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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.

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

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).

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.

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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

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“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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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

Featured image is from the author

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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

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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***

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***

 

 

 

In his article for The Atlantic of July 24, 2022 “Don’t Blame Dostoevsky,” Mikhail Shishkin makes a false start right away.[i]  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.  Thus “people” can go ahead and hate; Mr. Shishkin has just given the world a license.  Such an attitude is clearly allowed in the West, for Russia and things Russian are not protected from hate speech.[ii]  Regardless of how one views the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it does not justify dismissing things Russian or hating Russians; ideological convictions do not give individuals the right to denigrate a nation’s culture or demean its people.

Screenshot from The Atlantic

Russia’s contributions to the treasure-trove of world civilization are too numerous and superlative to mention here. It is not necessary to enumerate them. To eliminate Russian literature from university curricula, as was recently attempted in Milan, would negatively impact those students’ world cultural literacy.  The European examples of Russia hatred and slavish following of anti-Russia sanctions abound.[iii] As recent diplomatic blunders have demonstrated, such as UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’s ignorance of basic geography (surely a desideratum for her job?), international education and cultural literacy matter beyond the humanities.  Among the characteristics of Russian literature that make it so powerful and affecting are its deeply humane and penetrating content, a fullness of respect for the absolute value of each human being, and acknowledgment of the mystery of human nature.  Readers from all walks of life return to it again and again, enriching their interpersonal communications and ability to empathize with others.

Mr. Shishkin notes that “people” hate all things Russian.  Which people?  During the period leading up to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, 2014-2022, when Ukrainians of the Donbas were being terrorized by their own government, Russia hatred was carefully curated by the United Kingdom, the EU, and the U.S. with its Five Eyes allies (adding Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to the mix).  However, this does not represent the whole world.  In fact, it captures only a small part of it.  The Global South, most of Asia, and the Middle East enjoy at least cordial and even warm cultural and economic relations with Russia—for the Soviet Union / Russia was not an invader and colonizer of those lands.

Within the span of only a few pages, Mr. Shishkin simultaneously argues that Russian literature is (when it fights the state) and is not a weapon (has not enabled current atrocities)–but let us make allowances, for critics of Russia do suffer from circular logic and double standards. Otherwise, they would be penning essays that begin with, “I understand why people hate all things American (British, Saudi Arabian, German) right now.”  But are those critics aware that, despite the fact that the U.S. imposed severe sanctions on Russia after the 2014 reunification of Crimea with the peninsula’s historic homeland, Russia did not express hatred for things American?  During the 2018 FIFA World Cup held in various cities in Russia, in St. Petersburg on July 4 Russian professional musicians performed “The Star Spangled Banner” on Nevsky Prospect to honor the American national holiday.  We were there.

Fair-minded and well-educated persons in the humanities and sciences all over the world do not hate Russian culture or Russians.  Despite the fact that Germany was at war with Russia between 1914-1918, the composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff refused to vilify the German nation.[iv]  The Soviet Union was able to mend ties with Germany after World War II, despite the atrocities committed against Soviet citizens and the Red Army during the war.

The author seems to position himself as an expert, a Russian writer, one who continues “the humanist tradition of the intelligentsia” that has for ages battled “a Russian population stuck in a mentality from the Middle Ages,” “a pyramid of slaves” beaten into obedience. Who could possibly have empathy for such a people?!  Only Russian writers who, according to Mr. Shishkin, have resisted unacceptable tsars for the sake of those silent barbarians.  It is a fact that several generations of Western historians built their narratives based on the suppositions of their cultural peers and a dearth of availability of authentic materials in Soviet archives.  Now that many Russian archives are open to researchers both Russian and international, the genuine historical record is available—which is producing major rehistoricizing and lively discussion of such maligned or caricatured figures as Tsar Nicholas II and his family, the mystic Grigory Rasputin, and Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel, to name only a few.

In addition to conflating all of Russian literature into only the dissenting pieces, Mr. Shishkin reduces Russian history to an endless, joyless gulag devoid of any achievements or enjoyment.  Even a cursory review of Russian history problematizes such a sweeping statement.  Between the eighteenth century of Catherine II’s reign (1762-1796) and the early twentieth century when Russia, as other European countries, was evolving into a constitutional monarchy, the Russian social and cultural landscapes were a complex tapestry of existence in which people’s lives were ordered by well-established patterns.  The lives of peasants, intellectuals, and nobility were far from perfect, but there were many achievements and satisfactions therein.  Deep-rooted past traditions have been restored to Russia, such as the democratic Cossack stanitsas (villages) in the Caucasus, and the Feast Days of the Russian Orthodox Church (a foundational feature of Russian culture), at the same time as new highways and airports continue to appear to link major cities.  It is not by accident that the elegant and moving stories and novels of the Village Prose writers such as Valentin Rasputin, Vladimir Soloukhin, Vasily Belov, and others sought to correct—because of their own experiences and memories of growing up as peasants—erroneous and negatively biased assumptions about the Russian common people.  They were there.

Mr. Shishkin’s article does not manifest empathy for average Russians. Contempt for Russians is evident in the epithets he chooses for them (“a pyramid of slaves worshiping the supreme khan,” Russia is “a slave empire,” “slaves give birth to a dictatorship,” “Russian population stuck in a mentality of the Middle Ages,” “fascists, murderers”), and his pointed phrases deprive the Russian people of agency (they are “forced to sing patriotic songs,” “forced to endure and suffer,” “the state has been hammering the Russkiy mir [Russian World] view into people’s brains”). Russians–the barbarians that they are, stuck in the Middle Ages–need liberation and guidance, in Mr. Shishkin’s opinion. But it is a historical fact that the “Russkiy mir view,” as the author puts it, originated in the essential features of Russian culture itself.  These cannot be “hammered in,” for they were organically formed across the centuries by the people themselves.  As all sovereign countries, Russia should be measured by its own yardstick, not by norms and values artificially imposed on it by the West.

According to Mr. Shishkin, Russians (damn slaves!) put trust in their tsars, but their true salvation comes from so-considered enlightened writers.[v]  He divorces Russian culture from the nation; thus everyday people exist outside of “culture”; the nebulous intelligentsia represents the only beacon and carrier of any culture worth knowing. “The civilizational gap that still exists in Russia between the humanist tradition of the intelligentsia and a Russian population stuck in a mentality from the Middle Ages can be bridged only by culture—and the regime today will do everything it can to prevent that” [emphasis original].  Such a sensational generalization implying that the Russian government prevents the development and flourishing of literature, music, and the visual arts (both in traditional high culture and the folk arts) is just not true.  Anyone who has spent time in Russia can easily refute this claim.  It is the people themselves and Russia’s high-quality educational system in general and in the arts in particular—for many, the envy of the world—that are creating the works that will join the pantheon of Russia’s literary and cultural monuments.[vi]  Perhaps there exists an “imaginary Russia” that the author envisions, because it is not the Russia we know.

The author reduces Russian people–the very inspiration, part and parcel of Russian literature and culture–to an obedient clueless horde, a quiet servile crowd that rejects freedom for safety and bread. They are weak, they are slaves. Who will save them? According to Mr. Shishkin, the few elect, enlightened, and cultured, the ones who know the “truth,” the poets (the humanists!)–the new Grand Inquisitors, indulging the weakness of poor uncritical blockheads and promising them light and freedom if they rise against the authority of the rulers the enlightened writers living abroad deem intolerable.

Curiously, Mr. Shishkin references Herzen and Chernyshevsky, not mentioning that their famous novels inspired the Russian revolutionaries who brought about bloodshed worse than many military conflicts and which in turn led to Stalin’s purges and terror that Mr. Shishkin decries.  Since the probability that readers of The Atlantic have read What is to Be Done? and Who is to Blame? is pretty slim, an omission of key details of those novels would not be noticed.

This is not the only key fact the author omits. He fails to point out that Boris Yeltsin, the darling of the West of the 1990s, is as despised as the leaders whom he does mention. He does not speak of the complexity of the relationship between Russian poets/writers and the State, which was never simplistically black and white, nor does he disclose that none of the poets/writers he mentions ever felt contempt for the Russian people so categorically.

Does Mr. Shishkin have an awareness that he is rationalizing hatred and justifying Russophobia? Given the disdain, disrespect, and patronizing of Russians that permeate his essay, perhaps the real objective of the writing is not a defense of Russian literature and culture, but rather a feeble attempt not to be “canceled” along with them?  If so, there are better ways to affirm one’s participation in and defense of a well-established literary tradition.

We recommend that all journalists and writers wishing to attain a profound understanding of Russian literature re-read Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1881), in particular the section titled “Exhortations of Elder Zosima.”  The Elder in the tradition of Orthodox wisdom advises each person to [in a paraphrase] “walk round yourself every day and look at yourself; see how you appear to others”—and by extension, consider how you look to God.  Regardless of whether or not one follows a faith tradition, surely a universal truth involves not hating the Other.  The Russian woman gave bread to the German prisoner-of-war.

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Alexandra G. Kostina, Ph.D., is a Russian linguistics and literature professor and cultural analyst. Born in Novgorod, Russia and currently residing in the U.S., Prof. Kostina travels widely internationally for her research in linguistics, media bias, and Russian literature. She has taught courses on Dostoevsky and includes his thought as well as that of contemporary Russian writers in her research.

Valeria Z. Nollan, Ph.D., is a Russian language and literature professor, poet, and musician. Born in Hamburg, Germany of Russian parents displaced by World War II, Prof. Nollan has made twenty-six extended research trips to Russia and Europe between 1985-2022. She has published or edited eight books and many articles on Russian literature and culture; has given poetry readings in Russia, Europe, and the U.S.; and has performed Russian music at various venues. Her poetry collection Holocaust of the Noble Beasts (Seattle, WA: Goldfish Press, 2020) engages issues of worldwide animal welfare, art, and music.

Notes  

[i] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/russian-literature-books-ukraine-war-dostoyevsky-nabokov/670928/.

[ii] See, for example, Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria, by Swiss journalist and politician Guy Mettan (Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2017); and The American Mission and the “Evil” Empire: The Crusade for a “Free Russia” since 1881, by David S. Fogelsong (New York: Cambridge UP, 2007).

[iii] “German minister speaks out against boycott of Russian culture,” RT, July 3, 2022, https://www.rt.com/russia/558277-german-minister-boycott-culture/.

[iv] See my forthcoming biography Sergei Rachmaninoff: Cross Rhythms of the Soul (Lexington Books / Rowman and Littlefield, November 2022)—VZN.

[v] See The Rebirth of Russian Democracy, by Nicolai N. Petro (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995), which traces the longstanding undercurrents of democracy within Russia’s political systems.

[vi] See https://www.currentschoolnews.com/education-news/best-educational-system-in-the-world/.

Featured image: Dostoevsky in 1872, portrait by Vasily Perov (Licensed under the public domain)

First published by Global Research on December 14, 2018, of relevance to unfolding events

At first glance, it reads like the script for a Hollywood catastrophe movie. And yet it’s one of the scenarios that is actually being considered in the official 2018 report by the Commission, tasked by the United States Congress with studying the national defense strategy –

“In 2019, on the basis of fake news announcing atrocities committed against Russian citizens in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, Russia invades these countries. While US and NATO forces prepare to respond, Russia declares that an attack against its forces in these countries would be viewed as an attack on Russia itself, and considers a nuclear riposte. Russian submarines attack transatlantic optical fibre cables, and Russian hackers cut the electrical networks in the USA, while Russian military forces destroy US military and commercial satellites. The major cities of the United States are paralysed, since the Internet and cell-phones are rendered inoperative”.

The bipartisan Committee, composed of six Republicans and six Democrats, are looking at a similar scenario in Asia – in 2024, China stages a surprise attack and occupies Taiwan, and the United States are unable to intervene in a cost-effective manner, because Chinese military capacities have continued to grow, while those of the USA have stagnated due to insufficient military spending.

“These scenarios – explains the Commission – exemplify the fact that the security and the well-being of the United States are in greater danger than they have been for the last few decades”. Since the Second World War, “the United States have guided the construction of a world of unusual prosperity, freedom and security. This development, from which it has benefited enormously, has been made possible by the unequalled military might of the United States”.

For the moment, however, their military power – “the backbone of world influence and the national security of the USA” – has eroded to a dangerous level. This is due to the fact that “concurrent authoritarian forces – especially China and Russia – are in the process of seeking regional hegemony and the means with which to project their power on an international scale”.

This would be a tragedy of unimaginable dimensions, but perhaps terrible – warns the Commission – if the United States should allow their own national interests to be compromised by a lack of the will to make “hard choices and the necessary investments”. They therefore propose an ulterior increase of US military spending (which today is already equivalent to a quarter of the federal budget) of between 3 and 5 % annually – particularly to increase the deployment of US forces (submarines, strategic bombers, long-range missiles) in the Indo-Pacific region, where “four or five of our adversaries are active – China, North Korea, Russia and terrorist groups, (the fifth being Iran)”.

The strategic vision which emerges from the Congressional report – even more worrying when we note that the Commission is composed of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats – leaves no room for doubt. The United States – which, since 1945, has provoked wars causing between 20 and 30 million deaths (plus the hundreds of millions caused by the indirect effects of these wars) to “guide the construction of a world of unusual prosperity, freedom and security, from which it has benefitted enormously” is now preparing to do anything necessary to maintain its “unequalled military power” upon which their empire is founded, but which is now beginning to crumble with the emergence of a multipolar world.

For this purpose, the Congressional Commission is examining scenarios of aggression against the United States, which are no more than the mirror image of their own aggressive strategy, which runs the risk of dragging the world into catastrophe.

Source: PandoraTV

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Translated by Pete Kimberley

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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A small Canadian hospital lost three young doctors within a three-day period, right after a 4th COVID vax mandate was issued for healthcare workers. Trillium Health Partners in Ontario, Canada sent out three memos to their staff just three days apart – mourning the loss of three beloved doctors. The memos did not reveal the cause of these sudden and unexpected deaths, as the hospital continues to push out its 4th COVID vax mandate on healthcare workers.

Hospital CEOs, board members and administrators should be ashamed of themselves for not standing up for the innocent lives who have been lost to the COVID vaccines and all those who have been injured and killed by inhumane and deadly protocols. Hospital systems continue to facilitate needless medical experiments that perpetuate global genocide. These spineless administrators continue to persecute fellow healthcare workers who won’t comply with these deadly and destructive medical experiments. Healthcare workers are literally killing themselves off in cult-like fashion. With each booster, they must prove their allegiance to this cult of vaccination. Booster after booster, they destroy themselves from the inside out.

Small hospital mourns the unexpected loss of three young beloved doctors

The first memo mourns the loss of Dr. Lorne Segall, an otolaryngologist who served as the Division Head of Otolaryngology from 2016 to 2017. Joined Trillium health partners in 2007 and served as an Otolaryngologist at Credit Valley Hospital. He passed away on July 17, 2022 and leaves behind a wife and three children.

The second memo mourns the loss of Dr. Stephen McKenzie, a neurologist at Mississauga hospital. Dr. McKenzie contributed to undergraduate and postgraduate medical education at Trillium Health Partners and at the University of Toronto. He spent much of his time caring for multiple sclerosis patients. He passed away on July 18, 2022.

The third memo mourns the loss of Dr Jakub Sawicki, a member of the Surgical Assisting team at Trillium Health Partners. In 2013, he completed training at the Credit Valley Family Medicine Teaching Unit and began work at Trillium in 2014. He specialized in pain management and became Medical Director of pain medicine clinics within the region, while teaching family medicine residents. He passed away on July 20, 2022.

The cowardice of physicians around the world is daunting

The sudden and unexpected passing of three young medical professionals three days apart should raise alarms throughout the hospital system and throughout Canada, yet Trillium Health Partners will continue to ignore the obvious issue at hand, while pushing out another round of coercive medical malfeasance in their blind worship to “vaccination.”

The most recent government statistics out of Canada (from June 9 to June 19) show that the vaccinated account for 92 percent of covid-19 deaths. In that time period, there were 4,954 covid-19 deaths throughout Canada, and the vaccinated accounted for 3,796 of those deaths. With each additional booster, the percentage of deaths linearly increases. There were 135 deaths for people who took one vaccine, 1,174 deaths for people who took two vaccines, and 2,487 deaths for people who took three vaccines.

To make matters worse, the quadruple vaccinated are driving the majority of the new cases in 2022. Out of the 20,842 COVID-19 cases reported during the same period, the quadruple vaccinated accounted for 13,987 of them. The vaccinated account for 93 percent of the total case count. Not only is the vaccine not working to stop the spread of covid-19, but it is also the driving factor behind new variants that predominantly kill the vaccinated.

The 1,377 COVID-19 hospitalizations during the same time period were also predominantly in the vaccinated population. Approximately 85 percent of hospitalizations are coming from the vaccinated and it’s the quadruple vaccinated (65 percent) who are driving the majority of these hospitalizations.

The Trudeau dictatorship is still requiring these so-called vaccines in order for people to enter the country, and the government continues to pursue discriminatory policies to coerce more people into taking compounding clot shots. In most cases, hospital CEOs and administrators are too afraid to report the truth and stand up for their coworkers, patients and families. As they bow to medical tyranny at each and every turn, they will continue to unexpectedly die at the hands of tyrants.

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First published on February 15, 2021

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The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists emerged after World War II as a voice for peace by some of the scientists who developed the then ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Now, its mission has drifted into being an echo chamber for the US imperial project urging President Biden to take even more destabilizing actions against Russia.

Dropping the A-bombs

By the time that the scientists at the top-secret Manhattan Project had developed the atomic bomb and the US military had worked out the logistics for deploying it, World War II was for all intents and purposes over. By early May 1945, Germany had unconditionally surrendered; in large part due to the efforts of the Red Army defeating the Nazi Wehrmacht, but at the horrific cost of 27,000,000 Soviet lives. The Japanese too had been defeated militarily and had agreed to “unconditional surrender” with the one caveat that Emperor Hirohito be spared.

So, the world’s emerging hegemon had a problem. It had the ultimate weapon to impose its policy of world domination (i.e., today’s official US national security doctrine of global “full spectrum dominance”). But what good is this ultimate weapon if it is a secret? And, even if known, would the world believe that the US has the will to unleash such a destructive force?

President Truman had the solution – nuke Japan. All the military targets in Japan had been destroyed, but an even stronger message of the US’s determination to enforce imperial hegemony was made by annihilating the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

The Japanese promptly surrendered, offering up the life of their emperor. The US accepted, but did not execute the emperor, who was more useful alive than dead. Besides, the leniency gesture reinforced the message that the US would capriciously bomb at will. Even when President Obama visited Hiroshima in 2016, he pointedly offered “no apology” for the destruction his country had wrought.

Dawn of the Cold War

The quick Japanese surrender in August 1945 had another cause, which many modern historians consider more overriding than the US bombs. The Soviets, engaged with their western front, had remained neutral in the war with Japan, but had promised the Allies to join the war effort against Japan once the Germans were defeated. At the same time the US dropped the bombs, the USSR declared war with Japan causing Tokyo to capitulate.

The dropping of the atomic bombs was the first salvo of the Cold War, signifying the end of the US wartime alliance of convenience with the Soviet Union. Truman’s rush to nuke Japan had the dual advantage of making known his “hammer” over the Kremlin as well as denying the USSR time to advance east and have a seat in the surrender agreement with Japan. The Soviets had not developed atomic weapons on the assumption – which proved to be essentially correct – that World War II would be over before they could be deployed to defeat the Axis powers.

In the immediate post-war period, the Soviets and their allies were existentially threatened by the unambiguous intention of the US and its allies to destroy them. As a defensive measure, the Soviet Union had no choice but to develop a deterrent nuclear force, testing its first atomic bomb in 1949.

Although the Soviets pledged to use their nuclear arsenal only in defense and renounced “first strike,” the US didn’t. Soon the Cold War arms race threatened the planet with destruction. The emergent construct of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) was a fragile arrangement for the future of humanity.

Emergence of the Bulletin by scientists for peace

Voices of peace arose from the very inventers of the atomic bomb. Immediately after the destructive power of the atom was rained on Japan and even before the Soviet Union developed their deterrent force, former Manhattan Project scientists Eugene Rabinowitch and Hyman Goldsmith founded the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, subsequently renamed the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Other notables associated with the Bulletin were nuclear physicist Hans Bethe, Soviet space scientist Anatoli Blagonravov, Jewish-German émigré and developer of quantum mechanics Max Born, physicist “father of the atomic bomb” turned anti-nuclear proliferation activist J. Robert Oppenheimer, British polymath peace activist Bertrand Russell, Soviet physicist Nikolay Semyonov, and Albert Einstein.

The Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock, unveiled in 1947, was set at seven minutes to midnight. The clock was intended as an educational tool to serve “as a vivid symbol of these multiplying perils, its hands showing how close to extinction we are.”

The Pugwash Conferences, an effort at peace in the early part of the Cold War, were an outgrowth of the Bulletin in its formative years in the 1950s.

Mission drift at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Today, the risk of nuclear annihilation, not to mention global warming and other threats, has never been greater, according to the Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock. But the Bulletin has morphed from an advocate for peace and against other threats to humanity to something else.

From an organization run by scientists, the current governing board of the Bulletin has hardly a scientist in sight. Its president and CEO is Rachel Bronson, a political scientist who came out of the US security establishment NGO world, including the Council on Foreign Relations (Wall Street’s think tank) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (ranked the top military think tank in the world). Its chair, David Kuhlman, is a corporate consultant specializing in helping “clients identify pathways to profitable growth.” Its secretary, Steve Ramsey, formerly worked for defense contractor General Electric. Former Secretary of State and accused war criminal Madeleine Albright does promotionals for the Bulletin.

The Bulletin maintains a liberal façade and still publishes articles that contribute to peace and environmentalism. In that way, its role in collusion with the US imperial project is insidious, because the patina of peace is used to legitimize its mission drift.

Fanning the flames of anti-Chinese sentiment, the Bulletin promotes the conspiracy theory that the Chinese artificially developed COVID-19, featuring journalist Nicholas Wade’s “How COVID-19’s origins were obscured, by the East and the West.” However, scientific evidence points to natural origins of the virus. Anti-Russian sentiment is promoted with journalist Matt Field’s “Russian media spreading disinformation about US bioweapons as troops mass near Ukraine.” Where are the scientists advocating for peace?

The Bulletin covers the Ukraine crisis

Another case in point of its devolution is the article “How to mix sanctions and diplomacy to avert disaster in Ukraine,” published in the Bulletin on February 1. The article advocates for sanctions that would “severely and quickly devastate Russia’s powerful energy export sector.” Echoing Washington’s talking points, the article couches its recommendations as responding to Russian aggression but actually proposes nothing to de-escalate the conflict.

It is beyond ironic that an organization that purports to be warning against the dangers of nuclear holocaust is making a full-throated defense of an even more aggressive posture by one of the world’s leading nuclear powers.

Yes, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist’s Doomsday Clock is now 100 seconds to midnight, and they are trying to push it closer to Armageddon.

The view of the Bulletin’s Ukraine article is that the current crisis is Putin’s “own making.” In contrast, the article explains that the US has diplomatically “initiated” talks with Russia. There is no mention of the forward deployment of US troops or sending lethal aid to Ukraine. There is no recognition of aggressive actions by NATO such as stationing assault ABM missile systems in Romania and possibly Poland. Off limits is allusion to the US shredding the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Hidden from sight in the aforementioned article and another published the same day on “How the demise of an arms control treaty foreshadowed Russia’s aggression against Ukraine” is the US-orchestrated Ukraine coup in 2014 that installed an anti-Russian regime there. The latter article’s meticulously detailed history of the region notes “Moscow invaded and annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea,” but not the coup that precipitated it.

Reasonable peace proposals

There is not a word in these articles of how some of the Russian initiatives might prevent hostilities and make the region more secure with a reduced likelihood of war. And certainly, there is none of the following reasonable peace proposals:

• Russia and the US shall not use the territory of other countries to prepare or conduct attacks against the other.
• Neither party shall deploy short- or intermediate-range missiles abroad or in areas where these weapons could reach targets inside the other’s territory.
• Neither party shall deploy nuclear weapons abroad, and any such weapons already deployed must be returned.
• Both parties shall eliminate any infrastructure for deploying nuclear weapons outside their own territories.
• Neither party shall conduct military exercises with scenarios involving the use of nuclear weapons.
• Neither party shall train military or civilian personnel from non-nuclear countries to use nuclear weapons.

The above peace measures are what in fact Russia proposed, but are considered “non-starters” by the US and presumably by the Bulletin.

Citing the Atlantic Council, the US-based think tank for NATO, the Bulletin explains that the sanctions that they are advocating would cause the Russian economy to “experience significant chaos.” These sanctions that the Bulletin calls for are a form of warfare just as deadly as dropping bombs. Sanctions kill! Instead of supporting peaceful measures to reduce tensions in the Ukraine, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has become a cheerleader for Washington.

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Roger D. Harris is with the human rights group Task Force on the Americas, founded in 1985, and is on the SanctionsKill coalition.

Featured image is from Doomsday Clock

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First published on July 21, 2022

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A record heatwave is hitting Europe, mostly Southern Europe and the British Island. Temperatures are reaching more than 40 degrees C. London measured an all-time record of more than 41 degrees C.

The heatwave, with ever-increasing temps, has been hitting Europe for several weeks now, and there seems to be no end in sight yet. Massive forest and brush fires are hitting particularly Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Greece – but also other parts of Europe.

According to news reports, more than a thousand people have already died in relation to the heat, most of them in Southern Europe. Precise statistics are apparently not available. Is this really possible? Or could it ALSO be deaths caused by the toxic and poisonous covid vaxxes?

The heat plus the fires is not only destroying human lives – and massive livestock! – and properties, but also vital crops through drought and now the fires. Food crops are ”vital” in a time when the mass media narrative 24/7 brainwashing the public at large with the woes of the Russian aggression on Ukraine, that is causing energy and food shortages in the west, particularly in Europe for most countries, and in the Global South.

This is the narrative we are hearing. This is the narrative most people still believe. And now, the food that could save us from famine, is being destroyed by extreme heat, drought and fires.

Are these fires the result of the heat, or could they be caused by an intentional and planned arson? At this juncture there is no evidence to that effect.

And as if it was a bad coincidence, in parallel with the heat wave, the Dutch Government under the leadership of Mark Rutte, a scholar of Klaus Schwab’s Academy for Young Global Leaders, under close surveillance of the WEF and its “Green Agenda” (coinciding with the US and the UN Green Agenda), is imposing on its farmers an up to 30% reduction of farmland and cattle farms – under the pretext that the cattle’s manure releasing these horrible climate change gases, Ammonia (NH₃), Carbon Dioxide (CO₂), Methane (CH₄), and Hydrogen Sulfide (H₂S), will help accelerate “Climate Change”.

How ridiculous, criminally ridiculous, can it get and worse, if people believe it and play along. What started in the Netherlands, may soon come to a country near you.

Some 30% of farmers would not only lose their livelihoods, but are mandated to give up their land to the government for a pittance, so that the Government could use this prime farmland for “Green” purposes. Who knows, maybe Bill Gates will lease or buy it to produce insects and bugs for his new “green” insect burgers – and other disgusting replacements of one of humanity’s main and oldest staple food.

And, are we powerless against these monster powers?

For weeks hundreds of thousands of Dutch farmers and their supporters are taking to the streets and blocking highways to and from major Dutch cities, as well as main distribution arteries between Holland and Germany and within the Netherlands, disrupting food and other supply chain distribution schemes.

The Dutch farmers rebellion is now getting enforcement from Germany and Switzerland. They are marching with a “Wanted List” on placards of some of those considered as responsible for the crimes committed over the past two and a half years; crimes dictated by the Great Reset and the omni-powerful Financial Cult that manages the WEF. See this.

click image below to view

Do you remember just about a year ago, most of Germany was devastated by record storms and rainfalls? Some 200 people died, according to official records. The full extent of the devastation may never be known.

Infrastructure repairs are still ongoing. Authorities are extremely slow in fixing the damage.

By the same token, the North-East of the US has experienced an extremely cold winter 2021 / 2022 season, also causing hundreds of deaths. The cold weather strain is blamed on a weaker than usual ”Polar Vortex”.  What is a Polar Vortex?

This is what google has to says:

“[A Polar Vortex] is a very large, long-lived, rotating low-pressure system located near the north or south pole, especially in winter.”

As an example, they add:

“Earlier in the year [late 2021 / early 2022], a weather phenomenon known as a polar vortex chilled North America to record low temperatures”. See this.

Aren’t these extreme climate occurrences not rather unusual? – And this especially under the merciless narrative of Global Climate Change cum Global Warming. Man-made Climate Change, mind you.

The climate changes constantly; has been changing over the past 4.5 billion years of Mother Earth’s existence. Nothing that lives is stagnant.

If you look closer, these strange occurrences serve several agendas at once. The Climate Change Agenda, actively and carefully prepared for at least 30 years, since the Rio Earth Summit – but in reality, it was already hinted at in the early Club of Rome conferences and reflected in CoR’s most important book, “Reshaping the International Order” [1976].

Climate Change, indoctrinated into human brains for the last 30 years, since the “Earth Summit” of Rio in June 1992, also called UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), has become the new key word for “every bad deed” humans commit.

It’s based on human guilt, and manipulates human guilt and benefits from human guilt, a cultural-religious inheritance dating back to the Old Testament. And it works. It’s one of the factors contributing to what particularly we, westerners are suffering under, “cognitive dissonance”. Our brain doesn’t want to accept, that we may have been lied to and believed all our lives in lies. According to psychologists, cognitive dissonance is one of the most difficult human afflictions to overcome.

Some of us can easily deal with the shock of sudden reality hitting. Because if we don’t – and that is what the Evil Cult is counting on – we are indeed doomed, falling more and more into the abyss created by “them” from where to escape it will be ever-more difficult, eventually impossible.

Today, we still have some time. Less and less, with every day we let go by without fierce opposition. We are about a quarter through Agenda 2030, target date for implementation of everything – meaning, full enslavement, owning nothing and being happy – if they attain the goals of their agenda.

Since there are signs of people waking up – “they” being the WEF and its handlers – are planning to advance the agenda’s main targets to 2025 / 2026. Hence, the rush to get the WHO “Pandemic Treaty” pushed through the WHO General Assembly, even before the earlier target date of effectiveness, in 2024. For more on the “Pandemic Treaty”, see below.

Climate, like everything that lives, has never been stagnant, always moves, alters, mutates and grows in different directions, with or without human presence. That’s part of the mystery of the all-comprehensive and all-powerful universe, in which we are an invisible minute speck — or not even. The key influential body for our little solar system and for our Mother Earth’s climate is the sun.

For example, according to (real) scientific research, there were at least two “Snowball Earth” occurrences: one around 717 million and another some 645 million years ago. During these phases there were practically no solar surface movements, flares, explosions – to heat up Mother Earth. See this.

Any thinking-human – and indeed there are thousands of scientists to prove it but many are silenced – will conclude (and have proof) that we are being lied to again, that we are being drawn into a multi-trillion-dollar business, the so-called Green Agenda, by the neocons and the financial giants who control them, BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street et al. All with the objective to take full control of our planet’s resources and humanity.

We are indeed living in a very crooked world. Waking up to this reality and sitting down with ourselves, families and friends to separate the wheat from the chaff, is indeed a challenge, but we MUST face it. It’s our only chance to survive – recognizing the truth over the lies.

Unfortunately, many scientists who deserve that attribute and who dare speaking-up are silenced, either censured or otherwise.

The groundwork for the 1992 Rio Conference, the “Earth Summit” – and for much of what is going on today – was and is the Club of Rome’s Report of 1976, Reshaping the International Order.

This controversial book was formulated by a group of some twenty “experts” from developed as well as developing countries. It is arguably also one of the base documents for the WEF Great Reset, and certainly was at the base of UN Agenda 2030. Incidentally, the Club of Rome was also an initiative of the Rockefeller Clan.

Over the past 60 years or so, weather modification science has advanced by leaps and bounds from the US Air Force’s High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP (image below) in the 1990s, to the weather modification technologies by the Pentagon’s think tank, DARPA, or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Science Insider has learned that DARPA is the latest in a number of official science funding agencies or top scientific societies that are exploring the controversial idea of changing weather patterns, or Climate Change.

DARPA uses the military to developing weather cum climate geoengineering techniques. See this.

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The WHO Pandemic Treaty

What is being played out now, the disruption and outright destruction of food production, as well as the implementation of a harsh climate agenda, is real. And it fits perfectly the agenda of the Great Reset.

Simultaneously, it also serves to deviating attention from an ever-greater tyranny being prepared: The WHO “Pandemic Treaty”. Although being initiated at the behest of President Biden behind curtains already since December 2021, it “flared-up” and made it briefly to the mainstream, only in mid-April 2022.

If this diabolical “Pandemic Treaty” passes a two thirds majority of the WHO Health Assembly (total 194 member states), it will become international law by which the WHO may override and overrule every country’s sovereign health regulation, and dictate heath policy in every country. Apparently it is possible and likely, that the two-thirds law is quietly and silently being amended to a simple majority.

Under the Treaty WHO could, for example, declare the common flu as a pandemic and request absolute vaxx-mandates. With a forced vaxx-mandate – similar to what the world experienced in the last 18 months (since December 2020) – “infected people”, tested with the same flawed and fraudulent PCR test, could be injected with deadly toxins. Just like under the pretext of Covid-19..

As per Mike Yeadon, former Pfizer VP and Chief Science Officer , these “vaccines” side-effects, all studied and planned, will continue to weaken humans’  immune system, being the cause for all kinds of deadly diseases – cancers, kidney and liver ailments, heart failures, and so on, maybe two to three years down the road, when nobody can legally trace these diseases or deaths back to the vaxxes.

We must wake up to these hidden atrocities being carried out at present under the umbrella of a planned (?)  extreme heatwave, ravaging Central and Eastern Europe and the Global South.

Only we, the People, can stop them, in solidarity and in Peace.

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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.

Featured image: A thermometer showing 39 °C (102 °F) on a street in Valladolid on 15 June. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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

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In a speech in the European Parliament earlier this month, German MP Christine Anderson described the coercion of people into taking COVID vaccines as the “biggest crime ever committed on humanity.”

“This vaccine campaign will go down as the biggest scandal in medical history,” Anderson declared, adding “moreover, it will be known as the biggest crime ever committed on humanity.”

Yup and I meant every word if it! https://t.co/Pk4QS7eM2V

— Christine Anderson (@AndersonAfDMdEP) July 25, 2022

The MEP was addressing mass flight cancellations and staff shortages in airports and on planes, asserting that while it is claimed the situation stems from companies not hiring back enough staff after the pandemic, the real reason is that pilots and other staff have refused to get vaccinated.

Anderson further warned that “unscrupulous globalist elites” have used the pandemic for their own ends, asking “What in God’s name have they done with this?”

Addressing “each and every elected representative of people in every western democracy,” Anderson asked “What have you done?”

“You didn’t do your job, and do not tell me you didn’t know,” Anderson further asserted, adding “it is your job to protect the people that you were elected by.”

She continued,

“There is so much coming to light, all of the adverse side effects, numerous studies now available, on foetal disfigurements… genetic defects of babies born to women who got vaccinated.”

“What in the hell is going on here?” Anderson urged, vowing “We will do all we can to make sure this is brought to light and ensure the rights of the people to be protected.”

Watch:

Watch the full 1hr 30min event here:

Anderson previously made headlines for slamming the “political elite” for imposing vaccines and vaccine passports using “extortion and manipulation”.

Anderson stated that

“In the entire history of mankind there has never been a political elite sincerely concerned about the wellbeing of regular people. What makes any of us think that it is different now?”

Must Watch Very Powerful.

“In the entire history of mankind there has never been a political elite sincerely concerned about the wellbeing of regular people. What makes any of us think that it is different now. – Christine Anderson European Parliament.” pic.twitter.com/oSVYzg81p5

— Sikh For Truth (@SikhForTruth) October 29, 2021

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Featured image is a screenshot from one of the videos above

Remember:

Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

Nagasaki, August 9, 1945

Timely historical analysis: This article was first published in June 2019

The extent of devastation inflicted upon Japan by the American military during World War II is not broadly known, even today. In reprisal for the attack over Pearl Harbor, which killed almost 2,500 Americans, US aircraft first began unloading bombs on Japan during the afternoon of 18 April 1942 – attacking the capital Tokyo, and also five other major cities, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe and Yokosuka.

Participating in this opening incursion over Japanese territory, known as the “Doolittle Raid”, were a modest 16 US B-25 medium bombers which killed about 50 Japanese, while meting out minor overall damage. Yet the air strikes represented an embarrassment for Tokyo’s leaders, and they further dealt a sharp psychological blow on the Japanese mindset. To rub salt into wounds, not one of America’s B-25 aircraft was shot down. It was a sign of things to come.

As months elapsed into years, the destruction increased many times over. By 15 June 1945, 66 Japanese cities had been annihilated by the US Army Air Force, through firebombing attacks primarily unleashed by the new B-29 four-engine heavy bombers.

The number of Japanese metropolitan areas destroyed here was the exact figure that the Pentagon compiled when finalizing plans, in mid-September 1945, to eviscerate the Soviet Union. Indeed, 66 Soviet cities were earmarked to be wiped out – with 204 atomic bombs – less than two weeks after Japanese representatives signed surrender terms on 2 September 1945, finally closing out World War II.

Regarding atomic attack proposals against the Japanese Empire, General George Marshall, the US Army Chief of Staff, revealed in 1954 that,

“In the original plans for the invasion of Japan, we wanted nine atomic bombs for three attacks”.

Just prior to Hiroshima the Pentagon had less than half a dozen A-bombs, however.

Photograph of a mock-up of the Little Boy nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945. This was the first photograph of the Little Boy bomb casing to ever be released by the U.S. government (it was declassified in 1960). (Source: Public Domain)

The world’s first nuclear attack was unleashed at 8.15am local time in Hiroshima, on 6 August 1945, as a 15 kiloton bomb hurtled through the air when released from a B-29 aircraft. After falling for 44 seconds, the “Little Boy” atomic weapon detonated directly over Shima Hospital in Hiroshima’s city centre, instantly turning into ashes all of its doctors, nurses and patients. In the surrounding landscape, dozens of further hospitals, schools and historical buildings were razed to the ground.

Tens of thousands were killed immediately as ground temperatures momentarily soared from between 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Celsius. Of those people situated within two kilometres of the bomb detonation point, 112,000 would be dead within a year (10 August 1946).

Further thousands were also killed from radiation poisoning and severe burns, among those present in the hundreds of metres beyond the two kilometre radius mark. The majority of the dead and dying were civilians, men too old or sick to serve in the armed forces, along with large numbers of women and children.

Hiroshima’s vital arms and manufacturing complexes, scattered along the city’s periphery, were completely undamaged. These plants accounted for 74% of her total industrial output. Unscathed too was Hiroshima’s crucial port and military embarkation point on the Ota Delta. Almost 95% of Hiroshima’s factory workers were unhurt following the explosion.

On hearing of the atomic blast a few hours afterwards, president Harry Truman heralded it as “the greatest thing in history” and “an overwhelming success”.

Three days later, 9 August, Nagasaki was attacked at 11.02am local time with a more sophisticated 21 kiloton bomb – which was released over the city’s educational, cultural and religious heartland. As with Hiroshima, the Nagasaki bombing left unharmed most of the city’s war-making industries.

A mockup of the Fat Man nuclear device. (Source: Public Domain)

This “Fat Man” bomb killed further tens of thousands; including many hundreds of schoolchildren, along with destroying the city’s main hospitals, cathedrals, temples and schools. Medical facilities in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were decimated, adding significantly to the death tolls.

Echoing Washington’s support for atomic assaults were the Western media, almost without exception. Of 595 newspaper editorials written regarding the nuclear explosions from early August until late December 1945, less than 2% opposed the attacks which would kill more than 200,000 people.

The press also firmly supported the firestorming of both German and Japanese cities, in actuality they had “demanded more bombing of civilian targets”, even criticizing air strikes over military and industrial zones. For example, New York’s Time magazine praised the annihilation of Tokyo, which left around 100,000 dead, as “a dream come true… properly kindled, Japanese cities will burn like autumn leaves”.

Elsewhere, although Japan’s hard-line militarists proposed fighting to the last man, their political leaders were compelled to announce surrender on 15 August 1945, when threatened with further atomic attacks. General Leslie Groves, directing America’s A-bomb project, informed General Marshall on 10 August 1945 that another Nagasaki-type plutonium weapon would be “on the target” and available for use “after 24 August 1945”.

The USSR’s declaration of war on Japan during the evening of 8 August 1945 also influenced Tokyo’s capitulation; with the Red Army, in the following days, cutting through Japan’s elite armies across Manchuria like a hot knife through butter. Another factor was the American guarantee, relayed on 11 August 1945, that Emperor Hirohito – a God-like entity in Japan – could continue in his role following the surrender, though he would have no real power.

Just after the first atomic attack Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, Hisatsune Sakomizu, estimated that his country could hold out for another two months at most: to October 1945. Japan had long been beaten in the air, as too at sea, while her imports of crude oil, rubber and iron ore ceased to exist. Japanese forces were driven from Burma and throughout the Pacific territories.

In addition, according to high ranking figures like Admirals Chester Nimitz (Pacific Fleet Commander) and William Leahy (Truman’s Chief of Staff), the ongoing, crippling blockade of Japan by sea, coupled with conventional air attacks, would induce their surrender within weeks, making any US land invasion or atomic bombings unnecessary. The A-bombs were in reality dropped as a warning signal to the Soviet Union, America’s new and long-term enemy as highlighted by General Groves in March 1944.

Through non-nuclear bombing, the destruction of dozens of Japan’s metropolitan areas was overseen by Major General Curtis LeMay, who implemented increasingly murderous tactics. It should be remembered, however, that Japan’s army apparatus was particularly sadistic and brutal, committing atrocities predating World War II.

Yet it was Japanese civilians which bore the brunt of America’s military might. On 30 May 1945, LeMay openly boasted at a press conference that US air strikes had killed a million Japanese or more.

By the summer of 1945, over nine million of Japan’s citizens were left homeless, most fleeing to green areas. Just prior to the atomic explosions, 969 Japanese hospitals had also been destroyed by American airplanes.

Almost four years previously, Japan’s seemingly “unprovoked and dastardly attack” on the US naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii – as president Franklin D. Roosevelt described it – was based on what were in fact well-grounded fears. For five months preceding Japan’s raid on 7 December 1941, Washington had been moving her B-17 heavy bombers in growing numbers to US bases in the Pacific, such as at Pearl Harbor, and also to Clark Air Base and Del Monte Airfield in the Philippines.

From mid-1941, half of America’s big bombers were shifted from the Atlantic domain towards eastern horizons, something that Japanese strategists were only too aware of.

The reasoning behind this military build up had been outlined in late 1940, by America’s famed pre-war planner and Air Force General, Claire Chennault, who outlined how the B-17s would “burn out the industrial heart of the Empire with fire-bomb attacks on the teeming bamboo ant heaps of Honshu and Kyushu”. President Roosevelt was “simply delighted” when hearing of this plan.

Notwithstanding Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, America would have shortly entered the war regardless – and in opposition to Tokyo – as both states by 1941 were already major rivals with incompatible ambitions in the great Asian and Pacific regions. On 15 November 1941, three weeks before Pearl Harbor, General Marshall told reporters in an “off-the-record briefing” that American aircraft would “set the paper cities of Japan on fire. There won’t be any hesitation about bombing civilians”.

A year before, on 19 December 1940, Roosevelt approved $25 million in military aid to China, Japan’s traditional nemesis, including the gift of aircraft. Twenty-five million dollars in 1940 equates to nearly half a billion dollars today. On 11 March 1941, America’s president signed into law the Lend-Lease Act, a program providing further materiel to the Chinese – and also to other nations like Britain, the Soviet Union and France, all of which were far from benevolent towards Imperial Japan.

For many months, Roosevelt had placed sanctions and an embargo on Japan, such as in response to Tokyo’s September 1940 occupation of Northern French Indochina, which harmed US interests in the vicinity.

On 26 July 1941 Roosevelt froze the entirety of Japanese assets in America, a drastic policy which amounted to a declaration of economic war on Japan, over four months before Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt’s action stripped Japan of a staggering 90% of its oil imports, along with eradicating 75% of her foreign trade.

Within days, the Japanese were forced to dip into their scant oil reserves, which on their current course would be used up by January 1943, unless her armies embarked upon further invasions.

In equal enemy numbers, there were few who could live with the ferocity of the Japanese soldier, who gained notoriety for his cruelty. Tokyo’s war planners turned their hungry gaze to yet more tantalizing conquests, lining up the resource-rich states of Burma, the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), each of which would be conquered during the first half of 1942.

As the war advanced and tables slowly turned, the Western allies’ terror bombing of civilian areas – not only ranking as war crimes – also stood as a dismal failure in its bid to bring the conflict to swift conclusion. These morally bereft strategies, of which nobody was made accountable, actually prolonged World War II. The long-held idea that blood-drenched air raids would smash the people’s morale, forcing them to revolt against their leaders, was pure fantasy.

In the summer of 1945, Japanese civilians were more interested in laying their hands upon foodstuffs, with the nation gradually starving due to America’s naval blockade. What’s more, any attempt at rebellion would promptly be eliminated by Japan’s military police, the dreaded Kenpeitai.

Western leaders failed to discern the lessons of Germany’s early 1940s Blitz of Britain, which served to strengthen the British public’s morale, not weaken it. This reality soon became clear to Wehrmacht hierarchy; but not so it seems to leaders like Winston Churchill, who was advocating the senseless obliteration of medieval cities like Dresden as late as February 1945.

Targeting women and children with bombs left the German and Japanese war machines largely unmolested. The Nazis’ armaments minister, Albert Speer, was at times left dumbfounded by Allied air tactics over Germany, which often avoided the Reich’s industrial areas.

Across 1944 Speer, much to Hitler’s delight and amazement, actually oversaw an increase in both German aircraft and panzer production, which made possible such attacks as the Ardennes Offensive of December 1944.

The realities behind air bombing escaped the attention of others like LeMay, and his English counterpart Arthur “Bomber” Harris. After it was all over, Harris admitted in his memoirs that the stratagem underlying assaults over urban locations “proved to be wholly unsound”; and that the Allied leaders should have earlier directed their pilots more frequently towards bombardment of factories, communication signals and transportation lines, which would have finished off Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan before 1945.

While LeMay was speaking about the mass deaths of Japanese, which also destroyed more than 3.5 million homes, he did not mention that in mid-1945 much of Japan’s infrastructure still lay untouched; such as the country’s crucially important coal ferry between Hokkaido and Honshu while, incredibly, the rail network remained intact through to August 1945; as too did several industrial zones which LeMay’s B-29s roamed obliviously past.

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

Featured image: Charred remains of Japanese civilians after the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9–10 March 1945.

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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“Nothing is more real than nothing.” –Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

Those who are never lost are forever lost.  Only those who know they are lost and that life is a shipwreck have a chance to find their way to shore.

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.

Everyone is a pilgrim on the way, and because there are no maps, we all get lost.  And it is only by getting lost in a deep sense that we can find ourselves and discover the truth about the world.

It is well known that Ernest Hemingway made famous the phrase “the lost generation” when he opened his novel The Sun Also Rises with the epigram “You are all a lost generation,” attributed to Gertrude Stein, who said she heard it from a garage owner who said it about a young auto mechanic in his employ.

It is less well known that Hemingway later wrote “that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be …But to hell with her lost-generation talk and all the dirty easy labels.”

He was thinking of how the madness of war with the calls to patriotism and God and country and the never-ending official lies about everything maimed people at very deep levels.  His words in A Farewell to Arms have lasted because they are so true in their dismissal of abstract obscenities and their embrace of the concrete:

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain …. And I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards of Chicago if nothing were done with the meat except to bury it …. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

No doubt he was also thinking of the existential anxiety of being alive and the fear of death and nothingness that is conveyed in his powerful short story, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” that appeared in the 1930 volume Winner Take Nothing.  He was well acquainted with nothing (the not, nada) and knew that social circumstances only add to it, particularly wars and the nihilistic death wishes of lying political leaders.

Some say nothing has changed for millennia and that every age is similar and people are the same, always complaining about the present and recalling the good old days.  There is some truth in this, but the issue of assessing today in all its uniqueness remains paramount.  For every age and every generation is different; therein lies its potential and dangers.  Each can only be understood within its place and time.  We live in the era of high technology that has never before existed.  It is unique.  And it is uniquely dangerous.

Today is a time of unprecedented official lies about everything, endless wars hot and cold, class wars of the rich against the poor, medical wars of international elites against everyone, etc. –  it is a daily electronic digital  barrage meant to pound people into the deepest despair.  Call it “The Lost World of the Information Superhighway.”  These lies have sown a vast sense of bewilderment, as intended.  Lostness for so many, including those who don’t know it and take those lies for truth. People who don’t know that there are still places, although they are shrinking, where truth can be found.  The problem is, of course, that even when they are told about media sites and writers that operate honestly and outside the propaganda mill, they usually refuse to go there.  They prefer to live inside what Jim Garrison, the former New Orleans District Attorney who brought the only trial in the assassination of President Kennedy, correctly termed “the Doll’s House.”

Picking through the bins at the lost and found on the Internet, which is dominated by intelligence services and their Silicon Valley big tech partners, many who feel lost find “things” they think they have lost but which are counterfeit.  They cling to them as to false gods, not realizing that they have been placed there by the elite mountebanks and their accomplices, a process similar to a document dump that contains fabricated records.  It is an old trick.  Often what is really lost is the sense that life makes sense and is meaningful, but this awareness is often replaced with shards of false reassurance meant to distract and far too much information for anyone to comprehend.

What’s up?  Check your cell phone and head down the primrose path to unreality.

Just as there are two senses to being lost, one based on the awareness that if we refuse to grasp at straws and proceed through life by faith, the unknown road will bear us up (Thoreau said, “How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it…”), and the other being the more socially induced one of incessant propaganda, so too there are two ways of thinking about nothing.  The existential sense as described by Hemingway in his famous story mentioned above, and the sense of trivia or superficial preoccupations that distract.  C.S. Lewis described the latter sense very well:

The Christians describe the enemy as one ‘without whom Nothing is strong’. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

This is a perfect description of the passivity of scrolling the internet or social media.  Much ado about absolutely nothing but distractions.  Tranquilized by trivia.

Our current situation has been long in coming.  Back in the early 1960s, there was a  highly touted intellectual named Marshall McLuhan whose 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, was gobbled up by the baby boomers raised on television, whose rebellious members protested the inhumanity of IBM computer technology of that time.  Ironically, it was members of this generation who later created the computer revolution and have promoted the digital revolution.  They carry cell phones as sidearms to defend themselves from reality.

Newsweek called McLuhan “the oracle of the New Communications.”  He was an obscurantic celebrator of the electronic media and retribalized man long before the Internet, cell phones, personal computers, and digital mania.  McLuhan’s paeans to technology sounded very profound and liberating  with their vaguely Gnostic and Jungian rhetoric, which also fit with the 1960s “vibes.”  He called the electronic media our gods whom we must serve, for they in turn would liberate us.  He gave life to things while taking it from persons.  He wrote:

Electromagnetic technology requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide. Man must serve his electronic technologywith the same servo-mechanistic fidelity with which he served his coracle, his canoe, his typography, and all other extensions of his physical organs. But there is this difference, that previous technologies were partial and fragmentary, and the electric is total and inclusive. An external consensus or conscience is now as necessary as private consciousness. [my emphases]

Clearly this was a message of a prescient religious crank: mystical, mythological, technological nonsense perfectly in tune with the dawning new age. Not any coming of the Age of Aquarius, however, but that of the Age of Digital Control and endless wars.

By turning the person inside out and giving life to things, McLuhan was certainly anticipating and promoting the developments of the past forty years.  His ideas gave legitimacy to the passivity of the person in the face of the burgeoning mass media consumer culture.  They supported the growing commodification of all aspects of life, especially people.  By externalizing the person, McLuhan was eliminating the idea of the autonomous self and opening the way for today’s era of consumers, blank screens for the reception of advertising, public relations, and propaganda on a vast scale.  In fact, what he wrote of television runs deeper for cell phones and computer screens.  “ … with TV,” he wrote, “the viewer is the screen.  He is bombarded with light impulses that James Joyce called the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ that imbues his ‘soulskin with subconscious inklings.’ “

Inklings of abstract obscenities at war with the lost world of reality.

While many people sense this, they still embrace their killers, feeling that they would be lost without them. They have become appendages of their electronic appendages.  The current push to transform all person-to-person life into a digital one run by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies with its mass surveillance powers is recognized by many but dismissed as a weird conspiracy.  This is so far from the truth.  A good indicator of this nonchalant attitude toward such developing trends is the vastly increased popularity of on-line shopping.  Its innocence conceals the future that is coming.

I recently won a very high-tech looking electric toothbrush at the dentist.  When I opened it, I discovered it contained a gadget with a suction cup that could hold a “smart phone” that you could attach to the mirror.  The phone could electronically be linked to the toothbrush and it would monitor your brushing as you watched yourself brush.  Poor me, I felt so stupid: a man without a smart phone!

While everybody knows that the boat is leaking and the captain lied, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, such knowledge is abstract.  It is a sort-of knowledge, sensed but also denied.  Real but unreal.  Known but unknown.  And that’s how it goes.  It is very difficult for many conventional people to admit that the life they have known is disappearing while they dawdle in fantasy land, believing the propaganda of their rulers.  To live in the U.S.A. is to live in Neverland where no one ever has to be alone, never grow up, and always be “in touch” through the ether.  It is a country of lost children.

You can choose any issue of importance and its official explanation is certain to be untrue, obvious or subtle propaganda.  The lies about Ukraine and Russia; Covid-19, lockdowns, and vaccines; China and Taiwan; U.S. forces in Syria and U.S. support for Israeli aggression against Syria and the Palestinians; its support for Saudi Arabia’s ruthless policies and war against Yemen; the economy, central banking, and inflation; the increasing censorship of dissident voices; digital IDs, digital programmable currencies, and social credit systems; the persecution of Julian Assange; the Great Reset; a series of binaries meant to suggest false alternatives, etc.  The list is endless.  All official lies to support a sinking ship captained by psychopathic liars seemingly intent on a world war that will destroy the world.  Melville’s Captain Ahab writ large. Like those traveling on the Titanic, today’s passengers on the flailing American empire’s Good Ship Lollipop are in for a surprise, and it won’t be a sweet trip to a candy shop.

Hemingway was surely right that “Winner Take Nothing.”  Yet losers also exit empty-handed.  Everybody knows this but goes on surrounding themselves with stuff, lots of things.  Hoarders are a popular TV subject because they represent the extreme form of this madcap method of trying to secure oneself from loss.  It is a form of mental and spiritual despair that could only exist in advanced capitalist consumer society.  Too many possessions and too much information.  Cluttered minds, cluttered abodes.  There is a reason why the world’s poor are called the dispossessed.  One could say hoarders are the possessed, and it is a form of demonic possession.

Recently I was called upon to help a hospitalized elderly relative by checking on her house.  The house is filled from attic to basement, in every nook and cranny, with collected things that serve no life purpose but were kept to provide a security blanket that was really a strangulation cord.  I will spare you the details, except to say that this relative is an intelligent woman, as was her deceased husband, and yet they surrounded themselves with so much “stuff,” never threw things out, kept papers from 70 years ago, old keys and coins, empty jewelry boxes by the score, etc.  An overwhelming scene to behold.  And why did they do this?  Because they thought they were protecting themselves against loss, against nothing, nada.

As T. S. Eliot wrote in The Wasteland: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”  But there is nothing that will protect against the loss Eliot was referring to – the social, psychological, and spiritual fragmentation of Europe as a result of World War I.  A wasteland created by politicians. Like today.

We too are now living in a wasteland, and the only way to find our way forward is to acknowledge that we are lost and to jettison the false security of believing the vast tapestry of lies promulgated by the captains of the American-led Titanic.

I often think of the words of the poet Rilke as good advice, a step in the right direction where there is a lost and found worth visiting and insights await us. While primarily writing about the artist who time and again is that someone who emerges from the crowd and whose “winged heart everywhere beats against the walls of their time,” I think his words apply to every person, including journalists.  To plumb the depths of our sordid current world demands aesthetic, political, and spiritual resistance rooted in the open sociological imagination, a willingness to go wherever the facts and intuition leads us.  Rilke said:

Not any self-control or self-limitation for the sake of specific ends, but rather a carefree letting go of oneself; not caution, but rather a wise blindness; not working to acquire silent, slowly increasing possessions, but rather a continuous squandering of all perishable values. This way of being has something naïve and instinctive about it, and resembles that period of the unconscious best characterized by a joyous confidence, namely the period of childhood …. [the child] has no anxiety about losing things …. And whatever he has once been lit up in love remains as an image, never more to be lost, and the image is possession; that is why children are so rich.

For a country of lost children, this is a good place to start.

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

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

Featured image: First edition of The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926 by Scribner’s, with dust jacket illustrated by Cleonike Damianakes. The Hellenistic jacket design “breathed sex yet also evoked classical Greece”. (Licensed under the public domain)

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

To order his book, click the cover page.

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

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

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

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The fact that only 1% of Americans regard Russia as the US’ “most important problem” shows just how out of touch the Mainstream Media is with their targeted audience’s interests. That in turn adds credence to the speculation that they’re being ordered by their government to wage this unprecedented information warfare campaign against Russia despite it only being popular with a fringe minority.

The Mainstream Media (MSM) has been waging an unprecedented information warfare campaign against Russia for nearly half a year already, yet Gallup’s latest poll shows that literally only 1% of Americans consider it to be the US’ “most important problem” despite their government already sending Kiev tens of billions of dollars in their name as part of its proxy war against that Eurasian Great Power. This confirms that those Americans who obsess over Russia are a fringe minority.

Screenshot from Gallup

The polling company also noted in their report that the 1% of those who consider Russia to be their country’s “most important problem” is a steep drop from March when 9% of them shared that opinion. This suggests that Americans were most powerfully influenced at the onset of the MSM’s anti-Russian information warfare campaign but have since grown numb to it, with domestic issues like inflation, dysfunctional leadership, and abortion being regarded as much more important by them nowadays.

That’s bad news for the warmongers in Washington who wrongly assumed that their targeted audience could continue seeing Russia as their country’s “most important problem” well into the summer. What seems to have happened is that their MSM proxies overplayed their hand and have thus dealt irreparable damage to their information warfare operations after 99% of Americans no longer really care all that much about the Ukrainian Conflict.

Absent a major provocation aimed at artificially manufacturing another false narrative fearmongering about Russia, it might very well end up being the case that this trend is irreversible. Simply put, the MSM shared too many claims about Russia too fast to the point that most people started tuning out after realizing that everything they were being told about what a threat it supposedly was to their country never ended up panning out.

Russia never attacked NATO, World War III didn’t break out, and no fearmongered nuclear apocalypse ever happened unlike what the MSM warned was about to happen. The Ukrainian Conflict remains contained and Americans quickly realized that they have much more important things to worry about like inflation, which nobody seriously blames Russia for. “Putin’s price hike” that Biden never tires of talking about hasn’t caught on and is widely mocked as intellectually insulting propaganda.

There’s probably nothing that the US Government can do to make its people care anymore since most probably wouldn’t bite the bait even if their intelligence services engineered a major provocation like was earlier predicted. This suggests that the Democrats can’t realistically campaign on the Biden Administration’s support of Kiev since 99% of voters don’t think that it addressed their country’s “most important problem”. To the contrary, a growing number consider it to be a money laundering operation.

The fact that only 1% of Americans regard Russia as the US’ “most important problem” also shows just how out of touch the MSM is with their targeted audience’s interests. That in turn adds credence to the speculation that they’re being ordered by their government to wage this unprecedented information warfare campaign against Russia despite it only being popular with a fringe minority. Building upon this observation, it can be concluded that American media isn’t as “independent” as it claims to be.

With a view to the future, it’s unlikely that the MSM’s obsessive smears against Russia will end anytime soon even though 99% of Americans don’t consider it their country’s “most important problem”. That’s because the US Government wants to falsely signal to its transatlantic vassals that their own people supposedly haven’t lost interest in this proxy war in the hopes that this lie will convince their leaders not to waver in their support of Kiev like American officials worry is already in the process of happening.

Like the author noted last week, “The Zelenskys’ Vogue Photoshoot Exposed What A Charade The Ukrainian Conflict Has Become” while Gallup’s latest poll just confirmed that observation with statistical facts that nobody can deny since that company is regarded as the world’s most reputable in its field. This “politically inconvenient” development proves what a failure the MSM’s US Government-managed information warfare campaign against Russia has been.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

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Ukraine fired missiles containing petal mines in Donetsk. They littered the streets, parks, everywhere — they’re small-sized, neutral in color, they’re easy to miss.

Careful, look down as you walk through the streets of Donetsk.

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Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

She is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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Most of the fact-checking organizations Facebook has partnered with to monitor and regulate information about Ukraine are directly funded by the U.S. government, either through the U.S. Embassy or via the notorious National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

In light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an information war as bitter as the ground fighting has erupted, and Meta (Facebook’s official name) announced it had partnered with nine organizations to help it sort fact from fiction for Ukrainian, Russian and other Eastern European users. These nine organizations are: StopFake, VoxCheck, Fact Check Georgia, Demagog, Myth Detector, Lead Stories, Patikrinta 15min, Re:Baltica and Delfi.

“To reduce the spread of misinformation and provide more reliable information to users, we partner with independent third-party fact-checkers globally,” the Silicon Valley giant wrote, adding, “Facebook’s independent third-party fact-checkers are all certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). The IFCN, a subsidiary of the journalism research organization Poynter Institute, is dedicated to bringing together fact-checkers worldwide.”

The problem with this? At least five of the nine organizations are directly in the pay of the United States government, a major belligerent in the conflict. The Poynter Institute is also funded by the NED. Furthermore, many of the other fact-checking organizations also have deep connections with other NATO powers, including direct funding.

StopFake

Perhaps the most well-known and notorious of the nine groups is StopFake. Established in 2014, StopFake is funded by NATO’s Atlantic Council, by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the British Embassy in Ukraine and the Czech Foreign Ministry. It has also received money from the U.S. via the National Endowment for Democracy, although that fact is far from trumpeted by either party.

One potential reason for this was alluded to in a 2016 article reprinted by StopFake itself. As the article notes, “in the case of StopFake.org when opponents want to insult the project, they immediately invoke National Endowment for Democracy donor support as evidence of U.S. government and CIA involvement.”

In the wake of the Russian invasion, the NED pulled all public records of their Ukraine projects from the internet. Nevertheless, incomplete archived copies of those records confirm a financial relationship between the groups.

StopFake was explicitly set up as a partisan organization. As a glowing report on them from the International Journalists’ Network notes, the majority of StopFake’s fact-checks are on stories from Russian media, and the motivation for its creation was “Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea and a campaign to portray Ukraine as a fascist state where anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia thrived.”

While it is indeed incorrect to label Ukraine a fascist state, the country clearly has one of the strongest far-right movements anywhere in Europe. And unfortunately, StopFake itself is far from an apolitical bystander in that rise. Multiple established Western media outlets, including The New York Times, have reported on StopFake’s ties to white power or Nazi groups. When local journalist Ekaterina Sergatskova exposed these links, death threats from far-right figures forced her to flee her home.

Indeed, according to some, one of StopFake’s primary functions appears to be to promote the far-right. A long exposé by Lev Golinkin in The Nation cataloged what it called StopFake’s history of “aggressively whitewashing two Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups with a long track record of violence, including war crimes.”

Surely StopFake’s most famous former host is Nina Jankowicz. Jankowicz was briefly head of President Biden’s newly formed Disinformation Governance Board before public uproar caused her to resign. Dubbed the “Ministry of Truth”, both the board and Jankowicz generated strong opposition. Yet few mentioned the fact that, while at StopFake, Jankowicz herself had, on camera, enthusiastically extolled the virtues of multiple fascist paramilitaries.

In a 2017 TV segment about the Aidar, Dnipro-1 and Azov Battalions, Jankowicz presented the groups as heroic volunteers deafening Ukraine from “further Russian separatist encroachment.” As she stated,

The volunteer movement in Ukraine extends far beyond military service. Volunteer groups are active in supporting Ukraine’s military with food, clothing, medicine, and post-battle rehabilitation, as well as working actively with the nearly two million internal refugees displaced by the war in Ukraine.”

This framing jars with multiple reports from human rights groups such as Amnesty International, who claim that the Aidar Battalion is guilty of a litany of abuses, “including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions.” Amnesty also accuses Aidar and Dnipro-1 of “Using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”

Azov, meanwhile, is the most infamous organization of the lot. The group’s insignia is directly lifted from the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division, a unit responsible for carrying out some of the worst crimes of Hitler’s holocaust. The Azov Battalion also dip their bullets in pig fat before battle as a calculated hate crime, attempting to block Jewish or Muslim enemies from a better afterlife. Andriy Biletsky, the group’s founder, said in 2010 that he believes Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen” – the word Hitler used to describe Jews, Poles, Ukrainians and other peoples he designated for extermination.

In February, Facebook announced that it was changing its rules on hate speech to allow praise and promotion of the Azov Battalion. Was this on StopFake’s recommendation? MintPress asked Meta/Facebook for comment on their fact checking partner’s ties to far right groups and if StopFake had influenced their decision to allow pro-Nazi content on their platform, but did not receive a reply.

As Golinkin noted in his article for The Nation, StopFake has also defended C14, another fascist paramilitary, describing it merely as a “community organization”, citing C14’s own denial of its pogroms against Roma people as “evidence” of its innocence. This designation clashes even with the U.S. State Department, which classifies C14 as a “nationalist hate group.” The “14” in its name refers to the “14 words” white supremacist slogan.

Nazi fact-checking, brought to you by the National Endowment for Democracy https://t.co/RYbiRGHJxZ pic.twitter.com/9Lawg0yWN8

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) May 6, 2018

StopFake has made a number of controversial claims, including that the rise in anti-semitism in Ukraine is “fake” – even going so far as to brand well-established outlets like NBC News and Al-Jazeera as printing fake news about the Azov Battalion’s role in this. In an article entitled “Russia as Evil: False Historical Parallels. Some peculiarities of Russian Political Culture,” it also insisted that Hitler’s concentration camps were modeled on Russian ones set up by Vladimir Lenin. In reality, the German government pioneered the use of concentration camps during their genocide of the Herero and Namaqua peoples between 1904 and 1908 in Namibia. The British and Spanish were also early adopters.

In addition, StopFake has close links with The Kyiv Post, a Ukrainian outlet directly funded and trained by the National Endowment for Democracy. Since 2016, the Post has published 191 StopFake reports.

Who is the need?

Why receiving funding from the National Endowment for Democracy should immediately raise suspicions of any organization is because the NED was explicitly established by the Reagan administration as a front group for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Although it is funded by Washington and staffed by state officials, it is technically a private company and therefore not subject to the same legal regulations and public scrutiny as state institutions.

The CIA has used the NED to carry out many of its more controversial operations. In recent years, it has trained and funneled money to the leaders of the Hong Kong protesters to keep the insurrection alive, fomented a nationwide campaign of demonstrations in Cuba, and helped attempts to topple the government of Venezuela. Perhaps most importantly for this story, however, the NED was also involved in the 2014 coup that removed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych from power. Regime change is, in short, one of its primary functions.

The NED does this by establishing, funding, supporting and training all manner of political, economic and social groups in target countries. According to its 2019 annual report, Ukraine is the NED’s “top priority”. The agency has (officially) spent over $22 million in Ukraine since 2014.

In their more candid moments, NED leaders are explicit about the organization’s role. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” Carl Gershman, NED president from 1984 to 2021 said, explaining why his organization was set up. NED co-founder Allen Weinstein agreed: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” he told The Washington Post.

Vox

VoxCheck

VoxCheck receives substantial monetary assistance from the U.S. government through both the NED and the U.S. Embassy. It is also funded by the Dutch and German governments. Incomplete NED records show VoxCheck receives substantial yearly grants and has accepted around $250,000 in total.

That sort of money goes an extremely long way in Ukraine, which is by quite some way the poorest nation in Europe. The country’s GNI per capita of $3,500 per year is well below that of even Russia, which stands at $10,700. One $15,000 NED grant given to a Ukrainian media foundation, for instance, was enough to pay for over 100 articles to be written.

Despite its funding, Western media portray VoxCheck extremely positively. The Washington Post, for example, describes them as “a small group of independent fact-checkers.” In common parlance, the word “independent” is usually reserved for any media group not owned or funded by governments (as if that is the only type of dependence). But even at this extremely low bar, VoxCheck falls.

An NED document shows a 2020 grant given to VoxUkraine

In the article, the Washington Post describes VoxCheck’s fact-checking process, which largely consists of “sourcing credible news sources – such as a BBC article,” and then labeling Russian claims as false on this basis. In other words, the official state mouthpiece of the British government – one that was instrumental in promoting the lies which led to the invasions of Iraq and Libya – is considered sacrosanct.

What comes across in the Post’s glowing exposé is that VoxCheck staff have few pretensions about being neutral and see themselves as digital foot soldiers in a crusade against Russia. As one employee said, the mission is to “prevent someone from falling into Russian lies and manipulation.” Indeed, one of the staff quit his job to volunteer for the Ukrainian Army. Other VoxCheck employees revealed that they felt guilty for not doing so themselves and only contributing virtually to the fight.

Of course, Russia has lied constantly during this war; the entire invasion was based on a lie. Throughout the winter, Russian officials consistently repeated that they had no intention of invading Ukraine. Russian media, meanwhile, claimed that President Zelensky had fled the country in the wake of the invasion. But in war, all sides lie. And when a fact-checking operation constantly critiques only one side and stays largely quiet about the other, it has clearly taken a side in the conflict and is therefore acting in a partisan fashion. People interested in thinking critically should be scrutinizing claims made by all sides.

Fact Check Georgia

Fact Check Georgia describes itself as “an independent and non-partisan website which offers readers researched, verified and evidence-based information.” Yet it is bankrolled by a litany of dubious organizations, including the NED and the U.S. Embassy, the German Marshall Fund, the Dutch government and the European Endowment for Democracy, a European government-funded “private” organization explicitly modeled on the NED.

Fact Check Georgia’s “About Us” section reveals just how independent the fact checking organization really is

Fact Check Georgia’s independence is potentially undermined by the fact that at the bottom of every page of its website, it displays the crests of both the NED and the U.S. Embassy in Georgia. This is accompanied by the disclaimer, “The views and opinions expressed on this website belong to Factcheck.ge and are not the views and opinions of project support organizations” – a sentence that would not be necessary to attach if an organization was truly independent.

Furthermore, some of its staff have notable backgrounds. The first person listed on Fact Check Georgia’s “our team” section was formerly the Deputy Minister of Defense for Georgia – a country that fought a war against Russia in 2008.

Myth Detector

Another Georgia-based company, Myth Detector, was funded by the U.S. Embassy to the tune of €42,000 in financial year 2021. German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle contributed €41,000. Also donating €41,000 last year, according to Myth Detector’s financial report, is a group called “Zinc.” This is quite possibly the Zinc Network, a shadowy intelligence firm that conducts information warfare operations on behalf of the U.K. and U.S. governments.

Demagog

Not only is the U.S. Embassy in Poland funding Demagog, it is also carrying out training in how to think. Demagog’s website notes that the embassy established a “fact-checking academy” on “how to deal with false information.” “Thanks to the [embassy] cooperation,” it notes, “classes were conducted for students and teachers on fake news, reliable sources of information and fact-checking.”

Alongside the U.S. government, Demagog also receives money from Polish government, European Union and European Economic Area organizations.

Together, these five organizations’ operations are all directly bankrolled by Washington. However, many of the other fact-checking groups Facebook pays to serve as content police on their platform have similarly close connections to Western state power. Indeed, the only one of the nine that appears relatively free from direct government collaboration is self-funded outlet Lead Stories.

Patikrinta 15min

Lithuanian outlet Patikrinta 15min insist that they are an independent, non-partisan group. As their “About” section states: “Sponsors of Patikrinta 15min cannot be political parties, politicians, state organizations or companies or organizations related to politicians.” They do, however, accept funding from the Poynter Institute, the journalism group that owns U.S. fact-checking organization Politifact. Since 2016, the Poynter Institute has sought for and received at least seven grants from the National Endowment for Democracy, totaling well over half a million dollars.

Notably, some of these grants are clearly a way of funneling cash to Eastern European fact-checking groups. As one NED grant summary for $78,000 notes, the goal of the money is to “promote the use of fact-checking websites as an effective accountability tool in Central and Eastern Europe, and strengthen the global fact-checking community.” The NED goes on to note that Poynter will bring over 70 journalists to a training summit and afterward continue to “train” “mentor,” “support,” and help them and their organizations with “capacity building.”

One of several grants given to the ostensibly neutral Poynter Institute by the US State Dept’s NED

A cynic might conclude that the NED was simply trying to launder its money through Poynter. MintPress asked Patikrinta 15min to confirm or deny whether they were one of the Eastern European groups mentioned in the NED filings but has not received a response.

Like other groups, Patikrinta 15min’s non-partisan veneer frequently slips. This can be seen in headlines such as “Russian cynicism knows no bounds” and the fact that they frequently defend Nazi groups like the Azov Battalion.

Like StopFake, n 15min has argued that Azov’s use of the Waffen SS symbol is coincidental. It also presented Azov as an apolitical organization and has used quotes from Azov founder Andriy Biletsky – possibly the world’s most infamous living neo-Nazi – as “proof” that charges against it are Russian disinformation.

Re:Baltica

While there is no evidence that Re:Baltica has a financial relationship with the United States government, the lion’s share of its funding still comes from the West. As they note on their website, around two-thirds of their funding comes “from the institutions based in EU/NATO countries.” They also list “the Kingdom of the Netherlands” as one of their “friends” – i.e., donors.

Re:Baltica is generously funded by western govt’s and NGOs, including George Soro’s Open Society Foundation

Delfi

Delfi is a major web portal in Eastern Europe and the Baltic. The company does not disclose if it receives foreign funding. It does, undeniably, however, have a close relationship with the NED. In 2015, Delfi interviewed Christopher Walker, a senior NED manager about the best way they could counter Russian propaganda. Two years later, NED President Gershman addressed the Lithuanian parliament, revealing that his organization had,

[W]orked with Lithuania in countering Russian efforts to subvert and destroy democracy in Lithuania, in Europe, and in Russia itself. We have supported the work of the Lithuania-based Delfi and the East European Studies Center in monitoring, documenting, and combatting Russian disinformation in Lithuania and the Baltic states.”

Later that year, Delfi teamed up with the NED to hold the 1st Vilnius Young Leaders Meeting, whereby handpicked young activists were invited to rub shoulders with journalists and spooks from across Europe and the United States, in the hope of building up a Western-friendly force in civil society.

A chart showing the leadership structure of the EXPOSE network published as part of the Integrity Initiative Leak 7

Delfi, Re:Baltica and StopFake were all identified as proposed members of a “counter”-propaganda network hoping to be established by the EXPOSE Network. EXPOSE was allegedly a secret U.K.-government funded initiative that would have brought together journalists and state operatives in an alliance to shape public discourse in a manner more conducive to the priorities of Western governments.

As EXPOSE wrote, “An opportunity exists to upskill civil society organizations around Europe, enhancing their existing activities and unleashing their potential” to be the next generation of activists in the fight against Kremlin disinformation.”

“Coordinat[ing] their activities,” wrote EXPOSE, “represents a unique opportunity” for the British government in their fight against Russia. Unfortunately, they lamented, StopFake’s “monomaniacal fixation” on Russia had hurt its credibility.

Remarkably, EXPOSE also wrote that, “Another barrier to combating disinformation is the fact that certain Kremlin-backed narratives are factually true” – an admission that underlines that, to many governments and media outlets, “disinformation” is rapidly coming to simply mean “information we disagree with.”

The names of those individuals listed as potential employees of this network are a who’s who of state-linked operatives, including the Zinc Network, multiple individuals from NED-funded investigative journalism website Bellingcat and Ben Nimmo, a former NATO spokesperson who is now head of global intelligence for Facebook.

Facebook’s Cyber War

Nimmo is only one of a great many former state agents now working in the higher echelons of Facebook, however. Last month, MintPress published a study revealing that the Silicon Valley giant has hired dozens of ex-CIA personnel into influential positions within the company, especially in security, content moderation and trust and safety.

Given how influential Facebook is as a media and communications giant, this sort of relationship constitutes a national security issue to every other country in the world. And this is not a hypothetical threat either. In November, Nimmo led a team that effectively attempted to swing the Nicaraguan elections away from the ruling Sandinista party and towards the U.S.-backed candidate. In the days leading up to the election, Facebook deleted hundreds of accounts and pages of pro-Sandinista media.

This action underlines the fact that Facebook is not an international company existing only in the ether, but an American operation bound by American laws. And increasingly, it is moving closer to the U.S. government itself.

Who will guard the guardians?

Fake news abounds online, and we as a society are wholly unprepared to counter it. A study conducted by Stanford University found that the vast majority of people – even the digitally savvy youth – were unable to tell factual reporting from obvious falsehoods online. Many will fall for Russian propaganda. Russian media is indeed pumping out misleading information constantly. But so are NATO countries. And if the fact-checkers who have volunteered to sort truth from fiction for us relentlessly attack Russia but are quiet on their own side’s spin, many more will fall for Western propaganda.

The implicit outlook of many of these fact-checking groups is that “only Russia lies.” This is the position of a partisan organization, one that cares little about truth and more about imposing control over the means of communication. And this is all being done in the name of keeping us safe.

Who is fact-checking the fact-checkers? Unfortunately, it is up to small, independent media outlets to do so. However, MintPress has faced constant suppression for doing so, being blocked from communicating with our 400,000+ Facebook followers, suppressed algorithmically by the Silicon Valley giants, and being removed from financial transaction services like PayPal.

The solution is to teach and develop critical media literacy. All media outlets have biases and agendas. It is up to the individual to learn these and constantly scrutinize and evaluate everything they read. However, governments do not want their populations thinking critically; they want their message to be dominant, one reason why the NED has been quietly bankrolling so many fact-checking organizations to do its work for it.

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Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

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Guests are Robert Cibis (Founder and owner of OVALmedia), Nathalie Signorini (Managing director of OVALmedia Rome) and Bianca Laura Granato (Italian politician, “CAL”, Constitution/ Environment/Work).

This session talks about the coordinated and unannounced removal of all OVALmedia channels in different languages from Youtube and the media channel’s case in the Italian Senate, where OVALmedia was openly compared to Wikileaks.

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Dear Editor in Chief,

Once a fierce and proud Democrat, I see that Democrats have become more corrupt than Republicans ever were.

The sheer fact that the Biden administration and all of Biden’s followers are globalists — meaning, doing gradually away with sovereign rights in the US and in countries around the world towards a One World Order — shows that Democrats have abandoned their principles of social justice and sold their soul to the enemy (globalists are literally enemies of humanity).

And so did Senator Kyrsten Sinema. She held out against a fraudulent tax package – yes fraudulent, because the entire climate change narrative is a multi-multi-trillion dollar scam, has been brewing since the seventies, with the various “declarations” of the Club of Rome, and was finally set into an active forward drive at the first Climate Conference in Rio in 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the ‘Earth Summit’.

By today, the entire world is indoctrinated by a monster lie, except for a few scientists who have not abandoned their principles and resisted coercing – and a few World Bank insiders, who saw the fraud evolving from the very beginning.

Now another Democrat has fallen for money.

It’s a shame.

Where are we going?

Peter Koenig

 

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

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

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I feel for American basketball player Brittney Griner. Did she break the law? Yes, she did, and she pled guilty at trial. But a sentence of nine years — to be spent in what the New York Times calls a “penal colony” — for bringing hashish into Russia for self-treatment (assuming this is true) seems overly harsh. But the law can be an ass. If humans have sovereignty over their own bodies, then it is just plain wrong to be hassled for what one chooses to consume.

On the other hand, Griner should be accorded the same treatment from the Russian justice system as any Russian would be accorded. If this has been the case, then it can be argued that justice was meted out without favoritism in the Russian system.

Still, if it was a packing error, then Griner is paying a high price for a mistake that on its face would cause no harm to any other person.

US president Joe Biden called the sentence “unacceptable” and said he will do all he can to bring Griner back to the United States. When a country considers that one of its citizens is a victim of injustice abroad, then a country should agitate on behalf of its citizen.

A prisoner swap with Russia has already been broached by the US, so Griner may be back stateside before long.

Julian Assange: A Victim of Injustice

There is a current case, however, that speaks to notions of justice in western countries. Biden apparently considers the American legal pursuit of Assange — an Australian citizen whose acts (i.e., journalism) were committed outside the US — as acceptable. The US claim to extraterritoriality is well known to China and Meng Wanzhou.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been languishing in some form of incarceration for over 20 years, and he now faces potential imprisonment for the rest of his life if extradited and found guilty of espionage in the US. People who are clued in realize these charges are as phony as the sexual crimes alleged and dropped against him by Sweden. Assange’s actual “crime” is exposing the crimes of the US; especially revelatory was the Collateral Murder video where US troops in an Apache helicopter gleefully gunned down Iraqi citizens on a street in Baghdad. The murderers remain scot-free. For exposing war crimes, Assange and Bradley Manning have been punished.

Is Australia concerned about justice for its citizens? Assange has hardly received an iota of Australian government concern or assistance compared to that Griner has received from the US. Assange has also received scant support from the Australian monopoly media. In fact, Australian government leaders and media have usually criticized Assange or distanced themselves from him.

What if China were switched with the US and found itself faced with what Assange is accused of by the US? What would be the situation then?

Assange, who has not been overly kind to China, has, nonetheless, received support from China. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said,

“All eyes are on Assange’s human rights conditions and what may become of him. Let us hope and believe that at the end of the day, fairness and justice will prevail. Hegemony and abuse of might will certainly not last forever.”

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Kim Petersen is an independent writer and former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. 

Featured image is from Lawyers for Assange

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As in a Greek tragedy whose protagonist brings about precisely the fate that he has sought to avoid, the US/NATO confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is achieving just the opposite of America’s aim of preventing China, Russia and their allies from acting independently of U.S. control over their trade and investment policy. Naming China as America’s main long-term adversary, the Biden Administration’s plan was to split Russia away from China and then cripple China’s own military and economic viability. But the effect of American diplomacy has been to drive Russia and China together, joining with Iran, India and other allies. For the first time since the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, a critical mass is able to be mutually self-sufficient to start the process of achieving independence from Dollar Diplomacy.

Confronted with China’s industrial prosperity based on self-financed public investment in socialized markets, U.S. officials acknowledge that resolving this fight will take a number of decades to play out. Arming a proxy Ukrainian regime is merely an opening move in turning Cold War 2 (and potentially/or indeed World War III) into a fight to divide the world into allies and enemies with regard to whether governments or the financial sector will plan the world economy and society.

What is euphemized as U.S.-style democracy is a financial oligarchy privatizing basic infrastructure, health and education. The alternative is what President Biden calls autocracy, a hostile label for governments strong enough to block a global rent-seeking oligarchy from taking control. China is deemed autocratic for providing basic needs at subsidized prices instead of charging whatever the market can bear. Making its mixed economy lower-cost is called “market manipulation,” as if that is a bad thing that was not done by the United States, Germany and every other industrial nation during their economic takeoff in the 19th and early 20th century.

Clausewitz popularized the axiom that war is an extension of national interests – mainly economic. The United States views its economic interest to lie in seeking to spread its neoliberal ideology globally. The evangelistic aim is to financialize and privatize economies by shifting planning away from national governments to a cosmopolitan financial sector. There would be little need for politics in such a world. Economic planning would shift from political capitals to financial centers, from Washington to Wall Street, with satellites in the City of London, the Paris Bourse, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Board meetings for the new oligarchy would be held at Davos’s World Economic Forum. Hitherto public infrastructure services would be privatized and priced high enough to include profits (and indeed, monopoly rents), debt financing and management fees rather than being publicly subsidized. Debt service and rent would become the major overhead costs for families, industry and governments.

The U.S. drive to retain its unipolar power to impose “America First” financial, trade and military policies on the world involves an inherent hostility toward all countries seeking to follow their own national interests. Having less and less to offer in the form of mutual economic gains, U.S. policy makes threats of sanctions and covert meddling in foreign politics. The U.S. dream envisions a Chinese version of Boris Yeltsin replacing the nation’s Communist Party leadership and selling off its public domain to the highest bidder – presumably after a monetary crisis wipes out domestic purchasing power much as occurred in post-Soviet Russia, leaving the international financial community as buyers.

Russia and President Putin cannot be forgiven for having fought back against the Harvard Boys’ “reforms.” That is why U.S. officials planned how to create Russian economic disruption to (they hope) orchestrate a “color revolution” to recapture Russia for the world’s neoliberal camp. That is the character of the “democracy” and “free markets” being juxtaposed to the “autocracy” of state-subsidized growth. As Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov explained in a press conference on July 20, 2022 regarding Ukraine’s violent coup in 2014, U.S. and other Western officials define military coups as democratic if they are sponsored by the United States in the hope of promoting neoliberal policies.

Do you remember how events developed after the coup? The putschists spat in the face of Germany, France and Poland that were the guarantors of the agreement with Viktor Yanukovych. It was trampled underfoot the next morning. These European countries didn’t make a peep – they reconciled themselves to this. A couple of years ago I asked the Germans and French what they thought about the coup. What was it all about if they didn’t demand that the putschists fulfil the agreements? They replied: “This is the cost of the democratic process.” I am not kidding. Amazing – these were adults holding the post of foreign ministers.

This Doublethink vocabulary reflects how far mainstream ideology has evolved from Rosa Luxemburg’s description a century ago of the civilizational choice being posed: barbarism or socialism.

The contradictory U.S. and European interests and burdens of the war in Ukraine

To return to Clausewitz’s view of war as an extension of national policy, U.S. national interests are diverging sharply from those of its NATO satellites. America’s military-industrial complex, oil and agriculture sectors are benefiting, while European industrial interests are suffering. That is especially the case in Germany and Italy as a result of their governments blocking North Stream 2 gas imports and other Russian raw materials.

The interruption of world energy, food and minerals supply chains and the resulting price inflation (providing an umbrella for monopoly rents by non-Russian suppliers) has imposed enormous economic strains on U.S. allies in Europe and the Global South. Yet the U.S. economy is benefiting from this, or at least specific sectors of the U.S. economy are benefiting. As Sergey Lavrov, pointed out in his above-cited press conference: “The European economy is impacted more than anything else. The stats show that 40 percent of the damage caused by sanctions is borne by the EU whereas the damage to the United States is less than 1 percent.” The dollar’s exchange rate has soared against the euro, which has plunged to parity with the dollar and looks set to fall further down toward the $0.80 that it was a generation ago. U.S. dominance over Europe is further strengthened by the trade sanctions against Russian oil and gas. The U.S. is an LNG exporter, U.S. companies control the world oil trade, and U.S. firms are the world’s major grain marketers and exporters now that Russia is excluded from many foreign markets.

A revival of European military spending – for offense, not defense

U.S. arms-makers are looking forward to making profits off arms sales to Western Europe, which has almost literally disarmed itself by sending its tanks and howitzers, ammunition and missiles to Ukraine. U.S. politicians support a bellicose foreign policy to promote arms factories that employ labor in their voting districts. And the neocons who dominate the State Department and CIA see the war as a means of asserting American dominance over the world economy, starting with its own NATO partners.
The problem with this view is that although America’s military-industrial, oil and agricultural monopolies are benefitting, the rest of the U.S. economy is being squeezed by the inflationary pressures resulting from boycotting Russian gas, grain and other raw-materials exports, and the enormous rise in the military budget will be used as an excuse to cut back social spending programs. That also is a problem for Eurozone members. They have promised NATO to raise their military spending to the stipulated 2 percent of their GDP, and the Americans are urging much higher levels to upgrade to the most recent array of weaponry. All but forgotten is the Peace Dividend that was promised in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved the Warsaw Pact alliance, expecting that NATO likewise would have little reason to exist.

Russia has no discernable economic interest in mounting a new occupation of Central Europe. That would offer no gain to Russia, as its leaders realized when they dissolved the old Soviet Union. In fact, no industrial country in today’s world can afford to field an infantry to occupy an enemy. All that NATO can do is bomb from a distance. It can destroy, but not occupy. The United States found that out in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. And just as the assassination Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) triggered World War I in 1914, NATO’s bombing of adjoining Serbia may be viewed as throwing down the gauntlet to turn Cold War 2 into a veritable World War III. That marked the point at which NATO became an offensive alliance, not a defensive one.

How does this reflect European interests? Why should Europe re-arm, if the only effect is to make it a target of retaliation in the event of further attacks on Russia? What does Europe have to gain in becoming a larger customer for America’s military-industrial complex? Diverting spending to rebuild an offensive army – that can never be used without triggering an atomic response that would wipe out Europe – will limit the social spending needed to cope with today’s Covid problems and economic recession.

The only lasting leverage a nation can offer in today’s world is trade and technology transfer. Europe has more of this to offer than the United States. Yet the only opposition to renewed military spending is coming from right-wing parties and the German Linke party. Europe’s Social Democratic, Socialist and Labour parties share American neoliberal ideology.

Sanctions against Russian gas makes coal “the fuel of the future”

The carbon footprint of bombing, arms manufacturing and military bases is strikingly absent from today’s discussion about global warming and the need to cut back on carbon emissions. The German party that calls itself Green is leading the campaign for sanctions against importing Russian oil and gas, which electric utilities are replacing with Polish coal and even German lignite.

Coal is becoming the “fuel of the future.” Its price also is soaring in the United States, benefitting American coal companies.
In contrast to the Paris Club agreements to reduce carbon emissions, the United States has neither the political capability nor the intention to join the conservation effort. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the Executive Branch has no authority to issue nation-wide energy rules; only individual states can do that, unless Congress passes a national law to cut back on fossil fuels.

That seems unlikely in view of the fact that becoming head of a Democratic Senate and Congressional committee requires being a leader in raising campaign contributions for the party. Joe Manchin, a coal-company billionaire, leads all senators in campaign support from the oil and coal industries, enabling him to win his party’s auction for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee chairmanship and block any seriously restrictive environmental legislation.

Next to oil, agriculture is a major contributor to the U.S. balance of payments. Blocking Russian grain and fertilizer shipping threatens to create a Global South food crisis as well as a European crisis as gas is unavailable to make domestic fertilizer. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of grain and also of fertilizer, and its exports of these products have been exempted from NATO sanctions. But Russian shipping was blocked by Ukraine placing mines in the sea lanes through the Black Sea to close off access to Odessa’s harbor, hoping that the world would blame the world’s imminent grain and energy crisis on Russia instead of the US/NATO trade sanctions imposed on Russia. At his July 20, 2022 press conference Sergey Lavrov showed the hypocrisy of the public relations attempt to distort matters:

For many months, they told us that Russia was to blame for the food crisis because the sanctions don’t cover food and fertiliser. Therefore, Russia doesn’t need to find ways to avoid the sanctions and so it should trade because nobody stands in its way. It took us a lot of time to explain to them that, although food and fertiliser are not subject to sanctions, the first and second packages of Western restrictions affected freight costs, insurance premiums, permissions for Russian ships carrying these goods to dock at foreign ports and those for foreign ships taking on the same consignments at Russian harbours. They are openly lying to us that this is not true, and that it is up to Russia alone. This is foul play.

Black Sea grain transport has begun to resume, but NATO countries have blocked payments to Russia in dollars, euros or currencies of other countries in the U.S. orbit. Food-deficit countries that cannot afford to pay distress-level food prices face drastic shortages, which will be exacerbated when they are compelled to pay their foreign debts denominated in the appreciating U.S. dollar. The looming fuel and food crisis promises to drive a new wave of immigrants to Europe seeking survival. Europe already has been flooded with refugees from NATO’s bombing and backing of jihadist attacks on Libya and Near Eastern oil-producing countries. This year’s proxy war in Ukraine and imposition of anti-Russian sanctions is a perfect illustration of Henry Kissinger’s quip: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

Blowback from the US/NATO miscalculations

America’s international diplomacy aims to dictate financial, trade and military policies that will lock other countries into dollar debt and trade dependency by preventing them from developing alternatives. If this fails, America seeks to isolate the recalcitrants from the U.S.-centered Western sphere.

America’s foreign diplomacy no longer is based on offering mutual gain. Such could be claimed in the aftermath of World War II when the United States was in a position to offer loans, foreign-aid and military protection against occupation – as well as manufactures to rebuild war-torn economies – to governments in exchange for their accepting trade and monetary policies favorable to American exporters and investors. But today there is only the belligerent diplomacy of threatening to hurt nations whose socialist governments reject America’s neoliberal drive to privatize and sell off their natural resources and public infrastructure.

The first aim is to prevent Russia and China from helping each other. This is the old imperial divide-and-conquer strategy. Minimizing Russia’s ability to support China would pave the way for the United States and NATO Europe to impose new trade sanctions on China, and to send jihadists to its western Xinjiang Uighur region. The aim is to bleed Russia’s armaments inventory, kill enough of its soldiers, and create enough Russian shortages and suffering to not only weaken its ability to help China, but to spur its population to support a regime change, an American-sponsored “color revolution.” The dream is to promote a Yeltsin-like leader friendly to the neoliberal “therapy” that dismantled Russia’s economy in the 1990s.

Amazing as it may seem, U.S. strategists did not anticipate the obvious response by countries finding themselves together in the crosshairs of US/NATO military and economic threats. On July 19, 2022, the presidents of Russia and Iran met to announce their cooperation in the face of the sanctions war against them. That followed Russia’s earlier meeting with India’s Prime Minister Modi. In what has been characterized as “shooting itself in its own foot,” U.S. diplomacy is driving Russia, China, India and Iran together, and indeed to reach out to Argentina and other countries to join the BRICS-plus bank to protect themselves.

The U.S. itself is ending the Dollar Standard of international finance

The Trump Administration took a major step to drive countries out of the dollar orbit in November 2018, by confiscating nearly $2 billion of Venezuela’s official gold stock held in London. The Bank of England put these reserves at the disposal of Juan Guaidó, the marginal right-wing politician selected by the United States to replace Venezuela’s elected president as head of state. This was defined as being democratic, because the regime change promised to introduce the neoliberal “free market” that is deemed to be the essence of America’s definition of democracy for today’s world.

Image on the right: The Bank of England has refused to return 31 tonnes of Venezuelan gold. (BoE)

This gold theft actually was not the first such confiscation. On November 14, 1979, the Carter Administration paralyzed Iran’s bank deposits in New York after the Shah was overthrown. This act blocked Iran from paying its scheduled foreign debt service, forcing it into default. That was viewed as an exceptional one-time action as far as all other financial markets were concerned. But now that the United States is the self-proclaimed “exceptional nation,” such confiscations are becoming a new norm in U.S. diplomacy. Nobody yet knows what happened to Libya’s gold reserves that Muammar Gadafi had intended to be used to back an African alternative to the dollar. And Afghanistan’s gold and other reserves were simply taken by Washington as payment for the cost of “freeing” that country from Russian control by backing the Taliban. But when the Biden Administration and its NATO allies made a much larger asset grab of some $300 billion of Russia’s foreign bank reserves and currency holdings in March 2022, it made official a radical new epoch in Dollar Diplomacy. Any nation that follows policies not deemed to be in the interests of the U.S. Government runs the risk of U.S. authorities confiscating its holdings of foreign reserves in U.S. banks or securities.

This was a red flag leading countries to fear denominating their trade, savings and foreign debt in dollars, and to avoid using dollar or euro bank deposits and securities as a means of payment. By prompting other countries to think about how to free themselves from the U.S.-centered world trade and monetary system that was established in 1945 with the IMF, World Bank and subsequently the World Trade Organization, the U.S. confiscations have accelerated the end of the U.S. Treasury-bill standard that has governed world finance since the United States went off gold in 1971.

Since dollar convertibility into gold ended in August 1971, dollarization of the world’s trade and investment has created a need for other countries to hold most of their new international monetary reserves in U.S. Treasury securities and bank deposits. As already noted, that enables the United States to seize foreign bank deposits and bonds denominated in U.S. dollars.

Most important, the United States can create and spend dollar IOUs into the world economy at will, without limit. It doesn’t have to earn international spending power by running a trade surplus, as other countries have to do. The U.S. Treasury can simply print dollars electronically to finance its foreign military spending and purchases of foreign resources and companies. And being the “exceptional country,” it doesn’t have to pay these debts – which are recognized as being far too large to be paid. Foreign dollar holdings are free U.S. credit to the Unites States, not requiring repayment any more than the paper dollars in our wallets are expected to be paid off (by retiring them from circulation). What seems to be so self-destructive about America’s economic sanctions and confiscations of Russian and other foreign reserves is that they are accelerating the demise of this free ride.

Blowback resulting from US/NATO isolating their economic and monetary systems

It is hard to see how driving countries out of the U.S. economic orbit serves long-term U.S. national interests. Dividing the world into two monetary blocs will limit Dollar Diplomacy to its NATO allies and satellites.

The blowback now unfolding in the wake of U.S. diplomacy begins with its anti-Russia policy. Imposing trade and monetary sanctions was expected to block Russian consumers and businesses from buying the US/NATO imports to which they had become accustomed. Confiscating Russia’s foreign currency reserves was supposed to crash the ruble, “turning it into rubble,” as President Biden promised. Imposing sanctions against importing Russian oil and gas to Europe was supposed to deprive Russia of export earnings, causing the ruble to collapse and raising import prices (and hence, living costs) for the Russian public. Instead, blocking Russian exports has created a worldwide price inflation for oil and gas, sharply increasing Russian export earnings. It exported less gas but earned more – and with dollars and euros blocked, Russia demanded payment for its exports in rubles. Its exchange rate soared instead of collapsing, enabling Russia to reduce its interest rates.

Goading Russia to send its soldiers to eastern Ukraine to defend Russian speakers under attack in Luhansk and Donetsk, along with the expected impact of the ensuing Western sanctions, was supposed to make Russian voters press for regime change. But as almost always happens when a country or ethnicity is attacked, Russians were appalled at the Ukrainian hatred of Russian-language speakers and Russian culture, and at the Russophobia of the West. The effect of Western countries banning music by Russian composers and Russian novels from libraries – capped by England banning Russian tennis players from the Wimbledon tournament – was to make Russians feel under attack simply for being Russian. They rallied around President Putin.

NATO’s trade sanctions have catalyzed helped Russian agriculture and industry to become more self-sufficient by obliging Russia to invest in import substitution. One well-publicized farming success was to develop its own cheese production to replace that of Lithuania and other European suppliers. Its automotive and other industrial production is being forced to shift away from German and other European brands to its own and Chinese producers. The result is a loss of markets for Western exporters.

In the field of financial services, NATO’s exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT bank-clearing system failed to create the anticipated payments chaos. The threat had been so loudly for so long that Russia and China had plenty of time to develop their own payments system. This provided them with one of the preconditions for their plans to split their economies away from those of the US/NATO West.

As matters have turned out, the trade and monetary sanctions against Russia are imposing the heaviest costs on Western Europe, and are likely to spread to the Global South, driving them to think about whether their economic interests lie in joining U.S. confrontational Dollar Diplomacy. The disruption is being felt most seriously in Germany, causing many companies to close down as a result of gas and other raw-materials shortages. Germany’s refusal to authorize the North Stream 2 pipeline has pushed its energy crisis to a head. This has raised the question of how long Germany’s political parties can remain subordinate to NATO’s Cold War policies at the cost of German industry and households facing sharp rises in heating and electricity costs.

The longer it takes to restore trade with Russia, the more European economies will suffer, along with the citizenry at large, and the further the euro’s exchange rate will fall, spurring inflation throughout its member countries. European NATO countries are losing not only their export markets but their investment opportunities to gain from the much more rapid growth of Eurasian countries whose government planning and resistance to financialization has proved much more productive than the US/NATO neoliberal model.

It is difficult to see how any diplomatic strategy can do more than play for time. That involves living in the short run, not the long run. Time seems to be on the side of Russia, China and the trade and investment alliances that they are negotiating to replace the neoliberal Western economic order.

America’s ultimate problem is its neoliberal post-industrial economy

The failure and blowbacks of U.S. diplomacy are the result of problems that go beyond diplomacy itself. The underlying problem is the West’s commitment to neoliberalism, financialization and privatization. Instead of government subsidy of basic living costs needed by labor, all social life is being made part of “the market” – a uniquely Thatcherite deregulated “Chicago Boys” market in which industry, agriculture, housing and financing are deregulated and increasingly predatory, while heavily subsidizing the valuation of financial and rent-seeking assets – mainly the wealth of the richest One Percent. Income is obtained increasingly by financial and monopoly rent-seeking, and fortunes are made by debt-leveraged “capital” gains for stocks, bonds and real estate.

U.S. industrial companies have aimed more at “creating wealth” by increasing the price of their stocks by using over 90 percent of their profits for stock buybacks and dividend payouts instead of investing in new production facilities and hiring more labor. The result of slower capital investment is to dismantle and financially cannibalize corporate industry in order to produce financial gains. And to the extent that companies do employ labor and set up new production, it is done abroad where labor is cheaper.

Most Asian labor can afford to work for lower wages because it has much lower housing costs and does not have to pay education debt. Health care is a public right, not a financialized market transaction, and pensions are not paid for in advance by wage-earners and employers but are public. The aim in China in particular is to prevent the rentier Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector from becoming a burdensome overhead whose economic interests differ from those of a socialist government.

China treats money and banking as a public utility, to be created, spent and lent for purposes that help increase productivity and living standards (and increasingly to preserve the environment). It rejects the U.S.-sponsored neoliberal model imposed by the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization.

The global economic fracturing goes far beyond NATO’s conflict with Russia in Ukraine. By the time the Biden administration took office at the start of 2021, Russia and China already had been discussing the need to de-dollarize their foreign trade and investment, using their own currencies. That involves the quantum leap of organizing a new payments-clearing institution. Planning had not progressed beyond broad outlines of how such a system would work, but the U.S. confiscation of Russia’s foreign reserves made such planning urgent, starting with a BRICS-plus bank. A Eurasian alternative to the IMF will remove its ability to impose neoliberal austerity “conditionalities” to force countries to lower payments to labor and give priority to paying their foreign creditors above feeding themselves and developing their own economies. Instead of new international credit being extended mainly to pay dollar debts, it will be part of a process of new mutual investment in basic infrastructure designed to accelerate economic growth and living standards. Other institutions are being designed as China, Russia, Iran, India and their prospective allies represent a large enough critical mass to “go it alone,” based on their own mineral wealth and manufacturing power.

The basic U.S. policy has been to threaten to destabilize countries and perhaps bomb them until they agree to adopt neoliberal policies and privatize their public domain. But taking on Russia, China and Iran is a much higher order of magnitude. NATO has disarmed itself of the ability to wage conventional warfare by handing over its supply of weaponry – admittedly largely outdated – to be devoured in Ukraine. In any case, no democracy in today’s world can impose a military draft to wage a conventional land warfare against a significant/major adversary. The protests against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s ended the U.S. military draft, and the only way to really conquer a country is to occupy it in land warfare. This logic also implies that Russia is no more in a position to invade Western Europe than NATO countries are to send conscripts to fight Russia.

That leaves Western democracies with the ability to fight only one kind of war: atomic war – or at least, bombing at a distance, as was done in Afghanistan and the Near East, without requiring Western manpower. This is not diplomacy at all. It is merely acting the role of wrecker. But that is the only tactic that remains available to the United States and NATO Europe. It is strikingly like the dynamic of Greek tragedy, where power leads to hubris that is injurious to others and therefore ultimately anti-social – and self-destructive in the end.

How then can the United States maintain its world dominance? It has deindustrialized and run up foreign official debt far beyond any foreseeable way to be paid. Meanwhile, its banks and bondholders are demanding that the Global South and other countries pay foreign dollar bondholders in the face of their own trade crisis resulting from the soaring energy and food prices caused by America’s anti-Russian and anti-China belligerence. This double standard is a basic internal contradiction that goes to the core of today’s neoliberal Western worldview.

I have described the possible scenarios to resolve this conflict in my recent book The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism. It has now also been issued in e-book form by Counterpunch Books.

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The visit of former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder to Moscow is connected with his desire to find a way out of the current crisis in which Germany finds itself in. Behind his visit were certain financial and economic circles who see that Germany is dying as a global economic powerhouse and believe that strengthening trade relations with Russia could be a salvation for the failing economy and energy crisis.

Schröder’s recent visit to Moscow caused a lot of media attention and mixed reactions in Germany. Many Germans supported his statements on relations with Russia and the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, the commissioning of which, in the opinion of the former chancellor, would be the simplest solution to solving the problem of gas deficit in Germany.

At the same time, he received a lot of criticism from the elite, who described him as “Putin’s lobbyist”. The current German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, distanced himself, stating that Schröder’s trip was not agreed upon with him.

Although Schröder has retired from politics, he still carries heavy political weight in Germany. Undoubtedly, the German business community, who are now going through difficult times, have their interests represented by him. It can be safely assumed that one of the main topics of discussion was the situation with Russia’s oil and gas complex around Nord Stream-1 and Nord Stream-2.

At the end of July, German media announced that Schröder was in Moscow and discussed with Russian officials the delivery of gas via the Nord Stream gas pipeline. Later, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that President Vladimir Putin had met with Schröder, stating that the former chancellor is very worried about the real state of affairs and the energy crisis that is flaring up in Europe.

Schröder asked Putin to explain the situation and Russia’s point of view, but he did not want to be a mediator in solving the situation in Ukraine or the current gas issue. On the other hand, Putin explained to Schröder that deliveries of Russian gas to Europe have been reduced multiple times due to European sanctions and Ukraine’s suspension of transit through one of the legs of the gas pipeline under a fabricated pretext. Deliveries via Nord Stream fell from 167 million cubic metres per day to about 30 million. The Russian president confirmed that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is technically ready for “immediate use” though.

The energy crisis that is shaking the EU and Germany is largely artificial and externally induced, and for this reason many German citizens support the former chancellor’s statements about the need to launch Nord Stream 2 and maintain dialogue with Russia. Many German citizens see Schröder as a political veteran who is trying to save the country from economic adversity.

Germans agree that there is little chance that Berlin will listen to the words of the former chancellor, and, according to some comments, Schröder’s willingness to build contacts with Putin seems more profitable than the actions of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Even those who generally do not support Schröder believe that he remains one of the few who see the bigger picture.

Although Schröder is an experienced statesman, it is unlikely that German authorities will listen to him despite his efforts to solve the difficulties that Germany is facing in the economy and energy sector. The current German administration is not able to conduct an effective dialogue with the Kremlin as it wrestles between Western liberal ideology and the harsh reality of needing energy, especially as winter is slowly but surely approaching.

Figures like Schröder, who do not hold an anti-Russian position and prefer to resolve issues through discussions, become more important in shaping public opinion and understanding the reasons why there is an energy crisis and inflation to begin with.

According to European Commission data, which the DPA agency had access to and was reported by German media, Germany will have to save 10 billion cubic metres of gas from August 2022 to March 2023 in order to achieve the EU’s 15% savings goal. This is significantly more than the others and corresponds to approximately the annual consumption of five million four-person households.

In comparison, Italy will have to save a little more than eight billion cubic metres of gas in order to achieve the EU’s target; France and the Netherlands only need to save five billion cubic metres. In total, the EU wants to save around 45 billion cubic metres of gas.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck announced earlier that his country is ready to comply with the EU’s goals. He even said that Germany is ready to save more than 15%. But this highly unlikely, which makes Schröder’s visit to Moscow all the more important if Berlin wants to save itself from a catastrophic economic and energy disaster before the winter arrives.

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

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Conservative former attorney general Yoon Suk-yeol, elected in May by the narrowest margin in the country’s history, claims he is on holiday to avoid meeting with the US congressional speaker and contain escalating tensions

All eyes are still on Nancy Pelosi. The US Speaker of the House of Representatives’ high-profile tour of Asia, whose agenda is at odds with the guidelines outlined by the White House, has led to an unprecedented escalation of tensions between Washington and Beijing, the protagonists of a bitter rivalry for global hegemony. The unannounced but clearly expected landing in Taipei, the heart of Taiwan, raised hackles within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which responded by summoning the US ambassador to Beijing and launching the largest military manoeuvres in its history around the island of Formosa. With live fire.

The combative congressional speaker left Taiwan on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after setting foot on the island. Earlier, Pelosi had met with Tsai Ing-wen, the twelfth president of the so-called Republic of China, with whom she had closed ranks in defence of the enclave’s “vibrant democracy” in the face of pressure from the Asian giant. But the official trip by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, interpreted in regional terms as a pulse on China, did not end there. After visiting Singapore and Malaysia, beyond Taiwan, the next destination on the map was South Korea.

Pelosi, who had been meeting presidents and prime ministers at every stop on her route, had hoped to meet the tenant of the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential residence, Yoon Suk-yeol, on her arrival in Seoul. However, the conservative former prosecutor, a political novice elected to office in May by the narrowest margin in the country’s history, has declined the offer on the grounds that he was on holiday. Foreign Minister Park Jin, who is in Cambodia for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, was also unavailable for a reception. The only contact between the two was a phone call.

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi in Seoul (PHOTO/@SpeakerPelosi)

Yoon’s rebuff to the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, denied by his entourage, has generated an avalanche of criticism internally and, above all, externally. The People’s Power Party leader has been interpreted as a move to avoid a warming of relations with China, and analysts have been dismayed to see in him a more aggressive profile with respect to Beijing’s postulates. The presence of South Korea at the NATO summit in Madrid suggested that Seoul would adopt a more determined stance in favour of the United States, but the strategic weight of China, the country’s main trading partner, hindered the plans.

In a turn of events, the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), the platform of former president Moon Jae-in and leader of the opposition, praised Yoon’s non-appearance. “For the president] to meet with Pelosi in the midst of the escalating US-China conflicts is like jumping into a fire with a powder keg on his back,” said MP Kim Eui-gyeom. On her last official visit to Seoul in 2015 as minority leader in the lower house, Pelosi was able to meet with then-president Park Geun-hye and her Foreign Minister.

On this occasion, the octogenarian speaker was received by her counterpart, the President of the South Korean National Assembly, Kim Jin Pyo, and other high-ranking members of Parliament, with whom she held a meeting lasting about an hour. Pelosi then underlined the strong alliance built between the two countries out of the ashes of the Korean War (1950-1953), one of the first stages of the Cold War that ended with the partition of the peninsula. However, the joint communiqué, issued at the end of the meeting, does not even allude to his visit to Taiwan and China’s reactions in the last few hours.

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, accompanied in Seoul by the US diplomatic legation in South Korea (PHOTO/@SpeakerPelosi)

For the problems in that part of the region go beyond that. In Seoul’s sights is North Korea’s nuclear programme, the main source of its national security concerns. Neighbouring Pyongyang has been conducting missile tests at a pace never seen before and observers believe Kim Jong-un’s regime is preparing its seventh nuclear test, the first since 2017, posing a direct existential threat to the lower 38th Parallel. Any pronouncement by Pelosi is susceptible to North Korea. Her mere visit prompted a reaction from the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “The current situation clearly shows the insolent interference of the United States in the internal affairs of other countries”.

In the joint statement issued by Pelosi and Kim Jin Pyo, the parties express concern “about the growing threat” from Pyongyang. “We agree to support the efforts of the two governments to achieve practical denuclearisation and peace through international cooperation and diplomatic dialogue, based on strong and extended deterrence against the North,” the note concludes. There is hardly any mention of China or Taiwan, a sign that Seoul is opting for a appeasement approach, continuing the line drawn by former president Moon Jae-in despite the promises with which Yoon Suk-yeol won by the narrowest of margins in May.

Pelosi intends to deliver another coup on her regional tour by reviewing the 28,500 US troops stationed at Panmunjom, the four-kilometre-wide, 238-kilometre-long demilitarised area on the border between the two Koreas. Known as “the most tense place in the world”, this site witnessed the signing of the armistice that ended the fratricidal war nearly seven decades ago. If it happens, the visit would be the first by a senior US official to the area since former President Trump visited in the company of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in 2019.

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Featured image: Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi meets with South Korean National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin Pyo in Seoul (PHOTO/@SpeakerPelosi)

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 US and South Korea are planning new war games where they will simulate taking out North Korea’s military leadership, including the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday.

The drills will simulate targeting Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear sites plus bases needed to supply them. Sources familiar told The Daily Beast that the war games will end with a “decapitation” exercise where they attack North Korea’s command structure and take out Kim.

According to the report, the US will not publicly acknowledge that they are practicing killing Kim in the war games. Washington and Seoul haven’t held such exercises since President Trump canceled them in 2018 after meeting with Kim.

The last time the war games were held was in 2017, and Kim responded by ordering an underground nuclear weapons test. The North hasn’t launched a nuclear test since, but the US is risking provoking one by simulating Kim’s assassination.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his South Korean counterpart, Lee Jong-sup, agreed to restart the drills last weekend. When they were held last about 50,000 South Korean troops, and 20,000 US troops participated.

The renewed war games come after South Korea’s new President Yoon Suk-yeol said he would strengthen military ties with the US. His predecessor, Moon Jae-in, was a proponent of peaceful reunification with the North, and Yoon has said he will take a tougher stance on Pyongyang.

Yoon seeks the return of US nuclear bombers and submarines to South Korean territory. The US removed all of its nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula in 1991.

The Biden administration has maintained that it’s open to talks with Pyongyang but hasn’t offered any incentives to bring them to the table, such as sanctions relief. The North restarted launching missile tests last year, and the US has been warning that they may be preparing for a nuclear test.

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

Featured image is from VOA News