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Vector politics in Ukraine has added new dimensions to the 222 day-old conflict.

Typically, any conflict behavior should end when a new balance of powers has been determined. But the ‘balancing of powers’ will not end until a balance is actually achieved – and evidence abounds that Ukraine is about to enter yet another ‘re-balancing.’ 

Russian Duma’s ratification of the annexation of four regions of Ukraine (Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions), and the adoption of the relevant laws thereof, creates a new dynamic and will take some time to create a new balance of forces on the ground within Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, the external environment is also phenomenally transforming. The deepening energy crisis in Europe following the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines becomes a serious contradiction. There is no knowing how it can be reconciled. 

Thus, a complex situation presents itself, as all this is also happening against the backdrop of a massive Russian military build-up around Ukraine in the Kharkov region and in the southern Black Sea region, with long convoys of armor reportedly heading toward Crimea from Russia.

Russia’s new borders

The Duma’s unanimous ratification of the accession of four regions to Russia on Monday was to be expected, the relevant legislation was duly ratified on Tuesday by the Federation Council (the upper house of the parliament), and possibly, President Putin too will sign off on the documents today, following which it will come into force. That is to say, as of October 5, the annexed Ukrainian regions will have become part of Russia. 

Importantly, the Duma has approved the government’s proposals on the establishment of the new regions’ borders, based on the delimitation of territories which “existed on the day of their establishment and accession to Russia.”

The relevant treaties outline that the borders adjacent to the territory of a foreign country will be Russia’s new state border. Plainly put, the old boundaries of the Soviet era are being restored in those regions. 

The determination of the Russian state boundaries has security implications. In the Donbass and Zaporozhye Regions, there are vast areas that still remain under the control of the Ukrainian forces. Liman city in Donetsk Republic was captured by the Ukrainian forces only three days ago. The Ukrainian incursions into Kherson continue. Heavy fighting is reported.  

Evidently, much unfinished business remains for Moscow to bring under control the “occupied” territories that previously formed part of Donetsk and Lugansk. The Zaporozhye Region (which also happens to be an important littoral region on the Azov Sea and forms a part of what Russians historically call “Novorossiya”), is another priority where the capital city of the oblast itself is not yet under Russian control. 

‘Nyet’ from NATO

In the emergent situation, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky formally applied for Ukraine’s NATO membership on an expeditious basis, but within hours, the alliance poured cold water on that request, explaining that any decision will require support from all 30 member states.

It signals that there isn’t going to be any NATO intervention in Ukraine. Moscow will take note. The recent “loud thinking” about the use of nuclear weapons seems to have served its purpose. 

The US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s meeting with the head of Ukraine’s presidential office Andriy Yermak in Istanbul on Sunday was a low-key affair. The White House said Sullivan pledged Washington’s steadfast support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and discussed with Yermak the situation at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant and Ukraine’s continued work with the United Nations to export food to the world.

The White House readout on President Joe Biden’s call with Zelensky on Monday mentioned a new $625 million security assistance package by Washington that includes additional weapons and equipment, including HIMARS, artillery systems and ammunition, and armored vehicles. Biden “pledged to continue supporting Ukraine as it defends itself from Russian aggression for as long as it takes.” 

Later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the recent aid delivery would bring the overall cost of US military aid to Ukraine to more than $17.5 billion.

“Recent developments… only strengthens our resolve,” Blinken said in a statement on Tuesday. “We will continue to stand with the people of Ukraine.”

“The capabilities we are delivering are carefully calibrated to make the most difference on the battlefield and strengthen Ukraine’s hand at the negotiating table when the time is right,” he added. 

Revamping Russia’s strategy

On the other hand, the Russian military command will probably have to reset the parameters of the special military operations, since its forces will henceforth be safeguarding the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. What form its takes remains to be seen.

So far, the actual Russian deployment has been less than 100,000 troops. Most of the fighting was done by the militia groups such as fighters from Donbass and Chechnya and the Wagner Group of ex-special services personnel and other volunteers from Russia. 

Certainly, the induction of 300,000 troops with previous military experience will impact the overall military balance to Russia’s advantage. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has said that another 70,000 men have also volunteered, which will put the total strength of the additional forces at around 370,000.

Now, that is a huge increase. To get a sense of proportions, at the peak of the Vietnam War, the US deployment stood at around half a million troops. For the first time, Russia will have vast numerical superiority over Ukrainian forces. Therefore, it is entirely conceivable that the old pattern of “grinding” the Ukrainian forces may change and the objective will be to end the war quickly and decisively. 

The US decision to set up a command centre outside Ukraine (in Germany) seems to anticipate Russian attacks on command centres in Kiev and elsewhere with much bigger use of airpower, as in Syria. In fact, the new commander of the Western Military District Lt. Gen. Roman Berdnikov previously led the Russian intervention in Syria. 

Military experts anticipate that once autumn rains give way to the winter and the ground hardens, the Russian operations will intensify. Voices of dissent are heard lately within Russia that the war is meandering with no timeline as such. This may change. 

Plainly put, the point of no return is fast approaching from where Russia will have no alternative but to push for a regime change in Kiev and pave the way for an altogether new Ukrainian leadership that shakes off the vice-like Anglo-American grip, and is willing to settle with Russia. 

A Kafkaesque moment   

Unsurprisingly though, the attention in Europe is turning more and more towards the economic crisis with looming double-digit inflation and recession, which can lead to social unrest and political turmoil all across the continent. The growing public discontent is turning into protests in many European countries already. The crisis can only deepen once winter sets in. 

Conceivably, the shift in the popular mood may prompt the European governments to concentrate on their domestic issues rather than dabble in the Ukraine war. The most ardent votary of open-ended war with Russia is Britain, but even London is caught up in massive economic (and political) crises of its own. Prime Minister Liz Truss is fighting for political survival. The Conservatives have practically forfeited their mandate to rule. 

Germany’s predicament

Again, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union opposition bloc in the German Bundestag stalled a motion urging the government to “immediately” allow the export of German battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine. Politico reported that “A vote on weapons deliveries in the Bundestag would have risked revealing fatal cracks in the government unity and could even have led to a defeat of (Chancellor Olaf) Scholz in parliament.”

On the other hand, the German government also faces mounting pressure from the Eastern European allies in recent weeks to drastically increase the scale and type of Berlin’s military support to Ukraine. 

The influential Foreign Policy magazine in Washington wrote last week,

“In the eyes of Berlin’s NATO allies in Eastern Europe, particularly the countries that border Russia, Germany, the economic and political power centre of Europe, isn’t doing nearly enough. And the longer it delays, the more it risks a long-term diplomatic fracture with those allies in the East.” 

But despite this pressure tactic, polls show that while some 70 percent of Germans are supportive of Ukraine generally, only 35 percent endorse stronger military support. 

In this situation, the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline dovetails into the energy crisis in Europe and threatens European countries with “de-industrialization.”

For Germany, in particular, the country’s economic model is riveted on the availability of abundant gas supplies from Russia, per long-term contracts, at cheap prices, through pipelines. Clearly, the sabotage of the Nord Stream has monumental implications. 

To be sure, whoever perpetrated that terrorist attack calculated shrewdly that Russian gas should not flow to Europe for the foreseeable future. The perennial fear in Washington is that a German-Russian proximity may develop if energy ties are restored. Besides, today, US oil companies are having a huge windfall of profits in the European energy market, replacing Russia, by selling LNG at five to six times the US domestic price. 

Preventing Russian-German reconciliation

What complicates matters is that Europe needs energy security in the short and medium term without also wrecking climate targets. It means heightened geopolitical sensitivity. The point is, Europe’s orderly energy transition away from fossil fuels critically needs Russian gas and was built on the earlier assumption that there would be cheap and plentiful natural gas. 

Arguably, Moscow kept hoping that Nord Stream would eventually be a catalyst to heal the rupture in German-Russian energy ties. Interestingly, on Monday, Russian energy giant Gazprom proposed to European gas customers that part of the damaged Nord Stream network could still transport fuel — but only on the newly constructed Nord Stream 2. Nord Stream 1 is virtually destroyed.  

A Gazprom statement in its Telegram account said that one of the three lines of the Nord Stream 2 remains unaffected and the gas giant has lowered the pressure to inspect the link for damage and potential leaks. Nord Stream 2 has a shipment capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year, which means its line B could deliver as much as 27.5 billion cubic meters per year to Germany across the Baltic Sea.

However, the Nord Stream 2 requires EU approval, which is problematic given the tensions between Brussels and Moscow. These tensions may only increase if the EU approves the US-led decision by the G7 countries to impose a price cap on Russian oil. 

Most certainly, that is also Washington’s calculus — pin down Germany and keep Russia out. The spectre that haunts Washington is that Berlin may lose interest in the Ukraine war. The ascendancy of the Atlanticists in the echelons of power in Berlin in the most recent years – and their nexus with the virulently Russophobic EU bureaucrats in Brussels – has so far worked splendidly in Washington’s favor.

The EU is effectively over

But the ground beneath the feet is shifting, as the dramatic turn in Sweden and Italy’s politics has shown. 

Do not underestimate the “Meloni effect.” The heart of the matter is that the far-right forces invariably have more to offer to the electorate in times of insecurity and economic hardship.

In France too, President Macron is immobilized, lacking a parliamentary majority to legislate, and is being worn down by serial crises. As for Britain, the financial crisis triggered by the Chancellor of Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng’s budget highlights fundamentally the scarcity of feasible alternative economic models. Sterling is in free fall. Two consecutive Tory administrations failed to come up with a post-Brexit model, while Labour never wanted Brexit. The Truss government is the last chance to get Brexit really done, but no-one is holding their breath. And then, the Deluge — events will intrude. 

What all this means is that the three main power centers within the Eurozone and Britain are finding it hard to escape the old, dying industrial world of the 20th century and this is not the best of time to take on the half-million strong Russian allied forces in Ukraine, the Biden Administration’s bravado notwithstanding. 

Do not lend credence to the inaugural summit of the European Political Community (EPC) in Prague on Wednesday bringing together the leaders of 27 EU member states and up to 17 non-EU countries – namely, the UK, Turkey, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Israel. 

The plain truth is that the European integration project is over and done with. Any attempt to impose it will produce severe backlash. Looking back, therefore, the rupture with Russia has ushered in a new geopolitical landscape in Europe where Brussels’ conundrum regarding EU expansion stands exposed. The EPC is nothing but a disguised French ploy to slow down actual EU membership for countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. 

The EPC summit at the Prague Castle only serves to highlight that this is a Kafkaesque moment in European politics. This must be Ukraine’s revenge on Europe for staging such a cynical, violent coup in 2014 to cut its umbilical cord with Russia. 

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***

Ministers from a group of oil exporting countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed on Wednesday to slash output by two million barrels a day, prompting pushback from the US and igniting fears that it could propel global inflation higher. 

The decision came despite heavy lobbying by Washington in Gulf capitals against the move.

“It’s clear that Opec+ is aligning with Russia with today’s announcement,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said aboard Air Force One.

“The president is disappointed by the shortsighted decision of Opec+,” national security advisor Jake Sullivan and top economic advisor Brian Deese said in a statement.

The cut, equivalent to two percent of daily global supply, was proposed by the Saudi-led Opec+ meeting in Vienna on Wednesday. It is substantially higher than the one million barrels analysts had expected, and the biggest cut since April 2020.

Saudi Arabia and Russia aim to support prices amid signs that the global economy is slowing, with the possibility of a recession on the horizon. Oil prices usually drop when global economic growth slows.

The decision to cut production is likely to put pressure on relations between the US and Saudi Arabia, with Wednesday’s move seen as a win for Russia, particularly as it has faced battlefield losses in Ukraine, and reduced revenue from falling oil prices in recent weeks.

‘Technical and not political?’

US President Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia in July in a bid to repair strained ties with Saudi Arabia. Shortly after meeting with Saudi rulers, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Biden said he expected Riyadh to take “further steps” to boost oil supply.

The backlash against Wednesday’s production cut has already appeared in some quarters of Washington.

US Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, a noted critic of Saudi Arabia, said the Opec+ decision should lead to “a wholesale re-evaluation of the US alliance with Saudi Arabia”.

Gulf states are pushing back against that narrative.

“Tell me where is the act of belligerence,” Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said during a news conference at Opec’s headquarters in Vienna, when asked if the cut would strain ties with the US.

“We shall act and react to what is happening to the global economy in the most responsible and responsive way.”

The energy minister of the United Arab Emirates, Suhail al-Mazrouei, said the cut in production was “technical and not political”.

OPEC Secretary-General Haitham Al Ghais, from Kuwait, said the cartel was trying to ensure “security [and] stability to the energy markets.”

“Everything has a price,” Ghais said. “Energy security has a price as well.”

Recession headwinds

Oil prices skyrocketed above $100 a barrel earlier this year after Russia invaded Ukraine.

While they have fallen about 32 percent from their highs over the past four months, the drop has been due mainly to fears of slowing economic growth – particularly in China – as opposed to increased production.

Some say Riyadh needs little motivation outside of economics to back the production cut.

“Saudi Arabia sees a recession coming next year and they don’t want to be stuck with millions of barrels of cheap oil. They see now as the time to get the best price,” a former senior US official told Middle East Eye, on condition of anonymity.

The kingdom’s coffers have been buoyed by high crude prices. Earlier this year, Saudi Aramco overtook Apple as the world’s most valuable company.

Saudi Arabia is expected to be one of the world’s fastest-growing economies this year, and is using its oil wealth to push ahead with pro-business reforms and mega-projects such as Neom, designed to wean the country off its reliance on petrodollars.

And with an inflation rate of 2.8 percent, the oil-rich kingdom has also been more insulated from the price rises that are sweeping the globe – a hot-button political issue for Biden’s party in the November midterm elections.

‘Reduce Opec’s control’

In response to Wednesday’s decision, Biden called on his administration and US Congress to explore ways to “boost US energy production and reduce Opec’s control over energy prices,” the White House said.

The statement said Biden was ordering another dip into the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, with 10 million barrels set to be put on the market next month in an attempt to dampen price rises.

However, those reserves are fast emptying after record withdrawals were ordered by the administration, starting back in March. The reserves are now at their lowest level since July 1984, and it is not clear when the administration plans to purchase a refill.

Oil prices had risen about five percent since Friday, in anticipation of Wednesday’s meeting. International benchmark Brent was up 1.86 percent, at $93.47 a barrel on Wednesday morning.

Analysts say the cut was likely to hinder western countries’ efforts to cut Russia’s profits on oil sales. The European Union has moved towards agreeing a G-7 plan to cap the price paid for Russian oil.

Also on Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for EU countries to make deeper cuts to gas demand, while proposing a raft of price cap measures designed to protect consumers and businesses.

In September, Russia cut gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in response to Western sanctions. Soaring energy prices have prompted Europe to look to alternative suppliers of gas, including Israel, Egypt, Algeria and Qatar to fill the void left by Russia.

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***

The US insists on escalating the situation in Ukraine and deteriorating the global security crisis. On October 4, the US government announced another package of military aid to Kiev, valued at more than 625 million dollars. Despite the country being under a serious political, social, and economic crisis, with the public debt exceeding 30 trillion dollars, supporting Kiev’s neo-Nazi regime is the number one priority of the unpopular Biden administration.

However, more serious than the mere act of helping Ukraine is the type of assistance that has been provided. A few months ago, the US began sending M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to Ukraine, ignoring several Russian requests that such weapons not be supplied to Kiev. At the time, American officials stated that such weapons would be used by their partners only within Ukrainian territorial limits, not hitting targets in Russia.

The problem is that the US does not recognize Russian sovereignty over the recently reintegrated regions and not even over Crimea, which in 2014 was admitted as part of Russia after the popular will in this sense was attested by referendum. With that, the impasse remains: for the US, weapons can be used within the entire territorial limit that Kiev claims to have, which includes Russian areas.

Shortly after the announcement of the latest aid package by the Biden government, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russian, Ukrainian and European Affairs, Laura Cooper, commented on the case and emphasized the ability of the weapons provided to reach Russian Crimea:

“It’s our assessment that with the existing GMLRS [Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System] capability that they have on the HIMARS and that we’re providing more of, with this package, that they can reach the vast majority of targets on the battlefield, including Crimea (…) [This package is] valued at up to $625 million [and] will contribute to meeting Ukraine’s critical defense needs”.

It is well known that such weapons, depending on where they are located, could reach Crimea. What was expected was the American willingness to demand from its Ukrainian proxies a rational posture, limiting the use of lethal equipment to zones within the disputed territory. Crimea is not even a conflict zone, as Russian sovereignty in the region has been pacified since 2014. Hitting Crimea, as Ukrainian forces have already done several times and Russia ignored in order to avoid escalation, is an offensive on Russian territory. And Cooper’s words at this point sound like a kind of “authorization” on the part of Washington for this type of conduct to be carried out by Kiev.

In fact, the situation is more serious than that. The very justification for this recent package was the “need” to react to the Russian referenda, considered by the West as an illegal maneuver. This was confirmed by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken himself, who commented on the package stating:

“Recent developments from Russia’s sham referenda and attempted annexation to new revelations of brutality against civilians in Ukrainian territory formerly controlled by Russia only strengthens our resolve”.

In practice, the statements by Cooper and Blinken only confirm that the US will not respect the popular decision of the peoples of those regions to be part of Russia, and therefore there is no requirement on the part of Washington for Kiev to limit its attack capacity. Bombings against Kherson, Zaparozhye, Donetsk, Lugansk and even Crimea are “authorized” and are even encouraged by the West as a way of ending what is considered an “illegal Russian occupation”.

A more flexible stance on the part of the West could be achieved if there was a diplomatic disposition. Not having recognition does not mean allowing bombings and encouraging destabilization. It would be absolutely possible for Washington, even not recognizing the legitimacy of Russian sovereignty in these regions, to prevent Kiev from bombing them, just in order to avoid an even greater military escalation. However, for the US and NATO, decelerating the conflict and seeking peace was never a priority. The West seems really ready to take the fighting to its ultimate consequences, as long as Russia continues to be confronted and attacked in every possible way.

The conflict radically changes its nature from the moment the Russian Federation becomes the target of attacks. The special military operation for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine now coexists with an operation for the territorial defense of regions that are part of Russia. Protecting territorial integrity is a top priority for any national state and Moscow will certainly take all necessary measures to prevent its reintegrated regions from being bombed by foreign regimes.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

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***

Iraq remains in turmoil three years after mass protests erupted across the country. Thousands of Iraqis gathered last Saturday in Tahrir Square in Baghdad to mark the anniversary of demonstrations against mismanagement, corruption and the sectarian regime imposed on Iraq by the US occupation regime. They chanted, “Ash-sha’b yurid isqat an-nizam,” “The people want to bring down the regime.” This was the chant adopted by Egyptians in their Tahrir Square during the 2011 Arab Spring of discontent.

Iraqi security forces responded with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets, injuring dozens, and arresting scores. Protests also erupted in the south, including Nasiriya, Diwaniya and Basra.

News of the September 19th killing of Iraqi teenage girl, Zeinab Essam, allegedly, by gunfire from US military Camp Victory near Abu Ghraib has also stirred resentment over the residual US presence in Iraq.  Reports of her death been widely circulated on social media and prompted pro-Iran Shia militias to demand the expulsion of all US troops from the country.

Her demise has enraged her parents and other farming families living near the camp. They had previously complained about stray bullets. Amwaj media reported that US Baghdad operations command has pledged to carry out an investigation into the incident. Amwaj has pointed out that some Iraqis using Twitter have criticised the limited reporting on [her] killing compared to the media focus on Mahsa Amiri, a young Iranian woman who recently died in custody after being detained by morality police in Iran for failing to wear her headscarf properly.

The 2019 demonstrators not only demanded a new secular political system but also called for an end to US and Iranian interference in Iraq’s affairs. More than 560 people were killed before COVID cancelled mass demonstrations in 2020. They brought down Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi but not the dysfunctional system which decrees that the president must be a Kurd, the prime minister a Shiite and the assembly speaker a Sunni. His successor Mustafa Kadhimi has also failed to meet the protesters’ demands and is now a caretaker premier. Last October’s parliamentary election was meant to clarify and improve the situation but, instead, exacerbated political turmoil.

Meanwhile, the high price of oil has provided increased revenue to the Iraqi government but has not benefitted the population which continues to suffer from higher costs of essential imports and rising inflation.  Due to multiple crises which have afflicted Iraq since Daesh occupied Mosul and much of the north, the poverty rate has risen from 19 to 30 per cent.  Unemployment and food insecurity are driving household and child poverty. Five years after Daesh was driven from its false “caliphate”, 1.2 million Iraqis remain in displacement camps, due to the destruction of their homeowns and villages, rejection by Iraqis now living there, and exclusion by Shiite militias in control of the areas where they once lived.

Sweden’s International Development Cooperation Agency reports that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated dramatically because of “climate change, coupled with severe environmental degradation and mismanagement of natural resources”, creating “a very real danger for ecosystem collapse in Iraq, specifically threatening biodiversity, water and food security as well as long term stability.”

The 2021-2022 drought has dried Iraq’s ancient rivers, agricultural production and turned the country into a dust bowl. The temperature is rising and heatwaves last longer. In August this year, Basra recorded a temperature of 51.8ºC, the highest in the world to date.  Once considered the Venice of the region, Basra has long been afflicted with power cuts and water shortages, making it one of the most unliveable cities on earth.

Compounding misery with illness, the BBC has revealed that communities living near the oil fields in Basra province are at risk of suffering leukaemia because the burning of gas released in oil drilling which emits pollutants that cause cancer. The BBC reports that British Petroleum and Italy’s multi-national ENI are the main firms present in the Basra area. The Iraqi health ministry blamed flaring for a 20 per cent increase in cancer between 2016-2018. Farmers interviewed by the BBC said they also have kidney disease and breathing problems. Children have been particularly susceptible but have not been offered compensation to provide them with health care. Iraq, of course, depends on these companies and has not raised legal cases.  There are five major oil fields in Basra province. The largest, Rumaila is the chief polluter.

When I was a child living in the US mid-west, Iraqi dates were an annual Christmas treat in our household. As far as I knew at that time, Iraq was the world’s main source of dates. Indeed, I later learned Iraq did export most of the dates reaching world markets. The war with Iran (1980-1988) and the 2003-2011 US occupation reduced by half Iraq’s 30 million date palms. Consequently, Iraqi date exports are only 5 per cent of global consumption. Shortage of water, disease, and lack of care have taken their toll among date palms although the trees are said to be making a comeback in leafy suburbs of Baghdad. The tall palms in the large garden of my friends, Suad, Selma, Nuha and Abbad al-Radi were ailing when I last visited the compound in 2004 and the Radis did not know if they could be saved. Perhaps they have. The date palm has been a symbol of Iraq long before oil rigs sprouted in its deserts.

Oil-rich Iraq should be flourishing but is, instead, floundering on the edge of collapse thanks to internal disputes and the never-ending politico-military-economic interventions of Western and regional powers.

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Featured image: U.S. Army guarding Rumaylah Oil Fields, Southern Iraq, 2003. Photo credit: U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons

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***

Russian President Vladimir Putin has decreed Ukraine’s Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant is a Russian federal asset, absorbing all facilities and employees as the Kremlin’s push in the east loses momentum against Ukrainian forces.

The nuclear facility, the largest in Europe, was captured by Russian forces in March, with Ukrainian employees running day-to-day operations under siege conditions that have the world’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, concerned about the facility’s vulnerability to disaster.

In a decree published Wednesday by Russia’s Tass news agency, Putin ordered the official takeover of Zaporozhye nuclear assets, stating:

“The Russian government shall take measures to establish federal ownership of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant and other facilities necessary for its operation.”

According to Tass, Putin also instructed the government to set up the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant federal state unitary company, granting “the joint-stock company the Operator of the Zaporozhye NPP the status of an organization with operations in the area of nuclear energy”.

Ukraine’s state energy agency has responded with a categorical rejection of Putin’s decree, announcing that its state energy agency head was taking over the plant.

“All further decisions regarding the operation of the station will be made directly at the central office of Energoatom,” Ukraine state energy chief Petro Kotin said in a video address posted on Telegram, as reported by Reuters.

“We will continue to work under Ukrainian law, within the Ukrainian energy system, within Energoatom,” Kotin said.

The plant is located in Zaporizhzhia, a region that Putin officially integrated into Russia on Wednesday, following sham referendums. Russia has now annexed four partially Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine.

Moscow formally annexed the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions into the Russian Federation earlier on Wednesday.

Three weeks ago, Ukraine was forced to shut down the nuclear facility amid heavy shelling. At the time of Putin’s decree, Ukraine was considering whether to restart Zaporozhye to ensure the equipment is not undermined.

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Charles is a writer for Oilprice.com.

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***

Polish President Andrzej Duda said in an interview published Wednesday that Poland is open to hosting US nuclear weapons and has approached Washington about the idea.

Currently, NATO members Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey host US nuclear weapons under NATO’s nuclear sharing program. The US and NATO have previously said that they wouldn’t place nuclear weapons in countries that joined the alliance after the Cold War, but Duda said discussions on the issue are happening.

“There is always a potential opportunity to participate in the nuclear sharing program,” Duda told the newspaper Gazeta Polska. “We have spoken with American leaders about whether the United States is considering such a possibility. The issue is open.”

The provocative statements from Duda come amid soaring tensions between the US and Russia that largely stem from NATO expansion east of Germany since the end of the Cold War and the alliance’s promise to eventually absorb Ukraine.

The US recently announced it was building a permanent military base in Poland, breaking from an agreement with Russia known as the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. Under the act, the US and NATO agreed not to establish permanent bases east of Germany.

The US argues that the base in Poland doesn’t violate the act because troops will be deployed to the facility on a rotational basis, but it’s unlikely Moscow will see it that way.

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

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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Pages: 102

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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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First published on by Global Research on October 8 2021

***

“But again, the thing to emphasize here is that we’re not eager to have the United States come in and become an occupying power in Afghanistan… At the same time, we want to see to it that what is left behind gives the Afghan people the opportunity to develop a strong representative government, a government that can guarantee that in the future, no terrorists will once again find sanctuary or safe harbor in Afghanistan.”

– U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney (December 9, 2001)[1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

On October 7, 2001 military strikes over Afghanistan were launched by U.S. and British forces – the long awaited other shoe to drop following the 9/11 terrorism attacks. [2]

NATO was also involved, responding to the Article Five call to retaliate collectively against an attack by the country in question (which was never proven.) Over time, the Taliban was routed from power and a new supposedly democratic government put in place. [3][4][5]

It was the starting pistol marking the war “which would not end in our lifetimes.”

Ten years later, Osama Bin Laden, the lead man behind the 9/11 attacks (though his involvement was never actually established) was allegedly found, killed and thrown into the sea – truly a testament to the dedication of legality and due process! Yet it would be another ten years before the forces dispatched to the West Asian country would finally be withdrawn.[6]

And what was upshot of two decades of occupation, nearly a trillion dollars in military power and the deaths and injuries of over 100,000 civilians? Afghanistan is once again in the hands of the Taliban![7]

The sad factor is that this tragedy started not with the September 11 attacks, but more than twenty years previously to that when it was a secular country already exciting much of the populace with reforms and constitutional change, including more equal rights for women! U.S. actions initiated the violent measures that essentially created the Taliban and all the other Mujahedin fighters determined to replace progressive developers with brutal killers.

On this sad anniversary week, the Global Research News Hour intends to reflect on the origins behind the chaos which seems to be as remote now as it was back in 2001 when the venture against terror was established. We’ll also look to the future of the country with the U.S. and company hi-tailing it away from there.

Our first guest, Professor John Ryan, looks at Afghanistan’s history by examining his own visit in November 1978 and the sequence of U.S. covert operations which led to the downfall of the Afghan of a progressive government and the rise of Islamic jihadists. He is followed by Professor Rodrigue Tremblay who reflects on the reasons why the U.S. essentially lost the war, and what this decision enacted under President Biden would mean in the foreseeable elections. Our final guest, Professor Michel Chossudovsky expresses the informed viewpoint that the U.S. withdrawal was in fact a victory with respect to some of the real reasons for attacking the country in the first place.

John Ryan is a retired Professor of Geography and Senior Scholar of Geography at the University of Winnipeg. He is also a long-time socialist. He was one of the few Western academics to visit and report on his experiences in Afghanistan in a unique period in the late 1970s.

Rodrigue Tremblay is an International economist, is the author of the book about morals “The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles” of the book about geopolitics “The New American Empire“, and the recent book , in French, “La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018“. He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Michel Chossudovsky is Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization in, Montreal, and Editor of Global Research. He is Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, and award wining author of 11 books including The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015) .

(Global Research News Hour Episode 327)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.

CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

1. NBC News Transcripts SHOW: Meet the Press – NBC December 9, 2001 ;   http://www.leadingtowar.com/PDFsources_claims_atta/2001_12_09_NBCmtp.pdf
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1556588.stm
3. Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Defence Committee (2006). The UK Deployment to Afghanistan: Fifth Report of Session 2005–06; Report, Together with Formal Minutes, Oral and Written Evidence. The Stationery Office. p. 39
4. https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/natos-lessons-afghanistan
5. Press for Conversion Issue #59, (September 2006), p. 5, ‘The New Face of Terror in Afghanistan: How so-called “Democracy” Empowered our Allies: the Fundamentalists, Warlords and Drug Barons’
6. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2012/11/22/secret-details-of-bin-laden-burial-revealed
7. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47391821

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***

Bright Light News Reports: Drs. Charles Hoffe and Stephen Malthouse, Canadian doctors vilified for daring to uphold their oath and share the truth about Covid-19 “vaccines,” join co-founder Cris Vleck, vaxjustice.org, to give a voice and support to those who did what they were asked: get “vaccinated” to protect themselves and others to stop the “pandemic.”

Instead, they suffered injuries and were then ignored and ridiculed for making such claims. The U.S. OPENVAERS system reporting over 1.4 million adverse events and 31,000 deaths is small testament to the incontrovertible fact that something seriously dangerous and unjust is afoot.

Join Drs. Hoffe and Malthouse and Vleck, as they discuss the 10-day touring campaign to bring Justice for the Vaccinated and visit vaxjustice.org if you or somebody you know has been injured to make a report and/or to receive support or to make a donation.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate This Article button below the author’s name.

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***

“If you can’t say ‘F@#k’ you can’t say, ‘F@#k’ the government.’”— Lenny Bruce, comedian

Anti-government speech has become a four-letter word.

In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

Indeed, there is a long and growing list of the kinds of speech that the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation and prosecution: hate speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, extremist speech, etc.

Things are about to get even dicier for those who believe in fully exercising their right to political expression.

Indeed, the government’s seditious conspiracy charges against Stewart Rhodes, the founder of Oath Keepers, and several of his associates for their alleged involvement in the January 6 Capitol riots puts the entire concept of anti-government political expression on trial.

Enacted during the Civil War to prosecute secessionists, seditious conspiracy makes it a crime for two or more individuals to conspire to “‘overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force’ the U.S. government, or to levy war against it, or to oppose by force and try to prevent the execution of any law.”

It’s a hard charge to prove, and the government’s track record hasn’t been the greatest.

It’s been almost a decade since the government tried to make a seditious conspiracy charge stick—against a small Christian militia accused of plotting to kill a police officer and attack attendees at his funeral in order to start a civil war—and it lost the case.

Although the government was able to show that the Hutaree had strong anti-government views, the judge ruled in U.S. v. Stone that “[O]ffensive speech and a conspiracy to do something other than forcibly resist a positive show of authority by the Federal Government is not enough to sustain a charge of seditious conspiracy.”

Whether or not prosecutors are able to prove their case that Rhodes and his followers intended to actually overthrow the government, the blowback will be felt far and wide by anyone whose political views can be labeled “anti-government.”

All of us are in danger.

In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.”

The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American with an opinion about the government or who knows someone with an opinion about the government an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

You see, the government doesn’t care if you or someone you know has a legitimate grievance. It doesn’t care if your criticisms are well-founded. And it certainly doesn’t care if you have a First Amendment right to speak truth to power.

What the government cares about is whether what you’re thinking or speaking or sharing or consuming as information has the potential to challenge its stranglehold on power.

Why else would the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies be investing in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram?

Why else would the Biden Administration be likening those who share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” to terrorists?

According to the Department of Homeland Security’s terrorism bulletin, “[T]hreat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence.”

By the government’s own definition, America’s founders would be considered domestic extremists for the heavily charged rhetoric they used to birth this nation.

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin would certainly be placed on a terrorist watch list for suggesting that Americans should not only take up arms but be prepared to shed blood in order to protect their liberties.

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms,” declared Jefferson. He also concluded that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Observed Franklin: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”

Thomas Paine, Marquis De Lafayette, John Adams and Patrick Henry would certainly be labelled domestic extremists for exhorting Americans to defend themselves against the government if it violates their rights.

“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government,” insisted Paine.

“When the government violates the people’s rights,” Lafayette warned, “insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

Adams cautioned, “A settled plan to deprive the people of all the benefits, blessings and ends of the contract, to subvert the fundamentals of the constitution, to deprive them of all share in making and executing laws, will justify a revolution.”

And who could forget Patrick Henry with his ultimatum: “Give me liberty or give me death!”

Conduct your own experiment into the government’s tolerance of speech that challenges its authority, and see for yourself: stand on a street corner—or in a courtroom, at a city council meeting or on a university campus— and try denouncing the government with some of the founders’ rhetoric.

My guess is that you won’t last long before you get thrown out, shut up, threatened with arrest or at the very least accused of being a radical, a troublemaker, a sovereign citizen, a conspiratorialist or an extremist.

Or maybe you’ll just be fined.

It’s happening all across the country.

In Punta Gorda, Florida, for instance, two political activists were fined $3000 for displaying protest flags with political messages that violated the city’s ordinance banning signs, clothing and other graphic displays containing words that the city deems “indecent.”

During the first month of the new ordinance being enacted, Andrew Sheets was cited four times by police for violating the ordinance by displaying phrases which said “F@#k Policing 4 Profit,” “F@#k Trump,” and “F@#k Biden.” Richard Massey was cited for violating the ordinance by displaying a sign which proclaimed, “F@#k Punta Gorda, trying to illegally kill free speech.”

Coming to the defense of the two activists, The Rutherford Institute challenged the City of Punta Gorda’s ban on indecent speech as unconstitutionally vague and a violation of the First Amendment’s safeguards for political speech that may not be censored or punished by the government.

We won the first round, with the Charlotte County Circuit Court ruling against the City, noting that the ordinance was “designed to cause the preemptive self-silencing of speakers whose messages are entitled to constitutional protection.”

In other words, as the court recognized, the ordinance was clearly designed to chill political speech, which is protected under the First Amendment.

You see, the right of political free speech is the basis of all liberty.

No matter what one’s political persuasion might be, every American has a First Amendment right to protest government programs or policies with which they might disagree.

The right to disagree with and speak out against the government is the quintessential freedom.

Every individual has a right to speak truth to power using every nonviolent means available.

This is why the First Amendment is so critical. It gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of reprisal.

Americans of all stripes would do well to remember that those who question the motives of government provide a necessary counterpoint to those who would blindly follow where politicians choose to lead.

We don’t have to agree with every criticism of the government, but we must defend the rights of allindividuals to speak freely without fear of punishment or threat of banishment.

This is how freedom rises or falls.

As comedian Lenny Bruce, a lifelong champion of free speech, remarked, “If you can’t say ‘F@#k’ you can’t say, ‘F@#k’ the government.’”

Bruce, foul-mouthed, insightful, irreverent, and incredibly funny, was one of the First Amendment’s greatest champions who dared to “speak the unspeakable” about race, religion, sexuality and politics. As Village Voice writer Nat Hentoff attests, Bruce was “not only a paladin of free speech but also a still-penetrating, woundingly hilarious speaker of truth to the powerful and the complacent.”

Bruce died in 1966, but not before being convicted of alleged obscenity for challenging his audience’s covert prejudices by brandishing unmentionable words that, if uttered today, would not only get you ostracized but could get you arrested and charged with a hate crime.

Hentoff, who testified in Bruce’s defense at his trial, recounts that Lenny used to say, “What I wanted people to dig is the lie. Certain words were suppressed to keep the lie going. But if you do them, you should be able to say the words.”

Not much has changed in the 50-plus years since Bruce died. In fact, it’s gotten worse.

What we’re dealing with today is a government that wants to suppress dangerous words—words about its warring empire, words about its land grabs, words about its militarized police, words about its killing, its poisoning and its corruption—in order to keep its lies going.

What we are witnessing is a nation undergoing a nervous breakdown over this growing tension between our increasingly untenable reality and the lies being perpetrated by a government that has grown too power-hungry, egotistical, militaristic and disconnected from its revolutionary birthright.

The only therapy is the truth and nothing but the truth.

If the government censors get their way, there will be no more First Amendment.

There will be no more Bill of Rights.

And, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, there will be no more freedom in America as we have known it.

*

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

Featured image is from City News Service

Bosnia Herzegovina: In the Republic of Srpska, So Far Another Orange Revolution Falls Flat

By Stephen Karganovic, October 05, 2022

In the midst of several geopolitically important elections (Brazil, Bulgaria) which all took place on Sunday, the one in the Republic of Srpska may have gone somewhat under the radar. Arguably, however, it was no less important.

Local and National organizations Call Upon the City of Calgary to “Keep CAF Out of Calgary”

By Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, October 06, 2022

The campaign is intended to pressure Mayor Gondek, Calgary City Council, and the Green Line Board to terminate their contract with CAF (Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles), the Basque multinational corporation that the Green Line Board awarded the light rail vehicle (LRV) procurement contract to, with construction set to begin in 2023.

Rethinking the Second Amendment

By Emanuel Pastreich, October 05, 2022

As we struggle to bring Americans together from across the political spectrum, to form substantial and committed institutions that will support the battle for freedom and equality, the struggle against slavery and corporate governance by the billionaires, the Second Amendment of the Constitution, the right to bear arms, keeps coming up as a point of contention, of division, in our discussions.

Human Chain for Julian Assange this Saturday, October 8

By Don’t Extradite Assange, October 05, 2022

The assembly time is 1pm but we expect people to start arriving from 12.30. Our stewards will direct you to the end of the chain and ask you to take your place. There will be some travel disruptions on the rail network due to strike action on 8 October so please check your travel for the day and plan accordingly: (nearest tube: Westminster / buses: 12,159,453)

Property “Personal”: “Freedom and Personal Property Lost in the Last 2 1/2 Years”

By Peter Koenig, October 05, 2022

The question of what is property and what is possession arises for me from a philosophical-human analysis. It shows that property is closely connected with freedom. So, it is intimately linked with “today”, the time in which every day more of our freedom – and by association — of our personal property, is taken away.

Moldovan President Sandu Cares Little for Her Country’s Sovereignty

By Ahmed Adel, October 05, 2022

Moldovan President Maia Sandu told Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus, in thinking she was speaking to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, about her willingness to transfer the southern town of Giurgiulești to Kiev for several years.

Will Biden Know When to Stop?

By Alastair Crooke, October 05, 2022

The meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Samarkand has prompted a geo-economic earthquake – as did President Putin’s subsequent announcement of a partial mobilisation and referenda in four oblasts (provinces) of Ukraine, which almost certainly will result in their lightening integration into Russia.

Ukraine and the Balkans. US-NATO Flagrant Violations of Human Rights

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, October 05, 2022

The long-term crisis in the relations between the Russian Federation and Ukraine entered its final – war phase on February 24^th, 2022. The official reactions to the latest dramatic events in East Europe, which come from the Westerners, including the most important overseas Western political address, are usually dominated by two phrases.

India Can Live with US-Pakistan Makeover

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, October 05, 2022

The US state department spokesman Ned Price has put External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on the mat as regards the latter’s remarks questioning the raison d’etre of the US-Pakistan relationship. 

The Coutts Four: Alberta Is Home to Political Prisoners

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, October 04, 2022

The Coutts Four, convicted so far of nothing, are being held in custody until their trial begins sometime in mid-to-late 2023. Being made to suffer in prison for a year and a half before they can face their accusers in open court is sufficient justification for advancing the case that Alberta is now home to political prisoners.

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***

On October 5th, 2022 at 12:00 pm, Justice for Palestinians (JfP) and Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) will be launching a campaign called “CAF out of Calgary”, to take place in front of the Calgary Municipal Building. The campaign is intended to pressure Mayor Gondek, Calgary City Council, and the Green Line Board to terminate their contract with CAF (Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles), the Basque multinational corporation that the Green Line Board awarded the light rail vehicle (LRV) procurement contract to, with construction set to begin in 2023.

CAF is a company that has deep relations with Israeli companies involved in the construction of the Jerusalem rail line which is in the process of being expanded to connect illegal Israeli settlements to Jerusalem, as part of the larger annexation of occupied East Jerusalem. This is a continuation of the land theft that has been occurring in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, which has been thoroughly documented and continues to be covered by the media in recent years.

“It is critical that Calgarians and Canadians are made aware of the types of relationships their city leadership is fostering, especially with a $5.5 billion investment from our local, municipal,l and federal governments,” said Saba Amro of Justice for Palestinians in Calgary.

CAF’s complicity with and profiteering from Israeli apartheid, illegal annexation of Palestinian land, and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population has been well researched and documented by activists in Calgary and across the globe. This campaign is a call to action to urge the City of Calgary to drop this contract as long as CAF is involved in the expansion of the Jerusalem Light Rail into Occupied Palestine.

“Awarding a large contract to CAF is unethical, and turns a blind eye on CAF’s involvement with Israeli institutions and companies which have been repeatedly and harshly condemned for their human rights violations against Palestinians,” said Thomas Woodley with CJPME, adding that “publicly funding CAF for the Calgary Green Line is tantamount to putting a stamp of approval on Israel’s policies, laws, and practices that oppress and harm Palestinians.” The October 5th noon hour launch will include music, local and national speakers, and media, followed by detailed actions that can be taken to continue the work that activists in Calgary began after Mayor Jyoti Gondek announced this deal in November 2021.

*

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Featured image: Graffiti on the Israeli separation wall dividing the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis (Photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler via shutterstock.com)

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***

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday signed a decree that ruled out any talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, declaring they would be an “impossibility.”

The decree was first put forward by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, the decree states “the impossibility of holding negotiations with the president of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.”

The move formalized comments that Zelensky made on Friday following Putin’s approval of annexing four Ukrainian territorites.

“He does not know what dignity and honesty are. Therefore, we are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia,” Zelensky said.

Responding to Zelensky’s move, the Kremlin said it would wait until he changes his position or until there’s a new president in Kyiv to hold talks. “We will now wait either until the incumbent Ukrainian president changes his position, or until there is another president in Ukraine who will change his position for the sake of the Ukrainian people,” Peskov said.

During his speech Friday, Putin said he was open to talks with Ukraine but said the status of the territories Russia is annexing is not up for discussion.

“We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately cease fire and all hostilities; to end the war it unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table,” he said.

“We are ready for this, as we have said more than once. But the choice of the people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson will not be discussed,” Putin added.

The US has shown no signs of supporting a diplomatic solution and the Biden administration has no plans to back down on their support for Ukraine despite the risk of provoking Moscow.

*

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

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***

As we struggle to bring Americans together from across the political spectrum, to form substantial and committed institutions that will support the battle for freedom and equality, the struggle against slavery and corporate governance by the billionaires, the Second Amendment of the Constitution, the right to bear arms, keeps coming up as a point of contention, of division, in our discussions.

Although there are real differences of opinion, some based on profound philosophical divergences, the crux of the issue has been intentionally obscured by the corporate powers who have manipulated the public for their own benefit and who block any serious debate about the nature of this amendment to the Constitution from seeing the light of day.

We are drowned in incomplete arguments on all sides about the Second amendment that mislead us and that confuse us.

On the one hand, we have those (largely, but not exclusively, people we call progressives) who point to the horrific levels of gun violence in the United States, and who compare the number of gun deaths in the United States with those in just about any other country, thus demonstrating that the United States has a run-away problem with guns. They then suggest that this problem originates with the Second Amendment which the conservatives have misinterpreted as giving the citizen a carte blanche to possess weapons and to use them.

This side of the debate advocates strict regulations on the possession of guns as Federal policy as the best way to end this nightmare.

On the other hand, we have those, for the most referred to as conservatives, who hold that citizens have the right to bear arms as guaranteed by the Constitution, and who hold that 1) if firearms are made illegal then only criminals will have firearms; 2) arming of the citizens is necessary to resist the tyranny of the government.

Both sides of this argument have been distorted and misused by powerful corporate interests who control the message that is put out in the media and who create needless conflicts and unnecessary misunderstandings as part of their strategy of confusion.

That is no surprise. The corporate sponsors of these defending the right of the citizens to bear arms and of those calling for its restriction have their own agendas.

Part of that agenda is forcing citizens to support either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party in order to move forward. This intentional misdirection of political power towards the whores of the corporations is a big business in itself. But corporations have other reasons for wanting to create this conflict, and to encourage it, as I will detail below.

Let me also tell you how I feel about the Second Amendment. I felt that the unlimited sales of firearms and the culture of guns had created untold tragedy in the United States and that the mindless loyalty of certain Americans to the broad interpretation of the Second Amendment was responsible for this sad state of affairs. I supported gun control measures and also wanted the end of the glorification of gun culture (which I still do).

The growing institutional and political chaos that I witnessed in the United States over the last twenty years, however, which has taken an ominous turn for the worse over the last two years, led me to reconsider the Second Amendment. I came to realize that the steady state of accountable governance in the United States was far from certain and that the tyranny that the founders of the United States feared is now knocking at the door.

Is necessary to have local militias in place to defend us against a rotten Federal Government possessed by the globalists, the minutemen of our age?

The Federal Government that played a vital role in the fight against slavery under Lincoln, in the fight against fascism under Roosevelt, and in the fight against racial discrimination under Truman and Kennedy has vanished and in its place stands a lumbering monster, supported by multinational investment banks, military contractors, real estate speculators, and energy monopolies, a monster that is leading us to our doom.

There are quite a few good people still left in that Federal Government, but the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and local and state police have been deeply corrupted as the institutions of the United States decayed following the 9.11 incident, COVID19, and other on-going crimes.

Let us read the Second Amendment, and read it carefully. None of those talking heads, branded “progressive” or “conservative,” actually does so.

I am not reading the Second Amendment for you because I assume it is sacred, or because I assume the Constitution is perfect.

Rather, just as was the case in 1860, it is critical in this moment of chaos that we start from our philosophical and moral foundations. The Constitution forms common ground and it defines what is, and what is not, government. Interpreting the Constitution in a manner that addresses the current crisis is the best way to form consensus. It does not mean that we cannot modify the Constitution, or the Second Amendment, in the future.

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Like psalms, so much meaning is compressed in this short phrase.

The emphasis of the passage is not on the right of anyone to own any weapon and shoot it off at will for his or her pleasure. The right of the citizen to “keep and bear,” to own and to employ, arms is protected in that it is related to a larger, more critical, project.

The violence porn, gun worship, and the horrific promotion of violence in the media that has encouraged such broad ownership and use of firearms is not a product of the second amendment. It is a byproduct of the military industrial complex and the cult of war promoted in a decadent empire.

The fortunes made by the gun manufactures who sprinkle money on the National Rifle Association to promote a reckless vision of the American dream are the result of the pursuit of profit at the expense of the citizen.

Let us read that text again.

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The first part is clearly the primary clause that necessitates the right to keep and bear arms mentioned in the second part.

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” resonates for us in this age of chaos.

There are three elements missing in the United States of America today that are mentioned therein. Let us consider each one.

The first is “a well-regulated militia.”

The current militia, the military, is an unregulated monster that has merged with criminal forces around the world and has devolved into a mercenary power which strives to extract wealth for the rich and powerful through the use of force, and to generate revenue through the sale of weapons, the enforcement of sanctions, and other services for pay.

Such a “militia” is not well regulated; it is suicidal.

The second word is “security.” The current military, industrial, financial, intelligence, medical, trade complex has nothing to do with security for the citizens of our nation. Of course there are groups in the military who are serious about security, who remain loyal to the Constitution and to the people of our nation. But they are not the dominant force.

We need a system for national and regional security that is focused on real security, not threats made up for profit. If we do not have such a system, then the current military is a clear and present danger in that it grants multinational criminal operations access to the full range of weapons, starting with mass psychological manipulation, while the citizens are left unarmed.

The third phrase is “a free state.”

It would be hard to call the current government of the United States, a toy of multinational corporations and billionaires, a “free state.” For that reason alone, addressing the question of who will have the right to bear arms is pressing.

We are looking at a collapsing empire with a military out of control. There is no Republic left—although one could be established again.

To promote guns and the culture of guns for profit, either profits for gun manufacturers or for police and private security corporations, is horrible and must be stopped.

On the other hand, to leave the citizens unarmed if they face a predatory Federal government is also unacceptable.

The stress in the second amendment falls on keeping the military accountable to the people, and not on the sale of weapons to citizens for profit.

Thus, our primary concern must be with getting back to a democratic, participatory, and transparent system for security that includes the citizens and that assures that a tyranny cannot emerge from the military or from the police, one taken over by private interests, one that uses the state’s weapons to oppress the citizens of the nation, the citizens with whom sovereignty rests.

The answer is to end the mercenary military.

We should not be so naïve as to think that eternal peace is possible. Militias and police are necessary. But standing armies that are not composed of the citizens doing their service, but of men and women who are paid to fight, forced to fight to survive economically, who report to generals who then report to corporate CEOs, such armies are threat to us all.

We must create an accountable military that is linked to us, the citizens, at the local level. If the government is to exercise deadly force, then citizens must know what those weapons are and how they are used.

If deadly force is used, it should be used by trained citizens who are trusted by their neighbors, and not by strangers who are distant from us.

But what if there is a war? You ask.

First, note that the United States is full of weapons at every level that are held in a non-transparent manner by government agencies whose actions are classified so as to make them unaccountable.

That unaccountable military and police are already at war with us.

The next war may not be like the wars we prepared for. It may be a world war, or a civil war, or something hybrid, a matching of likes with likes around the world.

That could mean that you, the citizen, must be armed and ready to defend yourself.

I think that it was such a crisis that the founding fathers imagined back then. They did not adhere to the cult of guns, the sick culture that surrounds weapons today. But they knew that no political system will be stable forever and it is a mistake to have the state in control of all forms of deadly force.

It is also clear that many of the efforts to promote gun control in recent days are fundamentally different from what came before.

Today much of gun control legislation is not about reducing the deaths from gun violence, but rather about extending the authority of the Federal government to do whatever it pleases to citizens without accountability. I watched, sadly, this shift over the last twenty years.

We need to simultaneously combat the sick culture of guns and to reduce the number of guns on the street while at the same time raising the understanding of weapons on the part of citizens, and creating a military that is participatory and that is run by citizens, one committed to the long-term interests of our nation. We need citizens who can handle weapons and who can participate in the local militia while condemning the cult of guns, while being committed to peace.

There will be no room for military contractors, for investment banks, or for the promoters of the cult of guns in such a vision for our country.

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This article was originally published on US Provisional Government.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The Ancient Woods Foundation, a Lithuanian non-profit organization that preserves biologically diverse forests, saved a unique forest parcel, preserving the only habitat of a rare endangered fungus Lavender Baeospora in the country. This is a scientifically valid finding at both national and global levels, as the habitat could have been destroyed by deforestation, and there are only 400 of them worldwide.

Lithuanian non-profit organization the Ancient Woods Foundation, which takes firm steps in reducing deforestation in the country by preserving biologically unique old-growth forest parcels, has discovered a rare mushroom type in one of the forests under the organization’s protection—Lavender Baeospora (Baeospora myriadophylla).

According to Dr. Reda Iršėnaitė, a mycologist who discovered the fungus and works closely with the Foundation, this is a scientifically momentous finding since it is the only known habitat of the fungus in Lithuania and one of the only 400 habitats in the world—several of which are drastically decreasing due to deforestation and climate change.

The rare mushroom habitat in Lithuania could have been easily destroyed by logging. The Ancient Woods Foundation bought out the almost 50-acre Moniškis forest parcel just in time to save it, meanwhile, another valuable parcel next to it was entirely cut down.

Lavender Baeospora. © Rimantė Paulauskaitė-Digaitienė

Incentive for forest preservation at the national level

The Ancient Woods Foundation is preserving biologically valuable forest parcels with all life forms in them. The organization is creating an ancient wood that allows a variety of organisms—over 15k—to live and prosper unobstructed by human activity.

“A multitude of trees of varied ages and kinds grow in the ancient woods, creating an ideal habitat for thousands of species which need different conditions to live. Only biodiversity found in old-growth forests can ensure an “evolution reactor” that would allow the forests to change, adapt, and survive even with climate change happening right now,” Mindaugas Survila, a renowned documentary filmmaker, who co-founded the Ancient Woods Foundation, said.

According to Mr. Survila, the sixth mass species extinction has already started, and the loss of ancient woods has caused fungi like Lavender Baeospora to become extremely rare.

“Lithuania has many biologically valuable forest parcels, which create conditions for species like this to prosper. The rapid deforestation might further cause many of the endangered species to go fully extinct if no action is taken. Therefore, the Foundation hopes to buy out as many such parcels as possible and let them be untouched,” he added.

Mixed forests protect endangered species

The fungi variety is extremely important for all ecosystems because it interacts with other organisms like mycorrhizal and endofit fungi and provides food and water to humans. Baeospora myriadophylla is a saprotrophic fungus that feeds on wood and grows on giant decomposing firs, maples, alders, or, in some cases, on decomposing aspen trunks.

The species has been listed as endangered on national Red Lists of ten European countries while its habitats decreased by 15-25% within the last 50 years due to old-growth wood destruction. Scientists presume this decrease will continue in the future, therefore highly endangering the fungus. The last example of this species in Lithuania was found 50 years ago.

Dr. Reda Iršėnaitė says that Moniškis forest parcel had ideal unique conditions for the Lavender Baeospora to grow. There are many old aspen trees, which are especially valuable for decomposers like fungi, insects, and animals.

“The fungus is small but exceptional and very important to the forest ecosystem that takes a million years to develop. The decomposing aspen trunks preserved are a biodiversity treasure. The fungus probably would not have survived had the Ancient Woods Foundation not preserved this forest parcel. It is not included in the Lithuanian Red List as there have been no remaining examples of its habitat up until now,” she added.

The Foundation notes that large old mixed wood plots full of dead wood and organism variety may slow down biodiversity loss. For instance, Moniškis parcel has 130-year-old oaks, dead wood, and rare flora, fauna, and fungi species: a beaver house, signs of ungulate activity, and the habitats of white-backed woodpeckers and grey-headed woodpeckers listed as endangered species. The mycologist also found a crown-tipped coral (Artomyces pyxidatus), which grows on old decomposing aspens, tree lungwort (Lobaria pulmonaria), thriving on steady habitat conditions and clean air, as well as other kinds of lichen, moss, and fungi.

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Featured image: Lavender Baeospora. © Mindaugas Survila

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***

Dear Attendees,

Thank you for pledging to join the human chain this Saturday, we are hoping more of you will join who haven’t signed up yet. Here’s just a few notes to let you know what to expect when you arrive in Parliament Square, London, GB SW1P.

The assembly time is 1pm but we expect people to start arriving from 12.30. Our stewards will direct you to the end of the chain and ask you to take your place. There will be some travel disruptions on the rail network due to strike action on 8 October so please check your travel for the day and plan accordingly: (nearest tube: Westminster / buses: 12,159,453)

A team of stewards will be at Westminster station to direct people to the chain.

When everyone has arrived and it’s time to link arms and form the chain megaphone sirens and air horns will give the signal. Another signal will sound to bring the protest to a close after Stella Assange and others have made statements to the press. The protest will be finished after our video team has had the opportunity to film the whole chain.

Please feel free to bring Free Assange banners, wear Assange t-shirts etc.

And remember it’s not too late to contact more people and bring them along!

Thank you and see you on Saturday.

Source: Don’t Extradite Assange

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Featured image: Julian Assange was secretly recorded while living at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. (Source: EPV)

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***

“Belief in a bigger and better future is one of the most powerful enemies of present freedom.” – Aldous Huxley, author of the 1932 novel Brave New World, now considered visionary.

The question of what is property and what is possession arises for me from a philosophical-human analysis. It shows that property is closely connected with freedom. So, it is intimately linked with “today”, the time in which every day more of our freedom – and by association — of our personal property, is taken away.

To start with, let’s separate “property” from “possession”. Possession is what one appropriates: house, car, bicycle, television, etc.

Property is what we are born with. Namely, our body; our freedom; free thought, free written, oral expression; to move freely – and the right to have a say in government, to participate actively in a democracy, or at least in what we now call “democracy”.

One of the most important properties I have, if not the most important one, is my body. This means that I can decide about my body, that I can decide about what to do for my health.

It is also important to be able to decide about our individual incomes, our individual money. This supposes cash. No digital money that is controlled by the banks, the authorities; and, depending on our behavior, can be blocked or even expropriated. What I create is my property – which I may freely share, if I so decide – not the government or another “superior” authority.

Digitalization is based on linear thinking. But life is not linear, it is dynamic. A digital world is an unnatural world. It destroys our property to be able to lead a dynamic life.

Introducing digital money is outright criminal.

Total digitalization, as envisaged by the “Great Reset”, the UN Agenda 2030, and the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, is mankind’s demise. Hardly anyone, who can see the consequences, desires an electronic world. Although, younger generations, brainwashed by the mainstream media 24/7, still embrace the short-sighted convenience of a digital world. We have to shake them awake.

We must also vehemently oppose the very Engine of Digitization – the ultra-short waves 5G. Lest we will lose personal and social property through total surveillance.

The ultra-shortwave, 5G – and soon 6G – drives the 4^th Industrial Revolution. It is also destroying our physical and spiritual health. The around-the-globe bought governments of the entire 193 UN member countries are watching, as we humans are destroyed. With deliberate lies and brain manipulation, our property, our lives, our humanity is being transformed into transhumanity.

How much longer will it take, until a majority will wake up and scream STOP, and act to save our humanity, our lives, our most valuable property? Our sovereign selves.

Freedom and personal property have been largely lost in the last 2 1/2 years. If not yet completely, all roads point in that direction – for a dictatorial world government, with censorship, digital surveillance, an all-encompassing digital identity. We must and we shall STOP it.

What we are facing, if we as people worldwide do not join hands in solidarity and spirituality to avoid over the next eight years – UN Agenda 2030 – the incorporation into a totally digital world order planned by a small global financial elite, we will soon find ourselves without individual, social, political, cultural sovereignty and autonomy.

This would be the fulfillment of the “Great Reset.” Human individuals would be transformed into a chipped transhuman society where no one owns anything – physically or spiritually – and all think robotically, are controlled by algorithms – but are happy.

We are threatened with complete deprivation of freedom, of our personal property. This is what is coming to us, if we do not wake up from our comfort slumber, and in solidarity and spiritually, without hatred – but always accompanied by The Light, free ourselves from this diabolical cult, to regain our personal property, our absolute human freedom, with which we were all born.

It may require creating life in a new parallel society.

It takes courage to begin.

We can do it. Once begun, with our positive spirit and vision – human and societal dynamics may lead our way.

We are many – “they” are few.

“They” have money and capital. We have an absolute solidary and willpower to regain our freedom, our bodily and spiritual property.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

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

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***

In the midst of several geopolitically important elections (Brazil, Bulgaria) which all took place on Sunday, the one in the Republic of Srpska may have gone somewhat under the radar. Arguably, however, it was no less important. The Republic of Srpska is the Serbian entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it wields considerable influence and veto power over key policies (generally exercised to the detriment of Western objectives). In the latest confrontation arising from the conflict in Ukraine, it has taken a strongly pro-Russian position, preventing the creation of a solid anti-Russian front of satellite statelets in the Balkans and vetoing imposition of sanctions against the Russian Federation by Bosnia.

For all these, as well as a number of other compelling reasons, Srpska’s government has been targeted for destruction by the West. Destruction in this particular case is not an exaggeration since the ultimate goal is more than mere regime change. In the estimate of Western powers and their intelligence apparatus (correct in this case) the Serbian population which under the terms of the Dayton Agreement controls slightly under half of Bosnia is overwhelmingly pro-Russian and intuitively anti-NATO.  Therefore, Western thinking goes, nothing approaching even limited statehood should be permitted to them, strategically situated as they are deep in the rear of the Western alliance.

The government in the Republic of Srpska, which since 2006 has been overseen in various capacities by Milorad Dodik, has no doubt been an irritant to the collective West, and it was often targeted for replacement by compliant local Serbian collaborators. While regime change in the Republic of Srpska was always the minimal objective, Western policy makers regarded systemic change as by far the preferred option.

In the Bosnian context, for Western powers that means the dismantlement of the system of governance enshrined in the Dayton Agreement which in 1995 ended the armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Dayton agreement provided for two autonomous ethnically defined entities, the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation, and a weak central administration in Sarajevo with few effective powers assigned to it. Clearly, Western governments had viewed Dayton from the start as merely a transitional and not a permanent arrangement, leading relatively soon thereafter to the establishment of a strong central government, which they could more easily control, and with greatly weakened and diminished constituent entities.

The steadfast opposition of the Dodik government to these planned encroachments over the last decade and a half has been the central political drama in Bosnia. In seeking to preserve the status of the Republic of Srpska as provided by the Dayton Agreement, Dodik has sought political allies, and he found them in the Russian Federation and lately also in Orban’s Hungary.

For the collective West, this stance of the Republic of Srpska leadership is intolerable. In order to remedy the situation, it has used the standard instruments at its disposal to instigate an “orange revolution” at least twice around election time, in 2014 and 2018. The current attempt is the third in the series.

In order to accomplish their maximum objective, the abolishment of the Republic of Srpska, Western policymakers have relied on two principal tools. Firstly, they have used Hague Tribunal judgments about Srebrenica to argue that the Republic of Srpska is a “genocidal entity” which does not have the moral right to exist in the modern world. In addition, they have engineered a judgment in the international court at Strasbourg convenient to their objectives. The judgment overrides the Dayton Agreement and holds that ethnically based internal distribution of powers, even if originally agreed to by the parties, is discriminatory and therefore unacceptable. (Belgium’s strikingly similar constitutional arrangements are never cited as a problem.) The Strasbourg decision, enshrined in the Sejdic and Finci case, aims to overturn Dayton’s principal restraining provisions and impose the one man – one vote principle, which obviously would favor Bosnia’s more compliant non- Serbian majority.

Enter Jelena Trivić, candidate for president of the coalition of Republic of Srpska’s main opposition parties, whose common denominators are close and frequent social contacts with principal Western embassies in Sarajevo and strident anti-corruption rhetoric of the sort that in Gene Sharp’s playbook usually sets the stage for orange revolutions. Never mind that many of these “anti-corruption” champions are recycled operatives of former West-friendly or at least cooperative regimes who are themselves waist-deep in corruption.

Apparently, allegations of such nature have not bypassed Mrs. Trivić herself because two weeks ago a letter emerged, composed in fairly decent (though not impeccable) English and on what purports to be official US government letterhead, requesting a transfer of the equivalent of about $10 million to the Trivić campaign. The jury may still be out on the authenticity of the compromising letter, but it fits in neatly with the known modus operandi in similar situations.

The color revolution playbook was followed faithfully on Sunday evening when Mrs. Trivić, not bothering to wait for the votes to be counted, unilaterally declared victory and proclaimed herself the next President of the Republic of Srpska. This-in-your-face Balkan Guaido moment was greeted approvingly by her followers who poured into the street from her campaign headquarters to celebrate victory.

As election results were coming in, it soon became apparent that the victory celebration was a bit premature and that Dodik in fact held a comfortable lead. It should be recalled that according to Gene Sharp’s ideal contested election scenario there should be a tight race in which the opposition candidate favoured by Western interests could plausibly be portrayed as the real winner, inflaming the outraged masses to demand he or she be immediately installed regardless of the actual vote count.

It seems that the plausibility of Mrs.Trivić’s asserted victory soon became questionable over the course of the election night, so much so that the victory parade was mysteriously called off shortly after it began. The following morning, on Monday 3 October, the main opposition figures from Mrs. Trivić’s camp congregated at the British embassy in Sarajevo. Presently, there is no reliable information about the topics they discussed with the deputy ambassador, but it may plausibly be surmised that tactics to jump start the stalled orange revolution in the Republic of Srpska may have been high on the agenda.

Things appear to be quiet in the streets of Republic of Srpska’s main cities and towns at the time this is being written. A plausible electoral theft narrative has not yet been formulated but it should not be discarded that British specialists might come up with a storyline sufficient to inflame the discontented masses. The third time may not be a charm, but further developments in the Republic of Srpska should be carefully monitored.

Both the Dodik government and its Western backed and financed opponents (judgement still being reserved on the now famous $10 million letter, but there is plenty of other evidence of foreign interference and financial corruption of the political process) are plagued by low quality cadres. The Dodik administration’s lacklustre performance in most fields other than vociferous nationalist rhetoric and its inability to attract to its ranks young, educated, and competent persons who could infuse a new life into the institutions of government and help move the Serb entity forward has alienated large segments of the population. On the other hand, what passes for the opposition also consists of familiar old faces of ambitious but incompetent politicians who have nothing to show for their long-time parasitism in public life. They are being embraced and financed by Western interests only as a stepping stone to the destruction of the Republic of Srpska, after which they will be discarded like the used toilet paper that they are, to be replaced by the crop of subservient WEF “young leaders” who are undoubtedly being trained to take over a centralised Bosnia and neutered Republic of Srpska as this is being written.

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image: Dodik with Russian President Vladimir Putin, 22 September 2016 (Photo by kremlin.ru, licensed under CC BY 4.0)

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***

Moldovan President Maia Sandu told Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus, in thinking she was speaking to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, about her willingness to transfer the southern town of Giurgiulești to Kiev for several years.

“When I was in Kiev, we discussed the issue of the village of Giurgiulești and made a proposal. Its people came and inspected the territory, which we are ready to give them while we are still trying to resolve the legal problems with the port as a whole. But we can offer them land for years to come,” Sandu said during the prank, which was posted on the Vovan and Lexus Telegram channel. However, she continued by saying that after the technicians arrived and inspected the territory, the Moldovan authorities received no further response.

“So, I wonder if he is still interested in this proposal or if he has already found other solutions,” Sandu said, referring to the Ukrainian prime minister.

None-the-less, the Presidential Administration of Moldova declared that the video recording of the conversation between Sandu and the Russian pranksters is a fake. The denial is because giving away Giurgiulești would be a major scandal as it is the home of Moldova’s only port that is accessible to seagoing vessels.

The prank, which demonstrates that Sandu is ready to throw away Moldova’s sovereignty to Ukraine, comes as a security aide claimed that Moldova can no longer rely only on its neutral status and must ramp up its defensive military power. This is despite the country being one of the poorest in Europe, reflected in the fact that it can allocate only 0.45% of GDP for defence spending despite war waging in neighbouring Ukraine.

Moldova applied for European Union membership this year and strongly condemned Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. However, the country also contends with the fact that Russian peacekeepers are based in its breakaway Transnistria region and relies heavily on Russia for energy.

“Moldova can no longer rely exclusively on foreign policy instruments, one of which is its neutral status, to ensure state stability,” said Dorin Recean, the security aide. “Moldova must start work on increasing its defence potential… The authorities need to obtain the conscious support of citizens who should understand it is critical to the state’s survival.”

For his part, Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, Nicu Popescu, said during a press conference that the strengthening of partnerships in the field of security and defence with states and organisations is a key objective. These partnerships will continue and even be strengthened, he added.

Asked if the authorities in Chisinau intend to take steps to strengthen relations with NATO, Popescu stated that the authorities in Chisinau want to modernise their defence capabilities to the highest international standards, and this implies strengthening external partnerships, including in the field of security and defence.

“This involves strengthening our partnerships with Great Britain, but also other states and organisations. You know very well that we have defence partnerships with the United States of America and the European Union through the European peace initiative. We have a partnership with NATO, for a very long time, based on the individual action plan initiated in 2006,” declared Popescu.

Given that Ukraine has humiliatingly lost Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye to Russia, it must be questioned whether Giurgiulești, situated on the border of Moldova, Romania and Ukraine, might be a pathetic appeasement for Kiev and perhaps be a condition for Moldova to one day join NATO.

It also comes as protests against Sandu increase, especially as energy prices are sky-rocketing. Moldova’s gas regulator raised prices by 27% for households on September 21. Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă said earlier this month that there were discussions with the Moldovan Prime Minister to deliver gas to Moldova, but this cannot be more than five million cubic metres of gas per day.

“I discussed with Prime Minister Gavriliţa, 150 million cubic metres… We still have to see what quantities we can secure in the next period. In warehouses today, we have stored… about 87%, which means that if we manage to have contracts signed for the winter period, to maintain the balance in the system and to have the necessary quantities on cold days, we can ensure the respective quantity,” the Romanian Prime Minister declared to the press.

At the same time, Ciucă stated that Romania cannot provide Moldova with the necessary gas if Russia stops deliveries.

In this way, Moldova finds itself in a difficult position as its pro-Western president is even willing to sacrifice sovereignty for the sake of Ukraine. Now there are discussions of Moldova growing its military budget with the aim of eventually joining NATO despite the fact that Moldova is already one of the poorest countries in Europe, which is amplified as living costs are soaring.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

The Federal Reserve recently ordered another “super-sized interest hike” — the fifth rate hike this year — in what appears to be a hopeless effort to contain runaway inflation. Additional rate hikes are also anticipated. Some fear the Federal Reserve may be pushing us too hard, which could bring us from recession into deflation

Data from the Bureau of Labor statistics report the highest annual increase in food prices since the 1970s, with the cost of food rising 10.9% in the last 12 months. Overall, energy prices have seen the highest increases, rising by 41.6% between June 2021 and June 2022. For comparison, the Federal Reserve’s annual inflation target is 2%

As bad as the economic trend appears, that’s not all we have to contend with. Financial crisis historian Adam Tooze predicts several crises may converge over the next six to 18 months, including food crises, energy crises, pandemic outbreaks, stagflation, a Eurozone sovereign debt crisis and potential nuclear war

Our current situation is not accidental. It’s not even the result of pure ineptitude. Once you understand the globalist cabal’s plan for a Great Reset, you realize that all of these things need to happen in order for The Great Reset to be implemented. The rational conclusion, then, is that our food, energy, medicine and financial systems are being dismantled and hobbled on purpose

We can’t stop these crises from happening, but we can prepare to survive the destruction and then rebuild systems to our own liking, rather than accept their slave systems

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While the White House administration has tried to downplay the seriousness of inflation, reality has a stubborn way of paying no attention to fantasies and make-believe.

As reported by several news outlets in recent days,1 the Federal Reserve (which is not federal at all but rather a private entity that prints and lends fiat currency to the government) has ordered another “super-sized interest hike” — the fifth rate hike this year — in what appears to be a hopeless effort to contain runaway inflation. As reported by NPR, September 21, 2022:2

“The Federal Reserve ordered another super-sized jump in interest rates today, and signaled that additional rate hikes are likely in the coming months, as it tries to put the brakes on runaway prices.

The central bank raised its benchmark interest rate by 0.75 percentage points Wednesday, matching hikes in June and July. The Fed has been boosting borrowing costs at the fastest pace in decades. But so far, its actions have done little to curb the rapid run-up in prices.”

‘Exceptional Level of Economic Uncertainty’ Ahead

Higher interest rates, of course, increase the cost of borrowing, making home mortgages, car loans and credit card balances more expensive and, for many, unaffordable. And we haven’t even seen the worst of it yet. According to MSN,3 the Federal Reserve anticipates additional rate hikes after this, in the hopes of limiting stagflation, a situation in which prices rise and employment goes down.

Some, however, fear the Federal Reserve may be pushing us from recession into deflation. As reported by MSN September 21, 2022:4

“The World Bank last week raised the specter of a global recession, driven by higher rates in the U.S. and abroad. Investors are increasingly worried that disruption in the U.S. government debt market could worsen as the Fed raises borrowing costs.

The housing and stock markets are reeling. And some executives like Tesla CEO Elon Musk even say the economy is in danger of entering a period of deflation … the Fed’s policies take time to feed through the economy, meaning the central bank could end up depressing economic activity more than necessary before realizing it, given the sheer speed at which it’s jacking up rates — the fastest pace in three decades.

‘There’s the old expression that sometimes they’ll tighten until something breaks,’ said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab. ‘It’s a legitimate concern at this point.’ The predicament creates an exceptional level of economic uncertainty for the country … Also at stake is the central bank’s own credibility as the nation’s chief inflation-fighting authority.”

Record Inflation in 2022

In early August 2022, President Biden claimed the U.S. had “zero-percent inflation” in the month of July. Alas, boasting about a single-month index change was a Jedi mind trick that didn’t work on most people. The federal Consumer Price Index earlier that day published data showing an annual inflation rate of 8.5% for July, down from 9.1% in June, which was the highest rate since 1981.5

Data from the Bureau of Labor statistics also reported the highest annual increase in food prices since the 1970s, with the cost of food rising 10.9% in the last 12 months. Overall, energy prices have seen the highest increases, rising by 41.6% between June 2021 and June 2022. For comparison, the Federal Reserve’s annual inflation target is 2%.6

Later in that same speech, Biden “proceeded to accidentally step on his own message,” to quote the New York Post,7 by urging Congress to pass his Inflation Reduction Act.

Putting his foot even further down his own throat, Biden added the bill would “keep inflation from getting better.”8 Clearly, what he meant to say was that the bill would keep it from getting worse, but he spoke the truth in this instance nonetheless.

The better-titled Inflation Act is strongly biased toward financing of “green” programs, which will be funded by additional taxes, including a new 15% minimum corporate tax and massively increased IRS enforcement. Commenting on the bill shortly after it passed the Senate, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis, said:9

“The Orwellian named ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ will do no such thing, as a number of prominent experts and economic policy groups have indicated. The Penn Wharton Budget Model,10 the Tax Foundation,11 and the Congressional Budget Office12 all found the bill won’t lower inflation and may make it worse.

The IRS would more than double in size, unleashing 87,000 new enforcement agents on American families … [and the] nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation says that 78% to 90% of the revenue raised from misreported income would likely come from those making under $200,000.”

Impending Polycrisis

As bad as the economic trend appears, that’s not all we have to contend with in coming days. As detailed in “Economy Expert Explains the Impending Polycrisis of Doom,” global citizens are currently facing a whole host of intersecting and interconnected crises.

Adam Tooze, a financial crisis historian and director of the European Institute at Columbia University, predicts several crises may erupt and converge over the next six to 18 months, including food crises, energy crises, pandemic outbreaks, stagflation, a Eurozone sovereign debt crisis and potential nuclear war.

As explained by Tooze, “polycrisis” is not merely the presence of several crises at once. Rather, it’s “a situation … where the whole is even more dangerous than the sum of the parts.”13 These crises are hitting us all at once, and several of them reinforce and worsen each other. Also notable is the fact that there’s great uncertainty associated with some of them, making it extremely difficult to make predictions.

Beyond the influences highlighted by Tooze, others could also be added into the mix, such as the weaponization of the U.S. dollar, which is encouraging countries to de-dollarize and create alternative reserve currencies, NATO and U.S. meddling in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the push to expand NATO, and allowing health agencies to dictate economic policy, just to name a few.

These Crises Are Not Accidental

What’s perhaps most infuriating about our current situation is that it’s not accidental. It’s not even the result of pure ineptitude. Once you understand the globalist cabal’s plan for a Great Reset, you realize that all of these things need to happen in order for The Great Reset to be implemented. Since the reset can’t happen unless all of the old systems are first destroyed, the rational conclusion is that they’re being dismantled and hobbled on purpose.

The global economic system is being dismantled to bring in a programmable central bank digital currency (CBDC), so they can monitor and control your spending from a centralized location.

The energy grids of the Western world are being dismantled and incapacitated in order to justify a new “green” economy based on carbon credits. It will also push people to the brink of despair, which makes them more likely to accept “solutions” that would normally be rejected as unacceptable.

A “green” all-electric vehicle society — were it even possible, which it’s not — would also dramatically limit your ability to travel and, in fact, all travel could then be monitored and restricted from a central location, just like your bank account. Both CBDCs and electric vehicles are tools through which a centralized cabal can control your every move.

Agriculture and the food industry, meanwhile, are being crippled in part by irrational nitrogen reduction laws that will result in less food being grown and fewer livestock being raised, and in part by no longer coincidental fires, so that a new food system can be introduced — one based on “micro livestock,” i.e., insects, cultured meat, plant-based meat alternatives and GMO plant foods.

The common denominator is that all foods need to be patentable. Lack of food, like lack of energy, also makes people more “malleable” and willing to give up rights and liberties to survive.

Health care is also being undermined and getting more dangerous by the day as doctors are being muzzled through new laws, and the World Health Organization is pushing — using biosecurity as its justification — to grant itself the power to dictate and control health care worldwide. I think the reason for centralizing health care under the WHO is to make the transition to transhumanism easier.

The WHO is diligently working on a global vaccine passport, and President Biden recently signed an executive order14 that fast-tracks mRNA shots and other gene therapies “to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers.” So, it’s no longer a stretch to imagine a world in which you have to get regular gene therapy injections in order to be able to function in society.

And, between Biden’s executive order and the Food and Drug Administration’s new “future framework” that allows reformulated mRNA shots to be rolled out without testing, it seems humanity at large will be the guinea pigs for untold numbers of genetic experiments to see what works and what doesn’t.

In the end, the transhumanist cabal intends to make themselves immortal super-humans. But they need test subjects to perfect these radical technologies — and that’s going to be all of us. I could go on, but I think you get the gist. The breakdowns we’re experiencing are not by chance. They’re intentional.

The goal is to break everything apart, and then roll out a “new and improved” society consisting of a ruling class, and disposable masses that will be controlled through technology-driven social engineering and control mechanisms like surveillance, “biosecurity,” CBDCs, electric cars, gene therapies, carbon credits and social credit scores.

What You Can Do to Prepare 

The central banking cabal and its many allies have infiltrated governments and institutions across the world for many decades, slowly turning the systems against us. We are now in the final chapter of their technocratic, transhumanist takeover.

They’ve told us their plans. It’s all spelled out in white papers, reports, books and on websites. The Great Reset is the overarching plan for the global takeover, previously referred to as the New World Order. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the transhumanist piece of that plan, and the Green Agenda is the piece that will usher in essential control mechanisms.

Without a doubt, they wield formidable weapons. But before you drown in despair, remember that we still outnumber these megalomaniacs by tens of millions to one, if not more. And, believe it or not, they need our cooperation. If enough of us withhold our cooperation, their plans start falling apart. I’m not saying it will be easy. It’ll require sacrifice. But that’s nothing new. Freedom has always required sacrifice.

Two of the most important things everyone can do right now is 1) prepare ourselves and our families for hard times (if you were not a prepper before, now’s the time), and 2) start building parallel structures and systems to replace the ones that are being dismantled.

The idea is to survive and rebuild a world of our own choosing rather than being forced to accept theirs out of sheer desperation. Strategies that can strengthen individual and local resilience to the stresses facing us include the creation of local food systems15 and the strengthening of neighborhood and community connections.

By building a strong local food system, you reduce food insecurity, and by building a community network of specialists, you reduce the effects of a crumbling financial system as you can simply barter goods and services. For those who aren’t skilled at growing food it is wise to align with local farmers that you resonate with and can add complementary skill sets. Remember it takes a community to get through this.

Social cohesion also offers many psychological benefits.16 Local food systems and community networks both also reduce individuals’ reliance on government handouts, and by extension, they’re less likely to be forced into these new Great Reset slave systems. A 2017 StrongTown article17 provides several excellent suggestions for those willing to spearhead a local food movement in their own hometown.

Additional Suggestions

It’s important that you continue to prepare for the inevitable financial catastrophe and become as independent and resilient as possible. Shore up supplies and figure out how to live in an “off grid” scenario, in case daily conveniences suddenly vanish. This year I have offered many articles on how you can prepare for food, water and other crises, which you can find in my Substack library.

Aside from “investing” in storable food, a water catchment system and other essentials that will only go up in price or become unobtainable, you may also consider buying physical precious metals, which can help protect against currency devaluation. Investing in real assets, such as land could be another.

It’s hard to make definitive recommendations, as your strategy will depend on your personal situation, so take some time to think things through. If you do nothing to hedge your bets, you may one day find yourself left with nothing — which is precisely what the World Economic Forum has declared will be our lot.

It’s also essential to become as healthy as possible. A recent study showed that 93% of U.S. adults are metabolically unhealthy, and those stats were four years old. It’s likely that number is now over 95%. You want to be the 1 person in 20 who is healthy. Make it your goal to be in that group.

This is so important that I’m devising a poll to find out what that percentage is for our subscribers. It would be a bit more accurate as I’ll include metrics like vitamin one hour a day of sun exposure and exercise. So, start getting metabolically fit now.

Also prepare yourself mentally, emotionally and spiritually for what could be stressful and challenging times as the globalist cabal continues to push The Great Reset forward, which will require more “emergencies.”

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Notes

2 NPR September 21, 2022

3 MSN September 21, 2022

4 MSN Money September 21, 2022

5 NY Post August 10, 2022

6 NY Post August 10, 2022

7 NY Post August 10, 2022

8 NY Post August 10, 2022

9 NY Post August 10, 2022

10 Penn Wharton Budget Model

11 Tax Foundation August 12, 2022

12 Congressional Budget Office August 4, 2022

13 Adam Tooze Substack June 24, 2022

14 Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy

15 Treehugger October 11, 2018

16 NPR January 3, 2013

17 StrongTown August 7, 2017

Featured image is from Mercola

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***

On October 2, during an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” retired United States Army general and former Director of the CIA David Petraeus stated that if Russian President Vladimir Putin used nuclear weapons against the Kiev regime, the United States would “quickly intervene to take out Russian forces in Ukraine, including Crimea.” He added that this would also be a collective US-led NATO response.

The retired general claims that “direct US involvement is necessary in that scenario” and that “the political West must take the Kremlin’s latest nuclear rhetoric seriously.”

Petraeus thinks that this is what the US government has in mind when it comes to the recent statements of “catastrophic consequences” for Moscow. Lately, the belligerent thalassocracy has ramped up its unfounded rhetoric that Russia was supposedly planning on using tactical nuclear weapons against the Kiev regime forces. The narrative has been heavily (ab)used by the mainstream propaganda machine.

“And what would happen?” show co-anchor Jonathan Karl asked Petraeus.

“Well, again, I have deliberately not talked to Jake [Sullivan] about this. I mean, just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a NATO, a collective effort, that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea,” former CIA chief stated.

Then, the “This Week” anchor mentioned the scenario in which the radiation fallout from the supposed Russian nuclear strike could directly impact much of Eastern Europe, including nearby NATO member states.

“Yes. And perhaps you can make that case. The other case is that this is so horrific that there has to be a response, it cannot go unanswered. But it doesn’t expand, it doesn’t — it’s not nuclear for nuclear,” Petraeus claimed. “You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear escalation here. But you have to show that this cannot be accepted in any way,” the retired general said.

While the retired US Army general and former CIA director is not speaking from a position of legal authority, as he is not officially part of the troubled Biden administration or in any capacity as an active government official, his opinion can still be considered a reflection of what the US foreign policy and military establishment think, especially considering the positions he held in the past. The very idea that such a high-ranking (former) official thinks that Russia would stand idle while NATO targets its forces is quite indicative of the deteriorating state of America’s top brass, both political and military. This is also quite terrifying for the rest of the world, as it is expected that the US, which operates the second most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world, is led by at least somewhat reasonable people whose main concern should be not to lead the world into thermonuclear annihilation.

Petraeus further explained his view that Putin has “no qualms” about surrounding European countries and Western backers of Ukraine suffering too.

“Well, he’s trying to cast this in any way that he can in a way to appear threatening, to be threatening, to try to get Europe to crack. He thinks he can out-suffer Europe, if you will,” he continued. “And, you know, the Russians have out-suffered Napoleon and the Nazis and so forth. But I don’t think he’s going to out-suffer Europe. Europe’s going to have a tough winter, there’s going to be very reduced flow of natural gas, but they’ll get through it and I don’t think they’ll crack on the issue of support for Ukraine,” Petraeus stated and then went on with claims that the battlefield situation was “deteriorating for Russian forces” and that if they “continue to be backed into a corner” this would supposedly “make Putin more unpredictable and dangerous.”

In recent weeks, the propaganda machine of the political West has been producing a flurry of ominous headlines based on a false narrative that Russia is threatening everyone with nuclear weapons.

On September 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the Russian military would use everything at its disposal to defend the country and its territorial integrity, adding that the warning wasn’t a bluff. Although Putin never mentioned nuclear weapons, it’s clear that Russia could deploy them if the US tried to escalate. The statement was immediately taken out of context and the mainstream media started constructing the narrative that Russia would supposedly resort to using nuclear weapons against Kiev regime forces.

Standing at approximately 6,200 warheads, the Russian military is well-known for possessing the world’s most powerful nuclear arsenal. However, unlike the US, Russia never used these weapons in war. Its nuclear weapons serve as a deterrent and this was exactly what Russian President Vladimir Putin had in mind when giving the statement. Moscow has also announced low-level mobilization, clearly implying that the Russian military doesn’t plan on using nuclear weapons, as it would make no sense to send hundreds of thousands of soldiers into an area subjected to their use.

In addition, according to Pentagon sources, there have been no observed changes in Russian nuclear posture or any significant movement of the country’s nuclear forces. US intelligence services claim they have “stepped up their surveillance and monitoring“, but this has not led to any changes in America’s nuclear posture either, clearly implying that the whole narrative is a scare tactic aimed at galvanizing even more Russophobia.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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 meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Samarkand has prompted a geo-economic earthquake – as did President Putin’s subsequent announcement of a partial mobilisation and referenda in four oblasts (provinces) of Ukraine, which almost certainly will result in their lightening integration into Russia.

The aftershocks are being felt everywhere, but particularly in Washington and Brussels.  All wait to see what happens next.

The West chose to leap upon Russia’s very limited Ukraine operation – the SMO (Special Militarily Operation) – to brand it: “an invasion of Ukraine”, which it was not (any more than Russian support in Syria constituted an invasion).

For, like its Syrian prototype, the SMO was crafted as the minimum of Russian military support that might provoke and catalyse a negotiated settlement along Minsk II lines. The perfect fit of the SMO to Russia’s Syria ‘footprint’ makes it clear — it was aimed to elicit a political settlement; one which so nearly occurred in Istanbul in March — until nixed by Britain and the US.

One may imagine, however, that in opting for such a restrictive posture, the Russian High Command may not have counted on Kiev’s willingness to throw so many of its soldiers’ lives into defending indefensible positions, or the abandonment by which the West would throw money and weapons at the Kiev forces.

It was not money and weapons alone: The West escalated its psyops deceptions to unheard-of heights of fantasy. It flooded the media with stories of the ‘invasions’ slow progress, claiming that this portrayed Russian weakness and failure.

All this taken together represents a crucial and deliberate choice of optics over real strategy, which has painted Washington into today’s dangerous corner.

That is to say that since the go-slow nature of the Russian offensive was intended essentially to minimize the impact on civilian lives and infrastructure — and also to give the parties plenty of time in order to reach the conclusion that negotiations were required before events turned existential, for one side or the other.

Unfortunately, the propaganda flooding the media has been so successful – touching on neuralgic and deeply layered currents of Russophobia – that western leaders have become hostage to this contrived ‘staging’ of a ‘panicked, faltering and weak Russia’.

Thus, against such an adverse backdrop, the Kremlin finally opted to incorporate culturally-Russian parts of Ukraine into Russia.

It is a gamble. The force of logic here is clear:  The conflict then would either have to cease, as Russia commits to defending those annexed territories as ‘Mother Russia’ — a game-changing shift that implies irresistible force mounted against Kiev, were it to further assault these territories. Or alternatively, the West must escalate further.

Putin’s gamble posits therefore the ending of conflict, and therefore the threat of nuclear conflict, or else continuing the (problematic) NATO war against Russia which more directly does risk nuclear war: Team Biden’s choice.

However, Biden – though he says he has no stomach for a war with Russia and will not permit one – likes to tout the idea that “our democracy” is under threat. “We have an obligation, a duty, a responsibility to defend, preserve, and protect ‘our democracy’”, he says.

Biden is not referring to generic democracy as a whole, but specifically to America’s liberal-élite hegemony (aka ‘our democracy’), and to its predilection for forever wars abroad being under threat — not just in Ukraine, but in Samarkand where the Eurasian giants such as China, India, Russia, Pakistan and Iran are integrating their economies to new levels and promising to create rival trading and communications system (away from the dollar).

In a speech made in Philadelphia recently, Biden – speaking in an eerie set-up at Independence Hall – extended threats to ‘our democracy’ from those abroad to warn against the threat of a different terror, closer to home — from “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans” who “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic”.

Arta Moeini and Professor Carment argue that US politics have moved a complete circle: From Bush’s initial warning to the external world that, in the War on Terror, you are either ‘with us or against us’ — to Biden “weaponising the mythos of our democracy for partisan gains”.

Seen together, Biden’s rhetoric depicts his administration’s war against the amorphous specter of “MAGA fascism” at home and its stated goal of militarily defeating autocracies abroad as being but two sides of the same coin.

This doctrine ensnares all sides of the spectrum — by enmeshing them in false equivalencies: Deny the Establishment’s liberal interventionist foreign policy (in say, Ukraine) and be branded as an ‘extremist’ or even a ‘traitor’ – as Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán has been labeled in the European parliament, for taking Russia’s side in EU deliberations. Or, defend America’s civil liberties and due process toward participants in the 6 January demonstrations, and (then again) you are tarred as being in league with Putin.

So here is the rub: The Biden Administration still exhibits decidedly hawkish attitudes in respect to toppling Putin; to defending Taiwan; and containing Iran, in order to save ‘our democracy’. And he now uses this existential framing to attack his American political opponents at home, and to coerce American support for his agenda: “A battle for the soul” of the United States and the “challenge of our time” (autocracies).

But by linking them, were he to walk back one, he would undermine the other. Can Biden afford to see the Ukraine war end on terms favourable to President Putin, without it also being perceived as undermining his war on Trumpist ‘authoritarianism’ too? Is Biden trapped by his own ‘clever’ language game, one that was predicated on the expectation of Putin losing in Ukraine?  Yet, dare he risk nuclear escalation to maintain the ideological equivalence?

Moeini and Carment have noted:

“This logic has now become the operating principle behind what may be called the Biden Doctrine, which is expected to be unveiled in the administration’s forthcoming National Security Strategy. It holds that the fight for democracy is incessant, totalising, and all-encompassing. That neutralising the alleged threat of fascism at home, personified by MAGA and former president Trump, is part of a larger apocalyptic struggle to defend the liberal international order abroad.”

The West and its delusions are deeply entrenched. It can end as a débacle for the Biden ‘doctrine’.

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Alastair Crooke is Director of Conflicts Forum; Former Senior British Diplomat; Author.

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***

Auch wenn die Überlebensfrage der Menschheit angesichts eines möglichen präventiven Atomkriegs (1) gegenwärtig im Zentrum aller Überlegungen steht, sollten weise Aufklärer „über den Tag hinaus“ denken und überlegen, wie die Mitmenschen in einer Neuen Weltordnung asiatischer Prägung leben wollen. Frieden, Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit sind weiterhin erstrebenswerte Ziele aller Menschen. 

Wie auch immer sich die Welt entwickeln wird – ohne die Erkenntnisse der wissenschaftlichen Psychologie wird die Menschheit nicht weiterkommen. Als langjähriger Psychologe und Psychotherapeut steht der Autor zu seiner Prognose. Im Folgenden soll die Entwicklung der modernen Psychologie kurz dagestellt werden.

Es wird nicht leicht sein, Mitbürgern mit verschiedenem Bildungsgrad sowie Jung und Alt das Wissen über sich selbst und die Menschen generell zu vermitteln. Bis heute werden sie von Eltern, Kirche und Staat autoritär und religiös erzogen und so programmiert, dass es schwer sein wird, sie auf ihre Probleme aufmerksam zu machen.

Doch Bildung bedeutet, den Menschen zu vermitteln, wie sie ihre Probleme lösen und wie sie leben können. Auch sollten sie erfahren, welche Meinung sie über sich selbst, ihre Partner, Nachbarn, über den Staat und die Gemeinde und welche Haltung sie gegenüber ihren Kindern haben sollen.

Erst in der Neuzeit begannen die Menschen, sich zu erkennen

Vor dem Zeitalter der Psychologie herrschte im Gegensatz zur auf Kausalität beruhenden Wissenschaft die magische Weltanschauung des Mittelalters und der Religion, die die Menschen fest im Griff hatte. Man war der Meinung, dass die Seele des Menschen hier auf dieser Welt nur eine Prüfung durchmacht und dass der Mensch in den Himmel gehört; dort sei das ewige Leben.

Erst Ludwig Feuerbach hat dieses Problem erschüttert, indem er aufzeigte, dass dem nicht so ist (2). Doch seine Erkenntnis wird immer noch bekämpft und nicht weitervermittelt. Noch heute gilt in den Schulen das alte Prinzip der Religion, der übernatürlichen Bestimmung des Menschen. Auch die Gefühle der Menschen durften nicht erforscht werden; die Kirche war dagegen. Naturforscher waren deshalb auf dem falschen Weg, wenn sie andere Völker – die sogenannten Wilden – beobachtet haben.

Erst durch die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung im vorletzten Jahrhundert haben die Menschen angefangen, sich mit sich selbst zu befassen. Sie begannen, den Menschen zu erkennen, zu deuten und sich zu erklären, warum er sich so verhält. Das war der Beginn der Neuzeit.

Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung war ein großer Einbruch in die Gefühlswelt der Menschen. Karl Marx und die freiheitlichen Sozialisten haben angefangen, den Menschen richtig zu sehen. Wären diese Gedanken nicht bekämpft worden, wäre die Menschheit bereits viel weiter; die Menschen könnten sich das Leben in jeder Beziehung besser einrichten. Dabei hatte Marx den deutschen Philosophen Wilhelm Hegel als Vorbild. Und der hatte noch Gott und das Absolute in der Natur gesehen.

Karl Marx stützte sich jedoch auf Feuerbach ab, lehnte die übernatürliche Tendenz ab und fand heraus, dass die Haltung des Menschen geändert werden kann. Die Tiefenpsychologie bestätigt das. Marx war der Auffassung, dass das Bewusstsein des Menschen durch die Verhältnisse geprägt wird (Das Sein bestimmt das Bewusstsein.). Er hat den Menschen zurückgeholt auf die Erde. Auch hatte er Recht, dass sich die Menschen ändern, wenn ihr Leben gesichert ist, wenn sie einen gedeckten Tisch haben. Sie haben dann andere Gedanken, andere Gefühle und eine andere Beziehung zu den Mitmenschen. Solange die Menschen Angst haben, glauben sie. In der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung hörte der Glaube an Götter und übernatürliche Wesen auf.

Wenn die gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse die Menschen ändern, assoziieren sie sich mit ihren Mitmenschen, glauben an sie und fühlen sich in sie ein, indem sie an sie appellieren. Der andere Mensch will so gut leben wie ich, er will ein Dach über dem Kopf haben. Er macht mit, sagten die freiheitlichen Sozialisten, die Anarchisten. Vor den anderen Menschen muss man keine Angst haben und in ihrer Freiheit keine Gefahr sehen. Die freiheitlichen Sozialisten wollten eine Gemeinschaft haben, wo jeder Mensch entscheidet, welchen Weg er wählen, mit wem er sich assoziieren, wie er leben will. Diese Freiheit sollte man allen Menschen geben.

Freiheit bedeutet, dass der Mensch seine Sicherheit hat und nicht um die Kirchensuppe betteln muss. Das Prinzip der Freiheit sollte so verstanden werden, dass jeder arbeitende Mensch weiß, dass wenn er nicht mehr arbeiten kann, wenn er erkrankt, dass er dann dieselbe Möglichkeit hat zu leben, dass er den Lohn, den er heute hat, weiter haben wird, dass er seine Wohnung behalten, dass er weiterleben kann.

Doch eines hat Karl Marx den Menschen nicht zugemutet: dass man sie sofort freilassen kann. Er hatte es sich so vorgestellt, dass Revolutionäre die Macht und den Staat übernehmen und diese dann Gerechtigkeit und das Recht auf Leben, Grund und Boden schaffen. Wenn in den Fabriken Arbeiterräte das Sagen hätten, würde der Staat absterben, sich zurückziehen. Doch das hat sich als Irrtum erwiesen, weil sich Menschen unter dem Prinzip der Gewalt und Autorität nicht entwickeln können, sondern korrupt werden.

Wenn das Sein das Bewusstsein bestimmt, wie Marx sagte, dann beginnt das Sein, wenn den Menschen die Freiheit gegeben wird – und zwar sofort! Nicht der Staat, sondern die Gemeinschaft der Menschen entscheidet: der Bauer, der Angestellte, der Arbeiter in der Fabrik und die Gemeinde. Es muss kein Kommissär oder Städter kommen und Anordnungen treffen. Was will jemand, der das Problem nicht kennt, dem Bauern beibringen?

Die Tiefenpsychologie – ein Kind der Naturwissenschaft

Ohne materialistische Geschichtsauffassung wäre die Psychologie in ihrer Forschung nicht auf dem heutigen Stand. Die Psychologie ist eine Wissenschaft über das Wesen des Menschen, über die menschliche Natur. Als empirische Wissenschaft erforscht sie das geistige und seelische Leben des Menschen mittels systematischer Beobachtung und aufgrund von Erfahrungen: wie wird der Mensch, wie wächst er heran, welche Erlebnisse macht er und wie findet er sich in seinem Leben zurecht.

Naturwissenschaftlich orientierte Psychologen beobachten, messen und analysieren mit dem Ziel, Regelmäßigkeiten zu erkennen und ihre Forschungsergebnisse allen Menschen zur Verfügung zu stellen. Damit kann die Psychologie den Menschen vermitteln, wie sie naturgemäß leben und ihre Lebensprobleme lösen können. Auch lernen sie, die eigenen Gefühle und Reaktionsweisen und diejenigen der anderen Menschen zu erkennen und zu verstehen. Wenn sie die Gefühlswelt der Mitmenschen kennen lernen, dann können sie auch ihre Taten und Handlungsweisen einschätzen – diejenigen ihrer Mitbürger und diejenigen von Politikern und Machthabern.

Leider wird die Wissenschaft der Psychologie in vielen Ländern immer noch unterschätzt oder falsch eingeschätzt. Es gibt nämlich keine Politik ohne Psychologie und auch die Tatsache, dass Kriege geführt werden, ist auf den Mangel an psychologischer Erkenntnis zurückzuführen. Während des deutschen und weltweiten Faschismus haben die meisten Psychologen kläglich versagt und sich für mörderische Kriege einspannen lassen (3).

Der entscheidende Durchbruch in den intellektuellen Gesellschaftsschichten gelang den Naturwissenschaften erst im 17. Jahrhundert. Das löste im Zusammenhang mit der Aufklärung eine wissenschaftliche Revolution aus. Über zwei Jahrhunderte später entdeckte und erforschte der österreichische Arzt, Tiefenpsychologe, Kulturhistoriker und Religionskritiker Sigmund Freud das Unbewusste im Menschen und begründete die Psychoanalyse.

Freud war der Auffassung, dass die ganze Welt ein Spital sei, ein Kranken- oder Irrenhaus. Es gäbe keinen Menschen, der seine Probleme lösen könne. Wenn wir uns heute in der Welt umschauen, stellen wir fest, dass alle Menschen ohne Ausnahme durch die traditionelle Erziehung nicht gesund, sondern psychisch irritiert sind. Erfahrene Psychotherapeuten bestätigen dies. Aus diesem Grunde sind Aufklärung und Bildung der Menschen von großer Bedeutung. Wichtiger jedoch ist das Problem der Erziehung, welches – nach dem deutschen Schriftsteller Jean Paul – den eigentlichen Hebelarm der Kultur darstellt.

Die Bedeutung der Erziehung für eine lebenswerte Zukunft

Wenn es uns ein Anliegen ist, dass alle Bürger zukünftig in einer friedlichen, freien und gerechten Welt leben, dass die Menschen sich und ihre Mitmenschen verstehen und dass Gewalt, Kriege und die Herrschaft von Menschen über den Menschen ein ende finden, dann müssen wir uns dem Erziehungsproblem zuwenden und über die vergangenen und zukünftigen Erziehungsmethoden sprechen.

Die neuere tiefenpsychologische Forschung hat Eltern, Lehrkräften, Pädagogen, Psychologen und allen anderen Interessierten bewusst gemacht, dass der Mensch in einem derartigen Maße das Produkt seiner Erziehung ist, dass man die Hoffnung haben darf, durch bessere, das heißt psychologische Erziehungsmethoden Menschen heranbilden zu können, die gegen die Verstrickungen des Machtwahns gefeit sein werden.

Die Erziehungsmethoden der Vergangenheit schufen einen Menschentypus, der die Tragödie der Geschichte verursachen konnte. Das autoritäre Prinzip, jahrhundertelang als fraglos-gültige Grundlage des erzieherischen Verhaltens angesehen, drosselte bereits in den Kindheitsjahren das Gemeinschaftsgefühl der Menschen und stattete sie mit jener Aggressionsbereitschaft aus, durch die eine gewalttätige Welt im Zustand der Gewalttätigkeit verharren konnte.

Indem die Pädagogik in Elternhaus und Schule auf unangemessenes Autoritätsgebaren und auf Gewaltanwendung verzichtet und sich mit wahrem Verständnis dem kindlichen Seelenleben widmet, wird sie einen Menschentypus hervorbringen, der keine „Untertanen-Mentalität“ besitzt und darum für die Machthaber in der Welt kein gefügiges Werkzeug mehr sein wird.

Die Demokratisierung der Erziehung im Sinne der Achtung vor der kindlichen Persönlichkeit und die freundschaftliche Zuwendung des Erziehers zu seinem Zögling auf der Grundlage einer konsequenten zwischenmenschlichen Anti-Autorität wird den wertvollsten Beitrag zum Aufbau einer humanen Gesellschaftsordnung leisten.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Lehrer (Rektor a. D.), Doktor der Pädagogik (Dr. paed.) und Diplom-Psychologe (Dipl.-Psych. mit Schwerpunkt: Klinische-, Pädagogische-, Medien- sowie Individual-Psychologie). Viele Jahrzehnte unterrichtete er und bildete Fachkräfte fort. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und pädagogisch-psychologischen Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung und eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Sein Lebensmotto (nach Albert Camus): Geben, wenn man kann. Und nicht hassen, wenn das möglich ist.

Noten 

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-privatization-of-nuclear-war/5458265

2. Feuerbach, Ludwig (1994). Das Wesen des Christentums. Stuttgart

3. Baumgarten, Franziska (1949). Die Deutschen Psychologen und die Zeitereignisse. Zürich

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***

During her campaign for the leadership of the British Conservative Party, Liz Truss told the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) that, if elected, she would consider relocating the British embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. At a subsequent meeting at the UN, Prime Minister Truss repeated the promise of a review to her “good friend” Yair Lapid, the interim Israeli prime minister. 

The status of Jerusalem is the thorniest issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the most bitter, prolonged and intractable international conflicts of modern times. East Jerusalem, along with the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, were captured by Israel in the June 1967 war and have ever since been viewed by the international community as occupied territory.

Israel claims the entire city as its eternal, undivided capital, while the Palestinians claim the eastern part as the capital of their hoped-for future state.

Israeli officials were naturally delighted that Truss floated the idea of moving the embassy to Jerusalem, and thereby recognising Israeli sovereignty over the city, as one of her first foreign policy moves as prime minister.

Palestinian leaders have warned that moving the embassy would undermine the two-state solution and destroy their relations with Britain. Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, said it was “extremely unfortunate” that Truss used her first appearance at the UN as prime minister to “commit to potentially breaking international law”.

Violating UN resolutions

It is difficult to think of a foreign policy issue that is less in need of a review than the location of the British embassy in Israel. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem would violate a raft of UN resolutions and amount to an abrupt reversal of British policy since 1967. This policy, part of a broad international consensus, has held that all embassies should stay in Tel Aviv until a comprehensive peace agreement is reached between Israel and the Palestinians, with Jerusalem as the shared capital of two states.

During her tenure as foreign secretary, Truss made no attempt to relocate the embassy. One can only speculate that she instigated the review for reasons of political expediency: to ingratiate herself with Israel and its supporters in Britain, and more specifically, with the CFI, whose membership includes most of the cabinet and around 80 percent of Tory backbenchers.

One Israeli newspaper recently described Truss as potentially the “most pro-Israel British prime minister ever”. This was no doubt intended as praise, but it ignores Britain’s historic responsibility for creating the problem in the first place.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was made in Britain. It all began with the Balfour Declarationof 1917 in support of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, although the Jews were only 10 percent of the country’s population at that time. The commitment that this would not be at the expense of “non-Jewish communities” was completely ignored by successive British governments. The declaration thus enabled a systematic Zionist colonial takeover of Palestine, a process that is still ongoing.

In June 1967, Israel completed the takeover of the whole of historic Palestine. Two weeks after the guns fell silent, Israel unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem and merged it with West Jerusalem. The UN Security Council immediately denounced these measures as unlawful and invalid.

In 1980, when the Knesset formally annexed East Jerusalem, the Security Council censured Israel “in the strongest terms”. The United Kingdom voted for all of these resolutions.

Outrage and condemnation

US President Donald Trump was first world leader to break the long-standing agreement of the international community not to base embassies in Jerusalem until a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is reached. His decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 was met with outrage across the Arab world and provoked widespread international condemnation. It also led to a flareup of violence in which dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces. Theresa May, the British prime minister at the time, criticised the move.

Trump’s much-vaunted “deal of the century” was a crude attempt to redefine the two-state solution as Greater Israel, including about a third of the West Bank and the whole of Jerusalem, and a fragmented Palestinian mini-state surrounded by Israeli settlements and military bases. It was promptly and contemptuously rejected by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Despite Trump’s best efforts, only three states have followed his example of moving their embassies to Jerusalem: Kosovo, Guatemala and Honduras. All other 82 countries with diplomatic missions in Israel opted to keep their embassies in Tel Aviv. Some of these countries, including Britain, also have a consulate general in East Jerusalem, which serves as a channel of communication with the PA in Ramallah.

In her singularly pro-Israel stance and apparent indifference to Palestinian rights, Truss belongs to the mainstream of her party. All three prime ministers under whom she served have been staunch supporters of Israel. David Cameron described himself as a “passionate friend” of Israel and insisted that nothing could break that friendship.

Theresa May was probably the most pro-Israel leader in Europe during her premiership. In an address to the CFI in 2016, she described Israel as a “remarkable country … a thriving democracy, a beacon of tolerance, an engine of enterprise and an example to the rest of the world”. She furiously rejected a public petition, of which I was one of the signatories, to issue an official apology for the Balfour Declaration.

Strained relations

Boris Johnson carried the Israel-first Conservative policy a step further by placing Israel above international law. He resisted attempts to call it to account for its illegal actions and war crimes. In 2021, he announced that he opposed an International Criminal Court investigation into alleged war crimes in the occupied territories, noting in a letter to the CFI that while his government respected the independence of the court, it opposed this particular inquiry.

“This investigation gives the impression of being a partial and prejudicial attack on a friend and ally of the UK’s,” he wrote. The perverse logic of this statement is that being a friend and ally of the UK places Israel beyond international law and international scrutiny.

Like Johnson, Truss is a passionate proponent of post-Brexit Global Britain. Breaking international law, however, will do nothing to promote this brand – nor will it help to get a trade agreement with the US, which was touted as one of the major benefits of an independent foreign policy.

Truss’s loudly proclaimed intention, when she was foreign secretary, to unilaterally scrap the agreement with the European Union on Northern Ireland had already strained her relations with US President Joe Biden because of the peril he thought this would pose to the Good Friday agreement.

Following Trump’s example by moving the British embassy to Jerusalem would not go down well in the White House. Although Biden has not reversed the move of the American embassy, he has undertaken a series of measures to limit the damage done by his predecessor, and he has reverted to working with allies through the UN.

To move the British embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would be morally indefensible, legally questionable and politically damaging. It would be one of the most savage British blows to Palestinian statehood since the Balfour Declaration. It would also encourage Israel to continue to act with impunity, reinforcing the arrogance of power.

Israel and its supporters in this country would surely welcome the move, despite the damage to Britain’s standing in the world.

Rather than review the location of its embassy, the British government should reassess its relationship with Israel in light of present-day realities. In the last two years, reports by three major human rights organisations have concluded that Israel has become an apartheid state. These reports carefully document Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing, land confiscations, house demolitions, persecution of human rights defenders, detention of minors and tolerance of settler violence.

The sad truth is that since 1967, Israel has become addicted to occupation. A true friend does not indulge an addiction but tries to wean the addict from it.

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Avi Shlaim is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2014) and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2009).

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***

Even if the question of humanity’s survival in the face of a possible pre-emptive nuclear war (1) is currently at the centre of all considerations, wise Enlightenment thinkers should think “beyond the day” and consider how fellow human beings want to live in an Asian-style New World Order. Peace, freedom and justice remain desired goals of all human beings.

No matter how the world develops, humanity will not advance without the insights of scientific psychology. As a psychologist and psychotherapist of many years’ standing, the author stands by his prognosis. In the following, the development of modern psychology will be briefly presented.

It will not be easy to teach fellow citizens with different levels of education as well as young and old the knowledge about themselves and people in general. Up to now, they have been brought up in an authoritarian and religious way by parents, church and state and they are programmed in such a way that it will be difficult to make them aware of their problems.

But education means teaching people how to solve their problems and how to live. They should also learn what opinion they should have about themselves, their partners, neighbours, about the state and the community, and what attitude they should have towards their children.

It was not until the modern era that people began to recognise themselves

Before the age of psychology, in contrast to science based on causality, the magical worldview of the Middle Ages and religion held a firm grasp on people. It was believed that man’s soul was only undergoing a trial here in this world and that man belonged in heaven; there was eternal life.

It was Ludwig Feuerbach who shook up this problem by showing that this was not so (2). But his insight is still fought against and not passed on. Even today, the old principle of religion, the supernatural destiny of man, is still valid in schools. Even people’s feelings were not allowed to be researched; the Church was against it. Naturalists were therefore on the wrong track when they observed other peoples – the so-called savages.

It was only through the materialistic view of history in the century before last that people began to concern themselves with themselves. They began to recognise and interpret human beings and to explain to themselves why they behave the way they do. That was the beginning of the modern age.

The materialist conception of history was a great incursion into the world of people’s feelings. Karl Marx and the liberal socialists began to see man in the right way. If these thoughts had not been fought, humanity would already be much further ahead; people would be able to arrange life better for themselves in every respect. Marx had the German philosopher Wilhelm Hegel as his model. And he still saw God and the Absolute in nature.

Karl Marx, however, based himself on Feuerbach, rejected the supernatural tendency and found that man’s attitude can be changed. Depth psychology confirms this. Marx believed that man’s consciousness is determined by conditions (Being determines consciousness.). He brought man back to earth. He was also right that people change when their lives are secure, when they have a laid table. They then have different thoughts, different feelings and a different relationship with their fellow human beings. As long as people are afraid, they believe. In the materialistic view of history, belief in gods and supernatural beings ceased.

When social conditions change people associate with their fellow human beings, believe in them and empathise with them by appealing to them. The other person wants to live as well as I do, he wants to have a roof over his head. He joins in, said the liberal socialists, the anarchists. One must not be afraid of other people and see no danger in their freedom. The liberal socialists wanted to have a community where each person decides which way he wants to choose, with whom he wants to associate, how he wants to live. This freedom should be given to all people.

Freedom means that man has his security and does not have to beg for church soup. The principle of freedom should be understood in such a way that every working man knows that if he can no longer work, if he falls ill, that he will then have the same opportunity to live, that he will continue to have the wage he has today, that he can keep his home, that he can continue to live.

But there is one thing Karl Marx did not demand of people: that they could be set free immediately. He had envisaged revolutionaries taking over power and the state and then establishing justice and the right to life, land and property. If workers’ councils were in charge in the factories, the state would die off, withdraw. But this has proved to be a mistake, because people cannot develop under the principle of violence and authority, but become corrupt.

If consciousness is determined by being, as Marx said, then being begins when people are given freedom – and immediately! It is not the state that decides, but the community of people: the peasant, the employee, the worker in the factory and the community. There is no need for a commissioner or a city official to come and issue orders. What does someone who does not know the problem want to teach the farmer?

Depth psychology – a child of natural science

Without a materialistic view of history, psychology would not be at its present level of research. Psychology is a science about the being of human beings, about human nature. As an empirical science, it investigates the mental and spiritual life of man by means of systematic observation and on the basis of experience: how does man become, how does he grow up, what experiences does he have and how does he find his way in life.

Scientifically oriented psychologists observe, measure and analyse with the aim of recognising regularities and making their research results available to all people. In this way, psychology can teach people how to live naturally and solve their life problems. They also learn to recognise and understand their own feelings and ways of reacting and those of other people. When they learn about the emotional world of fellow human beings, they can also judge their deeds and ways of acting – those of their fellow citizens and those of politicians and those in power.

Unfortunately, the science of psychology is still underestimated or misjudged in many countries. Indeed, there is no politics without psychology, and the fact that wars are fought is also due to the lack of psychological knowledge. During German and worldwide fascism, most psychologists failed miserably and allowed themselves to be used for murderous wars (3).

The decisive breakthrough in the intellectual circles of society was only achieved by the natural sciences in the 17th century. This triggered a scientific revolution in connection with the Enlightenment. More than two centuries later, the Austrian physician, depth psychologist, cultural historian and religious critic Sigmund Freud discovered and researched the unconscious in humans and founded psychoanalysis.

Freud believed that the whole world was a hospital, a sick or insane asylum. There would be no human being who could solve his problems. If we look around the world today, we see that all people without exception are not healthy but psychologically irritated by traditional education. Experienced psychotherapists confirm this. For this reason, enlightenment and education of people are of great importance. More important, however, is the problem of education, which – according to the German writer Jean Paul – is the real lever arm of culture.

The importance of education for a future worth living

If we are concerned that all citizens live in a peaceful, free and just world in the future, that people understand each other and their fellow human beings, and that violence, wars and the domination of people over people come to an end, then we must turn to the problem of education and talk about past and future methods of education.

Recent research in depth psychology has made parents, teachers, pedagogues, psychologists and all other interested parties aware that man is the product of his upbringing to such an extent that we can hope that better, i.e. psychological, methods of upbringing will be able to train people who will be immune to the entanglements of the mania for power.

The educational methods of the past created a type of human being that could cause the tragedy of history. The authoritarian principle, for centuries regarded as the unquestionably valid basis of educational behaviour, already throttled people’s sense of community in their childhood years and equipped them with that readiness for aggression through which a violent world could persist in a state of violence.

By renouncing inappropriate authority and the use of violence in the parental home and school and devoting itself with true understanding to the child’s soul, pedagogy will produce a type of human being that does not have a “subject mentality” and will therefore no longer be a docile tool for those in power in the world.

The democratisation of education in the sense of respect for the child’s personality and the friendly devotion of the educator to his pupil on the basis of a consistent interpersonal anti-authority will make the most valuable contribution to the building of a humane social order.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a teacher (retired headmaster), doctor of education (Dr. paed.) and graduate psychologist (Dipl.-Psych. with specialisation in clinical, educational, media and individual psychology). He taught and trained professionals for many decades. As a retiree, he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and educational-psychological articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral values education and an education for public spirit and peace. His motto in life (after Albert Camus): Give when you can. And not to hate, if that is possible.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-privatization-of-nuclear-war/5458265

(2) Feuerbach, Ludwig (1994). The essence of Christianity. Stuttgart

(3) Baumgarten, Franziska (1949). The German Psychologists and the Events of the Times. Zürich

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***

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday will host Pakistan Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa at the Pentagon for talks amidst signs of enhanced military engagement between the two countries.

Last week, Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was in the town meeting top officials of the Biden Administration, including Secretary of State Tony Blinken.

Bajwa will be accorded an “enhanced honour cordon” at the riverside entrance of the Pentagon by Austin following which the two will be holding a meeting on bilateral and regional issues.

America’s engagement with Pakistan, in particular with its military, has increased in recent months. Last month, the US announced a $450 million F-16 fighter jet sustenance package for Pakistan — a move that was widely speculated as retaliation of India’s reluctance to criticise Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The F-16 package drew criticism from Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, who called on the US to reflect on its relationship with Pakistan, and observed it ‘is not fooling anyone’ by claiming support for Pak’s F-16 was meant for counter-terrorism.

“At the end of the day… to say I am doing it for ‘counterterrorism’… you are talking of an aircraft of the capability of a F-16 (and) everyone knows where they are deployed. You are not fooling anybody by saying these things,” he said.

The US state department spokesperson Ned Price defended the decision.

“We don’t view our relationship with Pakistan… our relationship with India… in relation to one another… both partners of ours with different points of emphasis…” he said, responding to Jaishankar’s criticism.

“We look to both as partners, because we do have in many cases shared values. We do have in many cases shared interests. And the relationship we have with India stands on its own. The relationship we have with Pakistan stands on its own,” he said.

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***

The long-term crisis in the relations between the Russian Federation and Ukraine entered its final – war phase on February 24^th, 2022. The official reactions to the latest dramatic events in East Europe, which come from the Westerners, including the most important overseas Western political address, are usually dominated by two phrases:

“flagrant violation of international public law” and “violation of the territorial integrity of an internationally recognized state”.

The perpetrator of the acts is, of course, Russia, and, as it is claimed, the innocent victim is neighboring Ukraine.

However, the same Westerners do not want to see either flagrant violations by the Kiev regime of human rights in the Donbass Region since 2014 onward or flagrant violations of international public law and territorial integrity of the internationally recognized state in the case of the Balkans (Yugoslavia) in the 1990s. 

The ignorant attitude towards the provisions of international public law relevant to the Balkan case resulted, therefore, in the break-up of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the long wars in its two former federal units (Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina) that took about 150,000 lives, produced more than two million displaced people and left behind a region to this day, almost three decades later, it has not politically stabilized and consolidated.

The West demonstrated an identical attitude towards the branch of law that it is ardently calling for these days concerning Ukraine, several years after the end of those wars, when it decided to actively engage in “protecting the endangered human rights of Kosovo Albanians” and “stopping the humanitarian catastrophe to which they were exposed”, as the official Western narrative was, explaining 78 days of the barbaric campaign of bombing Serbia and Montenegro in the spring of 1999. As we know, it ended with the complete physical destruction of the country and the de facto exclusion of Kosovo from its constitutional and legal framework of the Republic of Serbia. The self-proclaimed independence of Kosovo in February 2008 was, as well as the aggression against Serbia and Montenegro in 1999 contrary to all relevant customs of international public law. However, Western countries that today are leading in condemning similar Russian acts in Ukraine, were among the first to recognize the self-proclaimed independence of Kosovo.

The policy of “double standards” in international relations and global politics used by great powers is not unknown and unrecorded in history.

However, after the Cold War 1.0 (1949−1989) up today, the absence of any Western standards in the practice of generally accepted and binding rules of the international “game”, however, is one of the focal dimensions of the international relations in the world politics.

The well-known dictum that sums up that insight – “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they have to” – came from the pen of the famous ancient Greek historian and military leader from Athens – Thucydides (c. 460−c. 400 BC). Thus, almost two and a half millennia ago, the great historian taught that justice and rights, as its codified forms, exist in international relations and can only be among equals (inter pares). Major disagreements in this regard, which are the basis of what is happening today in Ukraine with potentially catastrophic consequences, occur when this “equal”, in this case, the great and powerful Russia, is not recognized as such and is not as such respected. Today, the Western policymakers made a crucial mistake with Russia as thinking this is the same state as it was in the 1990s during the wars of the Yugoslav succession. Unfortunately for them, today’s Russian Federation is not a Western puppet state from the Yeltsin’s period – it is today at least equal with the Western great powers including NATO as well. Those Western actors in global politics who would continue to overlook this “hard” fact concerning Russia and her role in the politics of the contemporary world, would lead the world to the dangerous edge of the abyss and push the world into it very quickly with their indolence and old policy of gangsterism in international relations.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic, former University Professor, a Research Fellow at Centre for Geostrategic Studies, Belgrade, Serbia www.geostrategy.rs, [email protected]

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Cradle

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***

Participation of almost 208,000 Sikhs in the Khalistan referendums held in four countries to demand the liberation of Indian Punjab show that Sikhs have accelerated their movement.

So far, four referendums have been held in UK, Geneva, Italy and Canada in which the Sikh community actively participated in a huge number and favoured an independent Khalistan.

The first Khalistan referendum was held on October 31, 2021 in the UK, in which 30,000 Sikhs participated. On December 10, last year, over 6,000 people took part in referendum in Geneva and in Italy 62,000 Sikhs participated on July 4, 2022 in referendum. But, the huge turnout for the Sikh referendum, organised by the pro-Khalistani advocacy group Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) was held on September 18, this year in Brampton city-in the Canadian province of Ontario, which depicted that the issue of the Sikh independence movement is becoming a mainstream movement, as it was an unprecedented show of power, in which more than 110,000 Canadian Sikhs participated.

During the referendum, the Sikh community raised anti-India and pro-Khalistan slogans, while more than 2,000 cars took part in the pro-Khalistan rally.

Organisers of the SFJ, and Canada’s Member of Parliament for Niagra West for the Conservative party said: “Amazing turnout at Gore Meadows community centre in Brampton…attendance in Ontario for Khalistan voting has broken all previous records of voting in UK, Italy and Geneva.”

In interaction with media entities, Sikh leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun-General Counsel to SFJ displayed a proposed Khalistan Map with Shimla as its capital. He elaborated that referendum in Canada was organised in a peaceful and democratic way.

Gurpatwant Singh added: “Today, Canadians voted in the independence referendum to reclaim Shimla as the capital once Punjab is liberated from the Indian occupation. The voting in Punjab for the Khalistan referendum will start from January 26, 2023, coinciding with India’s 74th Republic Day.”

Undoubtedly, the referendum campaign by the SFJ has raised awareness in a global community regarding atrocities committed against Sikhs by New Delhi. It will also further pressurise India to hold an official referendum.

Notably, Sikhs’ referendum campaign is in accordance with the UN article which gives people the right to self-determination—stating that a referendum for independence in a peaceful and democratic way is the right of everyone.

Using its typical shrewd diplomatic tactics, India issued multiple requests to the Canadian government to stop the Khalistan referendum.

But, the Canadian government refused to stop the SFJ from holding a referendum and categorically informed the Indian rulers that it was held in a peaceful and democratic way within the legal parametres of Canadian Law.

And the Indian Ministry of External Affairs strongly objected to the referendum, terming it as a “farcical exercise held and supported by politically motivated extremist elements.”

Even, the Indian leading media outlets did not cover the peaceful demonstration of Sikh community and instead negatively covered the entire event.

In fact, India which, apparently, claims to be the largest democracy, acting upon the principles of liberalism and secularism has broken all the records of mistreatment of religious and ethnic minorities by acceleration of violence, genocide and massacre, perpetrated on them.

Since Narendar Modi, the leader of the fanatic ruling party BJP became the Indian Prime Minister, he started implementing ideology of Hindutva ((Hindu Nationalism). Under his regime, persecution of religious minorities such as Christians and particularly Muslims and Sikhs, including even of lower cast-Hindus have been intensified by the extremist Hindus.

In this respect, in its annual report of 2017, Human Rights Watch which conducted investigative work in 2016 pointed out Indian government’s failure to control growing attacks on Dalits and religious minorities—Sikh community.

The report explained: “Authorities continue to use sedition and criminal defamation laws to prosecute citizens who criticise government officials or oppose state policies. In rare cases in 2016, police were held accountable for abuses. In April, 47 policemen were sentenced to life in prison for involvement in the killing of 11 Sikhs in 1991 in the Pilibhit district of Uttar Pradesh state. Despite calls for repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, soldiers continue to have immunity from prosecution when deployed in areas of internal conflict.”

However, the Sikhs are fighting for a separate homeland since 1947, but the movement attained impetus by the efforts of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, which in 1984 resulted in most brutal operation against a highly sacred Sikh religious place-the Golden Temple complex (Harmandir Sahib) in Amritsar, Punjab, which resulted in killings of thousands of Sikhs.

In this connection, Indian Army led by General Kuldip Singh Brar, supported by troops and armoured vehicles had broken all records of the state terrorism and extra-judicial killings through the barbaric Operation Blue Star which occurred between 3–8 June 1984, ordered by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to control over the Harmandir Sahib complex.

In this context, in their book, “The Sikh Struggle”, Ramnarain Kumar and George Sieberer writes, “The army killed every Sikh who could be found inside the temple-complex. They were hauled out of rooms, brought to corridors on the circumference of the temple and with their hands tied behind their back, were shot in cold blood. Among the victims were many old men, women and children…However, all visitors were locked up in rooms for two days without any food, water, or electricity and were starved to death. Besides, the Harmandir Sahib remained under the army control for many months”.

The brutality of the Operation was not confined to the Harmandir Sahib. Indian armed forces simultaneously attacked 40 other historical gurdwaras all over East Punjab. When Sikhs in other states came to know about the desecration of the Harmandir Sahib and massacre of their brethren, they quickly left for Punjab. New Delhi tried to stop them before they could reach Punjab. Many Sikhs were assassinated on the way and many others were arrested.

In the same year of November, two dedicated Sikhs named Beant Singh and Satwant Singh who were posted at Premier Indira Gandhi’s residence in New Delhi, assassinated her. Then Hindu riots erupted in the capital and other cities in which more then 15,000 Sikhs were murdered in broad daylight by the supporters of Indira Gandhi, while police watched silently so as to provide the Hindus with free hand to massacre Sikhs.

Nevertheless, the attack on the Harmandir Sahib and genocide of Sikhs accelerated the liberation movement for Khalistan, as Bhindrenwale became a folk hero.

To maintain its control over the Harmandir Sahib, another attack was launched on the Temple in 1987, called ‘Operation Black Thunder’. That time only Sikh resistance which was natural outcome of the tragedy was the main target. Afterwards, ‘Operation Woodrose’ and ‘Operation Black Thunder-II’ were conducted against the Sikh community, which also killed them extra-judicially.

After these barbaric operations, Sikhs organised themselves into an armed power in order to fight the Indian state terrorism. Many Sikhs left India to escape religious persecution. Sikhs have spread out all over the world to keep the struggle for Khalistan alive.

It is of particular attention that New Delhi and Indian intelligence agency RAW is trying to create division between the Sikh community-platforms in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and Pakistan etc. In this context, a deliberate campaign has been launched to ban or disallow Indian diplomats or officials’ entry to gurdawaras for misusing them for their ulterior motives so as to divide the Sikh community.

In a statement, Gopal Singh Chawla leader of the Khalistan movement for independence had announced that “Peace for Sikhs” has stepped up registration process for the Khalistan referendum. He has asked the other Sikhs to resign and join the movement and revealed that 11000 to 13000 Sikh have already left Indian Army without any benefits and joined Khalistan movement—have reiterated that from now onward Sikhs will not fight for India. He pointed out that the Sikhs leaders have realised that Indian military leadership always post Sikh outfits on borders to meet any operation confrontation and it is either Sikhs or low caste Hindus who lay their lives for India, from now onwards Sikhs will only lay their lives for Khalistan.

Referring to the promise of Gandhi made with Sikhs in 1947 for Khalistan, which was never fulfilled by cunning Hindu rulers; Gopal Singh claimed that “Khalistan is the basic right if Sikh nation and Sikhs will now create Khalistan at any cost.”

Nonetheless, the timeline of various Khalistan referendums and rapid increase in the number of Sikhs who voted in favour of Independent Khalistan reflect that Sikhs have accelerated the movement for the liberation of Indian Punjab.

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Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from referendum2020.org

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***

On September 27, 2022, a tropical cyclone—Hurricane Ian—struck Cuba’s western province of Pinar del Río. Sustained winds of around 125 miles per hour lingered over Cuba for more than eight hours, bringing down trees and power lines, and causing damage not seen during previous tropical cyclones. The hurricane then lingered over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, picking up energy before striking the U.S. island of Cayo Costa, Florida, with approximately 155 mph winds. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) called it “one of the worst hurricanes to hit the area in a century.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center said that this year will be the “seventh consecutive above-average hurricane season.” Both Cuba and Florida have faced the wrath of the waters and winds, but beneath this lies the ferocity of the climate catastrophe. “Climate science is increasingly able to show that many of the extreme weather events that we are experiencing have become more likely and more intense due to human-induced climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

Prepare and Relieve

Cuba, said the WMO, is one of the “world leaders in terms of hurricane preparedness and disaster management.” This was not always the case. Hurricane Flora hit the eastern coast of the island on October 4, 1963. When news of the approaching hurricane reached Fidel Castro, he immediately ordered the evacuation of the homes of people who lived in the projected path of the storm (in Haiti, former dictator François Duvalier did not call for an evacuation, which led to the death of more than 5,000 people). Castro rushed to Camagüey, almost dying in the Cauto River as his amphibious vehicle was struck by a drifting log. Two years later, in his Socialism and Man in Cuba, Che Guevara wrote the Cuban people showed “exceptional deeds of valor and sacrifice” as they rebuilt the country after the devastation caused by Flora.

In 1966, the Cuban government created the Civil Defense System to prepare for not only extreme weather events such as hurricanes but also the outbreak of epidemics. Using science as the foundation for its hurricane preparedness, the Cuban government was able to evacuate 2 million people as Hurricane Ivan moved toward the island in 2004. As part of disaster management, the entire Cuban population participates in drills, and the Cuban mass organizations (the Federation of Cuban Women and the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution) work in an integrated manner to mobilize the population to respond to disasters.

The day before Hurricane Ian hit Cuba, 50,000 people were evacuated and taken to 55 shelters. No private vehicles or public transportation was visible on the streets. Work brigades were mobilized to work on the resumption of electricity supply after the storm had passed. In Artemisa, for instance, the Provincial Defense Council met to discuss how to react to the inevitable flooding. Despite the best efforts made by Cubans, three people died because of the hurricane, and the electrical grid suffered significant damage.

Damage

The entire island—including Havana—had no power for more than three days. The electrical grid, which was already suffering from a lack of major repairs, collapsed. Without power, Cubans had to throw away food that needed to be refrigerated and faced difficulty in preparing meals, among other hardships. By October 1, less than five days after landfall, 82 percent of the residents of Havana had their power restored with work ongoing for the western part of the island (the amount of time without power in Puerto Rico, which was hit by Hurricane Fiona on September 18, is longer—a quarter of a million people remain without power more than two weeks later).

The long-term impact of Hurricane Ian is yet to be assessed, although some believe the cost of damages will surpass $1 billion. More than 8,500 hectares of cropland have been hit by the flooding, with the banana crop most impacted. The most dramatic problem will be faced by Cuba’s tobacco industry since Pinar del Río—where 5,000 farms were destroyed—is its heartland (with 65 percent of the country’s tobacco production). Hirochi Robaina, a tobacco farmer in Pinar del Río, wrote, “It was apocalyptic. A real disaster.”

Blockade

Mexico and Venezuela immediately pledged to send materials to assist in the reconstruction of the electrical grid on the island.

All eyes turned to Washington—not only to see whether it would send aid, which would be welcome, but also if it would remove Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list and end sanctions imposed by the United States. These measures cause banks in both the United States and elsewhere to be reluctant to process any financial transactions, including humanitarian donations. The U.S. has a mixed record regarding humanitarian aid to Cuba. After Hurricane Michelle (2001), Hurricane Charley (2004), and Hurricane Wilma (2005), the U.S. did offer assistance, but would not even temporarily lift the blockade. After the fire at a Matanzas oil storage facility in August 2022, the U.S. did offer to join Mexico and Venezuela to help the Cubans put out the fire. Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossio offered “profound gratitude” for the gesture, but the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden did not follow through.

Rather than lift the sanctions even for a limited period, the U.S. government sat back and watched as mysterious forces from Miami unleashed a torrent of Facebook and WhatsApp messages to drive desperate Cubans onto the street. Not a moment is wasted by Washington to use even a natural disaster to try to destabilize the situation in Cuba (a history that goes back to 1963, when the Central Intelligence Agency reflected on how to leverage natural disasters for political gains). “Most people don’t shout out freedom,” a person who observed one of these protests told us. “They ask for power and food.”

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This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

Manolo De Los Santos is the co-executive director of the People’s Forum and is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He co-edited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War (LeftWord Books/1804 Books, 2020) and Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (LeftWord Books/1804 Books, 2021). He is a co-coordinator of the People’s Summit for Democracy.

Featured image is from Countercurrents

Pipeline Terror Is the 9/11 of the Raging Twenties

By Pepe Escobar, October 05, 2022

There’s no question that future unbiased historians will rank Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address on the Return of the Baby Bears – Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia – on September 30 as a landmark inflection point of the Raging Twenties.

Twenty-one Years Ago: US Invasion of Afghanistan

By Shane Quinn, October 04, 2022

More than two decades ago on 7 October 2001 the United States, backed by its close allies Britain, Canada and Australia, began a military invasion of Afghanistan in south-central Asia.

“Preemptive Nuclear War”: The Historic Battle for Peace and Democracy. A Third World War Threatens the Future of Humanity

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 04, 2022

At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable. All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as “a weapon of last resort”, have been scrapped.

US, UK Behind Nord Stream Sabotage? Military Expert

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, October 04, 2022

Western media have tried to suggest that the Nord Stream pipeline incident was the result of a Russian sabotage operation, but this narrative does not seem to convince even Western experts. Recently, a former Pentagon adviser stated that the US and UK appear to be responsible for the operation that led to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 explosions.

More Studies Confirm the COVID Jab “Does More Harm Than Good”

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, October 04, 2022

The COVID jabs are an absolute disaster, with injuries and deaths piling up by the day. Yet so-called health authorities, doctors, media, drug makers and many of the jabbed themselves claim there’s nothing to see here. Ever since their release, brave medical professionals have spoken out against them, calling for a more cautious approach.

How a U.S. Colony Works: The Case of Germany

By Eric Zuesse, October 04, 2022

On 15 July 2022, Britain’s Reuters news agency headlined “70% of Germans back Ukraine despite high energy prices, survey shows”, and reported that “Some 70% of those polled backed Germany’s support for Ukraine, … found the survey conducted between July 12-14 by broadcaster ZDF.” ZDF is funded by the German Government — German taxpayers. 

“Gone in 30 Minutes” – Next on Europe’s Doomsday List: Collapse of Cell Phone Networks

By Zero Hedge, October 04, 2022

It’s not just heating that could be missing across Europe this winter: cell phones may be the next to go. That’s because if power cuts or energy rationing knocks out parts of the mobile networks across the region, mobile phones could go dark around Europe this winter according to the latest doomsday reporting from Reuters.

Researchers Use GMO Mosquitoes to Vaccinate Humans in NIH-Funded Malaria Study

By Michael Nevradakis, October 04, 2022

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded a malaria vaccine trial study that used genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes to “vaccinate” humans. A team of researchers at the University of Washington conducted the study, which was published in the Science Translational Medicine journal.

NATO in the Horns of a Dilemma After Former Ukrainian Regions Vote to Join Russia. Scott Ritter

By Scott Ritter, October 04, 2022

By infusing tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military aid into Ukraine, NATO produced a “game-changing” dynamic designed to throw Russia off balance. By undertaking the referendums in Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk, Russia changed the game altogether.

The China Coup Dupes

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 04, 2022

It all caused a flutter amongst the ignorant and expectant on September 21.  China, it was said, was in the grip of an intriguing internal crisis. Air traffic had dramatically altered, with some 9,583 flights cancelled.  There were talking heads aflame with interest on the latest social media morsel, minute and yet profound.

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A peer-reviewed scientific review in the Journal of Insulin Resistance, written by cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra, calls for the immediate suspension of all COVID shots as real-world data show they cause more harm than good

Data from Israel shows myocarditis post-jab is occurring at a rate of 1 in 6,000. Hong Kong data from male children and teens found a rate of 1 in 2,700

Data from the British Yellow Card system shows 1 in 120 people who have received at least one mRNA injection suffer an adverse event “that is beyond mild.” In Norway, the rate of serious adverse events post-jab is 1 in 1,000 after two doses of Pfizer

Researchers looking at data from the FDA, Health Canada and the Pfizer and Moderna trials concluded the absolute risk of a serious adverse event from the mRNA shots was 1 in 800, which massively exceeds the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization found in randomized controlled trials

Leaked audio from a June 2022 meeting between Israeli researchers and the Israeli Ministry of Healthy reveals the Pfizer jab causes long-term adverse effects and is associated with more severe side effects upon rechallenge (i.e., with repeated doses). While the researchers wanted to warn the public, the Ministry altered their final report to say that adverse effects are mild and short-lived. The government then canceled any further research into adverse effects

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The COVID jabs are an absolute disaster, with injuries and deaths piling up by the day. Yet so-called health authorities, doctors, media, drug makers and many of the jabbed themselves claim there’s nothing to see here. Ever since their release, brave medical professionals have spoken out against them, calling for a more cautious approach.

Now, a peer-reviewed scientific review,1 2 3 published in two parts4 5 in the Journal of Insulin Resistance calls for the immediate suspension of all COVID shots as real-world data show they cause more harm than good.

According to this paper, “Curing the Pandemic of Misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Through Real Evidence-Based Medicine,” authored by cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra:

“In the non-elderly population the ‘number needed to treat’ to prevent a single death runs into the thousands. Re-analysis of randomized controlled trials using the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology suggests a greater risk of serious adverse events from the vaccines than being hospitalized from COVID-19.

Pharmacovigilance systems and real-world safety data, coupled with plausible mechanisms of harm, are deeply concerning, especially in relation to cardiovascular safety.

Mirroring a potential signal from the Pfizer Phase 3 trial, a significant rise in cardiac arrest calls to ambulances in England was seen in 2021, with similar data emerging from Israel in the 16–39-year-old age group.

Conclusion: It cannot be said that the consent to receive these agents was fully informed, as is required ethically and legally. A pause and reappraisal of global vaccination policies for COVID-19 is long overdue.”

COVID Jab Boomerang 

In recent months, disability, excess mortality and live birth statistics all point in the same direction. Something horrific started happening around April 2021, and continues to get worse. Something is killing an extraordinary number of people in the prime of their life, who should have decades left to live. Something is causing people to file for permanent disability in numbers we’ve not seen before.

What changed in the world, in 2021? That is the question. The answer is ridiculously simple to answer, yet many choose to drive their heads deeper into the sand than face plain facts. The COVID shots, using mRNA technology to trigger antibody production in a way that had never been used before, were rolled out in 2021 under emergency use authorization. That’s what changed.

At the time of their rollout, human trials were far from finished, and much of their value had already been destroyed by unblinding the trials and offering the real injection to everyone in the placebo groups.6

This year, we’ve also come to realize that Pfizer, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have all repeatedly lied about the safety and effectiveness of the shots, as Pfizer’s own trial data show they’re about as dangerous as they come.

The only reason we now know this is because the FDA was sued and forced by a judge to release the trial data they initially wanted to keep hidden for 75 years. Pfizer data is now being released at a pace of 55,000 pages per month,7 and these batches have proven to be a treasure trove of bad and worse news.

Pfizer hid serious injuries, falsely categorizing almost all of them as unrelated to the shot without investigation, and misrepresented data showing massive risks as being of no concern. Participants who suffered serious injuries were often simply withdrawn from the trial, and their data excluded from the results.8

Real-world data now conclusively show these risks are extremely real. For example, Pfizer’s Phase 3 clinical trial showed an increased risk for cardiac problems, and during 2021, U.K. ambulance services recorded an extra 27,800 cardiac arrest calls above the national average in previous years, or about 500 per day9 10 — and disproportionally among the young.11 Importantly, COVID-19 cannot account for this rise, as the relevant increase began in the spring of 2021.

A Change of Heart

In his paper, Malhotra details his personal journey from staunch COVID jab proponent to concerned questioner. He got Pfizer’s two-dose regimen at the end of January 2021. You can see more of Maholtra’s efforts in the lecture he recently gave captured in the video above.

A few months later, his father, who also got the shot, suffered cardiac arrest six months after his second dose. The post-mortem findings were “shocking and inexplicable,” Malhotra writes, and got him to take another look at the data.

“After six months of critically appraising the data myself, speaking to eminent scientists involved in COVID-19 research, vaccine safety and development, and two investigative medical journalists, I have slowly and reluctantly concluded that contrary to my own initial dogmatic beliefs, Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine is far from being as safe and effective as we first thought,” Malhotra writes.12

He goes on to review how post-mortem examination revealed his father, who was extremely active and fit, had severe blockages in two of the three major arteries. His left anterior descending artery was 90% blocked and his right coronary was 75% blocked. The last scan, “a few years earlier,” according to Malhotra, had revealed perfect blood flow and no obstructions. He continues:13

“I couldn’t explain his post-mortem findings, especially as there was no evidence of an actual heart attack … This was precisely my own special area of research. That is, how to delay progression of heart disease and even potentially reverse it … Then, in November 2021, I was made aware of a peer-reviewed abstract published in Circulation, with concerning findings.

In over 500 middle-aged patients under regular follow up, using a predictive score model based on inflammatory markers that are strongly correlated with risk of heart attack, the mRNA vaccine was associated with significantly increasing the risk of a coronary event within five years from 11% pre-mRNA vaccine to 25% 2–10 weeks post mRNA vaccine.

An early and relevant criticism of the validity of the findings was that there was no control group, but nevertheless, even if partially correct, that would mean that there would be a large acceleration in progression of coronary artery disease, and more importantly heart attack risk, within months of taking the jab.

I wondered whether my father’s Pfizer vaccination, which he received six months earlier, could have contributed to his unexplained premature death and so I began to critically appraise the data.”

Data Points to Consider 

Malhotra reviews a number of data points in the paper, including:14

• Pfizer data showing there were four cardiac arrests in the injection group and only one in the placebo group.
• The misleading use of relative risk reduction (95%) when speaking of effectiveness, rather than absolute risk reduction, which was only 0.84%.
• 119 people would have to be injected to prevent one positive test, which may or may not be indicative of infection.
• Pfizer’s trial found no statistically significant reduction in serious illness or COVID mortality from the injection over the course of six months (the length of the trial). Moreover, the risk of serious COVID-19 infection in the placebo group was only 0.04%, showing just how low the risk of serious illness was in the first place, and this despite the fact that the regions chosen for the trial were chosen for their perceived high prevalence of infection.
• While there were two deaths from COVID in the placebo group and only one COVID death in the injection group, all-cause mortality over a longer period revealed 19 deaths in the injection group and 17 deaths in the placebo group.
• The pediatric trial used a surrogate measure of antibody levels rather than reduction in symptomatic infection, even though there was no known correlation between antibody levels and protection from infection. The FDA even warns that: “[R]esults from currently authorized SARS-COV-2 antibody tests should not be used to evaluate a person’s level of immunity or protection from COVID-19 at any time, and especially after the person received a COVID-19 vaccination.”

Extrapolating Data to Determine Protection Against Death

Malhotra goes on to describe how he extrapolated data to determine the level of protection these mRNA shots provide against COVID-related death:15

“Now that we know what the published trial did and did not show in terms of the vaccine efficacy, we can attempt to extrapolate what the effect of the vaccine would be in reducing mortality or any other adverse outcome from the virus.

If there is a 1 in 119 chance the vaccine protects you from getting symptomatic infection from ancestral variants, then to find the protection against death, this figure (n = 119) must be multiplied by the number of infections that lead to a single death for each age group.

This would give (for up to two months after the inoculation) the absolute risk reduction (for death) from the vaccine. For example, if my risk at age 44 from dying from Delta (should I get infected with it) is 1 in 3,000, then the absolute risk reduction from the vaccine protecting me from death is 1 over 3,000 multiplied by 119, that is, 1 per 357,000 …

From observational data it is possible to calculate the number who would need to be vaccinated to prevent a COVID-19 death. For example, comparing the population death rates during the Delta wave gives 230 for people over 80s needing to be vaccinated to prevent a single death in that period with that number rising to 520 for people in their 70s and 10,000 for people in their 40s …

Depending on your age, several hundreds or thousands of people like you would need to be injected in order to prevent one person from dying from the Delta variant of COVID-19 over a period of around three months.

For the over 80s, this figure is at least 230, but it rises the younger you are, reaching at least 2,600 for people in their 50s, 10,000 for those in their 40s, and 93,000 for those between 18 and 29 years. For omicron, which has been shown to be 30% – 50% less lethal, meaning significantly more people would need to be vaccinated to prevent one death.”

What Are the Harms? 

Next, Malhotra reviews the hams, noting that one of the most common side effects reported is myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, especially among young men. He rejects health authorities’ claim that myocarditis is far more prevalent in those who suffer serious COVID infection, stating:16

“Incidence of myocarditis rocketed from spring 2021 when vaccines were rolled out to the younger cohorts having remained within normal levels for the full year prior, despite COVID-19.

With the most up-to-date evidence, a paper from Israel found that the infection itself, prior to roll- out of the vaccine, conferred no increase in the risks of either myocarditis or pericarditis from COVID-19, strongly suggesting that the increases observed in earlier studies were because of the mRNA vaccines, with or without COVID-19 infections as an additional risk in the vaccinated …

Although vaccine-induced myocarditis is not often fatal in young adults, MRI scans reveal that, of the ones admitted to hospital, approximately 80% have some degree of myocardial damage. It is like suffering a small heart attack and sustaining some — likely permanent — heart muscle injury.”

Data from Israel shows myocarditis post-jab is occurring at a rate of 1 in 6,000. Hong Kong data from male children and teens found a rate of 1 in 2,700. Data from the British Yellow Card system shows 1 in 120 people who have received at least one mRNA injection suffer an adverse event “that is beyond mild.”

In Norway, Malhotra notes, the rate of serious adverse events post-jab is 1 in 1,000 after two doses of Pfizer. These are injuries that are life changing for the worse.

In all, nearly 500,000 adverse events had been reported to the Yellow Card system when Malhotra wrote this paper, which he points out is “unprecedented in the modern medical era and equals the total number of reports received in the first 40 years of the Yellow Card reporting system (for all medicines — not just vaccines) up to 2020.”

What VAERS Data Tell Us 

The same trend is seen in the U.S., where the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has received more adverse event reports for the COVID jabs than all other vaccines over the last 30 years combined. Malhotra writes:

“As with the UK’s system, the level of reports — including serious ones — associated with COVID-19 vaccines is completely unprecedented. For example, over 24,000 deaths have now been recorded in VAERS as of March 2, 2022; 29% of these occurred within 48 h of injection, and half within two weeks.

The average reporting rate prior to 2020 was less than 300 deaths per annum. One explanation often given for this is that the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out is unprecedented in scope; however, this is not valid, since (for the last decade at any rate) the United States has administered 150 million – 200 million vaccinations annually.”

Another criticism of VAERS is that ‘anyone can make an entry,’ yet, in fact, an analysis of a sample of 250 early deaths suggested that the vast majority are hospital or physician entries, and knowingly filing a false VAERS report is a violation of Federal law punishable by fine and imprisonment.

Given that VAERS was set up to generate early signals of potential harm for new vaccines, and was instrumental in doing so for several products, it seems perverse to only now criticize it as unreliable when there seem to have been no changes in the way it operates.”

It has been estimated that serious adverse effects that are officially reported are actually a gross underestimate, and this should be borne in mind … For example, a paper by David Kessler (a former FDA Commissioner) cites data suggesting that as few as 1% of serious adverse events are reported to the FDA. Similarly, in relation to the Yellow Card scheme in the United Kingdom, it has been estimated that only 10% of serious adverse effects are reported.”

1 in 800 Absolute Risk of Serious Side Effect

Malhotra also cites a recent study17 “coauthored by some of the most trusted medical scientists in the world in relation to data transparency,” which looked at data from the FDA, Health Canada and the Pfizer and Moderna trials.

“Researchers looking at data from the FDA, Health Canada and the Pfizer and Moderna trials concluded the absolute risk of a serious adverse event from the mRNA shots was 1 in 800, which massively exceeds the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization found in randomized controlled trials.”

They concluded the absolute risk of a serious adverse event from the mRNA shots was 1 in 800, which massively exceeds the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization found in randomized controlled trials.

“Given these observations, and reappraisal of the randomized controlled trial data of mRNA products, it seems difficult to argue that the vaccine roll-out has been net beneficial in all age groups … and when the possible short-, medium- and unknown longer-term harms are considered (especially for multiple injections, robust safety data for which simply does not exist), the roll-out into the entire population seems, at best, a reckless gamble,” Malhotra writes.18

“It’s important to acknowledge that the risks of adverse events from the vaccine remain constant, whereas the benefits reduce over time, as new variants are (1) less virulent and (2) not targeted by an outdated product.

Having appraised the data, it remains a real possibility that my father’s sudden cardiac death was related to the vaccine. A pause and reappraisal of vaccination Policies for COVID-19 is long overdue.”

The Israeli Cover-Up

In related news, leaked audio from a June 2022 meeting between Israeli researchers and the Ministry of Healthy reveals the researchers knew the COVID shots were associated with serious risks and wanted to alert the public.

However, whereas the researchers pointed out evidence showing the Pfizer jabs cause long-term adverse effects and are associated with more severe side effects upon rechallenge (i.e., with repeated doses), the Ministry altered the researcher’s final report to say that adverse effects are mild and short-lived. The government then canceled any further research into adverse effects.

At the end of September 2022, GB News interviewed Dr. Yaffa Shir Raz, who broke the story internationally19 (see video above for leaked audio and GB’s report).20 21 Importantly, the researchers noted the phenomenon of rechallenge is very strong evidence of causality, meaning the shots are definitely causing the problems reported.

However, they also warned the Ministry of Health that they’d have to be careful with the wording and think “medical-legal,” as the evidence would expose the government to liability, since they’d not been upfront with the risks and had endorsed the shots. The Ministry, apparently, decided to simply alter the conclusions of the study and close down further investigation rather than risk liability.

COVID Jab Makers Seek Authorization for Child Boosters 

At the same time as more and more damning data are coming to light, Pfizer and Moderna are both seeking emergency use authorization for their bivalent COVID boosters for children. Moderna is seeking authorization for children ages 6 through 17, while Pfizer’s shot is for children aged 5 through 11.22 As reported by Reuters September 23, 2022:23

“… the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it expects COVID-19 vaccine boosters targeting circulating variants of the virus to be available for children aged 5-11 years by mid-October.

Moderna’s mRNA-1273.222, a bivalent booster shot, contains the dominant BA.4/BA.5 variants along with the original coronavirus strain. The updated vaccine is already authorized for adults, while rival Pfizer’s bivalent vaccine is authorized as a booster dose for children over 12 years of age.”

Follow the Data and Think for Yourself

Considering how reckless the FDA and CDC have been so far, there’s little doubt they’ll authorize these reformulated boosters for children, even though they’ve only been tested for antibody levels in mice. Meanwhile, in the real world, the injuries and deaths continue to pile up.

Were there any sanity and humanity left inside the walls of our health agencies, these shots would be pulled from the market without delay. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case, which means We the People are the ones who must put a stop to the carnage by educating each other and simply saying “NO” to these and all future mRNA shots.

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Notes

1 Journal of Insulin Resistance 2022; 5(1): a71

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On 15 July 2022, Britain’s Reuters news agency headlined “70% of Germans back Ukraine despite high energy prices, survey shows”, and reported that “Some 70% of those polled backed Germany’s support for Ukraine, … found the survey conducted between July 12-14 by broadcaster ZDF.” ZDF is funded by the German Government — German taxpayers. 

Germany’s AfD Party is one of the two Parties in Germany that are less than enthusiastically backing Germany’s anti-Russia position, the other such Party being “Die Linke” or “The Left” Party, which is Germany’s only socialist democratic Party, despite West Germany’s “Social Democratic Party” calling itself “democratic socialist” while being neither. 

The AfD Party issued a press release, on 25 August 2022, “Stephan Brandner: Skandalöse „Politische Filter“ beeinflussen NDR-Berichterstattung” or “Stephan Brandner: Scandalous ‘political filters’ influence NDR reporting.” It reported that Mr. Brandner, who is an AfD Member of the German Parliament, said that

After the self-service affair about the now hated RBB director Schlesinger, reminiscent of feudal structures, an online magazine now reports that employees on North German radio complain about ‘political filters’ from their superiors. According to the report …, public service broadcasting executives act like ‘ministerial press officers’. … 

As an AfD politician I am not surprised. After all, ARD and ZDF only report on the AfD with a ‘political filter’ and, for example, no longer invite AfD politicians to talk shows. … Compulsory contributions [by taxpayers, to ‘public broadcasting’] should be abolished.

Mr. Brandner provided no evidence for any of his allegations. (That’s the way politics is in a dictatorship. How can the public vote intelligently if they are routinely accepting allegations that are being made without supplying documentation? That’s a dictatorship by lies and liars, and no democracy-capable public would accept it. In science, what is not documented to be true is assumed to be false — not assumed to be true. A democratic country operates on the basis of science, not on the basis of faith.)

However, this doesn’t mean that Mr. Brandner’s allegations there are necessarily false. One reason why they could very well be true is that there are six Parties in Germany, and the current governing coalition consists of the three that take the hardest line against Russia, and for America, and for the post-2014, U.S.–coup, anti-Russian, Ukrainian Government.

The ruling coalition, those three Parties, are called the “traffic-light coalition”, and include the rabidly neoconservative (or pro-U.S.-empire) anti-Russian Green Party, plus the U.S. Democratic Party-allied so-called “Social Democratic Party,” plus the rabidly libertarian or “neoliberal” (pro-free-market, anti-regulation, and generally U.S.-Republican-Party-allied) Free Democratic Party; and they EXCLUDE (or give the red light to, and prevent from participating in the Government) the three least-anti-Russian Parties, which are The Left Party (the authentic democratic socialists, or progressives, ideologically opposed to any imperialism), the AfD Party (nationalists), and the U.S.-Republican-Party-allied CDU/CSU Christian Democratic and Christian Social Union Party. 

Brandner raised an important question, without providing any evidence regarding its solution. But here are some relevant facts, regarding the extent to which Germany’s Government tolerates corruption (which includes corruptness of a Government and of its ‘news’-media):

On 14 December 2021, I did an analysis comparing the anti-corruption laws in three nations, and headlined “Political Corruption in U.S., Germany, and Russia”. I concluded that 

Although this is a very incomplete indicator of a country’s corruptness, it does present the U.S. in a very favorable light, and present Germany (11 out of 12 “No”s [meaning no law against corruption]) as being rather astoundingly corrupt. Russia is midway between those two, perhaps because after Yeltsin’s abominable rule, Putin cleaned up Russia’s Government, but a lot of that job still remains undone, even after 21 years.

Germany’s Government was more shaped by Truman than perhaps any in the world except America’s own Government. But, from the present indicator, America’s vassal nations would appear to be even more corrupt than the imperial center, the U.S., itself, is — at least insofar as their political campaign-finance laws (“what’s written in black and white” in the lawbooks) are concerned.

Here was the summary, specifically regarding Germany:

Following here will be answers that are solidly grounded in the written laws of each of these three countries (though not necessarily reflecting how those laws are enforced — or not), regarding the 12 most clearly important questions that were studied. I present those dozen questions in the order that seems to me to provide the clearest sequence in order for the reader to interpret them, not in the order that was employed by the source:

GERMANY

“8. Is there a ban on anonymous donations to candidates?” “There are no explicit provisions regarding donations to candidates.”

“2. Is there a ban on donations from foreign interests to candidates?” “There are no explicit provisions regarding donations to candidates.”

“18. Is there a limit on the amount a donor can contribute to a candidate?” “There are no explicit provisions regarding donations to candidates.”

“10. Is there a ban on donations from corporations with government contracts to candidates?” “There are no explicit provisions regarding donations to candidates.”

“4. Is there a ban on corporate donations to candidates?” “There are no explicit provisions regarding donations to candidates.”

“6. Is there a ban on donations from Trade Unions to candidates?” “There are no explicit provisions regarding donations to candidates.”

“5. Is there a ban on donations from Trade Unions to political parties?” “There are [is] no explicit … ban on donations from Trade Unions to political parties”

“3. Is there a ban on corporate donations to political parties?” “Ban on donation from corporate bodies, but accepted if it is a business enterprise, of whose shares more than 50 per cent of shares are owned by Germans …”

“9. Is there a ban on donations from corporations with government contracts to political parties?” “No.”

“14. Is there a limit on the amount a donor can contribute to a political party during a non-election specific period?” “No.”

“16. Is there a limit on the amount a donor can contribute to a political party during an election?” “No.”

“27. Are there provisions requiring donations to go through the banking system?” “No.”

Consequently, Brandner’s allegations might be expected to be true, simply because Germany, especially after the U.S. Government blew up the Russian gas pipelines to Germany and yet Germany’s Government continues to be a U.S. vassal-nation, despite that U.S. act of war against both Germany and Russia. This indicates Germany’s Government to be extremely corrupt, willing to ditch its own population in order to please its U.S. masters.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

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

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A consortium of four private groups worked with the departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and State to censor massive numbers of social media posts they considered misinformation during the 2020 election, and its members then got rewarded with millions of federal dollars from the Biden administration afterwards, according to interviews and documents obtained by Just the News.

The Election Integrity Partnership is back in action again for the 2022 midterm elections, raising concerns among civil libertarians that a chilling new form of public-private partnership to evade the First Amendment’s prohibition of government censorship may be expanding.

The consortium is comprised of four member organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and social media analytics firm Graphika. It set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State’s Global Engagement Center to file “tickets” requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.

Three liberal groups — the Democratic National Committee, Common Cause and the NAACP — were also empowered like the federal agencies to file tickets seeking censorship of content. A Homeland-funded collaboration, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, also had access.

In its own after-action report on the 2020 election, the consortium boasted it flagged more than 4,800 URLs — shared nearly 22 million times on Twitter alone — for social media platforms. Their staff worked 12-20 hour shifts from September through mid-November 2020, with “monitoring intensif[ying] significantly” the week before and after Election Day.

The tickets sought removal, throttling and labeling of content that raised questions about mail-in ballot integrity, Arizona’s “Sharpiegate,” and other election integrity issues of concern to conservatives.

The consortium achieved a success rate in 2020 that would be enviable for baseball batters: Platforms took action on 35% of flagged URLs, with 21% labeled, 13% removed and 1% soft-blocked, meaning users had to reject a warning to see them. The partnership couldn’t determine how many were downranked.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from passing any laws that abridge free speech, and courts have ruled that prohibition extends to federal agencies funded by the legislative branch. Participants were acutely aware that federal agencies’ role in the effort strayed into uncharted legal territory.

For instance, SIO’s Renee DiResta said in a CISA Cybersecurity Summit video in 2021 that the operation faced “unclear legal authorities” and “very real First Amendment questions.” She joined SIO from a firm exposed by The New York Times for creating “a ‘false flag’ operation” against Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore.

Also, we're getting the band back together (with several improvements) for the midterms — working with a range of collaborators to address rumors, misinformation, and disinformation around election processes and procedures: https://t.co/IuwvV27R1L. Follow @2020Partnership.

— Kate Starbird (@katestarbird) August 7, 2022

Mike Benz, an ex-State Department official who was slated to be the department’s first-ever digital freedom ambassador if President Donald Trump had won a second term, discovered much of the consortium’s work in research for his new Foundation for Freedom Online, a nonprofit which advocates for free speech globally while monitoring growing U.S. censorship.

He told Just the News the consortium was the largest federally-sanctioned censorship operation he had ever seen, a precursor to the now-scrapped Disinformation Governance Board and one that is likely to grow in future elections.

“If you trace the chronology, you find that there was actually 18 months’ worth of institutional work to create this very apparatus that we now know played a significant role in the censorship of millions of posts for the 2020 election and has ambitious sights for 2022 and 2024,” he said.

“Amazingly, there are now so many Ministry of Truth functionaries within the Department of Homeland Security,” he added.

“There are so many Ministry of Truth tasks, so many Ministry of Truth points of contact, so many different Ministry of Truth, policies for whether to remove something, reduce it, slap a fact checking label on it.”

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, called the revelations “stunning” and said the 2020 operation amounted to the federal government sanctioning and outsourcing censorship.

“The government knows that they cannot do it by themselves because of the First Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits it,” Clyde told the “Just the News, Not Noise” television show. “And then they decide to partner with another entity, a private entity. a social media platform or university.

“And then they say, ‘Hey, we’re going to feed you information that we think is disinformation, or we want to be disinformation. And then you go ahead and you do the de-platforming. You label it as misinformation, or disinformation.'”

Clyde said he expects Republicans to investigate the consortium next year if they gain control of Congress and that he is drafting legislation called the Free Speech Defense Act to address censorship issues.

“This bill would prevent the federal government from labeling anything through a proxy entity, like a social media company, as disinformation, labeling it as misinformation or labeling it as true,” he explained. “And then it would also give an opportunity for those people who have been injured by it to take legal action.”

Homeland Security, CISA, EIP and the Stanford and UW projects did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment from Just the News.

It wasn’t just blogs and individual social media users whose content was targeted for removal and throttling as “repeat spreaders” of misinformation. News and opinion organizations, including the New York Post, Fox News, Just the News and SeanHannity.com were also targeted.

The partnership’s members published the 292-page public report in March 2021, though the most recent version is dated June 15, 2021. The launch webinar featured former CISA Director Christopher Krebs, “who led the effort to secure electoral infrastructure and the response to mis- and disinformation during the election period.”

“I think we were pretty effective in getting [platforms] to act on things they haven’t acted on before,” both by pressuring them to adopt specific censorship policies and then reporting violations, SIO founder and former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos told the launch webinar. (He and Krebs started their own consultancy after the election.)

“Platform interventions” in response to “delegitimization of election results,” for example, went from uniformly “non-comprehensive” in August 2020 to “comprehensive” by Election Day, the report says.

The partnership has not drawn widespread attention, however. Congressionaltestimony has approvingly cited the report, which was also filed as evidence in a lawsuit against Massachusetts officials for allegedly deplatforming a Twitter user.

Benz’s Foundation for Freedom Online brought new scrutiny on the partnership in August and shared its own summary of the report with Just the News, with links to primary documents and background on CISA and its private partners.

FFO spent “16 weeks mapping virtually every element of DHS partnerships and operations connected to Internet censorship,” including the partnership’s report, Benz wrote, pledging to dribble out “revelations” from FFO’s research over several months. It has already published assorted video evidence.

“DHS’s Ministry Of Truth has evaded public attention for so long [because] it acts like a coordinator of a censorship network, rather [than] an implementer of specific censorship acts,” similar to how the CIA and Pentagon “outsource” wars to private military contractors, he said.

SIO officially launched the partnership 100 days before the election, “in consultation with CISA and other stakeholders,” the partnership report says. It attributes the idea to SIO-funded interns at CISA, noting that censorship by that agency and domestic social media monitoring by intelligence agencies would likely be illegal.

“This limited federal role reveals a critical gap for non-governmental entities to fill,” the executive summary says. “Increasingly pervasive mis- and disinformation, both foreign and domestic, creates an urgent need for collaboration across government, civil society, media, and social media platforms.”

The partnership said it limited itself to flagging social media content “intended to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters as to election processes, or delegitimize election results without evidence,” the latter cited in 72% of all tickets.

It wasn’t enough to be provably false, however. Simply “exaggerating [the] impact” of factual information was enough to be reported. The flagged content most likely to draw action by tech platforms was “misleading statistics.”

A graphic on “cross-platform participatory misinformation” suggests the purpose was to stop content from reaching a “virality threshold” where it could lead to “IRL [in real life] actions”: protests, legal action and “mainstream coverage.”

During the launch webinar, the Atlantic Council’s Emerson Brooking said they wanted to stop the “amplification and legitimation” of “far-right influencers [who] would be doing all they could to try to catch the eye of a Fox News producer,” making it likely that President Trump, “the social media death star,” would see their content.

Government entities were involved in real-time chats with the partnership and social media platforms over specific content under review.

A chat screenshot in the report shows an unidentified government partner rejecting the Sharpiegate claim that “sharpies aren’t read at all” by ballot-counting machines, and a platform provider responding that it was now reviewing those claims.

The partners all received federal grants from the Biden administration in the next two years.

The National Science Foundation awarded the Stanford and UW projects $3 million in August 2021 “to study ways to apply collaborative, rapid-response research to mitigate online disinformation.”

UW’s press release about the award noted their earlier work on the partnership and praise for the report from ex-CISA director Krebs, who called it “the seminal report on what happened in 2020, not just the election but also through January 6.”

Graphika, also known as Octant Data, received its first listed federal grant several weeks after the 2020 election: nearly $3 million from the Department of Defense for unspecified “research on cross-platform detection to counter malign influence.” Nearly $2 million more followed in fall 2021 for “research on co-citation network mapping,” which tracks sources that are cited together.

The Atlantic Council, which hosted then-Vice President Joe Biden for a keynote address at its 2011 awards dinner, has received $4.7 million in grants since 2021, all but one from the State Department. That far exceeds the think tank’s federal haul in previous years, which hadn’t approached $1 million in a single year since 2011.

Those figures don’t include the federal contracts for each partnership member. Graphika/Octant, for example, received nearly $100,000 in 2021 for its “Contagion Monitor” surveillance and services that use “advanced network science to analyze PRC [Chinese] influence.”

UW’s project, SIO and Graphika also collaborated on the Virality Project, which tracks and analyzes purported “COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and social media narratives related to vaccine hesitancy.”

The government “consultation” on censorship stands in stark contrast to recent media coverage of SIO and Graphika.

The Washington Post said an August report by the two organizations exposed years of “covert campaigns” to promote American interests abroad by fake social media accounts, which Facebook and Twitter had repeatedly taken down for alleged U.S. military ties. The Pentagon is reportedly auditing its “internet information operation” in response.

Graphika and its cadre of former U.S. intelligence agents was the subject of a critical profile in February by The Washington Standard, which dubbed it “The Deep State’s Beard for Controlling the Information Age.”

The Department of Homeland Security, CISA, Election Integrity Partnership and its two leaders, the Stanford Internet Observatory and UW’s Center for an Informed Public, didn’t respond to queries about the new scrutiny.

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It’s not just heating that could be missing across Europe this winter: cell phones may be the next to go. That’s because if power cuts or energy rationing knocks out parts of the mobile networks across the region, mobile phones could go dark around Europe this winter according to the latest doomsday reporting from Reuters.

While everyone knows by now that Europe’s chances of rationing and power shortages have exploded ever since Moscow suspended gas supplies, in France, the situation is even worse as several nuclear power plants are shutting down for maintenance. And the cherry on top: telecom industry officials told Reuters they fear a severe winter will put Europe’s telecoms infrastructure to the test, forcing companies and governments to try to mitigate the impact (i.e., more bailout demands).

The problem, as four telecoms executives put it, is that currently there are not enough back-up systems in many European countries to handle widespread power cuts, raising the prospect of mobile phone outages. Realizing that in just weeks Europe could be cell phone free, countries including France, Sweden and Germany, are scarmbling to ensure communications can continue even if power cuts end up exhausting back-up batteries installed on the thousands of cellular antennas spread across their territory.

Alas, like with everything else in Europe, it’s too little, too late and Europe is facing a truly historic cell phone black out because while Europe has nearly half a million telecom towers, most of them have battery backups that last around 30 minutes to run the mobile antennas. After that they go dark.

One of the alternatives being discussed is pushing Europe back to communist era blackout regimes: In France, a plan put forward by electricity distributor Enedis, includes potential power cuts of up to two hours in a worst case scenario, two sources familiar with the matter said.

The general black-outs would affect only parts of the country on a rotating basis. Essential services such as hospitals, police and government will not be impacted, the sources said. And now, it appears that cell phones are considered essential too: the French Federation of Telecoms (FFT), a lobby group representing Orange, Bouygues Telecomand Altice’s SFR, put the spotlight on Enedis for being unable to exempt antennas from the power cuts.

Enedis said it was able to isolate sections of the network to supply priority customers, such as hospitals, key industrial installations and the military and that it was up to local authorities to add telecoms operators infrastructure to the list of priority customers.

“Maybe we’ll improve our knowledge on the matter by this winter, but it’s not easy to isolate a mobile antenna (from the rest of the network),” said a French finance ministry official with knowledge of the talks.

Telcos in Sweden and Germany have also raised concerns over potential electricity shortages with their governments, several sources familiar with the matter said. Swedish telecom regulator PTS is working with telecom operators and other government agencies to find solutions, it said. That includes talks about what will happen if electricity is rationed. PTS is financing the purchase of transportable fuel stations and mobile base stations that connect to mobile phones to handle longer power outages, a PTS spokesperson said.

The Italian telecoms lobby was even more forceful, and told Reuters it wants the mobile network to be excluded from any power cut or energy saving stoppage and will raise this with Italy’s new government. The power outages increase the probability of electronic components failing if subjected to abrupt interruptions, telecoms lobby chief Massimo Sarmi said in an interview.

Until a solution is reached, to save power, telecom companies are using software to optimise traffic flow, make towers “sleep” when not in use and switch off different spectrum bands, Reuters sources said. The telecom operators are also working with national governments to check if plans are in place to maintain critical services. In Germany, Deutsche Telekom has 33,000 mobile radio towers and its mobile emergency power systems can only support a small number of them at the same time, a company spokesperson said.

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On March 16, 2020, following a long weekend of negotiations and deals about the coronavirus, Donald Trump, Deborah Birx, and Anthony Fauci spoke at a White House press conference for the first time about nationwide lockdowns.

They handed out a sheet of paper – it mostly consisted of conventional health advice – that said in tiny print:

“bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”

Shut it all down. Everything. Everyone. As if the whole economy were a nightclub closing early.

This amounted to a full repudiation of not only the Constitution but also freedom itself. At the very least, it was a fundamental attack on the First Amendment guarantees of the freedom of religion because it attacked the rights of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and everyone.

All evidence suggests that Trump did not know that the tiny text was in there.

The reading of the text was left to the question and answer session.

Even when it was read by Fauci from the podium, Trump seemed distracted by something else, almost as if he did not hear or did not want to hear it. Later he bragged that the whole thing was his doing, but looking back at the history of that day, it is not so clear.

Let’s take this apart frame by frame to understand what happened in these 70 seconds as part of the Q&A session. A reporter starts by asking whether the federal government is telling people to “avoid restaurants and bars” or if the government is saying that “bars and restaurants should shut down over the next 15 days.”

Both Fauci and Birx knew for sure that the guidelines were calling for them to shut down.

After a long and tedious press conference about not much, following a very precise question, Trump turns to Fauci to have him answer. This might be because he wasn’t listening carefully and did not know how to respond. Fauci then motions to Birx, who rises to the podium. Fauci probably believed that she would be the one to do the dirty work of announcing the lockdowns. Fauci is clearly egging her on: now is your time.

Birx begins her answer with a strategic deflection, speaking tendentiously about how long the virus lives on surfaces. It was nothing but smokescreen, and there is every reason to believe that she knew it. She pointedly was not answering the question. She chickened out at the last moment.

A possibly frustrated Fauci interrupts her with a hand signal from the side. Birx immediately realizes what he was going to do: he was going to read the order that Trump did not know was there. So she decides to pass the buck. She gets giddy and silly with excitement, adrenaline flowing. She starts stumbling around with her words, and says in a faux-girlish way that she will let Fauci speak because he is her mentor.

This was her way of saying that she would gladly pass this hot potato onto him.

She likely knew that this was the great moment they had all been waiting for. She was mad with excitement. Oddly, Trump was smiling too but possibly because of her antics, not because of what was about to happen.

Fauci steps up to the microphone. He does not personally call for lockdowns. Instead he reads the guidance word for word.

Dr. Fauci: The small print here. It’s really small print. “In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”

As he reads, Birx herself is smiling from ear to ear, as if the words were poetry to her. It was not an unfamiliar text. She had been working on these words the entire weekend. Finally all her work had come to fruition.

Even better, she didn’t have to read it. Fauci did.

What was Donald Trump doing during this time? He got distracted by someone in the audience who got his attention. He smiles and points a finger. One wonders who and why. Here is a screenshot.

Was someone assigned to do the job of distracting him? One cannot rule it out. This was the most significant moment of all. The big reveal had come. And Trump’s attention was clearly elsewhere. To whom was he pointing and smiling?

Was he just pretending not to hear?

Who can say?

Fauci reads the text and then he steps away from the microphone. He had just read what is in fact the most totalitarian instruction ever given by any government in the history of the world – I can’t think of another case of such a thing – that all human interaction must stop from sea to shining sea. After all, all congregate places include homes too. Then Fauci steps away from the microphone.

Trump then comes back to the podium. He briefly rolls his eyes, as if to say “There he goes again” but without a conception of what was just read or what it meant.

At this point, what happens? Birx is gleaming, internally cheering. The deed has been done. It’s over. They worked for many weeks to pull off this caper and in an instant it was done.

Notice here that Fauci catches Birx’s eye and gives a little nod. She smiles back. They were giving visual affirmations to each other.

It was then that Trump clarified that he is not telling anyone or anything to shut down, but this statement contradicts what was just read a few seconds ago.

The exchange went as follows:

Reporter: So Mr. President, are you telling governors in those states then to close all their restaurants and their bars?
Trump: Well we haven’t said that yet.
Reporter: Why not?
Trump: We’re recommending but-
Reporter: But if you think this would work.
Trump: … we’re recommending things. No, we haven’t gone to that step yet. That could happen, but we haven’t gone there yet.

This was another strange moment because Trump explicitly contradicted the words that were just read. The paper reporters were looking at were clearly a lockdown order. Any astute reporter would have seen the huge chasm separating the edict from Trump’s own words or understanding.

Here you can watch the full 70 seconds. Deconstruct it yourself. See what you think. It was momentous, probably the most significant in American history, the culmination of weeks of persuasion and planning.

Everything followed from that brief moment: lockdown chaos, the closed schools and churches, the end of basic rights, the wrecking of business, and then began the spending, inflating, mad welfare checks, and the demoralization of the population that continues to this day.

The population now subjected to shock and awe, the mask and vaccine mandates seemed minor by comparison.

All of it unfolded in 70 seconds on March 16, 2020. So far as I know, this is the first and only article written so far to reconstruct this brief moment in time.

Watch the video here.

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Ever since the Kiev regime’s actions in Donbass forced Russia’s hand in late February, the Neo-Nazi junta in power has been expecting nothing but full support. Anything less than that and one might as well be a “Kremlin bot”, “Russian troll” or any other Russophobic slur normalized by the mainstream propaganda machine.

This is precisely what happened to Elon Musk, the somewhat eccentric multibillionaire who has even supported the Kiev regime forces through his SpaceX Starlink network. And yet, all it took for the Kiev regime to accuse him of supposedly “supporting Russia” and even hurl insults at him was a tweet that Musk posted on October 3. The tweet boiled down to a four-point peace plan:

Ukraine-Russia Peace:

– Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people.

– Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).

– Water supply to Crimea assured.

– Ukraine remains neutral.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2022

 – Redo the referendum [in the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions] under UN supervision, with Russia agreeing to leave if that’s what the people decide;

 – Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake);

 – Water supply to Crimea assured;

 – Ukraine remains neutral.

“This is highly likely to be the outcome in the end – just a question of how many die before then,” Musk added, also noting “that a possible, albeit unlikely, outcome from this conflict is nuclear war.”

The plan could hardly ever be considered pro-Russian, and yet, it sent the Kiev regime into a raging frenzy, with Volodymyr Zelensky himself claiming that Elon Musk was now “supportive of Russia.” Others, such as the controversial Neo-Nazi junta’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, infamous for his defense of Neo-Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, showed much less restraint.

“F**k off is my very diplomatic reply to you Elon Musk,” Melnyk said on Twitter. “The only outcome is that now no Ukrainian will EVER buy your f…ing Tesla c**p. So good luck to you,” he added.

As previously mentioned, Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, is known (or rather infamous) for sending thousands of Starlink satellite network kits, which the Kiev regime openly boasted about and admitted using for military purposes.

“SpaceX has sent thousands of Starlink satellite internet kits to Ukraine,” company President Gwynne Shotwell told CNBC in late March. “I’m proud that we were able to provide the terminals to folks in Ukraine. It’s been enormously helpful, I think, to ensure people are still communicating,” Shotwell added.

In June, Musk himself claimed that over 15,000 kits were sent to the Neo-Nazi junta and that they were “helping fight Russian forces”. The admission that a supposedly “commercial satellite network” such as Starlink could be used in military operations sets a dangerous precedent that further blurs the line between civilians and the military. With SpaceX admitting the use of their products and services to help the Kiev regime forces target Russian and the Donbass republics troops, the company has effectively exposed itself as a party to the conflict, prompting Russia to contemplate using its anti-satellite weapons, both missiles and directed energy weapons such as lasers, microwaves, etc.

Thus, Musk risked one of his most prominent companies and its assets to aid the Kiev regime, and yet, he is now considered “pro-Russian”, with the Neo-Nazi junta’s “diplomatic elite” throwing insults and profanities at him for even suggesting that a peaceful solution to the Ukraine crisis should ever be considered. Nothing seems to be enough for the Kiev regime’s corrupt oligarchs and Neo-Nazi radicals. It seems the very concepts of common sense and basic gratitude are entirely unknown in Kiev.

In addition, Musk’s proposal isn’t very different from what Russia has been suggesting for years. Trying to avoid direct confrontation, Moscow attempted to come to a mutually acceptable agreement that would guarantee Ukraine’s neutrality, while respecting the will of the people of Crimea. The Donbass republics of DNR and LNR were supposed to keep a special status within Ukraine, while the country’s constitutional reform would guarantee the Russian-speaking population their basic human rights.

Still, neither the political West nor their favorite Neo-Nazi puppet regime wanted to even consider the possibility of a peaceful settlement that would prevent further bloodshed. Instead, the regime chose escalation and continued its shelling of the Donbass. The moment Russia decided it had had enough, the solution proposed by Musk became all but impossible.

Moscow is well aware of the fact that it cannot trust anything the political West claims. After decades of outright lies and arbitrary violations of existing treaties, be it political or military/arms control agreements, the Russian leadership realized that the only guarantees they could possibly have are those provided by the military. As it has been forced to directly intervene for the last 7 months, Moscow’s red lines are extremely unlikely to go back where they were before February 24. As stated by its top officials, Russia will fulfill all of the goals set by the special military operation.

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First published on September 21, 2022

The Covid Pandemic was a Fraud from the Outset

On March 11 2020, a worldwide lockdown was declared: there were 44,279 cumulative confirmed cases (January-March 2020) Worldwide outside of China.  That was the justification for triggering economic and social chaos Worldwide. 

On September 18th 2022, Joe Biden stated with authority that the pandemic is over opening the door towards complete normalization.

One day later, on September 19, 2022, 1,241,693 new “Confirmed Cases” Worldwide were recorded by the WHO. That was the justification to declare that the pandemic was over. 

There NEVER WAS A PANDEMIC 

For a detailed and comprehensive analysis including the devastating economic and social impacts:

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Destabilizing the social, political and economic structure of 190 sovereign countries was presented as the “solution” to combating the deadly virus. Fake science was supportive of this devastating agenda. 

And now we have reached a new climax: 

President Biden has stated emphatically that the pandemic is over. 

“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing.”  (September 18, 2022)

What was the “scientific basis” for making this far-reaching statement? 

On September 21, 2022, at the time of writing there were according to the WHO:

• More than 610 million PCR cumulative “confirmed cases” Worldwide,
• Almost half a million new cases (468,763) recorded in the last 24 hours, which suggests “an upward movement in the disease”;
• In the United States, there were more than 94 million cumulative confirmed cases on September 21, 2022 
• 57,676 new cases were recorded in the US in the last 24 hours. 
• 13,810 new cases recorded in the U.S. the previous day (September 20, 2022)

The above data are fully endorsed by the Biden Administration.

Since Biden’s statement (18 September), there have been more than 71,000 new confirmed cases in the U.S. And he tells us the “pandemic is over”.

This is either sheer incompetence on the part of President Biden and/or a tacit (and corrupt) acceptance that the official PCR Covid-19 “confirmed cases” used to justify the pandemic and sustain the fear campaign are invalid (“Fake”).

The Biden Administration has from the outset been instrumental in spearheading an upward movement in “Covid-19 confirmed cases”. And now Biden is faced with an uncomfortable dilemma. The continued rising tide of fake data (PCR, antigen, home tests) is at odds with Biden’s “pandemic is over” narrative.

Almost half a million new cases (468,763) have been recorded Worldwide (September 21) in the last 24 hours, coinciding with Biden’s “End of Pandemic” narrative. 

(see WHO diagrams below)

official WHO figures:  468,763 confirmed cases (Worldwide) in the last 24 hours. (September 21, 2022)

In the U.S.

U.S. more. than 94 million cumulative cases and 57,676 new cases in the last 24 hours (see WHO diagram above).

57, 676 cases (recorded on September 21, 2022) in the US in the last 24 hours does not under any circumstances confirm that the pandemic is over in the U.S., unless one acknowledges that the PCR test used to generate these numbers is flawed and totally invalid.

Very fishy: There are substantially more confirmed cases today (including a “recorded” upward trend of the disease) following Biden’s “pandemic is over” statement when compared to the data pertaining to the Covid-19 pandemic when it was first launched in March 2020. See data below.

Embarrassing Political Dilemma: “Decision to Launch the Pandemic” vs. “Pandemic is over”

Coinciding with Biden’s September 18 “Pandemic is Over” statement, the “Covid Confirmed Cases” are “VERY HIGH” (exceedingly high) when compared to the VERY LOW number of confirmed cases used to justify the “Launching of the pandemic” in March 2020. (see below)

44,279 cumulative confirmed cases Worldwide outside of China (January 7 to March 11, 2020) used to justify the “Decision to Launch the Pandemic” on March 11, 2020

Versus

468,783 cases Worldwide recorded in the last 24 hours (on September 21, 2022) to justify Biden’s “Pandemic is Over Decision” 

On the day following Biden’s statement (19 September, 2022) there were  1,241,693 new “Confirmed Cases” Worldwide

It’s Topsy Turvy. Draw your own conclusions.

These are all official figures compiled by the WHO. 

Flash Back to January-March 2020.

Fake science was supportive of a devastating agenda. The lies were sustained by a massive media disinformation campaign. 24/7, Incessant and Repetitive “Covid alerts” in the course of more than two years.

Let us compare the “pandemic is over” figures to the ridiculously low numbers used to justify the pandemic in the first place.

The January 30 2020 Covid Public Health Emergency

The initial phase of this crisis was the launching of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the WHO on January 30th, 2020: 83 Cases Worldwide outside China, 5 in the U.S, 3 in Canada. And the following day President Donald Trump discontinued air travel with China.

There was no “scientific basis” to justify the launching of the PHEIC 

Screenshot of WHO table, January 29, 2020,

March 11, 2020: The Lockdown. 

44,729 “Cumulative Confirmed Cases” (PCR positive) Worldwide (excluding China), namely 6.5 billion people was used as a Justification to declare a Worldwide Pandemic leading to the Lockdown imposed on 190 countries.

In Canada on March 9, 2020, there were 125 “confirmed cases” out of a population of 38.5 million people

  Screenshot of WHO graph Interactive WHO graph.

The figures speak for themselves.

Today, there are more new recorded cases following Biden’s statement than those recorded when the pandemic was first launched in March 2020.

Moreover, the official figures (September 2022) indelibly suggest an upward movement of the disease, which visibly contradicts the substance of Biden’s statement.

In some regards, “Joe Biden is right”. He did not consult or quote the official data prior to making his historic statement: “The pandemic is over”.

The evidence amply confirms, based on extensive research: The PCR test and its home/antigen tests ARE INVALID.  There never was a pandemic.

The March 11, 2020 number of PCR “confirmed cases” is not only invalid, it is ridiculously low.

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Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression

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Michel Chossudovsky,  September 21, 2022

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded a malaria vaccine trial study that used genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes to “vaccinate” humans.

A team of researchers at the University of Washington conducted the study, which was published in the Science Translational Medicine journal.

The study involved 26 participants who received three to five “jabs” — or bites from a small box containing 200 GM mosquitoes — over a 30-day period.

Sanaria, a company funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), is closely connected to the research, and the researchers involved in the trial use a gene-editing technology heavily promoted by Bill Gates.

Genetically modified mosquitoes used as ‘flying syringes’

The trial used malaria-causing Plasmodium mosquitoes that were genetically modified to avoid causing sickness in humans to infect participants with a “minor” version of malaria — insufficient to cause severe illness, but enough to make the humans create antibodies.

Dr. Sean Murphy, lead author of the study, told NPR, “We use the mosquitoes like they’re 1,000 small flying syringes.”

Despite the publicity generated by this study, however, results appear to have been mixed.

Of the 14 trial participants exposed to malaria, seven contracted the disease. For the remaining seven, the protection conferred by the “vaccine” did not last more than a few months and eventually dissipated.

According to the study:

“Half of the individuals in each vaccine group did not develop detectable P. falciparum infection, and a subset of these individuals was subjected to a second [Controlled Human Malaria Infection] 6 months later and remained partially protected.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “infections caused by P. falciparum are the most likely to progress to severe, potentially fatal forms” of malaria.

Adverse reactions in trial participants reportedly were “what one would expect after getting bit by hundreds of mosquitoes and nothing more.”

For example, trial participant Carolina Reid told NPR her entire forearm “swelled and blistered.”

Despite the study’s mixed results, the researchers claimed the “results support further development of genetically attenuated sporozoites as potential malaria vaccines.”

The researchers suggested several reasons for using live mosquitoes rather than a vaccine that could be delivered via a syringe, including that the use of live insects made sense, as the P. falciparum parasite quickly matures inside the mosquito.

In addition, the process of developing a version of the parasite that could be delivered via a syringe was described as “costly and time consuming.”

Nevertheless, according to Murphy the study will not be used for the mass vaccination of humans. However, the researchers involved in the trial said they believe the approach they used can eventually result in the development of a “substantially more effective” malaria vaccine.

At present, only one malaria vaccine is in use. The RTS,S vaccine produced by GlaxoSmithKline was approved by the World Health Organization in October 2021, but reportedly has an efficacy rate of only 30-40%.

Dr. Kirsten Lyke, a vaccine researcher at the University of Maryland, described the use of a genetically modified live parasite as a vaccine as “a total game changer,” saying the team of researchers “went old school with this one.”

“All things old become new again,” Lyke told NPR.

Lyke, who was not involved in the GM mosquito malaria trial, led the Phase 1 trials for the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and also served as co-investigator for COVID-19 vaccine trials administered by Moderna and Novavax.

Stefan Kappe, a parasitologist at the University of Washington and the Seattle Children’s Research Institute — who was one of the authors of the study — said that the approach described by Lyke is already being worked on by the team, adding that the team believes “we can obviously do better.”

However, according to Kappe, “increasing production capability to scale up manufacturing will require investment.”

The research team said that the vaccine developed from this process will eventually be administered via syringes, in order to administer a “more accurate dosage.”

According to Lyke, the use of a slightly more mature version of the GM parasite used during this trial could better equip the human body to prepare an immune response.

Murphy added that his team’s approach utilizes a whole weakened parasite rather than one of the proteins the parasite produces, as with the RTS,S vaccine.

Gates-linked firm provided GM parasites used in trial

According to NPR, the University of Washington partnered with Sanaria, a “small company” that produces the modified parasites.

According to its website, Sanaria is “a biotechnology company developing vaccines protective against malaria,” and its “vaccines have proven highly protective against Plasmodium falciparum infection in humans.”

The company also said it developed “an innovative approach to malaria using Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) sporozoites (SPZ) as the platform technology for immunizing people against malaria infection.”

Two of Sanaria’s listed donors — PATH MVI and the Institute for OneWorld Health — are beneficiaries of funding from the BMGF.

PATH, which founded the Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), describes itself as “an international nonprofit organization that drives transformative innovation to save lives and improve health,” working “with partners in private industry, government, and academia to develop malaria vaccines.”

PATH MVI said it advises and partners with “public institutions, businesses, grassroots groups, and investors to tackle the world’s toughest global health problems — which includes malaria, a notoriously complex parasite.”

As far back as 2008, when it received a $168 million grant, PATH MVI has received funding from the BMGF.

Aside from the BMGF, other PATH MVI donors include Chevron, the ExxonMobil Foundation, the USAID Malaria Vaccine Development Program and Open Philanthropy.

As Open Philanthropy — one of whose main funders is Dustin Moscovitz, co-founder of Facebook along with Mark Zuckerberg — funded a monkeypox tabletop simulation that  “predicted” a global monkeypox pandemic in May 2022, the same month an outbreak occurred.

Open Philanthropy has, over the past decade, provided hundreds of millions of dollars in donations and grants for “global health,” “biosecurity and pandemic preparedness” and “global catastrophic risks.”

In turn, the Institute for OneWorld Health, which claims it “partner[s] with communities in developing countries to bring permanent, sustainable healthcare to the chronically underserved,” has received multiple grants from the BMGF, including a 2004 grant for the development of a malaria vaccine.

Other Sanaria donors include the NIH and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Center for Infectious Disease Research, the National Institute of Standards, the Military Infections Disease Research Program and the European Vaccine Initiative.

Gates’ enthusiasm for gene-editing technology ‘off the charts’

One of the novel aspects of the University of Washington trial was that the parasites used were “disarmed” using CRISPR — or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats — gene editing tools.

CRISPR is described as “a component of bacterial immune systems that can cut DNA” that “has been repurposed as a gene editing tool,” acting “as a precise pair of molecular scissors that can cut a target DNA sequence, directed by a customizable guide” — a piece of RNA with a “guide” sequence that attaches to the target DNA sequence.

According to geekwire.com:

“When it comes to fighting malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases … CRISPR-Cas9 and other gene-editing tools are being used to change the insects’ genome to ensure that they can’t pass along the parasites that cause those diseases.”

Gates — an enthusiastic proponent of CRISPR — previously suggested CRISPR could be used to eliminate mosquitoes that transmit malaria.

According to a 2018 Business Insider report:

“Gates has long been supportive of using genetic editing tools. He was one of the early investors in Editas Medicine, one of the first companies to start trying to use CRISPR to eliminate human diseases.

“Gates Foundation researchers have worked for nearly a decade on ways to use genetic editing to improve crops and to wipe out malaria-carrying mosquitoes.”

In a 2018 Foreign Affairs article written by Gates, he specifically addressed CRISPR’s potential malaria-related applications:

“Scientists are also exploring other ways to use CRISPR to inhibit mosquitoes’ ability to transmit malaria — for example, by introducing genes that could eliminate the parasites as they pass through a mosquito’s gut on their way to its salivary glands, the main path through which infections are transmitted to humans.”

In a 2021 blog post addressing recent CRISPR-related developments, Gates said his “excitement about CRISPR has grown from super high to off the charts.”

And in a July tweet commemorating the 10th “birthday” of CRISPR, Gates described it as “one of the most important inventions in medicine, biology, and agriculture.”

Gates also helped fund the currently approved RTS,S malaria vaccine — as did Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, with which the BMGF is a partner.

Some scientists, however, are less enthusiastic about CRISPR’s gene-editing applications, warning they may result in unintended, harmful consequences.

For instance, in testimony submitted to the British Parliament in 2020, scientists Claire Robinson of GMWatch and Michael Antoniou of King’s College London warned:

“GM (including gene editing) of crops, animals and foods leads to several different types of unintended genetic mutations, which unpredictably alter the function of multiple gene systems of the organism.

“Altered patterns of gene function will unpredictably change the biochemistry of the organism.”

And even Gates, in his 2018 Foreign Affairs article, could not ignore the myriad of ethical controversies associated with CRISPR.

Nevertheless, Gates and the BMGF have been proponents of GM mosquitoes even beyond CRISPR.

For instance, the BMGF provided funding to Oxitec, a firm that has conducted pilot projects in Florida and Brazil using GM mosquitoes, purportedly with the aim of reducing the spread of mosquito-borne viruses.

In Brazil, the GM mosquitoes that were released were said to lack the ability to produce offspring — but were nevertheless found to have reproduced.

The BMGF also reportedly was “heavily involved” in trials using GM mosquitoes in India — and even went as far as to propose, in 2017, alongside the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, the development of a mosquito emoji, to be “used for public health campaigns.”

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Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied a legal petition by Center for Food Safety (CFS), Pesticide Action Network of North America, and others, demanding that the agency fix its failure to regulate pesticide-coated seeds, which are known to be widely harming bees and other pollinators. These crop seeds are coated with systemic insecticides known as neonicotinoids, the most widely used insecticides, and have devastating environmental effects. CFS filed the rulemaking petition in 2017 that would close the loophole. When EPA failed to answer the petition as of late 2021, CFS was forced to take them to court. Today’s response is issued pursuant to a court-set deadline.

“We gave EPA a golden chance and a blueprint to fix a problem that has caused significant harm to people, bees, birds, and the environment — and it stubbornly refused,” said Amy van Saun, senior attorney with the Center for Food Safety. “It’s extremely disappointing and we’ll be exploring all possible next steps to protect communities and the environment from the hazard of pesticide-coated seeds, including a lawsuit challenging this decision.”

Crops grown from pesticide-coated seeds, such as corn, soybean, and sunflower seeds cover over 150 million acres of U.S. farmland each year. Neonicotinoids are taken up into the plant’s circulatory system as the plant grows, permeating leaf, pollen, nectar, and other plant tissues. Neonicotinoids affect the central nervous system of insects, causing paralysis and death. Sublethal impacts include impaired navigation and learning. As a result, beneficial insects, valuable pollinators, and birds—including threatened and endangered species protected under the Endangered Species Act—are killed or injured. For songbirds, ingesting just one neonic coated seed can cause serious harm or death. Additionally, more than eighty percent of the pesticide coating can leave the seed, contaminating the air, soil, and waterways of surrounding environments. Most notably, clouds of neonicotinoid-laced dust released during planting operations has caused mass die-offs of honeybees and wild native bees.

Earlier this year, EPA admitted grave harm to hundreds of endangered species from the pesticide active ingredients that coat these treated seeds. On June 16, 2022 EPA released its final biological evaluations for clothianidin, thiamethoxam, and imidacloprid (three major neonic active ingredients), as required by a settlement in an earlier CFS case. EPA found that each neonic is likely to adversely affect from two-thirds to over three-fourths of America’s endangered species—1,225 to 1,445 species in all.

These pesticidal seeds also pose danger to communities. For example, the devastation caused in the village of Mead, Nebraska from the fumes and runoff of an ethanol plant using coated seeds as feedstock. The pollution has caused bee dieoffs and even eye and throat irritation and nosebleeds to local residents from the neurotoxins coating the corn seeds.

The 2017 petition demanded EPA close the regulatory loophole that allows seeds coated with systemic pesticides (coated seeds) to evade the registration and labeling requirements of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). EPA currently exempts coated seeds from FIFRA’s registration requirements and has failed to assess the risks of these unregulated seeds—while never providing the public with any justification for this exemption.

In EPA’s response denying the petition, the agency instead stated that it would “continue to review labeling instructions for pesticides registered for seed treatment” to ensure those instructions are “complete” for the seeds ultimately coated with these biocides. EPA also promised to issue an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking “to seek additional information on pesticide seed treatment and to explore the option of issuing a rule pursuant to FIFRA section 3(a) to regulate the use of pesticide-treated seed.”

CFS, through its Pollinators & Pesticides program, has long advocated for thorough, science-based safety testing and proper regulation of new pesticide product uses prior to any marketing and cultivation of crops, in a manner that minimizes lethal and sublethal effects on non-target species.

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A mild flutter ensued after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s recent meeting with his Turkiye counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York on September 21 when it came to be known that Cyprus figured in their discussion. Jaishankar highlighted it in a tweet.  

The Indian media instinctively related this to Turkish President Recep Erdogan making a one-line reference to the Kashmir issue earlier that day in his address to the UNGA. But Jaishankar being a scholar-diplomat, would know that Cyprus issue is in the news cycle and the new cold war conditions breathe fresh life into it, as tensions mount in the Turkish-Greek rivalry,  which often draws comparison with the India-Pakistan animosity, stemming from another historical “Partition” — under the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) that ended the Ottoman Empire. 

The beauty about peace treaties is that they have no ‘expiration date’ but the Treaty of Lausanne was signed for a period of a hundred years between Turkiye on one side and Britain, France, Italy, Greece, and their allies on the other. The approaching date heightens the existential predicament at the heart of Turkiye’s foreign policy. 

The stunning reality is that by 24th July 2023, Turkey’s modern borders become “obsolete”. The secret articles of the 1923 Treaty, signed by Turkish and British diplomats, provide for a chain of strange happenings — British troops will reoccupy the forts overlooking the Bosphorus; the Greek Orthodox Patriarch will resurrect a Byzantine mini state within Istanbul’s city walls; and Turkey will finally be able to tap the forbidden vast energy resources of the East Mediterranean (and, perhaps, regain Western Thrace, a province of Greece.) 

Of course, none of that can happen and they remain conspiracy theories. Nonetheless, the “end-of-Lausanne” syndrome remains a foundational myth and weaves neatly into the historical revisionism that Ataturk should have got a much better deal from the Western powers. 

All this goes to underline the magnitude of the current massively underestimated drama, of which Cyprus is at the epicentre. Suffice to say, Turkey’s geometrically growing rift with Greece and Cyprus over the offshore hydrocarbon reserves and naval borders must be properly understood in terms of the big picture.

Turkiye’s ruling elite believe that Turkey was forced to sign the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 and the “Treaty of Lausanne” in 1923 and thereby concede vast tracts of land under its domain. Erdogan rejects any understanding of history that takes 1919 as the start of the 1,000-year history of his great nation and civilisation. “Whoever leaves out our last 200 years, even 600 years together with its victories and defeats, and jumps directly from old Turkish history to the Republic, is an enemy of our nation and state,” he once stated. 

The international community has begun to pay attention as Turkiye celebrates its centenary next year, which also happens to be an election year for Erdogan. In a typical first shot, the US State Department announced on September 16 — just five days before Jaishankar met Cavusoglu — that Washington is lifting defence trade restrictions on the Greek Cypriot administration for the 2023 fiscal year. 

Spokesman Ned Price said,

“Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken determined and certified to Congress that the Republic of Cyprus has met the necessary conditions under relevant legislation to allow the approval of exports, re-exports, and transfers of defence articles.” 

The US move comes against the backdrop of a spate of recent arms deals by Cyprus and Greece, including a deal to purchase attack helicopters from France and efforts to procure missile and long-range radar systems. Turkiye called on the US “to reconsider this decision and to pursue a balanced policy towards the two sides on the Island.” It has since announced a beefing up of its military presence in Northern Cyprus.  

To be sure, the unilateral US move also means indirect support for the maritime claims by Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration, which Turkiye, with the longest continental coastline in the Eastern Mediterranean, rejects as excessive and violates its sovereign rights and that of Turkish Cypriots. 

Whether these developments figured in Jaishankar’s discussion with Cavusoglu is unclear, but curiously, India too is currently grappling with a similar US decision to offer a $450 million military package to Pakistan to upgrade its nuclear-capable F-16 aircraft. 

Indeed, the US-Turkey-Cyprus triangle has some striking similarities with the US-India-Pakistan triangle. In both cases, the Biden administration is dealing with friendly pro-US governments in Nicosia and Islamabad but is discernibly unhappy with the nationalist credo of the leaderships in Ankara and New Delhi. 

Washington is annoyed that the governments in Ankara and New Delhi preserve their strategic autonomy. Most important, the US’ attempt to isolate Russia weakening due to the refusal by Turkiye and India to impose sanctions against Moscow. 

The US is worried that India and Turkiye, two influential regional powers, pursue foreign policies promoting multipolarity in the international system, which undermines US’ global hegemony. Above all,  it is an eyesore for Washington that Erdogan and Prime Minister Modi enjoy warm trustful personal interaction with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

The photo beamed from Samarkand during the recent SCO summit showing Erdogan arm in arm with Putin must have infuriated President Biden. Modi too displayed a rare moment of surging emotions when he told Putin at Samarkand on September 16, 

“The relationship between India and Russia has deepened manifold. We also value this relationship because we have been such friends who have been with each other every moment for the last several decades and the whole world also knows how Russia’s relationship with India has been and how India’s relationship with Russia has been and therefore the world also knows that it is an unbreakable friendship. Personally speaking, in a way, the journey for both of us started at the same time. I first met you in 2001, when you were working as the head of the government and I had started working as head of the state government. Today, it has been 22 years, our friendship is constantly growing, we are constantly working together for the betterment of this region, for the well-being of the people. Today, at the SCO Summit, I am very grateful to you for all the feelings that you have expressed for India.” 

Amazingly, the western media censored this stirring passage in its reports on the Modi-Putin meeting! 

Notably, following the meeting between Modi and Erdogan in Samarkand on Sept. 16, a commentary by the state-owned TRT titled Turkiye-India ties have a bright future ahead signalled Erdogan government’s interest to move forward in relations with India. 

India’s ties with Turkiye deserve to be prioritised, as that country is inching toward BRICS and the SCO and is destined to be a serious player in the emerging multipolar world order. Symptomatic of the shift in tectonic plates is the recent report that Russia might launch direct flights between Moscow and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a state supported and recognised only by Ankara. (Incidentally, one “pre-condition” set by the Biden administration to resume military aid to Cyprus was that Nicosia should roll back its relations with Moscow!)  

Without doubt, the US and the EU are recalibrating the power dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean by building up the Cyprus-Greece axis and sending a warning to Turkiye to know its place. In geopolitical terms, this is another way of welcoming Cyprus into NATO. Thus, it becomes part of the new cold war. 

Can South Asia’s future be any different? Turkiye has so many advantages over India, having been a longstanding cold-war era ally of the US. It hosts Incirlik Air Base, one of the US’ major strategically located military bases. Kurecik Radar Station partners with the US Air Force and Navy in a mission related to missile interception and defence. Turkey is a NATO power which is irreplaceable in the alliance’s southern tier. Turkey controls the Bosphorus Straits under the Montreux Convention (1936).

Yet, the US is unwilling to have a relationship of mutual interest and mutual respect with Turkiye. Pentagon is openly aligned with the Kurdish separatists. The Obama administration made a failed coup attempt to overthrow Erdogan. 

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***

By infusing tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military aid into Ukraine, NATO produced a “game-changing” dynamic designed to throw Russia off balance. By undertaking the referendums in Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk, Russia changed the game altogether.

The ancient Greeks spoke of lemma as representing a logical premise, a matter taken for granted. This contrasted with a dilemma, or “dual premise”, where one would be presented with an either/or proposition. The Romans furthered this notion, referring to a “double premise” as argumentum cornutum, of the “horned argument,” because by answering one argument, an individual would be impaled by the logic of the second. Thus are the ancient roots of the modern idiom, “on the horns of a dilemma.”

This is the ultimate objective of maneuver warfare, for example: to position your forces in such a manner as to present the enemy with no good option – should they react to one pressing threat, they would find themselves overwhelmed by the other.

The Russian military operation that has been underway in Ukraine for more than seven months now has provided ample examples of the military forces of both sides being confronted with a situation that compelled them to alter their preferred course of action; the Russian “diversion” against Kiev early on in the SMO prevented the Ukrainians from reinforcing their forces in eastern Ukraine, and the recently concluded Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkov compelled a hasty Russian withdrawal from a significant swath of previously occupied Ukrainian territory.

Both examples cited presented one side with a lemma, or a single problem, which needed to be addressed. But neither was able to put its opponent “on the horns of a dilemma,” forcing a response which would result in impalement regardless of the option chosen. The reason for this is simple – very rarely will competent military commanders allow themselves to be presented with a military problem for which there is no viable response. War, it seems, is hard work, and dilemmas don’t fall from trees.

Or do they? Ever since Boris Johnston flew to Kiev in April to convince Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to pull out of peace talks then ongoing with Russia in the Turkish city of Istanbul, NATO has embarked on a program designed to provide Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in military and financial assistance, including the transfer of modern heavy weapons and the use of facilities on Western soil where tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops could be trained and organized without fear of Russian intervention.

The purpose behind the NATO infusion of weaponry into Ukraine was straightforward – to empower Ukraine to not only lengthen the conflict, but also to undertake offensive military operations designed to evict Russia from what Kiev and its backers consider occupied Ukrainian territory, including the Donbass and Crimea. The counteroffensive in Kharkov in early September underscored the serious consequences of NATO’s actions – even though, given the massive loss of life and material suffered by the attacking Ukrainian forces, made the Kharkov victory Pyrrhic in nature, it was a Ukrainian victory, and one which compelled a Russian retreat.

By transforming the Ukrainian army into a NATO army which was manned by Ukrainians, the US-led bloc had, in fact, changed the nature of the game from a straightforward Russia-versus-Ukraine “special military operation” into a “Russia-versus-the collective West” struggle where the military resources originally allocated by Moscow to the fight were now insufficient to the task.

Russia, however, was not taking the game-changing actions of NATO standing still. Responding to the new reality on the ground in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin opted not to simply up the ante in this new NATO-driven game of increasing military power but change the game altogether. Not only did he order the partial mobilization of some 300,000 Russian reservists to reinforce the troops currently committed to the SMO, Putin also approved referendums in the four territories where Russian forces are presently fighting – Kherson and Zaporozhye (formerly occupied Ukrainian regions), and Donetsk and Lugansk (former regions of Ukraine, de-facto independent since 2014). These referendums asked the citizens of these four territories one simple question: do you wish to become part of Russia?

After five days of voting, the results from all four territories were clear – by an overwhelming majority, the participants in the referendums approved the proposition. Shortly thereafter, they were incorporated into the Russian Federation. What was once Ukraine has now become Mother Russia.

Russia didn’t just change the rules of the game – it changed the game itself. Instead of Ukrainian forces fighting Russian forces on the territory of Ukraine, any future combat carried out by Ukraine against Russian forces would represent an attack on the Russian homeland itself.

Where does this leave NATO? The bloc’s leadership has made it clear from day one that it is not seeking direct confrontation with Russia. While its members have poured in tens of billions of dollars of material into Ukraine to help reconstitute its military, and provided critical logistics, intelligence, and communications support to Ukraine, it has repeatedly and insistently stated that it has no desire to fight a war with Russia directly and has made it clear that it would rather have the Ukrainians serve as a de facto NATO proxy in resisting Moscow.

NATO has gone “all in” both economically and politically when it comes to supporting Ukraine, to the extent that some of its members, having stripped their respective military structures of equipment and material, have nothing left to give. Despite this, European political and economic elites continue to articulate their strong support for Ukraine going forward.

This support, however, was predicated on the fundamental assumption that by providing Ukraine with this massive level of support, NATO would not get directly involved in a conflict with Moscow. But Russia, by transforming the battleground from one being fought on Ukrainian soil to one where it’s now defending its own land, has flipped the script.

NATO, having overcommitted to Ukraine, now finds itself “on the horns of a dilemma” – if it continues to provide massive material and financial support to Ukraine, it will, in effect, become a direct party to the conflict, something no one in the bloc wants. However, if it backs away from supporting Ukraine, the various Western political leaders and institutions which have made support for Kiev a sacred obligation will be seen as going back on their word.

How NATO opts to proceed has yet to be manifest, but indications are that it will not be in a manner which continues to double down on supporting Ukraine no matter what. Secretary General Stoltenberg’s tepid speech condemning Russia while showing no enthusiasm for Zelensky’s “accelerated application” for membership is indicative of the less-than-resolute nature of its support for Kiev.

NATO now will find its role diminished by the consequences of the Russian mobilization and referendums. Years from now, when the history of the conflict is finally written, the decision by President Putin to simultaneously mobilize the Russian reserves while absorbing the territory of southern and eastern Ukraine into the Russian Federation will serve as one of the premier modern-history examples of putting an adversary “on the horns of a dilemma.” The effective neutering of NATO by this action will more than likely be seen as a turning point in the conflict, one which sealed the fate of Ukraine in the face of an inevitable Russian victory.

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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, served in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991 to 1998 served as a chief weapons inspector with the UN in Iraq. Mr Ritter currently writes on issues pertaining to international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter and on Telegram @ScottRitter

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***

Mr. Ryan Turner,
General Manager and Circulation Manager,
Lethbridge Herald

Dear Mr. Turner;

Below please find the text of a lengthy article from the New York Times. The essay is entitled “‘Somebody Planted The Guns:’ In Canada a Raided, Distrusting Village Blames the Police.”  This NYT article presents an interpretation of the case that basically offers consistent support for the position of the Crown in the genesis of a show trial being planned for the Lethbridge Court House sometime next year.

The four men that are the subject of this trial were charged last February 14 with “conspiracy to commit the murder” of RCMP officials. As evidenced by the New York Times’ interest, these charges, as well as the collective failure of the Coutts Four to receive bail, are attracting worldwide attention. The ante is being raised this October 4 as the Crown brings new charges against three leaders of the Coutts action. So far 17 individuals have been charged by the RCMP unit and the Crown prosecutors involved in the Coutts investigation.

The Coutts Four, convicted so far of nothing, are being held in custody until their trial begins sometime in mid-to-late 2023. Being made to suffer in prison for a year and a half before they can face their accusers in open court is sufficient justification for advancing the case that Alberta is now home to political prisoners.

The bias of the NYT story is consistent with the notorious bias of the regime media. Since 2020 the regime media have been hellbent on making history replete with wholesale deceit, fraud and censorship embedded in much of its reporting on the manufactured COVID crisis.

The New York Times like the Lethbridge Herald consistently lied to its audiences reassuring us that the COVID injections were safe and effective. They were, in fact, no such thing. Both media venues supported the likes of Prime Minister Justin Tudeau in giving credence to his injection policies that have resulted in many deaths and injuries of large numbers of victims. The same pattern is being re-enacted in county after country where significant portions of the population have been jabbed with the clot shots.

Since mid-2021 these victims have been showing up in statistical abundance in a variety of ways in spite of the ongoing efforts of the media and their captive governments to continue to hide and downplay the reality of what is actually going on. Within this framework of misrepresentation the Alberta government made a laughing stock of itself with its report that the highest death rate in the province in 2021 was due to “unknown causes.” The cause is only “unknown” among those who have been shielding themselves from one of the most significant news developments of the twenty-first century.

The big news is still being obscured. Its essence is that the real plague of mortality and crippling injury overtaking us emanates from the needles of gene-modifying injections that do not prevent the spreading of COVID or infection by COVID. We have been lied to and thereby put in harm’s way by the governments and media that still insist on trying to silence, discredit and deplatform those endeavouring to insert scientific methodology into the poisonous mix of deadly disinformation.

In the case of Catherine Porter’s version of the regime media’s disinformation, the biases in her story have been fashioned into personal attacks that are meant to be unflattering to the culture and prevailing mentality of those of us who wear our identity as Albertans proudly. The subtext is that the Canadian Freedom Convoy movement that largely took shape in this province as well as in the broadly-based constituency that converged at Coutts are intellectually and academically substandard.

The failure of the NY Times to do justice to this story of the Truckers and especially the Coutts contingent of dissidents should be addressed by the Lethbridge Herald. After all, a major portion of the Lethbridge Herald’s readership showed up by the tens of thousands at Coutts in a very active period when demonstrators came and went for 17 days. The demonstrators included some elected officials of the Alberta provincial government. Why can’t this important chapter in Alberta’s history find fair and balanced representation in our own Albertan mainstream media?

Perhaps the attention being directed this way by the New York Times forms a fitting demonstration that important things can and do happen in this region. In my view our community, including our local media, sometimes drop the ball by failing to take proper ownership of the important controversies that sometimes unfold in this locale. What is to be said about our local paper dropping the ball to the NY Times? Its reporter, Catherine Porter, plays to all the worst caricatures and stereotypes in depicting Alberta as some sort of reactionary ghetto far from what she probably considers the woke wonders of New York.

In her bias, Porter embraces the so-called Canadian Anti-Hate Network whose highly politicized spokespeople often assert that those who question, for instance, injection mandates are motivated by an urge “to dismantle democracy.”

In fact it is the government of Justin Trudeau that seems most contemptuous of democracy. He is trying to fulfill his vaccine fixation by denying constructive consultation with his own constituents in order to please his real masters including those in Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum. We need a Canadian government based in Parliament, not in Davos.

Trudeau in fact was tagged as an enemy of democracy by several elected members of the European Parliament. His effort to wrongfully criminalize his political opponents in order to drag them through the mud of terrorist accusations was specifically noted by MEP Christine Anderson.

See this.

Trudeau is no democrat when it comes to the disproportionate amount of effort he and his government have invested in legal processes to charge, imprison, and return dissident Albertans to jail. Ms. Porter, for instance, did not address the case of Tamara Lich from Medicine Hat Alberta. This founder of the Freedom Convoy movement was re-jailed supposedly because she broke bail by appearing with a friend in a photograph during an awards ceremony where she was being honoured.

The number of those charged at Coutts has recently risen to 17 as Marco Van Huigenbose, Alex Van Herk, and George Janzen appear in court on 4 October to face $5,000 fines for mischief.

The membership of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police conducts activities that are deeply intertwined with those of the FBI in the United States. In Alberta the RCMP doubles as both the federal police force and a provincial police so it is sometimes difficult to know what jurisdiction is responsible for any particular police action.

In this instance there is little doubt that the Trudeau government was shopping through the RCMP at Coutts for some reference it could make to Trucker “terrorism.” The PM needed such a reference in order to give the appearance of substance, especially to his government’s outrageous break and entry without any judicial order into the internal security of Canada’s banking system on 14 February. This intervention was justified on the basis of the Emergency Act introduced just as the “conspiracy to commit murder” charges were being made public throughout Canada and around the world.

The Anti-Hate Network is itself deeply bound up with its own mispresentations of the 9/11 crimes and of the RCMP’s history of entrapping Islamic patsies with the goal of providing propaganda to demonize Muslims and thereby advance government agendas in the “War on Terror.” See this.

The Anti-Hate Network has imported all this controversy into the treatment of those 17 individuals criminalized at Coutts by employing Mubin Shaikh as an expert concerning the details of the case.

Shaikh worked closely with CSIS and the RCMP between 2006-2010 in setting up the entrapment/conviction of the “Toronto 18” as part of Canada’s original demonstration of the required spectacle meant to arouse fear of “homegrown Islamic terrorism.” Shaikh’s central role on this fiasco has been highlighted by Prof. Michael Kiefer’s “The Toronto 18 Frame-Up: Fraud and Fear-Mongering in the War on Terror.” Ms. Porter’s essay returns us to the paradigm of fear mongering as a staple in mainstream journalism. See this.

Catherine Porter repeats the strategy of lazy journalists working for the most discredited agencies in the regime media by merely declaring that those who agree with her and her backers are honest truth tellers and that those who disagree are despicable conspiracy theorists. The question of what the actual evidence does or does not support, however, almost never comes up with her. It almost never comes up because the point of the whole exercise, it seems, is not to get at the truth but rather to convict those already injected into trial-by-media procedures.

This trial-by media is intended to deprive the accused of fair hearings. Increasingly court processes, many of them palpably corrupt while in the pocket of those possessing high accumulations of wealth and power, count for much less than the media trials that precede them and often predetermine their outcomes.

In the title of her New York Times article Ms. Porter indicates that almost everyone in the town of Coutts came to a similar conclusion that the RCMP somehow staged the photograph of the weapons arsenal to set in motion a spurious process that has been playing itself out for several months now largely in the Lethbridge court house. Why not wait for the trial before pronouncing on such a crucial matter as the background of how the widely-distributed picture said to depict the Coutts weapons arsenal actually came to be?

Doesn’t such a widespread suspicion among so many of the people most close to the Coutts debacle merit some closer investigation? Or does Ms. Porter simply disqualify those who have made their lives in Coutts from having sufficient sophistication and insight to weigh in on such a grave matter.

Maybe the Lethbridge Herald would serve its home audience better by initiating some genuine investigation that takes its readers beyond the predictable stigmatization of one side and the automatic lionization of those that support the establishment narrative of the COVID debacle.

The failure of the regime media to show balance and objectivity in delving into the distinction between fact and fiction in the manufactured COVID crisis is holding us back from resolving a variety of contentions. These contentions have discredited many of our major institutions including government, media, the medical profession, universities, schools, churches, courts and banks.

It is time to put a stop in the COVID crisis to the disqualification from equitable representation of the large component of society who have done their own independent research with the goal of working towards a more healthy society. In such a society debate would be welcomed and embraced, not smeared and subjected to criminalizing processes such as those unfolding at the Lethbridge court house.

Yours Sincerely,

Anthony James Hall,
Professor Emeritus, University of Lethbridge

From The New York Times

“Somebody Planted The Guns:” In Canada a Raided, Distrusting Village Blames the Police” 

By Catherine Porter

Published Sept. 24, 2022, Updated Sept. 30, 2022

COUTTS, Alberta — The village’s only restaurant offers smiles and two pamphlets, one denouncing Covid-19 vaccines for children, the other saying the United Nations’ mission includes creating a “microchipped society” for “tracking and controlling.”

So pervasive is the belief here that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a dictator-in-the-making that even a top official in the village admits she “may have” a flag telling Canada’s leader where to go — rudely.

And many residents of the village, Coutts, Alberta, think the biggest event that occurred here in recent memory — when the police raided a local home in February and revealed a frightening cache of weapons — was a hoax perpetrated by the police to silence an antigovernment protest.

Read the full article here.

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Dr. Anthony Hall is editor in chief of the American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

It all caused a flutter amongst the ignorant and expectant on September 21.  China, it was said, was in the grip of an intriguing internal crisis. Air traffic had dramatically altered, with some 9,583 flights cancelled.  There were talking heads aflame with interest on the latest social media morsel, minute and yet profound.

The issue of flight cancellations was then spuriously linked to claims that President Xi Jinping had gone absent on his return from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Uzbekistan.  To this could be added two unconnected facts.  General Li Qiaoming, after having occupied his post for five years, was moving on, though where was not certain.  There were also the remarks of a retired centurion, a 105-year-old former politician, who spoke about respecting elders.

The media rush to tie the string around these events was aggressive.  It involved Gordon Chang, infamous proponent of the “collapse of China” theory, being consulted for expert advice by such outlets as Newsweek.  Chang’s tweets were generously quoted as sagacious observations:

“[W]hatever happened inside this #Chinese military during the last three days – evidently something unusual occurred – tells us there is turbulence inside the senior #CCP leadership.”

The lack of news from #China over the last few hours suggests coup rumors are untrue, but whatever happened inside the #Chinese military during the last three days—evidently something unusual occurred—tells us there is turbulence inside the senior #CCP leadership.

— Gordon G. Chang (@GordonGChang) September 24, 2022

Another gem from Chang was the view that much smoke had been detected, suggesting that “there is fire somewhere.  We don’t think there has actually been a coup, but at this point there have been some extremely troubling developments at the top of the Communist Party as well as the top of the People’s Liberation Army, which reports to the party, so something is terribly wrong.”

From this failed soothsayer, the “decision to cancel 60 per cent of its flights on Wednesday” and a “widely shared video” shared on social media showing “a line of military vehicles up to 80 kilometres long heading into Beijing” were key indicators that something was amiss in the centre of power.

Going further back the line of disinformation, one finds the channel New Tang Dynasty TV taking interest in the opinions of a dissident Zhao Lanjian, who made much of the flight cancellations.  That particular assessment was always going to be influenced by the fact that New Tang Dynasty is an important platform for the views of the religious group Falun Gong.  The group has, as its primary ambition, the elimination of the Chinese Communist Party.  The network also fanned the disappearance narrative regarding Xi and his apparent house arrest.

Then came the role of Jennifer Zeng, a New York-based Falun Gong blogger, asking the question whether Xi had been arrested and whether three senior anti-Xi officials had been sentenced to death.  Her efforts, according to The Print, were part of a “sprawling media ecosystem” backed by Falun Gong.

The rumour mill began to move at giddying speed.  India became the hotspot of dissemination.  The Noida-based Hindi news channel India TV was an avid enthusiast of the coup conspiracy theory.  The Indian politician Subramanian Swamy, with a Twitter following of 10 million, also got busy with tweeting on September 24, wondering about the “rumour” that the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party had “removed Xi from the Party’s in-charge of Army.  Then House arrest followed.”

By September 26, flights had resumed their merry way, with that occasionally useful tracking site flightradar24 showing a resumption of traffic from the Beijing Daxing International Airport.  But that did not get away from the other fact missed by the starry-eyed coup assessors: that the previous three weeks had also seen high cancellation rates for flights.  These included 60.1 per cent, 69 per cent and 64.1 per cent respectively.

The evidence supposedly mounted in favour of a coup began to look sketchy and even absurd.  There was no evidence of a military convoy stretching 80km entering the capital, despite the excitement caused by a video purporting to make that claim.  Logically, a British tech company that claims to “tackle” the harms arising from “misleading and deceptive online discourse”, found that the coverage in question related to a military convoy on the move last year.

Another video claiming to show an explosion that had supposedly taken place in the course of the alleged coup was from 2015, identifiable on Daily Motion and titled “Huge Explosion in Tianjin, China, 200 Tons TNT Equivalent.”  That particular conflagration was distinctly not fictional.  In the course of the explosion, 700 tonnes of sodium cyanide kept at the facilities of Ruihai International Logistic caught fire, leading to 173 fatalities.

The China Coup episode deserved a good mocking and Georg Fahrion of Der Spiegel was happy to do so. “Today in Beijing,” he noted with chirpy promise, “I investigated the China coup so you don’t have to.  At considerable personal risk, I ventured out to some neuralgic key points in the city.  Disturbing finds.  Brace yourself.”

Fahrion went on to talk about the main entrance to Zhongnanhai compound, “where the entire central leadership works, including Xi Jinping.”  Mockingly, he tells us that paratroopers of elite grade “have wrested control over the gate, cunningly disguised as the five middle-aged dudes who always stand there.”

The logic and strength of a lie is its fecund, reproductive power.  Mentioned constantly, reiterated and spread, it grows the legs of truth, and does a merry dance.  Sometimes, that dance is innocent enough; often, it’s not.  When it comes to speculating about coups and plots in such centres of power as China, the implications of getting that wrong are too grave to contemplate.

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

Featured image is from TheAltWorld

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***

“He who controls the weather controls the world” – Lyndon B. Johnson, 1962

Watch video below.

What we are seeing these days with hurricane “Ian” ravaging the Caribbean, the Florida coasts and inland, then all the way up to South Carolina – causing massive destruction of infrastructure, cropland, death of animals and people, as well as cancellations of all flights from NYC to Florida, this is a state of war.

It is also called geoengineering.

In the last couple of years it has become common place.

“Chemtrails”, the by now common term for spraying the higher atmosphere by airplanes literally with tons of tens of thousands of different chemical particles, has become a technology covered by hundreds if not thousands of patents. Not just US patents. Patents from countries around the world.

Did you know that Spain along with over 50 countries are currently carrying out “activities to artificially change the weather”. So said recently the Spanish weather agency AEMET and speaks of “chemical contrails” or “chemtrails”. See this.

To get a full picture of what geoengineering is all about, its history – back to at least 1947, probably longer – its scientific background, secrecy – and power – war power, literally to be used for weather warfare, you ought to watch “The Dimming” (linked below).

Geoengineering may be similar to Project Manhattan (The Manhattan Project was the code name for the American-led effort to develop a functional atomic weapon during World War II), see this “The Dimming” – Full Length Climate Engineering Documentary (https://www.GeoengineeringWatch.org, 10 March 2021)

According to Florida’s meteorological stations, Ian is the worst hurricane hitting Florida in decades, possibly ever.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

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

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***

This horrible war that could have been avoided, shouldn’t have been launched and could have been ended early through a negotiated settlement has reached an unimagined brink. The major parties to the war, Russia, Ukraine and the US, can continue on the path of escalation and go over the brink, or they can start to talk and to listen to each other.

Russia has been brought to the realization that there will be no negotiations with the West. Putin’s December 2021 requests for negotiations before the war and Russia’s accompanying proposal on mutual security guarantees were spurned by the US. At the start of the war, the State Department discouraged Ukraine from pursuing its interests and negotiating an end to the war in favor of continuing the war to fight for broader US interests. When a negotiated settlement was within reach, and it appeared that the war would not last much longer, the foreign minister of Turkey, the nation that hosted the promising Istanbul talks, charged that the promise of peace had been killed by “countries within NATO who want the war to continue.”

On September 21, Putin said that he “would like to make public for the first time” that “After the start of the special military operation, in particular after the Istanbul talks, Kiev representatives voiced quite a positive response to our proposals. These proposals concerned above all ensuring Russia’s security and interests. But a peaceful settlement obviously did not suit the West, which is why, after certain compromises were coordinated, Kiev was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements.” Russia had realized that there would likely not be a negotiated end to the war.

Russia also realized that they were no longer fighting the regional war against Ukraine they had launched. Ukraine’s response had been hijacked by the US, turning the war into a wider war between Russia and the US and NATO. The scale of the West’s provision of weapons, combined with training and targeting intelligence had already led Russia to see the US as risking crossing that line. Already by the end of April, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had said that “NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy.”

But from Russia’s perspective, the crossing of the line could no longer be denied after the September Ukraine counteroffensive that exposed direct US involvement that included intelligence sharing that, according to New York Times reporting, “allowed the United States to provide better and more relevant information about Russian weaknesses” and to increase “feeds of intelligence about the position of Russian forces, highlighting weaknesses in the Russian lines.” The US then war-gamed the counteroffensive with the Ukrainian military and advised them on “avenues for a counteroffensive [that] were likely to be more successful than others.” The US was providing everything but the soldiers who would die: they were providing the weapons, the training, the intelligence and the plan.

Russia had realized “that it is now in a direct war with the US, that this is now an American war.” On September 21, Putin said that Russia is fighting “the entire Western military machine.” And for Russia that meant that, even if Ukraine wasn’t in NATO, the existential threat that had long before Putin been Russia’s red line, NATO was in Ukraine. That conclusion was only reinforced by Zelensky’s September 30 statement that “De facto, we have already made our way to NATO.”

NATO is in Ukraine, and Ukraine is “de facto” in NATO. In 2008, when NATO promised at its Bucharest summit that Ukraine would become a NATO member, Russia declared it an existential threat that it would stop. According to Russian reporting at the time, Putin “flew into a rage” and promised that “if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the eastern regions.”

On September 30, an official signing ceremony was held in Moscow, following the referendums in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, that began the process of absorbing those four eastern regions into Russia.

Russia has promised to use any weapons necessary to defend its territory. The eastern regions of Ukraine are now seen by Russia as its territory. To ensure the manpower to keep the promise to defend its expanded territory, Russia simultaneously ordered a partial mobilization of up to 300,000 reserves.

The war has now escalated to the brink. The two sides have pushed as far as they can without risking going over. Though Ukraine is not officially in NATO, NATO is in Ukraine, completing the push east to Russia’s borders that Moscow has long feared. Russia has now annexed the eastern regions as they promised they would in 2008 if NATO came to Ukraine and consistently with their stated goal to protect Russian nationals in the Donbas whether through autonomy, independence or ascension to Russia. Having reached this pivotal point, Russia now called for the resumption of talks. On September 30, in a line in his speech at the signing ceremony that has gone unreported in the West, Putin called on Kiev to return to talks: “We call on the Kiev regime to immediately cease fire, all hostilities, to stop the war that Kiev started back in 2014, and to return back to the negotiating table.”

There is a brief window for Russia, Ukraine and the US to act on that moral responsibility and turn back from the brink and return to talks.

This is not the first time that it has come to Russia’s perceived need for nuclear threats. In 1962, Russia famously placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. Less famously, in April 1999, in a furious phone call as the NATO bombing of Kosovo came to a head, Boris Yeltsin warned President Clinton, “Don’t push Russia into this war? You know what Russia is, you know what Russia has at its disposal!”

The US and Russia that time talked and listened. It took time, and the relationship was, perhaps, irreparably damaged, but a compromise agreement was reached. NATO stopped its bombing of Kosovo, Serbian forces withdrew and a NATO and Russian peacekeeping forces were deployed to Kosovo under the banner of the UN.

In 1962, Kennedy and Khrushchev also listened and talked—if secretly. In 1962, Khrushchev feared American aggression in Cuba. Kennedy’s Operation Mongoose had the explicit goal of overthrowing Castro. When Edward Lansdale, who was running the operation, drew up the timeline for the coup, he said that “final success will require decisive US military intervention”. Equally importantly, Khrushchev feared American aggression in Russia: the US had Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Italy complete with nuclear warheads. Kennedy and Khrushchev stepped back from the brink. Exchanged secret messages led to negotiations. Russia would remove its nuclear missiles if the US would remove its nuclear missiles. To feel safe removing the missiles from Cuba, Khrushchev further demanded guarantees that the US would not invade Cuba. Kennedy agreed to provide an informal promise not to invade.

The US and NATO broke their promise not to expand NATO east of Germany and mocked Russia’s security concerns and red lines as they moved closer to Russia’s borders. Russia escalated by launching a war on Ukraine. The US continued the escalation by deeper and more direct involvement in the war. Russia further escalated by annexing the eastern regions. Now is the moment to end the escalation and urgently begin to listen and to return to talks.

What would have happened if Kennedy had not listened to Khrushchev and if the two had not secretly talked?

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Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.

Featured image: 03 June 1961  President Kennedy meets with Chairman Khrushchev at the U. S. Embassy residence, Vienna. U. S. Dept. of State photograph in the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston.

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***

The UK anticipated a “serious confrontation between Russia and Ukraine” as far back as 1992, declassified files show. One senior official even questioned whether Ukraine was “a real country”.

When British intelligence warned that Vladimir Putin was about to attack Ukraine earlier this year, the spooks’ foresight won many plaudits. Yet their prediction mirrored a scenario Whitehall had long known might unfold.

In May 1992, just six months after the Soviet Union broke up, Britain’s then Prime Minister John Major was being briefed by his staff. They were concerned about a potential clash between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea.

The peninsula in the Black Sea had belonged to Russia until the Soviet Union gifted it to Ukraine in 1954. For the rest of the Cold War, Crimea retained a significant Russian presence, including a strategically important warm water port for the Kremlin’s navy.

Such was the strength of Russia’s legacy in the area that during the 1990s local politicians wanted a referendum on independence from Ukraine. “Most of the population in Crimea is Russian,” an advisor told Major in a handwritten note.

They warned:

“If Crimea becomes independent, Ukraine’s ability to control the Black Sea fleet – based at Sevastopol – goes with it.”

Gordon Barrass, a senior UK intelligence official, added:

“The Ukrainians will try to prevent the referendum from being held…The issue will arouse passions among nationalists in Kiev and Moscow and could stir up inter-ethnic conflict within Crimea.”

Among those living in Crimea were the Tartars, an historic Muslim community that had been brutally oppressed under Soviet rule and wanted to remain part of Ukraine.

Percy Cradock, a veteran British diplomat and intelligence supremo, warned the situation “excites strong emotions in Crimea and amongst the powerful nationalist lobby in Kiev (as well as in Moscow).”

He believed:

“There must be a real possibility that the situation will slip out of control. That could mean violence in Crimea, and serious confrontation between Russia and Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s sovereignty questioned

In the event, there was a messy compromise. Crimea’s parliament declared independence, while also acknowledging Ukraine’s authority. Yet the situation remained volatile.

Major’s foreign policy advisor and former ambassador to Moscow, Rodric Braithwaite, wrote a confidential background note that would today be considered heretical.

“It is not entirely clear, even to the Ukrainians, still less to the Russians, that Ukraine is a real country,” Braithwaite noted. “Hence the tensions between the two.”

Braithwaite, who went on to chair the Joint Intelligence Committee later in 1992, gave the Prime Minister a potted history of the region, stretching back to the middle ages. He highlighted the “artificial famine which [Soviet leader Joseph] Stalin imposed on the Ukraine in 1930-31, when many millions of peasants were deported or starved to death.”

“So it was not surprising then very many Ukrainians greeted the Germans as liberators in 1941, and that large numbers agreed to join the German army”, Braithwaite reasoned, referring to Nazi collaborators during World War II.

‘An integral part of Russia’

Although these resistance groups were ultimately defeated by Stalin, Ukrainian nationalism survived as a political movement.

“Throughout 1990 the number and size of popular demonstrations for independence swelled,” Braithwaite noted, adding that Russia looked like an “empire” to Ukrainians.

On the other hand, he said:

“Russians would simply not recognise the picture. For Russians, the Ukraine is an integral part of Russia, its history and its culture. The Ukrainian language is no more than a dialect”.

He went on:

“I have not met a single Russian, even among the most sophisticated, who really believes that the Ukraine is now permanently severed from the motherland.”

In a candid remark, Braithwaite said:

“The Ukrainians know that. They also know that Ukraine itself is divided: between the ultra-nationalist…Western Ukraine…and the East which is predominantly inhabited by ethnic Russians.”

As tensions escalated, a confidential Whitehall planning paper warned: “We need to pay more attention to Ukraine.” It noted there were “fears over long term allegiance of ethnic Russian minority (22% of population)” and concerns that President Yeltsin “will be replaced by nationalists/neo-imperialists” in the Kremlin.

‘Reabsorbed by Russia’

At the end of 1993, Foreign Office planners thought “Ukraine might be reabsorbed by Russia unless it faced up to the need for painful economic and political reforms” to make it less dependent on money from Moscow.

Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Borys Tarasyuk, did not dispute the analysis when British diplomats came to Kiev to meet him in early 1994 for “some six hours of confidential exchanges”.

Tarasyuk believed Moscow “was determined to try to assert as much control as possible over all the republics of the former Soviet Union”, and would “use the well tried strategy of destabilising their neighbours in order to justify intervention”.

The Ukrainian politician was apparently “particularly exercised about the Crimea where recent elections have demonstrated the strength of pro-Russian separatist feeling.”

Roger Bone, a senior British diplomat who would later run arms giant Boeing, “reassured Tarasyuk that the West was very much alive to the risk of a shift in Russian foreign policy” and “would not acquiesce in the re-establishment of a Russian sphere of influence.”

Battle for influence

Plans were made to bring Ukraine’s economy into the Western orbit, through promoting privatisation and engagement with the International Monetary Fund. Financial aid was to be conditional on Ukraine restructuring its economy towards a free market model.

It would take another 20 or 30 years for the significance of these discussions to become fully apparent. In 2014, Ukraine’s democratically elected president was toppled in a popular “coup”, after he opted for an economic deal with Russia instead of the European Union.

Russia, now led by the nationalist Vladimir Putin, reacted to the loss of his ally by annexing Crimea. Residents supposedly voted by 97% to join Russia in a referendum, which was boycotted by Tartars and not recognised by Britain.

Meanwhile, Moscow helped destabilise Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, by backing separatist rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk. Peace talks failed and the conflict dramatically escalated this February when Putin launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Putin is now repeating his referendum tactic by holding disputed polls in the Donbas, despite the ongoing war. While British intelligence has recently won credit for predicting the conflict, the declassified files make clear this was a risk Whitehall had long known about.

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Phil Miller is Declassified UK’s chief reporter. He is the author of Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes. Follow him on Twitter at @pmillerinfo.

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

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***

The Ukrainian government is prepared to give the Joe Biden administration virtual control over its selection of Russian targets. Kiev made the proposal in a bid to receive longer-range weapons from the White House, according to multiple sources speaking with CNN.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will provide a full list of possible targets while allowing the White House to veto any of the potential sites. Kiev is hoping the increased transparency will pave the path to Biden authorizing more weapons transfers. Zelensky made the offer to Washington to alleviate concerns in the Biden administration that new weapons will be used to target Russian territory.

However, Kiev, Washington and Moscow currently have different views on what is Russian versus Ukrainian territory. After a 2014 coup in Ukraine that saw US-backed elements overthrow a democratically elected government, Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula. Last week, Moscow claimed four additional regions of Ukraine as its own.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to defend all of his country’s territory with the full arsenal at his disposal. The Kremlin stated that it considers its newly added regions as it would the rest of Russia. On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin acknowledged the possibility that Putin could order a nuclear strike in Ukraine, defending these new regions. The Pentagon chief then vowed Washington would support Kiev’s “efforts” for “as long as it takes” to “take back all of the territories” within its “sovereign borders.”

Concurrently, Moscow claims there has been an increase in Ukrainian attacks within Russia proper, encouraged by NATO. During a recent press conference, Putin publicly noted, for the first time, attempted Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s nuclear power plants.

The US has provided Ukraine with 16 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), and authorized sending over a dozen more to Kiev in an arms package last week. So far, the White House has only sent Ukraine with munitions for HIMARS that can travel 50 miles. Kiev is seeking Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) surface-to-surface missiles that can fly around 200 miles by the HIMARS. When the Biden administration began providing HIMARS to Ukraine, it was insisted that Kiev had provided “assurances” that these weapons would not be used to target Russian territory. In June, Antiwar.com contacted the State Department to ask if this condition applied to the Crimean Peninsula, a department spokesman replied “Crimea is Ukraine.”

The White House has made clear that they will not recognize the new Russian territories, and NATO has said they will escalate their support for the proxy war.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has previously said that if the West provides Kiev with longer-range weapons, then the Kremlin would expand its war goals in Ukraine. In July, Lavrov wrote an article claiming NATO was already on the battlefield coordinating attacks on Russian targets using the rocket systems.

“NATO instructors and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems aimers are, apparently, already directing the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and nationalist battalions on the ground,” Lavrov said.

In addition to the CIA presence on the ground in Ukraine, NATO commandos from Lithuania, Canada, Britain, and France are also present. Notably, there are several Donald Trump-aligned Republicans in the legislature, including Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) eager to “[go] for the kill” and overtly deploy American military advisors to Ukraine. Former US special operators are already on the ground near the contact line, training Kiev’s forces and developing battle plans.

Harry Kazianis wrote in Responsible Statecraft that in multiple war game simulations, Washington sending advanced weapons led to nuclear war.

I have fought more than thirty combat simulations in wargames under my own direction for a private defense contract…In every scenario I tested, the Biden Administration slowly gives Ukraine ever more advanced weapons like ATACMS, F-16s, and other platforms that Russia has consistently warned pose a direct military threat…In fact, in 28 of the thirty scenarios I have run since the war began, some sort of nuclear exchange occurs.

Kazianis does report that in some of the war games, diplomacy, rather than escalation prevailed, and nuclear conflict was averted.

The good news is there is a way out of this crisis — however imperfect it may be. In the two scenarios where nuclear war was averted, direct negotiations led to a ceasefire. The Biden Administration and its NATO allies should be testing Putin’s recent comments about a ceasefire to test his seriousness.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, America’s top diplomat, has declared Washington’s goal is to see Russia suffer a “strategic defeat” in Ukraine. During the war, he spoke to Lavrov once and for only 25 minutes, they merely discussed a potential bilateral prisoner exchange. Likewise, UK Prime Minister Liz Truss has ruled out diplomacy until Moscow is “defeated.”

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Kyle Anzalone is news editor at the Libertarian Institute, assistant editor at Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.

Connor Freeman is a writer and assistant editor at the Libertarian Institute, and co-hosts Conflicts of Interest.

Featured image is from TLI

9/11, Osamagate and the “Blowback”. America’s “Just War” Against Afghanistan

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 03, 2022

From the outset, the objective was to use 9/11 as a pretext for launching the first phase of the Middle East Central Asian War, which consisted in the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan. This was achieved by sustaining the myth that Muslim terrorists supported by the Afghan government had attacked the WTC on September 11, 2001.

Americans Find Gangsters Suitable to Lead the Country

By Eric Zuesse, October 03, 2022

Here are some of the top agents in this U.S.-headed gang, agents of U.S. billionaires. These individuals don’t even need to worry about elections, such as politicians do, and they remain in office for as long as they want if they do what America’s billionaires want them to do.

China Is Not Capitalist and It Is Not Yet Communist

By Kim Petersen, October 03, 2022

There are many western commentators who, apparently in profound dismay that a country which holds up the banner of socialism could be so economically successful, tiresomely deny that China practises socialism and insist that it is instead capitalist.

Blinken Calls Sabotage Attacks on Nord Stream Pipelines a “Tremendous Opportunity”

By Zero Hedge, October 03, 2022

Ever since the recent unprecedented sabotage attacks on the Russia to Europe Nord Stream pipelines, the central question has continued to remain who did it and correspondingly cui bono?

Germany Spends 2.5 Billion Euros on 100 Million Bivalent Boosters Only to Discover That Nobody Wants Them

By eugyppius, October 03, 2022

The German government has ordered 100 million doses of BA.1 and BA.4/5 bivalent vaccines at a cost of 2.5 billion Euros, and almost nobody wants them.

Increased Risk of Myocarditis: Doctor Who Promoted COVID Shots on TV Calls for Global Stop to COVID-19 Vaccines

By Marina Zhang and Dr. Yuhong Dong, October 03, 2022

Lately, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who was previously supportive of COVID-19 vaccines has been the topic of breaking news stories for demanding a global stop to the distribution of the same vaccines he once promoted.

Dutch Government Obstructs Excess Mortality Research

By Gideon van Meijeren, October 03, 2022

The Netherlands have been struggling with unexplained excess mortality for more than a year. Since the second half of 2021, over ten thousand more people have died than expected. In October 2021, the leader of Forum for Democracy, Thierry Baudet, was the first to draw attention to this topic, in parliamentary questions to the then Minister of Health, Hugo de Jonge.

Should Europeans ‘Thank’ the Americans for Destroying Nord Stream?

By Robert Bridge, October 03, 2022

With an investigation continuing into the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline that provided energy supplies to Europe from Russia, there appears to be just one prime suspect, and that should surprise nobody.

Biden’s Nordstream Destruction Prediction, Draped in Nazi Blood and Soil

By Kurt Nimmo, October 03, 2022

Thomas Reed, a senior US national security official, claims in his book “At The Abyss” that the United States allowed the USSR to steal pipeline control software from a Canadian company. This software included a Trojan Horse that caused a major explosion of the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline in June 1982. The Trojan ran during a pressure test on the pipeline but doubled the usual pressure, causing the explosion.

Please Some Straight Talk from the Peace Movement

By Philip Giraldi, October 03, 2022

The so-called Israel Defense Forces, whose Chief Rabbi Eyal Karim approves of his soldiers raping ‘attracting Gentile women’ as a way to keep up morale, are also continuing to kill Palestinians at an unprecedented rate and have covered-up the murder four months ago of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, admitting only that the woman was apparently killed by a soldier who claimed that he thought her to be an armed Arab rioter.

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***

On 13 November 2019, the U.S. President said, regarding Syria, “We’re keeping the oil, we have the oil, the oil is secure, we left troops behind only for the oil.” That was at a press conference, and none of the reporters asked him any question about that statement. They certainly thought to be unremarkable, and not surprising, to hear an American President say that our country is stealing oil from a country that we have invaded and still are militarily occupying despite having no legal authority to position any troops there — publicly admitting to international gangsterism, in the very boldest way (yet without surprising anyone there).

That statement had followed a U.S. ‘Defense’ Department’s statement, on 25 October 2019, saying, with more tact, that, “The United States will maintain a reduced presence in Syria, to deny ISIS access to oil revenues as the next phase of the defeat-ISIS campaign.” It was tactful because it lied to claim this is to be done (and no reference to stealing anything) “to deny ISIS access to oil revenues” — the false underlying assumption being conveyed that this oil is ISIS’s and NOT Syria’s, so that even IF that oil is being stolen from ISIS (which wants to overthrow Syria’s Government, just as much as does the U.S. Government, though for different reasons), then it still is being done for a reason that America’s voters would approve of: conquering ISIS. In other words, the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department was tactful enough to misrepresent what the reason for these ongoing international thefts is.

On 10 August 2022, when that President’s successor was (and still is) in office, The Cradle news-site headlined “Washington steals over 80 percent of Syria’s oil output per day: The losses incurred by the trafficking campaign surpass $100bln, according to Syria’s oil ministry”, and they presented a stunning brief aerial-shot video (perhaps from Russian drones) showing the long strings of tanker-trucks hauling away that oil from Syria. Though the U.S. President now was from a different U.S. political Party, the U.S. foreign policy remained unchanged.

That President’s successor, though of the opposite political Party, continued these thefts. The thefts had been started by a President of this President’s Party, back in 2012, who was working with European partners perhaps as early as 2009, and definitely wanted “regime-change” in Syria at that time, but definitely by no later than 2012 he decided to support Al Qaeda in Syria against Syria’s existing Government at that time, late in 2012, and the planning for this overthrow of Syria’s Government was already functioning in June of 2011. The U.S. Government was doing this overthrow-operation not for any legitimate reason — Syria had never threatened, nor posed any threat to, the United States. It presented no national-security risk to the United States, whatsoever — and never had. This was purely an international-gangland operation, in order to benefit the billionaires who control (buy the winning politicians in) each of its participating Governments. All members of this international gang settled upon their plan “behind closed doors, at the sidelines of the Atlantic Council’s Energy Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, on November 22 – 23, 2013.” The Atlantic Council is NATO’s chief PR organization. Furthermore, allegedly, ISIS’s “two heads are the royal family of Saudi Arabia and the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, U.S.A.” Lots more evidence along the same lines was given in the U.S. magazine Homeland Security Today, on 18 March 2019, interviewing “The ISIS Ambassador to Turkey”, who, for some reason, seems to have left ISIS. One of the U.S. gang’s mainstream news-media, TIME magazine, presented this operation as-if the U.S. Government were debating within itself pro-and-con about it, instead of fully committed to it (which the U.S. Government had been ever since 1949). They headlined about it, “Syria’s Opposition Hopes to Win the War by Selling Oil”, as-if “Syria’s Opposition” were anything more than Al Qaeda in Syria, and Kurdish separatists in Syria’s northeast — America’s proxy-forces to overthrow Syria’s committedly secular Government and replace it with a government that would be controlled by the Saud family.

On 29 September 2022, Steven Sahiounie headlined at The Duran, “Cholera and US sanctions killing Syrian civilians”, and reported that,

The deadly outbreak has claimed 39 lives in Syria, with thousands of suspected cases across the country. In areas under the Ministry of Health in Damascus, 23 deaths were reported recently, 20 of them in Aleppo, and at least 253 cases.

In the northeast region of Syria controlled by the US-backed SDF — a [separatist] Kurdish militia … — are a reported 16 deaths and 2,867 cases since September 5. The US occupation forces there are controlling the main oil fields in Syria to prevent the Damascus government from using the oil to provide electricity for people’s homes, water pumping stations, and gasoline for their cars. …

Health authorities tested the Euphrates and found the bacteria causing cholera.  The river is polluted by raw sewage and oil spills from the US-occupied oil wells at Deir Ez Zor. …

According to the UN, nearly two-thirds of water treatment plants, half of the pumping stations, and one-third of water towers have been damaged by more than a decade of war.

Last winter, Syrians died in their homes without heating. … Diesel fuel is used in Syria for home heating, but it is expensive and often in short supply because of the US occupation of the oil wells in the northeast, and the US sanctions preventing importing fuels. Most Syrians get about one hour [per day] of electricity because the fuel used to generate electricity is taken by the US troops.

Sahiounie says that because of the heavy paperwork that’s required by the U.S. sanctions in order for Syrians to buy foreign medicines, hospital treatments for the cholera victims are impeded.

Here are some of the top agents in this U.S.-headed gang, agents of U.S. billionaires. These individuals don’t even need to worry about elections, such as politicians do, and they remain in office for as long as they want if they do what America’s billionaires want them to do. Like the politicians, they are answerable only to the billionaires and a few centi-millionaires, who fund their careers, but their jobs are easier than for publicly elected officials, who are constantly competing against one-another to win over those big-dollar donors. In fact, some of these agents had formerly been successful politicians, U.S. office-holders, but then ‘retired’ upstairs, where it’s far easier to remain in their jobs, not only because of the constant competition for mega-buck donors, but because constantly fooling their voters is hard work, not so easy as being a lobbyist is. These agents are ONLY agents, but they all are extremely well rewarded financially, for their services to the gangsters who own them — who have funded the wealth or their lobbyists and other agents. And you see there some of the U.S. mega-corporations that fund these peoples’ careers, on behalf of those corporations’ controlling stockholders. But, of course, the names of the billionaires themselves aren’t shown there. The billionaires generally stay behind the scenes, because they don’t want to be the people who will get blamed for the resulting Government. 

Of course, the same things were true of this gang’s operations to take over Iraq, and are true today of the gang’s operations to retain control of Ukraine, which they had won in 2014. The American people find acceptable to be constantly lied-to, and to be ruled by, the agents of international gangsters — billionaires’ agents. It has been going on now blatantly since at least 9 December  2020, and actually ever since at least 25 July 1945, when this gang, these gangsters, America’s super-rich, took over the country, and have continued to hold control over America’s Government.

The majority of Americans vote for these gangsters’ stooges, instead of do anything to rebel against and replace virtually all of these stooge-officials who occupy congressional seats and the White House. So, the promises that are made to the public remain unfulfilled, while the promises that are privately made to the mega-dollar donors get turned into government-policies and laws. Even at the level of state governments, “Politicians Don’t Actually Care What Voters Want”. But, apparently, Americans find gangsters — agents of the billionaires — suitable to lead the country (on behalf of their funders — NOT of their voters). And those agents of billionaires then get to choose whom our judges will be. And, that’s okay. Or: Is it? Is it democracy, at all?

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

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

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There are many western commentators who, apparently in profound dismay that a country which holds up the banner of socialism could be so economically successful, tiresomely deny that China practises socialism and insist that it is instead capitalist.

Author Jeff Brown wrote that China is “history’s most successful socialist and communist country.”

This conflation of communism and socialism is common but inaccurate. It fudges that, according to Marxist thought, socialism is an earlier stage in the process of reaching the end goal of communism.

That writer Ron Leighton asserts in his piece that “China is Capitalist” is rather simplistic. Laissez faire capitalism, neoliberalism, and exploitation of other nations are antithetical to Chinese political-economic practice.

Dictionary Definitions

Socialism: “a theory or system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, capital, land, etc., by the community as a whole, usually through a centralized government.”

Communism: “a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.”

Capitalism: “an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.”

Is there an extant purely capitalist society? What do hospitals, schools, the fire department, the police, military, etc represent? The fact is that capitalism, because of its proclivity to concentrate wealth in a few hands, could not survive in a society without wealth redistribution.

The Communist Party of China prioritized pulling all its citizens out of absolute poverty and achieved this in late 2021. What “capitalist” country has achieved this? The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — despite a scorched earth bombardment by the US, climatological disasters suffered, and continuous sanctions against it — has achieved tuition-free education for all, kindergarten through university; free preschool; universal healthcare; full employment; and universal housing. What capitalist countries have achieved this? In fact, my North Korean guide proudly opined that the DPRK was more socialist than China.

China now strives toward becoming a xiaokang society, a moderately prosperous society — basically a society where almost everyone has attained a middle class level. This is hardly what one would expect to be prioritized under capitalism’s law of the jungle.

Unhindered, a system of socialism should function without need for capitalism.

Nonetheless, arguing about whether China is communist or capitalist is futile. China is neither.

If one wants to know what political-economic system China adheres to then check in with China’s chairman Xi Jinping. He states clearly in his book On the Governance of China that China follows and applies Marxist-Leninism to the Chinese context and that China is currently in the early stage of socialism, what Chinese call Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. The “Communist” in the Communist Party of China indicates the end goal, as Xi also makes clear in his book.

China emphasizes peace, the freedom for each nation to choose a system which best suits it, win-win commerce, and an improved life for people of all nations. It does not seek to impose a political-economic system on others, and it does not emphasize profit over people.

Sounds quite distant from capitalism.

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Kim Petersen is an independent writer and former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com.

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Ever since the recent unprecedented sabotage attacks on the Russia to Europe Nord Stream pipelines, the central question has continued to remain who did it and correspondingly cui bono?

Just when speculation and an avalanche of theories have inundated the web on an array of international outlets, the Biden administration has bluntly (and apparently lacking self-awareness) boasted that the pipeline bombings present an “opportunity”.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Friday joint press briefing with Canada’s top diplomat that the damage and disruption to the pipelines are being seen in Washington as a “tremendous opportunity” to greatly reduce European energy imports on Russia.

In addressing the ‘mystery’ sabotage incidents, Blinken began,

“I think first it’s important to make clear that these pipelines – that is, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 – were not pumping gas into Europe at this time.  Nord Stream 2 never became operational, as is well known.  Nord Stream 1 has been shut down for weeks because of Russia’s weaponization of energy.”

A mere few sentences later, he followed by saying “ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”

He at the same time touted that the Untied States has now become “the leading supplier of LNG [liquefied natural gas] to Europe,” stressing too that the Biden administration is helping to enable European leaders to “decrease demand” and “speed up the transition to renewables.”

Tellingly, in that single section of comments while speaking alongside his Canadian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, Blinken had repeated the word “opportunity” while highlighting the European energy crisis no less than three times.

According to @SecBlinken, the Nord Stream pipeline bombing "offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come." Too bad that this tremendous opportunity for DC bureaucrats will come at the expense of everyone else, especially this coming winter. pic.twitter.com/T2eacQUuBF

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) October 1, 2022

Canada’s Joly for her part pointed the finger at Russia for sabotaging its own pipeline during a panel discussion the same day, telling an Atlantic Council conference that the world is “not naïve” about who is responsible for the acts of “sabotage”. She’s the latest top official of a NATO government to do so.

But the Canadian foreign affairs minister stopped short of naming Russia directly in the exchange:

“At this point we’re still investigating, but obviously we want to make sure that we do things the right way, but we’re not naïve,” she said.

“You’re not naïve as to who’s behind it?” Sciutto responded.

“As I said, we won’t speculate but at the same time, we want to make sure that — the world needs to understand that this is very important European infrastructure that was sabotaged,” the minister added.

On the other side of the question of culprits and the crucial cui bono question, The American Conservative offers the following commentary:

One could certainly see why sabotaging Nord Stream benefits the US. We didn’t want Europe to get Nord Stream in the first place, because it would make Europe dependent on Russian gas. This is perfectly reasonable, from an American point of view. However, if Washington sabotaged those pipelines in the middle of the Ukraine-Russia war, that would mean an insane escalation of the war, to sabotaging critical infrastructure.

Think about it: if Russia can’t deliver gas to Europe anyway, because the pipelines are too damaged, that makes it harder to make peace and restore energy flow to Europe. This fits Washington’s policy goals. That doesn’t mean Washington is responsible for this sabotage, but there’s a lot more reason for Washington to have blown the pipelines up than for Russia.

The publication continues, “Prominent Polish politician Radek Sikorski understood this, firing off this ill-advised tweet as soon as the news broke.”…

Finally, we note that China state-affiliated media mouthpiece could not resist commenting on Blinken’s apparently cluelessly ironic comments, saying what much of the rest-of-the-world is perhaps thinking…

Taking the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines as a "tremendous opportunity" is such undisguised comment, isn't it? Isn't Mr. Blinken worried that his remarks will make the world believe "whoever benefits did it"? pic.twitter.com/X8NwAX75w2

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) October 2, 2022

Below is the full section of transcript and context wherein Secretary Blinken dubbed the pipeline incident and European energy crisis a “tremendous opportunity” [emphasis ours]…

“I think first it’s important to make clear that these pipelines – that is, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 – were not pumping gas into Europe at this time.  Nord Stream 2 never became operational, as is well known.  Nord Stream 1 has been shut down for weeks because of Russia’s weaponization of energy.

What we’ve been doing – and we’ve also been working on this together for many, many weeks as we saw the Russian aggression in Ukraine and as we saw the ongoing weaponization of energy by Russia – is to work very closely with European partners as well as countries around the world to make sure that there is enough energy on world markets.  And so we’ve significantly increased our production as well as making available to Europe liquefied natural gas.  And we’re now the leading supplier of LNG to Europe to help compensate for any gas or oil that it’s losing as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

We’ve worked to release oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to make sure as well that there is oil on the markets and to help keep prices down.  We’ve engaged with the European Union and established months ago a task force to work directly with Europe on ways to decrease demand to help get through the winter, as well as to pursue additional supply and to find ways to speed up the transition to renewables even as we’re getting through this challenging period.  So all of that work is ongoing.

My own sense – and I mentioned this the other day – is, look, there’s a lot of hard work to do to make sure that countries and partners get through the winter.  Europe itself has taken very significant steps to both decrease demand but also look at ways to pursue the transition to renewables at the same time.  And ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.

That’s very significant and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come, but meanwhile, we’re determined to do everything we possibly can to make sure that the consequences of all of this are not borne by citizens in our countries or, for that matter, around the world.”

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The German government has ordered 100 million doses of BA.1 and BA.4/5 bivalent vaccines at a cost of 2.5 billion Euros, and almost nobody wants them. An amusing Welt article chronicles the scenes unfolding at our deserted regional vaccination centres, which for some reason are still open:

Michael Hubmann did not expect that so few would come. Only 85 people had themselves vaccinated against Covid-19 on Thursday in Fürth in Middle Franconia, a district with 120,000 inhabitants. “We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible for people,” says Hubmann, a paediatrician who is coordinating the vaccination campaign. He explains that vaccinations were offered simultaneously in two shopping centres, a bus, a home for the elderly and in a former shop in the pedestrian zone. “Yet hardly anyone wanted to have the fourth dose.”

The medical bureaucrats are baffled, just baffled:

“Unfortunately, interest in the fourth dose has been pretty low so far,” says Markus Beier, Chairman of the German Association of General Practitioners. At the same time, he says it’s important that people over 60 and those with previous illnesses in particular protect themselves with a further dose. “There is uncertainty among the population as to what further vaccinations will achieve. But they still strengthen protection against severe outcome.”

Meanwhile, vast quantities of vaccine are expiring. At the end of August alone, 3.9 million doses of Moderna and another 700,000 doses of Novavax had to be binned.

Bivalent booster uptake fail. (Source: eugyppius)

The chart above tells the whole sordid story of our recent experiment with mass vaccination. Demand for this snake oil was highest in the beginning, before anybody had any direct experience with it; and in the Fall, when the government tied vaccination to specific social privileges. As overt vaccinator coercion has faded and millions of people have tried these doubtful elixirs for themselves, interest has all but entirely evaporated. This is the ultimate vindication for all those who have been saying that the vaccines are lousy overhyped pharmaceuticals with a bad side-effect profile. A safe and effective product would only gain momentum with the population. It took less than two years for these to wear out their welcome.

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Lately, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who was previously supportive of COVID-19 vaccines has been the topic of breaking news stories for demanding a global stop to the distribution of the same vaccines he once promoted.

It was certainly a first for a doctor who had heavily promoted the vaccines to publicly demand a global stop to the mRNA injections.

In February 2021, Malhotra was asked to appear on Good Morning Britain, after a previously vaccine-hesitant film director Gurinder Chadha, Order of the British Empire (OBE)—who was also interviewed—explained that she was convinced by Malhotra to take the jab.

However, more than a year later, in August 2022, Malhotra appeared on GB News, revealing that he had sent an open letter to the then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Joe Biden calling for the immediate release of the raw data from Pfizer’s original COVID-19 vaccine trial.

A month later, in an article he published in the Journal of Insulin Resistance on Sept. 26, 2022, Malhotra discussed the current problems with the COVID-19 vaccinations and demanded an immediate stop to these vaccines. He also discussed how the decades-long accumulation of problems within the medical and pharmaceutical community have led to the global disaster of COVID-19 vaccinations.

What got him to change his mind?

Well, it was his own personal tragedy that changed him into a doctor calling for a global stop to the very vaccines he once promoted.

A Personal Tragedy

As a leading cardiology consultant for many years, Malhotra was taught the benefits of vaccines, believed in them, and advocated for them.

In his first article, Malhotra wrote that vaccinations are some of the safest interventions in the world compared to most drugs, given that they are administered to prevent disease in healthy people and not to treat illness.

With this belief, Malhotra welcomed the news in the summer of 2020, when several pharmaceutical companies, including both Pfizer and Moderna, announced that they had developed a vaccine with more than “95 percent effectiveness” at preventing infection from the dominant circulating strain of SARS-CoV-2 2019.

Malhotra, as a proponent of vaccines, volunteered at a vaccine center and was one of the first to receive two doses of Pfizer’s messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccine.

He also recommended that his patients and the people around him take it.

His late father, Dr. Kailand Chand, a general practitioner, former deputy chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) and its honorary vice president, also took two doses of the Pfizer mRNA injection. Dr. Chand received the honorary Order of the British Empire (OBE) from the late Queen Elizabeth II of the UK in 2009.

Six months later, however, on July 26, 2021 Chand suffered a cardiac arrest at home after experiencing chest pain.

A subsequent inquiry revealed that a significant ambulance delay likely contributed to his death. Though his passing was a shock, what astounded Malhotra was Chand’s autopsy results.

The autopsy showed that two of his father’s three major coronary arteries had severe blockages, with 90 percent blockage in his left anterior descending artery and a 75 percent blockage in his right coronary artery.

This finding shocked everyone, according to Malhotra, as Chand was “an extremely fit and active 73-year-old man.”

It was particularly difficult for Malhotra to accept these results as he knew Chand’s medical history and lifestyle habits.

“My father, who had been a keen sportsman all his life, was fitter than the overwhelming majority of men his age,” Malhotra wrote.

“Since the previous heart scans (a few years earlier, which had revealed no significant problems with perfect blood flow throughout his arteries and only mild furring), he had quit sugar, lost belly fat, reduced the dose of his blood pressure pills, started regular meditation, reversed his pre-diabetes, and even massively dropped his blood triglycerides, significantly improving his cholesterol profile,” Malhotra wrote.

Even during the lockdowns, Chand walked an average of 10,000 to 15,000 steps everyday.

Malhotra could not explain the autopsy findings, it looked to him as if there was no heart attack but only a severe blockage, which was unexpected given Chand’s lifestyle habits.

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The Netherlands have been struggling with unexplained excess mortality for more than a year. Since the second half of 2021, over ten thousand more people have died than expected. In October 2021, the leader of Forum for Democracy, Thierry Baudet, was the first to draw attention to this topic, in parliamentary questions to the then Minister of Health, Hugo de Jonge. The minister directly attributed the excess mortality to COVID. This was incorrect, because the excess death waves did not coincide with the COVID waves at all. Moreover, the excess mortality often exceeded the number of COVID deaths in the same period – to say nothing of the fact that the definition of “COVID death” is, of course, highly controversial.

In December 2021, the House of Representatives ordered the government to conduct an independent investigation into the ongoing excess mortality. In addition to an investigation by Statistics Netherlands and the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), independent scientists were also supposed to be granted access to the data, via research financier ZonMW, in order to do their own research. However, that never happened.

An alarming letter obtained by FVD MP Gideon van Meijeren shows that independent scientists do not have access to the data they need. The letter comes from research financier ZonMW and is addressed to the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) as well as the Municipal Health Services (GGD) do not want to release the vaccination data and test results, hiding behind privacy rules as an excuse. But that argument does not hold water: the General Data Protection Regulation they rely on does not apply to deceased persons.

In the meantime, the RIVM and the GGD are making it impossible for independent scientists properly to carry out their assignment. Because of this, they cannot check the research done by RIVM and Statistics Netherlands, nor even do their own, even though these are basic conditions for sound scientific research. Moreover, the researchers say that this creates the appearance of self-interest on the part of the RIVM and the GGD.  According to them, it is precisely “in the interest of public trust in government to avoid any appearance of self-interest”. Duly noted.

The position of the RIVM and the GGD also shows their hypocrisy. Firstly, the RIVM has made data available when it comes to other studies. Secondly, without any objection, those very same RIVM and GGD made available the vaccination data and test results for the sake of the QR code, as a result of which the entire Dutch population had to throw its privacy into the bin on order to regain its social life.

Now that there are concrete indications that this may have had criminal consequences – after all, there is a real chance that the excess mortality is (partly) the result of the massive vaccination campaigns that have been imposed – this is being swept under the carpet. FVD wants to get to the bottom of the matter and is asking parliamentary questions, calling on Minister Kuipers to force the RIVM and the GGD to release the data.

Gideon van Meijeren’s parliamentary questions:

1. Do you recall that on November 19, 2021, in response to parliamentary questions about excess mortality from May 2021, your predecessor said that “Statistics Netherlands (CBS) states that the excess mortality, or the difference between the observed number and the expected number of deaths, is almost entirely caused by death from COVID-19”? Where and when did CBS state this? Do you agree with this statement? If so, why? If not, why not?
2. Are you familiar with the article ‘Every week hundreds more Dutch people are dying than usual, and nobody knows why’ from the Volkskrant dated 8 September 2022? What is your opinion of it?
3. Have you received in good order the letter from ZonMW dated 30 August 2022, to which the article refers? If so, why did you not immediately share it with the House of Representatives? What is your view on the fact that FVD had to obtain this letter via its own means?
4. What is your assessment of the contents of this letter and the accompanying appendices? Do you endorse these? If not, why not?
5. Do you share the scientists’ main concern – namely that the lack of data, in particular vaccination data and test results from the RIVM and the GGD, respectively, hinders research into the excess mortality? If not, why not? Do you recognise that, because of this, the scientists cannot carry out their assignment properly? If so, how will you ensure that the researchers can still carry out their assignment properly? If not, why not?
6. Do you share the opinion of the scientists from the sounding board group, as set out in appendix 2 of the letter, that failure to disclose data can give the appearance of other (self)interests of organisations such as the RIVM and the GGD and that it is “in the interest of public trust in government to avoid any appearance of self-interest”? If not, why not?
7. Do you recognise that the GDPR does not apply to data regarding the deceased? Do you recognize that the AVG should therefore not form an obstacle to the sharing of vaccination data and test results, as the RIVM and GGD claim it does according to this article? Do you therefore agree with the scientists who claim in Appendix 2 of the letter they sent (see question 4) that the GDPR leaves sufficient room to share the data necessary for the research?
8. Are you familiar with the 8 September response of the GGD to the article in the Volkskrant, in which the GGD indicates that it would be happy to make the necessary data available for the independent investigation, while also being able to guarantee people’s privacy?  What is your assessment of this response from the GGD? What is your assessment of this contradiction between the statement of the GGD (stating that the GGD does want to share the data) and that of the independent scientists (stating that the GGD does not want to share the data)? Could you please ensure that the necessary data from the GGD is shared with the researchers as soon as possible?
9. What is your assessment of the fact that scientific research into causes of death of recently deceased persons is frustrated by the RIVM, whereas the RIVM does make datasets available to researchers for other studies (whether accompanied by a material transfer or data sharing agreement or not)?
10. Do you acknowledge that, according to art. 3(1)(e) of the RIVM Act, you are authorised to order the RIVM to share the required vaccination data with the researchers (anonymously or not)?
11. Are you prepared to order the RIVM to share the vaccination data with the researchers as soon as possible, so that they can continue the research they have to carry out on behalf of the House of Representatives?

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Fifty percent of young adults who get myocarditis from the Covid-19 vaccine will die within five years, according to former Eastern Ontario COVID Response Team member, Dr. Chris Alan Shoemaker.

In a recent episode of “The Ben Armstrong Show,” the host talked about the possible long-term consequences of the COVID-19 vaccine that people are yet to see happen. Based on Shoemaker’s data, around 95 percent of people in intensive care units are fully vaccinated – which makes sense as their immune systems are now damaged.

Shoemaker is a licensed physician with 45 years of experience and has worked in emergency medicine, family practice and on military bases. His works in direct patient care at the West Ottawa COVID Care Clinic and the Eastern Ontario Response Team to COVID-19, as well as his experience with the vaccines, have convinced him that the vaccine is more toxic than the virus. More toxic, more damaging and more lethal, especially in the long term as it damages the T-cells.

“Your T-cells are an important part of your immune system to fight viruses and cancer. It will kill you quickly or slowly,” Shoemaker explained.

“They make you four times more likely to get COVID. In the last eight months, 95 percent of the people in the ICU are fully vaccinated. The vaccinated have been harmed. Their immune systems are being harmed. Stop harming your immune systems. You are only going to perpetuate the pandemic.”

Moreover, Shoemaker believes that the vaccines are especially dangerous for children and is calling on the Canadian government to stop all COVID shots for them. (Related: Britain bans COVID vaccine for children under 12, says they are at very low risk of developing severe COVID.)

“Keep your needles out of the shoulders of our children. The medical facts on this are beyond dispute. Children are given zero help by these vaccines,” he said at a weekend demonstration from London, Ontario. “It kills two out of every 1,000 within a year. Do you want your child to be one of those two who will die?”

Britain’s Office of National Statistics recently released a report showing the vaccine’s horrific toll on children. After studying the first eight months of vaccination, hoping for a 10 percent reduction in death cases, they found the opposite: Double-vaccinated children died by 5,200 percent more than non-vaccinated ones.

“Your 10 to 14-year-old is now, by proven statistics out of the United Kingdom, 100 times more likely to die in the following six months than a non-vaccinated child. This is a horrible number,” Shoemaker said of the data.

In South Africa, where the rate of vaccination is only six percent, COVID-19 cases are minimal.

But in Israel and New Zealand, where vaccination rates are extremely high, disease rates are climbing.

“It’s all junk. It has bad stuff in it. The toxicity of this human-designed genome injected into your shoulder is 100 times worse than getting the virus,” Shoemaker said. “The shots go straight into your bloodstream, into your bone marrow, your brain, to your myocardium, ovaries, testicles.”

It also appears that COVID-19 vaccines are killing young doctors in Canada, where 38 doctors under the age of 50 died in a span of 40 days. “Many of them died within 10 days of their fourth jab. They were just following the rules. They were good people,” Shoemaker said.

The death statistics are too damning, and according to Shoemaker, the vaccines don’t even work.

Shoemaker called on Canada’s top officials to ban the vaccines to save children’s lives. “You are killing children in Canada by foisting these vaccinations onto them,” he said.

He also implored Canadians to stand up against the government. “They are feeding you a line. They are perpetuating a myth. They are not making you safer.”

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With an investigation continuing into the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline that provided energy supplies to Europe from Russia, there appears to be just one prime suspect, and that should surprise nobody.

Following the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski already seemed to know the identity of the perpetrator when he tweeted out: “Thank you, USA.”

At first glance, it seemed that Sikorski was speaking sarcastically, berating Washington for carrying out an attack that will have severe repercussions for the people of Europe. After all, how could anyone see any good coming from the termination of Europe’s primary source of gas reserves with winter just around the corner? It was Sikorski’s homeland of Poland, after all, that urged its citizens to collect firewood in the face of dwindling gas reserves.

In fact, the Polish diplomat was speaking one-hundred percent literally, thanking the United States for plunging the continent deeper into the abyss. This has been the attitude of European leaders from the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine: ‘we will accept our self-destruction as scripted by Washington policymakers so long as the baddies in Moscow hears our virtue-signaling whimpers and screams.’ European capitals are about to learn the hard way that virtue signaling does not put food on the table or heat homes.

Judging by the rising temperature in Europe, however, last seen in Italy where a far-right leader has come to power on the wave of voters fed up with high electricity bills and loose immigration, the phrase ‘Thank you, USA’ may eventually be chiseled into Europe’s tombstone.

But first, the big question: was the United States really responsible for the destruction of Nord Stream, as Sikorski seems to believe? Well, if we were are to take bumbling Joe Biden at his word, then the answer would seem to be yes.

“If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again, then there will be — there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” the U.S. leader told reporters two weeks before Russia began its Ukrainian mission. “We will bring an end to it.”

When asked to specify, Biden responded, “I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”

There are other clues that point to American complicity.

On September 2, an American helicopter with the call sign FFAB123 was observed maneuvering in the area of the Nord Stream pipelines. According to the site ads-b.nl, six aircraft used this call sign that day, of which the tail numbers of three were established. All of them were Sikorsky MH-60S. By overlaying the FFAB123 route on the scheme marking the areas of the explosions, it is observable that the helicopter either flew along the Nord Stream-2 route, or exactly between the points where the ‘accident’ occurred.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, there are screenshots of other American aircraft flights as of September 13th in exactly the same area. In June there was an article in Sea Power magazine where the Americans boast of experiments in the field of underwater drones that they set up at the BALTOPS 22 exercises – in the area of Bornholm Island, the Danish island where the explosions were reported to have occurred.

“Experimentation was conducted off the coast of Bornholm, Denmark, with participants from Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, and Mine Warfare Readiness and Effectiveness Measuring all under the direction of U.S. 6th Fleet Task Force 68,” Sea Power reports.

Such an “experiment” would have required the deep-sea equipment needed for reaching the depths where the Nord Stream pipelines are located.

Finally, here’s one last tantalizing piece of information for all of the ‘coincidence theorists’ out there. On the day after Nord Stream 1 and 2 went offline, Poland, Norway and Denmark’s leaders attended the opening ceremony of the new Baltic Pipe, which will transport natural gas from Norway via Denmark and through the Baltic Sea to, yes, Sikorski’s ferociously Russophobic homeland of Poland. Yes, just a coincidence.

However, the main motivating factor for Washington having a hand in destroying Nord Stream is the awesome powers – both financial and political – that it will reap. The economic crisis in Europe is already forcing companies and corporations to consider relocating to the U.S., which is providing a better business environment and more or less affordable electricity bills.

And after the destruction of Nord Stream, the economic situation on the continent will deteriorate significantly. Even though the NS-II was not launched, there was the chance of its launch, and this “chance” had a considerable effect on the market. Now, without its main energy supplier, Europe is doomed while America will soar.

The economic destruction of Europe makes it totally dependent on the U.S. economically, politically, and militarily, turning it into a toothless tiger with no political will and independence. At the same time, Europe will become almost completely dependent on the U.S. for its (prohibitive) gas. The United States plans to supply at least 15 billion cubic metres (bcm) of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to European Union markets this year as Europe seeks to wean itself off Russian gas supplies.

In other words, the transformation of the EU into a banana republic – albeit it one in the northern hemisphere with winter quickly approaching – has already begun.

Europe, you really should have heeded the advice of Henry Kissinger, who understands the nature of the U.S. better than anyone: “To be an enemy of the U.S. is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”

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Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist.

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Thanks to a reader, I was tipped off on an earlier pipeline explosion, this one arranged by the CIA during the Soviet era.

Thomas Reed, a senior US national security official, claims in his book “At The Abyss” that the United States allowed the USSR to steal pipeline control software from a Canadian company. This software included a Trojan Horse that caused a major explosion of the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline in June 1982. The Trojan ran during a pressure test on the pipeline but doubled the usual pressure, causing the explosion. (CIA Trojan Causes Siberian Gas Pipeline Explosion.)

This act of sabotage was kept hidden for decades.

Around Halloween 1982, an explosion occurred in the middle of Siberia, vaporizing a large segment of the newly-built trans-Siberian pipeline. The explosion –which was reported to be 1/7 the magnitude of the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan during WWII– severely damaged the pipeline, which was set to produce $8 Billion in petroleum revenue annually for the USSR. Only recently has this silently successful CIA operation been disclosed to the public.

Does this mean the CIA or associated intelligence/military organizations are responsible for the Nordstream explosions? No, but it does demonstrate they are capable and have a history of sabotaging Russian operations.

Recall the cognitively vapid one, pretending to be the “leader” of the “free world,” saying they’d put an end to Nordstream one way or another. He said this prior to Russia going into Ukraine to denazify it.

BIDEN admits US behind sabotage of Nordstream 1 and 2.

Biden: "If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2."

Reporter: "But how will you do that, it's in germany's control?"

Biden: "I promise you, we will be able to do that." pic.twitter.com/idlxQYuAqU

— Syrian Girl 🇸🇾🎗 (@Partisangirl) September 27, 2022

Is it my imagination, or is that a “blood and soil” flag draped behind Biden? The black and red (Blut und Boden) is a Nazi ethnic cleansing symbol (related to Lebensraum, the German concept of stealing land for the “racially pure” and exterminating the Untermenschen, or subhumans, who lived there for centuries).

So, here we have the president of the United States delivering a rambling answer on Nordstream while standing before a flag used by Ukronazi thugs, adopted from German Nazis (with whom they collaborated during WWII)  as they kill ethnic-Russian children, mothers, and old folks.

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Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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