticism.

So, the elderly and the conservatives just care less about the environment, according to the study.

In other words, according to the researchers, a certain amount of naivete among the citizenry is useful when selling the climate crisis narrative.

The study’s authors correctly point out that climate hysterics themselves may bear some of the blame for skepticism. For instance, the climate change community’s practice of making predictions which are observably false leads to skepticism.

The researchers note that skeptics are aware of “predictions not becoming reality [and give] explanations such as ‘seeing climate change alarmists’ predictions being completely false.’” Naturally, this lends credence to skepticism.

The authors believe that such doubts have arisen because skeptics have a “basic misunderstanding” of model-based climate predictions. Is that “misunderstanding” due to the fact that such climate models were never meant to be a predictive tool?

Sky News’ Andrew Bolt made the point that the study was an attempt to classify climate change skepticism as a mental condition. He addressed the study in a very tongue-in-cheek way:

But I do wonder, I have to confess, why people with high analytical abilities, people who are great at analyzing things, are more skeptical of global warming preachers. I’m just sorry that Sharman didn’t actually analyze that bit because I reckon the answer would be fascinating.

And Bolt is correct. While the study doesn’t come right out and say that skeptics of a “climate emergency” have some sort of mental condition, the very existence of the study and its dubious conclusions are meant to plant the seed that, perhaps, people who would drag their feet on destroying the world’s economy and power systems to combat this so-called climate crisis might simply suffer from delusional thinking of some sort.

So, despite the study’s own finding that people with “high analytical abilities were even more likely to be sceptical about” climate change, the study’s authors would have us believe such people are a threat to the Earth.

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James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects with a primary focus on the ongoing anthropogenic climate-change hoax and cultural issues. He can be reached at [email protected]

Featured image: People hold signs during the March for Science in Melbourne, Australia on April 22, 2017. (Photo: Takver/flickr/ccc)

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The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) decided this week to take the side of Ukraine in the current war; blame Russia for the shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP); and issue a demand for Russia to surrender the plant to the Kiev regime “to regain full control over all nuclear facilities within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, including the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant.”      

This is the most dramatic shift by the United Nations (UN) nuclear power regulator in the 65-year history of the organisation based in Vienna.

The terms of the IAEA Resolution Number 58, which were proposed early this week by the Polish and Canadian governors on the agency board, were known in advance by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres when he spoke by telephone with President Vladimir Putin in the late afternoon of September 14, before the vote was taken. Guterres did not reveal what he already knew would be the IAEA action the next day.

According to the official IAEA text, the agency

“1. expresses grave concern that the Russian Federation has not heeded the call of the Board to immediately cease all actions against and at nuclear facilities in Ukraine”[and]

2. Deplores the Russian Federation’s persistent violent actions against nuclear facilities in Ukraine, including forcefully seizing of control of nuclear facilities and other violent actions in connection with a number of nuclear facilities and other radioactive materials and the ongoing presence of Russian forces and Rosatom personnel at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, which continue to pose serious and direct threats to the safety and security of these facilities and their civilian personnel, thereby significantly raising the risk of a nuclear accident or incident, which endangers the population of Ukraine, neighbouring States and the international community.”

The IAEA makes no reference to its investigation of the artillery shelling of the ZNPP, or to the evidence presented by Russian and other sources that these attacks, and a attempted commando assault on the plant on September 1, were ordered and carried out by the government in Kiev.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi speaks to the German, French and US media  at ZNPP on September 1.  The Bloomberg report indicated that Grossi’s visit was “the first time in the IAEA’s 65-year history that monitors crossed an active battlefront in order to carry out an inspection.” Grossi did not make accusations against either Russia or Ukraine, and subsequently proposed instead a no-fire zone around the plant. According to Bloomberg, “Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other for continued fighting in the area, with no way to independently verify their claims.”

The board of governors voted to demand Russia surrender, not only ZNPP, but all nuclear facilities “within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.”

Map of Ukraine Nuclear Facilities

Photo by Yakiv Gluck, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

The IAEA resolution calls “upon the Russian Federation to immediately cease all actions against, and at, the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant and any other nuclear facility in Ukraine, in order for the competent Ukrainian authorities to regain full control over all nuclear facilities within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, including the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, to ensure their safe and secure operation, and in order for the Agency to fully and safely conduct its safeguards verification activities, in accordance with Ukraine’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement entered into pursuant to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Statute.”

The agency’s board of governors has 35 members. This year they represent:  Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Burundi, Canada, China, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, India, Ireland, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Libya, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, the Russian Federation, Senegal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America and Viet Nam.

In an opening statement to the board, the IAEA Secretary General Rafaelo Grossi described his inspection visit to Zapoorzhye at the beginning of this month.

“A nuclear safety and security protection zone,” he said, “is urgently needed and I have begun initial consultations with the relevant Parties. The protection zone is essential to end the repeated shelling of the Plant and of the off-site power infrastructure crucial for reactor cooling and systems needed to maintain safety now that all reactors at Zaporizhzhya NPP are in shutdown.”

Grossi stopped short of identifying the source of the artillery attacks on the plant. The only demand he issued to the Russian side was to “recommend that the military vehicles currently present inside the buildings and around the buildings be removed so they do not interfere with the operation of the safety and security systems.”

The vote for the surrender resolution followed three days after Grossi’s speech. The voting rules for the governors can be followed here.  Rules 36 and 37 provide for simple majority and super-majority votes when or if the board decides to apply them. Grossi was asked this morning through his spokesman, Fredrik Dahl, to say what voting rules were adopted for the resolution. Dahl (right) is an Austrian with a long career as a Reuters correspondent working on the NATO side during the war against Serbia and the US and Israeli campaigns against Iran. Dahl refused to answer the telephone or email questions.

Grossi’s press office was also asked to report the roll call on the resolution vote, identifying the countries voting for the resolution, and those voting against or abstaining. Dahl and his associates refused to reply. The IAEA website is not disclosing the vote.

Instead, the Russian representative on the IAEA board and the Embassy in Vienna published a report on Telegram.  This reveals  the 35-member board voted 26 in favour; Russia and China voted against;  Burundi, Vietnam, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Senegal and South Africa voted to abstain. Twenty-six votes amount to 74% of the board;  Rules 36 and 37 require a super majority of two thirds — that’s 23 votes.

In English: “Western countries have voted through an anti-Russian resolution on the Ukrainian issue in the IAEA Board of Governors. The Achilles heel of this resolution is that it does not say a word about the systematic shelling of the Zaporozhye NPP, which is the main problem from the point of view of ensuring nuclear safety and nuclear safety in the world. The reason is simple – the shelling is carried out by Ukraine, which Western countries strongly support and protect. Russia and China voted against this document. Abstaining were Burundi, Vietnam, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Senegal and South Africa. Thus, most of humanity refused to support this project.” Source

In April, during a meeting in Moscow between President Putin and UN Secretary-General  Guterres, he was warned against lying publicly about the sides in the conflict.

At the time and subsequently, Guterres’s spokesman refused to answer questions about what he knew of Ukrainian military use of civilians as shields in the fighting at the Azov steel plant and other war crimes. Russian doubt about Guterres’s neutrality and independence grew with his conduct of the negotiations over release of Ukrainian and Russian grain cargoes and Russian fertilizers for export.

On September 14 the Kremlin has recorded that Putin telephoned Guterres in the late afternoon, Moscow time.

“The primary focus”, according to the Russian communiqué, “was on the implementation of the Istanbul package agreements on Ukrainian grain exports from Black Sea ports and exports of Russian foods and fertilisers. Both leaders emphasised the importance of prioritising the food needs of countries in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.”

Putin then raised the issue of the IAEA and ZNPP.

“The situation around the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) was discussed, including the visit by the IAEA delegation on September 1. Vladimir Putin gave a positive assessment to the constructive cooperation with the agency and told the UN Secretary-General about the measures taken by Russia to ensure the security and physical protection of ZNPP facilities.”

There is no record of what Guterres told Putin in reply. However, in a press conference Guterres held soon after the call in New York, he acknowledged that

“the last time I spoke with President Putin was this morning. That is the reason why I came late to the press conference. And we had the opportunity to discuss the Black Sea Grain Initiative and its extension and expansion, possible expansion.”

He added:

“We discussed Zaporizhzhia, and we discussed all the other aspects that are relevant in the present situation. And I usually do not say what I say in phone calls. My positions are known.”

He was asked what he knew of the situation at Zaporozhye.

“According to the informations I have,” Guterres replied, “electricity is being provided to the reactors for guaranteeing the cooling of those reactors, and other areas that also need the electricity supply are having it. And we hope that it will be able to maintain it, both with generators and through the grid.  The IAEA remains on the site, and the information we have are also that, until now, there was no radiation measured that is worrying. I believe that we have been now three days without bombing. I hope that these kinds of attacks will cease, and I hope that the security of the nuclear power plant will be maintained entirely at all costs and fully respected by the parties.”

A reporter then asked:

“We heard that there are some talks going on between the IAEA chief, Mr. Grossi, and the Ukrainians and the Russians. Is that what you believe has led to the end of shelling for the past three days? Are these talks something the UN is encouraging, involved in, in other ways?”

Guterres replied:

“Those talks are taking place, and I hope they will contribute to quiet things down. I cannot establish a cause-and-effect, but I believe that the IAEA presence is a very important deterrent and that their contacts are a very important deterrent in relation to any kind of attack against the power plant.”

Screenshot from the UN

Later in the press conference Guterres was asked a question about the IAEA’s role in the nuclear negotiations with Iran. He replied:

“I think the IAEA is a very important pillar, and I believe that its independence that exists and must be preserved is essential. The IAEA cannot be the instrument of parties against other parties. And I do believe the IAEA is doing its role based on the technical aspects in which the IAEA is supposed to have the knowledge and the capacity to do.”

Russian sources express scepticism that when Guterres said this, he did not already know that  IAEA resolution Number  58 would become “the instrument of parties against other parties” — exactly what Guterres told the press the IAEA should not do.

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I learned about Paul’s conversion to anti-vaxxer status from reading Brucha Weisberger’s substack article.

First, watch this TV news clip paying very close attention starting 50 seconds into the clip:

Here’s the definition of an anti-vaxxer:

He also said he’s not getting any more COVID shots until he sees more data…

And more vaccine hesitancy…

The question for your blue pilled friends

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is now advertising the new COVID booster as an “antibody update” to “recharge your immunity” — as if your immune system were a battery that needs recharging, or your immunity a software system that requires gene therapy “updates.” This is transhumanist lingo that has no bearing on real-world biology or physiology, and proves the FDA is onboard with the transhumanist ideas of technocracy pushed by the globalist cabal

According to a risk-benefit analysis looking at the impact of booster mandates for university students, between 22,000 and 30,000 previously uninfected adults (aged 18 to 29) must be boosted with an mRNA vaccine to prevent one COVID-19 hospitalization

For each hospitalization prevented, the jab will cause 18 to 98 serious adverse events, including 1.7 to three booster-associated myocarditis cases in males.

A small observational study led by neurology researchers at the National Institutes of Health found “a variety of neuropathic symptoms” occurring within three to four weeks of COVID injection.

Naturopath Henry Ealy and two Oregon state senators, Kim Thatcher and Dennis Linthicum, are trying to compel the state court in Oregon to order the impaneling of a special grand jury to investigate criminal data fraud by the CDC

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Just when you thought the U.S. Food and Drug Administration couldn’t possibly get any worse, they prove you wrong. Here are two recent COVID booster campaign messages tweeted out by the FDA:

“It’s time to install that update! #UpdateYourAntibodies with a new #COVID19 booster.”¹“Don’t be shocked! You can now #RechargeYourImmunity with an updated #COVID19 booster.”²

FDA Now Pushes Transhumanist Pipe-Dream

That’s right. The FDA now wants you to believe that your immune system is something that needs to be “recharged,” as if it were a battery, or “updated” with mRNA injections like a piece of software.

This is transhumanist lingo that has no bearing on real-world biology or physiology, and proves beyond doubt that the FDA is fully onboard with the transhumanist ideas of technocracy pushed by the globalist cabal. The human body is basically viewed as nothing more than a biological platform equipped with genetic software that can be altered and updated at will.

The problem, of course, is that your body doesn’t work that way. You cannot turn your body into a “bioreactor”³ or an internal “vaccine-production facility”⁴ and expect it to work as intended. The massive increase in disability and sudden death among COVID jab recipients is a testament to the fact that allowing Big Pharma to play God is a bad idea.

Transhumanism as a whole is a pipe-dream, as it fails to take into account just about everything that actually makes us human, including the nonlocality of consciousness, which they irrationally believe can be uploaded to a cloud-based system and merged with AI, or downloaded into an artificial body construct, such as a synthetic body.

False Advertising

The Federal Trade Commission is responsible for addressing fraudulent advertising. According to law, an ad must be “truthful, not misleading, and, when appropriate, backed by scientific evidence.”⁵The FDA itself also requires drug ads to be “truthful, balanced and accurately communicated.”⁶

“Balanced” refers to promotional materials that include efficacy and benefit claims, which must include a balance between benefit information and information about risks. In my view, the FDA’s most recent COVID booster ads are clear examples of false advertising, because:

• They’re not truthful and accurate, as there’s no basis for the claim that your antibodies need to be updated with a drug, or the claim that immunity must be recharged at regular intervals
• They’re not backed by scientific evidence, as the FDA is a) ignoring massive evidence of harm from the original shots, and b) the bivalent boosters are being released based on data from a few mice alone. The FDA is advertising the boosters for the prevention of disease, even though it has zero data to prove it prevents anything
• They’re not balanced, as the FDA fails to warn people about any of the many side effects reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)⁷

Was No-Test Drug Approval the Plan All Along?

While I cannot prove it, I suspect Operation Warp Speed (OWS) — devised in the spring of 2020 by a dozen top officials from then-President Trump’s health and defense departments to expedite the development of a COVID-19 vaccine⁸ — may have been intended to normalize the approval of drugs without proper testing.

Even if the normalization of expedited drug approval wasn’t originally intended, it certainly has been used and abused to that aim since. In June 2022, the FDA quietly implemented a “Future Framework” scheme⁹ to speed up the delivery of COVID boosters. This is what allows for the authorization of reformulated COVID shots without human trials.^10,11,12

The FDA basically rewrote the rules on the fly, deciding that mRNA gene therapies are equivalent to conventional influenza vaccines and can be updated and released without testing.

The idea here is that the safety of the mRNA COVID shots has already been proven by the original shots, which they claim have harmed or killed no one. Hence, safety is a given, and the effectiveness of reformulated boosters can be assessed simply by checking the antibody levels in a few mice, which is what Pfizer and Moderna did.

In reality, however, millions of people around the world have been harmed and killed by the original shots, the human trials for those shots were riddled with fraud, antibody levels tell us nothing about the jab’s ability to protect against infection, and the two technologies (conventional flu vaccines and mRNA gene therapy) have no common ground.

I have no doubt this “Future Framework” will also, over time, be widened to include other vaccines and drugs that drug makers may want to tinker with. It may even lower standards for drug trials in general, which historically have required at least 10 years of multiphase testing.¹³ The dangers of this trend really cannot be overstated.

Analysis of US Booster Policy

In a September 12, 2022, article, Kaiser Health News raised several questions about the FDA’s authorization of the new bivalent COVID boosters:¹⁴

“… in the real world, are the omicron-specific vaccines significantly more protective — and in what ways — than the original COVID vaccines so many have already taken? If so, who would benefit most from the new shots? Since the federal government is purchasing these new vaccines … is the $3.2 billion price tag worth the unclear benefit? …

The FDA could have requested more clinical vaccine effectiveness data from Pfizer and Moderna before authorizing their updated omicron BA.5 boosters. Yet the FDA cannot weigh in on important follow-up questions: How much more effective are the updated boosters than vaccines already on the market? In which populations?

And what increase in effectiveness is enough to merit an increase in price (a so-called cost-benefit analysis)? Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, perform such an analysis before allowing new medicines onto the market, to negotiate a fair national price …

As population immunity builds up through vaccination and infection, it’s unclear whether additional vaccine boosters, updated or not, would benefit all ages equally … The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices considered limiting the updated boosters to people 50 and up, but eventually decided that doing so would be too complicated.”

Shocking Jab Study Decimates Safety Claims

In related news, a shocking risk-benefit analysis¹⁵ looking at the impact of booster mandates for university students concluded that:

• Between 22,000 and 30,000 previously uninfected adults (aged 18 to 29) must be boosted with an mRNA vaccine to prevent one COVID-19 hospitalization
• For each hospitalization prevented, the jab will cause 18 to 98 serious adverse events, including 1.7 to 3 “booster-associated myocarditis cases in males, and 1,373 to 3,234 cases of grade ≥3 reactogenicity which interferes with daily activities”

That means mandating a third COVID shot for university students will result in “a net expected harm.” The authors also stress that “Given the high prevalence of post-infection immunity, this risk-benefit profile is even less favorable.” The authors go on to state that “University booster mandates are unethical because:”¹⁶

“1) no formal risk-benefit assessment exists for this age group;

2) vaccine mandates may result in a net expected harm to individual young people;

3) mandates are not proportionate: expected harms are not outweighed by public health benefits given the modest and transient effectiveness of vaccines against transmission;

4) U.S. mandates violate the reciprocity principle because rare serious vaccine-related harms will not be reliably compensated due to gaps in current vaccine injury schemes; and

5) mandates create wider social harms. We consider counter-arguments such as a desire for socialization and safety and show that such arguments lack scientific and/or ethical support.”

Government Study Reveals COVID Jab Problems

A small observational study^17,18 led by neurology researchers at the National Institutes of Health also brings bad news, as they found “a variety of neuropathic symptoms” occurring within three to four weeks of COVID injection:

“We studied 23 patients (92% female; median age 40 years) reporting new neuropathic symptoms beginning within 1 month after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. 100% reported sensory symptoms comprising severe face and/or limb paresthesias, and 61% had orthostasis, heat intolerance and palpitations …

Biopsies from randomly selected five patients that were evaluated for immune complexes showed deposition of complement C4d in endothelial cells. Electrodiagnostic test results were normal in 94% (16/17). Together, 52% (12/23) of patients had objective evidence of small-fiber peripheral neuropathy …

This observational study suggests that a variety of neuropathic symptoms may manifest after SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations and in some patients might be an immune-mediated process.”

FDA Refuses to Release Key COVID Jab Safety Analyses

In July 2022, The Epoch Times asked the FDA to release “all analyses performed by the agency for the COVID-19 vaccines using … Empirical Bayesian data mining, which involves comparing the adverse events recorded after a specific COVID-19 vaccine with those recorded after vaccination with non-COVID-19 vaccines.”¹⁹

The FDA has so far refused, claiming the data is tied to “internal discussions protected by law.” September 10, 2022, The Epoch Times reported:²⁰

“According to operating procedures laid out by the agency and its partner in January 2021²¹and February 2022,²² the FDA would perform data mining ‘at least biweekly’ to identify adverse events ‘reported more frequently than expected following vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines.’ The agency would perform the mining on data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

In a recent response, the FDA records office told The Epoch Times that it would not provide any of the analyses, even in redacted form. The agency cited an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act that lets the government withhold inter-agency and intra-agency memorandums and letters ‘that would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.’

The agency also pointed to the Code of Federal Regulations, which says that ‘all communications within the Executive Branch of the Federal government which are in written form or which are subsequently reduced to writing may be withheld from public disclosure except that factual information which is reasonably segregable in accordance with the rule established in § 20.22 is available for public disclosure.’

It’s not clear why the FDA could not produce copies of the analyses with non-factual information redacted. The Epoch Times has appealed the determination by the records office.”

CDC Also Refuses to Release Its Safety Analyses

According to the VAERS standard operating procedures cited above, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also required to perform data mining analyses, using Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) data mining. PRR²³ measures how common an adverse event is for a specific drug compared to all the other drugs in the database.

When The Epoch Times asked the CDC to release its results, it too refused. According to The Epoch Times, the CDC “has also twice provided false information when responding to questions”:²⁴

“The agency initially said that no PRR analyses were done and that data mining is ‘outside of th[e] agency’s purview.’ The agency then said that it did perform PRRs, starting in February 2021. Later, the agency acknowledged that wasn’t true.

The agency did not begin performing PRRs until March 2022, a spokesperson told The Epoch Times. Roger Andoh, a records officer, gave the initial response, citing the CDC’s Immunization and Safety Office. Dr. John Su, a CDC official, gave the second response.

It remains unclear with whom the information originated. The Epoch Times has submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for internal emails that may provide answers.”

So far, the FDA has insisted the data show no evidence of serious adverse effects from the COVID jab. The only possible signal they’d found through April 16, 2021, was for raised body temperature. In the article, The Epoch Times cites several papers in which the FDA and/or CDC claim their data mining efforts have come up empty handed.

But if that’s true, why the reluctance to release the data? Don’t they want us to be reassured that these shots are as safe as they claim them to be? Why sit on exculpatory evidence? Unless, of course, the data proves the FDA and CDC have been lying all along.

Senators Calling for Special Grand Jury

In other related news, naturopath Henry Ealy and two Oregon state senators, Kim Thatcher and Dennis Linthicum, have been trying since March 2022 to compel the impaneling of a special grand jury to investigate decisions by federal officials that “significantly compromise[d] the accuracy and integrity of COVID-related data.”²⁵

According to the March 7, 2022, petition,^26,27 filed in Portland, Oregon, the 30 defendants manipulated statistics to create “a significant hyperinflation of COVID-19 case, hospitalization and death counts,” which in turn resulted in $3.5 trillion in fraudulent taxpayer expenditures.

Defendants specifically named²⁸ are former CDC director Robert Redfield and current CDC director Rochelle Walensky, former Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Alex Azar, HHS director Xavier Becerra, and National Center for Health Statistics director Brian Moyer.

As explained by Ealy in the video update above, the defendants were given 60 days to reply to the March 7 petition. As it happened, the U.S. Attorney for Oregon, Scott Asphaug, was assigned by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to be the defending attorney — an interesting choice, considering Ealy, Thatcher and Linthicum had in 2021 asked Asphaug to investigate the listed defendants, which he refused to do.

Asphaug immediately filed for an extension, which gave them another 60 days. The defendants now had until August 26, 2022, to respond. Suddenly, July 13, the DOJ reassigned Asphaug to Nairobi, Kenya. Asphaug resigned from his post as U.S. attorney, effective July 17, at which point U.S. Attorneys Natalie Wight and Dianne Schweiner took over the CDC’s defense.

When the defendants missed the August 26 deadline, Ealy, Thatcher and Linthicum filed for default judgment.²⁹ Two days later, August 29, Wight and Schweiner opposed default judgment.³⁰

Schweiner’s excuse for missing the deadline was that she’d been busy caring for her acutely sick dog. As noted by Linthicum in his newsletter,³¹ “no self-respecting sci-fi editor would allow something this outlandish past his desk when trying to make a story about integrity and transparency sound believable.”

Ealy is now convinced the CDC is feeling the heat, and urges Americans to sign Stand for Health Freedom’s petition to convene a special grand jury to investigate the CDC’s conduct during COVID-19.

The more signatures there are on this petition, the stronger the argument that the court must order a grand jury investigation, as it demonstrates that this investigation is important to the American public, and isn’t just some pet grievance by Ealy, Thatcher and Linthicum.

As noted by Ealy, the CDC has committed criminal data fraud. There are laws prohibiting data manipulation by federal agencies, and laws meant to prevent it from happening in the first place.

The CDC violated those laws, not just once, but repeatedly, and those in charge must be held accountable. We cannot have a public health agency flouting data laws in order to justify harming the public. So, please, add your name to the grand jury petition.

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Notes

¹ Twitter FDA September 7, 2022

² Twitter FDA September 9, 2022

³ MIT Technology Review February 5, 2021

⁴ Nature Biotechnology 2022; 40: 840-854

⁵ FTC Truth in Advertising

⁶ Compliance Online Drug Ads

⁷ OpenVAERS

⁸ Politico January 17, 2021

⁹ FDA Briefing Document June 28, 2022

¹⁰ The Defender June 27, 2022

¹¹ The Epoch Times June 28, 2022 (Archived)

¹² New York Times June 27, 2022 (Archived)

¹³ Phrma.org Biopharmaceutical research and Development

¹⁴ KHN September 22, 2022

^15, 16 SSRN September 12, 2022

¹⁷ medRxiv May 17, 2022

¹⁸ Trial Site News September 1, 2022

^19, 20, 24 Epoch Times September 10, 2022

²¹ VAERS Standard Operating Procedures January 2021

²² VAERS Standard Operating Procedures February 2022

²³ All About Pharmacovigilance PRR

^25, 26, 28 Petition to impanel special grand jury March 7, 2022

²⁷ Stand For Health Freedom

²⁹ Application for entry of default August 27, 2022

³⁰ Opposition to entry of default August 29, 2022

³¹ Dennis Linthicum Newsletter

Featured image is from Mercola

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A new report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a program of the US Department of Education, confirms what most parents already knew: shutting down the schools because of the panic over covid was a disaster for American schoolchildren. According to the NAEP, since the 2020 school shutdowns the average nine-year-old suffered a decline in reading skills and math skills. The reading skills decline is the largest since 1990. The math skills decline is the first ever reported by NAEP.

What makes this especially tragic is that there was no medical justification for closing the schools. Children are unlikely to either contract or spread covid, so the idea that schools had to close to prevent children from infecting their families may be the most absurd of all the absurd claims made by covid authoritarians like Dr. Anthony “I represent science” Fauci.

It was clear to anyone truly following the science that school shutdowns were unnecessary and harmful. Yet, because of the combined clout of the teachers unions and the cult of Fauci, in many communities schools were among the last institutions to reopen. When the schools did reopen, children were forbidden to sit together at lunch or play together during recess. Children were also forced to wear masks the whole school day, which made many children sick.

The teachers unions’ pernicious role in closing the schools shows a sad disconnection among teachers union bosses (and the politicians that do their bidding) from the promoting of children’s education.

The one positive development from the school closures is that many parents discovered how concepts like critical race theory had been snuck into the government school curriculum. This has led to a parental uprising and a renewed focus on electing individuals to school boards who are committed to stopping government schools from indoctrinating children with political and social beliefs or undermining parents’ values.

Many parents moved their children to homeschooling in reaction to the school closures and the revelations on what was really being taught in government schools. After the school shutdowns, there was a huge increase in the number in homeschooling families. As dissatisfaction with government schools grows, more parents will begin homeschooling.

For almost a decade I have been involved with homeschooling through my Ron Paul Curriculum. Students using my homeschooling curriculum can attain a superior education in comparison to standards set by politicians or bureaucrats. Instead of indoctrinating students with instruction in subjects including critical race theory, the Ron Paul Curriculum provides students with a solid education in history, literature, mathematics, and the sciences. It also gives students the opportunity to create their own websites and internet-based businesses. The curriculum is designed to be self-taught, with students helping and learning from each other via online forums.

Starting in the fourth grade, students are required to write at least one essay a week. Students are required to post their essays on their blogs. Students also take a course in public speaking.

The curriculum does emphasize the history, philosophy, and economics of liberty, but it never substitutes indoctrination for education. The goal is to produce students with superior critical thinking skills who can thrive with their individuality.

If you think my curriculum may meet the needs of your child, please visit www.RonPaulCurriculum.com for more information.

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In their ongoing economic war on Russia, the United States and its allies propose a price cap on Russian oil exports. The oil price cap idea promoted by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen suggests that oil-consuming nations organize into a buyer’s cartel to limit Russia’s revenues from oil exports. This proposal follows previous measures against Russia, which have not dented its economy to the extent that it would be induced to change its posture (as the US and its allies desire) concerning the conflict in Ukraine.

Instead, the direct restrictions placed on Russian exports, principally of primary commodities such as oil and natural gas, have increased their world prices. They are so high that Russia’s export earnings have increased even if the volumes of some export have declined.

Russia currently accounts for about 10% of global oil, producing approximately 10 million barrels daily. Of these, Russia exports about 7 million barrels per day. If its exports decline, the resulting demand-supply mismatch will have speculators (principally international finance) bidding oil prices up to astronomical levels. Consequently, the proposed price cap, going by the intentions of the US and its allies, is meant to work by reducing Russian oil export earnings without reducing their magnitude.

Let us examine the US’ plan and that of its “allies” in detail. First, the ceiling price on Russian oil exports will be at a level that exceeds the cost of production of oil but below world oil prices. Second, the cap is meant to be enforced principally through controls over shipping insurance dominated by firms based in the US or its allies. It would be with the hope that if the price cap is successful, world oil prices and traded oil volumes will remain relatively stable, but Russia’s oil export earnings will decline.

If this decline is sufficiently large, the US and its allies can expect Russia to change its posture in the conflict in a way they find acceptable. However, these hopes are unlikely to be realized for several reasons.

The US has failed to convince OPEC to increase oil production, partly because of capacity constraints in coming years. Further, the US currently lacks strategic wherewithal (the “unipolar moment” has passed) to “persuade” OPEC members such as Saudi Arabia to activate their limited spare oil production capacity. Now, Iranian oil exports are part of world trade but outside the framework of the so-called rules-based international order due to unilateral US sanctions. Venezuelan oil production is also constrained by years of unilateral US sanctions. In both countries, markedly increasing production capacity will require years of investment. Moreover, their oil exports will be more expensive for European buyers than Russian oil due to higher transportation costs.

This is why Russian oil exports are irreplaceable in world trade for years to come.

Let us also examine the likely consequences of attempts by the US and its allies to enforce a price cap on Russian oil exports. Firstly, it will require a cartel of most actual and potential importers of Russian oil. China and India have effectively ruled out participating in any such exercise, using different idioms to articulate their reasoning. China is unlikely to accept a negotiation that strategically weakens Russia (the possible result if a price cap is effective) since this would be detrimental to China’s strategic standing vis-a-vis the US.

If India agrees to join this proposed buyer’s cartel, there could be at least two adverse consequences even if the price cap is effective. One, it could undermine India’s defense capacity, which disproportionately depends on Russian imports. Two, it could enhance the strategic proximity between China and Russia. This closeness could become antagonistic to India’s interests. Strategic proximity to the US may not counterbalance it in the future.

Secondly, Russia could respond to attempts to enforce a price cap by partially withholding its oil exports, leading to a rise in world oil prices. If Russian oil prices are below world market prices but above the proposed cap, some countries would find it worthwhile to import Russian oil. It has been argued that stopping oil production may require repairs when production restarts. These expenses may deter Russia from partially curtailing oil production.

However, this would be true only if the difference between Russia’s earnings from oil exports (when selling at an intermediate price between the world and capped prices) and the cost of restarting temporarily unused oil wells is lower than the earnings from oil sold at the capped price. If world oil prices rise adequately because of partial halts in oil production, it would be worthwhile for Russia to refuse to export oil at the capped price.

Thirdly, other countries that export oil or related commodities will rightly apprehend the success of the price cap as a strategy the US and its allies can use against them should they stray from the “rules-based international order.” Therefore, they are unlikely to want to cooperate with the price cap idea. Further, if Russia exports all its oil at the capped price, as long as it is below the world oil prices, any adjustment of oil supply towards demand will involve only non-Russian oil producers.

The increased volatility in the earnings of non-Russian oil-exporting countries would make them not want to cooperate with the proposed price cap.

Fourth, it is unclear how shipping insurance companies based in the US (and its allies) can monitor the actual price at which Russian oil is being exported. Suppose a country imports fertilizer and oil from Russia. The difference between the actual price of Russian oil and the capped price could be recorded in documents as part of the transaction value of fertilizer exports. Further, insurance companies in Russia or countries that import oil from it can provide insurance. It should not be very complicated since shipping insurance companies in the US or its allies primarily provide “expertise” and are not the source of the premiums. It is also possible that oil traders could “blend” oil from Russian and other sources and label it non-Russian to operate outside the framework of any price cap. Further, they could use mid-ocean ship-to-ship oil transfers to mark Russian oil as having originated in other locations, making the price cap inapplicable to such cargo.

Fifth, it is not militarily feasible for the US armed forces to impound ships carrying Russian oil exports since it would invite massive retaliation by the Russian Federation’s armed forces.

Sixth, Russia could retaliate against attempts to enforce a price cap on its oil exports in many other ways besides reducing production. For instance, contrary to reports in the mainstream media, Russia could escalate militarily in Ukraine without using nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. The Russian Federation government may conclude that the negative fallout of defeating Ukraine militarily by using overwhelming conventional force is lesser than if it allows itself to be bound by a price cap.

Resisting attempts to enforce the price cap by dropping the relative restraint of its armed forces would lead to a steep rise in casualties and refugee inflows from Ukraine into Europe and the Russian Federation. The latter may calculate that a swift end to the armed conflict will change the “cost-benefit” calculations of the US and its allies, making the proposed price cap lose its raison d’être.

Seventh, Russia is a leading primary commodity exporter. It could institute selective export restrictions of primary commodities against countries that seek to enforce the price cap. If these restrictions involve grains, fertilizers etc., it could greatly aggravate the world food crisis.

So we have a strong likelihood of Russian retaliation, an unwilling India and China, the impossibility of substituting Russian crude and gas, and unilateral sanctions raising rather than lowering Russia’s earnings. The proposed oil price cap does not seem worthwhile for those who propose it. It will likely be a strategic setback to the US, principally reflecting a fundamental feature of the contemporary international political economy—it is not strategically possible for the US to successfully contend simultaneously with China and Russia.

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Shirin Akhter is associate professor, Department of Economics, Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi.

C. Saratchand is professor, Department of Economics, Satyawati College, University of Delhi. The views are personal.