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Why has there been almost no coverage of what was taking place at the same time multi-millionaire Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was visiting Taiwan? 

Consider what is being said, as well as what is totally omitted, in the U.S. coverage of China’s naval action around Taiwan.

The U.S. naval command RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific Amphibious Assault Training) was carrying out maneuvers involving 170 aircraft, 38 ships, four submarines, and 25,000 military personnel from all the G7 imperialist countries. Some 19 other Asia Pacific countries were pulled in for symbolic participation. RIMPAC is the world’s largest international maritime exercise.

This aggressive maritime action took place from June 29 to Aug. 4. In other words, it was going on as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was visiting Taiwan.

The shaping of information is all pervasive. Whether it is FOX News, CNN, AP, the New York Times or the Washington Post, the multibillion-dollar media are part of and totally intertwined with U.S. military industries. They collaborate in hiding U.S. war plans and provocations.

The role of the corporate media in totally distorting the news on China must be challenged.

China’s right to self-defense

The media coverage of China’s military drills around Taiwan never describe them as self-defense. The media display absolute unity, blocking any mention of China’s right to safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Every statement or action taken by China is relentlessly described as “threatening,” “provocative” or “expansionist.” The same words are used again and again in news articles and politicians’ statements.

There is only one accepted political line. The media repeat that China is irrational, paranoid, belligerent, menacing and overreacting.

U.S. actions, even military maneuvers in which thousands of troops employ jet bombers and aircraft carriers, are described as “routine rotations” or normal schedules – that is, if the mainstream media report on them at all.

The Chinese media are always described as state-controlled propaganda. By comparison, the U.S. corporate media are always defined as free and democratic.

This is so relentless that it impacts even social forces who oppose U.S. militarism and endless U.S. wars.

Routine threats by U.S. Navy

RIMPAC is planned and coordinated by the U.S. Navy’s Third Fleet. According to its commander, their massive training is meant to deter escalation by China’s military.

Only part of the Third Fleet is engaged in RIMPAC. The fleet’s total size comes to a combat-ready force of more than 68,000 people, 100 ships and 400 aircraft.

Moving into place as Pelosi visited Taiwan was the even larger U.S. Navy Seventh Fleet, the largest of its forward-deployed fleets. At any given time, it amounts to 50 to 70 ships and submarines, 150 aircraft, and more than 27,000 sailors and Marines.

The Seventh Fleet is led by the USS Ronald Reagan, accompanied by guided-missile destroyers, nuclear submarines and jet aircraft. This ship has now been joined by aircraft carrier battle groups of the USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt.

It is comparable to a scenario in which Chinese destroyers were to sail into the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of New Orleans and Houston.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet consists of approximately 200 ships/submarines, nearly 1,200 aircraft, and more than 130,000 sailors and civilians. The U.S. Navy maintains 11 carrier strike groups in international waters.

Hiding in plain sight

Isn’t this aggressive and threatening? Yet this vast and deadly armada is hidden in plain sight. It is barely mentioned, but even when hundreds of ships and aircraft are involved, they are described as simply participating in “routine” or “business as usual” exercises.

These continuing assaults are not top news, but they are reported in military news media, such as the Navy Times.

When the guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold conducted its third transit through the South China Sea in a week, the Chinese government was prompted to label the move as a provocation. (See this)

The U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet has so far this year sent an average of one guided-missile destroyer per month through the Taiwan Strait as a challenge to China. (See this)

According to the Navy Times, China’s foreign ministry protested:

“The U.S. military’s actions have seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security, seriously undermined peace and stability in the South China Sea, and seriously violated international law and norms governing international relations.”

China’s long-held position is that “the two sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China and should work together to seek national reunification.”

The Taiwan Strait is part of the South China Sea, and China has claimed the area as its territorial waters. However, the United States has consistently said that it considers the strait to be international waters.

Freedom of Navigation – imperialist piracy

“Freedom of Navigation” is similar to the grand term “Free Trade.” It is not about freedom. Freedom of Navigation has meant unrestricted U.S., British, French and Japanese access to the looting of China.

Few people in the U.S. are aware of the fact that, more than a century ago, the U.S. Navy sent fleets of armored ships to patrol Chinese rivers and coastal waters.

Special fleets of gunboats of the U.S. Navy and Marines patrolled Chinese rivers up to 1,000 miles inland. They were there to enforce U.S. trade interests and suppress uprisings. Armies of occupation from the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Japan were stationed in Chinese cities.

“Concessions” were forced on China by brutal gunboat diplomacy and enshrined by onerous unequal treaties that made China pay imperialist countries huge indemnities and grant such “concessions” as control of its cities, major ports and largest waterways.

Britain, with U.S. and French participation, fought two Opium Wars in China to enforce its “right” to sell opium. The merchants called this “defending free trade” and “protecting freedom of navigation.”

It was the 1949 victory of the Chinese Communist Party that finally ended these “Freedom of Navigation” invasions into China’s mainland, opening the opportunity to rebuild a strong, united China which is increasingly able to defend its coastal waters and resist U.S. imperialist demands.

The corrupt and defeated former military forces, defending the rights of the old landlord class, withdrew, with U.S. Navy protection, to the island province of Taiwan. This was hardly a democratic process. It was a totally militarized U.S. occupation of the island.

China has held a consistent, well-understood position on its sovereignty and territorial integrity that is recognized internationally in all world bodies. China has repeatedly asserted its right to resolve this unfinished national reunification.

U.S. violates signed agreements

Washington is openly violating three different signed agreements – Joint Communiques it made with China in 1972, 1979 and 1982 – affirming that China is one country and Taiwan is a province of China.

Any focus on these signed agreements of “One China” in the Western media today would expose that the U.S. has broken its promises not to interrupt China’s efforts to reunify the island peacefully.

Once in a while the truth slips in. Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, an English rock band formed in London in 1965, is now on a final U.S. tour titled: “This is not a drill.”  In an interview with CNN on August 7, Waters refuted the narrative about Taiwan.

When CNN host Michael Smerconish said in the interview that “China is too busy encircling Taiwan,” Waters immediately said, “They’re not encircling Taiwan, Taiwan is part of China, and that’s been absolutely accepted by the whole of the international community since 1948.” Smerconish tried to interrupt Waters, saying that China is “on the top of the list of human rights offenders.” Waters immediately shot back: “The Chinese didn’t go to Iraq and kill 1 million people in 2003.”

Pelosi and insider trading

The U.S. corporate media are united in hostility to China. At the same time, different media can favor either a Democratic or Republican presidency.

For example, Fox News, guilty of a daily barrage of racist stereotypes against China, was at the forefront of exposing Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, for his multimillion-dollar insider stock trading in a semiconductor firm just before Congress voted to give $52 billion to chip manufacturers in the U.S., called the CHIPS Act.

Despite this scandal and her role as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi met with the chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer and a beneficiary of the U.S. legislation.

TSMC plans to build a $12-billion chip factory in the U.S. The semiconductor industry is a priority for the U.S. “containment” of China. At the same time, the U.S. government is using various sanctions to suppress Chinese high-tech companies and break chip supply chains away from China.

Effort to reverse U.S. corporate decline

Wang Peng, a research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, explained:

“The U.S. is using the CHIPS Act to force companies in countries and regions of key status on the global chip supply and industrial chains to play by U.S. rules, as well as encircling and suppressing chip industries in emerging markets,”

The bill’s requirement is for companies to pick only one of two choices: business ties with China, or subsidies from the U.S. government. (See this)

The problem U.S. imperialists face is how to force countries in the region to act against their own economic interests.

Taiwan’s annual exports to China come to $126.2 billion, almost double its exports to the U.S. of $65.9 billion. South Korea’s exports to China, at $132.5 billion, far outweigh the $74.4 billion to the U.S. Japan’s exports to China come to $163.8 billion, compared to only $135.9 billion in exports to the U.S.

In order to force high-tech companies to decouple from the People’s Republic of China, U.S. imperialism needs a political/military crisis with China. Every U.S. plan for sanctions on China starts with a manufactured crisis over Taiwan.

U.S. imperialism’s strategy of restructuring and distorting the global economy to serve its own short-term interests of maximizing immediate profits has led to an aggressive U.S. expansion of NATO and provocations in Ukraine.

The immediate threat to U.S. hegemony was the EU trade with Russia of $260 billion a year — 10 times its trade with the U.S. The EU has also been the largest investor in Russia. Breaking this growing economic integration of the EU with Russia, and at an even greater level with China, serves the long-term strategic interests of U.S. corporate domination that have been in place since World War II.

In 2021 China’s GDP was roughly 10 times larger than Russia’s. China is the world’s top trading economy and the number-one exporter of manufactured goods. It is in an increasingly strong position to resist U.S. demands.

The desperate imperialist strategy to reverse the declining global position of the U.S. will be far more disruptive to the global economy.

This information on U.S. provocations must be dragged into the daylight by all the forces determined to prevent another imperialist war.

The role of the U.S. corporate media is to make imperialist threats seem palatable and entirely reasonable. This is possible only by blocking all past history of U.S. wars while using racism to smear and demonize China’s legitimate, reasonable and lawful responses and countermeasures,

Taiwanese rapper and anti-imperialist commentator Zhong Xiangyu explains:

“The U.S. government has never been a protector of Taiwan. The U.S. Navy was the first country to attack Taiwan with a warship in 1867. The U.S. Navy supported Japan in invading Taiwan in 1874. The U.S. government sold weapons to Japan during the Sino-Japanese War, leading to China’s defeat and forcing China to cede Taiwan to Japan in 1895.

“Today Taiwan separatism is not true independence. It just means serving U.S. interests in a hegemonic, unequal relationship.”  

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This article was originally published on Workers World.

Sara Flounders is Co-Director of the International Action Center. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from WW

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Costa Rica’s recently elected president abolished the country’s COVID “vaccine” mandate on Wednesday.

“As of today, the vaccines are not mandatory,” President Rodrigo Chaves Robles announced during an August 3 press conference. “And therefore any action taken against anyone who does not want to be vaccinated is an action that is against the law.”

Recently elected Costa Rica president, Rodrigo Robles, rescinds the vaccine mandate. Makes it illegal to force anyone. pic.twitter.com/mFoEXh1PxD

— Dan Whipple (@DanWhipple_) August 7, 2022

Chaves, who was elected in April 2022, shared that although he himself has been jabbed, and he encourages others to consider “vaccination” as well, his position is “fundamentally that people have freedom of choice.

“But, if you don’t want to, as I said during my campaign: Costa Rica’s people are not cattle that you beat with a piece of wood and force to get vaccinated,” Chaves declared during the press conference.

Costa Rica’s president emphasized that his administration’s position is the same as that of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), and the majority of the world’s countries, arguing that Costa Rica’s prior vax mandates are therefore “contrary to international standards.”

Chaves backed up his claim by highlighting a WHO statement from April 2021, which stated that “vaccine” mandates “interfere with freedom and individual autonomy” and that “One must balance the well-being of the community with individual liberties.”

He further slammed the mandates as a violation of Costa Rican law since, as he pointed out, the members of Costa Rica’s National Vaccination and Epidemiology Commission (CNVE) were functioning under expired terms when they issued the jab mandates, rendering all of their post-term actions “invalid.”

After Chaves and his administration took office, “we realized that their terms … officially ended in 2020,” he said.

“When told this, they all got quiet. They said that nobody had told them their terms had ended. And nobody questioned this until the Minister here investigated,” continued Chaves, referring to Minister of Health Jocelyn Chacón, also present at the press conference.

The president explained that he asked Chacón to suspend the jab mandates “given the illegal actions taken by the Commission,” while keeping the shots available for those who, in the exercise of their liberty, desire to be vaccinated.”

During the press conference, Chacón denied claims that the current government of Costa Rica is “anti-vaccination,” pointing out that its members were “up to date” with their shots.

“There are countries which do not mandate, and have higher rates of vaccination. Why? Because people do not want to be ordered: they prefer to have things explained,” Chacón said.

In October 2021, Costa Rica announced it would start implementing a COVID shot mandate that would require the jab to enter non-essential businesses, including restaurants, shopping malls, gyms, and hotels. The jab was also required for all public servants, and private businesses were permitted to mandate the shot for their employees as well.

Costa Rica then became the first country in the world, in November 2021, to mandate COVID jabs for children. The decision came only a week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave its approval to administering Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to children age 5-11 despite limited safety data and virtually nonexistent need. The Costa Rican government cited the FDA approval in its announcement of the mandate.

Reuters reported that as of May 2022, more than 85% of Costa Ricans had “received at least one shot, while 79% have had two doses, and 41% have received a third vaccine, according to official data.”

Former Costa Rican president Carlos Alvarado announced that month, during his last speech as president, that the country was one of a “select group of countries in the world that has more than 85% of its population vaccinated with at least one dose.”

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Guest is Sara Bennett, singer, entertainer, presenter; “the chameleon among singers.” She has received several awards, among them is Artist of the Year 2019 (German Artist Magazine).

In this session, she talks about how important it is to speak to people in a positive way:

“Everything we are experiencing out there now, this complete absurdity, nothing more than purposeful numbing, hypnosis and distraction from the essential. […] People […] forget about life as such.”

Moreover, she opens up about passivity of the artistic community; colleagues collectively bury their creative freedoms and human rights.

She also shares an encounter with midwives in Luxembourg who said that the number of stillbirths has never been so high, the placentas look abnormal, there have never been so many harelips.

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***

Executive summary

August Ninth: The Atomic Bomb dropped on Nagasaki, August 9, 1945: Christians Killing Christians in the Name of Christ

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, August 09, 2022

On the 9^th of August, 1945, an all-Christian B-29 bomber crew, took off from Tinian Island in the South Pacific, with the blessings of its Catholic and Protestant chaplains. In the plane’s hold was the second of the only two nuclear bombs to ever be used against human targets in wartime. The primary target, Kokura, Japan, was clouded over, so the plane, named Bock’s Car, headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki.

Moscow Prioritises Ties with Myanmar

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, August 10, 202

The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Myanmar on August 3 shows that the relationship is assuming a strategic character. The Foreign Ministry in a press release on August 2 highlighted that the relationship is “one of the priorities of foreign policy in the Asia–Pacific region, an important factor in ensuring peace, stability and sustainable development.” 

US-China Chip War Continues. Geopolitics and the Semiconductor Industry

By Prabir Purkayastha, August 09, 2022

As the tension between the US and China mounts as a fall-out of Nancy Pelosi’s provocative Taiwan visit, the technology war between the two is also taking a new turn. Both houses in the US Congress have approved a $280 billion plan – The Chips and Science Act – to boost US chip manufacturing.

Video: COVID-19 Vaccine Patents and Gene-Deletion. Dr. Ariyana Love Interviewed by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich

By Dr. Ariyana Love and Reiner Fuellmich, August 09, 2022

Guest is Dr. Ariyana Love, a Naturopathic Doctor & Investigative Journalist. Her elder son was vaccine injured at age two and diagnosed with High Functioning Autism at age 7. She applied her knowledge of Naturopathic Medicine and designed a dietary protocol that resulted in a near total reversal of her son’s debilitating symptoms.

New Documentary: Eugenics to Pandemics

By John Potash, August 09, 2022

Shots puts an amusing spin on the little-known history of eugenics. It traces the genocidal, anti-ethnic eugenics movement which resulted in the sterilization and elimination of millions. It exposes how the wealthiest families financed the evolution of eugenics into Nazi Germany, and pushed America into perpetual wars. These families further influenced the government’s elimination of financial liability for vaccine manufacturers while simulating run-ups to the 2020 pandemic. By that year the wealthiest had bought and controlled the media, and censored medical experts that criticized government actions.

Video: Hollywood’s Pro-Soviet Propaganda vs. The “Russia Probe”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 09, 2022

This title might surprise you. But at the height of the Second World War, America and the Soviet Union were allies. And Hollywood as of June 1941 was involved in producing a very different type of war film.

11 Year Old Girl Calls Out Klaus Schwab and His Globalist Goons

By American Right TV, August 09, 2022

In a video that is sure to give anyone hope, an 11-year-old girl calls out Klaus Schwab and the plans of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in one of the most intelligent and well-spoken deliveries that would flaw even some of the greatest speakers in history.

Controversial Drug Remdesivir Plays Key Role in COVID-Related Hospital Deaths: Dr. Ardis

By Matt McGregor, August 09, 2022

The antiviral medication remdesivir has played a controversial role in the COVID-19 treatment protocols used by hospitals that many families allege resulted in the death of their loved ones.

The Rapid Postwar Increase of America’s Nuclear Arsenal. Churning Out Nukes “Like Sausages”

By Shane Quinn, August 09, 2022

By New Year’s Day 1951, the United States had increased its atomic bomb stockpile by many times over, enough to wipe out the Soviet Union. In June 1946, to the frustration of US war planners, the military possessed a modest nine atomic bombs.

Crisis of the Wheat Export Supply Chain: EU Sanctions Against Russia Could Trigger an African-Middle Eastern Migrant Crisis

By Ahmed Adel, August 09, 2022

Africa and the Middle East is set to suffer more than Europe if there is a reduction of grain exports, according to the head of the Belgian federation of cereal traders and agrosupply (FEGRA), Gisele Fichefet. Her comment was said in response to Russian Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev’s August 5 warning that 50 million tonnes of grain might be forced off the market because this year’s crops did not reach the 130 million tonne target.

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Africa and the Middle East is set to suffer more than Europe if there is a reduction of grain exports, according to the head of the Belgian federation of cereal traders and agrosupply (FEGRA), Gisele Fichefet. Her comment was said in response to Russian Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev’s August 5 warning that 50 million tonnes of grain might be forced off the market because this year’s crops did not reach the 130 million tonne target.

“I don’t expect major problems in Europe in both categories of grain, for cattle breeding and for human consumption, since this year’s crops were excellent despite the drought at the end of the season. The problems, if they arise, will be in the Middle East and Africa, and maybe in some countries of Southeast Asia,” Fichefet said.

Russia, the world’s largest exporter of wheat, and Ukraine, the fifth largest exporter of the same product, collectively account for more than one-third of global cereal exports and a half of the world’s sunflower oil export market. In addition, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) data found that Russia was the number one exporter of nitrogen fertilisers in 2021, and many European and Central Asian countries rely on Russia for over 50% of their fertilizer supply.

FAO predicted in March that supply disruptions in Russia and Ukraine could affect up to 30% of the wheat supply in some 50 countries, many of them being low-income countries in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Fichefet believes it was “not so much a price problem, as a delivery issue” as price fluctuations had not been more than 20% up or down since the start of the Ukrainian conflict. Although prices stabilised following the UN-brokered deal between Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, Fichefet warned this scenario could change if Moscow cuts grain exports.

On July 22, Russia, Turkey and the UN signed an agreement that unblocked Ukraine’s grain and fertiliser exports amid hostilities. Representatives of the Ukrainian government signed a similar document with Ankara and UN representatives.

In addition, Russia signed a memorandum with the UN to contribute to the export of Russian fertilisers and agricultural products to international markets. UN Secretary General António Guterres, meanwhile, announced the creation of the joint coordination centre to ensure the safety of bulk carriers transporting grain from Ukrainian ports, such as Odessa.

The eventual release of funds from Russian banks frozen by the sanctions against Moscow for its operation in Ukraine could help stop a potential food crisis being instigated by the shortage of agricultural products. Although Fichefet believes Europe is mostly protected from a potential food crisis, a destabilised global situation can become unsustainable for Europe.

On July 19, the European Commission proposed to unblock some of the funds in Russian banks to resume trade in agricultural and food products. The sanctions against Moscow caused the global rise in the prices of oil, gas and fertilisers. This has not only had a negative impact on Russia, but also the US and EU.

There has been a boomerang effect from the sanctions imposed by the West, specifically on the EU, which are the ones now suffering the most. Alarmingly though, the EU never considered that its measures against Russia could also lead to famine and a subsequent migration crisis in African and Middle Eastern countries. Europe since 2015 has already experienced a migration crisis due to all the conflicts that the US started in the Middle East and Africa, including Libya, by wanting to change the region geopolitically.

Egypt is already one of the world’s top wheat importers, buying around 75% of its supply from Ukraine and Russia. The war in Ukraine has seen wheat prices in Egypt soar, prompting President Abdel Fattah el Sisi to urge the government to determine a fixed price for unsubsidised bread, which started at the end of March.

In a speech on May 21, Sisi referred to the Quran’s Surah Yusuf about the necessity to “store up wheat for famine”, drawing a parallel between the present crisis to the famine during Prophet Joseph’s time. He also urged Egyptians to prioritise wheat planting rather than wasting this resource.

Cairo is also concerned by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam being constructed on the Blue Nile River. This project has received huge opposition from Egypt and Sudan as it could impact farmland downstream and instigate a drought. Such a scenario will not only increase internal pressures in Egypt, but coupled with simultaneous crises across Africa, the country could become a transit point for migrants attempting to reach Europe.

Therefore, although the EU may feel comfortable by its own supply of grains, it risks instigating another migration crisis by continuing with reckless sanctions against Russia that significantly affects African and Middle Eastern countries from securing grain.

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

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First published by GR in May 2017

This title might surprise you. But at the height of the Second World War, America and the Soviet Union were allies.

And Hollywood as of June 1941 was involved in producing a very different type of war film.

North Star 1943, starring Anne Baxter, Walter Houston, Dana Andrews and Walter Brennan.

According to Andrei Cojoc, “The highlight of the movie is the resistance fight of the heroic villagers, portrayed by an all American cast”.

The movie was decidedly pro-Soviet, pro-Communist describing Nazi repression in rural Ukraine. A variation of  “The International” was used as background music: “Comrades our people are at war… The Germans are 50 miles away.”

There was no “Russia Probe” in 1943.  “I am a guerrilla fighter of the Soviet Union”.

The Soviet people were described as freedom fighters. “It is our land, we swear to give our lives…”

Hollywood was recounting the courageous battle of villagers against Nazi Germany with the support of the Red Army and how the heroic Soviet peasantry was resisting Nazi occupation.

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***

In a video that is sure to give anyone hope, an 11-year-old girl calls out Klaus Schwab and the plans of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in one of the most intelligent and well-spoken deliveries that would flaw even some of the greatest speakers in history.

In her almost eight-minute speech, the girl unveils the plans that the globalist elites are wanting to unleash on us – medical tyranny and complete control through digital money – of which could be cut off at their leisure.

There are literally thousands of “white papers” that have been released by globalist organizations, like the WEF and the United Nations (UN) that clearly state what they have in store for humanity – and it isn’t anything good.

The UN has recently said that they are not under the control of any “Global Elites who run the world” but the very fact that they even acknowledged it in the first place, shows they probably are – why else would they want to push people to “report” “conspiracy theorists” who spread these “lies.”

The fact is, there is a global elite who turn the wheels of humanity to wherever they want it to go, they literally own everything – all the media, the food supply, the supply of oil, gas and energy and our financial systems. Not to mention the politicians that they lobby to push legislation that would be heavily gaged in their favor.

The courage and tenacity of this young girl should be appreciated by all, and should at least inspire enough hope to resist these tyrants who want complete destruction of the world – she has the courage, so should we.

 

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As the tension between the US and China mounts as a fall-out of Nancy Pelosi’s provocative Taiwan visit, the technology war between the two is also taking a new turn. Both houses in the US Congress have approved a $280 billion plan – The Chips and Science Act – to boost US chip manufacturing. Currently, 75 per cent of chip manufacturing in the world takes place in East Asia, centred around Taiwan, South Korea and China. The US aims to re-shore the semiconductor industry back to the US. It also hopes to revive the fortunes of its chip manufacturers like Intel, once upon a time the king of chip manufacturing, currently fighting not to become another has-been like IBM.

While the plan offers various carrots to the semiconductor industry in the US, termed by some as “corporate handouts”, it also comes with some substantial stick. Any company availing of its $52.7 billion subsidies for locating computer chip manufacturing in the US is prohibited from expanding or upgrading their advanced chipmaking facilities in China. As a result, companies like Samsung and SK Hynix, two major chip manufacturers who have made substantial investments in China, will now have to choose between walking away from these investments or not availing of the US subsidies.

Meanwhile, China has also not been sitting on its hands, waiting for the US to ratchet up its sanctions on its high-tech ambitions in this area. Recognising that the semiconductor industry, particularly advanced chipmaking, is a key area of struggle, it has made a major advance in manufacturing. SMIC, the Shanghai-based chip manufacturer, released its 7nm chips, which have been in the market for the last 12 months. Currently, only Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung have succeeded in manufacturing 7nm chips. Dylan Patel, a leading tech analyst, has written, “China’s SMIC is shipping a foundry process with commercially available chips in the open market which are more advanced than any American or European company…The most advanced American or European foundry produced chips are based on GlobalFoundries 12nm.” SMIC is the world’s fifth largest chip manufacturer.

The astonishing progress in computational power of electronic chips comes from our ability to pack more and more components into a silicon chip. This is known as Moore’s Law and has continued for the last five decades. A measure of the increased density of components in chips is the size of the transistors being created within the silicon chip. Therefore 14nm, 7nm, and 5nm are an indication of the size of the components in the chip and a measure of its computing power.

Lithography is a critical process in chipmaking and is used to create patterns on silicon wafers using ultraviolet (UV) light. The thinner the line that the lithographic machine creates on the silicon wafer, the more the devices that can be packed into a chip. Each of the measures, 14nm, 7nm, 5nm, etc., is a measure of the density of devices on the chip. The more devices we pack into a chip, the more its computing power and its power consumption.

I have written earlier in these columns about chip manufacturing and the importance of tools, specifically the Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) machines from ASML, the requisite for moving beyond the 14nm chips. It is not that older Deep Ultraviolet Lithography (DUV) machines cannot create higher densities. But the productivity of DUV machines to produce 10nm or 7nm chips is lower than with EUV technology. And going to 5nm or 3nm is not possible without EUV lithography.

ASML of Netherlands is the only maker of EUV machines in the world. As ASML’s EUV machine light source that creates the chip patterns is made by an American company, technically, it comes under US regulations. Though ASML was quite unhappy to lose a part of its China market, it has accepted that it will not supply EUV machines to China. For now, it can still continue to supply DUV machines to China, but this may also change in the future.

The US had believed that without EUV lithographic machines, the Chinese manufacturers would not be able to produce chips below 14nm. The SMIC 7nm chip has therefore blown a big hole in this assumption.

While DUV lithographic tools can create a high degree of packing of devices on a chip, it requires many more runs and a more complex set of operations to achieve such results. This is how lithographic machines for creating 28nm chips could produce 14 nm chips. This is the same process Intel and others have been trying for some time: use DUV technology to create 10nm or 7nm chips. SMIC is the first to successfully use DUV machines for creating 7nm chips.

It still does not put SMIC in the same bracket as Taiwan’s TSMC or South Korea’s Samsung, which already use EUV technology. But it still puts SMIC ahead of the rest of the pack. It also allows China to compete with products in the market using 7nm chips, as hundreds of its leading companies have come under US sanctions, including Huawei and SMIC. The US interpretation of its powers is that if any company uses US technology, under the US Foreign Direct Product Rule, it must obey the US sanctions regime. That is why ASML’s machines are under the US sanctions regime; as also any product manufactured using such machines. Therefore TSMC or Samsung, who use EUV machines from ASML, also cannot export any of their advanced chips to entities in China under the US sanctions regime.

There has been criticism that the 7nm chip from SMIC is only a copy of the TSMC chip and therefore does not show any major advance. While it is indeed a simple chip meant for cryptocurrency mining, according to TechInsights, its importance is that it is a stepping stone for “achieving a “true 7nm process”.

On the flip side is that China cannot go to 5 or 3nm technology without EUV lithographic machines. Currently, it is able to import DUV machines from ASML. Apart from ASML, two Japanese companies, Canon and Nikon, also manufacture DUV machines. So, where is China in manufacturing lithographic machines?

China has built indigenous capability in manufacturing chip manufacturing machines for some time, with Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment – or SMEE – as its leading manufacturer. SMEE had announced that it would release its first 28nm DUV machine in 2022, which can be used for 14nm chip manufacture. As SMIC has shown, it can then be used for also manufacturing 7nm chips. There is still no announcement from SMEE’s DUV machine of a supply date, which would be crucial for China’s ability to set up large-scale chip manufacturing indigenously.

The world’s semiconductor industry is clearly at a crossroads with the risk of the global supply chain splitting into two competing blocks, one led by the US and the other by China. The US semiconductor industry had argued that if such a split happens, then the US, which has a commanding lead in a number of technology areas today, will lose this lead in 5-10 years as a huge part of its profits and, therefore, R&D investments, are financed from their Chinese sales. Losing that market will mean that China will face a temporary setback but the US will permanently lose its leadership. This is why ASML’s CEO Peter Wennink has said the export restrictions regime that the US is forcing on the industry would not work.

The bulk of the chip market is not for the more advanced chips. According to a report published by the Boston Consulting Group/Semiconductor Industry Association (BCG/SIA) in late 2020, chips less than 10nm density are only 2 per cent of the market, even though they are the most glamorous and figure in the latest laptops and mobile phones. The bulk of the market is in chips for which China already has the technology or can play catch up with its investments in research and in building the entire supply chain, including chip fabrication and even DUV machines. According to the BCG/ SIA report, the smart way for the west to “combat” China would be to restrict the sanctions to only military tech and, from the profits from the rest, finance the R&D expenditure of the US companies. Without these profits, US companies will not be able to finance their future development.

But with “politics in command” in the US and a bi-partisan war hysteria being whipped up, the US seems to prefer the carrot and stick approach: carrot for investing in chip manufacture in the US; and the stick for any company setting up production in China. If the Covid-19 pandemic damaged the semiconductor supply chain leading to a chip shortage in 2021, the supply chain shock in the future is going to be from the US sanctions regime. The belief that the US can restrict the trade war only to sectors where they have a technical edge is the other weakness of the US strategy. It leaves open the possibility of asymmetric responses from China. “May you live in interesting times” is supposedly a traditional Chinese curse. The world appears to be entering such a phase, starting with the US-China chip war.

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How many Chinese fought in the Civil War? That is, the U.S. Civil War, 1861-1865?

As Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi sticks her nose into the Taiwan Strait, this is an interesting and illuminating question to ponder. Second in line to the U.S. presidency, Pelosi’s August 2 visit to Taiwan is the highest-level trip there since her predecessor, the rabidly reactionary ex-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s foray a quarter of a century ago to this island still claimed by Beijing, located about 100 miles east of the Chinese mainland.

As CovertAction Bulletin reported,

“1979 was the last time that a U.S. head of state or member of the ruling party visited Taiwan. Since the 1970s the official policy of the U.S. has been the One China policy, and this visit undermines this very policy.”

In Taipei, Pelosi met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and addressed the parliament as part of her Asia jaunt at taxpayer expense, which has greatly upset the People’s Republic of China—as if our beleaguered planet did not already have enough problems to deal with.

A Reuters report uses words such as “enraged” (in the headline) and “furious” to describe Beijing’s reaction to Pelosi’s interloper excursion and quoted China’s foreign ministry as saying the trip “has a severe impact on the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, and seriously infringes upon China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The Washington Post reported:

“China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs added of Pelosi’s trip that ‘China firmly opposes and sternly condemns this, and has made serious démarche [a complaint through diplomatic channels] and strong protest to the United States.’”

The Post added:

“Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at a meeting in Shanghai that U.S. politicians who are ‘playing with fire’ on the issue of Taiwan will ‘come to no good end,’ according to a transcript released by the Foreign Ministry.” Wang has also called the U.S. “the world’s biggest saboteur of peace.”

Echoing this sentiment, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying tweeted:

“Making themselves an enemy of the 1.4 billion Chinese people will not end up well. Acting like a bully in front of the whole world will only make everyone see that the U.S. is the biggest danger to world peace.”

During a two-hour-plus phone call on July 28 between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden, Xi warned in no uncertain terms:

“The position of the Chinese government and people on the Taiwan question is consistent, and resolutely safeguarding China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity is the firm will of the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people. The public opinion cannot be defied. Those who play with fire will perish by it. It is hoped that the U.S. will be clear-eyed about this. The U.S. should honor the one-China principle…”

According to its Defense Ministry, the PRC has ramped up “targeted military operations” that “include joint air and sea drills in the north, southwest and southeast of Taiwan, long-range live firing in the Taiwan Strait, and missile test-launches in the sea east of Taiwan, the [People’s Liberation Army’s] Eastern Theatre Command said.”

Media commentators have used the “B” word to describe Beijing’s strategic response, with the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post stating: “China is set to launch an unprecedented military drill that effectively blockades Taiwan until Sunday afternoon following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island.” Some economic sanctions, too, are being imposed on Taipei.

East Meets West Meets Geopolitical Gamesmanship

After a circuitous route, Pelosi arrived in Taipei aboard a U.S. Air Force passenger jet where she was met by Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu. According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail:

“Eight U.S. F-15 fighter jets and five tanker aircraft took off from a U.S. base in Okinawa to provide protection for Pelosi’s flight, NHK reported.”

The Military Times noted:

“U.S. officials have said the American military will increase its movements in the Indo-Pacific region during Pelosi’s visit. The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group were in the Philippine Sea on Monday, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.”

President Tsai Ing-wen gave Pelosi “an award… on behalf of the Congress, the ‘Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon,’” Taipei’s highest civilian honor.

Pelosi’s reckless, completely unnecessary pot-stirring brinkmanship has been met with disapproval and sparked controversy at home. According to The Washington Post:

“Virtually all the senior members of President Biden’s national security team have privately expressed deep reservations about the trip and its timing, said a White House official.”

“The arrogance of power is especially ominous and despicable when a government leader risks huge numbers of lives in order to make a provocative move on the world’s geopolitical chessboard. Nancy Pelosi’s plan to visit Taiwan is in that category. Thanks to her, the chances of a military confrontation between China and the United States have spiked upward,” observed longtime peace activist and author Norman Solomon.

Even late-night comic Trevor Noah chimed in on The Daily Show:

“Nancy Pelosi is going to get us all killed… Now’s not a good time to start World War III.” (Uh Trev, is there ever a good time?)

Civil and Uncivil Wars

Why is Pelosi blithely playing with fire and acting like the proverbial “bull in a China shop”?

Let’s circle back to this commentary’s original question: How many Chinese fought in the U.S. Civil War? This may sound facetious, but some 58 Chinese, almost all immigrants and none of them known to be officials of the Middle Kingdom, actually did see military action during the War Between the States, mostly in the Union Army and Navy.

Oddly, two sons of the Siamese twins Chang and Eng—who rose to fame and fortune through the Barnum and Bailey Circus and owned slaves on a farm in North Carolina—fought for Dixie, as did three other Chinese men.

Chinese Yankee by Ruthanne Lum McCunn tells the true story of Hong Kong-born Thomas Sylvanus (Ah Yee Way), an orphan brought to America for schooling in the mid-1850s, but enslaved in Baltimore. Only sixteen at the outbreak of war, Thomas ran north, joined the Freedom Army, and was blinded in the first major campaign. He failed to fully recover his sight and, deemed incapable of performing the duties of a soldier, was discharged. Yet he re-enlisted twice, saved his regiment’s colors during the bloodbath of Spotsylvania, was lamed at Cold Harbor, and survived nine months’ imprisonment in the dreaded Andersonville stockade.

Having said this in the interest of historical accuracy, the fact is that out of the millions of Americans who fought for the North and South during the Civil War, only a miniscule handful were of Chinese ancestry, and none is known to have officially represented the Chinese government. Nor did Empress Dowager Cixi or other powerful Forbidden City leaders travel during 1861-1865 to Washington or Richmond, the Confederacy’s capital, to intervene in the U.S. Civil War.

Furthermore, in the summer of 1861, Secretary of State William Seward sternly cautioned against foreign intervention in America’s domestic affairs while the Union fought the secessionists, boldly warning: “If any European Power provokes a war, we shall not shrink from it. A contest between Great Britain and the United States would wrap the world in fire.” (Note that Seward doesn’t even so much as mention China in his warning.)

Pelosi’s Background of Power and Privilege

On the other hand, imperialists like Nancy Pelosi have absolutely no idea that they are perpetually meddling in other people’s affairs and should mind their own business. They are not cognizant of it; the notion does not even cross their cerebral cortex. Like the Europeans who crisscrossed the world, claiming and conquering lands whether their inhabitants wanted to be dominated or not, it simply never occurs to interlopers like Pelosi that they have absolutely no right to stick their noses where they do not belong.

Multi-millionaires and powerful pols like Pelosi are so convinced of their superiority, inevitability and indispensability that they have absolutely no understanding they are overstepping their boundaries because, in their limitless self-esteem and self-conception, the world is their oyster.

The snooty Pelosi is so self-assured of her own sense of entitlement that she is often dismissive of the free press, treating reporters rudely if they dare question her royal highness. What is the source of Madam Speaker’s high self-regard?

Pelosi, who has served in Congress longer than any other California Democrat, is a creature of power and privilege who was born into the D’Alesandro dynasty. The 82-year-old’s father Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., served as a Democratic congressman (1939-1947) and mayor of Baltimore (1947-1959)—a position her brother also held.

Young Nancy managed the book of people who owed her father political favors and attended JFK’s inauguration.

After relocating by 1969 to the West Coast, Pelosi, who holds a degree from Trinity College in Washington, D.C., became a Democratic Party fundraiser and then state party chairwoman. In 1987, at the age of 47 after her two kids had gone off to college, Pelosi first ran for Congress in California’s 5^th Congressional District (long represented by liberal firebrand Phillip Burton) where her posh home was not even located, so her husband, moneybags Paul Pelosi, bought a new home in upper-class Pacific Heights so she would qualify to represent the district in which she was running.

According to the New York Post, Paul ran a “venture capital and investment firm Financial Leasing Services Inc. Over the years he’s made countless bets on high-profile companies his wife is supposed to regulate, like Amazon, Apple and Google.”^[1]

According to Time political correspondent and Pelosi biographer Molly Ball:

“Pelosi’s most formidable rival [in 1987’s special election] would be Harry Britt, a gay socialist former aide to Harvey Milk who had succeeded Milk on the Board of Supervisors. The AIDS crisis was at its height, ravaging the community. Britt had a chance to be the first openly gay man elected to Congress in history, at a time when President Reagan refused even to acknowledge the disease. It was time, Britt contended, for gay men and women to be represented by one of their own, not merely a sympathetic outsider.”

Thus, during the AIDS epidemic, Pelosi went to Washington by running to the right of and defeating an LGBTQ founder and vice chair of Democratic Socialists of America 36% to 32% in a three-way race.

To be fair, Pelosi has done some good in her time in Congress—she opposed the Iraq war and the Bush administration’s efforts to privatize Social Security, for example, was one of the House architects behind the 1994 assault weapons ban, helped pass the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank bill regulating Wall Street and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal Act allowing gays to serve openly in the military and ripped up a copy of President Trump’s “State of the Union” speech on live TV.

However, Pelosi has also served as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, rubber-stamping criminal CIA covert interventions. Although she is viewed as a doyenne of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing, this prototypical “corporate liberal” attained power by, according to a Britt campaign brochure, taking donations from “oil companies, highrise developers, Washington lobbyists and other special interests” in order to defeat a candidate far to her Left.

Profiteer Pelosi, the Free Marketeer

Although she has flip-flopped on the issue, Newsweek reports:

“Pelosi said she was against prohibiting lawmakers from owning and trading individual stocks. ‘We are a free market economy,’ she said. ‘They should be able to participate in that.’”

Newsweek notes:

“Pelosi has so far disclosed 48 transactions made by her family worth more than $50 million… Pelosi is currently one of the 25 wealthiest members of Congress, according to Business Insider.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a DSA member, tweeted:

“It is absolutely ludicrous that members of Congress can hold and trade individual stock while in office. The access and influence we have should be exercised for the public interest, not our profit. It shouldn’t be legal for us to trade individual stock with the info we have.”

It is absolutely ludicrous that members of Congress can hold and trade individual stock while in office.

The access and influence we have should be exercised for the public interest, not our profit. It shouldn’t be legal for us to trade individual stock with the info we have. https://t.co/Z3UZej2eC2

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 8, 2021

According to one of AOC’s hometown newspapers, the right-wing New York Post, “the speaker—whose estimated worth tops $100 million—and hubby Paul Pelosi have amassed as much as $30 million from Big Tech stock trades, even as she’s supposed to be regulating that industry… The rules guard against conflict-of-interest trading by congressional staff, and some lawmakers acknowledge the conflict (for themselves as well as her) and want to ban lawmakers and their families from trading stocks. Yet Pelosi defends the practice.”

A Chip Off the Old Blockhead

The Post also observes:

“From 2007 to 2020, the speaker and her spouse raked in between $5.6 million and $30.4 million (the rules don’t even require exact disclosure) from just five Big Tech firms: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft.”

Microsoft has been one of Pelosi’s top campaign contributors, donating $113,822 to her since 1989.

Congress may have dropped the ball on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and Biden’s Build Back Better Act but, in July 2022, Congress somehow managed to pass the $52 billion Pelosi-backed CHIPS Act of 2022to strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corp., during her Taipei foray, Pelosi “said a U.S. bill on computer chips was a good opportunity for more cooperation with Taiwan.”

The world’s number 1 and 3 largest manufacturing companies that produce the microchips that power Big Tech, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and United Microelectronics Corporation, are based in Taiwan. Mere coincidence or self-dealing? Could this have something to do with Pelosi’s insistence on going to Taiwan, even if it means upsetting the international apple cart? Hmmm, inquiring minds want to know…

Perpetual Busybodies, Endlessly Intervening in Others’ Internal Affairs

It never dawns on one percenters like Pelosi, who have such high opinions of themselves, that they simply do not belong in a quarrel on the other side of the world. The distance between Taipei and San Francisco is 6,449 miles; between Taipei and Washington, D.C., 7,864 miles.

The closest U.S. territory to Taiwan is the American colony of Guam—one-third owned and operated by the Pentagon—located 1,711 miles away, while Hawaii—where the U.S. military owns and operates 21% of Oahu, including Pearl Harbor—is 5,142 miles from Taipei.

Imperialist busybodies like Pelosi need to mind their own business, and let the people of China, as well as the Formosans (the Indigenous people of Taiwan who are almost always left out of the discussion) settle their own differences and disputes among themselves.

As we can clearly see by this latest outsider incursion, this foreign intrusion into what are essentially domestic matters and squabbles only exacerbate and heighten their problems. (Hey, how did those Iraq and Afghanistan invasions end up working out?)

Furthermore, these eternal trespassers want to do so without being held accountable for their encroachments. Thus, like Orwellian Newspeak, we are now witnessing the birth of new definitions. Consider this France 24 headline: “White House warns China against escalation over Pelosi’s… Taiwan visit”

Now, words like “escalation” and “retaliation” mean how a country that has been provoked by a superpower provocateur dares to respond to the offending party’s provocative actions. In this imperialist doublethink, countermeasures to blatant provocations are characterized as “escalation.” MSNBC hack Andrea Mitchell chimed in, insisting that no matter what Pelosi did, “They [PRC] started it!” The imperialists sure can dish it out, but they cannot take it. The elite must never ever be held accountable for their actions.

Although the U.S. media correctly point out that the People’s Republic of China considers Taiwan to be a “breakaway, renegade” province of China proper that is now “self-ruled,” I have not seen/heard/watched a single report that discussed the Chinese Revolution that spawned this conundrum and split.

In a nutshell, the Chinese Civil War was fought between the USSR-backed Chinese Communist Party and the U.S.-backed Kuomintang (KMT) from about 1927 to 1949, pitting China’s peasants and workers against its elite. In 1949, the CCP led by Chairman Mao Zedong triumphed and, with its tails between its legs, the KMT, led by Chiang Kai-shek, a man of legendary corruption, fled across the Taiwan Strait and established a military dictatorship on that island, where martial law lasted almost four decades.

Now Pelosi, an old Cold Warrior whose world view was formed during the 1950s, is using a retread of the tired old anticommunist sloganeering, which in the past pit “the free world” against “communism” and “Red China.”

Although the CCP still politically rules the PRC, given China’s tremendous market reforms and development, Pelosi currently rephrases the tired old Cold War mantra as: “America’s solidarity with the 23 million people of Taiwan is more important today than ever, as the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy.”

Which part of our much-vaunted system do the Pelosis of the world want to export to China, et al.? The electoral college? The fact that Americans have no direct vote for president? The unelected Supreme Court with life tenure that is stripping away our rights and freedoms?

The Senate filibuster and other measures such as two senators per state, no matter what the size of their population, enables minority rule? The right to purchase weapons of war to perpetrate mass slaughter in our schools, malls, places of worship, July 4^th parades, the Las Vegas strip, etc.? Student debt? Earth’s highest incarceration rate in the land of the “free”?

To return to the U.S. Civil War metaphor, in reality, Madam Speaker is following in the footsteps of Madame Chiang, and backing the side that would be equivalent to the Confederacy.

U.S. ruling circles may be alarmed at how “aggressive” modern China has supposedly become, but if one were to compare Beijing’s military posture to that of Washington’s incessantly interventionist foreign policy and militarism, with 750-plus bases girdling the globe and endless invasions, colossal Pentagon budgets, drone warfare, covert ops, cruel sanctions and so on, it would be laughable. In the 21^st century alone, America has slaughtered at least hundreds of thousands of human beings with completely unnecessary wars inflicted in Iraq and dubious other military adventures throughout the Middle East, Afghanistan and beyond. China’s military stance and defense budget is truly dwarfed by that of the bloody American empire, willy-nilly endlessly interfering around the world, as arguably the most destabilizing force in the world today, pursuing the same outdated Cold War strategy and realpolitik it has essentially practiced since 1949, still pitting Washington against Beijing and Moscow.

Running Dogs

Like all bullies Washington hates to pick on somebody its own size. The nuclear-armed United States prefers to invade smaller, helpless countries—Reagan’s counterinsurgency in Central America and the invasion of tiny Grenada are the more cowardly America’s speed.

But when it comes to other big powers like Russia and China, perpetually throwing your weight around does not always work. Taunting and bullying will only get you so far. After the Bush regime promised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not “move one inch east of Germany,” starting in the 1990s, Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin began warning the West against NATO expansion that eventually pushed right up to Russia’s borders.

When somebody is nuclear-armed and dangerous like Putin, it is incumbent upon wise statesmanship to listen to what your adversary is telling you and warning you against. This is not in any way to justify (but perhaps to explain) Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but a clear failure of statecraft and diplomacy led to this horrific turn of events.

Now, not content with triggering a war involving Moscow, entitled globetrotters like Nancy Pelosi traipse around the planet on the taxpayers’ dime and pick a fight with another mighty nuclear power with substantial armed forces. Unlike Grenada, China can fight back and will not be pushed around.

What is really behind Washington’s anxiety is that China seems to be on the rise, while America is in decline. To be sure, the PRC—like the U.S.—is an imperfect entity with lots of room for improvement. Critics could point to Hong Kong, the Uyghurs, mass surveillance, the zero-tolerance Covid policy, policies toward Taiwan and much more. But this is really absolutely none of America’s business. Should Beijing, Moscow, et al., base their foreign relations with Washington on the mistreatment of George Floyd, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor and the countless other African Americans slaughtered and abused by U.S. law enforcement?

And just as Western policy makers triggered the Russian bear, when it comes to the Pelosis of the world, rash decision makers who misbehave like pitbulls in China shops may learn the hard way that when it comes to China, if you travel from afar to smash a beehive with a baseball bat, you just might get stung. In the immortal words that may have originated with East German youth at a 1950 Berlin march: “Yankee, Go Home!” And while you’re at it, fix your own troubled household, instead of searching for endless enemies and troublemaking abroad.

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Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based film historian and critic who also reviews culture, foreign affairs and current events. Ed can be reached at [email protected].

Note

1. Most recently DUI Paul has been in the news for his drunk driving escapades.

Featured image is from The Cradle

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One count of conspiring to receive national defense information, seven counts of obtaining that information, nine counts of disclosing it, and one count of conspiring to access a computer.

It sounds like a tongue twister, but it is not. Those are the charges against Australian journalist Julian Assange, a total of 17 which will probably turn into 175 years in prison, if he is eventually extradited to the United States.

He sounds like a very bad boy, a real, Hollywood-style criminal. Of course, from the United States’ standpoint. If WikiLeaks had revealed the war horrors of any other country, Assange would be a hero, not a criminal.

Or if any other nation were moving land and sea to secure the extradition of a journalist who revealed civilian deaths, acts of torture and clandestine military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through thousands of documents, then that country would engage in “political persecution” that goes against “freedom of the press” and “represses the media.”

However, since the horrors and violations revealed in those documents were committed by the United States, then that nation “acts in accordance with the law.” This is hypocrisy.

Assange has been confined in the United Kingdom for more than ten years now. First in the Ecuadorian Embassy in that country and, when former President Lenín Moreno withdrew his refuge in 2019, the journalist remains ever since in the high security prison of Belmarsh, east of London.

Although he is not accused of any charges after serving a 50-week jail sentence for violating a bail in 2012, the British justice system decided to keep him locked up until the extradition case presented by the U.S. prosecution is concluded.

It has been years of struggle by his defense to avoid extradition, which would mean the total annihilation of what Assange has represented for those who dream of a world where war crimes and interference and hegemonic actions do not go unpunished; or at least, do not stay in the dark.

If he sets foot in the United States, not only will his life be in danger, but an alarming precedent will be set for investigative journalists. It would be a direct blow to that banner he is trying to sell: freedom of the press and free speech.

Assange’s team of lawyers has managed to delay that moment that already seems closer with the approval of extradition by the British government, more than a month ago. His legal hopes are running out, however, the support of intellectuals and activists worldwide for his release is growing daily.

Even the President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador directly asked his counterpart Joe Biden to release the founder of the WikiLeaks portal, to whom he “opens the doors of his country,” and described him as “the best journalist of our time.” He also considered that the treatment he has received only “for denouncing human rights violations” is worse than that of a criminal.

The Mexican president insisted that the United Nations should pronounce itself on this case. In fact, the UN special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, has denounced on numerous occasions that Assange has been subjected to psychological torture. Following the British government’s decision, he said it was another blow to press freedom. “How far have we sunk?” he questioned.

Independent, serious journalism, as Assange did, is a serious threat to the hegemony of the West, which has historically controlled information. For that reason, when crimes committed by the powerful are revealed, there is nothing left but to appeal to double standards and hypocrisy.

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Guest is Dr. Ariyana Love, a Naturopathic Doctor & Investigative Journalist. Her elder son was vaccine injured at age two and diagnosed with High Functioning Autism at age 7. She applied her knowledge of Naturopathic Medicine and designed a dietary protocol that resulted in a near total reversal of her son’s debilitating symptoms. In 2017, she was awarded the official title of Goodwill Ambassador to Palestine via the Palestinian Authorities.

In this session, she talks about Covid-19 vaccine-patents and how they’re able to target and permanently delete genetic codes on genetic lineages in humans, and also encode new genetic sequences into the genome of targeted cells – about the role of gene-deletion in Autism or AIDS. Further, she discusses about the 115 different animal venoms contained within the “spike protein” (“Glycoprotein S”) and about the transmissibility of this bioweapon using graphene oxide nanoparticles as vectors. “They are not using viruses in any vaccines. It’s always been deadly bacteria extractions, like E. coli, to create lab generated Mycoplasmas and this is the root cause of all chronic illness.”

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In addition to escalating brinkmanship with Russia and China, President Joe Biden’s administration is flirting with war against Iran. The clearest evidence of this includes the ever expanding “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign, as well as the development of a U.S.-led, NATO style alliance encircling Iran. There is also ample support for Israel’s incessant drone strikes, assassinations, and ceaseless bombings of allegedly Iranian targets in Syria.

Last month, Biden traveled to the region to publicly genuflect before the rulers of America’s cherished Gulf tyrannies and apartheid Israel. The aforementioned burgeoning alliance topped his agenda.

In May, Tel Aviv’s U.S. taxpayer subsidized military murdered Shireen Abu Akleh, a world renowned Al Jazeera journalist, a Palestinian Christian, and American citizen. During a raid on the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, the Israeli Occupation Forces shot her in the face while she was wearing a press vest. They also attacked her funeral procession, attempting to knock her casket to the ground while mourners were carrying it.

But Biden, “Israel’s man in Washington,” got off the plane at Ben Gurion airport and said our bilateral relationship is “bone-deep.” And speaking for the “vast majority” of Americans, he stated emphatically we are “completely devoted to Israel’s security without any ifs, ands, or buts—without any doubts about it.”

He went on to sign a joint declaration with acting Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid committing the U.S. to use all of its “national power” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

During an interview ahead of his Israel visit, Biden said he would use force, threatening war against Iran “as a last resort.” It is not enough for the Israelis, they demand an “offensive” and “credible” military threat against Iran. Lapid called it “the real thing.”

Biden refuses to lift the necessary sanctions to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal, which means at least the brutal economic war on Iran will persist in perpetuity. This week, Biden levied fresh sanctions on Iran. Biden’s issuance of sanctions has become more frequent in recent months and ever since the other members of the P5+1 began approaching a finalized deal.

As Dave DeCamp, news editor at Antiwar.com, reported,

The U.S. on Monday issued fresh sanctions against Iran meant to target the Islamic Republic’s oil and petrochemical sales to East Asia.

The new sanctions targeted three Chinese firms and one UAE firm accused of doing business with the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industry Commercial Co. (PGPICC), which the U.S. Treasury Department says is one of Iran’s largest petrochemical brokers.

According to the Treasury Department, PGPICC facilitated the “sale of tens of millions of dollars worth of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products from Iran to East Asia” through the firms that were hit with sanctions.

The sanctions are the latest sign that the Biden administration is not serious about reviving the Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA. On Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked if the U.S. was ready to return to JCPOA, but he sidestepped the questions and put the responsibility on Iran.

Donald Trump and Biden’s “maximum pressure” campaign has led to 40-50% inflation rates and medical shortages. Washington has deliberately suffocated the Iranian people, almost half of whom live below the poverty line.

Last year, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told Biden his “strategic vision” for Iran was “death by a thousand cuts,” or myriad military and diplomatic attacks, as well as clandestine attacks, “the gray-area stuff.” Bennett went on to demand U.S. troops remain indefinitely in both Syria and Iraq.

But the decades of lies and unsubstantiated assertions by hawks about Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons may remain a useable casus belli. Americans aware of Israel’s arsenal, which includes 200or more nuclear weapons and makes U.S. aid illegal, are considerably outnumbered statistically by those who falsely believe Iran has the bomb. The Iranians have never sought nuclear arms, and they recently reiterated twice that they have the technical capability but, despite their encirclement, Tehran has chosen not to take this course. The development of such weapons is haram under Islamic law, forbidden by the Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwah.

However, this was never about the phony threat of Iran nuking Israel. The Iranians’ latent threat is unacceptable for Tel Aviv because it may finally restrict the Israelis’ ability to attack their neighbors with impunity, the way they bomb Syria every week.

In the book Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, Scott Horton, the Libertarian Institute’s Director, explains,

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the former prime minister Ehud Barak, admitted in 2010 that even if Iran were hypothetically to gain atomic weapons, the Israelis were not afraid the Ayatollah would attack them in a first strike, as they constantly tell the public. Instead they were merely concerned that it would limit their “freedom of action” against other regional adversaries, such as Hezbollah, and could cause a “brain drain” of talented young Israelis to the United States. Netanyahu’s immediate predecessor, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the New York Times that, “Just as Pakistan had the bomb and nothing happened, Israel could also accept and survive Iran having the bomb.” Former Clinton administration State Department official Jamie Rubin also explained in Foreign Policy that the problem was never an Israeli fear of a first strike by Iran, but “Israel’s real fear – losing its nuclear monopoly and therefore the ability to use its conventional forces at will throughout the Middle East – is the unacknowledged factor driving its decision-making toward the Islamic Republic.”

Horton continues quoting Rubin,

[F]or Israeli leaders, the real threat from a nuclear-armed Iran is not the prospect of an insane Iranian leader launching an unprovoked nuclear attack on Israel that would lead to the annihilation of both countries. It’s the fact that Iran doesn’t even need to test a nuclear weapon to undermine Israeli military leverage in Lebanon and Syria.

Earlier this year, the Israelis simulated a massive bombing campaign over Iran, with a series of repeated airstrikes against the Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program. The drills took place over the Mediterranean Sea, spanned over 10,000 kilometers, and saw more than 100 military aircraft and navy submarines participating.

These simulations capped off a month long military exercise called Chariots of Fire which practiced for war with Iran and other contingencies. The U.S. General overseeing Central Command was in attendance. The IDF’s chief of staff has now announced the Israeli military’s primary focus is preparing an attack on Iran. In the Red Sea, the U.S. and Israel are now conducting joint war drills.

The Iran situation is another deadly indication that presidents and administrations may change, but the overall foreign policy agenda does not. Apparently, it only gets worse. The U.S. empire is in decline and the American people feel it. But the neocons and their liberal interventionist partners are holding onto their dream of a “Unipolar Moment.”

As the world adjusts to a multipolar world order, the U.S. foreign policy establishment, left and right, has picked fights with its enemies, not ours.

Americans’ only enemy is our own ruling class who would drag us into wars (proxy wars or otherwise), including with nuclear armed world powers to fulfill their desires to violently dominate the planet, funneling trillions of our dollars into the military-industrial complex. This establishment’s geopolitical and monetary schemes are destroying our nation’s future.  As the Ron Paul Institute’s Daniel McAdams recently said, “[American] foreign policy is the FED with nukes.”

We have been stuck with a bill for more than $10 trillion after more than 20 years of war and killing in the Middle East, with millions dead and tens of thousands of soldiers committing suicide. It is long past time Americans put their foot down.

We have a choice. Do we want to continue gambling on the apocalypse, fighting wars with Iran, Russia, and China in memory of the disgraced neocon Charles Krauthammer’s “Unipolar Moment?”

Or should we pursue “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none?”

The answer should be obvious.

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Shots puts an amusing spin on the little-known history of eugenics.

It traces the genocidal, anti-ethnic eugenics movement which resulted in the sterilization and elimination of millions.

It exposes how the wealthiest families financed the evolution of eugenics into Nazi Germany, and pushed America into perpetual wars. These families further influenced the government’s elimination of financial liability for vaccine manufacturers while simulating run-ups to the 2020 pandemic. By that year the wealthiest had bought and controlled the media, and censored medical experts that criticized government actions.

Shots illuminates how the government censored effective therapeutics, financially incentivized hospitals to adopt misleading reporting practices and deadly treatments, doubled global deaths with lockdowns, bankrupted small businesses, and allowed the most unsafe vaccines in a century.

Watch the trailer below or click here

click image to acces video

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A judicial panel Thursday consolidated more than 31 lawsuits against Merck for injuries allegedly caused by its Gardasil HPV vaccine, rejecting Merck’s argument that doing so would increase vaccine hesitancy, spread misinformation about vaccines and cause a flood of ‘meritless’ injury claims.

The lawsuits against Merck allege the pharmaceutical giant fast-tracked Gardasil through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval process and deceptively conducted clinical trials to mask serious side effects and exaggerate the vaccine’s effectiveness.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation said the individual lawsuits involve common questions of fact, and that “centralization in the Western District of North Carolina will serve the convenience of the parties and witnesses and promote the just and efficient conduct of the litigation.”

The judicial panel wrote:

“These personal injury actions present common questions of fact arising from allegations that plaintiffs, or their minor children, developed postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and various other injuries as the result of an autoimmune reaction to the Gardasil vaccine, which is recommended for the prevention of certain strains of the human papillomavirus and various cancers.”

The lawsuits consist of product liability claims, claims for breach of warranty, fraud, negligence and in some cases, violations of state consumer protection laws.

“Discovery in all cases can be expected to focus on the testing, labeling, regulatory approval and marketing of Gardasil,” the judicial panel wrote.

“Centralization will eliminate duplicative discovery and prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings — particularly with respect to preemption issues under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and Daubert issues — and will preserve the resources of the parties, their counsel and the judiciary.”

According to the order, after the motion for consolidation was filed, the panel was notified of nine other potentially related actions in six additional districts.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr., in 2007, was appointed to the Western District of North Carolina by President George W. Bush and will preside over the consolidated cases.

“Over the past year of intensive discovery, we’ve been able to show that Merck, manufacturer of the Gardasil vaccine, was aware that there was an unacceptable risk of neurological disorders, autoimmune diseases and particularly postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, also known as POTS,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman of Children’s Health Defense, said in a video.

Click here to watch the video.

The consolidation of all Gardasil cases in the U.S. into a single courtroom means that every child and every adult injured by the Gardasil vaccine can now argue their cases in front of a single federal judge, Kennedy said.

Merck argues cases should not be consolidated

According to the order, Merck opposed consolidating the lawsuits on several grounds. First, Merck argued that “individual issues in the cases will predominate” if the cases are consolidated, but the judicial panel was not persuaded.

“In this litigation, all plaintiffs allege that they were injured by the Gardasil vaccine in the same manner — through an autoimmune reaction caused by structural similarities between proteins in the vaccine’s antigens and within the vaccine recipient’s own cells. In view of the common issues arising from these allegations, we conclude that centralization will provide significant efficiencies,” the panel wrote.

Merck also argued informal coordination among parties of the lawsuits “has been, and would continue to be, practicable,” but the panel found “efforts to date by Merck and movants’ counsel to coordinate in a limited number of actions appear to have been only partially successful at best.”

Finally, Merck argued consolidation of the claims subject to the “Vaccine Act” would be “unprecedented” and “would attract a flood of meritless claims brought solely for the purpose of exhausting the claim process under the Vaccine Act and proceeding with tort claims in court.”

Merck was referring to the fact that claimants bringing the lawsuits were first required to go through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), established by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, before they could file their claims in an actual court of law.

The NVICP is a special, no-fault tribunal housed within the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that handles injury claims for 16 federally recommended vaccines. To date, the court has awarded more than $4 billion to thousands of people for vaccine injuries despite the system’s shortcomings.

In the NVICP, America’s legal system is replaced by a “special master.” The special masters who review claims are government-appointed attorneys, many of whom are former U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys.

Under the NVICP, the parents of vaccine-injured children are forced to sue the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for compensation. HHS is represented by DOJ attorneys.

It is exceptionally difficult to obtain compensation within the NVICP. The proceedings are often turned into drawn-out, contentious expert battles and the backlog of cases is substantial. Because of this, a single case can drag on for over a decade.

Payouts, including attorneys’ fees, are funded by a 75-cent tax per vaccine. There is a $250,000 cap on pain and suffering and death benefits.

Persons claiming injury from a covered vaccine may not sue the vaccine manufacturer or the healthcare provider that administered the vaccine in state or federal court unless they have exhausted the claim process in the Court of Federal Claims.

Merck asserted such claims would “overwhelm the already overburdened claim process” resulting in an “improper evasion of the intended purposes of that process.”

Merck further argued publicity surrounding the litigation would spread “misinformation” about vaccines and increase “vaccine hesitancy.”

The panel was not convinced. The judicial panel said:

“None of these arguments persuades us that centralization is not warranted. While the panel has not previously centralized actions subject to the Vaccine Act, it has previously centralized vaccine-related personal injury actions, including actions subject to an administrative exhaustion requirement.

“The Vaccine Act expressly permits claimants to file suit against vaccine manufacturers in federal court after exhausting the required claim process, and nothing in the Act […]  forbids centralization of such actions.

“Nor are we convinced by Merck’s argument that the creation of an MDL [multi-district-litigation] will encourage the filing of meritless claims, as any such claims are more appropriately brought to the attention of the transferee court.”

The court said concerns about the efficient functioning of the Vaccine Court and vaccine hesitancy are “properly raised elsewhere.”

The panel’s job, they said, was to determine if the litigation involved “common questions of fact” and whether centralization of the litigation would serve the convenience of the parties and witnesses, and “produce efficiencies for the litigants and the judiciary.”

Law firm representing plaintiffs pleased with ruling

According to a press release, lawyers from the firm Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman in April 2022, filed a motion to consolidate 30 vaccine lawsuits pending in district courts throughout the U.S.

As of July 28, the law firm said 48 cases were pending with at least 100 more to be filed in federal court.

In their motion for consolidation, attorneys said the central question of all of the cases was whether Gardasil can cause autoimmune disorders, whether Merck adequately warned of the vaccine’s risks and whether Gardasil caused the plaintiff’s injuries.

“We are very pleased the JPML [U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation] decided to centralize the Gardasil litigation,” said Bijan Esfandiari, Gardasil lawyer and senior shareholder at Baum Hedlund. “Efficient coordination of the multidistrict litigation makes the most sense and gives the plaintiffs the best path for seeking and obtaining justice. Our clients are looking forward to getting their day in court.”

Esfandiari, whose firm represents young men and women across the country who allege serious injuries from Gardasil, said some of the most common side effects alleged in the HPV vaccine lawsuits include:

• autonomic dysfunction
• complex regional pain syndrome
• premature ovarian failure
• fibromyalgia
• myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome
• orthostatic intolerance
• POTS

According to the press release, Judge Conrad will likely schedule a conference in the near future and establish procedures for the selection of lead and co-lead counsel for the Gardasil multi-district-litigation along with the selection of the executive committee, steering committee and other positions. The court will also issue various orders on how discovery is to proceed and establish deadlines.

Attorneys anticipate the trial against Merck over its Gardasil vaccine will begin in 2023.

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Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “surprise” trip to Taiwan last week should be “Exhibit A” as to why interventionism is dangerous, deadly, and dumb. Though she claimed her visit won some sort of victory for democracy over autocracy, the stopover achieved nothing of the sort. It was a pointless gesture that brought us closer to military conflict with zero benefits.

As Col. Doug Macgregor said of Pelosi’s trip on a recent episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight,

“statesmanship involves advancing American interests at the least cost to the American people. None of that is in play here. … Posturing is not statesmanship.”

Pelosi’s trip was no outlier. Such counterproductive posturing is much celebrated by both parties in Washington. Neoconservative Senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham were thrilled with Pelosi’s stop in Taipei and used it as a springboard to push for new legislation that would essentially declare war on China by declaring Taiwan a “major non-NATO ally.”

The “one China” policy that, while perhaps not perfect, has kept the peace for more than 40 years is to be scrapped and replaced with one sure to provoke a war. Who benefits?

Foolishly taking the US to the brink of war with Russia over Ukraine is evidently not enough for Washington’s bipartisan warmongering class. Risking a nuclear war on two fronts, with both Russia and China, is apparently the only way for Washington to show the rest of the world it’s serious.

The Washington Post’s neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin accurately captures the mindset in Washington DC with a recent article titled, “The skeptics are wrong: The US can confront both China and Russia.”

For Washington’s foreign policy “experts,” those of us who don’t believe a war with both Russia and China is a great idea are written off as “skeptics.” Count me as one of the skeptics!

During the Cold War there were times of heightened tension, but even in the darkest days the idea that nuclear war with China and the Soviet Union could be a solution was held only by only a few madmen. Now, with the ideological struggles of the Cold War a decades-old memory, such an argument makes even less sense. Yet this is what Washington is selling.

The US fighting a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine and Nancy Pelosi provoking China nearly to the point of war over Taiwan is meant to show the world how tough we are. In reality, it demonstrates the opposite. The drunken man in a bar challenging everyone to a fight is not tough. He’s foolish. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose from his display of bravado.

That is interventionism at its core: a foolish policy that provokes nothing but anger overseas, benefits no one in the US except the special interests, and leaves the rest of us much poorer and worse off.

There may be plenty to criticize about China’s government and policies. They are far from perfect, particularly in protection of civil liberties. But have we already forgotten that our own government shut down the country for two years over a virus, and then forced a huge number of Americans to take an experimental shot that is proving to be as worthless as it is dangerous? Let’s look at the log in our own eye before we start lobbing missiles overseas.

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Vital statistics during the past two and half years of the Covid-19 pandemic, indicate that nearly one million Americans died. Countless people suffered adverse effects from isolation, the loss of 22 million jobs, shuttered businesses, closed schools, and the inability to have pre-existing medical conditions treated in a timely manner. Mental disorders skyrocketed.  

Among adults, moderate to severe anxiety increased 37 percent and 30 percent for depression.

It was worse for young adults and teens; the Century Foundation states 43 percent of younger adults reported anxiety conditions. Behind this pain and suffering is a national healthcare system that has become a predatory phenomenon. Medical costs are outrageous and insurance coverage charges for every conceivable medical service and item imaginable. Most people with health insurance are denied full coverage. This has resulted in millions of Americans being placed in debt peonage and on the threshold of bankruptcy.

The question is what can be done to bring an out of control medical industrial complex into line to serve the needs of American citizens which other nations’ healthcare systems have done for decades.  The answer remains the same as it has been for the past half century. Universal healthcare.

For a nation that prides itself on being the world’s wealthiest, most innovative and technologically advanced, the US’ healthcare system is nothing less than a disaster and disgrace. Not only are Americans the least healthy among the most developed nations, but the US’ health system also ranks dead last among high-income countries. Despite rising costs and our unshakeable faith in American medical exceptionalism, average life expectancy in the US has remained lower than other OECD nations for many years and continues to decline. During the pandemic it is estimated that two to three years was lot on average life expectancy. On the other hand, before the Covid-19 pandemic, countries with universal healthcare coverage found their average life expectancy stable or slowly increasing.  The fundamental problem in Washington is that both parties have been far too beholden to the pharmaceutical, HMO and private insurance industries. Neither has made any concerted effort to reign in the corruption of corporate campaign funding and do what is sensible, financially feasible and morally correct to improve Americans’ quality of health and well-being.

The fact that our healthcare system is horribly broken is proof that moneyed interests have become so powerful to keep single-payer debate out of the media spotlight and censored. Poll after poll shows that the American public favors the expansion of public health coverage.  Other incremental proposals, including Medicare and Medicaid buy-in plans, are also widely preferred to the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare mess we are currently stuck with.

It is not difficult to understand how the dismal state of American medicine is the result of a system that has been completely sold out to the free-market ideology and the bottom line interests of drug makers, healthcare mega-corporations, and an inflated private insurance industry. How advanced and ethically sound can a healthcare system be if tens of millions of people have no access to medical care because it is financially out of their reach? At the end of 2021, 30 million Americans did not have health insurance including 9 million children. Almost 40 million more are underinsured.

The United Nations recognizes healthcare as a human right. In the 2018, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the American healthcare system as “politically and morally wrong.”  Ki-moon belongs to a group known as The Elders founded by Nelson Mandela and funded by Sir Richard Branson and musician Peter Gabriel, a group of older wise statespersons around the world determined to tackle global crises during their remaining years and unafraid to take on the capitalist system. Among their initiatives is global universal healthcare. As it turns out, the US has been the most influential roadblock to reach that goal.

The US’ healthcare system is a public economic failure, benefiting no one except the large and increasingly consolidated insurance firms at the top that ultimately supervise the racket.  It spends twice that of any other country, making up 18 percent of national GDP in 2019. The entire system is an example of the nation’s moral deterioration that also fuels a steady rise of inequality for the past three decades.

Our political parties have wrestled with single-payer or universal healthcare for decades. Obama ran his first 2008 presidential campaign on a single-payer platform. His campaign health adviser, the late Dr. Quentin Young from the University of Illinois Medical School, was one of the nation’s leading voices calling for universal health coverage since 1986.   Among the 35 most developed OECD nations, 32 have some form of national universal care.  However, past efforts to even raise the issue have been viciously attacked. A huge army of private interests is determined to keep the public enslaved to private insurers and high medical costs. The failure of our healthcare is in no small measure due to it being a fully for-profit operation.  Consider that there are currently 907 private insurance companies in the US, which earned the industry $881 billion in 2020. Older corporate rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans argue that a single-payer or socialized medical program is unaffordable. However, not only is single-payer affordable, it will in the long-term save $2 trillion or more annually. It will end bankruptcies due to unpayable medical debt. In addition, universal healthcare, structured on a preventative model, will reduce disease rates at the outset.

During a private conversation with Dr. Young shortly before his passing in 2016, he conveyed his sense of betrayal at the hands of the Obama administration. Dr. Young was in his 80s when he joined the Obama campaign team to help lead the young Senator to victory on a promise that America would finally catch up with other nations. The doctor sounded like a defeated man. He shared how he was manipulated, and that Obama held no sincere intention to make universal healthcare a part of his administration’s agenda. During the closed-door negotiations, which spawned the weak and compromised Affordable Care Act, Dr. Young was neither consulted nor invited to participate. In fact, he told us that he never heard from Obama again after his White House victory.

The record shows that the principal parties meeting with the Obama administration were from the private insurance and medical industries. It was this cartel that created Obamacare. It was left to the charismatic Obama and bureaucrats in his administration to tailor the disingenuous narrative to convince Americans it was a spectacular public victory. Looking back, Obama’s domestic promises and accomplishments, including Obamacare, were anemic at best. His policies only further muddied the bureaucratic waters and public interests with esoteric taxes, shortsighted giveaways, and regulatory hurdles.  Meanwhile, the physical and mental health of the nation continues to erode.

Today the pharmaceutical, HMO, and insurance industries, as well as medicine’s most prominent professional associations, medical schools and Wall Street firms form a powerful force with its tentacles wrapped around the throats of politicians and the federal health agencies. In 2021, the pharmaceutical and insurance industries alone spent over half a billion dollars on lobbying Washington.

Corporate Democrats argue that Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a positive step inching the country towards complete public coverage. However, aside from providing coverage to the poorest of Americans, Obamacare turned into another financial anchor around the necks of millions more.  Since the law was enacted, the average price for a family health policy rose by $2,200. During the same period, patient out-of-pocket hospitalization costs increased to $329 billion. The ACA is riddled with loopholes benefiting the private insurers who wrote the bill. Rather than healthcare spending falling, as Obama promised, it has exploded.  Trump made matters worse. Under his administration, an additional 7 million Americans fell into medical hardship and joined the uninsured. Today, one in 10 children under 18 are uninsured, an increase of 5 percent under Obama to almost 10 percent before Biden took office. These figures are in no way indicative of a “strong economy.”

Clearly, a universal healthcare program will require flipping the script on the entire private insurance industry, which employed over half a million people last year. During the years 2015 to the end of 2018, private insurance profiles rose almost 600 percent. And profits continue to surge. Topping the list, The Guardian reported that United Healthcare Group alone earned $4.3 billion in profit during the first year of the pandemic, far beating out its expectations.  None of this extreme wealth went directly towards preventing disease. Private insurance is a middle-man scam.

Obviously, the most volatile debate concerning a national universal healthcare system concerns cost.  Although there is already a socialized healthcare system in place — every federal legislator, bureaucrat, government employee and veteran benefits from it — fiscal Republican conservatives and groups such as the Koch Brothers network, including the Koch-funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University, are single-mindedly dedicated to preventing the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid. A Mercatus analysis made the outrageous claim that a single-payer system would increase federal health spending by $32 trillion in ten years. However, analyses and reviews by the Congressional Budget Office in the early 1990s concluded that such a system would only increase spending at the start; enormous savings would quickly offset it as the years pass.  In one analysis, “the savings in administrative costs [10 percent of health spending] would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage.” High administrative costs overshadow all aspects of US healthcare, not just the insurance industry. Twenty-five percent of hospital spending is administrative, compared to 16 percent in the UK. In 2015, CNBC reported that $275 billion was wasted in insurance paperwork. In addition, there are billing services, which in 2012 averaged $471 billion to physicians, hospitals, supply services, and private and public insurers.  The Green Party’s Dr. Margaret Flowers, the national coordinator of Health Over Profit for Everyone, argues that a single payer system is “the best way to put private insurers on the margins of our healthcare system and to control the pharmaceutical industry” as well as their exorbitant drug prices.

Indeed, a universal healthcare system would increase federal spending. But at the same time, independent analyses indicate it would reduce the nation’s total healthcare costs, a critical goal we should strive towards. Compared to other nations, the US spends a disproportionate amount on healthcare.  According to Statistica, as of 2021, the US spent approximately $12,531 per person. However, as we will note below, this is a misleading figure. It conceals the deeper problems running through the system.  Compare this to Switzerland, the second highest per capita spender at $8,000.   After the US and Switzerland, per capita expenditures decrease dramatically, with Germany (the third highest) at $5,700.  France, Canada, Belgium, Japan, Australia and the UK each spend less than half of the US.

An investigative review published by The Atlantic found that more than half of healthcare spending goes to only five percent of patients! If this money were equally distributed, then the $12,500 per capita expenditure for every adult and child might make sense. The writer calls this tiny segment of patients who dominate health costs the “Platinum Patients.”  Most of these medical “frequent flyers” are the elderly and the chronically ill who have reached the final months or days of their lives. This is where tens of billions of dollars in care and treatment are spent annually. This segment of patients is also the most lucrative for private insurers, hospitals and doctors – patients whose charts can be larded with unnecessary diagnostic tests, drug prescriptions and medical procedures to further scam the system.

Funding a National Health Program would primarily be accomplished by raising taxes to levels comparable to other developed nations. Senator Bernie Sanders and some of the younger Democrat progressives in the House would tax the highest multimillion-dollar earners 60-70 percent. Despite the outrage of its critics, including old rank-and-file multi-millionaire Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, this is still far less than in the past. During the Korean War, the top tax rate was 91 percent; it declined to 70 percent in the late 1960s. Throughout most of the 1970s, those in the lowest income bracket were taxed at 14 percent. Life, including healthcare, was affordable then.

But Democratic supporters of the ACA who oppose a universal healthcare plan ignore the additional twenty new Obama taxes that were levied to pay for the program. These included surtaxes on investment income, Medicare taxes from those earning over $200,000, taxes on tanning services, an excise tax on medical equipment, and a 40 percent tax on health coverage for costs over the designated cap that applied to flexible savings and health savings accounts.  The entire ACA was reckless, sloppy and unnecessarily complicated from the start.  And the people who suffered most from the covert economic details, yet were mandated by law to purchase private insurance, were those who just missed the poverty line cutoff.

The fact that Obamacare further strengthened the distinctions between two parallel systems — federal and private — with entirely different economic structures created a labyrinth of red tape, rules, and wasteful bureaucracy. Since the ACA went into effect, over 150 new boards, agencies and programs have had to be established to monitor its 2,700 pages of gibberish. A federal single-payer system would easily eliminate this bureaucracy and waste.

A medical New Deal to establish universal healthcare coverage is a decisive step in the correct direction. The energy behind the younger generation of Democrat legislators is admirable, but we question whether they possess the wisdom to address the fullness of our health crisis. We must look at the crisis holistically and in a systemic way.  Simply shuffling private insurance into a federal Medicare-for-all or buy-in program, funded by taxing the wealthiest of citizens, may only reduce costs temporarily. It will not curtail nor slash escalating rates of disease. Any effective healthcare reform must also tackle the underlying reasons for Americans’ poor state of health. We cannot shy away from examining the social illnesses infecting our entire free-market capitalist culture and its addiction to deregulation. A viable healthcare model would have to structurally transform how the medical economy operates. Finally, a successful medical New Deal must honestly evaluate the best and most reliable scientific evidence in order to effectively redirect public health spending.

For example, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former Obama healthcare adviser, observed that AIDS-HIV measures consume the most public health spending, even though the disease “ranked 75th on the list of diseases by personal health expenditures.” On the other hand, according to the American Medical Association, a large percentage of the nation’s $3.4 trillion healthcare spending goes towards treating preventable diseases, notably diabetes, common forms of heart disease, and back and neck pain conditions. In 2016, these three conditions were the most costly and accounted for approximately $277 billion in spending.  Earlier this year, the CDC announced that the autism rate is now 1 in 44 children, a 7 percent increase since 2016. In 2015, the economic burden of autism disorders was $268 billion; it is expected to almost double to $461 billion by 2025.  There are no signs that this alarming trend will reverse and decline; and yet, our entire federal health system has failed to search honestly and conscientiously for the underlying causes of this epidemic. All explanations that might interfere with the pharmaceutical industry’s unchecked growth, such as over-vaccination, are ignored and viciously discredited without any sound scientific evidence.  Therefore, a proper medical New Deal will require a systemic overhaul and reform of our federal health agencies, especially the CDC and FDA. For any medical revolution to succeed in advancing universal healthcare, the plan must prioritize spending in a manner that serves public health and not private interests. It will also require reshuffling private corporate interests and their lobbyists to the sidelines, away from any strategic planning, in order to break up the private interests’ control over federal agencies and its revolving door policies. Aside from those who benefit from this medical corruption, the overwhelming majority of Americans would agree with this criticism. However, there is a complete lack of national trust that our legislators, including the so-called progressives, would be willing to undertake such actions.

In addition, America’s healthcare system, as well as the so-called Green New Deal, ignores the single most critical initiative to reduce costs – that is, preventative efforts and programs instead of deregulation and closing loopholes designed to protect the drug and insurance industries’ bottom line.  Prevention can begin with banning toxic chemicals that are proven health hazards associated with current disease epidemics.  This should be a no-brainer for any legislator who cares for public health.  Unfortunately, unlike Europe, the US continues to permit numerous toxic chemicals, including many known carcinogens, to find their way into common everyday products. For example, Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, notes that “the policy approach in the US and Europe is dramatically different” when it comes to chemical allowances in cosmetic products.  Whereas the EU has banned 1,328 toxic substances from the cosmetic industry alone, the US has banned only 11.  The US continues to allow carcinogenic formaldehyde, petroleum, many parabens (an estrogen mimicker and endocrine hormone destroyer), the highly allergenic p-phenylenediamine or PBD, triclosan, which has been associated with the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria, avobenzone, and many others to be used in cosmetics, sunscreens, shampoo and hair dyes.

Another reason Europeans are much healthier than Americans is because their governments take more immediate preventative measures to remove chemicals shown to pose serious health risks. The US can easily adopt this policy in order to reduce avoidable healthcare costs. Corporations should no longer be given a free pass to poison the population for nothing more than expediency and profit. There are no safe levels for any carcinogenic and hormone-disrupting chemical, and that applies across the board – for every healthy and sickly man, woman and child.

Next, the food Americans consume can be reevaluated for its health benefits. There should be no hesitation to tax the unhealthiest foods, such as commercial junk food, sodas and candy, products that contain ingredients proven to be toxic, and meat products laden with dangerous chemicals including growth hormones and antibiotics. The scientific evidence that the average American diet is contributing to rising disease trends is indisputable. We could also implement additional taxes on the public advertising of these demonstrably unhealthy products.  All such tax revenue would accrue to a national universal health program to offset medical expenditures associated with the very illnesses linked to these products. Although such tax measures would help pay for a new medical New Deal, it may be combined with programs to educate the public about healthy nutrition if it is to produce a reduction in the most common preventable diseases. Taxing alone is not sufficient. The public will need to understand the reasons why their favorite junk foods are being taxed and the health risks they face by consuming them. Preventative health education should be mandatory throughout public school systems.

Measures to improve the quality of Americans’ health demand a harsh reality check. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the US spent $3.4 trillion annually on healthcare.  After the first year of the pandemic, healthcare spending rose over 9 percent to $4.1 trillion.  A question most of us might ask is how much of this $4 trillion was complete, avoidable waste?

Private insurers force hospitals, clinics and private physicians into financial corners, and this is contributing to prodigious waste in money and resources. Annually, healthcare spending towards medical liability insurance costs tens of billions of dollars. In particular, this economic burden has taxed small clinics and physicians. It is well past the time that physician liability insurance is replaced with no-fault options. Today’s doctors are spending an inordinate amount of money to protect themselves. Legions of liability and trial lawyers seek big paydays for themselves stemming from physician error. Forbes reports that the cost of medical malpractice runs at about $55 billion per year.  This has created a culture of fear among doctors and hospitals, resulting in the overly cautious practice of defensive medicine, driving up costs and insurance premiums just to avoid lawsuits. Doctors are forced to order unnecessary tests and prescribe more medications and medical procedures just to cover their backsides.  In 2017, $200 billion was spent on unnecessary medical tests, compared to $6.8 billion just 6 years earlier. The blowback has been a tragic rise in medical errors, patient injuries and deaths.

According to a 2017 review by Dr. Raj Gopalan, vice president of Innovation and Clinical Informatics at Wolters Kluwer, there are at least two million confirmed adverse drug reactions in the US every year, causing 100,000 deaths. These medication errors and complications add an additional $136 billion to the US’s annual healthcare bill. Furthermore, there is the loss of work and productivity due to medical error. The Journal of Health Care Finance estimates that every year, 10 million work days valued at approximately $1.2 billion are lost due to measurable medical errors. The reality is likely worse. An earlier analysis by Loyola University Medical School estimated that the total economic impact across the board for all losses due to iatrogenic events and deaths is nearly $1 trillion annually.

No-fault insurance is a common-sense plan that enables physicians to pursue their profession in a manner that will reduce iatrogenic injuries and costs. Individual cases requiring additional medical intervention and loss of income would still be compensated. This would generate huge savings. Reports indicate that the US is experiencing a severe shortage of doctors. The greatest shortages are in emergency medicine and general practice. This trend notably escalated during the pandemic.  Too many medical school graduates are entering more financially lucrative medical specialties. We believe that all medical and nursing education should be free. From the time students graduate, they should receive an excellent living wage, even before proceeding to any specialty, without the specter of debt looming over their future.

No other nation suffers from the scourge of excessive drug price gouging like the US. After many years of haggling to lower prices and increase access to generic drugs, no substantial progress has been made. Even generic drug prices are now skyrocketing, according to a CBS News investigation. A 60 Minutes feature about the Affordable Care Act reported an “orgy of lobbying and backroom deals in which just about everyone with a stake in the $3-trillion-a-year health industry came out ahead—except the taxpayers.” For example, Life Extension magazine reported that an antiviral cream (acyclovir), which had lost its patent protection, “was being sold to pharmacies for 7,500% over the active ingredient cost. The active ingredient (acyclovir) costs only 8 pennies, yet pharmacies are paying a generic maker $600 for this drug and selling it to consumers for around $700.” The active ingredient in the drug tretinoin costs 80 cents to the manufacturer, yet a full bottle costs $1,100. Other examples include the antibiotic Doxycycline. The price per pill averages 7 cents to $3.36 but has a 5,300 percent markup when it reaches the consumer. The antidepressant Clomipramine is marked up 3,780 percent, and the anti-hypertensive drug Captopril’s mark-up is 2,850 percent. And these are generic drugs! These numbers reveal how bloated and rapacious the medical industrial complex is. Drug prices like these are another reason why the US has failed to successfully launch a national universal healthcare program for all.

Medication costs need to be dramatically cut to allow drug manufacturers a reasonable but not obscene profit margin. By capping profits approximately 100 percent above all costs, we would save our system hundreds of billions of dollars. Such a measure would also extirpate the growing corporate misdemeanors of pricing fraud, which forces patients to pay out-of-pocket in order to make up for the costs insurers are unwilling to pay.

Likewise for exorbitant hospital costs. A one dollar bag of intravenous saline can cost up to $546, plus an additional $127 for administration. If given in a hospital ER, a single aspirin pill can cost $30, six times the pharmacy’s cost for a full bottle.  A Fox News report discovered that a visit to the ER for a headache might bankrupt you with over a $17,700 bill, or bilk you with a $24,100 bill for a sprained ankle. Unfortunately, the private insurance industry permits this unchecked price-gouging, and hospitals simply take advantage of the medical services racket.

Regardless of its harsh corporate critics, a single-payer program is completely feasible and well within the nation’s reach. Dean Baker at the Center for Economics and Policy Research states, “The government already pays for almost half of the nation’s health care bill through Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits and other public sector programs. Achieving Medicare for All would mean covering the other half of current expenses, along with the additional costs of paying for the uninsured and under-insured who are not getting the care they need.”

Finally, we can acknowledge that our healthcare is fundamentally a despotic rationing system based upon high insurance costs vis-a-vis a toss of the dice to determine where a person sits on the economic ladder.  For the past three decades it has contributed to inequality. The present insurance-based economic metrics cast millions of Americans out of coverage because private insurance costs are beyond their means. Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University political economist, has called our system “brutal” because it “rations [people] out of the system.”  He defined rationing as “withholding something from someone that is beneficial.” Discriminatory healthcare rationing now affects over 35 million people who have been priced out the system and left uninsured. They make too much to qualify for Medicare under Obamacare, yet earn far too little to afford private insurance costs and premiums. Out-of-pocket expenses for services insurers refuse to provide can also bankrupt a family. In the final analysis, the entire system is discriminatory and predatory.

However, we must be realistic. Almost every member of Congress has benefited from the flow of Big Pharma and private insurance money into their electoral campaign pockets. The only way to begin to bring our healthcare program up to the level of a truly developed nation is to remove the drug industry’s rampant and unnecessary profiteering from the equation.

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

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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On the 9^th of August, 1945, an all-Christian B-29 bomber crew, took off from Tinian Island in the South Pacific, with the blessings of its Catholic and Protestant chaplains. In the plane’s hold was the second of the only two nuclear bombs to ever be used against human targets in wartime. The primary target, Kokura, Japan, was clouded over, so the plane, named Bock’s Car, headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki.

St. Mary’s Cathedral, located in Nagasaki City’s Urakami River district, was a massive structure and a landmark easily visible from 31,000 feet above. The cathedral was one of the landmarks on which the Bock’s Car’s bombardier had been briefed for weeks before the mission. The cathedral was briefly seen through a break in the clouds, and the drop was ordered. The bomb exploded in a searing fireball as hot as the sun 500 meters above the church.

The legendary Urakami Cathedral was Ground Zero for the Nagasaki bomb on August 9, 1945

The Urakami Cathedral was Ground Zero for the second atomic bomb ever used against civilian populations in war time, and most Nagasaki Christians who lived in the area did not survive. 6,000 of the church members died instantly, including all who were at confession at 11:02 that morning. Of the 12,000 members of the church, eventually 8,500 died as a direct result of the bomb. Three orders of nuns and a Christian girl’s school were incinerated. Tens of thousands of innocent people died instantly and hundreds of thousands were mortally wounded, some of whose progeny are still living in agony as a result of the cross-generational contagiousness of the deadly plutonium. An irradiated crucifix was photographed in the days following the blast, lying helpless and forlorn and lying on its back, a deeply profound symbol of a religion gone wrong.

The Urakami Cathedral was the oldest and largest Christian church in the Orient, and Nagasaki was the oldest, largest and most influential Christian community in Japan, having been founded by the Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, in 1549. The Nagasaki Christian community is legendary in the history of Japanese Christianity because of its two centuries of catacomb-like existence during the horrible persecutions by the Imperial Japanese government – including mass crucifixions of faithful Christians who refused to give up the faith. Despite the persecutions and the formal outlawing of the religion (it was a capital crime to be a Christian – as it was for the original nonviolent form of Christianity – for over 2 centuries), Nagasaki Christianity survived and ultimately flourished – until 11:02 am, August 9, 1945.

What Imperial Japan could not do for over two centuries of brutal persecution and the arbitrary use of the death penalty, fellow Christians from America did in 9 seconds. The Cathedral was totally destroyed by the plutonium bomb and thousands of Nagasaki Christians were instantly boiled, incinerated, carbonized or vaporized. Radiation-induced disease and deformities among the “surviving” victims and their progeny continues to this day as a gruesome testament to the horrors of nuclear war.

Franz Jaegerstaetter was beheaded for refusing to join Hitler’s military on August 9, 1943

Image on the right: Franz Jaegerstaetter (Licensed under the public domain)

On the 9^th of August, 1943, Franz Jaegerstaetter, a devout Austrian Christian pacifist, was beheaded by German Christians for refusing to join Hitler’s army. Because of his gospel-based conscientious objection to war and killing, he had been abandoned by his spiritual leaders, as well as by his family and friends, all of whom had tried to convince him to do his patriotic duty and kill for “Volk, Fuhrer und Vaterland.” They all tried to convince him that his commitment to gospel nonviolence was futile – and, in the context of the national militarism operating at the time, also fatal. Instead, being obedient to the God of love rather than to men, he refused to relent and was murdered at Brandenburg Prison, at the hands of obedient baptized Christian soldiers, whose belt buckles read “Gott Mit Uns” (God With Us).

The Jewish Carmelite Nun, Sister Teresia Benedicta of the Cross was murdered at Auschwitz on August 9, 1942

On the 9^th of August, 1942, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Jewish Catholic Carmelite nun, was murdered by fellow German Christians at Auschwitz. “Gott Mit Uns” was also stamped on their belt buckles. Most of German Christianity had, by its collaboration and/or by its silence, endorsed the Nazi’s ruthless forms of nationalism, militarism, racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and its “legal” right to kill the enemies of the state.

On the 9^th of August, 1945, Lutheran Chaplain William B. Downey, of Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. MN, prayed for the safety of the crew and for world peace just before the Nagasaki bombing mission. (Downey was attached to the US Army Air Force’s 509^thComposite Group, whose major responsibility on Tinian was the delivery of the atomic bombs.)

Pastor Downey’s prayer 

“Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we pray Thee to be gracious with those who fly this night. Guard and protect those of us who venture out into the darkness of Thy heaven. Uphold them on Thy wings. Keep them safe both in body and soul and bring them back to us. Give to us all courage and strength for the hours that are ahead; give to them rewards according to their efforts. Above all else, our Father, bring peace to Thy world. May we go forward trusting in Thee and knowing we are in Thy presence now and forever. Amen.”

After the war ended, Downey, in counseling those soldiers who still had their consciences intact and were therefore troubled by the mass killing of innocent civilians by the bombs, said:

”The wrong was the killing, whether by fire bombs from hundreds of planes, by one atomic bomb or by a single rifle bullet. War itself is the evil that man must conquer.”

Father Zabelka blessed the Nagasaki bombing mission on August 9, 1945

On the 9^th of August, 1945, the 509^th Composite Group’s Catholic chaplain, Father George Zabelka, was just one of millions of victims of societal attitudes at the time: “The whole structure of secular, religious and military society told me clearly that it was all right to ‘let the Japs have it.’ God was on our side.” Father Zabelka knew what his bomber crews were doing to innocent civilians and their defenseless cities with conventional incendiary bombs in the spring and summer of 1945, and yet “I said nothing.” He regretted that silence for the rest of his life, but spent the remaining two decades of his life working tirelessly for world peace and denouncing militarism as being clearly anti-Christian. A contrite Father Zabelka was in Nagasaki on August 1995 asking for forgiveness from the Japanese people for his role in what is now recognized to be a crime against humanity and an international war crime.

Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, the foremost apostle of Christian nonviolence in America today, and the person most responsible for Zabelka’s conversion to gospel nonviolence, has dedicated his life and ministry to raising the consciousness of the church to the truths of Jesus’s nonviolent teachings. McCarthy says:

“Today, as for most of the last 1700 years, most Christians continue to justify as consistent with the spirit of Christ those energies, understandings, and emotions which lead inevitably to August 9. Today most Christians still do not unequivocally teach what Jesus unequivocally taught on the subject of violence. Today most Christians still refuse to proclaim that violence is not the Christian way, that violence is not the Holy way, that violence is not the way of Jesus.”

Every July 1st, to call the Christian community to repent and to return to the truth of the original form of Christianity, ie, that violence is not the way of Christ, Father McCarthy leads a 40 day fast from solid foods, solemnly breaking it on August 9^th at the site of the first atomic bomb detonation at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The test was blasphemously code-named “Trinity”.

McCarthy suggests that sincere Christians remember all the victims of past August 9ths (as well as other infamous dates in the history of war) in their thoughts and prayers on Nagasaki Sunday, August 8, 2010 by attending any of the various anniversary commemorations that may be available during the Hiroshima/Nagasaki week of August 6 – 9, the 65^th anniversaries of the bombings. Those devoted to the truth of gospel nonviolence hope that all ethically-conscious people, especially Christians, consider a day-long fast on August 9 lamenting the hundreds of millions of war dead, the hundreds of millions of physically, psychologically and spiritually dead and dying survivors of war violence (especially those most severely afflicted: the military veterans of war, their secondarily traumatized families and their loved ones and their civilian- and soldier-victims who were on the other side of the battle lines).

And, of course, we must remember the billions of those all over this war-torn world who continue to suffer, generation after generation, from the totally preventable, war-caused starvation, malnutrition, poisoning from Agent Orange, depleted uranium, legal and illicit drugs and other military toxins and the homelessness, joblessness, poverty, suicidality, homicidality, domestic abuse, national bankruptcies and hopelessness that follows all wars.

The War Prayer by Mark Twain

It seems appropriate to end this essay on Nagasaki with the following excerpt from Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer”, which, interestingly, Twain requested not be published until after his death. It is suspected that he felt that he would be castigated for a lack of patriotism by writing such a deeply truthful allegory. The excerpt starts as the Pro-War/ Justified War Theory pastor was praying for the troops. The pastor prayed:

“Watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory–

”An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord and God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

”The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside–which the startled minister did–and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

”’I come from the Throne–bearing a message from Almighty God!’ The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. ‘He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import–that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of–except he pause and think. ‘God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two–one uttered, and the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this–keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware, lest without intent you invoke a curse upon your neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain on your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse on some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

”’You have heard your servant’s prayer–the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it–that part which the pastor–and also you in your hearts–fervently prayed silently–and ignorantly and unthinkingly. God grant that it was so! You heard the words ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results that follow victory–must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“’Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle–be Thou near them! With them–in spirit–we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander friendless in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it–

”’For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

”’We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

”(After a pause.) ‘Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.’

”It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”

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Dr Gary G. Kohls is a retired rural family physician from Duluth, Minnesota. Since his retirement in 2008, Dr Kohls has written a weekly column, titled Duty to Warn, which has been re-published and archived at websites around the world.  

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Dr Kohls practiced holistic mental health care in Duluth for the last decade of his family practice career, primarily helping psychiatric patients who had become addicted to their cocktails of dangerous, addictive psychiatric drugs to safely go through the complex withdrawal process. His Duty to Warn columns often deal with various unappreciated health issues, including those caused by Big Pharma’s over-drugging, Big Vaccine’s over-vaccinating, Big Medicine’s over-prescribing, over-screening, over-diagnosing and over-treating agendas and Big Food’s malnourishing and sickness-promoting food industry. Those four powerful, profit-seeking entities combine to seriously affect the physical, mental, spiritual and economic health of the recipients of the prescription drugs, medical treatments, toxic vaccines and the consumers of the tasty, ubiquitous and disease-producing “FrankenFoods” – particularly when they are consumed in combinations, doses and potencies that have never been tested for safety or long-term effectiveness.

Archive of Dr Kohls’ articles

Featured image is from Political Concern

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

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***

The antiviral medication remdesivir has played a controversial role in the COVID-19 treatment protocols used by hospitals that many families allege resulted in the death of their loved ones.

Among the drug’s potential side effects is acute kidney failure, which many physicians argue is the source of the same symptom reported by the medical establishment to have been caused by COVID-19.

Dr. Bryan Ardis, CEO of Ardis Labs and host of The Dr. Ardis Show, said he watched his own father-in-law die in a hospital in February 2020 after being taken through the same hard-wired, standard-of-care protocols he would eventually witness playing out in the lives of others.

“It was the most traumatic thing I’d ever experienced in my whole life,” Ardis told The Epoch Times.

Among the multiple problems with his treatment, Ardis said, his father-in-law had been erroneously diagnosed with having the flu and given an antibiotic called vancomycin, which, like remdesivir, is known to cause acute kidney failure.

“Not only did he not have the flu, but the doctor also treated him with a horrifically toxic, last-resort antibiotic that doesn’t treat the flu,” he said.

When he asked the doctor why he had his father-in-law on the antibiotic that was causing his kidneys to fail, Ardis said the doctor told him that it was hospital protocol.

‘It Wasn’t From the Virus’

For Ardis, it became a foreshadowing of what was to come with the listed COVID symptoms in fact being caused by the drugs used to treat COVID, he alleged.

“In March 2020, every medical doctor started saying they had never seen a respiratory virus move from the lungs to attack the kidneys, which then causes acute kidney failure,” Ardis said.

But the kidney failure wasn’t from the virus, Ardis said.

Initially, Ardis said he thought they were using vancomycin because the stories in the news matched his own experience. However, he later found that the antiviral drug remdesivir, which itself is reported to cause acute kidney failure, was being used through emergency-use authorization to treat COVID before it was later approved by the Food and Drug Administration in October 2020.

Least Effective and Deadly: Study

Ardis’s research brought him to COVID protocols set by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), who had deemed remdesivir as “safe and effective” based on an experimental trial in Africa during an Ebola outbreak.

In the study found in the New England Journal of Medicine, a safety board found remdesivir to be “the least effective and the deadliest drug in this trial,” before it was suspended, Ardis explained.

“Fifty-three percent of people they gave that drug to died,” Ardis said.

Ardis said he considered whether Fauci had been given bad advice.

“I go to the end of the study and … imagine my shock when I saw that it was actually funded by Fauci’s department at NIAID,” Ardis said. “He would have been given a monthly review of everything coming out of that Ebola trial. The safety board would have let him know it was the least effective and deadliest drug in the trial.”

For Ardis, the study, which predated Fauci’s “safe and effective” estimate, showed that Fauci was not being truthful, Ardis alleged.

Fauci then asked the federal government to buy all the experimental reserves of remdesivir from the California-based pharmaceutical company called Gilead, Ardis said.

Further research didn’t improve his medical opinion of remdesivir, Ardis said, leaving him to conclude that the kidney failure doctors were reporting to be caused by the virus was in fact caused by remdesivir.

“Doctors had no idea they were being set up to use a drug that had such toxic effects and was proven to be ineffective and very dangerous,” Ardis said.

Support Behind Remdesivir

Though NIAID didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment, Fauci told reporters in 2020 during a White House press briefing that the data “shows that remdesivir has a clear cut significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery. This is really quite important.”

A final 2020 report from the National Institute of Health said that remdesivir was “effective against viruses in the coronavirus family.”

The NIH said in its report that remdesivir accelerated recovery for hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19.

“Our findings show that remdesivir is a beneficial treatment for patients with COVID-19,” says study author Dr. John Beigel of NIAID in the report. “It may also help to conserve scarce health care resources, such as ventilators, during this pandemic.”

Physicians such as Dr. Arnold Weg reported to NBC News in 2020 that remdesivir helped him recover from COVID, and that from this personal experience, “I feel very strongly that it should be used.”

Dr. Aneesh Mehta at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta told NBC News in the 2020 report on remdesivir that “remdesivir will get many of our patients home to their families more rapidly and with less side effects.”

As public support for remdesivir grew, Ardis continued to give his second opinion, sharing what he believed to be the truth about remdesivir, COVID protocols, alternative treatments, and the then-imminent vaccines.

It was Ardis’s information that helped people who reported equally traumatic experiences with hospital protocols, such as Kristi Schmadl and Greta Crawford.

‘Enough Sedatives to Put Down a Horse’

Schmadl told The Epoch Times that she believes it was remdesivir that caused her mother’s death in a hospital, based on medical records that show a worsening of kidney levels with each dose.

In addition to not feeding her mother and giving her “enough sedatives to put down a horse,” Schmadl said hospital staff attempted to label her mother as Do Not Resuscitate (DNR).

“We had one doctor tell us that if we didn’t put a DNR on her, he would,” she said.

Schmadl’s mother, who had only one kidney, was allegedly given vancomycin, fentanyl, precedex, and other drugs to which Schmadl said she and her family never consented.

“They called us on Aug. 15 to tell us our mother had ‘expired,’” Schmadl said. “That’s the word they used.”

Schmadl connected with Crawford, who herself was being treated with remdesivir in a hospital when she demanded that hospital staff cease treatment, remove her IV, and let her leave.

“My husband wheeled me out,” Crawford told The Epoch Times. “I was still on oxygen and weak.”

Crawford said she’s the only person she knows of who was still allowed a family member to be inside with her for 12 hours a day, as hospital COVID protocols usually require that the patient be isolated from their families.

While in the hospital, Crawford said a nurse “pressured her” and her family to get vaccinated while being treated with remdesivir.

“After my first dose, I noticed my hands and feet swell,” Crawford said. “At the time, I didn’t know that it was my kidneys shutting down.”

When she asked her doctor what was going on, Crawford said he stared at the floor and mumbled, “COVID’s strange” before walking out.

“I’ve never seen a doctor act like that,” Crawford said.

Crawford had COVID for two weeks before she entered the hospital, and for that time she had not experienced the symptoms she experienced when given remdesivir, she said.

“My white blood cell count shot up, I got a blood clot in my leg, I would have vomiting—all of these symptoms I had not experienced at home,” she said.

First published by GR on June 28, 2018

By New Year’s Day 1951, the United States had increased its atomic bomb stockpile by many times over, enough to wipe out the Soviet Union. In June 1946, to the frustration of US war planners, the military possessed a modest nine atomic bombs. However, less than five years later, the world’s leading power acquired an arsenal of 400 such bombs. As the postwar years further advanced America was churning out nuclear weapons “like sausages”, to borrow the phrase of Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev.

Despite Japan bearing the brunt of two atomic attacks in August 1945, it was in the direction of the Soviet Union that America’s nuclear focus was truly pointed. The atomic assaults on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, eventually killing over 200,000 people, were further meant as a warning signal to the USSR.

US General Leslie Groves, in charge of the nuclear program known as the “Manhattan Project”, had in 1944 confirmed that the Soviets were identified as America’s real long-term enemy. At Los Alamos, New Mexico, General Groves had revealed this bombshell to Joseph Rotblat, a Polish-born nuclear physicist. Rotblat said many years later,

“I believed that we had to develop the bomb as a deterrent to the Germans who, we believed – wrongly – were also developing the bomb. It was at this time [1944] that Groves mentioned that the real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets. I was terribly shocked”.

Image on the right: Joseph Rotblat

Unknown to Rotblat was that Hitler had, as early as June 1942, decided against the development of an atomic bomb – on both racial and pragmatic grounds – as repeatedly outlined by Nazi war minister Albert Speer, one of the most powerful figures in the Third Reich. By the summer of 1944, Allied intelligence accounts were flowing in that a Nazi atomic bomb was non-existent. Even earlier than this, in late 1943, the British spy Paul Rosbaud operating in Germany had reported to his superiors that the Nazi nuclear program was idle. This crucial information was subsequently relayed to Manhattan Project intelligent services, and on to General Groves.

Meanwhile at the end of 1944 Rotblat had endured enough, resigning from the Manhattan Project on moral grounds, the only such scientist to do so. If the Nazis had no nuclear plans, as neither did the Russians seriously at that time, was it really worth pursuing the development of atomic weapons? It would inevitably lead to nuclear proliferation, thereby placing the human species, including Americans, under increasing peril.

In the following decades, Rotblat himself became a noted anti-nuclear proponent and activist. Just months before his death in August 2005, aged 96, Rotblat penned an open letter to US president George W. Bush, writing that:

“The only way to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and to remove the fear of their inevitable use remains, as it has always been, the global elimination of all nuclear weapons by all states”.

As the Second World War ended in mid-August 1945, just days following Japan’s surrender American strategists were highlighting which Soviet cities to attack with atomic bombs. Major General Lauris Norstad, a great advocate of nuclear weapons, sent General Groves a list marking out 15 “key Soviet cities” headed by the capital Moscow, and 25 other “leading Soviet cities”, including Leningrad – which in particular was still reeling from the horrors of the Nazi siege of that city. Norstad also compiled an estimate of how many atomic bombs it would require to destroy each city, with Moscow and Leningrad needing six each.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, as Commanding General, had first met Norstad in Algiers in October 1942. Eisenhower described the then Lieutenant-Colonel Norstad as “a young air officer who so impressed me by his alertness, grasp of problems, and personality that I never thereafter lost sight of him. He was, and is, one of those rare men whose capacity knows no limits”. Indeed, reaching all the way to the earth-altering subject of nuclear weapons. This was also the case under Eisenhower when he became president in 1953. By the time “General Ike” departed office after two terms in 1961, the US arsenal had grown to 18,000 nuclear bombs.

In the early postwar years, the US military’s demand for weapons was not in line with supply. As euphoria of victory in the war dissipated, in late 1945 the US had only two atomic bombs in its arsenal. By the time America’s first official postwar plan against the USSR was formulated, in November 1947, it called for hitting 24 Soviet cities with 34 atomic bombs. However, in late 1947, the US had only 13 such weapons, which were of the Nagasaki type. The small number of atomic bombs was a closely-guarded secret. When president Harry Truman was informed of the true figures in April 1947, he was shocked by the news, presuming the stockpile to be in the dozens.

Following the Berlin Blockade (June 1948-May 1949), one of the first Cold War crises, Truman initiated three separate budgetary increases for nuclear bomb production. The desire to create more weapons was increased by the realization that the Soviets had, in late August 1949, tested their first atomic device – which was a replica of the Nagasaki bomb. News of the Soviets’ successful nuclear detonation astonished not only the American public, but many up the chain of US command; it had been thought the USSR would not attain such a goal until the mid-1950s.

Meanwhile, in October 1948 General Curtis LeMay, an especially hawkish US commander, became head of Strategic Air Command when he succeeded General George Kenney. LeMay quickly formulated the Emergency War Plan, which laid down demands for Strategic Air Command to “increase its capability to such an extent that it would be possible to deliver the entire stockpile of atomic bombs, if made available, in a single massive attack” against the USSR. LeMay’s strategy outlined that 133 atomic bombs would be dropped on 70 Soviet urban areas, killing perhaps 2.7 million people, almost all of them civilians. However, the final death toll would likely be far higher than that.

Such a strategy was being devised against a USSR which, in late 1948, had no atomic weapons. Furthermore, the socialist state was still recovering from the Nazi invasion of a few years before, and represented no threat to the American mainland. Nor would it do so for many years. By the following year, October 1949, LeMay’s Emergency War Plan had expanded to call for attacks on 104 Soviet urban centers with 220 atomic bombs, plus a few dozen weapons held back in reserve. In the summer of 1950, the Americans had possession of almost 300 nuclear weapons – they were all of the Nagasaki variety, plutonium implosion bombs, now being churned out on a production line. In 1950, the Soviets had comfortably less than 10 such weapons.

Just a decade later, 1960, the US nuclear arsenal not only further multiplied, but the nature of the bombs had also radically altered. They were almost entirely comprised of the “thermonuclear” variety: That is, hydrogen bombs, also known as H-bombs. These weapons are a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Come the latter stages of the Eisenhower presidency, the nuclear age had reached a point by which it became a grave threat to the human species, as it has done through to today.

The first hydrogen bomb was successfully tested in November 1952 by the Americans (with the Soviets following suit the next year). It had long been in the pipeline. A decade previously, in July 1942, the Hungarian-American physicist Edward Teller had a revealing discussion with his colleague Hans Bethe. Teller, an early member of the Manhattan Project, said

“the fission bomb [atomic bomb] was all well and good and, essentially, was now a sure thing”.

He felt that “what we should really think about was the possibility of igniting deuterium by a fission weapon – the hydrogen bomb”. Teller was later known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb”.

By the mid-to-late 1950s, increasing numbers of hydrogen bombs were entering the US arsenal, replacing the “obsolete” atomic bombs. In 1955, the estimated death toll from atomic weapon assaults on the USSR was 13 million dead. By the following year, 1956, there was a more than tenfold increase in the expected death toll with the new hydrogen bombs. It was thought that 150 million Soviets would be killed.

Come the early 1960s – with Kennedy now in office – the calculated death toll in the entire Soviet bloc, from expanding US nuclear attacks, had risen to over 200 million. Many millions would also die in America’s NATO ally countries, and neutral nations, by the resulting spread of radioactive fallout, which US planners were aware of. Simultaneous American bombings of Communist China were forecast to eventually kill about 300 million Chinese. From late 1949, China was added to the nuclear hit list following the Mao Zedong-led revolution. These enormous killing estimates were kept so secret that very few people, even within the American government, were intimate with the numbers.

By 1983, environmental scientists learnt that any such attacks would have killed almost all humans on earth, with the resulting nuclear winter quickly leading to a global famine.

*

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

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Commemorating Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Blaming Russia for U.S. War Crimes

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 09, 2022

Mainstream media lies then and now. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to be presented as a humanitarian undertaking by the U.S., as a means to ending WWII and saving lives. And today, in chorus, in regards to nuclear weapons, the media is placing the blame on Russia.

Punishing Whistleblowers at the United Nations

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, August 09, 2022

On June 21 this year, the BBC added its contribution with a documentary about whistleblowers within the UN and the malicious treatment they have received at the hands of their superiors.  The test and merit of any organisation lies in how it treats those who expose defects and faults.

Canada’s Actions, Inactions Leading Us Closer to Nuclear War

By Yves Engler, August 09, 2022

Humanity is a mistake away from “nuclear annihilation”, according to the head of the United Nations. But the Canadian government refuses to support efforts to lessen that risk. In fact, they’ve pursued policies that increase the likelihood of nuclear war.

Cuban Vaccine Against Lung Cancer Makes Its Way in the United States

By Granma, August 09, 2022

Cimavax-EGF, a Cuban therapeutic vaccine against lung cancer, conquers the scientific community and the population of the United States based on the achievements compiled in studies carried out. The vaccine was obtained after more than two decades of research and have shown satisfactory results in patients in advanced stages of lung cancer.

COVID Vaccination and Turbo-Cancer. “Multiple Tumors in Multiple Organs”. Dr. Ute Kruger

By Etana Hecht, August 08, 2022

Dr. Kruger initially thought that these turbo cancers, as she calls them, were due to delayed doctor appointments from Covid lockdowns, but that period is long over, and the tumors are still growing aggressively, and in younger patients. She reported some of these cases to the FDA, and while some higher-ups initially agreed to meet with her, they canceled the meeting with no explanation the next day and sent a phone agent to take her report instead.

All Roads in Gaza Led to Jenin, The Center of Palestinian Resistance

By Steven Sahiounie, August 08, 2022

Gaza is separated from Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank by Israeli territory, and yet the current Israeli attack on Gaza, and the deaths, injuries and destruction of homes is directly connected to Jenin, the center of Palestinian resistance.

How the Pentagon Dictates Hollywood Storylines. “War Propaganda Passed off as Entertainment”

By Jonathan Cook, August 08, 2022

In what should have been an extraordinary television confession this month, John Bolton, national security adviser in the previous administration of President Donald Trump, admitted to CNN in passing that he had helped to plot the overthrow of foreign governments while in office.

The Phoney Nitrogen Crisis: The Netherlands Is Ground Zero for Global Famine Agenda. Precipitating “30,000 Farmers Out of Business”

By TheCOVIDBlog.com, August 08, 2022

Before we dive into this, it’s important to understand nitrogen and its role on Earth. The air human beings breathe is 78% nitrogen, 22% oxygen and 1% other stuff. Humans have been breathing nitrogen throughout their existence on Earth. Most nitrogen in Earth atmosphere is N2 molecules, which are mostly inert (chemically non-reactive).

As the COVID Myths Explode, Delusions Are Shattering: Our Exit from Subservience Leads to Nuremberg 2.0

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, August 08, 2022

The steady unmasking of some nasty realities is finally infusing added intellectual oxygen into the public’s heightened awareness of the pervasive speciousness permeating the misnamed pandemic. As we move towards the final months of 2022, many open veins of fraud are being unearthed.

US Ambassadorial Nominee Confirms Role of NGOs in the Hybrid War Against Nicaragua

By Miguel Santos García, August 08, 2022

The US continues its foreign policy of a ‘rules-based order’ executed under ultimatums, political deception and hybrid warfare across the globe in its resistance to the global systemic transition to multipolarity. The article will focus on how Nicaragua’s government has dealt with the trending New Cold War.

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

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***

The United Nations prides itself on exposing, monitoring and noting the travails and vicissitudes to be found on this troubled planet.  It also prides itself on being the premier international institution that protects, or at the very least keeps an eye out for, the principles of the Charter that underpin its existence.  But as with all bodies with mighty aspirations but skewed power, the grime of reality often supplies a different, less impressive picture.

Every organisation replicates its own rationale for existence, including mechanisms to cope with problems of its own making.  Such problems are rarely resolved: they are inherent in the nature of the organisation itself, essential to its functioning.  The United Nations, like many labyrinthine orders, has proven to be impenetrable , bureaucratic and dispiriting.  For years, it has been dealing with a range of conduct issues regarding UN personnel and, for want of a better term, the workplace.  Over that time, it has also sought to keep such misbehaviour, and in some cases blatant criminality, concealed, preferring to focus the ire upon those who spill the beans.

Consulting the range of measures supposedly in place does little to encourage optimism.  In February 2016, we are told of Jane Holl Lute’s appointment as Special Coordinator on improving the UN responds to “sexual exploitation and abuse” which, on first reading, looks like an encouragement rather than a counter.  “Her role is to work across the United Nations systems’ many offices, departments and agencies to strengthen the UN response to sexual exploitation and abuse, wherever it may occur, from headquarters locations to the most remote field bases.”

The remit is a cool, procedural one, a case of making sure that the stars of administration align with the requisite paperwork.  Lute’s task was to “align approaches, enhance coordination, cooperation and coherence system-wide through the development of aligned mechanisms and procedures, standardized protocols and tools.”  This is the sort of language that murders the cause and obscures the victim, which is precisely the sort of rationale that thrives in New York and those “remote bases”.

But there is more.  Jane Connors comes shooting up the ranks as the appointed Victims’ Rights Advocate at UN Headquarters in August 2017.  Her role: to “ensure that the United Nations provides tangible and sustained assistance to the victims of sexual exploitation and abuse.”

These are but a few examples, and have done nothing to stem, let alone stop the rot.  On June 21 this year, the BBC added its contribution with a documentary about whistleblowers within the UN and the malicious treatment they have received at the hands of their superiors.  The test and merit of any organisation lies in how it treats those who expose defects and faults.  The brave and the responsible will take such exposures to heart, punish those responsible for breaches and apply the appropriate treatments.  Most, however, prefer to punish the well-meaning discloser while sparing the perpetrator.

The revelations in the documentary, informed by a number of whistleblowers, are disturbingly extensive.  There is James Wasserstrom, who claims to have found evidence that the construction of a power station in Kosovo came from a tendering process compromised by generous kickbacks.  There is John O’Brien, who brought attention to the fact that an environmental programme based in Russia had been tarnished by money-laundering.

In all these instances, organisational vindictiveness duly kicked in.  Wasserstrom, despite being promised the protections one would expect for a whistleblower, had his name leaked to his accusers.  O’Brien was accused of misbehaving in viewing nude photographs on his phone at work, the whistleblower as deviant.

All this pales before the crimes committed by the Blue Helmet peacekeepers in such countries as the Central African Republic and Haiti.  Locals became prey to sexual assault, vulnerable quarry to be pursued rather than protected.  Former assistant secretary-general Tony Banbury was particularly concerned about the welfare of a rape victim in CAR. He was left disgusted and despondent.  “I needed the organisation to prioritise that girl.  They prioritise the perpetrators.”

Those reporting sexual misconduct by highly placed UN personnel became rich targets for retribution.  Their careers were prematurely frustrated or ended.  Purna Sen, who was appointed spokeswoman on harassment, assault and discrimination in 2018, could only lament to BBC Newsnight that there was “a real tension within an organisation which not only upholds and advocates for human rights, but is actually the birthplace of most of these human rights – yet hasn’t learned to bring them home to the people who work for that organisation.”

The Government Accountability Project, Transparency International and the Whistleblowing International Network responded to the revelations in the documentary by repeating their own concerns.  “We again urge UN Secretary General António Guterres to immediately order an independent inquiry and use his power to remedy the harm caused to UN staff who have already suffered for trying to do the right thing.”  The three groups insist that, “Serious structural reforms are needed to bring the UN systems in line with international consensus for best practice principles and to ensure UN staff feel safe to speak up when they witness harmful conduct at work.”

The core problem for such a body as the UN, like others wielding enormous and iniquitous power, is suggested by the proliferation of policies without action or spirit.  They function like economists in the service of a bankrupt state, with guardians and investigators merely serving as advisors who never solve the problem.

One such individual is spokesman for the UN Secretary General himself, Stéphane Dujarric, who seems to genuinely believethe piffle he is spouting.  “We continue to do whatever we can to support victims and are focused on improving the systems and ensuring that people feel safe to report abuse.”

For those who seek change, punishment and banishment await.  With that state of affairs, everyone, from leader to cleaner, will be assured that this will remain the ugliest of family affairs, ensuring that all whistleblowing will never perform the role it should.

*

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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]

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

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

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

***

First published on July 23, 2022

Read the original German version:

Video: Interview mit Wirtschaftsexperte Peter König: Mit dem QR-Code zur absoluten Kontrolle

By Peter Koenig and Kla TV, July 19, 2022

***

“I am an economist and geopolitical analyst and try as best as possible to reflect the ever-changing “today’s”/ resp. to analyze “tomorrow’s” situations. In other words, to connect the dots: the dots between Covid, the Ukraine war, the reset, the QR code that is becoming more and more obtrusive, the planned “4th Industrial Revolution” by Klaus Schwab. This includes the plan to digitize everything, including the human brain, etc. etc.”

“This personal QR code is then spread out over or used further via an app on your cell phone. 

And this app is of course connected to a control center, we can’t do anything there, the phones, these mobile phones, they’re all already set up in such a way that they can be accessed from anywhere, even if you turn off the GPS, they know exactly that it’s there accompanied us, even without GPS – that’s quite clear. Then you would have to throw it away or leave it at home.”

“That’s why they don’t even know that they probably already have their QR code somewhere in their body. And those who haven’t done it yet have it on their cell phones. And we have to do something about it.”

Video  in German

Transcript. Translated from German

Kla.TV: Peter König worked as an economist at the World Bank for over 30 years and has implemented water projects in developing countries on various continents. I am pleased to welcome Peter König to Kla.TV. Can you tell us something about your current job?

Peter Koenig:  First: Thank you for allowing me to be with you and speak to you. I am an economist and geopolitical analyst and try as best as possible to reflect the ever-changing “today’s”/ resp. to analyze “tomorrow’s” situations. In other words, to connect the dots: the dots between Covid, the Ukraine war, the reset, the QR code that is becoming more and more obtrusive, the planned “Fourth Industrial Revolution” by Klaus Schwab.

This includes the plan to digitize everything including the human brain etc etc. So there are a lot of dots that can and must be connected in order to understand what is going on and what is planned. We have to know that in principle nothing is and remains stagnant, except for the big goal at the moment: The Great Reset, UN Agenda 2030, and the 4th Industrial Revolution. These are different descriptions for the same goal. You have to know that. They may have been made that way to confuse. But in principle it’s the same.

Kla.TV: How would you describe the current financial situation? For the average consumer, everything is still – yes – pretty much in balance. He’s actually still doing pretty well.

PK: Yes, that’s right. The average Joe living in Switzerland is relatively well off. But here in Switzerland, too, poverty has increased, and considerably so. Only here in Switzerland we don’t talk about it. It is taboo to be poor. The official unemployment figures in Switzerland in May this year were 2.1%, in April it was 2.3%, while at the end of December last year it was almost 5%. In my opinion, these figures are greatly manipulated. It’s the same everywhere in the West, by the way. 

One would also need to know the unemployment criteria: what is classified and considered as unemployment? How is day work, part-time work assessed? How are the different “classes” of jobs – construction work, clerical work, managerial/elite work, etc. – how are they included in the statistics? They’re not uniform. And I suppose I’m assuming that’s not being said either – these analyzes are available, that’s quite clear (in the statistics) – but they’re never published. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a lot of people today had to deal with part-time work and were classified as full-time employees.

In 2020 – the last number you can find openly – it was officially 8.5% of the people who were poor. How is poverty defined? A family of four with an income of less than 4,000 francs a month is poor in Switzerland. However, this criterion is not officially applied in Switzerland. Unofficially yes. But there is, I think, only in the canton of Geneva – recently – CHF 4,400 was named as an official poverty threshold number.

Kla.TV : You say that we are in the final phase of a demonic plan. They set this with the UN Agenda 2030, the so-called ‘Great Reset’ or the ‘4. Industrial Revolution’; they are the same. Can you tell us what you think are the goals of this plan or of the ‘Great Reset’?

PK : Yes, I would like to say very briefly as an introduction: The entire ‘Great Reset’ – the Ukraine war, by the way, is an integral part of it. You just don’t notice it. The war is typically another… – a divider of people. True, war can never be justified, nor any kind of killing. But one can explain how it came to this: The constant provocation of NATO, which opposed the promise of the Allies “Not One Inch Further East than Berlin” at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union – that was what the US Secretary of State, then James Baker, said and actually promised. And nobody respected that.

On the other hand, if you mention even a half-hearted argument for Putin, you are a frowned upon and hated as a Putin lover. There are even Swiss officers who did that, who worked in Ukraine, who were in NATO and see the matter clearly. That’s what they said. They are now censored. Imagine that. This is also known as “divide and conquer”. The media play a powerful role in indoctrinating the population with lies practically 24 x 7 and for the last – more than two years – they have been very successful. They are literally subsidized with billions, these lies. So that means the media were and are “subsidized”, or rather corrupted.

In short, what the West, especially the United States, has always wanted is control of the largest and richest country in the world, Russia. With by far the most mineral resources in the world. All natural resources that the West needs, not least for their war industry. The “rare earths”. So these are metals that are used primarily in electronics. The biggest consumer in electronics is the war industry and of course our western luxury lifestyle. In order to maintain that, we also need these raw materials, which can mainly be supplied by Russia and China.

In my view, the ‘Great Reset’ has three equal and devastating but related goals:

First: depopulation: That means massive depopulation. The eugenists are at work.

That was a plan of the ‘Club of Rome’ 50 years ago. And it was clearly stated in their report “Limit to Growth” from 1972. It was also part of the basis for the first formulations for the European Union.

Covid-19 was the targeted and psychologically sophisticated method of intimidation with a virus that you don’t see, of course, that never existed as such.

A new virus that has never been identified. It is flu-like and has a mortality rate roughly equal to that of the annual flu. About 0.07 to 0.1 percent of infections.

And this applies above all to older people who are already suffering from other comorbidities. But the fear mongering has caused that, mostly under pressure and blackmail, between 60 and 80% of the western population let themselves be “vaccinated”.

And so I put “vaccination” in quotation marks, because it’s not a vaccination. And that’s why I prefer to call it, they got vaxxed.

With a substance or substances containing genetically alterable components mRNA plus various toxins, like graphene oxide that cause serious diseases like heart failure , various types of cancer , kidney failure and so on. And in many cases, as we have seen, they are obviously fatal.

In fact, far more people have died from the effects of the so-called vaccination than from the effects of Covid. In addition, there is not one vaccination, there are different injections with different biochemical compositions. And we have to keep this in mind: There isn’t just one vaccine, one type of chemical that’s injected, there are different ones. I think to remember that real scientists once pointed out that there are at least five different species. But probably even more. And some of them are used in a targeted manner in certain countries and certain societies. So fear is the enemy’s greatest and strongest weapon, we must always keep that in mind.

Second: So the second reason behind this trilogy is the shift of private and public-private capital, i.e. the combination of public and private, from the bottom and the middle to the top.

Through artificially created economic crises, bankruptcies, etc., capital is shifted from below and from the middle up to a relatively thin layer of control-seeking, I would even call them criminal elites.

One can also call these groups a cult. And I actually think they live by certain cult standards. In the cults, certain habits and certain groups of people are classified as a cult because they have to follow these norms in order to be successful.

According to Forbes, the economics analyst, there were 2,668 billionaires on April 5 of this year (2022).

An Elon Musk is apparently number one with 219 billion.

You can clearly see that while the world population has become poorer, the wealth of the rich and especially the super-rich has multiplied. Bill Gates’ wealth, just one example, has increased from $96 billion in 2019 to $129 billion this April (note: 2022). That’s about 34 percent more.

While he is partially responsible for this plandemic – I call it a plandemic because it wasn’t a pandemic but a planned pandemic – for which he is responsible, for tens and tens of thousands of vaxx deaths.

Then there are the financial companies like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and also Fidelity and many others. And most importantly, the top three intertwined co-shareholders BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street are estimated to control somewhere between US$20 and US$25 trillion (1 trillion = 1 with 12 zeros).

They have leverage power of over $100 trillion. In contrast, the world gross national product is about US$ 95 trillion, that was at the end of last year (note: 2021). And with that power, they can coerce and blackmail literally any country, any government, any society. And we’ve seen that before. Those who do not participate are so-called “neutralized”. There are quite a few of them, especially in Africa.

These are people, behind BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street et al – along with other billionaires – that you can in good conscience – I would say, call sick. That’s why they, who have such capital powers at their disposal, have to control people. But actually – we can’t imagine that, at least I can’t – what that can do for you.

This is the state of the world today and we are only at the beginning of the 2030 Agenda. As long as people, the majority of people, suffer from what is called cognitive dissonance, we will continue to be dominated and manipulated until it comes to the next step. And so far this has been true. There are so many people, psychologists say, that this kind of affection, you can call it a disease, which is called cognitive dissonance, is one of the worst psychologically because it’s almost impossible to get rid of.

Kla.TV : What do you think is the next step then?

PK: This is precisely the third item in this diabolical trilogy, the ‘Reset’. This is total digitization. Money, people, surveillance and control of everything. Humans become transhumans. Klaus Schwab even said that in an interview on Swiss French television in 2016.

On top of that, we have the so-called QR-code. QR stands for “Quick Response”. And the associated technology that allows storing at least 30,000 data of each individual– up to now, and that can be increased. What and where you are, buy, where you go, who you circulate with, who you talk to, your health status, your bank account, your police report – everything, everything, is being watched and recorded.

The most important tool for full digitization is 5G. That’s why we already find antennas everywhere. And 5G is already active in certain cantons. I was in Ticino the other day and my phone already showed 5G. Not yet here in the Geneva area. And 6G will probably come soon. Because the only reason, by far the biggest reason for this is the digitization of everything and above all of people.

So: the QR code and the so-called VC derived from it – i.e. the “vaccine code” or “vaccine certificate code” (“vaccination certificate” in English) are the most dangerous thing that threatens us, what we face if we do nothing do about it. Because that means total surveillance. And once we’re there, it’s very, very difficult to get out of there.

Kla.TV: But let me tell you: the QR code is now an integral part of everyday life. We have that everywhere. And you see it as the most dangerous thing that can happen to us. Can you describe the danger of this QR code in a little more detail?

PK: We can even be condemned to starvation via the QR code. How so?

To do this, the QR code – or its successor, whatever it is called – has to be implanted in people in some way. And that’s what Klaus Schwab said back then in this short interview with Swiss-French television in Geneva, and that six years ago – he said: In about 2025, we will all have a chip either in our clothes or under our skin. Well, that was, maybe that’s his dream, I hope it doesn’t come to that, but he already announced it.

And so we’re in an electro-… we become an electromagnetic field. We people. There are already test groups in Sweden, volunteer test groups, who have implanted a chip in their hand, about the size of a grain of rice. At the moment, as I said, these are only volunteers who are involved. And so they need this code, i.e. this chip, mainly for digital payment transactions. But they can of course be expanded. Their potential is practically unlimited.

This is the basis for the QR-code, implanted into your body, and manipulable via 5G, or later 6G. One can easily imagine that someone who doesn’t live conform to the systems / the dictatorship’s requirements will be excluded form the payment system. That could mean, the person would not be able to buy food. The perso’s digital bank account may also be blocked, including the money in the account.

The west is doing this routinely – maybe less with individuals, but with countries that dare not living up to the demands of the US empire. Europe, especially NATO countries usually follow suit stealing other countries’ assets. Mind you, this is totally illegal under internatioal law. But nobody even cares anymore about international law.

Among the most sanctioned countries are Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Syria – and many others.

See also this on 5G.

Kla.TV : Mr König, you said that everyone now has a QR code, how do you understand that?

PK: Yes, well I’m assuming that everyone has at some point paid an invoice with a QR code on it. Even if you don’t need it to pay the bill, you still have associated your name, i.e. your own name, with this QR code and paid the bill, because that is an integral part of the payment slip that you use via the Bank paid or paid at post office counter.

But more importantly, probably all of us – or almost all of us I’m assuming – have done a PCR test, either because we wanted to travel or because we wanted to go to a theater somewhere, or something… In the last two years you could yes hardly go to a restaurant or in many restaurants you could not go at all around here without either being vaccinated or having a QR test. Then. everyone who has a PCR test, has a QR code, and a personal QR code at that.

This personal QR code, which is then just spread over or further used via an app on your cell phone. And this app is of course connected to a control center, we can’t do anything about it. The mobile phones are all already set up in such a way that they can be accessed from anywhere, even if you turn off the GPS, they know exactly where we are and what we do. If you don’t want this control, you literally have to throw your phone away. Or leave it at home. Very few people are willing do that.

But apart from that: at some point you need this cellphone again and then you are connected to it, and if you just like I said, we talked about the injection that contains graphene oxide and graphene oxide is very, very electromagnetic. That’s the substance that’s needed, probably one of the substances, maybe the most important, that’s needed to manipulate us with 5G. It may be soon. I don’t know when that will happen, but it certainly can… maybe it’s already started for certain people.

And then when that happens, the graphene oxide injection, we’ve practically got this substance of a QR code already built into our system. That’s how it works. And we can’t do anything about it, we don’t even know anymore. Most people… – I suppose very few people know that they have been vaccinated with a vaccine, so-called vaccine, which consists of graphene oxide, a highly magnetizable and electronically manipulable substance, very few people know that.

And that’s why they don’t even know that they probably already carry their QR code somewhere in their body. And those who haven’t done it yet have it on their cell phones. And we have to do something about that. There are people, there are effectively people, who say: We should try to go back in time, not to use cell phones anymore.

The smart phone has been gradually and persistently – and ever more persistently, infiltrated into our lives that we cannot imagine a life, especially the younger people, the younger generation, without this cellphone at all can no longer imagine. Most people find this QR code great. When I talk to people, especially younger people, they think it is superb, because you use it to pay a bill in the supermarket or restaurant directly with your phone, just swipe it by a cashier’s device – and bingo, the bill is paid. They have absolutely no idea what the aim is, no idea at all, and they don’t want to listen either. I’m a weirdo. I’m sorry, this is unfortunately our world today.

The digitized way of life, is driven into our brains with a flagrantly sophisticated lie-propaganda. When you know how much even the Swiss government, subsidized the media, or corrupts the media, it sounds unbelievable. The amount per capita in Switzerland – we only have 8.4 million inhabitants – is significantly higher than in the USA. A figure that has circulated is 1.7 billion Swiss francs (about the same in US dollars) over a period of 2 or 3 years. Just so, that the media say what the Swiss government and very likely WHO and the WEF wants them to say.

Kla.TV : Would that be the transformation from “human” to “transhuman”, as Klaus Schwab had specified somewhere or was also prescribed or advertised by his diabolical top advisor, the author and historian Yuval Noah Harari? Harari talks about how “humans” will be hacked in the future…?

PK: Harari literally calls us humans “animals that can be hacked”. Those are his words, meaning “animals that can be hacked”. “Hacked” in the sense of “electronically infiltrated” and can be manipulated. “Animals that can be hacked” are us.

I’m assuming that this arrogant kind of impudence from Harari was exploited by Klaus Schwab, probably even encouraged, to scare people. The first motto of avoidance, of resistance, is not to be afraid – NEVER.

I’ve said that before and I’ll keep repeating it. Have no fear. Fear is their greatest weapon. That’s the worst. In other words, many of those who have already been vaccinated, i.e. the so-called vaccinated, have had graphene oxide injected. And graphene oxide works very well as an electromagnetic field through which one may be manipulated.

And already with this manipulation a certain transhumanism is present. Most people don’t even know that. With 5G you can easily make remote-controlled transhumans out of it. That would be the total enslavement of the survivors; those who have just survived the reduction in world population. From my point of view, this would be a life no longer worth living, but we would probably hardly notice it, because we are under the spell of artificial intelligence (AI) [= artificial intelligence (AI)], algorithms or just as Klaus Schwab called it “You will own nothing but be happy.”

The dark cabal or cult’s goal as I like to call it, to reach this point by 2030, upon fulfillment, after the implementation of the UN Agenda 2030 – so there are still 8 years to go – or also with the fulfillment of the ‘Great Reset’, or the fulfillment of the ‘4. Industrial Revolution’. As already mentioned, these are goals that are identical in the three synonymous programs, the terminologies are just different in order to confuse us.

Kla.TV: Yes, do you see a possibility that these goals of total enslavement can still be prevented?

PK: Yes, there is still a lot missing, providing time to really wake people up, to wake up the majority. But it has to come to that. It is impossible for nature to be intimidated by such people — I can hardly call them people anymore, they are no longer humane.

So: take consciousness to a higher level to avoid the manipulation of the dark cult. That’s a priority.

In order to do that, we must–so I repeat–we must not be afraid. We must accept the acknowledgment of the lie that we have probably been exposed to for a lifetime. Because that is the power for overcoming of the so-called cognitive dissonance.

And very important, very important, we must not feel or express hatred towards these perpetrators. Because if we do that – that’s basically what they want, if they scare us or intimidate us, then their aim is to cause hatred. Then we sit down on the same deep level as they are themselves. We’re not allowed to.

So according to the motto – “We shall overcome” – we will master the situation – WITHOUT FEAR, I repeat again, WITHOUT FEAR, live towards the light and decide in peace for humanity. And so we can – I am convinced – save ourselves.

Kla.TV : Yes, Peter König, thank you very much for the interview. Thank you for taking the time. And yes, we will overcome together. Many Thanks.

Peter König : Nothing to thank for. I am grateful to you for letting me speak on your program and hopefully this message will reach some who are willing to get involved – also get involved spiritually. Many Thanks.

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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).

He 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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Have we forgotten that there is no safe place to hide in a nuclear war?

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Featured image is from Pete Linforth/Pixabay

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Cimavax-EGF, a Cuban therapeutic vaccine against lung cancer, conquers the scientific community and the population of the United States based on the achievements compiled in studies carried out. The vaccine was obtained after more than two decades of research and have shown satisfactory results in patients in advanced stages of lung cancer.

The Cuban Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM) and the Roswell Park Cancer Research Center in Buffalo, in the United States of America, joined forces a few years ago to facilitate access to equipment and reagents in order to promote the development of the drug, reported Russia Today.

The creation of the only joint venture between Cuba and the United States, the Innovative Immunotherapy Alliance, a biotechnological company to insert the drug in the U.S. society, facilitated Cuba’s access to equipment and reagents which are very difficult to obtain due to the limitations of the coercive measure of the economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the United States on the island, and the northern country can have access to a drug with excellent results and prospects.

Doctor Elia Neninger, who participated of in the clinical trials of the therapeutic vaccine from the beginning, assured the Russian TV station that the drug has two great advantages: few adverse reactions and a solution to lung cancer, which is a serious health problem in Cuba.

Deputy director of the Molecular Immunology Center Kalet León Monzón said that the patients who have received the vaccine are recovering from advanced tumor cancer and could have the prospect of survival in normal conditions in the very short term, according to Russia Today.

One of the beneficiaries of the vaccine, Miguel Creus, a patient who began to receive Cimavax 15 years ago, when the disease was in stage four and the vaccine was in clinical trials, assures that the drug has prolonged his life with a satisfactory state of health, and that at present he has no traces of tumors or symptoms of the disease.

Despite the effects of the economic blockade of the United States against Cuba, the collaboration between the two institutions continues and Cimavax overcomes the challenges. At present, there are clinical trials that combine this Cuban vaccine with other successful cancer treatments and their effects in high-risk people or patients in the initial stages of the disease are being studied.

According to some studies, lung cancer is the third most frequent cancer in the United States and the deadliest. This Cuban drug could be a promising relief, a good example of the benefits both nations would obtain if they had a normal relationship. (International News Office)

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Translated by ESTI

Featured image is from Granma

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“This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the secretary of war, Mr Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.

Even if Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. (Harry Truman, July 25, 1945, emphasis added)

 

Note the rhetoric ”we are the leader of the world for the common good”. The “Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic”

Hasn’t changed. Continuity in US foreign policy.

Extensive crimes against humanity, carefully planned by the US War Department are portrayed as “the common good”.

Harry S Truman:

‘The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base’,

radio broadcast – 1945

Mainstream media lies then and now. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to be presented as a humanitarian undertaking by the U.S., as a means to ending WWII and saving lives.

And today, in chorus, in regards to nuclear weapons, the media is placing the blame on Russia.

U.S. “mistakes” are simply not mentioned.

Both the United Nations Secretary General and Japan’s Prime Minister are “toeing the line”:

Humanity is playing with a “loaded gun” as crises with the potential for nuclear disaster proliferate worldwide, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the Japanese city of Hiroshima on the 77th anniversary of the first atomic bomb attack.

…

At an annual memorial on Saturday for the dropping of the first nuclear bomb, Guterres warned of the risk posed by crises in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Korean peninsula as he described the horrors endured in the Japanese city during World War II.

“Tens of thousands of people were killed in this city in the blink of an eye. Women, children and men were incinerated in a hellish fire,” the UN chief said.

“We must ask: What have we learned from the mushroom cloud that swelled above this city?” says Guterres.

No mention of Joe Biden’s $1.3 trillion nuclear weapons program. 

No mention of Washington’s pre-emptive nuclear war doctrine (2001 Nuclear Posture Review), which depicts tactical nuclear weapons (with an explosive capacity of 6 times a Hiroshima bomb) as “harmless to civilians”.

Russia is to blame

“Fears of a third atomic bombing have grown amid Russia’s threats of a nuclear attack since its war on Ukraine began in February.

…

The Russian ambassador was not invited to the ceremony but visited Hiroshima on Thursday to lay flowers at the memorial site.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, President Vladimir Putin has made thinly veiled threats hinting at a willingness to deploy tactical nuclear weapons.

Visibly the mayor of Hiroshima had also been co-opted by Washington. No history, no memories, no US war crimes. Accusations are casually directed against Russia:

Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui, in his peace declaration on Saturday, accused Putin of “using his own people as instruments of war and stealing the lives and livelihoods of innocent civilians in another country”.

Russia’s war on Ukraine is helping build support for nuclear deterrence, Matsui said, urging the world not to repeat the mistakes that destroyed his city 77 years ago.

Three days after the Hiroshima bombing, Washington dropped a second atomic bomb on the Japanese port city of Nagasaki, killing about 74,000 people and leading to the end of World War II.

…

The US remains the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons in conflict.

Saturday was the first time Guterres attended the Hiroshima memorial in person as UN chief. (Al Jazeera  emphasis added)

…

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said at the memorial.

“I must raise my voice to appeal to the people around the world that the tragedy of nuclear weapons use should never be repeated,” (Al Jazeera  *emphasis added)

While the above report tacitly blames Russia with various innuendos, what it fails to mention is that barely two weeks after the end of World War II, on September 15, 1945, the US War Department issued a TOP SECRET plan consisting of a coordinated nuclear attack directed against 66 major cities of the Soviet Union.

The Infamous “WW III Blueprint” to Wage a Nuclear Attack against the Soviet Union (September 15, 1945)

The War Department had estimated that a total of 204 atomic bombs would be required to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”.

Read the Memorandum for General Lauris Norstad  (below) “on the number of atomic bombs which should be available to ensure our national security”. This was before the Cold War at a time when the US and the Soviet Union were allies.

Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a dress rehearsal for a much larger attack against the Soviet Union?

The declassified documents speak for themselves.

Reference to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the documents below pertains to “areas of total destruction” as a means to assessing the atom bombs required in the plan to bomb 66 cities of the Soviet Union.

“It is not essential to get total destruction of a city in order to destroy it’s effectiveness. Hiroshima no longer exists as a city even though the area of total destruction is considerably less than total”. (Memorandum dates 26 September 1945)

Key documents were released in September 1945. This plan of the Manhattan Project against the Soviet Union was formulated at an earlier stage, at the height of World War II.

 

 

For further details and analysis, see

Today the Threat of Nuclear War is Real: “Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”, 204 Atomic Bombs against 66 Major Cities, US Nuclear Attack against USSR Planned During World War II

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 06, 2022

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Full text of Hiroshima Peace Declaration on 77th anniversary of atomic bombing

[Not a word directed against the United States and its 1.3 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program,

Not a word pertaining to the extensive war crimes committed against the people of Japan]

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The following is the full text of the Peace Declaration read Saturday by Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui at a ceremony to mark the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city.

“I adored my mother; she raised me with such kindness and care.” The woman speaking was 16 when she left home carrying the lunch her mother had lovingly prepared. She never imagined it would be their final parting. Summer, 77 years ago. That morning, without warning, the first nuclear weapon was dropped and detonated over humanity. Standing near Hiroshima Station, the girl saw a terrifying flash. Then came a thunderous roar. Striking from behind, the blast blew her through the air and knocked her unconscious. When she came to, she wandered through the smoldering city, searching for her mother. She saw a horrifying number of blackened bodies. One charred corpse still stood, clinging to the neck of a cow. Bodies floating in the river drifted up and down with the tide. She still remembers the morning when everyday life vanished violently into scenes from hell.

In invading Ukraine, the Russian leader, elected to protect the lives and property of his people, is using them as instruments of war, stealing the lives and livelihoods of innocent civilians in another country. Around the world, the notion that peace depends on nuclear deterrence gains momentum. These errors betray humanity’s determination, born of our experiences of war, to achieve a peaceful world free from nuclear weapons. To accept the status quo and abandon the ideal of peace maintained without military force is to threaten the very survival of the human race. We must stop repeating these mistakes. Above all, entrusting a nuclear button to any world leader is to sanction continued nuclear threats to humanity and potential recreation of the hellscape of August 6, 1945. We must immediately render all nuclear buttons meaningless.

Must we keep tolerating self-centeredness that threatens others, even to the point of denying their existence? We should take to heart the words of Leo Tolstoy, the renowned Russian author of War and Peace, who advised, “Never build your happiness on the misfortune of others, for only in their happiness can you find your own.”

Earlier this year, the five nuclear-weapon states issued a joint statement: “Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” They further declared their intent to “…remain committed to our Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations.” Having issued such a statement, why do they not attempt to fulfill their promises?

Why do some even hint at using nuclear weapons? The nuclear powers must act now to build bridges of trust among nations. Rather than treating a world without nuclear weapons like a distant dream, they should be taking concrete steps toward its realization. I call on the leaders of the nuclear-weapon states to visit the atomic-bombed cities where they can personally encounter the consequences of using nuclear weapons and strengthen their will to take these steps. I want them to understand that the only sure way to protect the lives and property of their people is to eliminate nuclear weapons. I fervently hope that the leaders who attend the G7 Summit in Hiroshima next year will reach this conclusion.

With the hibakusha’s will to peace at our core, and inheriting the “never-give-up” spirit of hibakusha leader Tsuboi Sunao, who dedicated his life to the cause, Hiroshima will continue striding toward nuclear weapons abolition, however arduous the path.

Mayors for Peace, now a network of 8,200 peace cities around the world, will hold its 10th General Conference in Hiroshima this year. That conference will work toward a civil society in which each and every citizen shares the conviction that happy lives require an end to war, an end to armed conflict, and an end to life-threatening social discrimination. In that pursuit, we will intensify cooperation among our peace-minded member cities to promote a “culture of peace” that rejects all forms of violence. Mayors for Peace encourages policymakers to pursue foreign policies through dialogue without relying on nuclear deterrence.

This past June, the First Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) adopted a declaration that, against the backdrop of the Russian invasion, categorically rejects the threat of nuclear weapons. With nuclear weapons-dependent states participating as observers, the meeting specifically stressed that the TPNW contributes to and complements the NPT. Therefore, I demand first that the Japanese government serve as mediator at the NPT Review Conference. Then, Japan must participate in the next Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW, promptly become a State Party itself, and wholeheartedly support the movement toward nuclear weapons abolition.

The average age of the hibakusha now exceeds 84, and their lives are still impaired by radiation’s adverse effects on their minds and bodies. Thus, I further demand that the Japanese government empathize with their suffering to better offer them enhanced support measures.

Today, at this Peace Memorial Ceremony commemorating 77 years since the bombing, we offer heartfelt condolences to the souls of the atomic bomb victims. Together with Nagasaki and likeminded people around the world, we pledge to do everything in our power to abolish nuclear weapons and light the way toward lasting world peace.

 

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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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Author’s Note: This is written in honor of a dear family friend who pulled through her recent cancer with flying colors.

I hate the title of this post, but there was no other title for this post. We’re at the point where information is coming through fast and furious, and while that helps push us to that tipping point we’re all working towards, it comes with so much pain and suffering.

Chief of Pathology

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***

Gaza is separated from Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank by Israeli territory, and yet the current Israeli attack on Gaza, and the deaths, injuries and destruction of homes is directly connected to Jenin, the center of Palestinian resistance.

On Friday, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) carried out a long range assassination of Tayseer Jabari, a leader in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement (PIJ).  He was killed when his home was attacked by Israeli missiles fired at the high-rise residential building Palestine Tower in Gaza.  At least 10 people were killed along with Jabari, including a five-year-old girl, Alaa Kaddum.  After the horrific blast in the residential building, dozens of terrified and injured residents were seen pouring out of the building and into the street where ambulances were arriving.

Jabari was assassinated in an unprovoked attack.  According to Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, “Israel carried out a precise counter-terror operation against an immediate threat.” However, no evidence of any planned attack on Israel was offered in defense of their unprovoked assassination of Jabari  which led to at least 15 collateral civilian deaths and 125 injured.

In response to the attack, the PIJ fired more than 200 rockets from Gaza at Israeli cities and illegal settlements.  Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense shield intercepted most, but sirens sounded in a number of Israeli cities throughout the night.  The IDF continued to fire rockets into Gaza into the early hours of Saturday morning

According to channel 12 of Israel, the medical center in Ashkelon has admitted 20 Israeli citizens with injuries.  The electricity is cut off in Gaza, and Israel has cut off fuel deliveries to produce electricity in Gaza, which will result in medical services being compromised.

A building in Sderot was struck and damaged.  A factory in Ashkelon received a direct hit from Gaza and suffered severe damage.

Hamas is the strongest resistance group in Gaza, and is the governing body.  They have stated they will not keep silent in the current situation and will show a united front with PIJ.

Condemnations for the attack on Gaza have come from Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, China, Russia, the Arab League, Kuwait, Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Ireland, the Arab Parliament, Al-Ashar University in Cairo, and Jordan activists.

Journalist’s assassination

On May 11, Palestinian-American veteran journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was waiting with other journalists in the early morning to report on the IDF incursion into Jenin.  According to the UN report, the only arms present were the IDF, and several shots were fired at the journalists huddled by a tree.  One bullet hit journalist Ali Sammoudi in the shoulder.  Two more bullets hit the tree where Shireen stood, and finally the bullet meant to kill her hit its mark.

Ravina Shamdasani, of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said from Geneva, “the shots that killed Abu Aqla and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi came from Israeli security forces and not from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians, as initially claimed by Israeli authorities”.

“It is deeply disturbing that Israeli authorities have not conducted a criminal investigation,” she added.

Ms. Shamdasani said the OHCHR had “found no information suggesting that there was activity by armed Palestinians in the immediate vicinity of the journalists”.

Apartheid Israel

Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory said,

“There is today in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 a deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system, that privileges the 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living in the 300 illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.”

Lynk added that

“there are more than three million Palestinians living under an oppressive rule of institutional discrimination and without a path to a genuine Palestinian state that the world has long promised, is their right”.

“Another two million Palestinians live in Gaza, described regularly as an ‘open-air prison’, without adequate access to power, water or health, with a collapsing economy and with no ability to freely travel to the rest of Palestine or the outside world,” said Lynk.

Lynk clearly defined Israel as an apartheid state, which conforms to the definition as a “political regime which so intentionally and clearly prioritizes fundamental political, legal and social rights to one group over another, within the same geographic unit on the basis of one’s racial-national-ethnic identity”.

Some thought apartheid had been abolished with the dissolution of the old colonial South Africa regime, but Israel has picked up the torch of oppression and racism and there is no end in sight to the crimes against humanity in Palestine carried out by the closest ally of the United States of America in the Middle East.

Ban Ki-Moon, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Neledi Pandor and Michael Ben-Yair have all described Israel’s occupation as apartheid.

Lynk delivered his report to the UN’s Human Rights Council adding that Israel’s military rule in the occupied Palestinian territory has been deliberately built with the “intention of enduring facts on the ground to demographically engineer a permanent, and illegal, Israeli sovereign claim over occupied territory, while confining Palestinians in smaller and more confined reserves of disconnected land”.

The international community, headed by the United States of America, have kept Israel in a protected state of impunity, and without threat of accountability.

The Biden administration and the US State Department issued a statement used to cover all crimes by the IDF.  The mantra chanted in Washington, DC. is, “The US recognizes the right of Israel to defend itself.”  No mention is made that the IDF attacked Gaza without any provocation.

IDF enters Jenin and arrests PIJ official

On Monday night, the IDF entered Jenin and arrested Bassem Saadi, the leader thereof PIJ. During the violent arrest in his home, his wife Nawal was injured by the IDF and was later hospitalized.

The IDF also shot dead 17-year-old Dirar al-Kafrini, late on Monday in Jenin., and have arrested 19 members of PIJ in raids across the West Bank.

Where is Gaza?

Gaza, is a Palestinian enclave on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. In 2006 they held elections which had been promoted by the US as democratic.  However, the US didn’t count on Hamas winning the support of the people in the election, and have been governing Gaza since.

Because of the US displeasure in the process of democracy in Gaza, Israel and the US have boycotted Gaza and the residents live under siege and blockade.

In 2012, the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) in the occupied Palestinian territory warned that the Gaza Strip might not be a liveable place by 2020, and as of 2020, Gaza had suffered shortages of water, medicine and power, a situation exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis.

The UN has called for the US-Israeli blockade to be lifted, and warned in 2020 that Gaza’s economy was on the verge of collapse.  The US sustained blockade has kept Gazans unable to leave or enter Gaza, and imports and exports are severely restricted, making even the most basic necessities like medicines unavailable.

The current escalation in Gaza began in Jenin in the West Bank.  The two areas are separated by land, but united in resistance to the occupation of Palestine.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

All images in this article are from MD

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At 10:13 am today (Thursday), Ukraine began shelling central Donetsk. There were five powerful blasts in the space of ten minutes. The last explosion blew out my hotel’s ground-floor glass, including a sitting room – where journalists often congregate before and after going out to do field reporting – and the lobby. About one minute earlier, I had passed through the latter. A cameraman’s assistant who was there at the time of that fifth explosion suffered a concussion from the force of the blast.

A woman walking outside the building was killed, as were at least four others, including a child. Donetsk Telegram channels are filled with videos locals have taken, of the dead, the injured and the damage, and of grief-stricken people. One such hard-to-watch Telegram post (warning: graphic footage) features a man in shock at the gruesome sight of the bodies of his murdered wife and grandchild on a street two blocks from the hotel.

The total number of injured is still not known, as I write. First estimates placed the number at at least ten, among them two ambulance workers: a paramedic and a doctor.

Reading the news, you have the luxury of graphic image warnings and the choice not to look at the pictures and videos of the carnage that occurred today, as well as over the past eight years of Ukraine’s war on Donbass. The people here on the ground don’t get a warning, or a choice as to whether they will see the mutilated remains of a loved-one or stranger. As uncomfortable as it is to see such footage, it does need to be shown if the world is to know the truth of what’s going on in Donbass, to give voice to the locals, killed and terrorized by Ukrainian forces as Western corporate media looks elsewhere or covers up these crimes.

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Read the original English version:

The Globalists have Launched a New Offensive against the Citizens of the Earth.

By Emanuel Pastreich, June 01, 2022

***

グローバリスト達は、地球上に住む人々に対して新たな攻撃を開始しました。グローバリスト達は、最も狡猾な方法で、文化、人種、習慣を利用して私達を分断させようとしています。この目的は、世界経済フォーラム（WEF）のような犯罪シンジケートを打倒し、解体することに特化した同盟、連合、さらにはコミュニティまでも形成できないようにさせ、市民達の連帯を妨害することです。世界経済フォーラムはグローバルガバナンスを掌握し、ますますその支配力を国や地方政府にまで猛然と拡大させつつあります。

民間の投資家が雇ったこの影の傭兵は、私達の間でも高い教育を受けた人々に賄賂を贈り、人々をそそのかすことによって、このような所業を行ってきたのです。抜け目のない人達は、高額な対価を得て、悪に対して目をつぶる方が得策であるということをよく分かっているということです。

一方の側である想定上の「西側」と他方の側であるロシア、中国、北朝鮮、イランとの間に「偽」の世界大戦を作り出すと同時に、これらの全ての国、さらには、世界の全ての国の経済的・政治的システムを操作し、支配しようとする現在の試みは、その規模において前例のない、卑劣で巧妙な計画であると言えるでしょう。

しかしながら、そのような絶対的な支配の計画は、歴史上、新しいものではないということは確かであり、単にAI、スーパーコンピューター、CTVカメラ、5G、低軌道衛星、ドローン、そして国境を持たない武器と化したメディアエンターテインメント複合体を使用したものに移り変わったにすぎません。

皆さんがそのような大それたことをするような悪人や、自己中心的な人はいないと思うなら、残念ながら、それは大きな間違いです。

「偽」の世界大戦を生み出すための最初のステップは、ロシアをウクライナに侵攻させるためにとられた（今も機密でありアクセスできない）作戦行動から始まっているのです。

この作戦は長期的かつ複雑であり、米国、ドイツなどのNATO加盟国、その他の国々、そしておそらくはロシア国内の一部派閥も関与していたことは明らかです。ロシアは、世界経済フォーラムとその影の支援者たちの犯罪的なアジェンダに立ち向かってはいませんでした。むしろ、プーチン大統領はこれらのグローバル組織の仲間でした。しかしながら、キエフで運命の分かれ道がありました。そして今、ロシアは今回の襲撃を受けて、WHOからの脱退をはじめとして、グローバル・ガバナンス・システム全体の解体に向かって動き出しているのです。

対話の余地はもう残されていません。ドイツと日本をはじめとする欧州、アジアの国々は、軍事予算と国内の監視体制を抜本的に強化し、核兵器を保有する国の数は今後10年間で簡単に倍増する可能性があるのです。だから、同じように、核兵器の総数も倍増する可能性があるのです。要するに、油断のならない政治家達がそこまでのことを意図していなかったとしても、私達は世界大戦の危機に直面しているのです。

ウクライナへの侵攻の後、目に見えない力によって上海でロックダウンが発生しました。これは大富豪達によって計画されていたものであり、多額の報酬と引き換えに実行されたと見て間違いないでしょう。

上海は監獄となり、特殊部隊はCOVID-19という偽の名目で人々を家に閉じ込め、人々を飢餓におびえさせるようになりました。

全世界に向けて、明確なメッセージが発信されたのです。

もちろん、これまでにも民間の投資家や多国籍企業が上海を支配してきたのは事実です。今回異なるのは、超富裕層を除いた全ての人々がロックダウンされたということなのです。

大手企業系列のメディアは、上海のストーリーをあり得ないほど歪めました。大手企業系列のメディアは、上海を牛耳ったのは寄生虫のような大富豪家達ではなく、むしろ「左翼」、「社会主義」によるものだ、そして何よりも、血で汚れた「中国共産党」によるものだと発表したのです。

「西側」の大手企業系列のメディアは、李克強首相が地方政府を支援し、COVID-19のロックダウンに反対している一方で、現在「共産主義者」として赤いレッテルを貼られた習近平国家主席が全体主義のゼロコロナ政策を推進し続けていることを嬉々と伝えています。

おそらく習近平は、国内外のグローバリストが扇動したロックダウンの責任を押し付けられ、李は西側が手を組める英雄的人物に祭り上げられているのです。グローバリスト達が自分たちの痕跡を慌てて隠している間に、李は、グローバリスト達の勢力下に入りつつあるということなのです。

グローバルファイナンスは上海でこの悪夢を生み出し、それを社会主義のせいにしました。その結果、現在グローバルファイナンスによって完全に支配されている国である米国、英国、そして日本では、市民は、「自分達は自由であり、中国は独裁的な共産主義国家である」と信じ込まされています。

政府がグローバルファイナンスを支配し、富を再分配し、労働者を保護する役割を果たす「社会主義的な」体制は、独裁国家として馬鹿にされ、否定されることになります。

右翼のブロガー達は、欧州、オーストラリア、米国などの先進的な白人諸国が、アジア人によって作り上げられた致命的な計画によって人口減少の標的になっているという、レポートやグラフを発表しています。

この戦争が白人に対するものであるかどうかは疑わしいですが、その視点を裏付けるために提供される統計データ（本物かどうかは別として）は、階級戦争を人種戦争と誤解させるように流布される可能性があります。実際に、第二次世界大戦ではそれが起こりました。米国には、1850年代にさかのぼれば、人種戦争の影に階級闘争を隠すという古い伝統があります。

同様の戦略は、公然に「西側」のもう１つの敵となっているイランでも用いられています。イランは大抵の国々よりもグローバリストの攻撃に対して上手に抵抗していましたが、今では食料の購入に生体認証ID、つまり、デジタルパスポートを義務付ける最初の国として紹介されるまでになっています。

　グローバリストの工作員は、イランを取り込む手段として、貧しい人々や無力な人々を対象にこの政策を推進しています。それはまた、反グローバリストの右派、つまりグローバリストからのキックバックを受け、偏った人種差別的な方法でグローバリズムを攻撃している人達が、イランは敵であり、非キリスト教的に国民を独自に虐待していると主張する機会にもなっているのです。

最後に、朝鮮民主主義人民共和国があります。この国は、COVID-19詐欺に最も長く抵抗し、国民がこの空想上の病気に感染したことを発表したり、ワクチン、社会的距離、マスクなどの医療兵器システムを支持したりすることを、拒否し続けました。

その後、2022年5月12日、北朝鮮の金正恩委員長は、自国でCOVID-19、特に、馬鹿げた変異株であるオミクロン株の感染者が発生したことを突然発表し、平壌がロックダウンの対象になると宣言しました。

発情期にあるハイエナのように、大手企業系列の新聞社はこの捏造された危機に嬉々として飛びつきました。

私達が何が起こったのかを知る前に、北朝鮮人は愚かなマスクを着用し、役立たずで危険な消毒剤を至るところにまき散らし始めました。

北朝鮮は、世界経済フォーラムや超富裕層向けの他のグローバリスト機関を運営している勢力と同じ、裏の勢力の攻撃を受けています。北朝鮮は理想的な国ではありませんでしたが、かつてはこの買収に抵抗することができました。しかし、今ではもはやそうすることができません。おそらく、平壌の意思決定者は脅迫され、買収されたのでしょう。同じことが他の全ての国でも起こりました。

特筆すべきことは、韓国がマスクの着用要件を緩和し、レストランやショップのワクチンパスポートを廃止したのと同じタイミングで、北朝鮮がCOVID-19の取り締まり始めたことです。この一連の出来事は偶然とは言えないでしょう。

予想通り、大手企業系列のメディアは、これらのイデオロギー的に異質な国々が、開放的で、合理的且つ民主的な「西側」とは対照的に、極端なCOVID-19対策で人々を抑圧していると報道しました。

この計画は中国、北朝鮮、イランに対して、全体主義のイメージを植え付けることです。この瞬間にも大富豪家達は、テレビ、インターネット、学校や研究機関を通じた、CCTVカメラ、ジオフェンシング、5Gによる徹底したターゲット広告を使って、米国、ドイツ、イスラエル（および他の国々）の民間技術企業によって支配されている「西側」諸国で技術専制政治の基盤を築いています。

つまり、新自由主義思想に抵抗した国々は、結果として全体主義の元凶とされているのです。これは、プロパガンダの専門家達による巧妙な仕業であると言えるでしょう。

その渦中において、彼らは企業国家によっていつでも運用を停止することができるデジタル通貨、スマートシティ、そして、スマートカーを私達に強引に推奨しています。これらは、私達を家の中に囚人として閉じ込め、常に監視の対象とすることを可能にしているのです。

シンディ・ナイルズ氏の言葉を借りれば、「地獄への道は、持続可能な開発目標（SDGｓ）で舗装されている」のです。

つまり、私達はグローバリストの乗っ取りに断固抵抗して、平壌、上海の市民と一緒に立ち向かわなければならないということです。私達は、仲間である犠牲者達を侵略者として扱うように私達を信じ込ませようとする大富豪家の自己陶酔的なレトリックを決して許してはなりません。

地域単位で代替的な臨時政府を形成すると同時に、企業のファシズムに対抗する「グローバリスト」ではない国際的な同盟を形成しない限り、グローバリスト達を打ち負かすことはできないのです。

大富豪家達は、私達が共通の目的のために地球の全ての国で志を同じくする人々を連帯させれば、自分達に勝ち目はない、ということを知っています。大富豪家達は、地球上の過激な構造改革を実行するために、私達を混乱させ、分裂させ、可能な限り多くの公人を脅し、買収しようとします。そして、大富豪家達は、その目的のためなら、幾らでもお金を支払うでしょう。

グローバリストの陰謀の一部として、意図的に敵へと仕立て上げられた国々の国民に手を差し伸べることは、私達の戦いを有利に進めるための、非常に重要な戦略です。

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エマニュエル・パストライヒは、ワシントンDC、ソウル、東京、ハノイにオフィスを持つシンクタンクであるアジアインスティチュートの会長を務めました。パストライヒは、未来都市環境研究所の所長も務めています。パストライヒは、2020年2月に、米国大統領の立候補を独立者として宣言しました。

彼はGlobalResearchの定期的な寄稿者です。

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The US continues its foreign policy of a ‘rules-based order’ executed under ultimatums, political deception and hybrid warfare across the globe in its resistance to the global systemic transition to multipolarity. The article will focus on how Nicaragua’s government has dealt with the trending New Cold War. Many international media outlets have detailed how the Nicaraguan government has withdrawn its approval of Hugo Rodriguez, the US ambassador nominee to the Central American country, for making disrespectful and interfering statements. What has not been sufficiently appreciated is that his statements actually confirm what the Nicaraguan government has been saying since 2018, that networks of NGOs synchronize with the US government serving as proxies of various kinds to execute certain roles within the deployment apparatus of Color Revolutions. 

In the recording of the confirmation process for diplomatic personnel, Senator Tim Kaine asks the nominee for US ambassador to the Central American country if he has a clear picture on how he will support the pro-US factions in Nicaragua, to which the ambassadorial nominee responded that he will represent – as a good leader of proxy groups – US interests by intensifying efforts within and outside of Nicaragua’s territory, seeking to reverse the will of the its government. The crucial transcript reads as follows:

Senator Kaine: What space for US sort of pro democracy, pro human rights activity, or support for organizations that are engaged in pro human rights activities, what space exists within Nicaragua that you could promote, should you be confirmed?

Nominee Hugo Rodriguez: Thank you senator, you are exactly right, it has really been a really lamentable state of events, really since 2018 in Nicaragua, the space has been increasingly limited, however we still maintain a strong and well led USAID contingent in country, working with those human rights defenders and others NGOs that continue to operate in country and increasingly working with those who are operating or directing operations from outside of the country, so those spaces still exist, and if confirmed, I look forward to redoubling our efforts to make sure those voices are able to be heard across Nicaragua and across the region.

The Nicaraguan government took prompt action on this development in the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee by revoking that same day the approval granted to the US ambassador nominee to Nicaragua.

The logistics of operation and deployment of Hybrid Warfare proxy cells / NGOs described by nominee Rodriguez serves as evidence and confirmation that the US coordinates these hostile, sabotage and political deception networks. Non-governmental organizations emerged in Nicaragua in the 1990s under the presidency of Mrs. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro whose government hastily privatized most of the country generating unemployment and extreme poverty.

In 1992 the foundations for an NGO government were created under the General Law on Non-Profit Legal Entities, Law No. 147 to develop social projects that received international funding which until now would be co-opted. As the years went by, certain groups – historically tied to US proxy factions – amassed a large number of NGOs seeking to distort the purpose of these organizations, forgetting their original intentions, they thus dedicated themselves to businesses with nebulous finances, the creation of anti-government cells, corruption and money laundering. Law No. 147, which has been in force since 1992, was recently repealed in March 2022 and replaced by Law No. 606, which is a more sophisticated set of regulations for the NGOs in the country.

Nicaragua recognized the need for reforms in Democratic Security and counter Hybrid Warfare in the legal sphere, first intervening with the NGOs directly involved with the 2018 coup attempt and then focusing on NGOs that are not complying with State regulations. The other NGOs that were not necessarily directly involved in the coup attempt are now being cancelled because they are hiding the information required to properly audit them so they are not complying with the regulations of Law No. 606. Since 2018, several rounds of audits have been carried out in this sector and hundreds of these organizations have had their legal status cancelled, prohibiting their existence on Nicaraguan soil.

Deputies of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN in spanish) indicated in February 2022 that the NGOs in question contravened the Law of Regulation of Foreign Agents, and the legislation against money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction among others. Edwin Castro, FSLN deputy explained that,

“If they don’t present a correct board of directors, don’t present financial statements, don’t present accountability, etc., then the obligation is to call them, if they don’t comply, cancel them, start canceling them, there are thousands that have to be cancelled, but is not because of political reasons, simply a legal matter”.

For his part, Carlos Emilio López, another FSLN deputy spoke on how

“[…] no one is above the law, that is, these associations even if they receive funding from the US, even if they receive funding from Europe, that does not make them organizations that have a shield of impunity to do and undo whatever they want, whatever they desire, no, all natural persons in Nicaragua and all legal persons in Nicaragua have to comply with the Nicaraguan legal system.”

The NGOs based in Nicaragua are required to comply with certain laws passed by the National Assembly and regulated by the Ministry of Public Administration of the country. With this in mind, Nicaragua is practicing a policy of “democratic security”, based on counter Hybrid Warfare tactics and strategies aimed at reinforcing national models of democracy.

Even though the 2018 armed Hybrid War coup d’état was neutralized, it nevertheless has NGO networks that the US continues to support within Nicaragua – just as former nominee Hugo Rodriguez mentioned – waiting for new opportunities to come into play and carry out their primary objective of coup and removal of the Sandinista government from power. The NGOs have created a subversive system in Nicaragua and it is fully exposed in the role played by NED, USAID, Freedom House and other agencies that funded proxy networks to carry out their pro-US agenda in Nicaragua, and these in turn funded secondary organizations – helping them to evade state registration – creating particular funding networks. In this way the NGOs involved that generated destabilization in Nicaragua from April 2018 in violation of the Law had as a consequence the cancellation of their legal status.

The US power finds itself unable to stop its unworkable and obsolete unipolar paradigm, where it has an imperial monopoly on doing business with a given country, and defacto isolating it by making it impossible for that country to enter into bilateral relations with third countries that the West perceives as enemies.

Andrew Korybko pointed out in a recent article how this imperial narcissistic behavior demonstrated by US diplomatic personnel is a reflection of their own ‘Rules Based Order’ – which seeks to falsify authentic international law – from which their dominion operates, by rightly stating that even in India they behave like a viceroy. For we have already seen that this failure in the US approach to diplomacy is systemic whether in India, a state of the Big 8 or in Nicaragua, a sovereign Central American nation, both of the Global South, both of which have been struggling for decades for their sovereignties.

They are now facing, as are many other countries throughout the world, an upsurge in Hybrid Warfare everywhere due to the global transition to multipolarity. The US is in decline, its unipolar window of geopolitical and geoeconomic power has closed and in desperation it is increasing the pressure it puts on countries forcing them to choose between the Western Golden Billion partner countries and the multipolar countries. In the midst of the global systemic transition it seeks to micromanage what are by all means state decisions of the free people of the Global South, as part of the New Cold War, dictating which democratic security policies can or cannot be implemented to protect their societies or limiting with which countries relations can be established.

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Miguel Santos García is a Puerto Rican writer and political analyst who mainly writes about the geopolitics of Neocolonial conflicts and Hybrid Wars within the 4th Industrial Revolution and the ongoing New Cold War.

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***

 

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi warns doctors:

“If you allow yourself to be instrumentalized, you will be complicit in mass murder. Routine introduction of gene-based vaccines spells the downfall of mankind.”

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The “Public Health Experts” are at it again, and they’re singing the same tune as last year.

This week, Anthony Fauci has been making the media rounds warning of a severe winter of death and illness for the unvaccinated. Once more, he has warned of a heavy toll for those who refuse experimental gene injections that have been fraudulently represented as the cure to the coronavirus.

“If they don’t get vaccinated or they don’t get boosted, they’re going to get into trouble,” the career bureaucrat told an LA radio station this week, warning of a brutal winter for the unvaxxed.

Dr. Fauci: If you aren't up-to-date on Covid vaccines and boosters, you’re ‘going to get into trouble’ @annikakimc https://t.co/ETZEQg3xO7

— Ted Kemp (@TedKempCNBC) August 4, 2022

The NIAID boss has been on the warpath against the non compliant, blaming “social media misinformation and disinformation” for the fact that there is a significant contingent in the United States that refuses to comply with his demands. Fauci recently had a bad bout with COVID-19, despite taking four Pfizer injections and two full courses of Pfizer oral pills.

Fauci says because of "social media misinformation and disinformation, it's very difficult to get people to adhere to common sense public health measures."pic.twitter.com/5qOKOAOUJC

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) August 1, 2022

If this seems like an article from last year, or some form of deja vu, that’s because Fauci and his gang of pharmaceutical snake oil salesmen said virtually the exact same thing last year.

Last year, Fauci warned of a brutal winter for those who decided not to get injected with the gene juice.

“You know, if we don’t get people vaccinated who need to be vaccinated, and we get that conflating with an influenza season, we could have a dark, bad winter,” Fauci said at the time.

Moreover, President Biden infamously declared a coming “winter of death and severe illness for the unvaccinated.”

Joe Biden: “For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death, if you’re unvaccinated, for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm.”

Terrifying

pic.twitter.com/YGigHnbga3

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 21, 2021

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator: "For the unvaccinated, you're looking at a winter of severe illness and death—for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm." pic.twitter.com/svwUGFgsBc

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) December 17, 2021

“For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death—for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm,” added former White House COVID coordinator Jeff Zients.

Of course, that 2021 winter of death and severe illness never came to fruition, and neither will the 2022 winter projection, to the devastation of the people in charge. The good news is that, according to polls, Americans are largely tuning out the Big Pharma-Government Health seasonal mRNA sales drive.

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In November 2021, Robert Kennedy Jr. released his epochal The Real Antony Fauci, the definitive exposé of how the monster Fauci has for decades been plotting to impose vaccine tyranny not only on America but throughout the world. The Covid-“vaccine” hoax is only the latest episode in this plot, and I summarized the vital core of Kennedy’s case in a review that appeared on LRC.

One thing about Kennedy’s magnificent crusade may have surprised many LRC readers. Kennedy is and remains a liberal Democrat, and few people of that political persuasion oppose Covid tyranny. To the contrary, they say that “science” requires everybody to be masked and vaccinated, and the more lockdowns the better. Kennedy discovered this to his cost. The name “Kennedy” is one of honor among Democrats, but this did not stop the cancel culture elite from denouncing him and trying to block his access to the media.

Kennedy has responded to the campaign against him by his former political allies with exemplary courage. He has distilled the essence of his research over many years into vaccine tyranny and the evil forces behind it in a short book that you can read in a couple of hours: A Letter to Liberals from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Censorship and Covid: An Attack on Science and American Ideals. You can download it for free here.

Kennedy says this about the efforts to destroy dissent from Covid Tyranny: “According to an August 18, 2021, Pew Research Center Survey, 65% of Democrats currently support government censorship of unauthorized opinions.

“That astonishing result suggests that Democrats have lost their faith not only in their party traditions, but also in democracy. The majority of Democrats appear to believe that the Demos—the people—can no longer be trusted to govern themselves and that it is, therefore, permissible for elites to manipulate the public with propaganda, and even to censor information that might infect the population with dangerous thoughts. Liberals have long agreed that censorship of dissent is the emblem of totalitarian systems.

The new strategy of silencing government critics like myself is therefore repugnant to liberalism’s foundational values and is clearly offensive to the American Constitution’s guarantee of free speech. . . the ‘Lockdown Left’ has abandoned the discipline of evidence-based medicine. Instead of scientific citation, they rely on appeals to often undeserving authorities who have manufactured ‘scientific consensus’ by cherry-picking data to support a pre-determined policy. Sanctimonious bromides to ‘follow the science,’ ‘trust the experts,’ most often mean blind dogmatic trust in the official—and often whimsical—pronouncements of amoral pharmaceutical companies and their venal government vassals at captive agencies like CDC, FDA, NIH, and WHO. Unable to defend the scientific underpinnings of their ideology in debate, liberals rely on book bans and an arsenal of coercive muzzling strategies including deplatforming, delicensing, doxxing, gaslighting, defunding, retracting, marginalizing, and vilifying scientists, physicians, journalists, and vaccine-injured Americans who complied but now refuse to toe the official line. The hallmark of Lockdown Liberalism is a bullying form of censorship called ‘cancel culture,’ which disappears not just the heretical language, but also the heretic who uttered it.”

As you can see, Kennedy doesn’t pull his punches.

What has Kennedy discovered that the Left wants silenced?

For one thing, the Covid “vaccine” doesn’t cure people: It kills them.

“With the rising unpopularity of mandates, governments are rushing to declare the pandemic ended, often assigning credit to mass vaccination. However, there is meager scientific evidence that vaccines reduced COVID infections or deaths. To the contrary, there is abundant evidence that mass vaccination had only very brief efficacy against COVID, including the now-undeniable fact, summarized in the February issue of the European Journal of Epidemiology, that ‘Countries with a higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.’ [Data based on CDC COVID Tracker and the New York Times Interactive Tracking the Coronavirus.] Consistent with this global pattern, US deaths attributed to COVID in 2022 were—after mass vaccination—higher than they were in 2020, before vaccination. Aegon Insurance reported a 2021 third-quarter rise of 40% in US COVID-19 deaths among people under 65 years old, ‘the highest percentage in any quarter since the pandemic began.’ In March 2022, South Korea, one of the most vaccinated nations on Earth, reported record-high COVID infections and mortalities following its aggressive national booster program. COVID deaths in March in Korea exceeded all prior fatalities combined. Likewise, Australia, another mass vaccination leader, saw record-breaking COVID- 19 outbreaks in 2022 with deaths 1700% higher than at the start of the pandemic. The tendency of COVID vaccinations to increase COVID illness and mortality is a predictable outcome of the well-documented phenomenon of vaccine-induced ‘pathogenic priming’. . . Despite the global propaganda effort to persuade us otherwise, the experience of Korea and Australia is the norm.”

In the face of the deadly effects of the “vaccine,” the Left wants to force everybody to take it. If you refuse, you become a “non-person.”

“The irrational stigmatizing and outright bigotry is real and global. Today, American hospitals routinely deny lifesaving care to Americans based upon their vaccination status. In June 2022, for example, a Vanderbilt University Hospital heart transplant surgeon refused to add a mortally ill six-month-old baby boy named August to the transplant recipient list because the parents declined to fully vaccinate him, including the experimental COVID-19 shot, based on medical and religious grounds. An agreement was eventually reached after much public outcry, and now baby August is currently on the transplant list to receive a heart. Should not such a baseless act of brutality against infants offend every liberal conscience? Leading liberals endorse the exclusion of unvaccinated people from civil rights, including jobs, education, and transportation. The ACLU has called for expanded censorship to silence government critics (see David Cole in the New York Times). Even the left’s iconic guru Noam Chomsky has recommended the exclusion of the unvaccinated from society. As to food, he says, ‘Well, that’s actually their problem’”

Why does the “vaccine” kill people?

One reason is that it weakens the body’s natural immune system and thus makes it less likely that people will be able to fight Covid off.

“A British study published in Science in June 2022 sought to explain why vaccinated individuals are so much more susceptible to infection than the unvaccinated. The paper concludes that the vaccines alter the body’s all-important T-cell immunity by making T-cells hyper-vigilant toward the original—now extinct—Wuhan version of COVID-19 while diminishing their capacity to combat new variants like Omicron. Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson summarizes the findings in the Science paper thus: In other words, the mRNA shots appear to permanently wrongfoot the immune systems of people who receive them and bias them toward producing T-cells to attack variants that no longer exist, even though they never were infected with those variants at all. Vaccinologists call this phenomenon ‘original antigenic sin (OAS).’ Multiple sources have now confirmed OAS to be a serious problem for people who have taken COVID-19 vaccines. This is what you see when you look in the telescope and follow the science: government mandates of shoddily tested, heavily subsidized, rushed, zero-liability vaccines that are causing more harm than good.”

There is another way the “vaccine” kills people. If you are weak because of an illness you’re suffering from, the deadly jab can put you over the edge. “Over the 17 months following the rollout launch, CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a voluntary reporting system used by doctors, nurses, hospitals, and individuals, has recorded an astonishing 1,329,135 adverse events, of which 241,910 have been designated by the agencies as serious injuries (including a long list of cardiac, neurological, autoimmune, and reproductive system diseases, blood clots, strokes, myocarditis, seizures, paralysis, hepatitis, demyelinating diseases, Guillain-Barré syndrome, Bell’s palsy, herpes, vaginal lesions, diabetes, spontaneous abortions, heart attacks—including among six-yearolds, genital ulcers—even in girls as young as five, and other devastating harms).”

If the “vaccine” is as bad as Kennedy says, and he has the data to prove it, why do many people ignore the facts? Kennedy says that the answer lies in a plot to suppress the truth.

When we look at what is behind the plot, we see the motive for this callous assault on human life: Big Pharma profits from it.

“Most of my fellow liberals are unaware of all these alarming facts due to a highly orchestrated global pandemic of journalistic malpractice. At the outset of the pandemic, most of the world’s leading news organizations— BBC, Reuters, AP, AFD, CBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, Washington Post, Financial Times, Facebook, Google/YouTube, Microsoft, Twitter, and others—organized themselves into a collusive anti-democratic and anticompetitive cartel known as the Trusted News Initiative (TNI)—pledged to squelch and censor all reports about government COVID countermeasures that challenged official proclamations. . . [on]the official BBC website, where you can read, in the words of those conspirators, about how a group of companies that have historically competed against one another to reveal government untruths have now partnered in lockstep to promote the Government line and connived to work in concert to attack reporting that runs counter to officially proclaimed orthodoxies. These organizations have successfully prevented virtually all honest journalism about vaccine injuries and vaccine failure from reaching the general public. This rigid compliance with Big Pharma’s propaganda agenda was, unfortunately, no great leap for mainstream media. In recent years, Pharma and its allies have made enormous investments to control American newsrooms and transform mainstream and social media, TV networks, and scientific journals into vessels for mercantile propaganda. The pharmaceutical industry is now the dominant advertiser on television, the funding source for over 75% of total advertising and an even greater percentage during news shows. Furthermore, Pharma investor Bill Gates has distributed $319 million in recent years to news organizations specifically targeting ‘independent’ platforms like NPR, Public Television, The Independent, The Guardian, etc., that were historically less susceptible to pressure from commercial advertisers. Most alarming, since the pandemic’s outset, HHS has quietly paid out over a billion dollars (you read that right) to news outlets like CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times to promote COVID vaccines. Those companies have obligingly published thousands of pieces extolling vaccination while actively censoring criticism of vaccines— or content that challenges Pharma profit taking—all without disclosing those compromising payoffs to their audiences. With this cash in hand, the US media have abandoned their traditional skepticism toward government edicts and abetted the censorship of nonconforming views. While the media abolish contrary opinion, they marginalize, vilify, and bully dissenters.”

The “vaccine” is particularly deadly when given to children.

“On March 10, 2022, CDC admitted, in response to a Freedom of Information request, that it has not a single record of a healthy child under age 15 dying from COVID. Comprehensive research from Germany and the UK, and separate studies of US children by Johns Hopkins, Nature, and The Lancet, had all previously reaffirmed that healthy children have statistically zero risk of dying from COVID. Meanwhile, the vaccines impose a high risk (1/2,700) of causing myocarditis in 12–17-yearold boys. A grim analysis of recent United Kingdom Office for National Statistics (ONS) data from January 1, 2021, through January 31, 2022, analyzed by Dr. Wayne Winston, PhD, professor emeritus of Decision Sciences at the University of Indiana’s Kelley School of Business, suggests that vaccinated children are more likely to die from any cause than unvaccinated children. The data show that vaccinated children ages 10 to 14 are 28 times more likely to die than unvaccinated, and the vaccinated 15-to-18-year-olds are 1.82 times more likely to die than unvaccinated teens of the same age.”

Kennedy sums up his message in this way, and we owe him a great debt for his efforts to enlighten the public:

“As they demolish the Constitution to get at Trump and promote Pharma, liberals don’t seem to appreciate that the most vulnerable population will soon reap the whirlwind. And where will we all hide when an unleashed Exxon, Smithfield, Peabody, Monsanto, and Koch Energy have license to silence their critics with the help of Google, Facebook, and Twitter? As these soulless multinational behemoths deploy their new powers to silence dissent. . . and commoditize our children, they are fanning the toxic winds that will soon envelop America in . . .dystopian totalitarianism.”

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Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail], former editorial assistant to Ludwig von Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor of LewRockwell.com. He is the author of Against the State and Against the Left. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

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Russia has been ramping up oil exports to Asia since its invasion of Ukraine led to Western sanctions on imports of Russian oil. Some of the crude and products going to Asia are being transferred from one vessel to another in international waters around Europe, including outside UK territorial waters.  Off the coast of Suffolk in the UK, outside UK territorial waters, at least two ship-to-ship transfers took place in May, and UK-crewed boats helped the transfer and delivered supplies to the tankers, according to an investigation by Global Witness and The Independent.  

The coast off Southwold, Suffolk, is designated an area of outstanding natural beauty, but it is also one of the few areas around the UK where ship-to-ship transfers are allowed, The Independent’s Ben Chapman notes.

The STS transfers of fuel oil off Suffolk identified by Global Witness and The Independent saw two tankers carrying 165,000 tons of Russian fuel oil worth over $201 million (£165 million) proceed to the Middle East and Singapore.

These oil transfers are not illegal. Yet, such ship-to-ship (STS) transfers around Europe are being increasingly used for reloading Russian oil onto ships that then head to Asia via the Suez Canal, tanker-tracking publications have shown. There are other areas around Europe where STS transfers are happening, and new STS transfer “hubs” have started to emerge in recent months.

According to vessel tracking and analysis by Lloyd’s List, China-owned supertankers are at the center of a new STS transfer hub in the middle of the North Atlantic, around 860 nautical miles west of Portugal. Such operations in the area have never been seen before, Alex Glykas from maritime advisors Dynamarine told Lloyd’s List.

Russia is also redirecting its residual fuel oil (RFO) exports – the world’s largest such exports – away from the West and to Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, according to Roslan Khasawneh, a senior fuel oil analyst at the energy analytics firm Vortexa.

“Russia’s changing flows are establishing new transhipments hubs for Russian RFO including offshore Kalamata, Greece where there has been a spike in ship-to-ship transfers as well as in Egypt which has seen its imports of Russian fuel oil climb to a record 70kbd in June. As a result, Egypt’s fuel oil exports jumped to a 10-month high of 120kbd in June, mostly to Saudi Arabia,” Khasawneh wrote in an analysis in July.

Increased STS transfers help Russia move more and more of its oil volumes to Asia and its key buyers there, China and India. These moves are offsetting to a large extent the Western sanctions on Russia’s oil and the effect of the upcoming EU embargo on imports of seaborne Russian oil and products, expected to take effect at the end of the year.

Western sanctions have so far failed to crush Russia’s oil exports as Moscow is redirecting crude and products to its more than willing Asian buyers, China and India.

Russian oil exports dropped by just 250,000 bpd in June, to 7.4 million bpd, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its monthly report for July. Despite volumes of crude and product exports being at the lowest since August 2021, Russia’s export revenues increased by $700 million month-over-month on higher oil prices, to $20.4 billion, or 40% above last year’s average, the IEA’s estimates showed.

European vessel owners, especially private Greek operators, are moving a lot of the Russian oil in the months before the EU ban on seaborne Russian oil imports kicks in. Greek tanker owners have increased their exposure to Russian oil shipping in the past months as they race to profit from the higher demand for heavily discounted Russian oil in China and India.

Russian exports of crude and products are yet to see a significant dent. Despite slightly lower volumes, so far, Putin is generating more money from oil than he did prior to the invasion of Ukraine or last year, as oil prices stay elevated.

The West’s main goal to cripple Putin’s revenue but still allow Russian oil exports somewhere in the world has led to the idea of capping the price of Russian oil. The G7 group of leading industrialized nations, led by the United States, is considering waiving the ban on insurance and all services enabling transportation of Russian oil if that oil is bought at or below a certain price.

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

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

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First published on June 1, 2022

***

The Globalists have launched a new offensive against the citizens of the Earth, one that seeks, in the most devious manner, to pit us against each other by using culture, race, and habit to divide us so that we cannot form alliances, federations or even communities dedicated to taking down, and to taking apart, criminal syndicates like the World Economic Forum that have seized control of global governance, and, increasingly, are extending their control to national and to local government with a vengeance.

These shadow mercenaries of private equity have done so by bribing, and by intimating, the educated among us; the best and the brightest, who knew better took the thirty shekels, a handsome price, to cast a blind eye on evil in plain sight.

The current effort to create a “faux” world war between the imagined “West” on the one side and Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, on the other, while at the same time manipulating, and dominating, the economic and political systems of all those countries, of all the nations of the world, is a scheme both hideous and ingenious which is unprecedented in its scale.

But such plots for absolute domination are certainly not new in history, they just have never been launched using AI, supercomputers, CCTV cameras, 5-G, low-orbit satellites, drones, and a weaponized media-entertainment complex that knows not borders.

If you think that no one could be so evil, or so self-confident, as to try something on that scale, I have a sad tale to tell you.

The first step for creating a “false” world war consisted of the actions taken (still classified and inaccessible) to get Russia to invade the Ukraine.

We know for certain that this operation was long and complex and that it involved the United States, NATO members like Germany, and other nations, and also most likely involved factions within Russia itself.

Russia did not stand against the criminal agenda of the World Economic Forum and its shadowy backers. If anything, President Putin was a card carrying member of these global institutions. But the die was cast in Kiev, and now Russia is challenging the entire global governance system in response to this assault, starting with its withdrawal from the World Health Organization.

There is no space left for dialog; the nations of Europe, and Asia, starting with Germany and Japan, are radically increasing their military budgets and their domestic surveillance, and the number of nations with nuclear weapons could easily double over the next decade. So also, the total number of nuclear weapons could also double. In short, we face the reality of world war, even if the tricky politicians did not intend to go that far.

After the invasion of Ukraine came the lockdown of Shanghai by invisible forces, no doubt paid for by the billionaires.

Shanghai became a prison, the commandos using the bogus COVID -19 as an excuse to trap people in their homes and to threaten them with starvation.

A clear message was broadcast to the entire world.

Of course private equity and multinational corporations have owned Shanghai for decades. The difference this time was that everyone, except the superrich, were locked down.

The corporate media distorted the Shanghai story beyond recognition. The corporate media announced that it was not the parasitic billionaire class that took over Shanghai, but rather it was “leftism,” “socialism,” and above all the “Chinese Communist Party” that had blood on its hands.

The “Western” corporate media giddily describes how premier Li Keqiang is supporting local government and opposing COVID-19 lockdowns while President (chairman) Xi Jinping, who is now painted red as the “communist,” continues to push for totalitarian zero-tolerance policies.

Most likely Xi has been forced to take responsibility for these lockdowns instigated by globalists at home and abroad and Li is being set up as a heroic figure whom the West can work with—and falling under the sway of the globalists as they rush to cover their footprints.

Global finance created this nightmare in Shanghai, and then blamed it on socialism in order to convince the citizens of the United States, Great Britain and Japan, nations that are now fully owned by global finance, that they are free and that China is a communist dictatorship.

Any “socialist” system in which government plays the role of controlling global finance, redistributing wealth, or protecting working people is to be mocked and dismissed as a dictatorship.

Right-wing bloggers have put out reports and graphs that supposedly show how the advanced Caucasian nations of Europe, Australia and the United States are being targeted for population reduction in a deadly plot cooked up by the Asians.

It is doubtful that this war is against Caucasians, but it is entirely possible that the statistics, real or imagined, offered to support that perspective are circulated so as to make sure that class war is mistaken for a race war. That is what happened in the Second World War, after all. In fact, the United States has an old tradition of hiding class war behind race war that dates back to the 1850s.

Similar strategies are being employed in Iran, another official enemy of the “West.” Iran resisted the globalist assault better than most nations, but now it is advertised as the first country to require biometric IDs, that is digital passports, for the purchase of food.

The globalist operatives are pushing this policy on the poor and helpless as a means to draw Iran into the fold. It also is an opportunity for the anti-globalist right, those taking kickbacks from the globalists to attack globalism in a skewed racist manner, to claim that Iran is the enemy, that it is uniquely abusing its people in an unchristian manner.

Finally, there is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the one nation that held out for the longest time against the COVID-19 fraud and that refused to announce that any of its citizens had contracted this mythical disease, or to advocate for that medical weapon system of vaccines, social distancing, and masks.

Then, on May 12, 2022, North Korea’s head, Chairman Kim Jung-un, announced suddenly that there were cases of COVID-19, specifically the ridiculous variant omicron, in his nation. He declared that Pyongyang would be subject to a lockdown.

Like hyenas in heat, corporate newspapers jumped up and down over this fabricated crisis.

Before we knew what had happened, North Koreans were wearing silly masks and spraying useless and dangerous disinfectants everywhere.

North Korea is under attack by the same hidden forces that run the World Economic Forum and other globalist institutions that cater to the super-rich. North Korea was no utopia, but they were able to resist this takeover and now they can do so no longer. Most likely the decision makers in Pyongyang were threatened, and also were paid off. That is what has happened in every other nation.

Significantly, North Korea cracked down on COVID-19 at the same moment that South Korea relaxed mask requirements and ended vaccine passports for restaurants and shops. This course of events was no coincidence.

Predictably, the corporate media told us that these ideologically alien nations were oppressing their people with extreme COVID-19 measures, in contrast to the rational and democratic “West” that is opening up.

The plan is to project images of totalitarianism onto China, North Korea and Iran at the very moment that the billionaires are laying the foundations for techno-tyranny in the “Western” nations controlled by private technology firms from the United States, Germany, and Israel (and other nations) using CCTV cameras, geo-fencing, 5G and relentless targeted advertising via television, internet, school, or research institution.

That is to say that those nations that resisted neo-liberal ideas are described as the source of the resulting totalitarianism. To do so is an act of genius by the masters of propaganda.

The ensuing fog allows them to push on us digital currencies that can be shut down any time by the corporate state, smart cities and smart cars designed to make us prisoners in our homes, all subject to constant surveillance.

As Cindy Niles put it, “the path to hell is paved with sustainable development goals.”

That means we must stand with the citizens of Pyongyang, and of Shanghai, against the globalist takeover. We should never allow the billionaire’s narcissistic rhetoric to convince us to treat these fellow victims as aggressors.

We cannot beat the globalists unless we form alternative provisional governments at the local level while simultaneously forming an international, not “globalist,” alliance against corporate fascism.

The billionaires know that they are finished if we bring together like-minded people in all the nations of the Earth for a common purpose. They will pay any amount to confuse and divide us, threaten and bribe as many public figures as possible, to implement their radical restructuring of the Earth.

Reaching out to the citizens of the nations that have been intentionally branded as the enemy as part of the globalist plot is a critical strategy to shift the battle in our favor.

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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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***

Washington has backtracked from the dissimulation by the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that Washington had intelligence suggesting Iran was preparing to provide Russia with “several hundred” drones to use in Ukraine, with training sessions set to begin in July. 

On July 26, NSC spokesman John Kirby, clarified his boss’ remark by admitting to Al Arabiya, “We’ve seen no indications of any sort of actual delivery and/or purchase of Iranian drones by the Russian Ministry of Defence.” 

Interestingly, Al Arabiya buttonholed Kirby at all. For, Sullivan’s fake news (probably based on Israeli disinformation) came at his special briefing on President Biden’s visit to Jeddah. Al Arabiya’s dogged downstream pursuit of the “fake news” suggests that Riyadh knew Sullivan making a crude attempt to to hustle the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in directions that would have made Biden’s trip a roaring success. 

Biden had three overlapping objectives: one, to rally Saudi leadership behind his containment strategy against Russia and China; two, to break up the OPEC+ alliance between Saudi Arabia and Russia so that a coordinated counterpoint ceases to be in the world oil market that is beyond American control; and, three, to assemble an anti-Iran military military alliance of Gulf states and Israel to give verve to Abraham Accords which has patently lost its fizz. 

Biden drew blank on all three counts: Saudis will pursue their friendly relations with Russia and China and its normalisation with Tehran. Prince Mohammed spoke with President Putin within the week of Biden’s visit where they discussed further expansion of trade and economic cooperation and significantly, also underscored “the importance of further coordination within OPEC+”. 

Traditionally, Saudi actions speak far better than words. So, when the OPEC+ held a virtual meeting last Wednesday, it concluded that:

• There is “severely limited availability of excess capacity” among oil producing countries resulting from “chronic underinvestment in the oil sector” ; 
• It is a matter of “particular concern… (that) insufficient investment into the upstream sector will impact the availability of adequate supply in a timely manner to meet growing demand beyond 2023.”
• The importance of maintaining consensus and the “cohesion” of OPEC and OPEC+ (that is, OPEC plus Russia principally) cannot be overstated. 

Plainly put, it rejects the July 3 G7 Foreign Ministers’ Statement on Energy Security, which envisages imposing comprehensive embargo on all services for “transportation of Russian seaborne crude oil and petroleum products globally” unless Moscow sells oil at a price to be agreed in consultation with the West.  

Simply out, the West is once again contemplating crackdown on a major oil producing country for geopolitical reasons, which would have profound impact on the world oil market. The paradox here is that, unlike in the case of Iran or Venezuela, the West desperately needs Russian oil’s continued flow into the world oil market but is capping the price at which Moscow can sell so that its income from oil exports cannot sustain the special military operations in Ukraine. 

Indeed, the West is acting in the spirit of George Kennan’s famous dictum in the early 1950s that oil “belongs to us” because it lubricated the West’s prosperity.  The G7 statement is no doubt precedent-setting. As the pressure on world’s resources becomes more acute, this predatory approach harks back to the colonial era (when India was frog-marched by Imperial Britain to supply cotton to the textile mills in Britain and buy back textiles at prices determined by the colonial master.)

It can extend to resources other than oil as well. China, for example, produces roughly two-thirds of the world’s lithium-ion batteries, whereas, the US only produces 1% of global lithium supply and 7% of refined lithium chemicals — versus China’s 51% — and is about 70% dependent on imported lithium (which has such critical uses in industries raging from mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras and electric vehicles to aircraft, high-speed trains and satellites. 

To be sure, the G7 move to seize control of Russia’s oil exports rings alarm bells all across the oil-producing countries of the Gulf region. The geopolitical message is: ‘Fall in line, or else.’ Now, this comes at a time when the EU is desperately eyeing access to cheap and reliable supply of oil. (Japan just announced that its “sanctions from hell” against Russia will not apply to the Sakhalin 2 gas and oil project!) 

Against such a tumultuous backdrop with the industrial powers inclining toward brandishing their latent colonial instincts of a bygone era, the Gulf states become highly vulnerable. The Gulf states already are shell-shocked about the banditry that the EU and US resorted to against Russia by confiscating its reserves in the Western banking system and appropriating the private assets of wealthy Russians. 

There is also an added dimension. Tomorrow, what prevents the “Collective West” from resorting to such pressure tactic to enforce “regime change” in the Gulf region on the pretext of advancing democracy and human rights? After all, it is no secret that the former Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef was Washington’s preferred choice to succeed King Salman. Make no mistake, Biden’s fist bump with Prince Mohammed is not the last word on Saudi succession. 

Indeed, Prince Mohammed’s suggestion (while Biden was still in Jeddah) that Saudi Arabia and Iran should now step up their contacts to the political level becomes highly significant. Even more so, Saudi Arabia’s interest in SCO membership (so soon after Iran’s admission to the grouping.)

Along with Saudi Arabia, a host of other West Asian countries have approached the SCO for membership. The Russian daily Izvestia reported on Thursday that the SCO plans to sign memoranda on granting dialogue partnership to Egypt, Syria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain at the forthcoming summit in Samarkand. Interestingly, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been invited to the event.

According to Izvestia, as an exception, the UAE has sought SCO membership on an expeditious basis, although the grouping’s established practice so far has been to start with a “dialogue partner”. Izvestia quoted a source close to the SCO organising committee that the SCO has had consultations internally and “the main understanding that dominates is that the SCO is interesting, the SCO attracts, and therefore the most important thing for us is not to wallow in bureaucracy, but to find solutions that will allow us to respond adequately… And react by adapting the rules to new conditions.” 

Clearly, Biden’s offer of a military alliance not only had no takers in the Arab world but they seem petrified. If as the Bible says, there are three brands of deception — vanity, flattery, and blasphemy — and Satan uses all three, Biden’s offer contains elements of all three. And if the SCO offers an antidote to the poisoned chalice, why not? 

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***

If you ask a random EU official if the bloc should continue trying to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, you will invariably get a positive answer. The sanction potential is reaching its end, but this is no reason for the EU to relieve the pressure, that official will say, as many have in conversations with the media. And yet, the EU has quietly begun to unwind its sanctions against Moscow.

The UK’s Express called it caving in to Putin. Bloomberg dubbed it “corrections to previous sanctions.” Whatever it is called, it comes down to the same thing: the EU is loosening the noose. And it’s not just the EU, either.

For starters, the European Union decided to add exemptions to Russian sanctions, which would allow countries from outside the bloc to deal with sanctioned Russian entities, including banks and state companies such as Rosneft. Per the Bloomberg report, these exemptions are for entities “deemed essential to shipments of food, agricultural goods and oil to third countries outside the EU”.

The EU appears to be putting a lot of effort into convincing whoever is listening that their sanctions against Russia have absolutely nothing to do with either food or energy supply disruptions or, at the very least, they did not aim for them to happen.

It said it directly in a news release by the Council of Europe that announced the latest round of sanctions that targeted Russia’s gold.

“More broadly, the EU is committed to avoiding all measures which might lead to food insecurity around the globe. None of the measures adopted today or earlier in view of Russia’s actions destabilising the situation in Ukraine target in any way the trade in agricultural and food products, including wheat and fertilisers, between third countries and Russia,” the news release stated.

What all this effectively amounts to is an admission that sanctions against Russia are not working too well in their intended way and are instead hurting or threatening to hurt third parties not involved in the Ukraine conflict.

There’s more, too. While the EU tweaks its sanctions to allow the trade of more Russian oil in order to avoid another spike in oil prices, the UK is hesitant to join the block in its oil insurance ban on Russian vessels. The UK’s participation in the insurance squeeze is essential because of the market share British-based insurers hold in shipping insurance and yet they are stalling.

A recent Financial Times report on the topic suggests this might have something to do with the UK’s big geopolitical brother and its concern about oil prices. The U.S., unlike the EU and its embargo, has opted for an alternative way of trying to reduce Russia’s oil income: price caps. The UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, France, and Italy have agreed to pursue this cap.

Judging by the latest news from the G7 camp, however, the cap is not moving ahead as planned. A lot of people – analysts, shipping industry insiders, and the head of Russia’s central bank, among others – said that a price cap on Russian crude would not work. It appears that G7 has not heard them.

Per a Reuters report from earlier this week, the G7 is looking into “a comprehensive prohibition of all services that enable transportation of Russian seaborne crude oil and petroleum products globally, unless the oil is purchased at or below a price to be agreed in consultation with international partners.”

Talk, however, is cheap, while action is not. Yet talking is important when the world is watching you, so the G7 planners also said that “In considering this and other options, we will also consider mitigation mechanisms alongside our restrictive measures to ensure the most vulnerable and impacted countries maintain access to energy markets including from Russia.”

In other words, just like the EU, the G7 would be wary of causing unintended damage to countries not involved in the Ukraine mess by making sure Russian oil reaches them freely. And then, refined products made from Russian oil will head back to the EU.

India buys Russian oil, runs it through its refineries, and sells ‘Indian refined products’ where? To the EU. Ditto for other cargos. Ditto for Saudi Arabia. Those vessels’ bills of lading won’t mention Russia as they arrive at their EU destination.

“In short, the EU is quietly facilitating the bypass of its own proclaimed ‘crushing’ sanctions regime,” according to Alastair Crooke, director of Lebanon-based nonprofit Conflicts Forum, as quoted by the Express.

It must have dawned on EU, UK, and U.S. policymakers that sanctioning Russia would not be as easy as sanctioning a smaller oil exporter, especially if this oil exporter also exports a lot of other vital stuff, such as food and fertilizers.

The U.S. even issued a fact sheet to clarify that its sanctions do not target Russian fertilizer exports, or, indeed, agricultural product exports. And this while Amos Hochstein said that “Their economy has nothing else. They produce weapons and they produce and they drill for oil and gas.”

It appears that ‘their economy” has at the very least a lot of fertilizers and agricultural produce that serves to feed people outside Russia as well, and that’s without mentioning the metals, too. As for the oil, it seems pretty critical as well: nothing short of critical would force the EU, the UK, and the U.S. to loosen the sanction noose.

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

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***

After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi provocation, tensions have escalated, with China firing missiles near the island in drills on August 4 and, for the first time, five Chinese missiles landed in Japanese waters. Washington’s new pro-secessionist instance on this issue violates its own “One China” foreign policy and brings the world closer to further conflict. These developments are unfolding while the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war threatens global food security. For a number of reasons, the US-led West is largely to blame for the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and this is still the case regarding the current proxy war between Washington and Moscow in Ukraine. According to University of Chicago political science Professor John Mearsheimer, NATO enlargement was and is the tap root of the trouble. Now, many concerned observers fear that recent history could somehow repeat itself in Asia over Taipei. Could this double crisis crystallize the current new Cold War into a new bipolarity, thus bringing the world closer to global war?

Washington has broadened its engagement in South Asia as part of its wider Indo-Pacific vision to counter Beijing. Tensions have also been on the rise on the Korean peninsula amid concerns over a “new Asian NATO”. Moreover, in May, US President Joe Biden pledged to militarily defend Taiwan against China. In addition, Washington has been selling arms to Taipei (as it has been doing with Kiev).

Meanwhile, the June NATO Summit in Madrid has made it clear that the military Alliance seeks to completely encircle Russia. The Atlantic Alliance has been expanding east since 1999, and now, with Swedish and Finnish membership, its reach will expand as far out as the Arctic, another geopolitical hot point. The same Summit also has openly addressed Beijing as a threat, which is unprecedented.

So, such an ill-conceived “siege policy” on Russia and China at once has the collateral effect (from an American perspective) of boosting cooperation between these two great powers. This situation, however, brings many challenges to all actors involved and for global peace. For one thing, it is hard to conceive how Washington can possibly have the resources and political will to keep encircling Beijing and Moscow simultaneously for too long.

According to US National Guard Bureau Gen. Dan Hokanson, the Guard is considering a major training program expansion in the Indo-Pacific. These partnerships aim to boost a regional anti-China coalition, in the context of American-Chinese competition for influence among the small island nations. This is mostly about military considerations, as the recent Solomon Islands episode has made clear.

Dmitry Suslov, a Higher School of Economics US-Russia relations expert, claims that, since the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis, Washington has also “intensified its confrontational approach towards China”. According to the scholar, the US is trying to build a global integrated system of alliances while simultaneously confronting both Moscow and Beijing. He describes such a project as aiming at a “global, truly consolidated, tightly integrated system of alliances, and not just vertically integrated.” It would involve “horizontal interconnection”, with European and Asian alliances. This explains why the latter were also invited to the Madrid Summit. The Summit’s Declaration also acknowledged that there has been an “unprecedented level of cooperation with the European Union”, and vowed to strengthen this strategic partnership.

Thus, while much has been talked about a “new Asian NATO” (pertaining to the QUAD or even the so-called “new QUAD”), American ambitions in fact include what one could describe as a new “global NATO”, comprising allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. This bloc’s raison d’être is to counter the “threat” of Russian-Chinese cooperation, a “threat” that is the result of Washington’s own encirclement policies against two great powers.

While for now there is no reason to believe that China will go so far as to militarily intervene in Taiwan in the near future, on the other hand, if any provocation or escalation of tensions between these great powers spirals out of control, then there is a risk of world war, as many analysts have warned since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war on February And, worse, such a scenario could involve nuclear war– in this case, there would be no winners.

American unipolarity is coming to an end, no matter how much the White House would like to maintain it. Because the American Establishment sees multipolarity as a kind of an existential challenge, it would seem that the US, in a kind of “plan B”, would prefer to push for a new bipolarity rather than to welcome the emergence of new polycentric world order.

In doing so, Washington tries to coopt partners into full alignment, thus attempting to perpetuate the new Cold War and threatening global peace. This is a false dilemma, though. There are signs the age of non-alignment and multi-alignment has come to stay, as African nations, Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil have shown. These emerging powers have been successfully avoiding the trap of alignment, while pursuing their own interests.

To sum it up, Russian-Chinese cooperation will increase, and so will multi-alignment amid regional emerging powers. These new configurations have the potential to foster new forums and new systems. While much is talked about BRICS and new (non-dollar-based) market mechanisms and institutions, right now the planet badly needs new diplomatic mechanisms and structures, not only to avoid bipolarity and build multipolarity, but to minimize the risk of a global nuclear war and literally save the world.

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

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***

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has claimed that there was no known association between heart inflammation and COVID-19 vaccines as late as October 2021.

CDC officials made the claim, which is false, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for reports from a CDC team that is focused on analyzing the risk of post-vaccination myocarditis and pericarditis, two forms of heart inflammation. Both began to be detected at higher-than-expected rates after COVID-19 vaccination in the spring of 2021.

The team focuses on studying data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a passive surveillance system co-run by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The date range for the search was April 2, 2021, to Oct. 2, 2021.

“The National Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases performed a search of our records that failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request,” Roger Andoh, a CDC records officer, told The Epoch Times. The center is part of the CDC.

No abstractions or reports were available because “an association between myocarditis and mRNA COVID-19 vaccination was not known at that time,” Andoh added.

Both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are built on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

Earliest Myocarditis Reports

Reports of heart inflammation after COVID-19 vaccination were first made public in April 2021 by the U.S. military, which detected the issue along with Israeli authorities well before the CDC.

While Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, said that month that the agency had looked for a safety signal in its data and found none, by the end of June CDC researchers were saying that the available data “suggest an association with immunization,” and in August described (pdf) the issue as a “harm” from vaccination.

The claim that the link wasn’t known “is provably false,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times via email. “Either the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing at CDC, or federal health officials are disseminating misinformation about what they knew about myocarditis following mRNA COVID vaccines and when they knew it.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said that the FOIA response “raises even more questions about the agency’s honesty, transparency, and use, or lack thereof, of its safety surveillance systems, such as VAERS, to detect COVID-19 vaccine adverse events.”

“I have sent two letters to the CDC about the agency’s inability to find records demonstrating its use of the vaccine surveillance systems. To date, the CDC has failed to respond to my letters,” he added.

‘Correction’

“Apparently CDC needs to make a correction!” a spokeswoman for the agency told The Epoch Times in an email.

The agency is acknowledging that by June 2021, data began to indicate a link between the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and heart inflammation, outlined that month in two presentations made to government vaccine advisory panels.

“Additional data accumulated in subsequent months, ultimately leading to the conclusion that a causative association did indeed exist. However, such a conclusion required time to accumulate and analyze data,” the spokeswoman said.

It remains unclear how the CDC looked for a signal in April 2021. The CDC has declined to provide any details.

The CDC’s records office did not respond to a request for comment.

The correction is the second time in recent weeks that the agency has backtracked on a claim.

Andoh in June told the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense that staff from the agency’s Immunization and Safety Office informed him that the agency would not perform data mining on VAERS, even though several CDC documents said the agency would perform the analyses.

Questioned about the matter, Dr. John Su, a CDC official, told The Epoch Times that the agency started performing the data mining in February 2021.

Noting the conflicting statements, Johnson wrote to Walensky asking her for answers. “CDC’s assertion and Dr. Su’s statement cannot both be true,” he said.

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Zachary Stieber covers U.S. and world news. He is based in Maryland.

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***

Nineteen fourteen was a terrible year, much worse than the most pessimistic imaginings at the time had forecast, and it was perhaps among the worst years in human history.

During late July and early August 1914, in Paris, Berlin, London and Saint Petersburg, crowds lined the streets during the last days of the crisis leading up to the First World War, which officially began on 28 July 1914. Some among the marchers sang patriotic songs, demonstrated in front of enemy embassies, and committed random acts of violence.

Those who had desired the conflict, and those who had dreaded it, found their tensions released with the declarations of war. Some wept to see the lamps going out across Europe heralding the imminent approach of fighting, though these were not in a majority. In all of the warring powers many of the young men especially, oblivious of the carnage lying in store for them on the battlefields, celebrated the dawning of a new world with a sense of awe. Yet it soon became clear to everyone, politicians, the public and to a lesser extent military commanders, that the nature of modern, industrialised warfare had been sorely misunderstood.

It was thought by most that the war would be decided within a few months, before Christmas 1914 even, and that no nation’s economy could handle the strain of a prolonged war. There were other fanciful beliefs that combat was to be conducted in the classical sense, with cavalry screens and wide-wheeling masses of manoeuvre. Such were the technological advances that mankind had made by the early 20th century, many decades into the industrial age, that the old-style forms of war were primarily defunct, and the new form was infinitely more deadly.

In 1915 for example, the French Army would suffer 1,624,000 casualties. By comparison in 1915 the German Army had incurred 873,200 casualties, amounting to less than 54% of French casualties; which gives an indication of the superiority of the Germans over the French, and during a period when German forces were simultaneously fighting against the massive Russian Army in the East.

That was into the future. In the early morning of 4 August 1914, the Germans invaded neutral Belgium. They attacked towards the city of Liège in eastern Belgium, located less than 25 miles from the German border. Germany’s invasion of Belgium, a lawless and aggressive action, drew much condemnation from the French and British among others. Not mentioned was that France had until 1912 been planning an attack on Belgium at the outbreak of hostilities, and only that year the French had abandoned the notion out of consideration for England’s attitude, and not out of consideration for the Belgians.

Furthermore, on 5 October 1915 France and Britain invaded neutral Greece, which was of course against the wishes of the Greeks who wanted to stay out of the war, as had the Belgians. The Anglo-French invasion of Greece was a very similar example of unlawful aggression to the German invasion of Belgium. Yet the reactions in Paris and London to the attack on Greece a year later were quite different.

Greece was not pivotal to Anglo-French war aims, whereas the German advance into Belgium, a strategically placed country which borders Germany to the west, was viewed with good reason by Berlin’s militarists as crucial to a German victory in the war. On 4 August 1914 the German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, publicly acknowledged his country’s guilt in assaulting Belgium. Addressing the Reichstag (parliament) he called it “a breach of international law” and continued “The wrong – I speak openly – the wrong we hereby commit we will try to make good as soon as our military aims have been attained”.

An invasion of Belgium was formulated almost a decade prior to 1914 by the German field marshal, Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, as part of his strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan. Field Marshal von Schlieffen, who died aged 79 in January 1913, had planned another illegal offensive against the neutral Netherlands, through Maastricht in the far south of the Netherlands, but Germany spared the Dutch such a fate in 1914.

The German advance into eastern Belgium, meanwhile, was continuing from its opening phase, as they assailed the country starting with 6 regular brigades and 2 cavalry divisions. The German plan was for a rapid and surprise attack (coup de main) against Liège and its fortifications, comprising largely of a dozen late 19th century forts, believed to be among the strongest on the European continent.

On 7 August, just 4 days into the offensive, a 49-year-old German commander, Major-General Erich Ludendorff, forced his way into Liège’s city centre and took the surrender of the Citadel of Liège, the city’s main fortification which had been built in the mid-13th century. This act earned Ludendorff the nickname among Germans as “The Hero of Liège”, and it set him on the path to supreme power in 1916; but at the moment, Ludendorff’s capture of the Citadel was more symbolic than strategic, as the 12 forts nearby were still intact and manned by Belgian troops.

With the Citadel neutralised the German government announced, wrongly, that Liège had fallen. Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, his conscience again uneasy, tried in vain to stop the fighting in Belgium. There was little chance of that, and the Belgian garrison in Liège was defending the city with gallantry; they were inflicting considerable casualties on the enemy, who unwisely chose to attack frontally against the entrenched Belgian riflemen.

Late on 9 August 1914, day 6 of the invasion, an unusual sight appeared over the horizon. The Germans were moving towards Liège their heavy siege guns; such as the 10 metre long Big Bertha, which weighed more than 40 tons and was built in high secrecy by the Krupp steel company, one of the world’s most technically advanced armament firms.

The Big Bertha siege howitzers could reach a target from almost 6 miles way. It fired a shell containing a maximum weight of 1,785 pounds (810 kg), which ensured that Big Bertha could penetrate concrete and soil up to a depth of 40 feet. Each shell could be fired every 7 and a half minutes, or 8 an hour. By the evening of 12 August 1914, the first German siege gun was securely in place, and ready to crack the Belgian forts as a spoon breaks apart an egg. Even before the 12th of August, German infantry took by storm 2 of Liège’s 12 forts, Barchon and d’Evegnée.

The Germans began loading Big Bertha, and the barrel of the giant gun was then pointed at Fort Pontisse. A tremendous roar rang out as Big Bertha’s first shell struck Fort Pontisse, to be followed in synchronisation by more. The fort was completely destroyed by 12:30 pm the following day, 13 August. Over the next 2 days, 6 more of Liège’s forts were reduced to rubble; the last of these, Fort Loncin, was blown to smithereens after one of Big Bertha’s shells scored a direct hit against live ammunition in the fort. The remaining 2 forts surrendered to the Germans without a fight on 16 August 1914. So ended the Battle of Liège after 12 days of bloody fighting.

Shortly after its invasion of Belgium had commenced, sections of the German Army were perpetrating hysterical and brutal acts against the populace. Some Belgian villages were reduced to ashes, hostages were executed, the city of Louvain in central Belgium with its famous libraries was destroyed, priests attending to the wounded were shot out of hand, while a compassionate English nurse, Edith Cavell, was killed the following year (12 October 1915) by a German firing squad for helping prisoners to escape. In all, German soldiers were directly responsible for the deaths of an estimated 5,521 Belgian civilians and 896 French civilians.

In the early days of the war the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, wrote a letter to his Austrian counterpart Franz Joseph which ran, “My soul is torn, but everything must be put to fire and sword; men, women and children and old men must be slaughtered and not a tree or house be left standing. With these methods of terrorism, which are alone capable of affecting a people as degenerate as the French, the war will be over in two months, whereas if I admit considerations of humanity it will be prolonged for years. In spite of my repugnance I have therefore been obliged to choose the former system”.

At the front, German soldiers culpable in criminal actions justified their behaviour by claiming they had firstly been attacked by franc-tireurs, that is armed civilian, guerrilla fighters or snipers. In isolated cases there may have been a grain of truth to this but how did they, an invading army, expect to be received in neutral Belgium, with flowers and cheering on the streets? In his war memoirs written in 1919 Ludendorff, in contrast to the Kaiser, does not seem to have had a soul that is torn. Ludendorff blamed the Belgian authorities for what he admitted were the “sternest measures” taken by the Germans.

Recalling his time in Liège in the first days of the war, Ludendorff wrote, “During the night I was awakened by brisk firing, some of which was directed on our house. The franc-tireur warfare of Belgium had begun. It broke out everywhere the next day, and it was this sort of thing which aroused that intense bitterness that during those first years characterized the war on the Western front, in contrast to the feeling prevailing in the East. The Belgian Government took a grave responsibility upon itself. It had systematically organized civilian warfare… our troops cannot be blamed if they took the sternest measures to suppress it. It is true that innocent persons may have had to suffer, but the stories of ‘Belgian atrocities’ are nothing but clever, elaborate, and widely advertised legends, and the Belgian Government can alone be held responsible”.

Though Ludendorff possessed physical courage and was regarded as one of Germany’s best staff officers, he was also a ruthless soldier and an imperialist already displaying fascist tendencies; he did not shirk from violence if he felt it had to be used.

Belgian historian Sophie de Schaepdrijver wrote “the victims were accused, incorrectly, of being franc-tireurs. Most of the German rank and file genuinely believed that the locals were attacking them; this sniper delusion was sometimes countered by the commanding officers, sometimes not”.

The German attack on Belgium was broadening in scope. On 14 August 1914, before Liège had fallen, the right wing of the German invasion force was entering Belgium. Crossing the German-Belgian frontier was the German 1st Army under General Alexander von Kluck, and the German 2nd Army under General Karl von Bülow. Both von Kluck and von Bülow, each aged 68, were highly experienced officers. The two men had seen action in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.

German mobilisation was completed on 13 August 1914, meaning that the Belgian Army’s defence of Liège had in total delayed Germany’s western advance for a few hours, if at all, contrary to what has often been claimed. In the first 15 days of marching through August the German 1st Army, consisting of 6 corps, met little opposition across the Belgian countryside. They advanced about 180 miles in 2 weeks of hard marching. The German 1st Army in the process captured the Belgian capital city, Brussels, on 20 August 1914.

Five days before that, on 15 August advance units of the German 3rd Army – under General Max Klemens von Hausen – had reached the Meuse river at the city of Dinant, in southern Belgium, beside the French border and 150 miles from Paris. The first attempts of the German 3rd Army, to establish a crossing over the Meuse river, were beaten back by the Belgians.

Elsewhere, the German effort was foiled of cutting off and destroying the Belgian field army on the Gette river, by preventing the Belgians from seeking refuge in the city of Antwerp, in northern Belgium. The Belgian troops had no intention of sitting on the Gette river line and being wiped out. Regardless, one Belgian division was caught napping on the Gette, and it suffered 1,600 casualties against the Germans before it could break away.

By 20 August 1914 the Belgian forces were safely in Antwerp, except for the 4th Division, which was still stationed in the city of Namur in central Belgium. Also on 20 August, after a few days of frustration, the German 3rd Army forced a crossing of the Meuse river at Dinant to the south. By 25 August, Namur further north had been captured by the Germans. Belgium’s position was desperate, and the roads through the country were wide open.

Had the Schlieffen Plan been executed as originally devised by Field Marshal von Schlieffen, with the all important German right wing “brushing the sleeve of the [English] Channel”, the Germans could have now walked unopposed into the heartland of France. Yet the Schlieffen Plan, specifically relating to the German right wing, had been weakened and the strategy altered by General Helmuth von Moltke (The Younger), who in January 1906 had succeeded von Schlieffen as Chief of the German General Staff.

Von Moltke did not possess as sharp a military brain as his predecessor; he did not perceive the Schlieffen Plan’s intricacies. To his death, von Schlieffen had stressed that the right wing of the German Army was to be “as strong as possible”, and he allotted 79 divisions to comprise of this right wing.

Von Schlieffen had designated just 9 divisions and some Landwehr (militia) forces to the German left wing, which was to occupy positions from Metz in north-eastern France to the Swiss border, around 150 miles to the south of Metz. Yet von Moltke, instead, assigned most of the new divisions that became available between 1906 and 1914 to the German left wing! The truth was that von Moltke had also lost confidence in the Schlieffen Plan, and in the back of his mind he was preparing for a longer war by cutting down on short-term risks; but as it turned out, von Moltke was significantly increasing the overall risk to Germany.

It should be mentioned, too, that von Moltke was later supporting the criminal activities of some German troops in Belgium and France. On 5 August 1914, the 66-year-old von Moltke wrote to the Austrian commander Conrad von Hötzendorf, “Our advance in Belgium is certainly brutal, but we are fighting for our lives and all who get in the way must take the consequences”. A week later, in a statement of 12 August, von Moltke further justified such actions by warning Belgium and France that it was “in the nature of such things that [countermeasures] will be extraordinarily harsh and even, under some circumstances, affect the innocent”.

Returning to the Schlieffen Plan, in the East von Schlieffen had allotted 10 German divisions in which to guard East Prussia against the initial advance of the Russian Army; which would take a few weeks to materialise, due to the inevitable lengthy mobilisation process relating to the Russian Army’s large size, and the difficulty of the ground that the Russians would have to traverse across; such as their having to avoid the Masurian Lakes of central Europe and extensive marshy terrain nearby.

Von Moltke judged that the Schlieffen Plan was a great gamble, which it certainly was, but his attempts to improve it and make it less so injured rather than enhanced its prospects of success. Von Schlieffen had concluded that Germany needed a quick, decisive battle of annihilation in the West, and that this was possible only if the enemy could be outflanked and enveloped. Von Schlieffen, a student of military history, regarded Hannibal’s crushing victory over the Romans at Cannae, in the year 216 BC, as the perfect example of this type of military operation.

Von Schlieffen envisaged that the German right wing – which would consist of the bulk of the German Army – would pass through Belgium and northern France, cross the Seine river just above Rouen in the Normandy region, sweep around Paris to the west and south, and thereupon smash the French Army back against the Swiss frontier, like a hammer striking an anvil. With the French and their ally Britain knocked out of the war within the expected 6 weeks, the Germans would turn east with all of their remaining forces and overcome the Russian Army; which by then would be at Germany’s eastern boundaries. That is how von Schlieffen foresaw victory for his country in the war.

From a purely military viewpoint the Schlieffen Plan was an excellent strategy, and very bold, but not without its flaws. Germany would have fewer men than needed for the tasks at hand. The margin of time would be very small between the campaigns in the West and East. An extended delay in the West would probably be fatal for Germany’s chances in the war, as indeed proved the case. Germany’s location on the map in central Europe, flanked on either side by enemies, had always placed her in a vulnerable position in a major European war. France had the luxury of being protected on its left flank, by either the Atlantic Ocean or the English Channel.

On 16 August 1914 the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), of 4 divisions and a cavalry division, had crossed the English Channel and disembarked without interference at Le Havre in northern France. On 22 August the British forces, commanded by Field Marshal John French, finally reached Mons in western Belgium, where they took up a position on the left of the French 5th Army, commanded by General Charles Lanrezac. As the British soldiers marched along the dusty roads, they sang a popular music-hall song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”, named after the county of Tipperary in Ireland.

The former German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, had said that if British troops ever landed on mainland Europe and attacked Germany, “I shall have the police arrest them”. Considering that Britain was a naval power, which did not then have or need a large army, Bismarck’s witty comment is understandable.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Sources

Christopher Hoitash, “Franc-Tireurs: French Partisans Were a Thorn in Germany’s Side”, War History Online, 4 June 2018

Erich Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story, August 1914-November 1918, The Great War (Pickle Partners Publishing, 12 Apr. 2012)

Noam Chomsky, On The Backgrounds of the Pacific War, Liberation, September-October 1967, Chomsky.info

Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 April 1985)

Sophie de Schaepdrijver, “The ‘German Atrocities’ of 1914”, The British Library, 29 January 2014

History.com editors, “This Day in History, 1914, August 05, German assault on Liège begins first battle of World War I”, History.com, Original publication date 16 November 2009, Last updated 3 August 2020

Oliver Stein, “Schlieffen, Alfred, Graf von”, 1914-1918-online International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 21 February 2017

Marc Romanych, “Big Bertha weapon”, Britannica

Dr. John Rickard, Siege of Liège, 5-16 August 1914, HistoryOfWar.org, 14 March 2001

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***

In May, Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, held up a vote on a bill which sought to approve some $40 billion in aid for Ukraine. Paul wanted language inserted into the bill, without a vote, that would have an inspector general scrutinize the new spending.

“This would be the inspector general that’s been overseeing the waste in Afghanistan,” Paul said, “and has done a great job.”

While senators on both sides of the aisle bristled at Paul’s delay tactics, Christopher Tremoglie, a commentary fellow for The Washington Examiner, questioned the fact that

“[w]hile much attention has been placed on Paul holding up the aid legislation, the more important issue is why are so many senators against ensuring that billions of taxpayer dollars aren’t being misused?”

One of the senators who took umbrage over Paul’s actions was the senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer. Speaking from the floor of the Senate chamber, the senior senator from New York declared that “it is repugnant that one member of the other side, the junior senator from Kentucky, chose to make a show and obstruct Ukraine funding.”

Schumer added that Paul’s actions served to “strengthen [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s hand.”

What Schumer didn’t say was that an inspector general, mandated to oversee how U.S. taxpayer money authorized under the bill in question (the Additional Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022, which became Public Law 117-128 on May 21), would have exposed the role that U.S. funds played to exact political revenge on the man who tried to inject a modicum of accountability into how monies appropriated by Congress are spent, namely Rand Paul.

‘Countering Disinformation’

Some three weeks after Schumer helped push the bill into law, on July 14, Andriy Shapovalov, a Ukrainian civil servant whose salary was paid for by U.S. taxpayer monies, convened a “round table” in Kiev on “countering disinformation.”

Shapovalov, in his role as the acting head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, published a list of the names of 72 people whom he accused of deliberately spreading disinformation about Ukraine. Shapovalov labelled them “information terrorists,” adding that Ukraine was preparing legislation so that such people can be prosecuted as “war criminals.”

The “round table” was organized by the U.S. Civil Research and Development Fund (CRDF Global Ukraine), an ostensible nonprofit organization authorized by U.S. Congress to promote “international scientific and technical collaboration.” It is supported by the U.S. State Department, some of whose officials sat in attendance.

One of the people singled out by Shapovalov as an “information terrorist” targeted for criminal prosecution as a “war criminal” was none other than Rand Paul.

To recap: Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, angered by Rand Paul daring to ask for accountability over how $40 billion in U.S. taxpayer money was going to be spent in Ukraine, accused Paul — for doing his duty as a senator — of strengthening Putin’s hand, before allowing this very money, being doled out with zero oversight, to underwrite a Ukrainian entity which, with the active support of the U.S. State Department and U.S.-funded NGOs, labels Paul an “information terrorist” and threatens the Kentucky senator with prosecution as a “war criminal.”

If this doesn’t sicken you, you’re not much of an American.

There can be little doubt that a case can be made that Public Law 117-128, in so far as it finances and facilitates ongoing violations of individual civil liberties of American citizens and constitutes an ongoing effort to intimidate lawmakers from carrying out their legislative responsibilities under the Constitution, has, through the State Department-supported, Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, created an ongoing criminal organization which is carrying out acts against U.S. citizens for which it should be held criminally and civilly liable.

Whether the Justice Department would ever bring an investigation into this criminal enterprise is doubtful. After all, Schumer was able to shut down the creation of an inspector general capable of carrying out the required investigations.

But there is more.

Diane Sare

On May 31, Diane Sare, a LaRouche candidate challenging Schumer for his Senate seat in November, filed 66,000 signatures — well over the 45,000 required by law — with the New York State Board of Elections, thereby getting her name on the ballot.

Commenting on this achievement, Sare noted that “The successful petitioning campaign constitutes a major breakthrough, given that the new requirements were designed to prevent independent and minority party candidates from being able to comply.”

Diane Sare was singled out by the Schumer-funded, State Department-supported Center for Countering Disinformation as an “information terrorist” who should be prosecuted as a “war criminal” because of her public stance challenging the narrative about the Ukraine conflict.

That’s right — Chuck Schumer helped create the organizational structures which have attacked the reputation of a challenger for his Senate seat, threatening her with political violence and more for the “crime” of challenging Schumer on the issue of Ukraine.

This is the same Chuck Schumer who advocated impeaching President Donald Trump for a phone call Schumer claimed sought to pressure Ukraine into carrying out investigations that could have been damaging to the candidacy of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The same Chuck Schumer who once proclaimed from the Senate floor:

“I strongly disagree with those who advocate harassing folks if they don’t agree with you. No one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.”

I couldn’t have said it any better — what Chuck Schumer has done in using U.S. taxpayer money to attack his political opponents is un-American. One can only hope that the New York voters see it the same way come November.

It also appears to be illegal. As such, I hope that both Rand Paul and Diane Sare pursue whatever legal recourse is available to them to expose and shut down a Schumer-supported law that allows U.S. taxpayer money to underwrite a campaign targeting U.S. citizens, including serving senators and political challengers, with intimidation and more for the “crime” of exercising their First Amendment right of free speech.

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Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

Featured image: Sen. Chuck Schumer in 2018. (AFGE, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

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***

The cesspool of vaccine side effects in Germany is finally completely open. According to the Dutch news site, Blckbx, five months after a Wob request, it appears that 437,593 of the 11 million insured persons of the country’s largest Health Insurance fund, Techniker Krankenkasse (TK), had to undergo medical treatment in 2021 for Covid vaccine side effects. That is 1 in 25 and an increase of 3000 percent.

This week, TK finally provided facts and figures about the number of treatments they had to reimburse in 2021 due to (serious) side effects of covid vaccines. But unfortunately, it took a lot of struggle and effort to get answers to the Wob request.

In 2021, the massive number of 437,593 insured, or 1 in 25, received medical treatment for side effects of vaccination, reports the Techniker Krankenkasse (TK). This number is almost twice as high as all side effects reported by the German federal medical agency Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) and Lareb Germany. Furthermore, it represents an increase of 3000 percent for TK compared to 2019 and 2020.

‘As many as 1 in 500 injections is expected to cause serious side effects

The figures also suggest that the number of 1:5000 serious side effects per shot reported by the German ministry last week is, in reality, much higher. Based on the figures from Techniker Krankenkasse, as many as one in 500 injections is expected to cause a serious side effect, and 3.3 million Germans would have had to be treated by a doctor by 2021 because of side effects of the covid shots. Serious side effects include (facial) paralysis, persistent pain, nerve problems, severe skin reactions, heart attacks, strokes, heart muscle inflammation, permanent disability, and death.

In the Wob request to the TK health insurance fund, the billing figures from 2019 to 2021 were requested per quarter and per person for the reporting codes T881 – Complications after vaccination (immunization), not classified elsewhere, including rash after vaccination, T88.0 – Post-vaccination infection (immunization), including post-vaccination sepsis (immunization), U12.9 – Adverse reactions to the use of COVID-19 vaccines, unspecified and Y.59.9 – Adverse complications due to vaccines or biologically active substances.

The data shows that in 2021 the Techniker Krankenkasse had to reimburse 147,235 medical treatments for code U12.9 – Adverse reactions to the use of covid vaccines, unspecified – alone. All codes listed below are serious side effects requiring a doctor’s treatment.

In 2019, among the 11 million insured, 13,777 medical treatments were required due to vaccine side effects. In 2020 there were 15,044. In 2021, the number shot up to 437,593, an increase of more than 3,000 percent.

Fired Health insurance boss’ estimates confirmed again

In February (former), BKK Provita board member Andreas Schöfbeck sounded the alarm because he saw that the number of doctor visits due to the vaccines among the millions of customers of the German health insurer was no less than ten times higher than the official figures. Converted, according to Schöfbeck, no fewer than three million Germans would have had to visit a doctor as a result of vaccination.

In a telephone conversation with the WELT newspaper, which asked Schöfbeck questions about the letter he wrote to the Paul Ehrlich Institute, Schöfbeck said that at BKK, ProVita alarm bells started ringing when the health insurer’s case management increasingly came across diagnoses that indicated side effects of the covid vaccination. Therefore, he searched the shared data pool of all BKK health insurance funds for the diagnosis codes T88.0, T88.1, Y59.9, and U12.9.

The investigation found that from the beginning of the year 2021 to the middle of the third quarter, 216,695 BKK policyholders had been treated for side effects of vaccines. This number excludes 7,665 cases of complications from other vaccines. In addition, the statistics did not include patients who received more than one treatment. By comparison, up to December 31, 2021, the Paul Ehrlich Institute only registered 244,576 reports of adverse events due to corona vaccines, based on 61.4 million people vaccinated.

Schöfbeck was immediately fired for his revelations.

2.5 million doctor visits due to vaccines

At the beginning of July, German news channel WELT obtained a letter from the National Association of Physicians of Statutory Health Insurance (KBV) showing that Andreas Schöfbeck’s estimates were probably correct. The KBV letter from mid-June revealed that nearly 2.5 million citizens went to the doctor in 2021 because of the side effects of the corona vaccination.

Evidence continues to pile up

Both former health insurance fund boss Andreas Schöfbeck, the National Association of Physicians of Statutory Health Insurance (KBV), and now also the Techniker Krankenkasse figures show that the actual number of severe side effects as a result of the experimental covid injections is many times higher than was first officially assumed.

Even the health ministry in Germany has admitted that 1:5000 injections lead to hospitalization, permanent disability, or death – a very serious revelation, but probably a very conservative estimate.

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Amy Mek is an Investigative Journalist: Banned in parts of Europe, Wanted by Islamic countries, Threatened by terror groups, Hunted by left-wing media, Smeared by Hollywood elites & Fake religious leaders.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

Americans are always innocent.  They never provoke.  They never antagonize.  Their only concern is the preservation of democracy and human rights around the world.  So, they say.

During her recent visit to Taiwan, the raven-eyed Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, pledged her support for democracy on the Chinese island.  At a press conference following her meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen, she stated, “Again, our delegation came here to send an unequivocal message: “America stands with Taiwan,” no doubt in the same manner it stands with Ukraine.

The message, of course, was sent to Chinese President Xi Jinping, who, speaking with his American counterpart, Joe Biden, prior to the Pelosi visit, warned that, “Those who play with fire will perish by it.”

On the advice of the military, President Biden, who initially cautioned against the visit, tried to play down the controversial trip by asking, in essence, what’s the problem?  America’s One China policy has not changed.  So, what’s the fuss?

Democratic and Republican lawmakers, normally at each other’s throats, agreed that Pelosi should follow through with her visit.  After all, they reasoned, the Chinese Communist Party should not be able to dictate the travel plans of the Speaker of the House, illustrating once again the bipartisan nature of the politics of empire.  

Pelosi, however, did not visit Taiwan on an American Airlines flight or one sponsored by any other commercial airline, chartered airline, or private jet.  No.  She flew to the island on a U.S. Navy military transport plane, protected in the South China Sea by the aptly named USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier and a flotilla of warships.  There was no provocation, according to U.S. government spokespersons, pretending innocence.

This is the same Nancy Pelosi who, as a Congresswoman, carried a banner in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square honoring pro-democracy demonstrators while decrying the lack of political freedom in Communist China in 1991.  The public relations stunt was repeated by Vitoria Nuland and John McCain in Kiev’s Maidan Square in support of pro-democracy protesters in Ukraine; the difference being, the United States was able to topple the Ukrainian government by using fascist shock troops in 2014, but failed to organize a color revolution by co-opting students and workers in China, whose military crushed dissidents in 1989.

The People’s Liberation Army could have shot Pelosi’s plane out of midair and ended, once and for all, the career of a venal imperialist politician who spouted anti-Chinese rhetoric for decades.  They did not do so, considering the act too brazen, unlike the United States government that routinely uses its military or its surrogates to take out enemies with the ruthlessness of Mafia hitmen.  Witness the recent killing of Al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.  Or the hanging of Saddam Hussain.  Or the torture, sodomy, and shooting of Muammar Kaddafi, captured on a cellphone video, and viewed with relish by Hillary Clinton, who commented, “We came, we saw, he died.”

In his comments extoling the extra-judicial killing of Zawahiri, Biden stated, “We make it clear again tonight that no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out,” a right reserved by the American empire but forbidden to its enemies.

What China has done is commence “targeted military operations” surrounding the island of Taiwan.  These operations involve the entire Chinese military, including naval drills, long-range shooting drills, and ballistic missile launches by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).  By so doing, China has closed Taiwan’s water lanes and airspace.  It has done so before.

There have been three Taiwan Strait crises, one in 1952, another in 1954, and a third in 1995.  On all three occasions, the PLA launched military operations only to face deterrent forces deployed by the United States.  In the second crisis, PLA troops massed in the coastal province of Fujian, prompting the Americans to send warships into the Strait.  China is currently massing troops in Fujian as part of its targeted military operations in response to the Pelosi provocation.

Two questions emerge: Is the military operation a show of force or a prelude to war?  If China launches a war of reunification, what will the United States, having pledged to defend Taiwan, do?

Unlike the United States, whose leaders have their itchy fingers poised on launch codes for Hellfire, cruise, and nuclear missiles, the Chinese, whose civilization is 5,000 years old, have demonstrated a great deal of patience when it comes to Taiwan.  They can take the long view and simply wait for conditions to ripen for reunification after demonstrating their military power to crush any move toward independence by Taipei and Washington.

President Xi, who values stability, is very cautious and undoubtedly understands the consequences that a proxy-war like the one being fought by the United States against Russia in Ukraine would have on China.  The consequences of a direct war would be infinitely more profound and destructive.

But the highly emotional issue of Taiwan’s reunification should not be underestimated given China’s history of subjugation prior to the Maoist revolution in 1949, especially if U.S. provocations continue, as they most certainly will. The revolution pulled China from the clutches of imperialism and bestowed independence and dignity upon the Middle Kingdom, enabling the country to emerge as a global economic and military power, one that should not be trifled with today.

Yet, it is precisely because of China’s emergence as a world power that Pelosi stuck her finger in the eye of the Chinese Dragon in the name of defending “democracy” from “autocracy,” holding fast to the Biden doctrine of foreign interventionism.

The truth is that the United States only loves democracy when the state serves capital, particularly American capital, as it does in Taiwan and every other democratic vassal state in the empire.  These are fake democracies that serve the elites, not the people.  Autocratic governments, including monarchies such as Saudi Arabia’s, are acceptable to the United States as long as they adopt vassal status to U.S. capital.  The only type of government, democratic or autocratic, hated by the American empire is one that adopts policies of economic nationalism and does not throw its doors open to unregulated foreign (i.e., U.S. corporate and financial) penetration.

In the United States, politics is controlled by capital. In China, capital is controlled by politics.  That is what allowed the Chinese Communist Party to lift 800,000 of its people out of extreme poverty.  The United States, despite its “War on Poverty” during the 1960s, never approached such a monumental social achievement and, worse, has abandoned the Keynesian economic model that supported Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in favor of a neoliberal economics of deregulated capital accumulation.

Internationally, the Chinese practice fair trade, not free trade, a euphemism for U.S. corporate globalization and profit accumulation.  In 2013, President Xi Jinping undertook the Belt and Road Initiative, an economic and infrastructural development program that connects China to Central Asia, Europe, and Africa modeled on the ancient Silk Road trade route.  In 2017, President Xi extended the initiative to Latin America.  The idea is to set up a global corridor by land and sea for financial integration, development, and trade, supported by institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which does not involve itself in predatory lending and debt enslavement as do the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, American accusations of a “Chinese debt trap” notwithstanding.

On July 22, 2022, China and Russia announced the development of a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar, thereby undercutting financial dependence on the United States and its Treasury Department’s profligate use of sanctions to punish adversaries.  The announcement was made at a meeting of BRICS countries that included Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, who intend to develop a basket of currencies to replace the dollar reserve.

Herein lies the threat to U.S. global hegemony that explains why the United States sees itself as being involved in agreat-power competition, the latest neoconservative justification for military interventionism and confrontational behavior.

Pelosi’s visit must be analyzed within the context of Obama’s pivot to Asia.  The foreign policy initiative was announced by the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2011.  It is the brainchild of his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, that was also adopted by Trump and Biden.

Here is where the truth radically differs from propaganda.  The United States’ empire is being threatened by an economic competitor that is, in the words of its own president, “eating our lunch.”  The American response, as usual, is to apply force.  The pivot to Asia is nothing other than the hegemon, under Obama, Trump, and Biden, turning away from its destructive frenzy in the Middle East to vent its anger in the Far East, in the same way a mass murderer pivots from one victim to another to take aim during a shooting spree.

The pivot involves the United States surrounding China with an archipelago of 400 military bases that extend from Australia, to the South Pacific, to Japan, especially Okinawa, and to South Korea.  The purpose is to counter Chinese naval expansion in the South China Sea and potentially cut off maritime trade routes.  The bases also provide a launching pad for an attack on China.  Who, it must be asked, is threatening whom?

The pretext of Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is not only to protect democracy from autocracy but to protect human rights. Presidents of the United States, State Department officials, Congressional representatives, including Pelosi, and corporate journalists have been particularly vocal in confronting China’s human rights abuses, especially regarding its treatment of Uyghur and Tibetan people.

Concerning the Uyghurs, China is accused of committing human rights violations against the largely Muslim ethnic minority living in Xinjiang province, including the detention of over one million people, the imprisonment of thousands, and the imposition of a mass sterilization program on Uyghur women.  China has denied persecuting the Uyghurs by mass internment.  The Chinese government has also categorically denied charges of imposing mass sterilization in the province.  Not coincidentally, the United States has been recruiting Uyghur jihadists, who were battle-hardened in its proxy-war in Syria and its occupation in Afghanistan, to fight for independence in Xinjiang, thus disrupting the Belt and Road Initiative.  China has launched a genuine anti-terror campaign to put an end to the Uyghur separatist rebellion.

Even if the charges against China are taken at face value, which they should not be given the American track record of imperial lies, who is the United States government to lecture China on the treatment of Muslims in the wake of its fraudulent “War on Terror?” The U.S. war of terror led to attacks on seven Muslim countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Iran; CIA ghost flights, extraordinary rendition, and torture programs aimed at Muslims; the kidnapping and imprisonment of insurgents, many of whom are Muslim, on a military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; FBI raids on Muslim charities and violations of the civil liberties of Muslim Americans and immigrants in the wake of 9/11; a ban on immigration from seven Muslim countries; and U.S. support for Israel’s repression of Palestinians, particularly its recent attacks on Muslim worshipers at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Prior to the Chinese entry into Tibet, the country was ruled by a Buddhist theocracy that based itself on a ruthless feudal order, the foundation of which was serfdom, with all of its attendant atrocities.  The Chinese communists permitted limited self-rule in Tibet when they entered the country in 1951.  The CIA immediately began financing a Tibetan independence movement, including support for the Dalli Lama, leading to an armed uprising that was suppressed by the People’s Liberation Army in 1956/57.  The fraudulent Dalli Lama, who lived in opulence while in Tibet, has been hailed as a paragon of spiritual virtue by clueless liberals in the West, despite his history as a tool of the CIA and one of its front organizations, the National Endowment for Democracy.

The empire never rests when it comes to subverting independent states by fomenting religious, ethnic, and tribal hatred to induce separatist movements.  And yet, the Chinese people and their government are subjected to the appallingly hypocritical rhetoric uttered by Nancy Pelosi as she presumes to lecture China on the issue of human rights.

It is peculiar how Pelosi, the freedom fighter, is not concerned about the human rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, 14,000 of whom were killed by the fascist puppet government in Kiev installed by a U.S. sponsored coup in 2014.

Pelosi has no regard for the human rights of Afghan, Pakistani, Iraqi, Libyan, Syrian, Yemeni, or Somali people who have suffered from U.S. invasions, occupations, bombings, drone strikes, and other forms of hideous imperial violence in the Middle East and North Africa.

Pelosi, being a regular attendee at annual AIPAC conferences, recipient of large Zionist campaign donations, and hack for the Zionist Lobby, cares not a whit about Palestinian human rights, being as she is, a rabid supporter of Israel and its violent repression in the Occupied Territories.

She does not care about the people of Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, or any other country subjected to economic boycotts, sanctions,

coup d’états, proxy-wars, death squads, and other forms of political violence and oppression imposed by the United States in Latin America.

Closer to home, despite rhetorical support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Pelosi is unconcerned about the human rights of Black Americans, who are routinely shot down in the streets of freedom’s land by police forces deployed in mass by her political ally in the White House, Joe Biden, author of Bill Clinton’s notorious crime bill.

Above all, she does not care about the people of China or Taiwan.  What she cares about is imperial domination. Pelosi and Biden have fractured the One China policy that recognizes the People’s Republic as the legitimate government of China and acknowledges the view that Taiwan is part of China, in favor of intimidation and the not-so-veiled threat of military intervention should China try to reunify Taiwan.  The U.S. posture of “strategic ambiguity” with regard to Taiwan is no longer ambiguous following Pelosi’s visit and recent statements by Biden that are designed to encourage Taiwanese independence from Beijing.

When Biden was asked during a recent news conference in Tokyo whether the United States would use military force to defend Taiwan if it were attacked, he answered, “Yes, it’s a commitment we made.”  Spokespersons at the White House and State Department tried to “walk back’’ the comment, reiterating the One China policy, but the proverbial cat was out of the bag.

Mad-dog imperialists are desperate and can only provoke war to save their declining empire, but war with China or Russia, or both, is a conflict they cannot win as it will destroy life on the planet.  Herein lies the existential danger facing humanity.

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Donald Monaco is a writer and political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War.  He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective.  His most recent book is titled, The Politics of Empire, and is available at amazon.com. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Winds of War in Eurasia

By Manlio Dinucci, August 08, 2022

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s provocative visit to Taiwan is part of the U.S. escalation against China in what, in Pentagon geography, is referred to as the Indo-Pacific, i.e., the region stretching from the west coast of the United States to that of India.

U.S. Declares Monkeypox Health Emergency, FDA Offers Vaccine to Some Kids Despite No Clinical Trials

By Megan Redshaw, August 08, 2022

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday declared monkeypox a public health emergency. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it will offer monkeypox vaccines to children on a “case-by-case” basis, despite no clinical trials for kids under 18.

Going Global with NATO

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, August 08, 2022

Regional alliances should, for the most part, remain regional.  Areas of the globe can count on a number of such bodies and associations with varying degrees of heft: the Organization of American States; the Organisation of African Unity; and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.  Only one has decided to move beyond its natural, subscribed limits, citing security and a militant basis, for its actions.

Chris Hedges: NATO — The Most Dangerous Military Alliance on the Planet

By Chris Hedges, August 08, 2022

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the arms industry that depends on it for billions in profits, has become the most aggressive and dangerous military alliance on the planet. Created in 1949 to thwart Soviet expansion into Eastern and Central Europe, it has evolved into a global war machine in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Do Universities Teach Economics?

By Emanuel Pastreich, August 07, 2022

The “facts” of economics, from interest rates and deficits, to inflation and value, are presented in the textbooks as if they were natural laws, the equivalent of the second law of thermodynamics or the law of gravity. It is fabulously assumed that the student can discover the truth of economics through the mere process of calculation without any epistemological or metaphysical, let alone scientific investigation into the validity of those assumptions about the human activities defined as economics.

Russia- Zimbabwe Relations: “Remain Work-in-Progress” Interview with Brigadier General Nicholas Mike Sango

By Brigadier General Nicholas Mike Sango and Kester Kenn Klomegah, August 07, 2022

Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, and shares borders with South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique. It is very rich in mineral resources and is the largest trading partner of South Africa on the continent of Africa. Russia maintains very friendly relations with Zimbabwe, thanks to ties which evolved during the struggle for independence.

It Is an Illusion to Believe That One Can Rise Against the State

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, August 07, 2022

Time and again, people succumb to the illusion that they have to take to the streets and break windows when they are wronged. Politicians of all shades are already fantasising about coming popular uprisings and civil war. This rebellion against violence “from above” is understandable because people find it hard to bear and also want to fight it off with violence.

“To Hate All Things Russian”: Russia’s Contributions to the Treasure-trove of World Civilization

By Prof. Alexandra Kostina and Prof. Valeria Z. Nollan, August 07, 2022

In his article for The Atlantic of July 24, 2022 “Don’t Blame Dostoevsky,” Mikhail Shishkin makes a false start right away.  He rationalizes hate for a nation and its culture in the first sentence: “I understand why people hate all things Russian right now.” From the outset he tells readers it is permissible to hate an entire nation if one can manufacture an “acceptable” reason for this hatred.

The Collapse of America: Distant Early Warning Signs of Uncle Sam’s Demise. Andrei Martyanov

By Michael Welch, August 07, 2022

In the previous instalment of this two part series, we painted a portrait of an American Empire that was constantly failing in its military engagements in, really, all of its pursuits, from Afghanistan and Iraq, to Libya and Syria, to Venezuela, Bolivia and even the crucial flash-point now in Ukraine. In a nutshell, the U.S. has lost ground in every military venture it pursued since the turn of the century.

At the Lost and Found in the Era of “Nothingness”: When Knowledge Coincides with Ignorance and “Truth Becomes Untruth”

By Edward Curtin, August 05, 2022

The world’s great religions, including Taoism and Existential philosophy, understand that at the heart of human existence is the presence of the not (death, emptiness, void), but this negative reality, this “nothingness” interpenetrates with the positive of being alive so that our knowledge coincides with our ignorance, our lives with our death, and our truth with untruth.  This is also common sense.

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The Environmental Protection Agency reported this week that it issued so-called “emergency” approvals to spray various neonicotinoids and pyrethroids — insecticides the agency itself recognizes as “very highly toxic” to bees and aquatic insects — on more than 370,000 acres of crops across the U.S.

Emergency exemptions allow the spraying of pesticides not otherwise approved on specific crops. The approvals, made from July 2021 to June 2022, allowed for the spraying of thiamethoxam on rice paddies in Arkansas and bifenthrin on peach, apple and nectarine orchards in Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

“The EPA is using this backdoor approval process to ramp up otherwise unlawful use of dangerous pesticides,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Declaring an emergency for 10 consecutive years demonstrates that EPA officials have taken the abuse of emergency exemptions to the point of absolute absurdity.”

This marks the 10th straight year that emergency exemptions for bifenthrin have been granted in Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, where it would otherwise be illegal to use the potent insecticide to target the brown marmorated stinkbug on pome and stone fruit trees, which are highly attractive to bees. Bifenthrin is known to be highly toxic to bees. It is a restricted-use insecticide of the pyrethroid class that is linked to autism, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. It is a highly persistent pesticide that is considered a Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substance, or PFAS.

This is also the second consecutive year that the highly toxic insecticide thiamethoxam has been approved for use on rice fields in Arkansas. The maker of thiamethoxam, Syngenta, applied for a general approval of thiamethoxam on rice and other crops in 2017. Nearly five years later the EPA has yet to approve or deny that application, indicating there are high risks that prevent the agency from granting approval through its normal processes.

The so-called emergency approval will allow the pesticide, which is incredibly toxic to aquatic invertebrates, to be sprayed on a crop that is grown in standing water throughout much of the year. Arkansas is home to 20 species of freshwater fish, mussels and crawfish listed under the Endangered Species Act that require clean freshwater habitat for their survival.

“Big Ag knows that when a pesticide can’t make it through the normal review process, it can always exploit the emergency exemption process,” said Donley. “The absurd ‘emergency’ approvals for these dangerous poisons show that the EPA often succumbs to pressure to shrug off proper consideration of what’s safe for people or wildlife.”

The EPA has routinely allowed emergency exemptions for predictable and chronic situations that occur over many consecutive years. The agency has consistently abused the authority of granting emergency exemptions, as chronicled in the Center’s report, Poisonous Process: How the EPA’s Chronic Misuse of ‘Emergency’ Pesticide Exemptions Increases Risks to Wildlife.

In 2019 the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General released a report finding that the agency’s practice of routinely granting “emergency” approval for pesticides across millions of acres does not effectively measure risks to human health or the environment.

The Center has filed a legal petition calling for EPA to limit emergency exemptions to two years as a way to prohibit some of the more egregious abuses of this process. The EPA has not taken any substantive action in response to the petition.

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Featured image is from Zero Hedge

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday declared monkeypox a public health emergency. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it will offer monkeypox vaccines to children on a “case-by-case” basis, despite no clinical trials for kids under 18.

The U.S. declared monkeypox a public health emergency to raise awareness and allow for additional funding to fight the disease’s spread, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said on Thursday.

“We’re prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus, and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus,” Becerra said.

Becerra said he also is considering a second declaration that would allow federal officials to expedite medical countermeasures — such as potential treatments and vaccines — designed to ensure drugs are safe and effective.

President Biden said in a tweet he remained “committed to our monkeypox response: ramping-up vaccine distribution, expanding testing, and educating at-risk communities.”

“That’s why today’s public health emergency declaration on the virus is critical to confronting this outbreak with the urgency it warrants,” Biden said.

The last time the U.S. declared a public health emergency was in January 2020, for COVID-19.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 7,100 cases of monkeypox have been reported in the U.S., including five cases in children.

Symptoms of monkeypox infection are usually mild and include fever, rash and swollen lymph nodes, and occasionally intense headache, back pain, muscle aches, lack of energy and skin eruptions that can cause painful lesions, scabs or crusts.

The virus is rarely fatal and no deaths have been reported in the U.S.

Monkeypox primarily is spread through skin-to-skin contact during sex and affects mostly gay and bisexual men, public health officials say, although the virus can affect anyone.

According to the CDC, about 98% of monkeypox patients who provided demographic information to clinics identified as men who have sex with men.

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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We repost this article, that was originally published on LewRockwell.com in 2006, in commemoration of the 77th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing.

Every year during the first two weeks of August the mass news media and many politicians at the national level trot out the “patriotic” political myth that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan in August of 1945 caused them to surrender, and thereby saved the lives of anywhere from five hundred thousand to one million American soldiers, who did not have to invade the islands. Opinion polls over the last fifty years show that American citizens overwhelmingly (between 80 and 90%) believe this false history which, of course, makes them feel better about killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians (mostly women and children) and saving American lives to accomplish the ending of the war.

The best book, in my opinion, to explode this myth is The Decision to Use the Bomb by Gar Alperovitz, because it not only explains the real reasons the bombs were dropped, but also gives a detailed history of how and why the myth was created that this slaughter of innocent civilians was justified, and therefore morally acceptable. The essential problem starts with President Franklin Roosevelt’s policy of unconditional surrender, which was reluctantly adopted by Churchill and Stalin, and which President Truman decided to adopt when he succeeded Roosevelt in April of 1945. Hanson Baldwin was the principal writer for The New York Times who covered World War II and he wrote an important book immediately after the war entitled Great Mistakes of the War. Baldwin concludes that the unconditional surrender policy “. . . was perhaps the biggest political mistake of the war . . . . Unconditional surrender was an open invitation to unconditional resistance; it discouraged opposition to Hitler, probably lengthened the war, costs us lives, and helped to lead to the present aborted peace.”

The stark fact is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early as May of 1945. The Japanese monarchy was one of the oldest in all of history dating back to 660 B.C. The Japanese religion added the belief that all the Emperors were the direct descendants of the sun goddess, Amaterasu. The reigning Emperor Hirohito was the 124th in the direct line of descent. After the bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9 of 1945, and their surrender soon thereafter, the Japanese were allowed to keep their Emperor on the throne and he was not subjected to any war crimes trial. The Emperor, Hirohito, came on the throne in 1926 and continued in his position until his death in 1989. Since President Truman, in effect, accepted the conditional surrender offered by the Japanese as early as May of 1945, the question is posed, “Why then were the bombs dropped?”

The author Alperovitz gives us the answer in great detail which can only be summarized here, but he states, “We have noted a series of Japanese peace feelers in Switzerland which OSS Chief William Donovan reported to Truman in May and June [1945]. These suggested, even at this point, that the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender might well be the only serious obstacle to peace. At the center of the explorations, as we also saw, was Allen Dulles, chief of OSS operations in Switzerland (and subsequently Director of the CIA). In his 1966 book The Secret Surrender, Dulles recalled that u2018On July 20, 1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary [of War] Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo — they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and their constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people.'” It is documented by Alperovitz that Stimson reported this directly to Truman. Alperovitz further points out in detail the documentary proof that every top presidential civilian and military advisor, with the exception of James Byrnes, along with Prime Minister Churchill and his top British military leadership, urged Truman to revise the unconditional surrender policy so as to allow the Japanese to surrender and keep their Emperor. All this advice was given to Truman prior to the Potsdam Proclamation which occurred on July 26, 1945. This proclamation made a final demand upon Japan to surrender unconditionally or suffer drastic consequences.

Another startling fact about the military connection to the dropping of the bomb is the lack of knowledge on the part of General MacArthur about the existence of the bomb and whether it was to be dropped. Alperovitz states “MacArthur knew nothing about advance planning for the atomic bomb’s use until almost the last minute. Nor was he personally in the chain of command in this connection; the order came straight from Washington. Indeed, the War Department waited until five days before the bombing of Hiroshima even to notify MacArthur — the commanding general of the U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific — of the existence of the atomic bomb.”

Alperovitz makes it very clear that the main person Truman was listening to while he ignored all of this civilian and military advice, was James Byrnes, the man who virtually controlled Truman at the beginning of his administration. Byrnes was one of the most experienced political figures in Washington, having served for over thirty years in both the House and the Senate. He had also served as a United States Supreme Court Justice, and at the request of President Roosevelt, he resigned that position and accepted the role in the Roosevelt administration of managing the domestic economy. Byrnes went to the Yalta Conference with Roosevelt and then was given the responsibility to get Congress and the American people to accept the agreements made at Yalta.

When Truman became a senator in 1935, Byrnes immediately became his friend and mentor and remained close to Truman until Truman became president. Truman never forgot this and immediately called on Byrnes to be his number-two man in the new administration. Byrnes had expected to be named the vice presidential candidate to replace Wallace and had been disappointed when Truman had been named, yet he and Truman remained very close. Byrnes had also been very close to Roosevelt, while Truman was kept in the dark by Roosevelt most of the time he served as vice president. Truman asked Byrnes immediately, in April, to become his Secretary of State but they delayed the official appointment until July 3, 1945, so as not to offend the incumbent. Byrnes had also accepted a position on the interim committee which had control over the policy regarding the atom bomb, and therefore, in April, 1945 became Truman’s main foreign policy advisor, and especially the advisor on the use of the atomic bomb. It was Byrnes who encouraged Truman to postpone the Potsdam Conference and his meeting with Stalin until they could know, at the conference, if the atomic bomb was successfully tested. While at the Potsdam Conference the experiments proved successful and Truman advised Stalin that a new massively destructive weapon was now available to America, which Byrnes hoped would make Stalin back off from any excessive demands or activity in the post-war period.

Truman secretly gave the orders on July 25, 1945 that the bombs would be dropped in August while he was to be in route back to America. On July 26, he issued the Potsdam Proclamation, or ultimatum, to Japan to surrender, leaving in place the unconditional surrender policy, thereby causing both Truman and Byrnes to believe that the terms would not be accepted by Japan.

The conclusion drawn unmistakably from the evidence presented, is that Byrnes is the man who convinced Truman to keep the unconditional surrender policy and not accept Japan’s surrender so that the bombs could actually be dropped thereby demonstrating to the Russians that America had a new forceful leader in place, a “new sheriff in Dodge” who, unlike Roosevelt, was going to be tough with the Russians on foreign policy and that the Russians needed to “back off” during what would become known as the “Cold War.” A secondary reason was that Congress would now be told about why they had made the secret appropriation to a Manhattan Project and the huge expenditure would be justified by showing that not only did the bombs work but that they would bring the war to an end, make the Russians back off and enable America to become the most powerful military force in the world.

If the surrender by the Japanese had been accepted between May and the end of July of 1945 and the Emperor had been left in place, as in fact he was after the bombing, this would have kept Russia out of the war. Russia agreed at Yalta to come into the Japanese war three months after Germany surrendered. In fact, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945 and Russia announced on August 8, (exactly three months thereafter) that it was abandoning its neutrality policy with Japan and entering the war. Russia’s entry into the war for six days allowed them to gain tremendous power and influence in China, Korea, and other key areas of Asia. The Japanese were deathly afraid of Communism and if the Potsdam Proclamation had indicated that America would accept the conditional surrender allowing the Emperor to remain in place and informed the Japanese that Russia would enter the war if they did not surrender, then this would surely have assured a quick Japanese surrender.

The second question that Alperovitz answers in the last half of the book is how and why the Hiroshima myth was created. The story of the myth begins with the person of James B. Conant, the President of Harvard University, who was a prominent scientist, having initially made his mark as a chemist working on poison gas during World War I. During World War II, he was chairman of the National Defense Research Committee from the summer of 1941 until the end of the war and he was one of the central figures overseeing the Manhattan Project. Conant became concerned about his future academic career, as well as his positions in private industry, because various people began to speak out concerning why the bombs were dropped. On September 9, 1945, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, was publically quoted extensively as stating that the atomic bomb was used because the scientists had a “toy and they wanted to try it out . . . .” He further stated, “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment . . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it.” Albert Einstein, one of the world’s foremost scientists, who was also an important person connected with the development of the atomic bomb, responded and his words were headlined in The New York Times “Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb.” The story reported that Einstein stated that “A great majority of scientists were opposed to the sudden employment of the atom bomb.” In Einstein’s judgment, the dropping of the bomb was a political — diplomatic decision rather than a military or scientific decision.

Probably the person closest to Truman, from the military standpoint, was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Leahy, and there was much talk that he also deplored the use of the bomb and had strongly advised Truman not to use it, but advised rather to revise the unconditional surrender policy so that the Japanese could surrender and keep the Emperor. Leahy’s views were later reported by Hanson Baldwin in an interview that Leahy “thought the business of recognizing the continuation of the Emperor was a detail which should have been solved easily.” Leahy’s secretary, Dorothy Ringquist, reported that Leahy told her on the day the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, “Dorothy, we will regret this day. The United States will suffer, for war is not to be waged on women and children.” Another important naval voice, the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also, the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was reported to have said in a press conference on September 22, 1945, that “The Admiral took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombing and Russia’s entry into the war.” In a subsequent speech at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.” It was learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower’s assessment was “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.” Eisenhower also stated that it wasn’t necessary for Truman to “succumb” to Byrnes.

James Conant came to the conclusion that some important person in the administration must go public to show that the dropping of the bombs was a military necessity, thereby saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, so he approached Harvey Bundy and his son, McGeorge Bundy. It was agreed by them that the most important person to create this myth was Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. It was decided that Stimson would write a long article to be widely circulated in a prominent national magazine. This article was revised repeatedly by McGeorge Bundy and Conant before it was published in Harper’s magazine in February of 1947. The long article became the subject of a front-page article and editorial in The New York Times and in the editorial it was stated “There can be no doubt that the president and Mr. Stimson are right when they mention that the bomb caused the Japanese to surrender.” Later, in 1959, President Truman specifically endorsed this conclusion, including the idea that it saved the lives of a million American soldiers. This myth has been renewed annually by the news media and various political leaders ever since.

It is very pertinent that, in the memoirs of Henry Stimson entitled On Active Service in Peace and War, he states, “Unfortunately, I have lived long enough to know that history is often not what actually happened but what is recorded as such.”

To bring this matter more into focus from the human tragedy standpoint, I recommend the reading of a book entitled Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6, September 30, 1945, by Michiko Hachiya. He was a survivor of Hiroshima and kept a daily diary about the women, children and old men that he treated on a daily basis in the hospital. The doctor was badly injured himself but recovered enough to help others and his account of the personal tragedies of innocent civilians who were either badly burned or died as a result of the bombing puts the moral issue into a clear perspective for all of us to consider.

Now that we live in the nuclear age and there are enough nuclear weapons spread around the world to destroy civilization, we need to face the fact that America is the only country to have used this awful weapon and that it was unnecessary to have done so. If Americans would come to recognize the truth, rather than the myth, it might cause such a moral revolt that we would take the lead throughout the world in realizing that wars in the future may well become nuclear, and therefore all wars must be avoided at almost any cost. Hopefully, our knowledge of science has not outrun our ability to exercise prudent and humane moral and political judgment to the extent that we are destined for extermination.

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Regional alliances should, for the most part, remain regional.  Areas of the globe can count on a number of such bodies and associations with varying degrees of heft: the Organization of American States; the Organisation of African Unity; and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.  Only one has decided to move beyond its natural, subscribed limits, citing security and a militant basis, for its actions.

On April 27, the UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, prime ministerial contender, made her claim that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization needed to be globalised.  Her Mansion House speech at the Lord Mayor’s Easter Banquet was one of those unusually frank disclosures that abandons pretence revealing, in its place, a disturbing reality.

After making it clear that NATO’s “open door policy” was “sacrosanct”, Truss also saw security in global terms, another way of promoting a broader commitment to international mischief.  She rejected “the false choice between Euro-Atlantic security and Indo-Pacific security.  In the modern world we need both.”  A “global NATO” was needed.  “By that I don’t mean extending the membership to those from other regions.  I mean that NATO must have a global outlook, ready to tackle global threats.”

The Truss vision is a simple one, marked by nations “free” and “assertive and in the ascendant.  Where freedom and democracy are strengthened through a network of economic and security partnerships.”  A “Network of Liberty” would be required to protect such a world, one that would essentially bypass the UN Security Council and institutions that “have been bent out of shape so far” in enabling rather than containing “aggression”.

This extraordinary, aggressive embrace of neoconservative bullishness, one that trashes international institutions rather than strengthening them, was on show again in Spain.  At NATO’s summit, Truss reiterated her view that the alliance should take “a global outlook protecting Indo-Pacific as well as Euro-Atlantic security”.

The Truss position suggested less a remaking than a return to traditional, thuggish politics dressed up as objective, enduring rules.  Free trade, that great oxymoron of governments, is seen as “fair”, which requires “playing by the rules.”  The makers of those rules are never mentioned.  But she finds room to be critical of powers “naïve about the geopolitical power of economics”, a remarkable suggestion coming from a nation responsible for the illegal export of opium to China in the nineteenth century and promoters of unequal treaties.  “We are showing,” he boasted, “that economic access is no longer a given.  It has to be earned.”

The Global NATO theme is not sparklingly novel, even if the Ukraine War has given impetus to its promotion and selling.  The post-Cold War period left the alliance floundering.  The great Satan – the Soviet Union – has ceased to exist, undercutting its raison d’être.  New terrain, and theatres, were needed to flex muscle and show purpose.

The Kosovo intervention in 1999, evangelised as a human rights security operation against genocidal Serbian forces, put the world on notice where alliance members might be going.  NATO was again involved in enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya as the country was ushered to imminent, post-Qaddafi collapse.  When the International Security Force (ISAF) completed its ill-fated mission in Afghanistan in 2015, NATO was again on the scene.

In the organisation’s Strategic Concept document released at the end of June, the Euro-Atlantic dimension, certainly regarding the Ukraine conflict and Russia’s role, comes in for special mention. But room, and disapproval, is also made for China.  “The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.”

A number of “political, economic and military tools” had been used to increase Beijing’s “global footprint and project power”, all done in a manner distinctly not transparent.  The security of allies had been challenged by “malicious hybrid and cyber operations”, along with “confrontational rhetoric and disinformation”.  Of deep concern was the deepening relationship between Moscow and Beijing, “and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order” which ran “counter to our values and interests.”

The alliance’s recent self-inflation has led to curious developments.  Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been pushing Canberra ever closer towards NATO, a process that has been ongoing for some years.  At the alliance’s public forum in Madrid, Albanese used China’s “economic coercion” against Australia as a noisy platform while decrying Beijing’s encroachments into areas that had been the playground, and in some cases plaything, of Western powers.  “Just as Russia seeks to recreate a Russian or Soviet empire, the Chinese government is seeking friends, whether it be […] through economic support to build up alliances to undermine what has historically been the Western alliance in places like the Indo-Pacific.”

At a press conference held at Madrid’s Torrejon Air Base, the Australian prime minister felt certain that “NATO members know that China is more forward leaning in our region.”  Beijing had levelled sanctions not only against Canberra but had proven to “be more aggressive in its stance in the world”.

Australian pundits on the security circuit are warmed by the visit, seeing a chance to point NATO’s interest in the direction of China’s ambition in the Indo-Pacific.  Just as Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad described Washington’s Cold War involvement in Western Europe as an empire by invitation, NATO, or some bit of it, is being envisaged as an invitee in regions far beyond its traditional scope.  None of this will do much to encourage the prospects for stability while leaving every chance for further conflict.

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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 Al Mayadeen English

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s provocative visit to Taiwan is part of the U.S. escalation against China in what, in Pentagon geography, is referred to as the Indo-Pacific, i.e., the region stretching from the west coast of the United States to that of India. Here RIMPAC, the world’s largest naval exercise under U.S. command, is underway, with naval and air forces from 26 countries participating. It is directed against what the Pentagon calls “Chinese aggression,” accusing Beijing of preparing against Taiwan a military operation similar to that conducted by Russia in Ukraine. In this way, Washington is fueling, after the one in Ukraine, other hotbeds of war to hinder and break the Great Eurasian Partnership, which, proposed by President Putin in 2015, is being implemented with a series of projects of which the New Silk Road, promoted by China, is the backbone.

The International North-South Transport Corridor connects Russia to India and other Asian countries via Azerbaijan and Iran, along a much shorter, and therefore cheaper, route than the Atlantic and Mediterranean routes. US and EU sanctions against Russian oil and gas exports are thus thwarted. Another project underway is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which opens access to the Arabian Sea to Chinese exports, and could extend to Afghanistan, a country the US and NATO have tried in vain to control through a costly and bloody 20-year war.

The growing economic integration of Eurasia, which encourages negotiated conflict resolution and intercultural dialogue, contributes concretely and substantially to the transition from the unipolar to the multipolar world, which the U.S. and other major powers in the West are trying hard to prevent.

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This article was originally published on byoblu.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Facebook Page

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First published on July 13, 2022.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the arms industry that depends on it for billions in profits, has become the most aggressive and dangerous military alliance on the planet. Created in 1949 to thwart Soviet expansion into Eastern and Central Europe, it has evolved into a global war machine in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

NATO expanded its footprint, violating promises to Moscow, once the Cold War ended, to incorporate 14 countries in Eastern and Central Europe into the alliance. It will soon add Finland and Sweden. It bombed Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. It launched wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, resulting in close to a million deaths and some 38 million people driven from their homes. It is building a military footprint in Africa and Asia. It invited Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, the so-called “Asia Pacific Four,” to its recent summit in Madrid at the end of June. It has expanded its reach into the Southern Hemisphere, signing a military training partnership agreement with Colombia, in December 2021. It has backed Turkey, with NATO’s second largest military, which has illegally invaded and occupied parts of Syria as well as Iraq. Turkish-backed militias are engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Syrian Kurds and other inhabitants of north and east Syria. The Turkish military has been accused of war crimes – including multiple airstrikes against a refugee camp andchemical weapons use – in northern Iraq. In exchange for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s permission for Finland and Sweden to join the alliance, the two Nordic countries have agreed to expand their domestic terror laws making it easier to crack down on Kurdish and other activists, lift their restrictions on selling arms to Turkey and deny support to the Kurdish-led movement for democratic autonomy in Syria.

It is quite a record for a military alliance that with the collapse of the Soviet Union was rendered obsolete and should have been dismantled. NATO and the militarists had no intention of embracing the “peace dividend,” fostering a world based on diplomacy, a respect of spheres of influence and mutual cooperation. It was determined to stay in business. Its business is war. That meant expanding its war machine far beyond the border of Europe and engaging in ceaseless antagonism toward China and Russia.

NATO sees the future, as detailed in its “NATO 2030: Unified for a New Era,” as a battle for hegemony with rival states, especially China, and calls for the preparation of prolonged global conflict.

“China has an increasingly global strategic agenda, supported by its economic and military heft,” the NATO 2030 initiative warned. “It has proven its willingness to use force against its neighbors, as well as economic coercion and intimidatory diplomacy well beyond the Indo-Pacific region. Over the coming decade, China will likely also challenge NATO’s ability to build collective resilience, safeguard critical infrastructure, address new and emerging technologies such as 5G and protect sensitive sectors of the economy including supply chains. Longer term, China is increasingly likely to project military power globally, including potentially in the Euro-Atlantic area.”

The alliance has spurned the Cold War strategy that made sure Washington was closer to Moscow and Beijing than Moscow and Beijing were to each other. U.S. and NATO antagonism have turned Russia and China into close allies. Russia, rich in natural resources, including energy, minerals and grains, and China, a manufacturing and technological behemoth, are a potent combination. NATO no longer distinguishes between the two, announcing in its most recent mission statement that the “deepening strategic partnership” between Russian and China has resulted in “mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order that run counter to our values and interests.”

On July 6, Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, and Ken McCallum, director general of Britain’s MI5, held a joint news conference in London to announce that China was the “biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security.” They accused China, like Russia, of interfering in U.S. and U.K. elections. Wray warned the business leaders they addressed that the Chinese government was “set on stealing your technology, whatever it is that makes your industry tick, and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market.”

This inflammatory rhetoric presages an ominous future.

One cannot talk about war without talking about markets. The political and social turmoil in the U.S., coupled with its diminishing economic power, has led it to embrace NATO and its war machine as the antidote to its decline.

Washington and its European allies are terrified of China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) meant to connect an economic bloc of roughly 70 nations outside U.S. control. The initiative includes the construction of rail lines, roads and gas pipelines that will be integrated with Russia. Beijing is expected to commit $1.3 trillion to the BRI by 2027. China, which is on track to become the world’s largest economy within a decade, has organized the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world’s largest trade pact of 15 East Asian and Pacific nations representing 30 percent of global trade. It already accounts for 28.7 percent of the Global Manufacturing Output, nearly double the 16.8 percent of the U.S.

China’s rate of growth last year was an impressive  8.1 percent, although slowing to around 5 percent this year.  By contrast, the U.S.’s growth rate in 2021 was 5.7 percent — its highest since 1984 — but is predicted to fall below 1 percent this year, by the New York Federal Reserve.

If China, Russia, Iran, India and other nations free themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network financial institutions use to send and receive information such as money transfer instructions, it will trigger a dramatic decline in the value of the dollar and a financial collapse in the U.S. The huge military expenditures, which have driven the U.S. debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the U.S.’s entire GDP, will become untenable. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military in 2021, $ 801 billion which amounted to 38 percent of total world expenditure on the military, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined. The loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency will force the U.S. to slash spending, shutter many of its 800 military bases overseas and cope with the inevitable social and political upheavals triggered by economic collapse. It is darkly ironic that NATO has accelerated this possibility.

Russia, in the eyes of NATO and U.S. strategists, is the appetizer. Its military, NATO hopes, will get bogged down and degraded in Ukraine. Sanctions and diplomatic isolation, the plan goes, will thrust Vladimir Putin from power. A client regime that will do U.S. bidding will be installed in Moscow.

NATO has provided more than $8 billion in military aid to Ukraine, while the US has committed nearly $54 billion in military and humanitarian assistance to the country.

China, however, is the main course. Unable to compete economically, the U.S. and NATO have turned to the blunt instrument of war to cripple their global competitor.

The provocation of China replicates the NATO baiting of Russia.

NATO expansion and the 2014 US-backed coup in Kyiv led Russia to first occupy Crimea, in eastern Ukraine, with its large ethnic Russian population, and then to invade all of Ukraine to thwart the country’s efforts to join NATO.

The same dance of death is being played with China over Taiwan, which China considers part of Chinese territory, and with NATO expansion in the Asia Pacific. China flies warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense zone and the U.S. sends naval ships through the Taiwan Strait which connects the South and East China seas. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May called China the most serious long-term challenge to the international order, citing its claims to Taiwan and efforts to dominate the South China Sea. Taiwan’s president, in a Zelensky-like publicity stunt, recently posed with an anti-tank rocket launcher in a government handout photo.

The conflict in Ukraine has been a bonanza for the arms industry, which, given the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, needed a new conflict. Lockheed Martin’s stock prices are up 12 percent. Northrop Grumman is up 20 percent. The war is being used by NATO to increase its military presence in Eastern and Central Europe. The U.S. is building a permanent military base in Poland. The 40,000-strong NATO reaction force is being expanded to 300,000 troops. Billions of dollars in weapons are pouring into the region.

The conflict with Russia, however, is already backfiring. The ruble has soared to a seven-year high against the dollar. Europe is barreling towards a recession because of rising oil and gas prices and the fear that Russia could terminate supplies completely. The loss of Russian wheat, fertilizer, gas and oil, due to Western sanctions, is creating havoc in world markets and a humanitarian crisis in Africa and the Middle East. Soaring food and energy prices, along with shortages and crippling inflation, bring with them not only deprivation and hunger, but social upheaval and political instability. The climate emergency, the real existential threat, is being ignored to appease the gods of war.

The war makers are frighteningly cavalier about the threat of nuclear war. Putin warned NATO countries that they “will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history” if they intervened directly in Ukraine and ordered Russian nuclear forces to be put on heightened alert status. The proximity to Russia of U.S. nuclear weapons based in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey mean that any nuclear conflict would obliterate much of Europe. Russia and the United States control about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads, with around 4,000 warheads each in their military stockpiles, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

President Joe Biden warned that the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be “completely unacceptable” and “entail severe consequences,” without spelling out what those consequences would be. This is what U.S. strategists refer to as “deliberate ambiguity.”

The U.S. military, following its fiascos in the Middle East, has shifted its focus from fighting terrorism and asymmetrical warfare to confronting China and Russia. President Barack Obama’s national-security team in 2016 carried out a war game in which Russia invaded a NATO country in the Baltics and used a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon against NATO forces. Obama officials were split about how to respond.

“The National Security Council’s so-called Principals Committee—including Cabinet officers and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—decided that the United States had no choice but to retaliate with nuclear weapons,” Eric Schlosser writes in The Atlantic. “Any other type of response, the committee argued, would show a lack of resolve, damage American credibility, and weaken the NATO alliance. Choosing a suitable nuclear target proved difficult, however. Hitting Russia’s invading force would kill innocent civilians in a NATO country. Striking targets inside Russia might escalate the conflict to an all-out nuclear war. In the end, the NSC Principals Committee recommended a nuclear attack on Belarus—a nation that had played no role whatsoever in the invasion of the NATO ally but had the misfortune of being a Russian ally.”

The Biden administration has formed a Tiger Team of national security officials to run war games on what to do if Russia uses a nuclear weapon, according to The New York Times. The threat of nuclear war is minimized with discussions of “tactical nuclear weapons,” as if less powerful nuclear explosions are somehow more acceptable and won’t lead to the use of bigger bombs.

At no time, including the Cuban missile crisis, have we stood closer to the precipice of nuclear war.

“A simulation devised by experts at Princeton University starts with Moscow firing a nuclear warning shot; NATO responds with a small strike, and the ensuing war yields more than 90 million casualties in its first few hours,” The New York Times reported.

The longer the war in Ukraine continues — and the U.S. and NATO seem determined to funnel billions of dollars of weapons into the conflict for months if not years — the more the unthinkable becomes thinkable. Flirting with Armageddon to profit the arms industry and carry out the futile quest to reclaim U.S. global hegemony is at best extremely reckless and at worst genocidal.

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

Featured image: Original illustration by Mr. Fish

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First published in the Korea Times on November 29, 2017.

Almost all of my undergraduate students take courses in economics and I greatly envy them for it. Sadly, I never had a chance to study economics as an undergraduate and do not consider myself to be qualified in the field.

So, in my ignorance, I started asking them questions related to economic phenomena during my classes on Korean and East Asian history.

But I discovered a remarkable fact about the study of economics in Korea when I made my questions to my students more specific about the impact of economics on politics and society: I found out that I had read more about economics than most of my students who had taken years of economics classes in college.

When I asked them about the fundamentals of economic theory, I discovered that in the course of their classes in “economics” they had not read any of the major works of Adam Smith, Max Weber, Karl Marx, John Keynes, or even contemporary critics like Thomas Piketty.

I was truly astonished. I, a mere literature professor, had read at least some of the major works of all of those theoreticians. One student then explained to me that economics textbooks did include short passages introducing the major theories of economics.

But the vast majority of the economics classes consist of employing advanced mathematics to solve given problem sets without a consideration of the nature of economics.

The “facts” of economics, from interest rates and deficits, to inflation and value, are presented in the textbooks as if they were natural laws, the equivalent of the second law of thermodynamics or the law of gravity. It is fabulously assumed that the student can discover the truth of economics through the mere process of calculation without any epistemological or metaphysical, let alone scientific investigation into the validity of those assumptions about the human activities defined as economics.

At that point in the conversation with my students, I regained my confidence. After all, extremely convincing arguments have been advanced by numerous thinkers that there are “laws” in economics only in the most limited sense and that the entire concept of an economy is so culturally specific, and so impacted by politics and practice that economics as a field is as much a science as is literature or art history.

I think that the most critical part of any economics course must be an introduction to the underlying philosophical and historical principles of the study of economics: how men have historically conceived of society, the state, money and commerce and how those factors interact with each other to produce what we call the “economy.”

Part of that process should include a consideration of how vastly different the concept of “economy” can be from one expert to another, or historical period to another.

It is also critical that the study of economics contain substantial consideration of the ethical implications of financial and commercial activities. Economics is not a value-neutral field like the study of quasars, but is rather akin to politics: an all too human enterprise that demands ethical judgment about its function and its results.

This focus on the ethics of economics is not my idiosyncratic perspective. From Thomas Aquinas in the West to Mencius in the East, the ethical element of economics and politics has long been considered to be essential. I do not know exactly how the study of economics came to be seen as something that did not demand the careful consideration of moral philosophy.

In any case, Korea faces tremendous economic challenges today that cannot be addressed with what our students are learning in these economics classes focused on mathematics. Whether we are talking about the collapse of the global trade system, which is considered essential to Korean economic development, into isolationist and nationalist spheres, or we are considering the accelerating gap between the rich and the poor, the next generation will face serious problems that involve cultural and political issues. They have no hope of solving these problems with mathematical equations.

I fear that teaching economics as if it were a form of calculus will do the next generation a terrible disservice if we think even for a moment about the complex issues that they will face in the future.

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This was originally published on Korea Times on November 29, 2017.

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.

Featured image is from Flickr

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Immer wieder erliegen Menschen der Illusion, dass sie auf die Straße gehen und Fensterscheiben einschlagen müssen, wenn ihnen Unrecht geschieht. Politiker aller Schattierungen fabulieren bereits von kommenden Volksaufständen und vom Bürgerkrieg. Dieses Aufbegehren gegen die Gewalt „von oben“ ist verständlich, weil Menschen sie nur schwer ertragen und sie ebenfalls mit Gewalt abwehren wollen. Hundert und mehr Jahre Geschichte haben jedoch gezeigt, dass der verspielt, der so dumm ist zu glauben, dass er gegen den Staat aufkommen kann. Der Staat ist gut gerüstet.

Eine pazifistische Welt kann nur durch eine tiefgreifende Änderung der sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse entstehen. Um dies zu erreichen, muss die Menschheit aber einen anderen Weg wählen als den der Gewalt. Bereits zu Beginn des Zweiten Weltkriegs schrieb Albert Camus in sein Tagebuch: „Treiben Sie niemanden zum Aufruhr. Man muss mit dem Blut und der Freiheit der anderen schonend umgehen.“ Er empfiehlt, die Mitmenschen umfassend aufzuklären und als erstes Gebot Selbstbeherrschung zu lernen (1).

Toleranz ist jedoch nicht gleichbedeutend mit Nachgeben. Sie ist eine Tugend, die Frieden ermöglicht. Hinzu kommt die Aufklärung und die Erziehung, eine gewaltige Aufgabe, die viel Zeit und Geduld benötigt: Die Menschen müssen sich selbst, ihre Natur, ihre Reaktionsweisen und die der anderen kennen lernen und damit zu „Antriebsriemen“ der Veränderung der Welt werden (2). Die Jugend braucht humane und mutige Vorbilder, um die Welt einmal in eine andere Bahn lenken zu können.

Ohne Zwang und Gewalt – in absoluter Freiwilligkeit

Nur indem sich die Menschen zusammensetzen und überlegen, wie sie die anstehenden sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Probleme gemeinsam lösen können, wird die Menschheit weiterkommen und die Welt genesen. Auf freiwilliger Basis assoziieren sie gerne. Bereits das Kind kooperiert, wenn es nicht gezwungen wird. Zwang und Gewalt ersticken das natürliche Bedürfnis zur Mitarbeit. Dem Konzept der Freiheit muss dann jenes der Gewaltlosigkeit folgen.

Wieso sollten erwachsene Menschen nicht in der Lage sein, ohne Zwangsmaßnahmen wie genverändernde Impfungen oder freiheitsraubende Isolierung mit dem Problem eines Virus zurechtzukommen? Auch können sie mit überlegen, wie zwischenstaatliche Probleme ohne einen verheerenden Krieg gelöst werden können. Auf keinen Fall sollte die Lösung von Menschheitsproblemen an Politiker delegiert werden! (3)

Ein politisches Beispiel für unangebrachte Zwangsmaßnahmen war die russische Revolution. Dort haben die Bolschewiki das zaristische Prinzip der Gewalt, der Unterdrückung und des Zwanges angewandt, anstatt den humanistischen Weg zu wählen und die Menschen anzusprechen und frei zu lassen. Vielleicht hätte so der Zweite Weltkrieg verhindert werden können.

Toleranz ist nicht gleichbedeutend mit Nachgeben

Diese bedeutende Aussage schrieb Albert Camus in seinen Tagebuchaufzeichnungen von 1939 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe zu (4). Aber wie auch immer: Vom 25. Oktober bis 16. November 1995 wurde auf der 28. Generalkonferenz der Mitgliedstaaten der UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) eine „Erklärung von Prinzipien der Toleranz“ verabschiedet, aus der im Folgenden nur auszugweise zitiert werden kann. In der Präambel schreiben die Staaten der UNESCO:

„Entschlossen, alle positiven Schritte zu unternehmen, die notwendig sind, um den Gedanken der Toleranz in unseren Gesellschaften zu verbreiten – denn Toleranz ist nicht nur ein hochgeschätztes Prinzip, sondern eine notwendige Voraussetzung für den Frieden und für die wirtschaftliche und soziale Entwicklung aller Völker – erklären wir“:

• „Toleranz bedeutet Respekt, Akzeptanz und Anerkennung der Kulturen unserer Welt.“
• „Toleranz ist eine Tugend, die den Frieden ermöglicht, und trägt dazu bei, den Kult des Krieges durch eine Kultur des Friedens zu überwinden.“
• „Toleranz ist nicht gleichbedeutend mit Nachgeben, Herablassung und Nachsicht.“
• „In Übereinstimmung mit der Achtung der Menschenrechte bedeutet praktizierte Toleranz weder das Tolerieren sozialen Unrechts noch die Aufgabe oder Schwächung der eigenen Überzeugungen.“
• „Toleranz auf der Ebene staatlichen Handelns erfordert Gerechtigkeit und Unparteilichkeit in der Gesetzgebung, bei der Anwendung der Gesetze sowie in Justiz und Verwaltung.“
• „In der heutigen Welt ist Toleranz wichtiger als jemals zuvor.“
• „Toleranz ist notwendig zwischen einzelnen wie in Familie und Gemeinschaft.“
• „Bildung ist das wirksamste Mittel gegen Intoleranz.“
• „Erziehung zur Toleranz gehört zu den vordringlichsten Bildungszielen.“
• „Wir verpflichten uns zur Förderung von Toleranz und Gewaltlosigkeit durch Programme und Institutionen in den Bereichen Bildung, Wissenschaft, Kultur und Kommunikation.“ (5)

Camus: „Treiben Sie niemanden zum Aufruhr!“ 

Zu Beginn des Zweiten Weltkriegs schreibt Camus in einem Brief an einen Verzweifelten:

„Sie haben eine Aufgabe, zweifeln Sie nicht daran. Jeder Mensch besitzt einen mehr oder weniger großen Einflussbereich. Er verdankt ihn seinen Mängeln ebenso sehr wie seinen Vorzügen. Aber wie dem auch sei, er ist vorhanden und er kann unmittelbar genutzt werden. Treiben Sie niemanden zum Aufruhr. Man muss mit dem Blut und der Freiheit der anderen schonend umgehen. Aber Sie können zehn, zwanzig, dreißig Menschen davon überzeugen, dass dieser Krieg weder unabwendbar war noch ist, dass noch nicht alle Mittel versucht worden sind, ihm Einhalt zu gebieten, dass man es sagen, es wenn möglich schreiben, es wenn nötig hinausschreien muss! Diese zehn oder dreißig Menschen werden es zehn anderen weitersagen, die es ihrerseits weiterverbreiten. Wenn die Trägheit Sie zurückhält, nun gut, so fangen Sie mit anderen von vorne an.“ (6)

Die Jugend braucht humane und mutige Vorbilder 

Um die Welt einmal in eine andere Bahn lenken zu können, braucht die Jugend humane und mutige Vorbilder. Das können zum einen die Eltern und Großeltern, zum anderen die Lehrkräfte sein. Doch zunächst müssen sich die Menschen selbst erkennen. Sie müssen sich ihrer Natur und ihrer psychischen Reaktionsweisen bewusst werden – und in einem nächsten Schritt auch die anderen Menschen erkennen (7).

Dieses Wissen können sich die Menschen in der Regel nicht einfach durch simple Lernprozesse aneignen. Um ihre gefühlsmäßige Einstellung zu ändern, sollten sie eine therapeutische Beziehung zu einem Psychotherapeuten, der ein wirklicher „Menschenkenner“ ist, eingehen. Durch eine Vertrauensbeziehung erlebt der einzelne Mensch Annahme und Mitgefühl. Die ermöglicht ihm, kränkende Erlebnisse aufzuarbeiten. Dadurch erlangt das Individuum eine verständnisvolle Sicht seiner selbst und seiner Mitmenschen.

Ein gestärkter und sich seiner selbst bewusster Erwachsener (ob Mutter, Vater oder Lehrkraft) ist dann ein geeignetes Vorbild für die zu ihm aufblickende Jugend. Ausgestattet mit einem gesunden Menschenverstand bringt er den Mut auf, sich seines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen, denkt für alle anderen mit, weil er keine Angst vor seinen Mitmenschen hat, sondern mit ihnen kommuniziert und kooperiert. Er unterwirft sich auch nicht gehorsam irgendeiner angeblichen Autorität, sondern bleibt sich und seiner Ethik treu. Er bekennt sich offen zur Gewaltlosigkeit, zum Frieden, zur Freiwilligkeit und zum Geist der Verantwortlichkeit in Familie und Gesellschaft und sieht im Gemeinsinn ein erstrebenswertes Ziel für alle Menschen.

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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, bildete bei der BAYER-AG in Leverkusen Hochschulabsolventen fort, gründete in Köln zusammen mit Kollegen eine Modellschule für ehemalige Schulversager und leitete sie. An der Bayerischen Akademie für Lehrerfortbildung und Personalführung war er als Instituts-Rektor für die Ausbildung von Beratungslehrkräften für alle Schularten zuständig. Am Ende seiner Berufslaufbahn war er Staatlicher Schulberater für die Landeshauptstadt München. Als Pensionär arbeitete er viele Jahre als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und pädagogisch-psychologischen Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung und eine Erziehung zum Gemeinsinn und Frieden.

Noten 

(1) Marin, Lou (Hrsg.). (2013). Albert Camus – Libertäre Schriften (1948-1960). Hamburg, S. 268 und 273

(2) https://www.globalresearch.ca/wer-die-welt-andern-will-muss-den-menschen-andern/5788261

(3) https://www.globalresearch.ca/die-losung-der-menschheitsprobleme-nicht-an-politiker-delegieren/5748759/

(4) Marin, Lou (Hrsg.). (2013). Albert Camus – Libertäre Schriften (1948-1960). Hamburg, S. 268

(5) https://www.verbraucherschutzstelle.de/prinzipien_der_toleranz.htm/

(6) Marin, Lou (Hrsg.). (2013). Albert Camus – Libertäre Schriften (1948-1960). Hamburg, S. 273

(7) https://www.globalresearch.ca/wer-die-welt-andern-will-muss-den-menschen-andern/5788261

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Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, and shares borders with South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique. It is very rich in mineral resources and is the largest trading partner of South Africa on the continent of Africa. Russia maintains very friendly relations with Zimbabwe, thanks to ties which evolved during the struggle for independence. Since then, Russia has had a very strong mutual sympathy with and friendly feelings toward the southern African people, government and the country.

Brigadier General Nicholas Mike Sango, Zimbabwean ambassador to the Russian Federation, has held his position since July 2015. He previously held various high-level posts such as military adviser in Zimbabwe’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations and as international instructor in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

Below Kester Kenn Klomegah conducted this exclusive interview with him to assess and guage the current climate of relations between Russia and Zimbabwe specifically and Africa generally. The following are excerpts (summarized text) from the long-ranging interview.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah: As you are about to leave [your position of ambassador], what would you say generally and concisely about Russia’s policy towards Africa?

Brigadier General Nicholas Mike Sango: Russia’s policy towards Africa has over the last few years evolved in a positive way. The watershed Russia-Africa Summit of 2019 reset Russia’s Soviet-era relations with Africa. Africa fully understands that the transition from the Soviet Union to the present-day Russian Federation was a process and that today Russia is now in a position to influence events at the global scale. Even that being the case, her institutions and organs, be they political or economic are equally in a transitional mode as they adapt to the Federal policy posture and the emerging realities of the present geo-political environment. Africa in return has responded overwhelmingly to the call by its presence in its fullness at the 2019 Sochi Summit.

KKK: Do you feel there are still a number of important tasks which you have not fulfilled or accomplished as Zimbabwean Ambassador to the Russian Federation?

BGNMS: Zimbabwe government’s engagement with the Russian Federation is historically rooted in new state’s contribution towards Zimbabwe attaining her freedom and nationhood in 1980. This is the foundation of the two countries relations and has a bearing  on two countries  interactions and cooperation. Relations between the two countries have remained stead-fast with collaborations at political and economic spares hallmarked by Russia’s involvement as early as 2014 in the commissioning of the Darwendale Platinum Project followed by ALROSA, the diamond giant setting its footprints on the territory of Zimbabwe.

The President of the Republic of Zimbabwe visited Moscow in 2019. Since then, there have been reciprocal visits by ministers and parliamentarians. In early June 2022, the Chairperson of the Federation Council visited Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s military have participated in Army Games over the years and will do in 2022 ARMY GAMES. Further to these mentioned above, Russia has continued to support human resource development through its government scholarship programmes as well as training other arms of government.  Zimbabwe recently hosted the Russia-Zimbabwe Intergovernmental Commission where new cooperative milestones were signed.

Zimbabwe’s foreign policy is anchored on engagement and re-engagement. As Ambassador to the Russian Federation, my focus as per direction of the Zimbabwean President was to promote business-to-business engagement and attract Russian investment in Zimbabwe. While the Darwendale Platinum Project and ALROSA’s entry into the Zimbabwe market, we have not seen other big businesses following the two.

The volume of trade between Zimbabwe and Russia could be better. Perhaps, as an Embassy, we have not made a strong case for importers to look in Zimbabwe’s direction. Or, our own trade and investment institutions have not fully appreciated the potential of the Russian market. The concern by Russian importers regarding the logistical cost of bringing goods from landlocked countries in the far southern hemisphere is appreciated. This, however, would not inhibit the importation of non-perishable products.

As mentioned earlier on, businesses are still in transitional mode and it is the hope that the emerging world order will in time persuade business to look at Africa through the lenses to see the vast opportunities and benefits beckoning. On the other hand, having established the Russian-Zimbabwe Business Council, it was hoped that businesses of the two countries could speak to each other, appreciate the strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities open. Although the benefits are yet to be seen, this remains work-in-progress.

KKK: Has the experience, including all your interactions, changed your initial thoughts when you first arrived to this ambassadorial post in 2015?

BGNMS: Interestingly, my views and perceptions about Russia before and during my stay in the beautiful country has always been grounded in the history and our nation’s journey to nationhood, independence and sovereignty. As a product of the revolutionary struggle and from my government’s direction and policy, Russia was and will always be an ally regardless of the changing temperatures and geo-political environment.

KKK: What would you frankly say about Russia’s policy pitfalls in Africa? And what would you suggest especially about steps to take in regaining part of the Soviet-era level of engagement (this time without ideological considerations) with Africa?

BGNMS: There are several issues that could strengthen the relationship. One important direction is economic cooperation. African diplomats have consistently been persuading Russia’s businesses to take advantage of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) as an opportunity for Russian business to establish footprints in the continent. This view has not found favor with them and, it is hoped over time it will.

Russia’s policy on Africa has been clearly pronounced and is consistent with Africa’s position. Challenges arise from implementation of that forward-looking policy as summarized:

• The government has not pronounced incentives for business to set sights and venture into Africa. Russian businesses, in general, view Africa as too risky for their investment. They need a prompt from government.
• Soviet Union’s African legacy was assisting colonized countries attain independence. Russia as a country needs to set footprints into the continent by exporting its competitive advantages in engineering and technological advancement to bridge the gap that is retarding Africa’s industrialization and development.
• There are too many initiatives by too many quasi-state institutions promoting economic cooperation with Africa saying the same things in different ways but doing nothing tangible. “Too many cooks spoil the booth.”
• In discussing cooperative mechanisms, it is important to understand what Africa’s needs and its desired destination is. In fact, the Africa Agenda 2063 is Africa’s roadmap. As such the economic cooperation agenda and initiatives must of necessity speak to and focus within the parameters of the AU Agenda 2063.

KKK: And finally about the emerging new world order as propagated by China and Russia?

BGNMS: Africa in general refused to condemn Russia for her “special military operation” in Ukraine at the United Nations General Assembly and that shook the Western Powers. The reason is very simple. Speaking as a Zimbabwean, our nation has been bullied, subjected to unilateral coercive measures that have been visited upon us and other poor countries without recourse to the international systems governing good order, human rights and due process. There is one more historical fact – Africa is no longer a colony, of any nation and refuses to be viewed as secondary states. It is for the above reasons that Africa welcomes multilateralism and the demise of hegemonism perpetuated by so called “big brothers” – be it social, cultural, ideological or economic. Africa rejects this western perception of Africa.

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Originally published November 26, 2021.

“It took Russia twenty years to return to being a normal state with a vibrant economy, powerful armed forces and self-respect, but Russians still had a nation, even in those horrifying times of the 1990s so-called “liberal” experiment.

“The United States doesn’t have a nation anymore. Not even close, and if the magnificence and power, through visual representation, of the nation’s cathedrals are any indication, the United States has become as a tasteless boxy post-modernist mega-church preaching prosperity gospel. It is fake, it always was, and it cannot stop disintegration.”

– Andrei Martyanov, from Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse   [1]

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In the previous instalment of this two part series, we painted a portrait of an American Empire that was constantly failing in its military engagements in, really, all of its pursuits, from Afghanistan and Iraq, to Libya and Syria, to Venezuela, Bolivia and even the crucial flash-point now in Ukraine. In a nutshell, the U.S. has lost ground in every military venture it pursued since the turn of the century.

But a closer look inside the Union itself reveals multiple difficulties plaguing the world’s one remaining Superpower on several fronts.

According to the Survey of Mothers with Young Children, 40.1% of the mothers with children 12 and younger reported household food insecurity since the on-set of COVID-19. That’s up 170 percent over food insecurity numbers in 2018! [2]

In the 1960s, manufacturing made up 25% of the U.S. gross domestic product. That number shrunk to 11% today. Five million American manufacturing jobs have left the country since the turn of the century. [3]

In oil and natural gas production, the U.S. is at the equivalent of 2,303 million tonnes of oil equivalent versus 2,684 million tonnes for China. And in terms of the production of electricity from oil, hydro, nuclear and all other sources, the U.S. is producing 4,385 TWh versus 7,482 TWh for China! [4][5]

In 2019, the U.S. produced 10.8 million vehicles. Compare that to the 25.7 million produced by China! And in 2015, the U.S. was 90% dependent on China for its laptops and videogames with TV. [6][7]

Plus the United States has run up a debt just shy of 29 trillion dollars – WAY higher than its regular production in the manufacturing sector (2.158 trillion) and its provision in services (13.1 trillion)![8][9]

These daunting statistics are mentioned in the book Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse written by military analyst Andrei Martyanov. It has been described as part 3 of a trilogy of books on the fading dominance of the mighty turned frail American eagle. As Pepe Escobar put it in a recent book review:

“Martyanov, in meticulous detail, analyzes the imperial decline thematically – with chapters on Consumption, Geoeconomics, Energy, Losing the Arms Race, among others, composing a devastating indictment especially of toxic D.C. lobbies and the prevailing political mediocrity across the Beltway. What is laid bare for the reader is the complex interplay of forces that are driving the political, ideological, economic, cultural and military American chaos.” [10]

This simple nearly 240 page read lays out how the U.S. got where it is today, and also lays out why it is so fundamentally incapable of recovering given the current state of education, media, and the band of incompetents prevailing within its elites. We got in touch with Martyanov this week and benefited from his unique understanding in this special edition of the Global Research News Hour!

Andrei Martyavnov served as an officer on the ships and staff position of Soviet Coast Guard through 1990. In mid-1990s he moved to the United States where he currently works as Laboratory Director in a commercial aerospace group. He is a blogger on the US Naval Institute Blog and at Reminiscence of the Future. He is author of Losing Military Supremacy, The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, and earlier this year, Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse. He is based near Seattle Washington.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 334)

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Notes:

1. Andrei Martyanov (2021), P. 235, “Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse”‘, Clarity Press Inc.
2. Lauren Bauer, “The COVID-19 crisis has already left too many children hungry in America,” Brookings Institution, Up Front, May 6, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/05/06/the- covid-19-crisis-has-already-left-too-many-children-hungry-in-america/
3. Pat Buchanan, “Stress Test of a Failing Superpower,” UNZ Review, July 24, 2020, https://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/stress-test-of-a-failing-superpower/
4. Total energy production, 2019, Global Energy Statistical Yearbook 2020, https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-energy-production.html
5. “Electricity production, 2019,” Global Energy Statistical Yearbook 2020, https://yearbook.enerdata.net/electricity/world-energy-production-statistics.html
6. OICA, 2019 Production Statistics, https://www.oica.net/category/production-statistics/2019-statistics/
7. Caroline Freund, “How Dependent Are US Consumers on Imports from China?” Peterson Institute for International Economics, June 7, 2016, https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-investment-policy-watch/how-depenent-are-us-consumers-imports-china
8. “United States GDP From Manufacturing, 2005-2020 Data,” Trading Economics, https://tradingeconomics.com//united-states//gdp-from-manufacturing
9. “United States GDP From Private Services Producing Industries,” Trading Economics, https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-from-services
10. https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/05/22/the-disintegrated-states-of-america/#more-239977  

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***

Time and again, people succumb to the illusion that they have to take to the streets and break windows when they are wronged. Politicians of all shades are already fantasising about coming popular uprisings and civil war. This rebellion against violence “from above” is understandable because people find it hard to bear and also want to fight it off with violence. However, a hundred and more years of history have shown that he who is so stupid as to believe that he can raise against the state will gamble away. The state is well equipped.

A pacifist world can only come about through a profound change in social and economic conditions. But to achieve this, humanity must choose a path other than that of violence. Already at the beginning of the Second World War, Albert Camus wrote in his diary: “Do not drive anyone to riot. One must be gentle with the blood and freedom of others.” He recommends educating one’s fellow human beings comprehensively and learning self-control as the first commandment (1).

Tolerance, however, is not synonymous with yielding. It is a virtue that makes peace possible. In addition, there is enlightenment and education, a formidable task that requires much time and patience: People must learn about themselves, their nature, their ways of reacting and those of others, and thus become “drive belts” of change in the world (2). Young people need humane and courageous role models to be able to steer the world on a different course for once.

Without coercion and violence – in absolute voluntariness

Only by people getting together and thinking about how they can solve the upcoming social and economic problems together will humanity progress and the world recover. On a voluntary basis, they like to associate. Even the child cooperates if it is not forced. Coercion and force stifle the natural need to cooperate. The concept of freedom must then be followed by that of non-violence.

Why shouldn’t adults be able to deal with the problem of a virus without coercive measures such as gene-altering vaccinations or freedom-stealing isolation? They can also help think through how interstate problems can be solved without a devastating war. Under no circumstances should the solution of humanity’s problems be delegated to politicians! (3)

A political example of inappropriate coercion was the Russian Revolution. There, the Bolsheviks used the tsarist principle of violence, oppression and coercion instead of choosing the humanist path and addressing the people and letting them go free. Perhaps the Second World War could have been prevented in this way.

Tolerance is not synonymous with giving in

Albert Camus attributed this significant statement to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his 1939 diary entries (4). However, from 25 October to 16 November 1995, the 28th General Conference of the member states of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) adopted a “Declaration of Principles of Tolerance”, extracts of which can be quoted below. In the preamble, the UNESCO states write:

“Determined to take all positive steps necessary to spread the idea of tolerance in our societies – for tolerance is not only a highly valued principle, but a necessary condition for peace and for the economic and social development of all peoples – we declare”:

– “Tolerance means respect, acceptance and recognition of the cultures of our world.”

– “Tolerance is a virtue that makes peace possible and contributes to overcoming the cult of war through a culture of peace.”

– “Tolerance is not synonymous with yielding, condescension and indulgence.”

– “In accordance with respect for human rights, practised tolerance does not mean tolerating social injustice or abandoning or weakening one’s convictions.”

– “Tolerance at the level of state action requires justice and impartiality in legislation, in the application of laws, and in the judiciary and administration.”

– “In today’s world, tolerance is more important than ever before.”

– “Tolerance is necessary between individuals as well as in families and communities.”

– “Education is the most effective means against intolerance.”

– “Education for tolerance is one of the most urgent educational goals.”

– “We commit ourselves to the promotion of tolerance and non-violence through programmes and institutions in the fields of education, science, culture and communication.” (5)

Camus: “Drive no one to riot!”

At the beginning of the Second World War, Camus writes in a letter to a desperate man:

“You have a task, do not doubt it. Every man possesses a sphere of influence, more or less. He owes it as much to his defects as to his merits. But be that as it may, it is there and it can be used immediately. Do not drive anyone to riot. You have to be sparing with the blood and freedom of others. But you can convince ten, twenty, thirty people that this war was neither inevitable nor is it, that all means have not yet been tried to stop it, that it must be said, written if possible, shouted out if necessary! These ten or thirty people will spread the word to ten others, who will in turn spread it. If inertia holds you back, well, start all over again with others.” (6)

Youth need humane and courageous role models

In order to be able to steer the world in a different direction, young people need humane and courageous role models. These can be parents and grandparents on the one hand, and teachers on the other. But first people have to recognise themselves. They have to become aware of their nature and their psychological reaction patterns – and in a next step also recognise other people (7).

As a rule, people cannot simply acquire this knowledge through simple learning processes. To change their emotional attitude, they should enter into a therapeutic relationship with a psychotherapist who is a real “judge of character”. Through a relationship of trust, the individual experiences acceptance and compassion. This enables him to work through offending experiences. Through this, the individual gains an understanding view of himself and his fellow human beings.

A strengthened and self-aware adult (whether mother, father or teacher) is then a suitable role model for the youth looking up to him. Equipped with common sense, he musters the courage to use his own mind, thinks for everyone else because he is not afraid of his fellow human beings but communicates and cooperates with them. He also does not obediently submit to any alleged authority, but remains true to himself and his ethics. He openly professes non-violence, peace, voluntarism and the spirit of responsibility in family and society and sees public spirit as a desirable goal for all people.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a teacher (retired headmaster), doctor of education (Dr. paed.) and graduate psychologist (Dipl.-Psych. with focus on clinical, educational, media and individual psychology). He taught for many decades, trained university graduates at BAYER AG in Leverkusen, and founded and ran a model school for former school failures in Cologne together with colleagues. At the Bavarian Academy for Teacher Training and Personnel Management, he was the institute director responsible for training guidance counsellors for all types of schools. At the end of his professional career, he was a state school counsellor for the state capital Munich. As a retiree, he worked for many years 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.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) Marin, Lou (ed.). (2013). Albert Camus – Libertarian Writings (1948-1960). Hamburg, pp. 268 and 273

(2) https://www.globalresearch.ca/wer-die-welt-andern-will-muss-den-menschen-andern/5788261

(3) https://www.globalresearch.ca/die-losung-der-menschheitsprobleme-nicht-an-politiker-delegieren/5748759/

(4) Marin, Lou (ed.). (2013). Albert Camus – Libertarian Writings (1948-1960). Hamburg, p. 268

(5) https://www.verbraucherschutzstelle.de/prinzipien_der_toleranz.htm/

(6) Marin, Lou (ed.). (2013). Albert Camus – Libertarian Writings (1948-1960). Hamburg, p. 273

(7) https://www.globalresearch.ca/wer-die-welt-andern-will-muss-den-menschen-andern/5788261