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Washington’s Failed Push for Anti-Russian Global Consensus

June 13th, 2022 by Ted Galen Carpenter

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Biden administration officials treat Russia as an international pariah and push the global community to unite behind Washington’s leadership to compel the Kremlin to withdraw its forces from Ukraine. The administration’s strategy has been just partially successful. Criticisms of Russia’s actions are relatively easy to find among foreign leaders, but when it comes to outright condemnations—much less endorsements of NATO’s position that the war was unprovoked and entirely Moscow’s fault—governments around the world demur.

They are even less inclined to sign on to the U.S.-led campaign to impose extraordinarily severe sanctions on Russia. Indeed, outside of NATO and the string-of-pearls U.S. bilateral security alliances in East Asia, the support for sanctions is notable for its absence. That was true even during the first month of the war, and it has become even more pronounced since then.

Hudson Institute scholar Walter Russell Mead provides an apt summary of Washington’s lack of success in broadening the anti-Russia coalition beyond the network of traditional U.S. allies.

“The West has never been more closely aligned. It has also rarely been more alone. Allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization plus Australia and Japan are united in revulsion against Vladimir Putin’s war and are cooperating with the most sweeping sanctions since World War II. The rest of the world, not so much.”

Signs of trouble surfaced almost immediately. On March 2, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and calling for the immediate withdrawal of Russian military forces: 141 countries voted for the resolution, and as U.S. officials were fond of emphasizing, only five voted against.

However, a surprising 35 countries—including 17 African nations—opted to abstain, even though a favorable vote to placate the United States would have been the easy choice. The resolution was purely symbolic, since it did not obligate U.N. members to take any substantive action, yet a significant number of countries in Asia, the greater Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa, opted to snub Washington. More than 20 percent of the General Assembly’s membership refused to embrace a purely feel-good measure the Biden administration emphatically wanted passed. From the outset, the U.S.-sponsored global coalition against Russia looked fragile and unenthusiastic. It has become more so with the passage of time.

African countries especially fail to see any advantage for themselves in supporting the West’s policy. Although Washington insists that repelling Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is essential to preserve the “rules based, liberal international order,” governments and populations in Africa see matters differently. To them, the war looks more like a mundane power struggle between Russia and a Western client state. As one African scholar put it:

“many in Africa and the rest of the Global South do not regard—and never have regarded—the liberal international order as particularly liberal or international. Nor do they consider it to be particularly orderly, considering how much their countries were turned into spheres of influence and arenas for geostrategic competition.”

More tangible economic interests also push Africa toward neutrality. A June 3 New York Times analysis concluded succinctly:

“A meeting on Friday between the head of the African Union and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia highlighted the acute needs each one hopes the other can fill: Africa needs food, and the Kremlin needs allies.”

Indeed, the head of the African Union, President Macky Sall of Senegal, has explicitly called for the lifting of sanctions on Russia.

Even portions of Latin America have balked at waging economic war against Russia. Most troubling for the U.S.-led anti-Russia strategy, both Brazil and Mexico—the region’s two most important political and economic players—continue to dissent. Indeed, the tensions have broadened to negatively impact Washington’s overall relations with those two governments. Mexico’s president even refused to attend the Biden administration’s much ballyhooed “Summit of the Americas” in June. It was an ostentatious snub.

It is especially ominous for U.S. objectives that both China and India have stayed on the sidelines with respect to the West’s showdown with Russia. True, Xi Jinping’s government has also resisted Moscow’s calls for greater solidarity and tangible support. PRC leaders have instead sought to remain on the tightrope of trying to pursue a generally neutral course with a slight tilt toward Russia’s position. But most important, both Beijing and New Delhi have remained firm in their refusal to impose economic sanctions on Russia.

The Biden administration has not reacted well to any country’s attempt to maintain a neutral posture. That annoyance even has been directed at major powers such as China and India. U.S. officials have exerted increasingly insistent pressure on both governments to embrace the West’s sanctions strategy. Some of Washington’s statements have amounted to outright threats. On multipleoccasions, the administration warned India that there would be “consequences” for failing to impose sanctions on Russia. The unsubtle message was that India itself could become a target for sanctions from the United States and its allies, if New Delhi failed to cooperate.

Despite the much more extensive bilateral economic links to the PRC, Washington has even threatened Beijing with sanctions if it supported Moscow’s actions in Ukraine. Moreover, “supporting” increasingly became an implicit synonym for “failing to oppose.” Beijing did not respond passively to such pressure. Instead, the PRC warned that it would impose retaliatory sanctions against the United States and its allies.

Washington’s bullying behavior is not playing well internationally. For example, the Biden administration’s threats to sanction China over Beijing’s relations with Moscow immediately spooked Thailand, Indonesia, and other smaller powers in East Asia. However, the reaction was not one of capitulating to Washington’s demands. Instead, the abrasive U.S. approach seemed to harden the resolve of those nations to remain neutral with respect to the Russia-Ukraine war. South Africa and other countries in the Global South also complained loudly about heavy-handed U.S. pressure, and refused to alter their positions.

The Biden administration clearly overestimated the extent of international outrage at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Given the track record of multiple Western military actions against sovereign countries, including Serbia, Iraq, and Libya, it is hardly surprising that other governments might view the West’s stance regarding Moscow’s behavior as the epitome of self-serving hypocrisy. U.S. leaders also overestimated the extent of U.S. leverage to compel nations not in Washington’s geopolitical orbit to participate in a punitive policy toward Russia. It should be a sobering experience, but the administration and the members of the U.S. foreign policy blob that populates it show no signs of learning anything worthwhile. Instead, U.S. arrogance and the inflated sense of Washington’s power continues undiminished.

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Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more than 1,100 articles on international affairs.

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Russian Ambassador Claims US Asked Him to Defect

June 13th, 2022 by Morning Star

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Russia’s ambassador to Washington has claimed that US spooks encouraged him to defect and denounce the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Anatoly Antonov told Russian state television on Wednesday that he had refused a request from US authorities to publicly criticise President Vladimir Putin.

“I recently received a letter by mail, with a call to denounce my motherland and condemn the Russian president’s actions,” he said.

“And I was recommended to make an inquiry to the office of US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman if I am ready to accept the proposal.”

Mr Antonov said that staff at the Russian embassy had also been asked to “communicate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

“When I see US media publications calling upon Russian servicemen and diplomats to betray their homeland, I have no words to describe my rejection of such moves,” he said.

The diplomat described Moscow’s relations with Washington as at an unprecedented low, with dialogue between the two sides “limited to the discussion of technical issues.”

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Featured image: Anatoly Antonov (left) at a press conference when he was Russia’s Deputy Minister of Defence in 2015 Photo: Russian Ministry of Defence / Mil.ru.

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Lawmakers with the bipartisan Abraham Accords Caucus have introduced a bill in the House and Senate that will require the Pentagon to coordinate missile defense upgrades for Israel and several newfound Arab allies, pointing to potential “attacks from Iran.”

Unveiled on Thursday, the Deterring Enemy Forces and Enabling National Defenses (DEFEND) Act would instruct the secretary of defense to “develop an acquisition approach” to improve anti-air weapons for a number of Middle Eastern states, among them Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council.

The legislation will aim to “implement an integrated and missile defense capability to protect the people, infrastructure and territory of such countries from cruise and ballistic missiles, manned and unmanned aerial systems and rocket attacks from Iran and groups linked to Iran.”

If passed, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will be required to submit a report to Congress within 180 days on the current defense capabilities of the states in question and how they could be improved.

Announced by Republican Senator Joni Ernst, the bill marks the first piece of legislation brought by the Abraham Accords Caucus, a bipartisan bloc within the House and Senate created to “build on the success” of a series of agreements struck between Israel and Arab nations starting in 2020. The senator claimed the law would help to contain Iranian proxy groups, which she said were targeting innocent civilians and “pose a persistent threat to our homeland.”

Though Ernst acknowledged most Americans are fed up with decades of armed intervention in the Middle East, she argued that “radical Islamic terror” continues to menace the United States, saying terrorism “can only be deterred and denied if American allies and partners in the Middle East step up and take on the threat posed by Iran.”

According to Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen, the bill has the endorsement of several pro-Israel groups and hawkish think tanks, including the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, CUFI Action, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the American Jewish Congress, the Atlantic Council and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).

In backing the legislation, the neoconservative-leaning FDD said Washington should “continue to initiate, develop and enhance military to military relationships between the US, Israel and other US allies and partners in the region” as an “extension” of the Abraham Accords.

Kicked off with a US-brokered normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates in 2020, the Accords have since been joined by Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco and Sudan, each agreeing to establish diplomatic and economic ties with Tel Aviv after decades of enmity.

Though the new bill is largely concerned with Iran, some countries slated to receive increased US military assistance have been accused of backing jihadist militant groups in the past, chief among them Saudi Arabia. Few of the 10 states named in the law could qualify as democracies, moreover, putting it at odds with President Joe Biden’s frequent lip service to the importance of ‘democratic values.’

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

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

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

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182 New Reports of Deaths After COVID Vaccines, CDC Data Show

June 13th, 2022 by Children’s Health Defense

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VAERS data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show 1,295,329 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID-19 vaccines, including 28,714 deaths and 236,767 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020, and June 3, 2022.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released new data showing a total of 1,295,329 reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and June 3, 2022, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). That’s an increase of 7,734 adverse events over the previous week.

VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.

The data included a total of 28,714 reports of deaths — an increase of 182 over the previous week — and 236,767 serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 1,726 compared with the previous week.

Of the 28,714 reported deaths, 18,638 cases are attributed to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, 7,524 cases to Moderna and 2,483 cases to Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 829,329 adverse events, including 13,225 deaths and 83,801 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and June 3, 2022.

Foreign reports are reports foreign subsidiaries send to U.S. vaccine manufacturers. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, if a manufacturer is notified of a foreign case report that describes an event that is both serious and does not appear on the product’s labeling, the manufacturer is required to submit the report to VAERS.

Of the 13,225 U.S. deaths reported as of June 3, 16% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 20% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 59% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.

In the U.S., 588 million COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered as of June 3, including 347 million doses of Pfizer, 222 million doses of Moderna and 19 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

vaers data vaccine injury june 10

Every Friday, VAERS publishes vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.

Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to June 3, 2022, for 6-month-olds to 5-year-olds show:

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to June 3, 2022, for 5- to 11-year-olds show:

  • 11,133 adverse events, including 292 rated as serious and 5 reported deaths.
  • 22 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis.
    The Defender has noticed over previous weeks that reports of myocarditis and pericarditis have been removed by the CDC from the VAERS system in this age group. No explanation was provided.
  • 43 reports of blood clotting disorders.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to June 3, 2022, for 12- to 17-year-olds show:

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to June 3, 2022, for all age groups combined, show:

U.S. government diverts $10 billion in funding for more COVID vaccines

The Biden administration this week said it is diverting more than $10 billion in COVID-19 testing and relief funds to buy more COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

The money was diverted from plans to buy COVID-19 tests and personal protective equipment, reported NBC, as well as funding for research and development of new COVID-19 vaccines, according to AP.

The redirected funds will be used to start negotiating contracts with vaccine-makers to make new doses for the fall, including “next-generation” vaccines that pharmaceutical companies are developing to target new COVID-19 variants.

Roughly $5 billion will go to support the purchase of new COVID-19 vaccine doses for a fall immunization campaign and $4.9 billion will be used to procure about 10 million remaining courses of Pfizer’s Paxlovid COVID-19 antiviral pill, a White House official who asked not to be named told Bloomberg.

The administration’s move to divert funding to buy more COVID-19 vaccine doses comes just days after the Center for Disease Control (CDC) shared data with NBC News revealing the U.S. wasted 82.1 million COVID-19 vaccines from December 2020 through mid-May 2022.

Studies suggest link between fatal brain disease and COVID vaccines

A French pre-print paper published in May on Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) and COVID-19 vaccination identified a new form of sporadic CJD that occurred within days of receiving a first or second dose of Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

CJD is a degenerative brain disorder that leads to dementia and, ultimately, death.

Researchers believe the prion region from the original Wuhan COVID-19 variant’s spike protein was incorporated into mRNA vaccines and adenovirus vector vaccines — given to hundreds of millions of humans — and that it can cause a new type of rapidly progressing sporadic CJD.

Researchers analyzed 26 cases of CJD and found the first symptoms appeared on average 11.38 days after injection with a COVID-19 vaccine.

Of the 26 cases, 20 had died by the time the study was published and six were still alive. “The 20 deaths occurred only 4.76 months after the injection. Among them, 8 of them led to a sudden death (2.5 months),” researchers wrote.

Biden administration secures 10 million doses of COVID vaccine for kids under 5 

The Biden administration Thursday said it made available 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for children under age 5 to states and healthcare workers with “millions more available in the coming weeks.”

The White House unveiled its “Operational Plan” for vaccinating the youngest age group — one week before advisors to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are scheduled to meet to decide whether to grant Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna pediatric vaccines for babies as young as 6 months old.

Children under 5 could begin receiving the vaccines as early as “the week of June 20th — with the program ramping up over time as more doses are delivered and more appointments become available,” the White House said.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Chairman and Chief Legal Counsel Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called on parents and physicians “now more than ever” to “step into the breach to protect our babies from our government.”

Kennedy said the COVID-19 countermeasures, including the vaccines, were “never about science or public health,” adding, “Now they have departed from common sense and into naked cruelty and barbarism.”

Severe COVID-19 ‘rare’ in people who didn’t get vaccine

A survey of 300,000 people who didn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine revealed the unvaccinated didn’t place a disproportionate burden on health systems — in fact, they experienced very low rates of hospitalization and severe COVID-19.

The international Control Group project — also known as the Vax Control Group — conducted the survey.

The survey data offer important revelations, including:

  • The unvaccinated “control group” participants have experienced very low hospitalization rates and severe COVID-19 disease rates.
  • They are more likely to rely on self-care, using natural products such as vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc and quercetin.
  • Many have used ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
  • Women have suffered menstrual and bleeding abnormalities despite being unvaccinated, possibly due to spike protein exposure and shedding.
  • Their mental health burden has been considerable, possibly aggravated by stigmatization by the mainstream, “vaccinated” society.
  • They have been heavily discriminated against because of their decision to exercise their right to informed consent and refuse the administration of “genetic vaccines.”

Canadian government approves vaccine-injured man’s compensation claim

A Canadian man last month learned the government approved his request for compensation for a COVID-19 vaccine injury.

Ross Wightman, a 40-year-old husband and father of two, said it took years of submitting paperwork before the government approved the claim. Wightman was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a rare condition affecting the nervous system that left him partially paralyzed, soon after receiving his first and only dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in April 2021.

Wightman did not divulge the exact amount of the payout. However, he said he did not qualify for the program’s maximum payout of $284,000. He said he plans to appeal the payout amount to the program’s medical review board, which he said failed to take into account all his symptoms.

There have been 46,149 officially recorded adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines reported in Canada, but only a handful of claimants have received compensation.

CHD asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

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The so-called “deadlock” over resolving the global food crisis is just as artificially manufactured as its origins since Kiev has now officially declared that it won’t resume wheat exports by sea to the Global South unless it receives anti-ship missiles first.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Vasily Bodnar officially demanded weapons in exchange for resuming wheat exports by sea in what amounts to the blatant blackmailing of the Global South in the midst of the artificially manufactured food crisis.

He said that “Effective security guarantees are required for maritime shipments to resume. These guarantees must be provided through the supply of appropriate weapons to Ukraine to protect its coasts from maritime threats and the involvement of the navies of third countries in protecting the relevant part of the Black Sea.” This comprehensively debunks the US-led Western Mainstream Media’s (MSM) fake news that Russia is the one that’s supposedly holding the Global South hostage by allegedly blockading Ukrainian ports.

The background context is that Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya already explained the artificially manufactured origins of the global food crisis late last month. In short, he blamed it on the economic consequences caused by the West’s response to COVID (particularly with respect to spiking inflation and influencing food demand); Ukraine’s mining of its own ports; and the anti-Russian sanctions.

President Putin later reiterated these causes in a TV interview that he gave a little over a week later on the same day that he met with Macky Sall, the Chairman of the African Union. His guest extended credence to the Kremlin’s explanation by declaring that “Anti-Russia sanctions have made this situation worse and now we do not have access to grain from Russia, primarily to wheat.”

All the while and in spite of the artificially manufactured origins of the food crisis that lie entirely beyond Russia’s control, Moscow has been doing its utmost to encourage Kiev to at the very least resume its wheat exports to the Global South. To that end, it proposed four potential corridors: the Azov Sea; the Black Sea; overland through Belarus en route to Baltic ports; and across Western Europe. Suffice to say, Kiev has flat-out refused to employ any of these means, though it’s also worth noting that Nebenzya mentioned in his speech late last month that Russia has “reasonable suspicions” to believe that Kiev is exporting wheat to those Western European countries that already have copious reserves of this commodity in exchange for arms exactly as happened with the Central Powers near the end of WWI.

This suggests that the EU is stockpiling wheat that it doesn’t even need in order to keep it off the global market, perhaps in order to later “reward” compliant governments across the Global South with a few scraps in exchange for them offering it privileged access to their natural resources that the bloc is scrambling to replace from Russia after the US coerced it into unilaterally “decoupling” from that country. Be that as it may, Kiev could still in theory simply export its wheat via the newly Russian-controlled Azov Sea but refuses to do so unless it receives anti-ship missiles. The reason why it’s making that demand at this particular moment in time is because talks between Russia and Turkey on creating a so-called “grain corridor” in the Black Sea seem to be making progress.

The reported plan that hasn’t yet been officially confirmed is for Turkey to help Kiev demine the waters near Odessa and will then escort its vessels with grain to international waters, after which Russian warships will escort them to the Bosporus. In fact, many believe that it was precisely this plan that prompted Foreign Minister Lavrov to visit Turkey on Wednesday in order to more intimately discuss its most sensitive details. After their talks concluded, he said that Russia agreed to ensure the security of Ukrainian grain vessels but expressed pessimism about Kiev’s willingness to go through with this proposal. Nevertheless, it’s intriguing to point out that the Turkish Agriculture and Forestry Minister announced just the day prior that Kiev agreed to give his country a 25% discount on wheat.

This hints that Kiev might indeed be seriously countenancing this proposal, though its unexpected public demand for weapons in exchange for resuming the export of wheat by sea could mean that it believes that the deal is close enough for someone in the US-led West to give it what it wants in order to make that happen. It should be said, however, that there’s no objective connection between anti-ship missiles and resuming the export of wheat by sea since the proposed plan calls for NATO-member Turkey to escort Kiev’s ships to international waters, after which they’ll be escorted by Russian warships to the Bosporus. There’s no credible scenario wherein Russia would attack Turkey, especially not after cooperating with it to reach this deal, so Kiev doesn’t actually need anti-ship missiles for its security.

The takeaway is that the so-called “deadlock” over resolving the global food crisis is just as artificially manufactured as its origins since Kiev has now openly declared that it won’t resume wheat exports by sea to the Global South unless it receives anti-ship missiles first. Everything that the US-led Western MSM had claimed about Russia holding developing countries hostage is actually true for its proxies in Kiev, which African Union Chairman Sall had already realized, hence why he extended credence to the Kremlin’s claims that it isn’t responsible for this crisis. Now that Kiev is officially holding the Global South hostage, those countries have no reason to ever trust its Western patrons again after they approved their proxy weaponizing food exports to developing countries.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Carl von Clausewitz, a prominent Prussian general described war as “merely the continuation of policy by other means.” This perfectly describes the political West’s relationship with the world. However, against Russia, it is unable to conduct what the late Donald Rumsfeld euphemistically called “kinetic force.” The phrase differentiates conventional warfare from “soft” force, limited to diplomacy, sanctions and cyber warfare. The latter is usually overlooked, despite often taking center stage in geopolitics.

The advent of the Digital Age gave rise to cyber warfare. While it was applied even during the 1990s, it became more prominent in the last 20 years. With nearly all organizations on the planet now being online, we got unprecedented access to information. However, this has its downsides, particularly in the form of hackers, who aren’t necessarily just “lone wolves” motivated by money (or ideology). The data on hackers is questionable at best. However, there’s publicly available information, especially that coming from state structures openly talking about the military usage of cyberspace.

General Paul Nakasone, the head of US Cyber Command, stated the US is conducting offensive operations in “support of Ukraine.” In an exclusive for Sky News, he explained: “‘Hunt forward’ operations are allowing the US to search out foreign hackers and identify the tools they use against America.” Nakasone, who is also director of the NSA, stated he is “concerned every single day about the risk of a Russian cyberattack” and that the “hunt forward” activities were an “effective way of protecting America.” He confirmed for the first time the US is conducting offensive cyber-ops against Russia. “We’ve conducted a series of operations across the full spectrum; offensive, defensive, [and] information operations,” he stated. The general didn’t give any specifics, but he claimed the activities of US military hackers were allegedly “lawful, conducted with complete civilian oversight of the military and through policy decided at the DoD.” His job is to “provide a series of options to the secretary of defense and the president, and so that’s what I do,” he said, declining to give any further details.

“We had an opportunity to start talking about what particularly the Russians were trying to do in our midterm elections. We saw it again in 2020, as we talked about what the Russians and Iranians were going to do, but this was on a smaller scale. The ability for us to share that information, being able to ensure it’s accurate and it’s timely and it’s actionable on a broader scale has been very, very powerful in this crisis,” the general said.

When asked about counterattacks in response to US offensive operations, Nakasone said: “We remain vigilant every single day. I think about it all the time. This is why we’re working with a series of partners to ensure we prevent that.” He delivered a speech at CyCon, a conference on cyber conflict, hosted by NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence (CCDCOE) in Tallinn, and praised the cooperation as a “key strategic benefit.”

“Hunt forward is a key aspect of the Cyber Command’s partnerships. It is so powerful… because we see our adversaries and we expose their tools. Cyber Command specialists have been deployed abroad to 16 other nations where they can seek intelligence from the allies’ computer networks – always on a consensual, invitation basis,” General Nakasone said.

“Crucial to how hunt forward works is Cyber Command sharing the intelligence they find with the host nation. If you’re an adversary, and you’ve just spent a lot of money on a tool, and you’re hoping to utilize it readily in a number of different intrusions, suddenly it’s outed and it’s now been signatured across a broad range of networks, and suddenly you’ve lost your ability to do that,” the general said. “In one such hunt forward deployment, US military specialists had been present in Ukraine very close to the date of the invasion. We went in December 2021 at the invitation of the Kiev government to come and hunt with them. We stayed there for a period of almost 90 days,” he added.

A spokesperson confirmed this team left in a hurry after Russia intervened. There aren’t many details regarding US cyber-ops, but what we know 100% is what Nakasone himself admitted – the US is actively conducting offensive cyber-ops against Russia. This may very well explain the strange blackouts in some Russian regions, as well as other unexpected disruptions of its key infrastructure. The issue is not just that Russia could respond to these attacks with its own cyber-ops, but also with “kinetic force”, as Rumsfeld defined it. This is especially true as the consequences of cyber-ops aren’t only limited to cyberspace. Blackouts result in very real damage. Schools, hospitals, state institutions, etc. all rely on critical infrastructure. If the result of these attacks is similar to armed aggression, Russia would be compelled to respond.

After all, the political West itself has been contemplating this approach. NATO is considering including cyber warfare in Article 5. The clause is the focal point of the “defensive alliance.” Expanding its scope to cyber-ops could lead to uncontrollable escalation. It also reveals yet another instance of glaring hypocrisy of the political West – while the US and its satellites conduct offensive cyber-ops against Russia, and then openly brag about it, they’re saying those same cyber-ops in response to US/NATO cyberattacks would trigger its infamous “collective defense” clause.

If the US/NATO insist(s) that Article 5 could be invoked, why doesn’t the same apply to Russia? Well, as far as Russia goes, the “purely defensive alliance” doesn’t get to decide what Russia defines as a security threat.

Thus, the political West might not only be facing Russia’s cyber counteroffensive, but an actual, physical response. As Huntington defined it, “the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

Russia can also “apply organized violence” in a way superior to anyone else’s. It hopes it won’t need to, but it most certainly is capable of it. If the political West wants to prevent a world-ending conflict, it will stop its cyber, bioweapons or other operations against Russia. Otherwise, the “purely defensive alliance” will finally get the taste of its own medicine, facing the full might of the “defense” it has been conducting against the world. Only radioactive.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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Introduction

East Asia had the opportunity of witnessing the diplomacy of one of the most seasoned diplomats of the United States — Joe Biden, President of the U.S. He spent five days in Korea and Japan from May 20 to May 24.

The world was expecting to see real professional diplomacy which did not seek only the interests of the U.S.; The world was hoping to see a diplomacy which promoted also the interests of the partner countries, especially, Japan and Korea. 

However, to the great disappointment of many, Biden was repeating Washington’s old foreign policy determined by the warmongering CIA, the National Security Council and the Department of State.

As a matter of fact, Biden came to East Asia with the chilly wind of war and for the recruitment of soldiers who will fight for Washington.

This paper discusses two outcomes of Biden’s East Asia visit, namely, intensification of regional security risks and the recruitment of countries which will be asked to conduct proxy war against China.

Biden’s North Korea Policy and the Trilateral Japan-US- Korea  Military Alliance

The regional security risk had increased due to the following decisions of Biden: the North Korea Policy, the trilateral military alliance of Japan-ROK-US and Biden’s declaration of American military intervention in a possible Taiwan-China war.

Biden’s North Korea policy offered nothing new. Instead, he has made two commitments which will surely further intensify the North-South tension; it may bring even possible armed conflict.

First, he accepted the request of the new conservative government of Yoon Suk-yeul to beef up the striking power of the ROK army by promising the deployment of strategic military assets such as, for instance, the strategic nuclear weapon.

Second, Biden reiterated Washington’s favourite nuclear rhetoric:

“If Kim Jung-un denuclearizes North Korea, the U.S. might engage with Pyongyang for peace!”

What he was really saying is this:

“We have no intention of establishing peace on the Korea Peninsula.”

These two declarations of Biden have further alarmed North Korea which had been quite annoyed by Yoon’s previous declaration of his intention of pre-emptive attack against North Korea.

Now, the Japan-Korea-US trilateral military alliance (JKUS military alliance) in practice means a de facto Japan-Korea military alliance.

The military relation between Korea and the U.S. is more than a military alliance, because Washington can command the ROK army in case of war. In fact, South Korea is a part of American armed forces as long as Washington has the OPCON (the right of Washington to command the ROK armed forces in war involving South Korea).

What is worrisome regarding the Japan-Korea military alliance is the possibility of the presence of the Japanese military on Korean soil.

For Koreans, such a possibility is a nightmare, because they know that Japan’s ambition of ruling Asia again — especially Korea — is still alive. In particular for North Koreans, this military alliance could lead to a possible participation of the Japanese Armed Forces in an attack against North Korea.

North Korea is already reacting violently. Recently, it launched 13 missiles including 4 missiles simultaneously to show that it can hit several targets at the same time. These missiles are short-range or medium-range missiles threatening South Korea and Japan.

There is no doubt that the election of Yoon as president representing the anti-North Korean pro-Japan South Korean conservatives combined with the warmongering Washington establishment and the Japanese ambition to restore the glory of the Meiji Era are enough to threaten North Korea.

February 2022 ROK Elections

Under such circumstances, North Korea might decide to join the Russia-China bloc in a global “East-West shooting war” and the reunification will be no more; South Korea will meet its death. Yoon will remain the worst traitor to the Korean Nation.

Biden’s Reckless Taiwan-China Diplomacy

What is even more terrifying is Biden’s declaration of military intervention in the event of Taiwan-China war. This is surely an intervention into China’s internal affairs.

The world knows that the U.S. has recognized the One-China policy by virtue of the three joint statements (1972, 1979 and 1982) and the Taiwan Relation Act (1979). In fact, Biden admitted the One-China policy only a few months ago.

However, Washington has been violating the One-China principle for decades through the policies of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). In accordance with the 1982 Agreement with China (the 6 Assurances of Donald Reagan), Washington can provide only “defensive weapons” to Taiwan. But I wonder if there is such thing as defensive weapon. For decades, Washington has been pouring billions of dollars worth of weapons. Trump gave Taiwan 4 billion USD every year. Can we believe that all these weapons are only for defensive purposes?

In a way, the contradictory Taiwan policy of Washington is understandable for Taiwan is in fact the American fixed aircraft carrier threatening China at its front door.

It is said that if U.S. loses Taiwan, its regional interests in East Asia will be seriously damaged. This is the worst kind of imperialist attitude. How can a country claim its interest by arming a foreign sovereign country?

But, for China, a Taiwan armed to the teeth by the US is an intolerable threat. So, Washington is provoking a collision course with China.

By inciting China’s PLA to invade Taiwan, Washington is intent upon breaking one of the conditions which could justify such an invasion.

There are five conditions which would allow Beijing to intervene in Taiwan:

  • Taiwan’s declaration of independence,
  • Internal turmoil in Taiwan,
  • Taiwan’s military alliance with a foreign country,
  • Taiwan’s acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) such as strategic nuclear weapon and
  • Violation of the Taipei-Beijing Consensus for 1992 One-China principle.

Washington can ask Japan to provoke a situation in which one of these conditions can be broken even without the declaration of Taiwan independence.

The easiest thing to do is to send a WMD to Taiwan such as a strategic nuclear weapon or organize internal turmoil within Taiwan or form a Japan-Taiwan military alliance.

Japan will be happy to accommodate such a request by Washington because it is the dream of the Neo-Meiji Restoration Group (NMRG) led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to beat China with Washington’s help and become once again the ruler of Asia, if not the world.

Thus, to be sure, Biden was successful in making the war drum to sound louder in East Asia.

Recruitment of Proxy War Soldiers 

The Japan-Korea bilateral military alliance is intended to recruit proxy-war soldiers. As pointed above, if Washington decides to attack North Korea, the ROK army and the Japanese army are likely to fight for the hegemony of Washington and for Japan’s re-conquest of Korea.

What is more important for Biden is the recruitment of soldiers to fight against Chinese forces in US sponsored Taiwan-China war. The same ROK soldiers and the Japanese soldiers are expected to do the shooting on behalf of Washington. It is possible that Washington would not join the shooting match; it will just provide more weapons as it is doing in the Ukraine-Russia war.

One puzzling aspect of this dangerous security dynamics of East Asia initiated by Washington is the “harakiri” — security strategy of the pro-Japan conservative South Korean government led by Yoon.

South Korea’s participation in the attack against North Korea will bring nothing positive. In fact, millions of South Koreans may lose their lives and its economy will be ruined.

Furthermore, the participation of the Japanese army in this attack against North Korea could end up with a permanent presence of the Japanese military on Korean soil and even the 1910 treacherous drama of annexation of Korea with Japan may repeat itself. It is likely that the pro-Japan conservative Koreans will support it like their ancestors did in 1910.

This may sound absurd. But do not forget one thing. The core of the pro-Japan South Koreans is composed of the descendents of former Korean elite who collaborated with the Japanese colonial government and those Japanese who did not return to Japan to protect their wealth and adopted Korean names to hide their identity. To be frank, this group is more Japanese than Korean.

Moreover, the participation of the South Korean army in the Taiwan-China war would create a situation in which South Korea will have to endure China’s trade reprisal and even direct military bombardment on  Korean soil.

About a quarter of South Korean exports go to China. A simple deployment few years ago of THAAD near Seoul made South Korean pay a heavy price in terms of loss of income from tourism, the campaign of “No Korean Products” in China, the forced closing of Korean companies in China and other forms of retaliation. The U.S. cannot and will not compensate for such a huge loss.

For Korea, the only wise way of surviving in the Sino-American hegemonic confrontation is to be neutral and maintain friendly relations with both the U.S. and China. This is what Moon Jae-in did. Alas, Yoon blew away what Moon has accomplished. This is tragic, indeed.

The liberal government of Moon Jae-in was able to maintain reasonable good relations with both superpowers. Korea, being the 10th global economic power and the 6th military power, could bargain to Korea’s advantage with Beijing and Washington.

Now, as for Japan, the Japanese imperialist conservatives led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are more than happy to be legionnaires in the Taiwan-China war. For Abe and his friends, the Taiwan-China war can be a God-given gift.

Remember that the Abe group has the dream of restoring the might and glory of pre-1945 Japan. This group denies Japan’s surrender in 1945; it does not accept the Tokyo War Criminal Court. It has the illusion of being the predestined ruler of the world.

To realize its dream, Japan has to destroy China. To destroy China, Japan needs a regular army, not just the so-called self-defence army. To do this, Japan has to modify the 1948 Peace Constitution, especially the controversial Article 9. However, the materialization of Abe’s dream needs Biden’s support.

Biden is aware of the danger that Japanese have not forgotten the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing. The Americans do remember the massacre of Pearl Harbor. It is more than possible that Biden does not want see Japan too powerful.

But to “Kill China”, Biden Needs Military Japan

Biden’s declaration of military intervention in the Taiwan-China war was intended to recruit the Japanese army as proxy army fighting for the U.S. The same goes for the ROK army.

For Biden, the Japanese army is the best legionnaire to fight against China. To force China to attack the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands or Taiwan, Japan might provoke incidences leading to war. In fact, Japan is good at it.

The Mukden incidence in Manchuria in 1931 leading to Japanese invasion in Manchuria and the Marco Polo Bridge incidence provoking an all-out war with China in 1937 started because of faked incidences prepared by the Japanese army.

In short, Biden did well in recruiting the armed forces of the two major military powers in the region as legionnaires in the case of a possible Taiwan-China proxy war.

Biden and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF)

In addition to the recruitment of the two military powers, Korea and Japan, Biden was successful in producing another China containment organization comprising of 13 countries through the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).

This is composed of 7 ASEAN member countries (Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei) and the U.S., India, Japan, ROK, Australia, New Zealand.

 

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, left, President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, May 23, 2022 (Thanks to AP /Evan Vucci)

The purpose of this new organization is to contain China. The IPEF gives itself four areas of regional cooperation including realignment of the production chain, renewable energy, trade and fight against corruption. However, the ultimate role is to contain China intensified by the restriction of exchanges of goods, ideas and services especially exchange of technology.

Most of the experts in Korean trade and international politics argue that this could bring disaster to Korea due to possible retaliation on the part of China.

Japan looks very excited to be a part of IPEF for it will provide opportunities to play a leadership role with help of the ROK as a cheer leader.

The assurance of investments of USD 27 billion in the U.S. by Samsung and Hyundai is a big gain for Biden. And these investments will strengthen America’s competitiveness in electric cars and semi-conductors. They will be a part of US’ China containment policy China.

The Indo-Pacific Economic Forum (IPEF) is, in fact, an additional China containment policy in order to strengthen the effectiveness of anti-China strategies. Up to now, the previous strategies have not been effective.

Since the time of Obama, Washington has been trying to contain China through several strategies, but none of them has yielded expected results.

The deployment of the U.S. Naval task force in the South China Sea led to the militarization of the Chinese reefs.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

The TPP went nowhere, because it had two contradictory objectives, namely trade promotion and China containment.

If the objective was regional trade promotion, China should be included.

If the objective is China containment, China will retaliate and the member countries’ trade with China will fall.

The ensuing loss of trade with China could be greater than the gain of trade with its TPP member countries. So, it is a deficit game for member countries unless Washington compensates the deficit.

The question is: “Can Washington afford it?” No wonder why Trump decided to withdraw from it.

TPP has now become CPTPP also known as TPP-11 (The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership of eleven countries including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam), which seems to be more than trade. But, to the extent that Japan leads it, it could become a China-containment weapon, because Japan still has the ambition of ruling Asia.

The Exclusive “Anglo-American-Ozzie”AUKUS Military Alliance.

The effectiveness of AUKUS as a military alliance remains to be proven. The new Prime Minister of Australia may have different ideas about Australia-China relations. The new Foreign Minister of Australia, Penny Wong, is known to be pro-China and her boss Anthony Albanese, the new Prime Minister of Australia, proposed a softer approach to China policy.

Source: Financial Express

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad)

The effectiveness of Quad depends on how India would react in case of war with China. India belongs to several multinational organizations such as BRICS, SOC, RCEP where India maintains good relations with China.

India PM Narendra Modi, US president Joe Biden, Japanese PM Fumio Kishida, Australian PM Anthony Albanese, Quad summit in Tokyo on May 24.

India is not sure of Washington’s security guarantee in the long run. India is disappointed of being excluded from AUKUS. India is fearful of Chinese retaliation. For all these reasons, India’s membership in Quad does not seem to be as strong as that of Japan.

The IPEF is Biden’s idea of containing China. This replaces the TPP and it is supposed to be trade-oriented with the hidden objective of destroying China. Therefore, it has the same dilemma as TPP. Whether its objective is for trade or China containment, the probability of success is low. Remember that all the member countries depend heavily on China for trade and investment.

Galloping Inflation: Economic and Social Crisis in America

However, the most serious stumbling block to the U.S. global hegemony are the worsening internal problems within the United States.

The inflation which could become galloping, intensifying street killings, decaying infrastructure, increasing number of people suffering from hunger, crowed city streets by the homeless and the jobless, soaring medical care cost preventing millions of people from getting medical care and rising number of school kids who starve due to ugly income inequality are all the sign of declining Pax Americana.

It appears that the priority should be given to the solution of the internal problems.

Some people may say that Biden, the great expert of diplomacy, has harvested rich rewards from his Asian tour. I do not share such praise.

I think that he has demonstrated what might be described as the diplomacy of a falling empire.

There are three ways of dominating the world: economic domination, ideological domination and military domination. But the military domination is powerless without economic domination and ideological backing.

America’s Global “Harakiri”. Diplomacy of a Falling Empire

The America’s economic domination is weakening due to its endless economic war;

its ideological domination is fading due to wrong management of democracy.

What is left is military domination.

Biden is resorting to the military domination without strong economic support and ideological backing. This is the symptom of a falling empire.

Biden’s diplomacy is, perhaps, the desperate efforts to save the falling empire through military might.

But, Biden’s pursuit for military domination will inevitably lead to global suicide of humanity and its shameful end.

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Dr. Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics, and member of the Research Center on Integration and Globalization (CIEM) of University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). 

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

 

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Hundreds of Ukrainian mines floating in the Black Sea threaten to halt tens of millions of tons of grain from being exported. Ukrainian officials claim it would take six months to clear the mines, something which directly contradicts the long-held claim that Russia’s naval blockade is preventing the export of wheat.

Markiyan Dmytrasevych, an adviser to Ukraine’s Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, said that regardless of any agreement with Russia, thousands of mines would remain floating around the port of Odessa, making the export of wheat difficult. According to Dmytrasevych, it will take until the end of the year to clear out all the mines, thus making a mockery of the months-long disinformation campaign that Russia was blockading Ukrainian wheat shipments and therefore responsible for any global food shortage.

Russia and Ukraine collectively supply about 40% of the wheat consumed in Africa, and due to the war and consequential anti-Russia sanctions, prices have already risen by about 23% across the continent. The two countries also account for about 33% of the world’s grain supply, and wheat prices have skyrocketed by a third since February 24.

To derail a global food crisis, Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline will have to be demined. However, demining efforts require specialized equipment to scour wide swaths of open water, something Kiev was fully aware of when it began mining the Black Sea.

NATO issued a warning on June 1, stating:

“Drifting mines have been detected and deactivated in the Western Black Sea by coastal nation’s authorities. The latest statement of regional authorities, confirming another sighting of a mine, shows the threat of drifting mines in the Southwest part of the Black Sea still exists.”

Along with the obvious problem associated with traversing mine-laden waters, shipping insurance for vessels heading to the region has skyrocketed.

“There is clearly a growing nervousness around the region in the insurance market, especially in relation to the Black Sea,” Marcus Baker at insurance broker and risk adviser Marsh told Reuters.

Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky told the Financial Times that while, in theory, he supports a maritime corridor, no Russian vessels should be allowed access.

“On UN-led talks to restore access to Ukrainian Black Sea ports, Zelensky was willing to back the idea of a maritime corridor to enable grain exports from Ukrainian ports as long as no access was given to Russian ships,” the paper reported. “There was no need for a dialogue with Moscow to resolve the blockade given that the only threat to world food supplies was coming from Russia.”

However, despite Kiev now acknowledging that demining efforts could take up to six months, Zelensky is still attempting to blame Russia’s naval blockade as the reason why 75 million tons of grain could be stuck in Ukraine after the summer season.

Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš is also disingenuous to the situation, questioning to the Atlantic Council on June 8 whether “a US or French warship [should] go through the Bosphorus and dock in the port of Odesa?”. Of course, his suggestion completely omits that US and French warships would not only have to break the Russian blockade, but also traverse mined waters.

None-the-less, Ukraine is in a difficult position. As the country unrelentingly refuses to negotiate an end to the war with Russia on the open orders of Washington and London, Ukraine does not want to weaken its coastal defenses around Odessa. However, at the same time, it has been exposed that Ukraine’s Black Sea mines are responsible for halts in the export of wheat, and not Russia’s naval blockade as Western leaders, officials and media led to us to believe for months.

Despite offering a way out of the emerging food crisis by calling for the demining of the Black Sea and the creation of a maritime safe corridor, Ukraine Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko tweeted on Wednesday that the words of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “are empty.”

“Ukraine has made its position on the seaports clear,” Nikolenko tweeted. “Military equipment is required to protect the coastline and a navy mission to patrol the export routes in the Black Sea. Russia cannot be allowed to use grain corridors to attack southern Ukraine.”

As Kiev stubbornly continues to carry out the demands of the US and UK, it appears that the establishment of a safe corridor for the export of grain from Ukraine will not emerge anytime soon, thus artificially creating a global food crisis that can be relatively easy to resolve, despite the inevitability of high wheat prices. Most disingenuously though is the continued portrayal that Ukraine is not responsible for the halt of exports, however, even this has been exposed to the point that Western media cannot ignore Kiev’s refusal to demine its coast.

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The Eight Stupidest Things About Nuclear Weapons

June 12th, 2022 by David Swanson

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1. Nukes are the “tough on crime” of foreign policy

Investing in children’s welfare and education costs less and reduces more crime than “tough on crime” policies which are often counterproductive, but voters in San Francisco just obeyed a bunch of corporate advertising and recalled a District Attorney because he had reduced crime rather than being “tough on crime.” Nuclear weapons cost tens of billions of dollars a year, plus the costs of the airplanes, submarines, bases, and troops. Claiming that nuclear weapons in Ukraine could have prevented a Russian invasion requires ignoring the fact that not putting missile bases into Poland and Romania and not threatening to put them into Ukraine could also have prevented a Russian invasion — and requires ignoring all the nations that have given up their nukes or passed up having nukes and not been invaded. But the important point is that there are less costly, less destructive, more effective means of protecting a country — even if they aren’t all generally thought of as relevant at all. Just as schools are not understood as crime prevention even though they are the very best crime prevention tool in existence, the tools of diplomacy, cooperation, disarmament, the rule of law, and unarmed civilian protection are not thought of as capital d “Defense” even though they are the very best protection available.

2. Nukes are the “we’re aware of climate change” of foreign policy

It’s generally considered well-educated to acknowledge the existence of climate collapse but to go on with all the practices and industries that are driving it, and to claim that there are endless ways in which you can undo the damage later. Similarly, one can get an op-ed into the New York Times or Washington Post by admitting that your proposals could cause nuclear apocalypse but proposing them anyway. For example:

“[W]e cannot aim for total victory over Putin’s Russia, because that could trigger a nuclear war — yet something like total victory may be the only way to stop Putin from just bleeding Ukraine forever.” —Thomas Friedman

“But if a cornered and delusional Mr. Putin were to instead use a nuclear weapon — whether via a tactical strike or by weaponizing one of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants — we would have several options. There are some who would argue for a nuclear response. But there is a wide range of options and they need not be mutually exclusive. For example, NATO could engage in Ukraine.” —Mitt Romney

“Any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict on any scale would be completely unacceptable to us as well as the rest of the world and would entail severe consequences.” —Joe Biden

When Henry Kissinger is arguing that the universal consensus is reckless warmongering, you just might have a problem.

3. The nuclear deterrence theory depends on threatening and seeming to mean it without meaning it, which challenges the mental abilities of many believers in nuclear deterrence theory.

Not only does pretending to mean it without meaning it or causing others to mean it require great acting talent and mental discipline, but it also requires fooling only particular audiences. Getting Vladimir Putin to believe you mean it, while counting on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s superior intellect to recognize that you don’t mean it is one hurdle. Getting Putin to believe you mean it but that you don’t mean it too immediately or definitely (so that he doesn’t launch them first) is another trick — dependent principally on the idea that you’re sufficiently insane to do it while completely capable of holding off. The fact that you may believe that very thing about Putin because your own propaganda has pushed it for years may mislead you about the ease of getting him (and the numerous people who actually run a government) to believe it of you.

4. One of the downsides of nukes is the serious risk of eliminating all life on Earth.

There are plenty of minor downsides, like radiation and cancer around facilities, and waste that will last for millennia, and plenty of dubious upsides like getting to name government programs after cool stuff in Star Wars movies. But it’s all overshadowed by the super big enormous downside that the Doomsday Clock tells us is more likely than ever, and that the mere passage of time virtually guarantees given the record of near-miss incidents and accidents. The concern about it is lower than ever. The absurd belief in powerlessness to do anything about it is higher than ever. But we have the history, including that of the rally in New York City on June 12th 40 years ago, of people making each other aware, acting, and moving utterly cynical politicians to do a significant portion of what was needed. If only anyone knew history.

5. Apocalypse is becoming acceptable.

According to Pew, 36% of Republicans and 35% of Democrats favor U.S. warmaking even if it risks nuclear war with Russia. Huge majorities support measures guaranteed to increase the risk of nuclear war with Russia — a risk already acknowledged by 69% in the U.S. Three years ago another poll found that a third in the U.S. supported not just a risk of nuclear war but actually launching nuclear weapons at North Korea even if it killed a million people; and a full half of the U.S. public said it would happily set aside its own capacity for independent thought and support a nuclear attack on North Korea after it had happened (but before their own demise from direct hits or nuclear winter). Meanwhile, there’s been an increase in admitting that climate change exists, but not in support for doing anything about it. In fact, support for addressing climate collapse is declining. The only category of people in the United States who support serious action on the environment in large numbers, according to Pew, are people who believe that this world is the only world, that when you die you die. But it’s not polite for me to say that, and some 99% of people are often bothered more by impoliteness than by the nuclear threat.

6. People believe nukes are concerning if you show them pictures.

I kid you not. A recent study summarized at Peace Science Digest found that it’s easy enough to get a majority in the U.S. to support nuclear war, unless you give them a “vivid description” — unless you show them a picture. Just as one must “humanize” every particular little subgroup of people in order to get other people to care about them as humans, you have to apocalypsize every particular type of apocalypse to get people to care about avoiding it as an apocalypse. People have to have details like eyebrows and favorite flavors of ice cream to be human. Then they have to have burned eyebrows and vaporized ice cream to become troubling. Here are some nuclear apocalypse videos you might spread around as a means of preventing them becoming nonfiction:

7. We’re paying people piles of money for this, and they’re buying our elections with it.

The owners of these sociopathic corporations are getting stinking rich putting all life on Earth at risk:

1. Aerojet Rocketdyne (United Kingdom, United States);
2. Airbus (France);
3. BAE Systems (France, United Kingdom, United States);
4. Bechtel (United States);
5. Bharat Dynamics (India);
6. Boeing (United Kingdom, United States);
7. China Aerospace Science and Technology (China);
8. Constructions Industrielles de la Méditerranée (France);
9. Fluor (United States);
10. General Dynamics (United Kingdom, United States);
11. Honeywell International (United States);
12. Huntington Ingalls Industries (United States);
13. Jacobs Engineering (United States);
14. L3 Harris Technologies (United States);
15. Larsen & Toubro (India);
16. Leidos (United States);
17. Leonardo (France);
18. Lockheed Martin (United Kingdom, United States);
19. Northrop Grumman (United Kingdom, United States);
20. Raytheon Technologies (United States);
21. Rostec (Russian Federation);
22. Safran (France);
23. Textron (United States);
24. Thales (France), and;
25. Walchandnagar Industries Limited (India).

8. The solutions are painfully obvious

There’s no great mystery what to do, how governments could do it, or how people could compel governments to do it. Yet it’s not being done.

If you are the U.S. government:

  • You commit to not using nukes ever.
  • You join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
  • You immediately begin complying with it and with other treaties you’re violating, so that people take it seriously.
  • You remove your nukes from other countries you’ve put them in.
  • You take the weapons off the missiles.
  • You dismantle and destroy the weapons, beginning with the land-based ones.
  • You facilitate the de-nuclearization of other countries by de-funding militarism in general and by investing in actually green energy.

If you are the U.S. public:

  • You work on divestment, education, agitation, and organization, learning from and building on the history of successful popular actions against nuclear madness.

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US Government Admits Participation in Ukrainian Biolabs

June 12th, 2022 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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In a recent statement, US government officials finally admitted that the country helped to build and maintain biolaboratories on Ukrainian soil over the last two decades. The declaration comes from the Pentagon, which reinforces the military importance of the program of biolabs abroad. However, US officials still insist on the evidently fallacious narrative that the laboratories were intended for “peaceful” use.

In an online statement on Thursday, June 9, US Defense Department’s representatives  said that Washington has been involved in the activities of 46 biolabs within Ukrainian territory, whose objectives, according to them, would be to act cooperatively with local experts in order to improve Ukraine’s biological safety and human and animal health.

“The United States has also worked collaboratively to improve Ukraine’s biological safety, security, and disease surveillance for both human and animal health, providing support to 46 peaceful Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and disease diagnostic sites over the last two decades (…) “This work, often conducted in partnership with outside organizations, such as the WHO and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), has resulted in safer and more effective disease surveillance and detection (…) Ukrainian scientists have acted consistent with international best practices and norms in publishing research results, partnering with international colleagues and multilateral organizations, and widely distributing their research and public health findings”, Pentagon’s spokespersons said.

The representatives also emphasized that there was no research being carried out in Ukraine involving the use of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. In this sense, the use of the biolabs would be restricted to activities related to the search for peaceful medical knowledge and without any military purpose, which seems contradictory, considering that there were US military personnel operating in these facilities, such as in all US biolaboratories in other countries.

In fact, if the function of the biolabs really existed only in a non-military way, the units could be managed by civilian institutions of the US government, instead of having the active participation of the armed forces and intelligence agencies. Furthermore, in this case, the American health authorities would be the ones called upon by the government to provide public clarification on the case, not the Pentagon. In the current conjuncture, the American authorities seem to contradict themselves successively, unable to hide the obvious truth that the country was producing biomedical research of a military nature in Ukraine.

In addition, the security policy surrounding the research carried out there raises suspicions about its possible peaceful use. Although in the statement it is claimed that the US acted in partnership with Ukrainian and international organizations, there was no publicity of data on the results of research in these units. In fact, the very existence of the laboratories had previously been denied by some American authorities – although some specific people, such as the Undersecretary Victoria Nuland, have also admitted, showing how there are continuous contradictory statements by the US government.

It seems that in the current situation, after Russia has exposed so much data about the clandestine activities of such labs and their supporters, there is no longer any way Washington can deny the existence of the activities, so it tries to maintain damage control through a “partial confession”, admitting the existence but denying the use for production of biological weapons.

Furthermore, even if we consider all the Pentagon’s statements true, many questions will remain unanswered. The sources of funding for the laboratories, according to data presented by the Russians, involved a wide network of private agents, including Big Pharma companies, such as Pfizer and Moderna, and Hunter Biden himself, son of the US president, known worldwide for carrying out illegal activities in Ukraine. None of this has been clarified by the Pentagon or any other American authority so far.

In addition, by not answering about private funding sources, the US government raises even more suspicions on the possible biological weapons research. It is true that there was American public money applied in the operations of the biolabs, but Russia denounces the existence of private investments that have not been recognized by the US so far. This means that there were at least two sources of funding for such activities. One of these sources was the US government itself, which supposedly financed peaceful biomedical research, while the other source, which involves pharmaceutical companies and corrupt agents, remains unofficial and, consequently, without clear purposes. Certainly, it was the private source that financed illegal research with bioweapons, which could not be included in official US state accounting documents. There are many questions Washington has yet to answer.

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

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***

On Friday, NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoana said that he expects the Western military alliance to establish permanent bases in Eastern Europe in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Under the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, the alliance agreed not to build permanent bases east of Germany, but Geoana suggested that the deal is now “void” because of Russia’s invasion.

Geoana said that as part of NATO plans, the alliance is working on a “state of the art, permanent” presence in Eastern Europe. At an upcoming NATO summit in Madrid scheduled for later this month, Geoana said alliance leaders will be working on a “fundamental transformation of NATO’s posture, presence and deterrence” in the region, which will include “more of a presence on the ground.”

Last month, The Washington Post reported that Poland and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are seeking a significant increase in NATO’s presence on their territory. But other NATO members, including France and Italy, are hesitant to do so. NATO members are also divided on whether or not to abandon the NATO-Russia Founding Act.

Earlier in the year, the US deployed tens of thousands of additional troops to Europe, many of which deployed to Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. US military leaders are looking to make the deployment more permanent.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Congress in April that US allies in the region are “very, very willing” to build new bases where US troops can be deployed. He suggested that the bases should be permanent, but that the US troops would rotate through them.

“My advice would be to create permanent bases but don’t permanently station, so you get the effect of permanence by rotational forces cycling through permanent bases,” Milley said.

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***

Is it anything positive when mainstream media starts to admit that Ukraine is losing the war with Russia?  Not necessarily.  While when she is losing – we should send her help even more!

You know, Rohan – Gondor, that is very serious…  So better let us be extremely watchful.  The Third World War option is still on the table.  And please remember: even when they lie less – they still cheat all the time.

Silences and hidden costs. This war is based on a lie

On lying to the World that it has not lasted since 2014, that there was no mass murder by the Nazi Banderites in Odessa, on 2nd May 2014, that the Ukrainian Nazi-battalions did not shoot the civilian population of Donbas, that the Kiev junta did not bomb residential areas of Donetsk, that drinking water supplies in Crimea were not cut off by Ukrainians, that the opponents of Anglo-Saxon domination over Ukraine were not assassinated.

And finally, that there was no plan of Ukrainian attack against the Donbass People’s Republics and Crimea in February 2022.

They lied and still lie, and even when they are silent, it is also only to cheat and hide the facts, such as Kiev attempts to produce dirty nuclear bombs and American biological weapons laboratories working in Ukraine.

They are also silent about the true costs of this war.

Both the direct ones, related to sending budget money, fuel, and weapons, as well as those resulting from the trade war with Russia, from the forced withdrawal of companies from the Russian market, and above all from a suicidal energy policy, which is at the same time inflationary and condemns millions of households to energy exclusion and misery.  We live in a time of multiplied lies on a strategic scale, and it can be summarised in several very expressive pictures.

De-falsification of Ukraine

Let’s take one of the many photos distributed a few weeks ago on the Western Internet as evidence of the allegedly unprecedented criminal nature of Russian aggression.

The photograph shows the body of a little boy in rompers lying in a coffin. Icons are placed next to his calm face and in the background a crying woman holds an older man in the deepest despair.

Commentaries explained that this a funeral of four-year-old Artiom, killed in a Russian artillery fire in the suburbs of Donetsk.  It is this last detail – the location – that should make viewers cautious. 

Why would the Russians attack the Donetsk suburbs, when this area has been under the control of pro-Russian People’s Republic of Donesk for eight years, and the front line is now many kilometres west of the capital of the independent Donbass?

However, the observers’ attention was focused on a boundless tragedy of the entire scene, so instead of geographical deliberations, bellow this photo we could find only hundreds of insults against the Russian aggressors allegedly killing innocent children. Well, it is hardly surprising, isn’t it?

Genocide of Donbass Civilians: Children - 11.04.2022, Sputnik International

Source: Sputnik News

Not at all.  Although the truth is different in a hard to imagine manner.  Artiom Bobryshev is really dead.

And he was really only 4 years and 4 months old at the time of his death.

And he lived with his family in the Kirov region of Donetsk.  

The point is that he was killed on the 15th January 2015. SEVEN YEARS AGO. 

During one of the hundreds of Ukrainian firings on Donetsk.  KILLED FROM UKRAINIAN MISSILES fired by the Kiev junta on the civilian city districts of the Donbass People’s Republics. 

Because this war has been going on for eight years. Donetsk children were really murdered there.  And the truth is still murdered.

The same deadly propaganda laboratory prepared and distributed photos and videos from the UKRAINIAN missile attack on Donetsk – as evidence that … the Russians are bombing civilian targets in Kiev.

If it was not about the human life dimension, that would be almost satirical Internet humbug, when Ukrainian propaganda calls “Let’s save Odessa from crazy Putin who comes to destroy it!

Odessa, a wonderful, internationalist city where Ukrainian Nazis tried to burn its local Russian-speaking identity with live fire, the same as they murdered 42 victims in the House of Unions! Odessa awaiting Russian liberation to be saved from Putin!

Nazi trail vs. return of normality

Even those who are blinded by some bizarre feelings towards the current authorities in Kiev or fascinated by Ukrainian pointless resistance, imposed by the Anglo-Saxons, with time will have to see that normal life is really returning to the areas under the Russian and Donbas control, reconstruction begins, civil administration acts and people are just alive and want to live on.

Whether someone in the West likes it or not – to live in Russia, in Novorossiya, also in a changed, denazified Ukraine, but to live normally.

Because what alternative do fanatics present?  Endless war, “the aid” half stolen on its way to Ukraine by the oligarchs and half sent immediately back to the Anglo-Saxon “donors” and memes, a lot of memes based on Kiev fakes?

Another systemic lie is also the hurried, alleged denazification of the AZOV Battalion.

The Nazi symbols of this gang are quietly removed and hidden.  And for the most distrustful there is a version, that this is a different, more friendly kind of Nazism”. 

Besides, Zelensky’s sponsors just follows the Banderites predecessors, acting the same as UPA (Nazi Ukrainian Insurgent Army) which when came under British control at the turn of 1946/47 forbade to expose swastikas and ordered to change popular nicknames like “Killer of the Jews” or “Throat Cutter”.

However, of course, Nazis are Nazis even with replaced badges and slogans, whenever we think about historical UPA or the present AZOV and other pro-Western Kiev forces.  And this is playing around with the forces, ideology and practice responsible for genocide.

Displace the facts

Unfortunately, many people, having shown Kiev and Anglo-Saxon lies in black and white, react with unacceptance and anger.  Instead of reflection and self-awareness – what unfolds is escalation and further self-deception.

Of course, lying is an inherent feature of the falsehood known as liberal democracy, but succumbing to it now equals to the global suicide.  That is why it is so important not to repeat the lies of Kiev propaganda. To keep the rational view and thinking.  To check the sources and verify the facts before copying news, memes and pictures.

Sure, the punishment for thinking can be painful. We know it seeing more and more scholars and thinkers abused in universities and blacken in the mainstream media simply for academic analysis of the current conflict.  So even more it is high time to understand this greatest lie.  It is not that we say SUCH things, “because we are Russian agents”. Just the opposite.  They call us “Russian agents, Kremlin supporters, Putin’s influencers” – just because we refute the lies: we say and write simple and basic things, namely the truth.

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Konrad Rękas is a renowned geopolitical analyst and a regular contributor to Global Research.

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**
First published on December 5, 2021

.

.

This video by the late Dr. Andreas Noack pertains to graphene hydroxide contained in the Covid vaccine vial.

Dr. Noack explains the devastating impacts of graphene hydroxide on the cardiovascular system.

“These nanoscale structures can best be described as razor blades.

These razor blades are injected into the body”

The video was recorded on the 23d of November 2021.

Shortly thereafter Dr. Andreas Noack was reported to have been murdered.

His wife made a video presentation confirming that he had been assassinated. See video below.

The mainstream media has remained totally silent as if nothing had happened.

No police investigation? The circumstances of his assassination have not been disclosed.

Our thoughts today are with Andreas Noack, his wife and his family.

The Legacy of Andreas Noack will Live.

Michel C, Global Research, December 5, 2021

***

Video, November 23, 2021

Dr. Noack’s research was a followup of that conducted by the Spanish team Quinta Columna

For further details on this project see the preliminary summary report by  Prof. Pablo Campra Madrid, entitled Graphene Oxide Detection in Aqueous Suspension, Observational study in Optical and Electron Microscopy.

Graphene has electromagnetic properties which have been detected in people who have been vaccinated. These effects have been amply documented and confirmed. See the study conducted by the European Forum for Vaccine Vigilance

***

Video: Andreas Noack has passed away, confirmed by his wife.

 

The November 2020 Video

There has been confusion and disinformation regarding Dr. Andreas Noack.

To clarify matters, last year in November 2020, the police entered his home and brutally arrested him.

The video below has recently been re-posted and misinterpreted without mentioning that it was recorded in November 2020.

Video, November 2020

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First published on January 28, 2022

***

Please recall our November 23, 2021 post titled “The FDA and Pfizer are a Match Made in Hell”.

There we described how the FDA took only 108 days to approve Pfizer’s injection, but wanted 55 years to produce the documents!

Thankfully Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency filed a lawsuit after the FDA denied their request to expedite the release of the records, and the records are being released, albeit still too slowly.

Among the first reports handed over by Pfizer was a ‘Cumulative Analysis of Post-authorization Adverse Event Reports’ describing events reported to Pfizer up until February 2021. You can download this entire report here.

Look at table 6 from this Pfizer report. It is titled “Missing Information”. Its first heading under the topic “Missing Information” is “Use in pregnancy and lactation”. It includes this paragraph:

“Pregnancy outcomes for the 270 pregnancies were reported as spontaneous abortion (23), outcome pending (5), premature birth with neonatal death, spontaneous abortion with intrauterine death (2 each), spontaneous abortion with neonatal death, and normal outcome (1 each). No outcome was provided for 238 pregnancies (note that 2 different outcomes were reported for each twin, and both were counted).”

On the surface this states that of 270 pregnancies, there were 23 spontaneous abortions, 5 “outcomes pending”, 2 premature birth with neonatal death, 2 spontaneous abortions with intrauterine death, 1 spontaneous abortion with neonatal death, and 1 normal outcome. But note also “no outcome was provided for 238 pregnancies”.

So really we have no idea what happened with 243 (5 + 238) of the pregnancies of these injected women; they have just not been included in the report. What we do know is that of 27 reported pregnancies (270 subtract 243), there are 28 dead babies! This appears to mean that someone was pregnant with twins and that 100% of the unborn babies died.

Here is an excellent article by LifeSite News which goes into greater depth about these shocking revelations. LifeSite News cuts Pfizer some slack on the 5 “outcomes pending” which creates  the possible impression that 87.5% of the babies of the injected women died. With all respect to LifeSite, I feel correct in not counting the 5 “outcomes pending” and hence arrive at the conclusion that 100% of the unborn babies died in the injected women for whom results are presented.

The LifeSite News article also reveals deceptive number games in another article titled “Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine”, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on December 31, 2020. These deceptive practices attempted to cover up the fact that in first trimester pregnancies, the Pfizer injection produced 82% miscarriages.

On January 12th we shared the excellent analysis by the Canadian Covid Care Alliance of this same “Safety and Efficacy” article from the New England Journal of Medicine. This Pfizer-friendly study is a complete sham; it is replete with misrepresentation and deceptive methods. The deception and truth is revealed in detail in this video and article by the CCCA.

Dr Trozzi’s brief and Dr Nagase’s excellent interview discussing this sham article is here.

They’re killing babies; what can we do?

These injections are criminal; period. Help us serve the Cease and Desist Declaration of the World Council for Health, to any and all governments, clinics, hospitals, medical regulatory bodies, doctors, nurses, politicians, or anyone participating in any way in the manufacture, shipping, distribution, promotion, or administration of these injections. The message to anyone involved in these injection campaigns is “Stop now. This is a crime. You will be criminally and civilly responsible. The cat is out of the bag. Justice is coming.”

The Declaration can also be found here along with information and instructions for serving it.

Please keep photos and notes of to whom, when and where the declaration and notice is served. We are finalizing more resources on the World Council for Health web site to upload these photos and details. These resources will be fine tuned and found here very soon.

There are at least five million Canadians, and billions of global citizens who have resisted the injections. We, as well as many coerced injection victims who are waking up with buyer’s remorse, must be the army that stops this, and return human rights and real health care to our society.

Do not submit; unite!

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First published on May 15, 2022

***

The time is now. As most readers of this substack are now well aware, this is not just about COVID. The constitution hangs in the balance. Please help us to get these messages spread far and wide. The 17,000 Physicians and Medical Scientists in our organization, who are not financially conflicted and remain committed to the Hippocratic Oath, are doing our part. Now we ask that you help us to help you. We need your help.

Global COVID Summit, Declaration IV

A Joint Statement, representing 17,000 Physicians and Medical Scientists 

To Restore Scientific Integrity

17,000 Physicians and Medical Scientists Declare that the State of Medical Emergency must be lifted, Scientific integrity restored, and crimes against humanity addressed.

We, the physicians and medical scientists of the world, united through our loyalty to the Hippocratic Oath, recognize that the disastrous COVID-19 public health policies imposed on doctors and our patients are the culmination of a corrupt medical alliance of pharmaceutical, insurance, and healthcare institutions, along with the financial trusts which control them. They have infiltrated our medical system at every level, and are protected and supported by a parallel alliance of big tech, media, academics and government agencies who profited from this orchestrated catastrophe.

This corrupt alliance has compromised the integrity of our most prestigious medical societies to which we belong, generating an illusion of scientific consensus by substituting truth with propaganda. This alliance continues to advance unscientific claims by censoring data, and intimidating and firing doctors and scientists for simply publishing actual clinical results or treating their patients with proven, life-saving medicine. These catastrophic decisions came at the expense of the innocent, who are forced to suffer health damage and death caused by intentionally withholding critical and time-sensitive treatments, or as a result of coerced genetic therapy injections, which are neither safe nor effective.

The medical community has denied patients the fundamental human right to provide true informed consent for the experimental COVID-19 injections. Our patients are also blocked from obtaining the information necessary to understand risks and benefits of vaccines, and their alternatives, due to widespread censorship and propaganda spread by governments, public health officials and media. Patients continue to be subjected to forced lock-downs which harm their health, careers and children’s education, and damage social and family bonds critical to civil society. This is not a coincidence. In the book entitled “COVID-19: The Great Reset”, leadership of this alliance has clearly stated their intention is to leverage COVID-19 as an “opportunity” to reset our entire global society, culture, political structures, and economy.

Our 17,000 Global COVID Summit physicians and medical scientists represent a much larger, enlightened global medical community who refuse to be compromised, and are united and willing to risk the wrath of the corrupt medical alliance to defend the health of their patients.

The mission of the Global COVID Summit is to end this orchestrated crisis, which has been illegitimately imposed on the world, and to formally declare that the actions of this corrupt alliance constitute nothing less than crimes against humanity.

We must restore the people’s trust in medicine, which begins with free and open dialogue between physicians and medical scientists. We must restore medical rights and patient autonomy. This includes the foundational principle of the sacred doctor-patient relationship. The social need for this is decades overdue, and therefore, we the physicians of the world are compelled to take action.

After two years of scientific research, millions of patients treated, hundreds of clinical trials performed and scientific data shared, we have demonstrated and documented our success in understanding and combating COVID-19. In considering the risks versus benefits of major policy decisions, our Global COVID Summit of 17,000 physicians and medical scientists from all over the world have reached consensus on the following foundational principles:

  1. We declare and the data confirm that the COVID-19 experimental genetic therapy injections must end.
  2. We declare doctors should not be blocked from providing life-saving medical treatment.
  3. We declare the state of national emergency, which facilitates corruption and extends the pandemic, should be immediately terminated.
  4. We declare medical privacy should never again be violated, and all travel and social restrictions must cease.
  5. We declare masks are not and have never been effective protection against an airborne respiratory virus in the community setting.
  6. We declare funding and research must be established for vaccination damage, death and suffering.
  7. We declare no opportunity should be denied, including education, career, military service or medical treatment, over unwillingness to take an injection.
  8. We declare that first amendment violations and medical censorship by government, technology and media companies should cease, and the Bill of Rights be upheld.
  9. We declare that Pfizer, Moderna, BioNTech, Janssen, Astra Zeneca, and their enablers, withheld and willfully omitted safety and effectiveness information from patients and physicians, and should be immediately indicted for fraud.
  10. We declare government and medical agencies must be held accountable.

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***

Understandably, emotions run high in a war. However, prominent German philosopher Jürgen Habermas calls on us: “let’s not allow ourselves to be guided by warmongering or a politics of fear”. He insists on reasonableness and “comprehensive consideration”.

The end of German pacifism

One of the most remarkable and unexpected events of this war is Germany’s radical turn regarding armaments and war efforts. The country has no real war industry, in the past it spent relatively little on armaments and in military conflicts the government has generally been very moderate. Just think of Iraq in 2003 or Libya in 2011.

From a historical point of view, that is more than understandable and sensible. In the past, the militarization of Germany has twice led to a global conflagration resulting in tens of millions of deaths. Therefore, it is better not to go back to that situation.

There is a second reason for the German reluctance to be involved in the current conflict. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, German capital was poured into Eastern and Central Europe. Strong economic ties were forged with Russia, among others.

Outside the European Union, Russia was until recently the fourth most important country for German imports and the fifth most important country for the export of German goods. The Germans are particularly dependent on the Russians in terms of energy: for gas that dependency is 32 percent, for oil it is 34 percent and for coal it is 53 percent.

German capital therefore has nothing to gain from a protracted conflict, let alone from an escalation, on the contrary. Conversely, it is especially the US that has an interest in this. At least that’s how Willy Claes, a former NATO-boss, sees it. According to him, this conflict is essentially about a “confrontation between Russia and America” in which “Europe is not involved”. He notes that the US it “will not mind it taking a while”.[1]

At the outset of the invasion, for the two reasons cited, the Federal Government was particularly reticent, much to the chagrin of countries such as the US, UK and the eastern states of the European Union. They put pressure on Chancellor Scholz to shake off this reticence.

The pressure exerted by the media was even greater. Due to the fact that almost everyone now has a smartphone, this is the most mediatized war in world history. We are able to follow the appalling suffering in this war online with the most horrific details, so to speak, and that arouses a lot of emotions, even far away from the battlefield.

In addition, the mainstream media use the Hollywood framing of ‘the good versus the bad’. Such a framing is excellent for viewing and reading figures, and moreover it raises the emotions in public opinion. Such reporting however, leaves no room for nuance or for balanced approaches such as those of the German government at the outset of the conflict.

Eventually, Olaf Scholz gave in to the great pressure and that was the end of a pacifist foreign policy that had lasted for the past 75 years. Germany will spend no less than 100 billion euros extra on armaments in the coming years and promises have also been made for arms supplies to Ukraine.

An ugly dilemma

It is against this pressure on the German chancellor and the break with the pacifist past that Jürgen Habermas has written a noteworthy op-ed piece in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Habermas is Germany’s most prominent and respected philosopher, pretty much the Noam Chomsky of Germany.

The 92-year-old philosopher outlines the ugly dilemma facing the West: either a defeat in Ukraine or the escalation of a limited conflict that could turn into a Third World War. In this “space between two evils”, the West has chosen not to participate directly in this war.

For Habermas, this is a wise decision because “the lesson we have learned from the Cold War is that a war against a nuclear power can no longer be reasonably ‘won’, at least not by military force”.

The problem with this is that Putin then determines

“when the West crosses the threshold set by international law, beyond which he will also formally consider military aid to Ukraine to be the start of a war by the West. This gives the Russian side an asymmetrical advantage over NATO, which does not want to become a war party because of the apocalyptic proportions of a world war involving four nuclear powers.”[2]

On the other hand, the West “cannot accept being blackmailed randomly. If the West simply left Ukraine to its own devices, this would not only be a scandal from a political and moral point of view, it would also not be in its own interest.” The scenario of what happened in Georgia and Moldova[3] could then repeat itself and, Habermas wonders, “who would be next”?

Within this uneasy setting, Habermas is glad that the German chancellor is not guided by a “politics of fear” and that he is pushing for a “politically responsible and comprehensive consideration”.

Scholz himself summarized his policy in Der Spiegel as follows:

“We confront the suffering that Russia is causing in Ukraine by any means necessary without causing an uncontrollable escalation that causes immeasurable suffering across the continent, perhaps even the entire world.”

Warmongers

But Scholz is under a lot of pressure. He faces a “fierce battle of ideas, fuelled by press voices, over the nature and extent of military support to a ravaged Ukraine.” In addition, the main protagonist, President Zelensky, is a talented actor, “who knows the power of images and delivers powerful messages”. The “political misconceptions and wrong decisions of previous German governments” are thus easily weaponized for “moral blackmail”.

Habermas here refers on the one hand to the continuation of the policy of detente after the fall of the Soviet Union, even when Putin had become unpredictable, and on the other hand to dependence on cheap Russian oil.

This moral blackmail has

“ripped the young away from their pacifist illusions”. He explicitly refers to Annalena Baerbock, the young foreign minister of the Greens, “who has become an icon, who immediately after the start of the war gave authentic expression to the shock with credible gestures and confessional rhetoric”.

Three days after the invasion, Baerbock gave an emotional speech to the German parliament. As in other countries, the German Greens have strong roots in the peace movement. It was therefore more than significant that it was mainly the German Greens who insisted within the government for more and faster arms deliveries.

Habermas is particularly irritated by the “belligerent rhetoric” and “the self-assuredness with which the morally indignant accusers in Germany act against a thoughtful and reticent federal government”. They are hounding the chancellor with “short-sighted demands”.

“The conversion of the former pacifists” according to Habermas “leads to mistakes and misunderstandings”, and he perceives a “confusion of feelings”. These “agitated opponents of the government line… are inconsistent in negating the implications of a policy decision they do not question.”[4]

Scholz has kept a cool head for the time being. He has had to make concessions, but he continues to steer a cautious and moderate course, especially when compared to the bellicose stance of the US or Britain. Germany has promised to increase its arms supplies to Ukraine, but these are promises and their implementation has been slow.

Unlike hawkish countries such as the US, UK and the Baltic States, France, Germany and Italy maintain an open dialogue with Russia. For example, Scholz and Macron had a telephone conversation with Putin to negotiate, among other things, about unblocking Ukraine’s food exports.

Putin

Habermas also resents the “focus on Putin as a person”. That “leads to wild speculation, which our leading media spread today, just as in the heydays of speculative Sovietology.”

The media portrays “an erratic visionary” who sees “gradual restoration of the Great Russian Empire as his political life’s work”. “This personality profile of an insanely driven historical nostalgic contrasts with a track record of social progress and the career of a rational and calculated strongman”.

Habermas interprets the invasion of Ukraine “as a frustrated response to the West’s refusal to negotiate Putin’s geopolitical agenda”.

For Habermas, Putin is “a war criminal” who deserves having to appear before the International Criminal Court. But at the same time, he notes that the Russian president still has veto power in the Security Council and that he can threaten his opponents with nuclear weapons.

Like it or not, it will be with him that we will “need to negotiate an end to the war, or at least a truce”.

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Translated by Dirk Nimmegeers.

Source

Jürgen Habermas unterstützt abwägende Haltung des Bundeskanzlers, Der Spiegel.

Notes

[1] Willy Claes in Belgian TV programme De Afspraak of 24 May: “If I may say it a little boldly, it is about a confrontation now between Russia and America. With all due respect and sympathy for the Ukrainians, and by the way, Europe is not playing along. … In conclusion, the Americans will not object it taking a while. … It’s a golden age for the war industry, which is by definition American.”

[2] The US, France, Great Britain and Russia.

[3] In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia to support the self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia it backed in their conflict with Georgia’s central authorities. After a ceasefire, the Russians withdrew but maintained a security zone in the conflict zones. A similar scenario had previously occurred in Moldova in the period 1990-1992.

[4] NATO’s choice not to be directly involved in this war.

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Ucraina: La Disinformazione Del Sistema Informativo

June 10th, 2022 by Manlio Dinucci

Nel primo riferimento alla sua attività si legge quanto segue: Il piano del 2019 / Un suo articolo che sostiene come «l’attacco anglo-americano a Russia e Ucraina era stato pianificato nel 2019» è diventato una sorta di manifesto «di mezzi di informazione statali russi e utenze che sostengono l’invasione dell’Ucraina».

Il Corriere non indica la fonte delle frasi virgolettate ma, nel presentare il dossier, parla di “materiale raccolto dai servizi”. Si tratta di una completa distorsione della realtà: nell’articolo del 2019, pubblicato sul Manifesto il 21 maggio col titolo “Rand Corp: come abbattere la Russia”, l’autore non sosteneva una sua tesi ma riportava il piano pubblicato dalla Rand Corporation, potente think tank USA, intitolato “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”. Per di più è assurdo che l’autore scrivesse nel 2019 di un piano di “attacco anglo-americano a Russia e Ucraina”, quando già l’Ucraina aveva incluso nella sua Costituzione la decisione di far parte della NATO (argomento trattato dallo stesso Dinucci sul manifesto del 12 febbraio 2019).

Nel secondo riferimento si legge quanto segue: Passaggi del suo libro La guerra – È in gioco la nostra vita, pubblicato dalla ByoBlu Edizioni — editrice di un canale digitale e tv più volte tacciato di «disinformazione», — sono stati citati da Putin nel discorso del 9 maggio per le celebrazioni del Giorno della vittoria.

Sul Corriere del 6 giugno, Alessandra Arachi ribadisce: Tra i personaggi che avrebbero fatto parte della “rete”, secondo gli apparati di sicurezza, c’è Manlio Dinucci che ha scritto un libro sulla guerra che lo stesso Putin ha citato il 9 maggio per le celebrazioni del giorno della Vittoria. Si tratta di un falso che raggiunge livelli demenziali, sufficiente da solo a dimostrare la natura del dossier del Corriere: un esempio di giornalismo trash strumentale a un piano mirante a mettere a tacere qualsiasi voce alternativa a quella del mainstream politico-mediatico.

VIDEO :

https://www.byoblu.com/2022/06/10/grandangolo-pangea-la-rassegna-stampa-internazionale-di-byoblu-51-puntata/

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Pakistan must decide between the US-controlled IMF and China with respect to which of those two can most realistically help it avert bankruptcy and accordingly become its top economic-financial partner across what’s thus far been the most chaotic decade since World War II.

Pakistan’s reputable Express Tribune cited “highly placed sources” on Thursday when reporting that the US-controlled IMF demanded that the country renegotiate energy deals connected to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship project of Beijing’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), as part of an implied prerequisite for receiving a bailout from that global financial body. This comes precisely at the moment that Pakistan’s economic crisis continues to comprehensively worsen and the new authorities who scandalously replaced former Prime Minister Imran Khan in early April on the pretext of resolving these problems have yet to come up with any sustainable solution.

It also deserves mentioning that Pakistan and China agreed last September not to alter tariff and tax policies connected to CPEC energy deals so the new authorities would be going back on the former government’s word if they tried to revise these terms under the US-controlled IMF’s pressure. The optics of them attempting that could extend credence to the former premier’s claims that they came to power as part of a US-orchestrated regime change against him as punishment for his independent foreign policy. China is Pakistan’s top strategic partner and one of the dual engines of the emerging Multipolar World Order alongside Russia so Islamabad must tread very carefully in this respect.

Any sudden moves in the direction of simultaneously presenting themselves as having complied with US pressure following accusations that they were brought to power by America in order to flip Pakistan’s grand strategic reorientation away from the multipolar conservative-sovereigntist (MCS) direction of former Prime Minister Khan and towards Washington’s self-interested unipolar liberal-globalist one could irreparably harm the reputation of the new government. Of relevant concern, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa opined just a few days back that China’s interest in South Asia seems to be fading, including in Pakistan, which hosts BRI’s flagship project.

According to him,

“My analysis is that China has shifted their strategic focus into Southeast Asia. They see more strategic interest in Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia, that region, and Africa. They have less interest in this region. I don’t know whether I am right or wrong, even the focus on Pakistan has gone down. That shows that their interest here is not like earlier. Their interest has shifted to two other areas.”

While this remains the realm of his personal opinion for now since it hasn’t been objectively confirmed, it’s nevertheless a reasonable observation since recent economic and political tumult in top Chinese partners like Sri Lanka and Pakistan might have led Beijing to recalibrate its grand strategy.

Instead of concentrating on South Asia like before, the People’s Republic might indeed be redirecting its BRI focus to neighboring ASEAN and Central Asia, the first of which has a much larger and stable market while the second can connect China to Iran and Turkey. Africa, as always, remains a priority focus of China’s comprehensive global engagement efforts since neither can sustainably rise across this century without the other, meaning that there’ll be neither an African Century nor a Chinese Century but most likely an Afro-Sino Century if their efforts are successful. Even though South Asia is important for China, and especially Pakistan’s CPEC, recent uncertainty there might have comparatively reduced its interest.

Should this observation be even partially accurate, then it would suggest that Pakistan has been forced onto the horns of a dilemma by the US-controlled IMF whereby it must make a zero-sum choice.

Simply put, Pakistan must choose between complying with Washington’s indirectly conveyed demands via that global financial body and thus risk complicating relations with China or rebuff the same country that its new government is laser-focused on improving relations with, possibly ruin the opportunity for a rapprochement, but reassuringly retain its excellent strategic relations with the People’s Republic.

The stakes couldn’t be higher considering former Prime Minister Khan’s earlier warning about the sequence of events that could spell the end of his country in the worst-case scenario. In his words,

“If the establishment doesn’t make the right decisions then I can assure in writing that they and the army will be destroyed because what will become of the country if it goes bankrupt. Pakistan is going towards a default. If that happens then which institution will be [worst] hit? The army. After it is hit, what concession will be taken from us? Denuclearisation. If the right decisions aren’t made at this time then the country is going towards suicide.”

For as worrying as this scenario might sound, it certainly seems credible, especially considering the dilemma that Pakistan has reportedly just been forced into by the US-controlled IMF. This places immense pressure on the country’s military and intelligence structures, which are collectively referred to as “The Establishment” in Pakistani parlance, to soon decide which course of action to take. The problem, however, is that The Establishment recently decided to abandon its former role in stewarding the country by unexpectedly taking a position of “neutrality” ever since the scandalous no-confidence motion against former Prime Minister Khan that he alleges was orchestrated by the US.

This newfound stance might not be the best to practice at such a pivotal juncture in Pakistani history since The Establishment had previously claimed that CPEC was an initiative of grand strategic interest that had the full support of all the country’s stakeholders. With this in mind, their continued “neutrality” might be interpreted by some observers – and particularly those in China – as tacit approval of whatever the new government decides to do regarding the US-controlled IMF’s reported demand to renegotiate CPEC energy deals. By failing to intervene and letting them possibly comply with Western pressure, The Establishment might inadvertently send a very troubling signal to China.

The People’s Republic might immediately suspect that there’s credence behind former Prime Minister Khan’s claims that his successors came to power as part of a US-orchestrated regime change to reverse his independent foreign policy if they suddenly went back on the former government’s agreement to retain the terms of CPEC energy deals under indirect American pressure via the IMF. That could signal to the Chinese that the new government aligns more with the US-led Western ULG worldview than the jointly Russian- and Chinese-led MCS one. Furthermore, Beijing might also come to believe that The Establishment tacitly supports this grand strategic reorientation too.

Should this scenario come to pass, then Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa’s observations about China’s allegedly decreased interest in South Asia might become a fait accompli, at least with respect to Pakistan. The People’s Republic would in all likelihood regard the new Pakistani government and their Establishment backers as unreliable, thus potentially redirecting its BRI focus away from that country and towards Central Asia like it’s already seemingly in the process of doing in order to pioneer connectivity with more economically and politically stable Iran and Turkey. Pakistan and CPEC will always undoubtedly remain important, but they’d no longer be the “first among equals” in BRI.

Reflecting on the strategic insight shared in this analysis, it’s clear that Pakistan has been thrust by the US onto the horns of a dual dilemma. It must first most urgently avert its impending bankruptcy in order to preserve the integrity of its nuclear program per former Prime Minister Khan’s wise warning, but it must also decide between the US-controlled IMF and China with respect to which of those two can most realistically help it do so and accordingly become its top economic-financial partner across what’s thus far been the most chaotic decade since World War II. This means that Pakistan is forced to make a pivotal zero-sum choice whose grand strategic consequences will reverberate for years to come.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Journalists who receive some funding from foreign governments are at risk of committing offences under a bill that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The risk also applies to individuals working for civil society organisations such as human rights groups. 

It would be an offence to disclose leaked information that would prejudice the “safety or interests of” the UK. What constituted such prejudice would be entirely a matter for ministers to decide and there would be no defence to argue that the publication was in the public interest.

The sweeping new threat to freedom of expression is contained in the National Security Bill which MPs are due to vote on for the first time today. The Bill is being championed by home secretary Priti Patel.

Although the government has claimed the measure is designed to prevent new types of spying, the bill is much broader, wider even than the much criticised section 1 of the 1911 Official Secrets Act it would replace.

The 1911 Act refers to the obtaining or communication of information “calculated to be or might be or is intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy” (emphasis added).

Also under the bill, ministers and spies would be given immunity from collusion in serious crimes overseas.

Military chiefs of the Five Eyes countries (US, UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada) met Johnson last week. (Photo: Andrew Parsons / No 10)

Life imprisonment

The Freedom of Information (FoI) Campaign and Article 19, the global campaign for free expression, describe the bill as a major extension of the scope of offences in the 1911 Act.

They say: “A civil society organisation engaged in legitimate activities which has some funding for work on environmental, human rights, press freedom, asylum, aid or other issues from a friendly government could commit an offence under the bill.”

The prosecution would need to show only that such organisations had made use of leaked information “which they knew or should have known was restricted to avoid prejudicing the UK’s safety or interests and that its use did prejudice the UK’s safety or interests.”

The organisations add: “The decision on what constituted the UK’s safety or interests would be the government’s and could not be challenged in court. If the government decided that the UK’s energy situation required an immediate expansion of fracking or the building of coal fired or nuclear power plants, the use of leaked information which could undermine that policy could be a criminal offence under the bill.

“The prosecution would only have to show that the information prejudiced the attainment of the government’s policy in the UK’s interests and that the person who used the information received funding from a foreign government.”

On conviction, that person could face life imprisonment.

Overseas funding

The FoI Campaign and Article 19 point out that the same would be true if an organisation with overseas government funding to confront the problems of asylum seekers used leaked information to oppose the UK government’s asylum policies.

The government could assert that these were necessary in the UK’s interests.

A journalist working for another government’s state broadcaster – including that of a friendly state – who reports on a leak of protected information which is held to be prejudicial to the UK’s interests, would also commit an offence under the bill if they knew or ought to have known that the broadcast would prejudice the UK’s safety or interests.

The fact that the journalist was paid by the funds of a foreign government department or agency and that the broadcasting organisation itself was financed by such funds would satisfy the foreign power condition.

They would also face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Yet a journalist working for a UK news organisation responsible for an identical report based on the same leak could not commit this offence because the foreign power condition would not apply.

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Featured image: Priti Patel leaves St Paul’s Cathedral with other ministers after the Platinum Jubilee service on Friday. (Photo: Andrew Parsons / No 10)

Who Owns the World?

June 10th, 2022 by Peter Koenig

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What does it mean “Owning the World”? Can anybody, even the richest individual or the richest institution – rich defined as in mucho-mucho money – own the world? That would include, “owning” nature in all its infinite multitude, plants, insects, mammals, all the seas, the water under and above ground and the air we breathe – everything, trees, grass, flowers, bees, summa-summarum, the World.

That’s not possible. And hopefully will never be possible. But, as Klaus Schwab would say

“We – mankind – have now a unique opportunity to end the ambition and the drive of a few dystopian minds to pursue this goal which, if reached, might destroy the planet, our Mother Earth. We must join together now and with an awakened conscience exit this sick-to-the-bone matrix.”

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This one-hour video provides a comprehensive picture of who controls everything we buy, eat, read, travel in, clothe ourselves with, how and about what we communicate with each other – and, yes, they also control the climate.

Please watch the documentary and spread it around as far and wide as you can. Click image below to watch.

Finally, they control also our banking system. The “controllers”, those who enslave us with monetary handcuffs – inflation, interest rates, debt, credit, digital money, digital spending control – eventually they can make us or break us. Or in a better term: They wish they can make or break us. We can stop it. And we must.

For the safety of Mother Earth and for our own salvation.

As it stands today, the majority of the world – the food we eat, the transportation we use, the news we read – it’s all owned by the very same people. Combined, they are like an octopus stretching its tentacles around the world.

Their agenda is almost endless, but complete; well thought out for the last at least hundred years. They can make plandemics, provoke wars, climate change, cause supply chain disruptions, famines and massive death.

The term “plandemic” is used instead of pandemic, so that all understand that the pandemic was planned.

“They” are the levers and hands, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithmic tools of some extremely powerful financial corporations, the names of which are, by now, almost household words – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – are everywhere. There are others, like Morgan-Stanley, Bank of America, Chase and so on. They also own a small piece of the pie.

Black Rock and Vanguard and to some extent State Street, are intertwined, linked together with mutual shareholdings, inter-changes of management and, thus, joint policy decisions.

Their individual asset holdings count as a single cumulative leverage power, currently as an estimated US$ 20 to US$ 25 trillion, as compared to the 2021 US GDP of some 23 trillion dollars, or the world GDP of 95 trillion US$ equivalent (2021 statistictimes.com). The combined leverage strength of 25 trillion dollars is at least 1.5 times the value of the world GDP.

So, every country of the world, every government, does their bidding. Any exception was “neutralized”.

That’s what we have been experiencing for the last two years. The worldwide, generalized, lockstep approach to covid management, measures, restrictions, testing and finally, the vaxxing tyranny – all is part of a massive public oppression; control of 7.9 billion people.

Shifting of assets from the lower 20% to 30% to the top one percent. Oxfam says, the world’s 1% gets 82% of the world’s wealth.

Forbes claims that by March 2020, here were some 2075 billionaires in the world. According to Oxford, two thirds of them obtained their fortunes through inheritance and monopolies.

Bill Gates alone, increased his pre-plandemic fortune from 96.5 billion dollars by about 33 billion to 129 billion in 2022 (Forbes). Increasing one’s fortune by a third (34%) during a plandemic he helped create, which decimated the income and livelihood of billions of people and caused tens of millions of deaths, is quite an “achievement”. Maybe one day it will be ripe for Nuremberg 2.0.

So, the powerful become even more powerful.

They can buy up huge areas of prime-farmland, dictating the meet production is bad for the environment, that we, humans, should eat artificial plant-made meat, bugs, GMO-vegies, and leave the rich farmland to nature and to the oligarchs, of course.

Who owns the new food production? Bill Gates, the Rockefellers, the Soros Open Society Foundation, and the same giant financial institutions, we have seen before, operating through smaller corporations, companies and banks.

The same huge financial corporations, BlackRock, Vanguard, Sate Street, et al, are also the financial backbone of the World Economic Forum, or the WEF.

Two months before the corona plandemic “broke out”, in January 2020, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the WEF and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, hosted the Event 201, a simulation of a corona virus plandemic.

Just by chance, a corona virus plandemic broke out at the beginning of 2020, simultaneously, around the entire world. All governments worldwide applied the same stern measures – in lockstep – lockdowns, mask wearing, social distancing, isolation; a scenario already illustrated in the 2010 Rockefeller Report, as Chapter I “The Lockstep Scenario”.

So-called gene-modifying mRNA injections, wrongly called vaccines, were prepared in advance, but they were rolled out only in December 2020.

They were immediately “emergency approved” by all the health agencies throughout the world. The injections of these vaxxes caused immediately large numbers of “side-effects”, injuries and death. Nobody was responsible. All vaxx-companies were transferring the liability for vaxx-injuries to the governments, who bought – were forced to buy – their vaxxes.

Klaus Schwab, the founder and CEO of the WEF, said about the corona outbreak, Covid-19, this was a historical opportunity to Reset the world – what translated into the slogan that was in every politician’s mouth, “we are going to build back better”.

Finally, Schwab says in his book, The Great Reset, that by 2030, we will own nothing but we will be happy. Meaning we, the survivors at the end of the decade of the 2020s, will live in a fully digitized world as transhumans, owning nothing, but chipped and mind-controlled by 5G, to believe we are happy.

Happy Humanity!

***

There is hope. We can wake up and break loose from this matrix. We are many. They are few.

Please watch the documentary and spread it around as far and wide as you can. Click image below to watch.

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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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***

It isn’t every day that an elite group of more than 120 high level political leaders, corporate CEOs, and representatives from the worlds of finance, academia, and the media meet to discuss global affairs. But when such a top-level gathering does take place, you might imagine it would receive extensive media attention. In the case of meetings of the ultra-secretive Bilderberg Group, however, this is not what generally happens. Instead, the vast majority of the mainstream media simply avoids making any mention of them. This year’s Bilderberg meeting, held between 2-5 June at the luxurious Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington D.C., was no exception.

Established in 1954, meetings of the Bilderberg Group are invitation-only and normally take place once a year. Around two-thirds of the participants come from Europe, with the rest coming from North America. Publicly, Bilderberg likes to claim that its meetings are simply a forum for ‘informal discussions’. In reality, however, they wield enormous global influence.

The appointment of former Belgian Prime Minister Herman van Rompuy as the first President of the European Council in 2009 famously took place within days of him attending a special Bilderberg dinner meeting that was seemingly organized for the sole purpose of considering his candidacy. Many other Bilderberg alumni, such as Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Angela Merkel, have similarly gone on to assume senior political roles after attending its meetings. For this reason, Bilderberg’s participant lists are often seen as a good indication of where future power may lie.

Notable attendees

Notable attendees from the world of politics at this year’s meeting included the 99-year-old Henry Kissinger; Mark Rutte (Prime Minister of the Netherlands); Sanna Marin (Prime Minister of Finland); Charles Michel (President of the European Council); and Margaritis Schinas (Vice President of the European Commission). Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was also tipped to be contributing this year via a video conference link.

Attendees from the corporate world included Albert Bourla (Chairman and CEO of Pfizer); Emma Walmsley (CEO of GlaxoSmithKline); Ben van Beurden (CEO of Shell); Bernard Looney (CEO of BP); Eric E. Schmidt (former CEO and Chairman of Google); Yann Lecun (Vice President and Chief AI Scientist of Facebook); Kevin Scott (CTO of Microsoft); and José Manuel Barroso (Chairman of Goldman Sachs International).

Other stand-out names appearing on the participant list included the King of the Netherlands; Jens Stoltenberg (Secretary General of NATO); William J. Burns (Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency); Jake Sullivan (Director of the United States National Security Council); and Jeremy Fleming (Director of the British Government Communications Headquarters).

Bilderberg expects global instability to continue

The list of key discussion topics at this year’s meeting suggests Bilderberg expects the current period of global instability to continue. Top of the discussion list was the subject of ‘Geopolitical Realignments’. This was followed by discussions on ‘NATO Challenges’, ‘China’, ‘Indo-Pacific Realignment’, ‘Sino-US Tech Competition’, and ‘Russia’.

Just as concerning as these opening topics was a discussion on ‘Continuity of Government and the Economy’. Frankly, we can only but guess exactly what this might have been referring to. Continuity after what, in other words. Another global pandemic and a breakdown of public order? Economic collapse? An escalation of the war in Ukraine? While a possible indication can arguably be found in the discussion topic that followed (‘Disruption of the Global Financial System’), Bilderberg’s overall message seems to be that the world will not be returning to normal anytime soon.

A further thought-provoking topic came in the form of a discussion titled ‘Disinformation’. Given the growing worldwide controls on freedom of speech over the past two years, particularly online, and the Biden administration’s attempt to set up a so-called ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ with the stated goal to “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security”, the participation of several heavyweight representatives from big tech in the meeting suggests Bilderberg has decided that achieving ‘Continuity of Government and the Economy’ is dependent on gaining still further control of the online world.

Following a discussion on ‘Energy Security and Sustainability’ in which we can assume the CEOs of Shell and BP played prominent roles, next up on the agenda was an item titled ‘Post Pandemic Health’. With Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine having recently become the most lucrative medication in history, the participation of its CEO this year can be interpreted as a sign that Bilderberg is betting on the company’s dominance of pharmaceutical medicine to continue.

Other topics covered (or at least, those we have been told about) included discussions on the ‘Fragmentation of Democratic Societies’ and ‘Trade and Deglobalization’. The meeting apparently closed with a discussion on Ukraine.

And there you have it. Aside from a well-written article penned by long-time Bilderberg observer Charlie Skelton that was published in the Guardian, mainstream media coverage of the 4-day meeting was virtually non-existent. It wasn’t as if big media didn’t have anyone present, however, as the participants included senior representatives from Axel Springer, The Economist, The Financial Times, and others. It’s simply that they – and Bilderberg – don’t want you to know about it.

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

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

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U.S. Out of Africa: Voices from the Struggle

June 10th, 2022 by Black Alliance for Peace

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The United States Department of Defense has carved up the earth into eleven unified combatant commands. The U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, and the U.S. Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM, are two of these combatant commands. While AFRICOM encompasses the African continent with the exceptions of Egypt, which is under the jurisdiction of CENTCOM, and Eritrea, SOUTHCOM incorporates the Caribbean and South and Central America and claims to be protecting human rights in the region as a long-term responsibility through the development of “regional militaries,” controlled and facilitated by the U.S. Its mission includes contingency planning, operations (including disaster response and “crisis action”), security cooperation, “the force protection” of U.S. military resources in the region, and “ensuring the defense” of the Panama Canal, a critical geographic node for U.S. commerce and security across both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Like AFRICOM does on the African continent, SOUTHCOM works to extend and protect U.S. political and economic interests in the Americas region. And like AFRICOM, the military-first strategy has become the tool to maintain U.S. regional domination, despite SOUTHCOM’s spurious claims of “humanitarian assistance/disaster relief” and counter-narcotics operations. U.S. “Full Spectrum Domination” is SOUTHCOM’s real objective in our region.

Both SOUTHCOM and AFRICOM are extensions of NATO and the militarized assault on the democratic and human rights of Africans by the U.S. with the support of neocolonial forces, as well as an attack on the self-determination of African peoples and nations in the Americas, the African continent, and the world. Domestic and international repression by the U.S. security state are linked. Our oppression crosses borders; so must our solutions. All who support the right of the people to authentic democracy and human rights should stand in solidarity against neo-colonial rule and the imperialism that it protects.

The Black Alliance for Peace stands against the growing influence and power of SOUTHCOM and AFRICOM, and the ever-increasing militarization of the regions that they operate in. We call for international “Zones of Peace” in the Americas and on the African continent. Informed by the Black radical peace tradition, we understand that peace is not the absence of conflict, but the achievement, by popular struggle and self-defense, of a world liberated from nuclear armament and proliferation, unjust war, and global white supremacy.

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Oleksandra Koval, director of the Ukrainian Book Institute (part of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture), has claimed that they will begin working towards withdrawing over 100 million so-called ‘propaganda’ books from public libraries in Ukraine. The books – including the works of the world-renowned writers and poets Dostoyevsky and Pushkin – may be sent to paper recycling centres according to the Minister of Culture and Information Policy, Oleksandr Tkachenko.

The first round of withdrawals, which Koval expressed a desire to complete by the end of the year, will target what she called in an interview with Interfax Ukraine, “ideologically harmful literature” published when Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, as well as Russian literature with so-called “anti-Ukrainian content”. The second round of withdrawals is intended to include all books published in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union: “they will probably be of different genres, too, including children’s books, and romance novels, and detective stories,” Koval explained.

After the disposal of such ‘harmful’ literature, Ukrainian Public and School libraries will be left with about 100 million books, or half of their current total volume, according to Koval’s estimate. But not all copies of Russian books ought to be removed, says Koval: some should be kept in university and scientific libraries, where Soviet-era children’s fairy tales and romance novels will be preserved “for specialists to study the roots of evil and totalitarianism”.

The removal of Russian books must be seen in the greater context of the ‘decommunisation’ of Ukraine. Since 2015, all communist parties and symbols have been banned, and the war has only been used to further ramp up political repression: the Zelensky regime has banned another eleven parties, and has placed all TV stations under government control.

This is not the first time in recent years Russian books have been banned by the Ukrainian government. In 2015, 38 books published in Russia were banned. More books have been added to the list since, including two books by the popular contemporary Russian detective-novel author, Boris Akunin, and a memoire of the beloved Soviet actor and musician Vladimir Vysotsky.

In 2018, the Russian language edition of ‘Stalingrad’ by British historian Antony Beevor was banned, although the ban was later lifted due to pressures from the British embassy. The reason for the ban? A passage describing the murder of 90 Jewish children by the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, of which Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera was a leading figure.

This is the same Bandera who in 2021 was honoured by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory through inclusion in a ‘Virtual Necropolis’ commemorating important historical figures – alongside two commanders of SS battalions (Smovsky Konstantin Avdiyovych, deputy commander of the 118th Battalion of the Schutzmannschaft and Ivan Omelianovycha-Pavlenko, commander of the 109th Schutzmannschaft) who carried out pogroms against Jews! But monuments to Stepan Bandera are not limited to the virtual realm. In recent years statues have been constructed in honour of the pogromist, while statues of Lenin and Pushkin have been torn down. And in Chernihiv, a monument to the Soviet partisan and anti-fascist martyr Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was demolished.

On 21 May, a picture was shared on social media allegedly showing the burning of Ukrainian history books, organised by Russian forces. This image was given wide circulation by the British ambassador to Ukraine, as well as the ex-prime minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt (who, among other shady dealings, has been implicated in war crimes in Sudan as a member of Lundin Group’s board of directors).

The picture was later proven by the France24 fact checking site ‘the Observers’ to have been taken during a protest in Crimea in 2010. Regarding whether the Russian forces have generally engaged in the destruction of books, the France24 article goes on to say that “Ukrainian authorities have claimed that Russian soldiers have destroyed books in the occupied areas… However, our editorial staff did not find any photos showing this destruction.”

It is hardly novel for governments to crack down on free speech in times of war. But this attack is just the latest of many attacks against the status of the Russian language in Ukraine that long precede this war. One third of Ukrainians regard Russian as their native tongue. Yet in 2017, a law was tabled stating that Ukrainian must be the language used at all levels of education, with Russian and other minority languages only recognised for instruction at pre-school and primary school levels. Before his election in 2019, Zelensky had promised to throw this law out but soon reneged on his promises. This is just a continuation of the chauvinist policies of Ukrainian governments since the 2014 Maidan coup, which have repeatedly clamped down on the democratic rights of Russian speakers, whilst glorifying historical Nazis and Nazi collaborators, and permitting fascist gangs free reign across the country for years.

This is the same government which is supposedly fighting for ‘democracy’ – a fight for which it is receiving billions of pounds worth of support from western governments. All Progressives must stand on the side of the international working class in opposition to these attacks from the Ukrainian government; in opposition to the crocodile-teared imperialists in NATO; and in opposition to Putin’s invasion. War will always bring horror, and capitalism will always bring war.

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Gilad Erdan, Israel‘s ambassador to the United Nations (UN), was elected on Tuesday as a vice president of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly, despite objections from Iran and Syria.

Beginning in September, and lasting for one year, the new position will see Erdan chairing General Assembly meetings and have a role in setting their agendas.

While addressing the General Assembly in October, Erdan tore up the UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) yearly report, copying former ambassador Chaim Herzog, who did the same in 1975 when the UN declared Zionism a form of racism.

Large sections of the report condemned Israel’s offensive against the besieged Gaza Strip in May 2021, which killed 260 Palestinians and 13 people on the Israeli side.

Speaking on Tuesday, Erdan said: “this triumph sends a clear message to our enemies that they will not prevent us from participating in leading roles at the UN and in the international arena.

“Hatred must never triumph over the truth. I won’t allow it.”

Erden will be one of 21 vice presidents during the annual session.

Danny Danon, Erdan’s predecessor, was elected as one of the vice presidents of the 72nd session of the assembly in 2017.

Israel blamed

Erdan’s election comes despite increasing anger over Israel’s actions in the Palestinian occupied territories in recent months, including the killing on the 11 May of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces in Jenin.

On Wednesday, UN investigators concluded that Israel’s occupation and discrimination against Palestinians were the main causes of the endless cycles of violence in Israel and the occupied territories.

A high-level team of investigators, appointed last year by the UNHRC to probe “all underlying root causes” in the decades-long conflict, pointed the finger squarely at Israel.

“Ending the occupation of lands by Israel… remains essential in ending the persistent cycles of violence,” they said in the 18-page report, adding that there was ample evidence that Israel has “no intention” of doing so.

The report added that Israel was pursuing “complete control” over the occupied territories, including occupied East Jerusalem.

The commission said the Israeli government has been “acting to alter the demography through the maintenance of a repressive environment for Palestinians and a favourable environment for Israeli settlers”.

Highlighting an Israeli law denying naturalisation to Palestinians married to Israeli citizens, the report accused Israel of providing “different civil status, rights, and legal protection” for Palestinian citizens of Israel.

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Featured image: While addressing the General Assembly in October, Erdan tore up the UN Human Rights Council’s yearly report over its criticism of Israel’s offensive against the Gaza Strip in May 2021 (UNTV)

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken refused to answer questions on why Israel has not been held accountable over the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, despite eyewitness testimony, media investigations and her employer blaming Israeli forces for her death.

During a Summit of the Americas event in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Abby Martin, the host of the independent documentary and interview series The Empire Files, asked Blinken why there have been “absolutely no repercussions” for Israel over Abu Akleh’s killing, or for Saudi Arabia for the killing of Middle East Eye columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

“Secretary Blinken, what about Shireen Abu Akleh?” asked Martin. “She was murdered by Israeli forces. CNN just agreed to this. These are our two greatest allies in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Israel. They have murdered American journalists and there have been absolutely no repercussions.

“Why is there no accountability for Israel or Saudi Arabia for murdering journalists?”

Blinken responded by saying:

“I deplore the loss of Shireen. She was a remarkable journalist, an American citizen.”

After Martin objected to Blinken’s assertion that the evidence in the case was not yet clear, the secretary pushed back:

“I’m sorry, with respect, [the facts] have not yet been established.”

“We are looking for an independent, credible investigation. When that investigation happens, we will follow the facts, wherever they lead. It’s as straightforward as that,” he said.

The remarks effectively dismissed an investigation carried out by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which concluded last month that Abu Akleh had been deliberately targeted by Israeli troops.

Eyewitnesses and colleagues who were present at the time of the killing, including Middle East Eye correspondent Shatha Hanaysha, have all said that Abu Akleh was targeted by an Israeli sniper. Al Jazeera has said Abu Akleh was “assassinated in cold blood”.

The CNN investigation that Martin referenced concluded that “there was no active combat, nor any Palestinian militants, near Abu Akleh in the moments leading up to her death” and that the evidence “suggests that Abu Akleh was shot dead in a targeted attack by Israeli forces”.

The Associated Press has also carried out a reconstruction of Abu Akleh’s killing and reported that their findings lend “support to assertions from both Palestinian authorities and Abu Akleh’s colleagues that the bullet that cut her down came from an Israeli gun”.

Calls have grown both in the US and internationally for an independent investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing.

More than 50 US lawmakers signed a letter last month calling on the FBI and State Department to intervene and lead a probe.

On Monday, Republican Senator Mitt Romney, along with his Democratic colleague Senator Jon Ossoffcalled on the Biden administration to conduct “a full and transparent investigation” into the killing.

The PA has refused to hand over the bullet to Israel, saying Israel could not be trusted to investigate the conduct of its military. Rights groups have also said Israel has a poor record of investigating the conduct of its forces in relation to Palestinian deaths.

Al Jazeera has referred the case to the International Criminal Court in the Hague and vowed to bring the killers to justice through all international legal platforms.

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The Biden administration today said it made available 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for children under age 5 to states and healthcare workers with “millions more available in the coming weeks.”

The White House unveiled its “Operational Plan” for vaccinating the youngest age group — one week before advisors to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are scheduled to meet to decide whether to grant Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna pediatric vaccines for babies as young as 6 months old.

According to the White House:

“If FDA authorizes and [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)] recommends one or both of the COVID-19 vaccines for this age group, it would be a historic milestone in the nation’s fight against the virus — and would mean nearly every American is eligible for the protection that vaccination provides.”

Children under 5 could begin receiving the vaccines as early as “the week of June 20th — with the program ramping up over time as more doses are delivered and more appointments become available,” the White House said.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times orders for the vaccines from states “have been somewhat tepid so far.”

Of the 5 million doses offered last week — prior to today’s announcement — 58% of the available Pfizer vaccines were ordered, and “roughly a third” of the available Moderna vaccines had been ordered.

The vaccines, paid for by the U.S. government, are being made available to pediatricians’ offices, community health centers, rural health clinics, children’s hospitals, public health clinics, local pharmacies and other community-based organizations.

The administration said it “will remain laser-focused on equity and making sure that we reach those hardest-hit and most at-risk communities.”

The plan includes working with programs such as Head Start and the Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, Program in addition to Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, and Latino, Black and Native American community programs.

The White House also will focus on parents, especially moms:

“‘What to Expect,’ a platform of over 20 million moms, will author a blog series featuring doctors and other trusted experts answering questions about pediatric COVID-19 vaccines, and how moms, expecting moms, and all parents can get the information they need to get themselves and their children vaccinated; author new articles dispelling myths about the COVID-19 vaccine and children; and create and amplify new What to Expect social media content, reaching moms where they are and fighting vaccine misinformation across all platforms.”

Critics question need, raise safety, efficacy concerns

Many experts have questioned the need to vaccine young children in part because the virus poses little-to-no serious risk to them and in part because, according to the CDC, the majority of children have already had, and recovered from the virus.

Dr. Marty Makary last week told Fox News the COVID-19 vaccines do “not make sense” for most kids.

Makary, a physician and public health researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said:

“If you look at the fact that 75% of kids had COVID as of a CDC study back in February and Omicron has been ubiquitous since then, 80 to 90 plus percent of kids have already had COVID. So we’re talking about immunizing those who are already immune for a lot of people. That just does not make sense.

Others, including Dr. Michelle Perro, a pediatrician, have warned about the risks associated with the vaccine, and evidence the vaccines provide weak protection, especially as they were designed for the original Wuhan strain which has been supplanted by a wave of new strains.

In a letter submitted Wednesday to the FDA, 18 members of Congress addressed a number of concerns about the vaccines.

They asked the agency to, “Please list the medical emergencies of children 0 to 4 years old that enables the FDA to approve the COVID vaccine for children using its EUA.”

In all, the Congress members demanded answers to 19 questions and requested a response before next week’s meeting.

Commenting on today’s announcement by the White House and on its timing — a week before FDA scientists meet to review data on the vaccines — Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Chairman and Chief Legal Counsel Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called on parents and physicians “now more than ever” to “step into the breach to protect our babies from our government.”

Kennedy said the COVID-19 countermeasures, including the vaccines, were “never about science or public health.”

He added:

“Now they have departed from common sense and into naked cruelty and barbarism. By recommending an unapproved, experimental, zero-liability and high-risk medical intervention for an illness that poses zero statistical danger to that age group, the White House has made itself the enemy of America’s children.

“The Pharma gods have demanded child sacrifice and the high priests of public health have offered a generation of infants. Now more than ever, parents and physicians must step into the breach to protect our babies from our government.”

Kennedy and CHD in February delivered a letter to top public health officials and the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee urging them to reject Pfizer’s application for EUA of its COVID vaccine for children 6 months through 4 years of age.

According to the letter:

“We are writing to put you on notice that should you recommend this pediatric EUA vaccine to children under five years old, CHD is poised to take legal action against you.

“CHD will seek to hold you accountable for recklessly endangering this population with a product that has little, no, or even negative net efficacy but which may put them, without warning, at risk of many adverse health consequences, including heart damage, stroke and other thrombotic events and reproductive harms.”

The FDA was originally scheduled to meet Feb. 15 to review Pfizer’s EUA application for COVID-19 vaccines for children 6 months to 5 years old, but postponed the meeting citing insufficient data. Pfizer resubmitted its application June 1.

Moderna submitted its application for the vaccine for children 6 months to age 6 on April 28, after changing its efficacy claims to meet FDA guidelines.

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A new CHD Films documentary, “Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda,” exposes a World Health Organization program resulting in the sterilization of African women without their knowledge or consent.

From award-winning filmmaker Dr. Andy Wakefield, in collaboration with executive producer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), and CHD Films, comes the documentary “Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda.”

The film exposes a World Health Organization (WHO) population control experiment carried out under the guise of a vaccination program, that resulted in the sterilization of women in Africa without their knowledge or consent.

The film premieres tomorrow, Friday, June 10 at 2 p.m. ET on CHD.TV. Immediately following the 30-minute film, a special edition of CHD.TV’s “Friday Roundtable” will feature Wakefield, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Dr. Jim Thorp, Brian Hooker, Ph.D. and Dr. Liz Mumper to discuss the dramatic rise in infertility issues across the globe.

Click image to watch the video

“It is with timely irony that the World Health Organization reveals its true colors as it makes a desperate grab for control of global health,” said Wakefield, who directed the film. “This story is a true ‘WHO’ dunnit.”

“Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda” pulls back the curtain to reveal the truth behind WHO’s nefarious collaboration with the Kenyan government in which an experimental tetanus vaccination — later found to be laced with the pregnancy hormone βhCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) — was given to millions of unknowing African women of childbearing age in the 1990s and early 2000s. Consequently, their right to carry children was stolen.

Wakefield chronicles this tragic story and brings shocking new evidence to light. As the late Dr. Stephen Karanja warns in the film, “When they’re through with Africa, they’re coming for you.”

“The truths exposed in this film cast a long shadow from a tetanus trial in Africa to the symptoms of infertility that are happening all over the world, including reports after the Gardasil vaccine and the COVID-19 shots,” said CHD Chief Science Director Dr. Brian Hooker.

Mary Holland, CHD president and general counsel and author of “The HPV Vaccine on Trial: Seeking Justice for a Generation Betrayed,” had this to say about the film:

“This film documents evidence that strongly supports the idea that the WHO was conducting an experiment on women of childbearing age to make them infertile without informed consent.

“The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, signed by most countries of the world, specifies that enforced sterilization is a war crime. This film highlights that rendering human beings infertile without their consent, as was done to the most vulnerable people during the eugenics era in the U.S., is truly diabolical.

“The film asks whether the global community should vastly empower the WHO to regulate and enforce global health policy.”

CHD.TV will air the film with special programming featuring leading experts discussing their concerns about the rise in infertility rates and how other vaccines, including the COVID-19 shot, are linked to infertility.

The line-up includes the following highlights:

  • Friday, June 10 at 2:30 p.m. ET: “Friday Roundtable” featuring Dr. Andy Wakefield, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Dr. Jim Thorp, Brian Hooker, Ph.D. and Dr. Liz Mumper.
  • Monday, June 13 at Noon ET: “Tea Time” featuring women’s health expert Dr. Christiane Northrup who will answer questions from the public regarding infertility.
  • Tuesday, June 14 through Friday, June 17 at 10 a.m. ET: “Good Morning CHD” will feature Dr. Patrick Flynn, Dr. Lawrence Palevsky and a representative from CHD Africa.
  • Thursday, June 16 at 1:30 p.m. ET: “Doctors and Scientists” with Brian Hooker, Ph.D. will be joined by obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Jim Thorp.
  • Wednesday, June 22 at 1:30 p.m. ET: “Against the Wind” with Dr. Paul Thomas will be joined by Dr. Andy Wakefield.
  • Watch on-demand “The Solution” with Dr. Tony O’Donnell interviewing Dr. Andy Wakefield.

“An abiding principle of ethical medical practice is that every patient has the right to fully informed, voluntary consent,” said Kennedy.

“We expose the WHO’s gross violation of this principle in its surreptitious campaign to prevent and abort pregnancies in millions of unsuspecting African women. WHO led these women to believe that they were part of a public health program to protect their newborn babies. This is a timely message that the WHO is not fit, on any level, to dictate global health policy.”

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A leading peace group on Monday said a new report detailing the depth of U.S. support for Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen—hundreds of which have been called war crimes by international legal experts—shows the need for Congress to pass a recently introduced measure to end American complicity in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

According to The Washington Post—which along with the Security Force Monitor (SFM) at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute analyzed thousands of news reports and images to identify warplanes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that have attacked Yemen—”a substantial portion of the air raids were carried out by jets developed, maintained, and sold by U.S. companies, and by pilots who were trained by the U.S. military.”

This, despite a February 2021 pledge by President Joe Biden to end U.S. support for “offensive operations” in the Saudi-led war—a promise that has been repeatedly sidestepped via arms sales and a $500 million maintenance contract.

“This is an absolutely devastating analysis of U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen,” tweeted the Quaker peace group Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). “Our ongoing complicity is a stain on our nation’s soul. Just further reason for Congress to pass the newly introduced Yemen War Powers Resolution.”

Last week, a bipartisan group of 48 House lawmakers introduced a War Powers Resolution directing “the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.”

“It’s critical that the Biden administration take the steps necessary to fulfill their promise to end U.S. support for the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen,” explained Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), one of the resolution’s lead sponsors.

“We should not be involved in yet another conflict in the Middle East,” he added, “especially a brutal war that has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, and contributed to the deaths of at least 377,000 civilians.”

Writing for Just Security, Priyanka Motaparthy, director of the Counterterrorism, Armed Conflict, and Human Rights Project at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, and SFM’s Tony Wilson noted Saturday that “during seven years of war, coalition airstrikes have killed nearly 9,000 civilians in Yemen.”

“Human rights groups and the United Nations-mandated Group of Eminent Experts have documented more than 300 airstrikes that are likely war crimes or violations of the laws of war,” they continued. “These strikes have hit hospitals and other medical facilities, markets, a school bus filled with children, and a funeral hall filled with mourners.”

“Independent human rights groups, journalists, and U.N. monitoring bodies have found U.S. weapons used in many of these attacks,” the pair added.

The Post-SFM investigation comes amid widespread U.S. and Western condemnation of alleged and documented Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

“Thousands of similar strikes have taken place against Yemeni civilians,” the report notes. “The indiscriminate bombings have become a hallmark of the Yemen war, drawing international scrutiny of the countries participating in the air campaign, and those arming them, including the United States.”

The report also comes as Biden prepares to visit Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks in a bid to boost relations with the oil-rich kingdom amid record fuel prices driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—despite a campaign promise to make the nation’s leaders “pay the price” for their role in the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The president’s decision to visit the fundamentalist kingdom, one of the world’s worst human rights violators, stands in stark contrast to the U.S.’ exclusion of Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan leaders from the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles—purportedly due to the lack of democracy and respect for human rights in those countries.

Annelle Sheline, a Middle East research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, last week called the introduction of the War Powers Resolution “a key factor in why the warring parties in Yemen decided to extend their ceasefire,” which is now in its third month.

Speaking of the resolution on Al Jazeera last week, Sheline said that “if this were to pass, two-thirds of Saudi Arabia’s air force would be grounded, because they cannot operate without U.S. military contractors, spare parts, and assistance.”

“It very clearly shows,” she added, “that the Saudis… don’t want to be in the position of losing the ability to fly their own planes if the U.S. does withdraw support.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Featured image: Brendan Bell-Taylor, Action Corps Idaho organizer, and Laura Burton protest the war on Yemen in front of the Idaho State Capitol, in Boise, on January 25, 2021, as part of a Global Day of Action: World Says No to War on Yemen. Sen. Jim Risch, U.S. senator from Idaho, is the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. [Source: twitter.com]

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On 8 June, a judge overturned the original Greek court ruling that rubber-stamped the US confiscation of Iranian oil.

“The action for the reversal of the ruling was accepted by the court,” an unnamed source told Reuters, before adding “it will be hard to overrule that [the appeal court’s ruling].”

“The court has ruled that the cargo be released. The Greek government was not involved,” a Greek government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

In response to the news, the Iranian ambassador to Greece said on 9 June that he believes Iran will soon receive its oil shipment.

In retaliation for the coordinated theft of its oil by Greece and the US, naval forces from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized two ships sailing under the Greek flag in the Persian Gulf on 27 May.

The Delta Poseidon and Prudent Warrior ships were seized near the Iranian ports of Bandar Lengeh and Asalouyeh.

During the theft of the Iranian oil, a minor oil spill was caused, prompting condemnationof the theft by Greek environmental groups.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibizadeh urged Greece to resolve the issue without the involvement of the US.

The Iranian official said:

“Mr Blinken has to realize that the era when the US single-handedly imposes its rules on the world has come to an end … the biggest disrupter of free trade in the world.”

“Unfortunately, the Greek government demonstrated that taking orders from a third party is more important to them … But we believe relations between Iran and Greece should remain well-intentioned,” FM spokesman Khatibizadeh told reporters in Tehran.

“I suggest the Greek government take the legal and judicial route in this respect without any fanfare,” Khatibizadeh said.

The Greek court ruling which overturned the initial ruling that approved the US confiscation of Iranian oil indicates that Athens desires to mend ties with Iran without US involvement.

In spite of US sanctions, Iran has increased its oil trade internationally, maintaining exports of one million barrels per day (bpd) since the start of the Iranian new year.

Revenue from Iranian energy exports increased by 60 percent in the same time period.

According to Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the economic roadmap written by Tehran is designed to anticipate growth and success independently of the outcomes of negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal currently taking place in Vienna.

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What If the U.S. Had Invaded Ukraine?

June 10th, 2022 by Jacob G. Hornberger

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Let’s engage in a thought experiment. Suppose that Ukraine was headed by a pro-Russia regime. After repeated failed attempts at assassination by the CIA, the Pentagon finally decides to invade Ukraine for the purpose of bringing about regime change — i.e., ousting the pro-Russia regime from power and replacing it with a pro-U.S. regime.

What then would be the response of American statists, especially those within the U.S. mainstream press?

There is no doubt about the answer. Everything would be different than it is today with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The media would be proudly embedding itself within the U.S. military’s invading forces. Mainstream papers would be reporting and commenting on the courage of U.S. troops. There would be no sympathetic pictures or videos of Ukrainian civilians killed; they would all be labeled as “collateral damage.” Church ministers across the land would be exhorting their congregations to pray for the troops. Every statist across the land would be tripping over himself to find some soldier to thank for his service. Airlines would be inviting soldiers to board planes first as a way to honor them. Statists would be condemning the “bad guys” — that is, those Ukrainians who were shooting at American soldiers. Every statist would be praising and glorifying the Pentagon for bringing freedom to Ukraine. 

How do we know that American statists would react in this way to a Pentagon invasion of Ukraine?

Two answers: Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s how statists reacted when it was the Pentagon that invaded those two countries. That’s how we know that that’s how statists would react if it were the Pentagon, rather than Russia, that invaded Ukraine.

When I was in high school and college, a common question that would be asked regarding World War II was: How could the German people overwhelmingly support Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party? After all, today the Nazi regime is easily recognized by most Americans as the “gold standard” when it comes to evil. Why weren’t the Germany people able to see that?

The answer lies in the power of state indoctrination and government propaganda. 

The German people had the same conception about government that American statists do. They believed that the more powerful their government, the stronger their nation. Actually, it’s the exact opposite. The more powerful the government, the weaker the nation — that is, the weaker the populace. That weakness is reflected by citizens with passive and deferential mindsets — ones that are easily molded into believing whatever government officials want people to believe. 

That’s why powerful governments will always have the nation’s children herded into state education camps — that is, “public” schools. The purpose is always to mold the mind of the child from its earliest years to become loyal, patriotic, passive, and deferential. That mindset becomes so well-fortified over 12 years in school that it oftentimes lasts until the person dies. 

Consider the words of Nazi official Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials: “Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

Isn’t that why U.S. statists overwhelmingly supported the Pentagon’s invasion of Afghanistan? Didn’t they passively and patriotically buy into the U.S. government’s official pronouncement that the Taliban was complicit in the 9/11 attacks? Didn’t they also passively and patriotically buy into the U.S. government’s official pronouncement that Iraq was about to unleash “mushroom clouds” over American cities?

And isn’t that also why U.S. statists are doing everything they can to avoid confronting the sordid role that the Pentagon, operating through its old Cold War dinosaur NATO, has played in producing the Russia-Ukraine war that has now killed thousands of people? 

This is what happens under omnipotent government. You get a weak nation of citizens with passive, deferential mindsets, ones that go with whatever the official flow is. 

As I point out in my new book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, it is always easy to identify and confront evil in foreign regimes. Anyone can do that, as American statists are easily able to do with respect to Nazi Germany. It is a much more difficult task to identify and confront evil within one’s own regime, which is why most Germans were unable to identify and confront the evil of the Nazi regime. What we need in America is a great awakening, one in which Americans achieve a higher level of conscience, consciousness, and independence of thought, one that would empower them to identify and confront the evil within their own regime.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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Creating Cold War Conditions in Asia Isn’t Easy

June 10th, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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Only three weeks remain for the summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Madrid, which is expected to unveil a new Strategic Concept aimed at redefining “the security challenges facing the Alliance and outline the political and military tasks that NATO will carry out to address them.”

The NATO and the European Union are in unison that the world has fundamentally changed in the past decade and strategic competition is rising, and security threats in Europe and Asia are now so deeply connected that the two continents become a “single operating system”. 

The past week saw some “finishing touches” to the new cold war agenda — the US President Joe Biden hosting Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand; three tiny NATO countries in the Balkans blocking their air space to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to visit Serbia; and, Japan hosting the NATO Military Committee chief Rob Bauer. 

The first one was about Washington stepping in to draw New Zealand, the reluctant Pacific partner standing in the shade, towards the Indo-Pacific centre stage. (Biden actually invoked memories of the landing of US troops in World War II in New Zealand.) The second was an unprecedented act of diplomatic taboo, like dogs marking territory — “Serbia belongs to the West.” And Japan and NATO have messaged a new level of cooperation. 

To be sure, in the US’ struggle with China and Russia, Japan is emerging as the anchor sheet of its strategy in Asia. An agreement was reached in Tokyo on Tuesday during Bauer’s visit that Japan and NATO will step up military cooperation and joint exercises. (In May, Japanese Military Chief of Staff Koji Yamazaki had joined a meeting of NATO counterparts in Belgium for the first time.) 

The Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said after meeting with Bauer that Japan welcomed NATO’s expanded involvement in the Indo-Pacific region. He said, “The security of Europe and Asia are closely intertwined, especially now with the international community facing serious challenges.” Bauer also spoke of “shared security challenges” for the NATO and Japan. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been invited to the NATO summit in Madrid, which would make him the first Japanese leader to do so. 

Japan’s case is that Russia’s special operation in Ukraine distracts the US, which may embolden China to unify Taiwan with military force. In reality, though, the Biden Administration does not seem to share Japan’s paranoia. The defence ministers of the US and China are slated to meet in Singapore on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La conference. The US defence secretary Lloyd Austin has expressed cautious optimism that his forthcoming meeting will contribute to regional stability. Reportedly, the US State Department changed its Fact Sheet over Taiwan this week, reinserting a line “We do not support Taiwan independence,” which had been removed a month earlier.  

Japan’s eagerness to play an important symbolic and practical role in the West’s struggle with Russia stems from a complex set of motives. The alacrity with which Japan became one of the most active countries in implementing strong sanctions against Russia in support of Ukraine is striking. Almost overnight, Prime Minister Kishida swung to an openly negative stance towards Russia. 

Within a fortnight of the Russian operation in Ukraine on February 24, Kishida stated that the “Northern Territories (Kuril Islands) are inherent territories of Japan” and on 8th March, Foreign Minister Hayashi followed up that the territories are “unlawfully occupied by Russia.” On 9th March, Kishida already referred Russia to the International Criminal Court. And on 16th March, Japan revoked Russia’s status as a “most-favoured trading nation”, froze Russian assets and excluded selected Russian banks from the SWIFT bank messaging system. Since the end of World War II, Japan had not sent military matériel to another country in the midst of fighting a war, but in in early March, the country’s Self-Defense Forces loaded up a Boeing KC-767 tanker aircraft with materials bound for the battlefields of Ukraine. 

In sum, Japan eagerly demonstrated its willingness to become a proactive partner in the US–Japanese alliance. Japan discarded the equity painstakingly garnered through the past four decades of negotiations to settle the territorial issue and negotiate a post-World War II peace treaty with Russia. In effect, Japan–Russia relationship has been turned into a potential flashpoint in Northeast Asia. 

The US-Japan mutual apprehension over the economic and military rise of China and North Korea’s increasingly capable missile and nuclear capabilities could be a motivating factor for both Washington and Tokyo, who no longer regard a split between Russia and China, as happened in the 1970s, to be a plausible near-term prospect. But, fundamentally, there is a shift in Japanese foreign policy.

Japan’s alliance with the US and the emergent coupling with the NATO go far beyond a focus merely on the country’s survival, but offers vistas for Japan to transform as a leader in the Indo-Pacific region. No doubt, the understanding with the US on the latter’s support in the long-standing dispute over Kuril has emboldened Japan. 

Suffice to say, the Ukraine crisis has revealed that Asian states have much more diverse interests than many had been prepared to recognise. Now, this would act as a breaking mechanism on the path of the new cold war proponents in Asia. While the US, Australia and Japan have been at the forefront of countries opposing Russia, others have more mixed views.

A large bloc of non-aligned countries in Asia, including India and Indonesia, insist that Ukraine is quintessentially a regional conflict, notwithstanding its fallouts exacerbating global energy and food supplies. Basically, the vision of the Asian countries is of regional integration and modernisation and only a handful agreed to impose sanctions against Russia, while several — indeed, the big majority — have either openly opposed the sanctions regime or have refrained from sanctioning Russia. 

The point is, Russia is a resident power in Asia and is a member of all the key bodies that constitute the region’s multilateral architecture — APEC, ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting,  East Asia Summit, etc., apart from being a Dialogue Partner of the ASEAN since 1996. Russia has had an uneven engagement with Asia’s institutions, but most of the region’s participants prioritise their relations with Moscow.  Unless Russia were to reduce its presence voluntarily, which is inconceivable, Asia’s multilateral architecture remains a hurdle for the US’ efforts to assemble a “coalition of democracies” to isolate Russia.

The Achilles heel of the US’ cold war strategy is that it lacks an inspiring economic agenda. The Biden administration dare not contemplate a return to free trade, given the entrenched protectionist sentiments  in the domestic politics. Even the tariff waivers issued by the Biden Administration on Monday on some solar panels for a 2-year period from four ASEAN countries — Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam — needed to be carefully couched as part of efforts to address “the urgent crisis of a changing climate… to ensure the US has access to a sufficient supply of solar modules to meet electricity generation needs while domestic manufacturing scales up.” Herein lies the contradiction: US’ cold war strategy is primarily in military terms, whereas, what impresses Asian countries is economic clout.

Meanwhile, while many in the West tend to see China as firmly in Russia’s corner, the reality is more nuanced. China has sought to position itself as neither critic nor supporter of Russia, which, arguably, in the given circumstances, favours Russia, and has shown no signs of shifting its position in the face of Western criticism. Without doubt, China finds itself in an advantageous geopolitical situation. 

That said, will China’s current stance hold the duration of the war in Ukraine which some predict could spill over to next year? The Russian military operation has not proceeded as successfully as Moscow would have wanted or expected. Yet, the military operation will not end without achieving the Russian objectives. And those objectives contain variables. On balance, Beijing would weigh in what the US’ international standing is going to be at the end of it all, which would, of course, have great bearing on China’s future position in the world. 

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With The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism, Michael Hudson, one of the world’s leading independent economists, has given us arguably the ultimate handbook on where we’re at, who’s in charge, and whether we can bypass them.

Let’s jump straight into the fray. Hudson begins with an analysis of the “take the money and run” ethos, complete with de-industrialization, as 90 percent of US corporate revenue is “used to share buybacks and dividend payouts to support company stock prices.”

That represents the apex of “Finance Capitalism’s” political strategy: to “capture the public sector and shift monetary and banking power” to Wall Street, the City of London and other western financial centers.

The whole Global South will easily recognize the imperial modus operandi: “The strategy of US military and financial imperialism is to install client oligarchies and dictatorships, and arm-twist allies to join the fight against designated adversaries by subsidizing not only the empire’s costs of war-making (“defense”) but even the imperial nation’s domestic spending programs.” This is the antithesis of the multipolar world advocated by Russia and China.

In short, our current Cold War 2.0 “is basically being waged by US-centered finance capitalism backing rentier oligarchies against nations seeking to build up more widespread self-reliance and domestic prosperity.”

Hudson presciently reminds us of Aristotle, who would say that it is in the interest of financiers to wield their power against society at large: “The financial class historically has been the major beneficiary of empires by acting as collection agents.”

So inevitably the major imperial leverage over the world, a true “strategy of underdevelopment,” had to be financial: instrumentalizing IMF pressure to “turn public infrastructure into privatized monopolies, and reversing 20th century pro-labor reforms” via those notorious ‘conditionalities’ for loans.

No wonder the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), established in Belgrade in 1961 with 120 nations and 27 observers, became such a threat to US global strategy. The latter predictably fought back with a slew of ethnic wars and the earliest incarnations of color revolution – fabricating dictatorships on an industrial scale, from Suharto to Pinochet.

The culmination was a cataclysmic Houston get-together in December 19, 1990 “celebrating” the dissolution of the USSR, as Hudson reminds us how the IMF and the World Bank “laid out a blueprint for Russia’s leaders to impose austerity and give away its assets – it didn’t matter to whom – in a wave of ‘shock therapy’ to let the alleged magic of free enterprise create a neoliberal free-for-all.”

Lost in a Roman wilderness of debt

To a large extent, nostalgia for the rape-and-pillaging of 1990s-era Russia fuels what Hudson defines as the New Cold War, where Dollar Diplomacy must assert its control over every foreign economy. The New Cold War is not waged only against Russia and China, “but against any countries resisting privatization and financialization under US sponsorship.”

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Hudson reminds us how China’s policy “followed almost the same path that American protectionism did from 1865 though 1914 – state subsidy for industry, heavy public-sector capital investment…and social spending on education and health care to upgrade the quality and productivity of labor. This was not called Marxism in the United States; it was simply the logical way to look at industrialization, as part of a broad economic and social system.”

But then, finance – or casino – capitalism gained steam, and left the US economy mainly with “agribusiness farm surpluses, and monopolies in information technology (largely developed as a by-product of military research), military hardware, and pharmaceutical patents (based on public seed-money to fund research) able to extract monopoly rent while making themselves largely tax-exempt by using offshore banking centers.”

That’s the current State of Empire: relying only “on its rentier class and Dollar Diplomacy,” with prosperity concentrated in the top one percent of establishment elites. The inevitable corollary is US diplomacy imposing illegal, unilateral sanctions on Russia, China and anyone else who defies its diktats.

The US economy is indeed a lame post-modern remake of the late Roman empire: “dependent on foreign tribute for its survival in today’s global rentier economy.” Enter the correlation between a dwindling free lunch and utter fear: “That is why the United States has surrounded Eurasia with 750 military bases.”

Delightfully, Hudson goes back to Lactantius, in the late 3rd century, describing the Roman empire on Divine Institutes, to stress the parallels with the American version:

“In order to enslave the many, the greedy began to appropriate and accumulate the necessities of life and keep them tightly closed up, so that they might keep these bounties for themselves. They did this not for humanity’s sake (which was not in them at all), but to rake up all things as products of their greed and avarice. In the name of justice they made unfair and unjust laws to sanction their thefts and avarice against the power of the multitude. In this way they availed as much by authority as by strength of arms or overt evil.”

Socialism or barbarism

Hudson succinctly frames the central issue facing the world today: whether “money and credit, land, natural resources and monopolies will be privatized and concentrated in the hands of a rentier oligarchy or used to promote general prosperity and growth. This is basically a conflict between finance capitalism vs. socialism as economic systems.”

To advance the struggle, Hudson proposes a counter-rentier program which should be the Global South’s ultimate Blueprint for responsible development: public ownership of natural monopolies; key basic infrastructure in public hands; national self-sufficiency – crucially, in money and credit creation; consumer and labor protection; capital controls – to prevent borrowing or denominating debts in foreign currency; taxes on unearned income such as economic rent; progressive taxation; a land tax (“will prevent land’s rising rental value from being pledged to banks for credit to bid up real estate prices”); use of the economic surplus for tangible capital investment; and national self-sufficiency in food.

As Hudson seems to have covered all the bases, at the end of the book I was left with only one overarching question. I asked him how he analyzed the current discussions between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and the Chinese – and between Russia and China, further on down the road – as being able to deliver an alternative financial/monetary system. Can they sell the alternative system to most of the planet, all while dodging imperial financial harassment?

Hudson was gracious enough to reply with what could be regarded as the summary of a whole book chapter: “To be successful, any reform has to be system-wide, not merely a single part. Today’s western economies have become financialized, leaving credit creation in private hands – to be used to make financial gains at the expense of the industrial economy… This aim has spread like leprosy throughout entire economies – their trade patterns (dependency on US agricultural and oil exports, and IT technology), labor relations (anti-unionism and austerity), land tenure (foreign-owned plantation agriculture instead of domestic self-reliance and self-sufficiency in food grains), and economic theory itself (treating finance as part of GDP, not as an overhead siphoning off income from labor and industry alike).”

Hudson cautions that “in order to break free of the dynamic of predatory finance-capitalism sponsored by the United States and its satellites, foreign countries need to be self-sufficient in food production, energy, technology and other basic needs. This requires an alternative to US ‘free trade’ and its even more nationalistic ‘fair trade’ (deeming any foreign competition to US-owned industry ‘unfair’). That requires an alternative to the IMF, World Bank and ITO (from which Russia has just withdrawn). And alas, an alternative also requires military coordination such as the SCO [the Shanghai Cooperation Organization] to defend against the militarization of US-centered finance capitalism.”

Hudson does see some sunlight ahead: “As to your question of whether Russia and China can ‘sell’ this vision of the future to the Global South and Eurasian countries, that should become much easier by the end of this summer. A major byproduct (not unintended) of the NATO war in Ukraine is to sharply raise energy and food prices (and shipping prices). This will throw the balance of payments of many Global South and other countries into sharp deficit, creating a crisis as their dollar-denominated debt to bondholders and banks falls due.”

The key challenge for most of the Global South is to avoid default:

“The US raise in interest rates has increased the dollar’s exchange rate not only against the euro and Japanese yen, but against the Global South and other countries. This means that much more of their income and export revenue must be paid to service their foreign debt – and they can avoid default only by going without food and oil. So what will they choose? The IMF may offer to create SDRs to enable them to pay – by running even further into dollarized debt, subject to IMF austerity plans and demands that they sell off even more of their natural resources, forests and water.”

So how to break free from dollarized debt? “They need a critical mass. That was not available in the 1970s when a New International Economic Order was first discussed. But today it is becoming a viable alternative, thanks to the power of China, the resources of Russia and those of allied countries such as Iran, India and other East Asian and Central Asian countries. So I suspect that a new world economic system is emerging. If it succeeds, the last century – since the end of World War I and the mess it left – will seem like a long detour of history, now returning to what seemed to be the basic social ideals of classical economics – a market free from rent-seeking landlords, monopolies and predatory finance.”

Hudson concludes by reiterating what the New Cold War is really all about:

“In short, it is a conflict between two different social systems, each with their own philosophy of how societies work. Will they be planned by neoliberal financial centers centered in New York, supported by Washington’s neo-cons, or will they be the kind of socialism that the late 19th century and early 20th century envisioned – a ‘market’ and, indeed, society free from rentiers? Will natural monopolies such as land and natural resources be socialized and used to finance domestic growth and housing, or left to financial interests to turn rent into interest payments eating into consumer and business income? And most of all, will governments create their own money and steer banking to promote domestic prosperity, or will they let private banks (whose financial interests are represented by central banks) take control away from national treasuries?”

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Do you remember the iconic Union Carbide image from the 1950s or early 1960s? The one with the giant hand coming from the sky, pouring pesticides onto Indian soil.       

The blurb below the image includes the following:

“Science helps build a new India – India has developed bold new plans to build its economy and bring the promise of a bright future to its more than 400 million people. But India needs the technical knowledge of the western world. For example working with Indian engineers and technicians, Union Carbide recently made available its fast scientific resource to help build a chemicals and plastics plant near Bombay. Throughout the free world, Union Carbide has been actively engaged in building plants for the manufacture of chemicals, plastics, carbons, gases and metals.”

In the bottom corner is the Union Carbide logo and the statement ‘A HAND IN THINGS TO COME’.

This ‘hand of god’ image has become infamous. Union Carbide’s ‘hand in things to come’ includes the gas leak at its pesticides plant in Bhopal in 1984. It resulted in around 560,000 injured (respiratory problems, eye irritation, etc), 4,000 severely disabled and 20,000 dead.

As for the chemical-intensive agriculture it promoted, we can now see the impacts: degraded soils, polluted water, illness, farmer debt and suicides (by drinking pesticides!), nutrient-dense crops/varieties being side-lined, a narrower range of crops, no increase in food production per capita (in India at least), the corporate commodification of knowledge and seeds, the erosion of farmers’ environmental learning, the undermining of traditional knowledge systems and farmers’ dependency on corporations.

Whether it involves the type of ecological devastation activist-farmer Bhaskar Save outlined for policy makers in his 2006 open letter or the social upheaval documented by Vandana Shiva in the book The Violence of the Green Revolution, the consequences have been far-reaching.

And yet – whether it involves new genetic engineering techniques or more pesticides –  there is a relentless drive by the agritech conglomerates to further entrench their model of agriculture by destroying traditional farming practices with the aim of placing more farmers on corporate seed and chemical treadmills.

These corporations have been pushing for the European Commission to remove any labelling and safety checks for new genomic techniques. The European Court of Justice ruled in 2018 that organisms obtained with new genetic modification techniques must be regulated under the EU’s existing GMO laws. However, there has been intense lobbying from the agriculture biotech industry to weaken the legislation, aided financially by the Gates Foundation.

Since 2018, top agribusiness and biotech corporations have spent almost €37 million lobbying the European Union. They have had 182 meetings with European Commissioners, their cabinets and director generals. More than one meeting a week.

In recent weeks, Syngenta (a subsidiary of ChemChina) CEO Erik Fyrwald has come to the fore to cynically lobby for these techniques.

But before discussing Fyrwald, let us turn to another key agribusiness figure who has been in the news. Former Monsanto chairman and CEO Hugh Grant recently appeared in court to be questioned by lawyers on behalf of a cancer patient in the case of Allan Shelton v Monsanto.

Shelton has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and is one of the 100,000-plus people in the US claiming in lawsuits that exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller and its other brands containing the chemical glyphosate caused their cancer.

His lawyers argued that Grant was an active participant and decision maker in the company’s Roundup business and should be made to testify at the trial.

Why not? After all, he did make a financial killing from peddling poison.

Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018 and Grant received an estimated $77 million post-sale payoff. Bloomberg reported in 2017 that Monsanto had increased Grant’s salary to $19.5 million.

By 2009, Roundup-related products, which include genetically modified seeds developed to withstand glyphosate-based applications, represented about half of Monsanto’s gross margin.

Roundup was integral to Monsanto’s business model and Grant’s enormous income and final payoff.

Consider the following quote from a piece that appeared on the Bloomberg website in 2014:

“Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant is focused on selling more genetically modified seeds in Latin America to drive earnings growth outside the core US market. Sales of soybean seeds and genetic licenses climbed 16%, and revenue in the unit that makes glyphosate weed killer, sold as Roundup, rose 24%.”

In the same piece, Chris Shaw, a New York-based analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co, is reported as saying “Glyphosate really crushed it” – meaning the sales of glyphosate were a major boost.

All fine for Grant and Monsanto. But this has had devastating effects on human health. ‘The Human Cost of Agrotoxins. How Glyphosate is killing Argentina’, which appeared on the Lifegate website in November 2015, serves as a damning indictment of the drive for “earnings growth” by Monsanto. Moreover, in the same year, some 30,000 doctors in that country demanded a ban on glyphosate.

The bottom line for Grant was sales and profit maximisation and the unflinching defence of glyphosate, no matter how carcinogenic to humans it is and, more to the point, how much Monsanto knew it was.

Noam Chomsky underlines the commercial imperative:

” … the CEO of a corporation has actually a legal obligation to maximize profit and market share. Beyond that legal obligation, if the CEO doesn’t do it, and, let’s say, decides to do something that will, say, benefit the population and not increase profit, he or she is not going to be CEO much longer –  they’ll be replaced by somebody who does do it.”

Syngenta’s CEO is cut from the same cloth as Grant. While Monsanto’s crimes are well documented, Syngenta’s transgressions are less well publicised.

In 2006, writer and campaigner Dr Brian John claimed:

“GM Free Cymru has discovered that Syngenta, in its promotion of GM crops and foods, has been involved in a web of lies, deceptions and obstructive corporate behaviour that would have done credit to its competitor Monsanto.”

Some weeks ago, Fyrwald called for organic farming to be abandoned. In view of the food crisis, brought on by the war in Ukraine, he claimed rich countries had to increase their crop production – but organic farming led to lower yields. Fyrwald also called for gene editing to be at the heart of the food agenda in order to increase food production.

He stated:

“The indirect consequence is that people are starving in Africa because we are eating more and more organic products.”

In response, Kilian Baumann, a Bernese organic farmer and president of the Swiss Small Farmers’ Association, called Fyrwald’s arguments “grotesque”. He claimed Fyrwald was “fighting for sales”.

Writing on the GMWatch website, Jonathan Matthews says the Russian invasion of Ukraine seems to have emboldened Fyrwald’s scaremongering.

Matthews states:

“Fyrwald’s comments reflect the industry’s determination to undermine the European Union’s Farm to Fork strategy, which aims by 2030 not just to slash pesticide use by 50% and fertilizer use by 20% but to more than triple the percentage of EU farmland under organic management (from 8.1% to 25%), as part of the transition towards a ‘more sustainable food system’ within the EU’s Green Deal.”

He adds:

“Syngenta view[s] these goals as an almost existential threat. This has led to a carefully orchestrated attack on the EU strategy.”

The details of this PR offensive have been laid out in a report by the Brussels-based lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO): A loud lobby for a silent spring: The pesticide industry’s toxic lobbying tactics against Farm to Fork.

Mathews quotes research that shows GM crops have no yield benefit. He also refers to a newly published report that draws together research clearly showing GM crops have driven substantial increases – not decreases – in pesticide use. The newer and much-hyped gene-edited crops look set to do the same.

Syngenta is among the corporations criticised by a report from the UN for “systematic denial of harms” and “unethical marketing tactics”. Matthews notes that selling highly hazardous pesticides is actually at the core of Syngenta’s business model.

According to Matthews, even with the logistical disruptions to maize and wheat crops caused by the war in Ukraine, there is still enough grain available to the world market to meet existing needs. He says the current price crisis (not food crisis) is a product of fear and speculation.

Matthews concludes:

“If Erik Fyrwald is really so concerned about hunger, why isn’t he attacking the boondoggle that is biofuels, rather than going after organic farming? The obvious answer is that the farmers being subsidised to grow biofuels are big consumers of agrichemicals and, in the US case, GMO seeds – unlike organic farmers, who buy neither.”

Fyrwald has a financial imperative to lobby for particular strategies and technologies. He is far from an objective observer. And he is far from honest in his appraisal – using fear of a food crisis to push his agenda.

Meanwhile, the sustained attacks on organic agriculture have become an industry mainstay, despite numerous high-level reports and projects indicating it could feed the world, mitigate climate change, improve farmers’ situations, lead to better soil, create employment and provide healthier and more diverse diets.

There is a food crisis but not the one alluded to by Fyrwald –  denutrified food and unhealthy diets that are at the centre of a major public health crisis, a loss of biodiversity which threatens food security, degraded soils, polluted and depleted water sources and smallholder farmers, so vital to global food production (especially in the Global South), squeezed off their land and out of farming.

Transnational agribusiness has lobbied for, directed and profited from policies that have caused much of the above. And what we now see is these corporations and their lobbyists espousing (fake) concern (a cynical lobbying tactic) for the plight of the poor and hungry while attempting to purchase EU democracy to the tune of €37 million. Cheap at the price considering the financial bonanza that its new patented genetic engineering technologies and seeds could reap.

Various scientific publications show these new techniques allow developers to make significant genetic changes, which can be very different from those that happen in nature. These new GMOs pose similar or greater risks than older-style GMOs.

By attempting to dodge regulation as well as avoid economic, social, environmental and health impact assessments, it is clear were the industry’s priorities lie.

Unfortunately, Fyrwald, Bill Gates, Hugh Grant and their ilk are unwilling and too often incapable of viewing the world beyond their reductionist mindsets that merely regard seed/chemical sales, output-yield and corporate profit as the measuring stick of success.

What is required is an approach that sustains indigenous knowledge, local food security, better nutrition per acre, clean and stable water tables and good soil structure. An approach that places food sovereignty, local ownership, rural communities and rural economies at the centre of policy and which nurtures biodiversity, boosts human health and works with nature rather than destroying these.

Fyrwald’s scaremongering is par for the course – the world will starve without corporate chemicals and (GM) seeds, especially if organics takes hold. This type of stuff has been standard fare from the industry and its lobbyists and bought career scientists for many years.

It flies in the face of reality, not least how certain agribusiness concerns have been part of a US geopolitical strategy that undermines food security in regions across the world. These concerns have thrived on the creation of dependency and profited from conflict. Moreover, there is the success of agroecological approaches to farming that have no need for what Fyrwald is hawking.

Instead, the industry continues to promote itself as the saviour of humanity – a hand of god powered by a brave new techno-utopian world of corporate science, pouring poison and planting seeds of corporate dependency with the missionary zeal of Western saviourism.

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal.

The author receives no payment from any media outlet or organization for his work. If you appreciated this article, consider sending a few coins his way: [email protected] 


Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Click here to read.

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From the US-Canadian bilateral statements in 2021 and 2022 leading up to the Summit, to the role of Canada in the last 2021 United Nations vote on the US blockade against Cuba, to the June 6, 2022, visit by Chilean President Gabriel Boric to Ottawa and his meeting with Justin Trudeau: What does all this tell us about the Summit and the importance of CELAC, which provides a clear alternative?

On February 26, 2021, then Canadian foreign affairs minister Marc Garneau’s readout of his virtual meeting with US counterpart Antony Blinken, declared that “both reaffirmed a commitment to address human rights and needed reforms in Cuba… The two discussed the dire situation in Venezuela and agreed to work together alongside the international community supporting Venezuelans to address this crisis and the human suffering it is causing. Minister Garneau and Secretary Blinken look forward to the next Summit of the Americas.”

However, on April 25, 2022, one of Canada’s foremost dailies, the National Post reported that Cuban Foreign Minister Rodríguez said “that the United States had decided to exclude Cuba from preparations for a summit of regional leaders.” The National Post is certainly on the desks of Justin Trudeau and Canadian foreign ministry staff. In response, on May 11, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known as AMLO, announced that he would not be attending the Los Angeles Summit as a result of Biden’s exclusionary policy. And AMLO has made it plain that he sees future CELAC summits as the alternative.

On the road to the Los Angeles Summit

Whereas AMLO’s decision was a definite game changer, the Trudeau government’s news release of June 5, 2022, simply announced that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly would be in Los Angeles from June 6 to 10. She would be joining Prime Minister Trudeau at the 9th Summit of the Americas, but holding meetings with key stakeholders. There is no mention of the revolt by AMLO and leaders of a number of other key Latin American and Caribbean states against the US policy of exclusion. But the Trudeau government’s quiet introduction of the term “key stakeholders” was apparently meant to replace missing presidents or prime ministers who would normally be attending, with lower-level representatives. Not to mention certain dissidents from countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, who might replace the formal delegations altogether.

It seems that this provocative option to meet with “regime change” activists, known as mercenaries in Cuba, may already be in the Trudeau game plan: the press release vaguely suggests that “Minister Joly will meet with her counterparts from the region, government officials, civil society representatives.” This latter term, “civil society representatives,” can be seen as a euphemism for mercenaries or dissidents seeking regime change. 

Cuban mercenaries in Los Angeles

As might be expected, in a June 6 tweet, Ambassador Brian A. Nichols, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, U.S. Department of State, appeared in a photo from Los Angeles with one of the main Cuban mercenaries. The caption read “…Cubans must have the chance to tell their stories. Today I had the pleasure of meeting the inspirational @YoTuel007 at the #SummitAmericas civil society forum. We stand with Yotuel and all Cubans that continue to stand up bravely for “homeland and life.”

The June 5 Canadian news release goes on to state that “on the margins of the Summit, Minister Joly will hold a North American Foreign Ministers’ Trilateral Meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard…” Of course, there is no mention that Trudeau will be meeting with his Mexican counterpart AMLO, since he has publicly stated that he will not attend the Summit as a gesture of support for the excluded states and a snub to Biden.

The conclusion one may draw is that, despite its much-vaunted pretence of being a “friend of Cuba,” the Trudeau government is fully complicit with Biden’s exclusionary policy against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Thus, both North American white supremacist and settler-colonial states are once again firmly pitted against nation states of the Global South. Should this characterization of Trudeau, in particular, come as a surprise?

The Trudeau government’s UN performance regarding Cuba

Let us examine Trudeau’s track record on the US blockade against Cuba. On June 23 and 24, 2021, the Cuban resolution in favour of lifting the blockade was presented once more to the United Nations General Assembly. Yet again, the overwhelming majority of countries voted in favour of the resolution by a vote of 184 in favour to 2 against (Israel, United States), with 3 abstentions (Brazil, Colombia, Ukraine.)

Although Canada did vote in favour, it did not dare to take the floor to speak out, like numerous other member states. The following compilation of speakers is based on the United Nations official report on the over the two days of debate. It includes those who spoke before the vote as well as those who spoke after the vote explaining why they voted as they did .

Representatives spoke on behalf of various Global South organizations, including the Non-Aligned Movement (120 members), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM, 20 members), Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC, 57 members), the Group of 77 (the United Nations’ biggest intergovernmental group of emerging countries, 134 members), the African Group at the UN (54 members), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN, 10 members), with various states being members of several groups.

Also delivering general statements were representatives of Vietnam, the Russian Federation, Venezuela, Mexico, Algeria, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, China, South Africa, Antigua and Barbuda, Philippines, Namibia, Egypt, India, Bolivia and Nicaragua, with the representative of Cuba speaking by right to reply.

From the non-Global South (aside from the Eurasian Russian Federation), only Portugal spoke timidly in the name of the European Union. Why timidly? It was the only country among the European Union members to speak (and just once), while in comparison, a number of countries from the Global South spoke multiple times, while also associating them themselves with one or more Global South organizations. Even the United Kingdom spoke. However, Justin Trudeau’s government did not rise to speak.

The liberal poster boy Trudeau, using dog-whistle diplomacy, made a move at the UN appealing to the world and especially the Global South, by voting in favour of the Cuban resolution and thus striving to maintain its dubious reputation as a “friend of Cuba.” Yet, by failing to speak in the General Assembly, in contrast to the multiple interventions of the entire Global South, he sent another signal, one clearly intended for Washington: the Trudeau regime stood clearly beside its US partner by intimating… “that we do not strongly oppose the blockade of Cuba,” thus emboldening the US to pursue its Cuba policy. Thus, it is a confrontation between the Global South versus the West.

Chilean President Boric and Trudeau in Ottawa: A preview of the Summit?

The superficiality of Trudeau as a “friend of Cuba” came to the fore once again. A meeting between Chilean President Gabriel Boric and Prime Minister Trudeau took place in Ottawa on June 6 as the Chilean leader was headed to Los Angeles. The readout did not mention the exclusionary nature of Biden’s Summit. However in the press conference following the meeting, one reporter asked Trudeau about Cuba’s exclusion. In typical Trudeau fashion, he avoided giving an answer, only saying that they are looking forward to dealing with all participants. The US News outlet got the picture, by gloating that “Trudeau did not say whether or not he disagreed with the exclusion, but said Canada looked forward to participating fully in the summit.” This constitutes yet further proof that Trudeau is complicit with Biden’s policy.

On the Summit, Trudeau’s imperialist policy toward Latin America has gone even further down the road of hitching itself to US imperialist ambitions, by not exhibiting any opposition to Biden’s exclusionary meeting in Los Angeles.

In a June 7 Press TV interview, I participated with Kawsachun News reporter Camila Escalante Camila, who was speaking from Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Camila Escalante provided the context: the desperate 11th hour attempt by Biden to salvage his collapsing Summit, the Mexican stand to boycott on the presidential level and the significance of the recent Nicolás Maduro-Alberto Fernández phone call. Escalante went further on the context, touching on the stand that Argentina will take at the Summit against exclusion and the suggestion by Maduro to Argentina that in its current role as pro tempore president of CELAC, it should call a CELAC meeting as soon as possible to deal with issues the countries in the South are facing.

For my part, I highlighted the principled stand of Argentina and other countries that are attending but intend to speak out unconditionally against exclusion. In addition, I further elaborated on the Boric-Trudeau Ottawa press conference and the two leaders’ cowardly responses to a question on exclusion. I also expanded on the fact that having certain “regime-change” elements from Cuba already in Los Angeles is also symptomatic of what to expect. View the 10-minute TV video here.

Colonialism at home, imperialism abroad

Is there a link between Canada’s foreign and domestic policy? Indeed, Canada learned its first baby steps about imperialism via its ongoing colonial genocide against the Indigenous Nations. This is why the description of Canada as “colonialism at home and imperialism abroad” is so popular and so pertinent. For example, the RCMP has had a continuous presence on the Wet’suwet’en (Yintah territory) in British Colombia since late 2018, after Coastal Gaslink obtained an injunction against land defenders blocking the right of way for a liquified natural gas pipeline the company is constructing through approximately 190 kilometres of Wet’suwet’en territory. While the US-Canada-Latin America discussions were taking place in 2021-22 as outlined above, the Trudeau government  was carrying out round-the-clock surveillance and harassment by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and pipeline security personnel against the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in British Columbia. Thus, the Canadian imperialist attitude toward Latin America and the Caribbean is steeped in its centuries-long heritage of colonialism.

Therefore, any apparent differences between Canada and the US regarding Cuba and Latin America should be taken with a grain of salt. Canada is imperialist through and through. Nobody in Canada or the rest of the hemisphere should entertain any illusions about the fact. The worn-out liberal poster boy image of Trudeau is intentionally designed to camouflage this reality, as laid out among other points in the June 7 Press TV interview.

 Given the Trudeau policy alone, not to mention that of the US, history may very well show that a complete boycott by the South would have been the only appropriate response. We shall see. How a self-respecting Latin American/Caribbean country can sit side by side with Trudeau in this hemispheric meeting is just unbelievable. Black Agenda Report pointed out on June 8: “A boycott is only the minimum that should be done. However, we understand it will be difficult because we know the vindictiveness of the gringo hegemon and the lengths it will go to assert its vicious domination.”

The Global South states of Latin America and the Caribbean on the one hand, and North America on the other, are clearly at loggerheads as never before. As with the other North American white supremacist, settler-colonial and imperialist regime, Canada deserves no place in any association in the Hemisphere. Thus, the alternative is CELAC, which includes all countries south of the Rio Grande and excludes Canada and the US.

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This article was originally published on The Canada Files.

Arnold August is an award-winning journalist and author of three acclaimed books. His three books on Cuba-US-Latin America have been acclaimed by experts in the field. In 2013, he was awarded the Félix Elmuza Award by the Association of Cuban Journalists and contributes to outlets in English, Spanish and French in many parts of the world. He serves as a Contributing Editor for The Canada Files.

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The social and economic crisis in the US seems really serious and far from over. The government tries to implement a series of measures in order to contain the disastrous effects of uncontrolled inflation, but each action has strong impacts in other areas, generating absolute instability. On June 5 Washington’s officials reported that President Joe Biden plans to begin a gradual easing of some sanctions on Chinese goods, with the aim of increasing economic fluidity and reducing inflation. However, the project strongly disappointed the country’s entrepreneurial community.

Last Sunday, US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said that lowering tariffs on Chinese goods “makes sense” in the current context of the US economy – which is why Biden is allegedly looking at the possibility. According to her, nothing has yet been decided, and President Biden should make the decision on the topic soon, but it is a viable possibility to contain the general increase in prices, at a time when inflation is at its highest level in 40 years.

“We are looking at it. In fact, the president has asked us to analyze that. And so we are in the process of doing that for him and he will have to make that decision”, she said during a recent interview to CNN.

Raimondo also stated that the government will keep intact the sanctions considered strategically interesting, such as the special tariffs on steel and aluminum, which more effectively protect the American heavy industry against foreign emerging powers. However, in a situation of internal crisis, it would make sense to reduce the prices of more elementary products, such as household utensils, clothes, bicycles, and basic Chinese imported items, which would allow greater market fluidity and free circulation of products, without great damage to the American industrial structures.

But even under these conditions, American trade organizations are furious at the government’s move to consider easing tariffs. For domestic commercial organizations, lowering the price of Chinese products would automatically mean harming the growth of small and medium-sized American companies, which would have to deal with cheap foreign products, having losses in sales to the consumer middle classes.

In the days following Raimondo’s statement, main US trade unions launched protests and notes of repudiation, urging Biden to ignore any possibility of lowering tariffs on Chinese imports. For example, the Labor Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations and Trade Policy published a letter signed by its leader, Thomas Conway, in which American business urges the president to act “in the national interest to strengthen [American] economy for the future”.

It is important to note that these special tariffs on Chinese products were implemented not by Biden but by his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose geopolitical tactic of starting a “trade war” against China resulted in the implementation of a massive tariff sanctions package, undermining economic fluidity in the US. With the crisis generated by the pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine adding to this, everything became even worse.

One of Biden’s most criticized points by some analysts was precisely the continuation of the trade war with China. To maintain a healthy foreign policy in crisis scenarios, the most strategic thing to do is to choose between a military or economic confrontation against the main US rivals – Russia and China. Trump, for example, improved relations with Russia while maintaining his anti-China trade strategy. Biden, however, did not choose a specific target or strategy, but confronted all US enemies in the most radical way possible, maintaining Trump’s sanctions on China and initiating military programs in the zone of Chinese influence, while resuming the NATO military presence on the Russian border and lately initiating the biggest package of sanctions ever seen against a country, after the start of Moscow’s special operation in Ukraine.

This absence of a strategic mentality is due to the ideological and anti-pragmatic aspect that has characterized the Biden administration until now, generating this crisis scenario. If the Democrat had not increased Ukraine’s aggressiveness towards Russia, the special operation would not have been launched and the world would not be dealing with the economic effects of a military conflict. Likewise, if he had previously eased sanctions on China, the impacts on American small and medium business would be smaller and, consequently, it would be easier for the White House to negotiate with trade unions, as the scenario would not be the same as the current crisis situation.

Now, however, there is not much to be done. If Biden does not ease sanctions, he will be increasing inflation because there will be fewer products circulating on the market; but if he does, he will actually be harming the interests of the domestic business community, which will have enormous difficulties in competing with the cheaper prices of Chinese goods. Whatever Biden chooses, it will be insufficient either to remedy the crisis or to regain his popularity, as he will improve in one area to harm in another.

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

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The Food Shortage Solution in Your Own Backyard

June 10th, 2022 by Ellen Brown

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While the global food systems we depend on come under increasing strain, there’s a solution to the growing crisis that most Americans can find in their own backyards–or front lawns.

A confluence of crises—lockdowns and business closures, mandates and worker shortages, supply chain disruptions and inflation, sanctions and war—have compounded to trigger food shortages; and we have been warned that they may last longer than the food stored in our pantries. What to do?

Jim Gale, founder of Food Forest Abundance, pointed out in a recent interview with Del Bigtree that in the United States there are 40 million acres of lawn. Lawns are the most destructive monoculture on the planet, absorbing more resources and pesticides than any other crop, without providing any yield. If we were to turn 30% of that lawn into permaculture-based food gardens, says Gale, we could be food self-sufficient without relying on imports or chemicals.

Permaculture is a gardening technique that “uses the inherent qualities of plants and animals combined with the natural characteristics of landscapes and structures to produce a life-supporting system for city and country, using the smallest practical area.”

Russian families have shown the possibilities, using permaculture methods on simple cottage gardens or allotments called dachas. As Dr. Leon Sharashkin, a Russian translator and editor with a PhD in forestry from the University of Missouri, explains:

Essentially, what Russian gardeners do is demonstrate that gardeners can feed the world – and you do not need any GMOs, industrial farms, or any other technological gimmicks to guarantee everybody’s got enough food to eat. Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing season per year – so in the US, for example, gardeners’ output could be substantially greater. Today, however, the area taken up by lawns in the US is two times greater than that of Russia’s gardens – and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.

The Dacha Model

Dachas are small wooden houses on a small plot of land, typically just 600 meters (656 yards) in size. In Soviet Russia, they were allocated free of charge on the theory that the land belonged to the people. They were given to many public servants; and families not given a dacha could get access to a plot of land in an allotment association, where they could grow vegetables, visit regularly to tend their kitchen gardens and gather crops.

Dachas were originally used mainly as country vacation getaways. But in the 1990s, they evolved from a place of rest into a major means of survival. That was when the Russian economy suffered from what journalist Anne Williamson called in congressional testimony the “rape of Russia.” The economy was destroyed and then plundered by financial oligarchs, who swooped in to buy assets at fire sale prices.

Stripped of other resources, Russian families turned to their dachas to grow food. Dr. Sharaskin observed that the share of food gardening in national agriculture increased from 32% in 1990 to over 50% by 2000. In 2004, food gardens accounted for 51% of the total agricultural output of the Russian Federation – greater than the contribution of the whole electric power generation industry; greater than all of the forestry, wood-processing and pulp and paper industries; and significantly greater than the coal, natural gas and oil refining industries taken together.

Dachas are now a codified right of Russian citizens. In 2003, the government signed the Private Garden Plot Act into law, granting citizens free plots of land ranging from 1 to 3 hectares each. (A hectare is about 2.5 acres.) Dr. Sharaskin opined in 2009 that “with 35 million families (70% of Russia’s population) … producing more than 40% of Russia’s agricultural output, this is in all likelihood the most extensive microscale food production practice in any industrially developed nation.”

In a 2014 article titled “Dacha Gardens—Russia’s Amazing Model for Urban Agriculture”, Sara Pool wrote that Russia obtains “over 50% agricultural products from family garden plots. The backyard gardening model uses around 3% arable land, and accounts for roughly 92% of all Russian potatoes, 87% of all fruit, 77% vegetables, and 59% all Russian meat according to the Russian Federal State Statistic Service.”

Our Beautiful but Toxic and Wasteful Green Lawns

Rather than dachas, we in the West have pristine green lawns, which not only produce no food but involve chemical and mechanical maintenance that is a major contributor to water and air pollution. Lawns are the single largest irrigated crop in the U.S., covering nearly 32 million acres. This is a problem particularly in the western U.S. states, which are currently suffering from reduced food production due to drought. Data compiled by Urban Plantations from the EPA, the Public Policy Institute of California, and the Alliance for Water Efficiency suggests that gardens use 66% less water than lawns. In the U.S., fruits and vegetables are grown  on only about 10 million acres. In theory, then, if the space occupied by American lawns were converted to food gardens, the country could produce four times as many fruits and vegetables as it does now.

study from NASA scientists in collaboration with researchers in the Mountain West estimated that American lawns cover an area that is about the size of Texas and is three times larger than that used for any other irrigated crop in the United States.  The study was not, however, about the growth of lawns but about their impact on the environment and water resources. It found that “maintaining a well-manicured lawn uses up to 900 liters of water per person per day and reduces [carbon] sequestration effectiveness by up to 35 percent by adding emissions from fertilization and the operation of mowing equipment.” To combat water and pollution problems, some cities have advocated abandoning the great green lawn in favor of vegetable gardens, local native plants, meadows or just letting the grass die. But well-manicured lawns are an established U.S. cultural tradition; and some municipalities have banned front-yard gardens as not meeting neighborhood standards of aesthetics.  Some homeowners, however, have fought back. Florida ended up passing a law in July 2019 that prohibits towns from banning edible gardens for aesthetic reasons; and in California, a bill was passed in 2014 that allows yard use for “personal agriculture” (defined as “use of land where an individual cultivates edible plant crops for personal use or donation”). As noted in a Los Angeles Times op-ed:

“The Legislature recognized that lawn care is resource intensive, with lawns being the largest irrigated crop in the United States offering no nutritional gain. Finding that 30% to 60% of residential water is used for watering lawns, the Legislature believes these resources could be allocated to more productive activities, including growing food, thus increasing access to healthy options for low-income individuals.”

Despite how large they loom in the American imagination, immaculate green lawns maintained by pesticides, herbicides and electric lawnmowers are a relatively recent cultural phenomenon in the United States. In the 1930s, chemicals were not recommended. Weeds were controlled either by pulling them by hand or by keeping chickens. Chemical use became popular only after World War II, and it has grown significantly since. According to the EPA, close to 80 million U.S. households spray 90 million pounds of pesticides and herbicides on their lawns each year. A 1999 study by the United States Geological Survey found that 99% of urban water streams contain pesticides, which pollute our drinking water and create serious health risks for wildlife, pets, and humans. Among other disorders, these chemicals are correlated with an increased risk of cancers, nervous system disorders, and a seven-fold increased risk of childhood leukemia.

That’s just the pollution in our water supply. Other problems with our lawn fetish are air and noise pollution generated by gas-powered lawn and garden equipment. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that this equipment is responsible for 5% of U.S. air pollution. Americans use about 800 million gallons of gas per year just mowing their lawns.

Yet even people who recognize the downsides of lawnmowers and chemicals continue to use them, under pressure to keep up appearances for the sake of the neighborhood. That cultural bias could change, however, in the face of serious food shortages. And while yards left to dirt and weeds may be unsightly, well-maintained permaculture gardens are aesthetically appealing without the use of chemicals or mowing. Here are a couple of examples, the first of a dacha and the second of a Pennsylvania community garden:

Stephen Scott / Small Farmers’ Journal

Neighborhood Gardens Trust

Homegrown Food: Organic, Non-GMO, and No Fossil Fuels Required

Local garden farming does not need chemical fertilizers or gas-guzzling machinery to thrive, as the Russian dacha farmers demonstrated.  Dr. Sharashkin wrote in his 2008 doctoral thesis:

[T]he Soviet government had the policy of allowing dacha gardening only on marginal, unproductive, or overexploited lands that could not be used in state-run agriculture. And it is on exactly these lands that gardeners have consistently been producing large crops of vegetables and fruits ever since private gardens were re-authorized in 1941.… [M]ost of the gardeners grow their produce without chemical fertilizers.

When the practice [of industrial chemical use] subsided in the 1990s as the output of collective farming dwindled and was replaced by household production, significant abatement of environmental pollution with agrochemicals (especially that of watersheds) was observed. [Emphasis added.]

Most of Russia’s garden produce is grown not only without agrochemicals but without genetically modified seeds, which were banned in Russia in 2016. As Mitchel Cohen reports in Covert Action Magazine, some GMO use has crept back in, but a bill for a full ban on the cultivation of genetically modified crops is currently making its way through the Duma (the ruling Russian assembly).

Growing your own food conserves petroleum resources not only because it requires no tractors or other machinery but because it needn’t be hauled over long distances in trucks, trains or ships. Food travels 1,500 miles on average before it gets to your dinner table, and nutrients are lost in the process. Families who cannot afford the healthy but pricey organic food in the supermarket can grow their own.

Prof. Sharaskin noted that gardens also have psychological benefits. He cited studies showing that personal interaction with plants can reduce stress, fear and fatigue, and can lower blood pressure and muscle tension. Gardening also reconnects us with our neighbors and the earth. Sharaskin quotes Leo Tolstoy:

“One of the first and universally acknowledged preconditions for happiness is living in close contact with nature, i.e., living under the open sky, in the light of the sun, in the fresh air; interacting with the earth, plants, and animals.”

From Crisis to Opportunity

Today, people in the West are undergoing something similar to the “rape of Russia” at the hands of financial oligarchs. Oligarchical giants like BlackRock and Blackstone come to mind, along with “the Davos crowd” – that exclusive cartel of international bankers, big businessmen, media, and politicians meeting annually at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

WEF founder Klaus Schwab has declared the current confluence of crises to be “a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.” It is also a rare but narrow opportunity for us, the disenfranchised, to reclaim our plundered assets and the power to issue our own money, upgrading the economy in the service of the people and reimagining food systems and our own patches of land, however small.

For food sustainability, we can take a lesson from the successful Russian dachas by forming our own family and community food gardens. Russia has also seen the burgeoning growth of eco-villages – subsistence communities made up of multiple family cottages, typically including community areas with a school, clinic, theater, and festival grounds. Forming self-sufficient communities and “going local” is a popular movement in the West today as well.

A corollary is the independent cryptocurrency movement. We can combine these two movements to fund our local food gardens with food-backed community currencies or cryptocurrencies. Crypto “coins” bought now would act like forward contracts, serving as an advance against future productivity, redeemable at harvest time in agricultural produce. That subject will be explored in a follow-up article, coming shortly.

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This article was first posted on ScheerPost.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of DebtThe Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The top Ukrainian official who was fired for spreading misinformation has admitted that she lied about Russians committing mass rape in order to convince western countries to send more weapons to Ukraine.

Lyudmila Denisova, the former Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, was removed from her position following a vote of no confidence in the Ukrainian parliament which passed by a margin of 234-to-9.

Parliament member Pavlo Frolov specifically accused Denisova of pushing misinformation that “only harmed Ukraine” in relation to “the numerous details of ‘unnatural sexual offenses’ and child sexual abuses in the occupied territories, which were unsupported by evidence.”

In an interview published by a Ukrainian news outlet, Denisova admitted that her falsehoods had achieved their intended goal.

“When, for example, I spoke in the Italian parliament at the Committee on International Affairs, I heard and saw such fatigue from Ukraine, you know? I talked about terrible things in order to somehow push them to make the decisions that Ukraine and the Ukrainian people need,” she said.

Denisova noted that Italy’s Five Star Movement was originally “against the provision of weapons to us, but after [her] speech, one of the party leaders… said that they will support [us], including by the provision of weapons.”

Despite the fact that her claims about mass rape were false, they were repeatedly amplified by legacy media outlets like CNN and the Washington Post.

“The media was quick to put this woman’s BS claims out but couldn’t care less about correcting the record,” writes Chris Menahan.

Indeed, there have been innumerable outright hoaxes and falsehoods throughout the war where so-called ‘fact checkers’ have been noticeable by their absence.

These include radiation leaks at besieged nuclear plants which turned out not to have occurred, the media’s complete misinformation about what happened on Snake Island, the ‘Ghost of Kiev Hoax, as well as the ‘attack’ on a Holocaust memorial that never happened.

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Featured image is a screenshot from a video above/via Summit News

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The War in Ukraine Marks the End of the American Century. “What’s Left is a Steaming Pile of Dollar Denominated Debt”

By Mike Whitney, June 09, 2022

It’s true. The “full faith and credit” of the US Treasury is largely a myth held together by an institutional framework that rests on a foundation of pure sand. In fact, the USD is not worth the paper it is printed on; it is an IOU flailing in an ocean of red ink.

The 2020 U.S Elections: Zuckerberg, Rockefeller, Google and the Privatization of Election Integrity

By F. William Engdahl, June 09, 2022

Through deceit and capitalizing on loopholes in US law for non-profit entities, private corporate and foundation interests have and are pouring vast sums of money to corrupt the US election process in the interest of a dystopian Green Agenda and worse.

Ortega Links Non-invitation to the Summit of Americas to Nicaragua’s Close Ties with Russia

By Paul Antonopoulos, June 09, 2022

Ortega also linked Washington’s non-invitation for Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba to the summit as a foreign policy strategy intended to weaken Russia.

Scientism, Not Science, Rules the Roost

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, June 09, 2022

Science has long been regarded as a stronghold of logic and reason. Scientists don’t draw conclusions based on emotions, feelings or sheer faith. It’s all about building a body of reproducible evidence. Well, that’s what it used to be, but as technocracy and transhumanism have risen to the fore, it has brought with it its own form of science — “scientism” — which is basically the religion of science.

The Dangers of Regime Change: After Putin

By Ted Snider, June 09, 2022

The comparison between the crisis in Ukraine and the Cuban missile crisis has occasionally been made. With an honest look at that crisis, history has two lessons to offer for the crisis of today.

Biden Works to Prolong Ukraine War: Craig Murray

By Craig Murray, June 09, 2022

I was in Turkey to try to further peace talks, as an experienced diplomat with good contacts there, and as a peace activist. I was not there as a journalist and much of what I discussed was with the understanding of confidence. It will probably be some years before I judge it reasonable and fair to reveal all that I know. But I can give some outline.

Video: Epstein’s “Black Book”

By Kristina Borjesson and Nick Bryant, June 09, 2022

Investigative reporter Nick Bryant (who was the first to get Epstein’s black book) and I introduce ourselves to Elon Musk as reporters who do care about investigating all things Epstein, including his clients, and explain why he thinks journalists like us do not exist.

Everything Is a Weapon: The U.S. Government Is Waging Psychological Warfare on the Nation

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, June 09, 2022

The U.S. government is waging psychological warfare on the American people. No, this is not a conspiracy theory. Psychological warfare, according to the Rand Corporation, “involves the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of opposition groups.”

For the Peoples of Our Region, the Failure of Biden’s Summit of the Americas Would be a Welcome Event

By Ajamu Baraka, June 09, 2022

The Summit of the Americas is not the property of the host nation. The U.S. has no right to exclude, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, but has done so in disregard of their sovereignty. The U.S. is not fit to judge others or to be responsible for bringing nations together. Every leader in the hemisphere should boycott what has become a farcical event.

The US Is at War with Itself

By Michael Jansen, June 09, 2022

US citizens will not come to grips with the growing epidemic of mass shootings, almost all by young men wielding assault rifles. Self-interest prompts US politicians to refuse to address mass and multiple shootings while the public is divided by conflicting, politically-motivated narratives. Last weekend, there were 17 fatalities in 10 multiple shootings across the country.

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***

Through deceit and capitalizing on loopholes in US law for non-profit entities, private corporate and foundation interests have and are pouring vast sums of money to corrupt the US election process in the interest of a dystopian Green Agenda and worse. It consists of a complex network of interests including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google, Rockefeller funds. The evidence is that this is all being covertly orchestrated by US intelligence agencies to impose a destructive economic and social agenda on the US tied to the Davos Great Reset and UN Agenda 2030.

Increasing evidence is coming to light detailing the hijacking of the core of the American elections system that not only sheds light on the 2020 US elections, but also on private financing the very infrastructure of local election clerks and election procedures including drop-box mail-in balloting and expenses of city and county election offices.

The room for abuse is staggering as the process is not transparent. At the heart of this is a little-known “non-profit” known as the oddly-named Center for Tech and Civic Life or CTCL. The alleged creator of CTCL and current head is a former Obama Foundation Fellow, Tiana Epps-Johnson. A close scrutiny of her CTCL funders and operations suggest she was simply chosen as a convenient vehicle by very powerful foundations and Big Tech companies to transform the very structure and control of the American elections process.

Center for Tech and Civic Life

Epps-Johnson founded CTCL in 2012. By 2019 she was in the big leagues when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan gave CTCL several donations totaling over $419 million to influence the 2020 US elections. How this was done is a study in sophisticated and patently illegal election manipulation.

Stalin once said

“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”

Today he might add, “Who controls the Ballot Drop Boxes also controls the vote.” This is the focus of Zuckerberg and the CTLC.

In the US political system each state is responsible for the conduct of election laws. In the run-up to the 2020 elections, following irregularities in the 2018 mid-term Congress elections where Democrats took majority in both houses, Republicans began pointing to a move by radical Democrat states like California, New York, Illinois or Michigan to open the floodgates to potential fraud by not requiring voter photo ID photo, or even standard restrictions on mail-in voting such as postmark or signature. Presently no proof of photo ID is required to cast a vote in 15 states including the most populous states of California, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Minnesota.

Follow the Money

In the crucial November 2020 US election, CTLC played an unprecedented, highly-sophisticated and clearly highly corrupt role to influence the outcome in favor of Democratic candidates, especially Joe Biden as President. It was thanks to donations totaling $419 million, nearly half a billion dollars, from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, through their $86 billion tax-exempt foundation. The crucial point was how and where the money was given out.

According to the CTLC website, they opened applications to any local election commission requesting funds, allegedly on a non-partisan basis. The money went direct and state legislatures or government had no control over it, contrary to what is written into the US Constitution. The grants or free funds were officially “TO SUPPORT THE SAFE ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC ELECTIONS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” Here is where it gets interesting.

The states where covid lockdowns and social measures were most severe were precisely the key Democratic-run states asking no voter ID and imposing massive mail-in voting “because of covid restrictions” as noted above, like California, Illinois, Pennsylvania or New York. CTCL announced grants to support unprecedented mail-in voting, including special drop-boxes in key locations to make voting by mail easier, and vote fraud as well.

The grant monies could finance vast networks of drop boxes in key Democrat neighborhoods such as Philadelphia, where Democratic Party corrupt machines were in control. Money also might be spent in local election districts to “educate” poll watchers or “train” election officials. Oh, how could this go wrong?

By law, tax-exempt organizations are required to file detailed expenditure statements to the IRS tax department. The CTLC tax form for the crucial 2020 election year was filed on January 22, 2022. For the first time since the November 2020 elections, it gives a detailed picture of what Zuckerberg’s huge donations to CTCL bought. On the surface it appears that grants were indeed given to election commissions requesting regardless of whether it was a known democratic district or Republican.

However, a detailed city or county breakdown shows the deception. In many states minimal grants of $5000 were doled out. Many of those went to known Republican areas. Not enough to do much of anything significant. But it allowed CTLC to claim non-partisanship.

But in the most notoriously corrupt democratic cities or counties the story was very different. For example the highly-populated Dallas County Texas where 65% voted Democrat, the County Election Commission got an eye-watering $15,130,433 from CTCL to spend as they saw fit. No details required. Neighboring Tarrant County where Fort Worth is, and 49% Democrat, was given $1,678,523, and Harris County where Houston is, and 56% Democratic, got a generous $9,663,446. Laredo Texas, a small town on the Mexican border got a juicy $2,435,169.

In Democratic-run Pennsylvania where major legal challenges of significant Democrat vote fraud in Philadelphia and Pittsburg were made, the CTLC nonprofit gave $2,052,251 to Allegheny County (Pittsburg) and a generous $10,016,070 to Philadelphia, the “City of Brotherly Love.” That $10 million was granted even as the former Philadelphia Judge of Elections was convicted for his role in accepting bribes to cast fraudulent ballots and certifying false voting results during the 2014, 2015, and 2016 primary elections in Philadelphia. Keep in mind neither CTLC nor Zuckerberg nor any government, required any accountability for their generosity.

New York City Board of Elections, under then notoriously corrupt Democrat Mayor Bill DeBlasio (born Warren Wilhelm Jr), got a CTLC contribution of $19,294,627. In Democrat-run Michigan the notoriously corrupt Democrat-run Detroit election officials got $7,436,450 to organize the vote as they saw fit. All told, in the State of Michigan, where significant 2020 vote fraud was claimed and even documented before corrupt judges threw the evidence, CTLC gave an estimated $24 million to some 420 towns and county election commissions. In Democratic Illinois, notoriously corrupt Chicago, home of CTLC, was given $2,269,663 to play with.

In the hotly-contested state of Georgia where both Republicans and Democrats were accused of fraud and refusal to legally prosecute it, tens of millions of dollars flowed from CTLC to key Democratic areas such as Dekalb County (83% Democrat) which got $9,625,041. Fulton County (Atlanta) which got some $10.7 million. Gwinnett County Georgia by Atlanta got $6.4 million of a total for Georgia in 2020 of $40 million! Biden “won” the pivotal swing state by a mere 0.2% of a percent. A corrupt Republican Secretary of State refused to challenge the result despite ample evidence of fraud. Another hotly-contested “Swing State” in 2020, Arizona, also got millions for key counties from CTLC including fraud-documented Maricopa County which got $1,840,345. And Democrat-run California, got some $18 million in a state asking no voter ID.

Non-partisan’ CTLC

What is exactly the Center for Tech and Civic Life whose website claims to be about “working to foster a more informed and engaged democracy, and helping to modernize US elections,”? Tiana Epps-Johnson in her own website modestly claims she is doing, “groundbreaking work to make US elections more inclusive and secure.” Bizarrely, she calls herself a “civic technologist,” whatever that is. Leave aside the fact that the most secure elections today are the classical in-person, ID verified paper ballot voting and not hackable Internet-accessible computer voting machines or mail-in or absentee ballots, which are banned in most developed countries. Outdoor Ballot Drop Boxes make vote fraud simple. This was the key to the Zuckerberg CTLC strategy

Tiana calls herself the founder and executive director of CTCL. Her Wikipedia bio reads like that of a typical spook, with no personal data such as family, birth. Her stated history begins with her as an undergraduate at Stanford where she allegedly got a BA. Quoting further from her website where she speaks of herself in third person,

“Prior to CTCL, she was the New Organizing Institute’s Election Administration Director from 2012 to 2015. She previously worked on the Voting Rights Project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. Tiana… was selected to join the inaugural cohorts of Obama Foundation Fellows (2018) and Harvard Ash Center Technology and Democracy Fellows (2015). Tiana earned a MSc in Politics and Communication from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Science from Stanford University.”

That’s it, that is all the world knows about her background. Yet she is entrusted to dole out nearly half a billion dollars to influence the 2020 US elections? Her ties to Obama are so close such that she introduced the Democratic former President in April 2022 to a Stanford student audience for a speech on “disinformation,” for which Obama is clearly world-class expert.

Things become clearer when we look at the funders of this formerly obscure non-profit. In addition to Zuckerberg’s Facebook (meta), CTLC’s website lists Google, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, eBay billionaire founder Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, the Knight Foundation, most notably. Clearly Tiana, the mysterious young “civic technologist” travels in very high-powered circles.

Google-YouTube Censors

In a May, 2022 journalist Dinesh D’Souza released a documentary detailing actual CCTV video footage of ballot drop box fraud across key states in the 2020 elections. It’s titled ‘2000 Mules’, a reference to some 2,000 paid vote fraudsters documented on surveillance CCTV video cameras.

They are shown illegally delivering multiple votes to the special ballot drop boxes in key swing state cities like Philadelphia, drop boxes paid for by Zuckerberg’s CTLC election largesse. Without the special election temporary drop boxes, allegedly to accommodate the huge increase in mail-in voting in 2020 due to “covid,” the ballot stuffing in the key states would not have been possible.

The “mules” were allegedly paid $10 per vote stuffed, and identified mules were filmed driving to several drop boxes in the dead of night wearing gloves to avoid fingerprint traces. D’Souza’s video has been banned on YouTube, a company owned by Google, the same Google which also donated to CTLC. Google enjoys close ties to the CIA as do most key Silicon Valley giants, allegedly also Zuckerberg. It is a spider’s web of Democrat NGO’s and tax-exempt foundations like Zuckerberg’s, who have de facto privatized American elections in a covert way Stalin could only have dreamed of.

Since 2020, some 14 states have passed laws forbidding private funding of elections. Similar bills have passed the legislature in another five states, including Pennsylvania, but have been blocked by Democratic governors.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.

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

Featured image is from NEO


Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-2-3
Year: 2007
Product Type: PDF File

Price: $9.50

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

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***

The continued occupation by Israel of Palestinian territory and discrimination against Palestinians are the key root causes of the recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict in the region, according to the first report by the new United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, issued today.

The Commission also noted that impunity is feeding increased resentment among the Palestinian people. It identified forced displacement, threats of forced displacement, demolitions, settlement construction and expansion, settler violence, and the blockade of Gaza as contributing factors to recurring cycles of violence.

“The findings and recommendations relevant to the underlying root causes were overwhelmingly directed towards Israel, which we have taken as an indicator of the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the reality of one State occupying the other,” Navanethem Pillay, chair of the Commission, said.

The Commission released its 18-page report after conducting an assessment of recommendations made by previous Commissions of Inquiry and Fact-Finding Missions, as well as other United Nations mechanisms and its own hearings.

The Commission undertook two missions to Geneva and one to Jordan, and held consultations with various stakeholders, including Israeli and Palestinian civil society organizations.

“We also found that these recommendations have overwhelmingly not been implemented, including calls to ensure accountability for Israel’s violations of international humanitarian and human rights law and the indiscriminate firing of rockets fire by Palestinian armed groups into Israel. It is this lack of implementation coupled with a sense of impunity, clear evidence that Israel has no intention of ending the occupation, and the persistent discrimination against Palestinians that lies at the heart of the systematic recurrence of violations in both the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel,” Ms. Pillay added.

In its report, the Commission focused on the findings and recommendations directly related to underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict. In its assessment, key recommendations have not been implemented and this lies at the heart of the conflict. The Commission identified several overarching issues that lay at the core of most recommendations, including Israel’s failure to uphold the laws and customs of war, including those of belligerent occupation, violations and abuses of individual and collective rights, and a lack of accountability.

“Our review of the findings and recommendations of previous UN mechanisms and bodies clearly indicates that ending Israel’s occupation, in full conformity with Security Council resolutions, remains essential in stopping the persistent cycle of violence. It is only with the ending of occupation that the world can begin to reverse historical injustices and move towards self-determination of the Palestinian peoples,” Commissioner Miloon Kothari noted.

Commissioner Chris Sidoti added:

“Israel clearly has no intention of ending the occupation. In fact, it has established clear policies to ensure complete permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory. This includes altering the demography of these territories through the maintenance of a repressive environment for Palestinians and a favourable environment for Israeli settlers. Israel’s policies and actions build Palestinian frustration and lead to a sense of despair. They fuel the cycle of violence and the protraction of conflict.”

The report also noted that the Palestinian Authority frequently uses the occupation as a justification for its own human rights violations and as the core reason for its failure to hold legislative and presidential elections. At the same time, the de facto authorities in Gaza have shown little commitment to upholding human rights, and no adherence to international humanitarian law.

The report, which will be presented to the 50th session of the Human Rights Council on 13 June 2022, concludes by laying out that the Commission will conduct investigations and legal analysis into alleged violations and abuses, and will work with judicial accountability mechanisms toward ensuring individual, State and corporate accountability. It will also carefully assess the responsibilities of third States and those of private actors in the continued policies of occupation.

Background

The UN Human Rights Council mandated the Commission on 27 May 2021 to “investigate, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law leading up and since 13 April 2021”. In July 2021, the President of the Human Rights Council announced the appointment of Navanethem Pillay (South Africa), Miloon Kothari (India) and Christopher Sidoti (Australia) to serve as the three members of the Commission and indicated that Ms. Pillay would serve as Chair. Resolution A/HRC/RES/S-30/1 further requested the commission of inquiry to “investigate all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity.” The Commission of Inquiry was mandated to report to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly annually from June 2022 and September 2022, respectively.

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

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***

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega permitted the entry of foreign troops, ships and aircraft into the country for humanitarian purposes from the second half of 2022. According to the official government gazette, ships, aircraft and military personnel from the US, Russia, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Dominican Republic are authorized to “participate in exercises and exchanges in humanitarian aid operations and search and rescue missions in emergency situations or natural disasters.”

However, why is Russia the only state outside of the Americas in the agreement, especially amid tensions with the US?

The Nicaraguan government believes that the exchange between military forces will be of “mutual benefit in emergency situations” between nations. The gazette also says that the entry of foreign troops was previously planned and coordinated with the Nicaraguan Army, whose members were also allowed to travel to these countries to carry out humanitarian activities.

What makes this allowance all the more interesting is the participation of Russia, signifying just how important Moscow is for Nicaragua, especially as it is the only country from outside the Americas in the agreement.

Recently, Ortega criticized the holding of the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles (June 6-10), recalling that Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela were not invited to event by the Joe Biden administration.

“I say from here to the Yankee: forget it, we are not interested in being in that Summit, we are not interested (…) that summit does not exalt anyone,” Ortega said. “We have to make ourselves respected, we cannot be asking the Yankee, begging him that we want to go to his Summit. We are not encouraged by their summit.”

Ortega also linked Washington’s non-invitation for Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba to the summit as a foreign policy strategy intended to weaken Russia.

“They want to subdue Russia. They want to subjugate China […] [they’re] thinking the time has come for them to take over the entire planet. And they didn’t realize that’s not possible anymore,” he said.

Nicaragua is currently hosting an elaborate celebration to commemorate the June 12, 1990 declaration of the Russian Federation following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The event celebrates the close ties the two countries have enjoyed since 1979 when the Sandinista Popular Revolution came to power. Since then, Nicaragua has been a key and strategic ally of Moscow.

This is especially the case since the political ideology of Nicaragua is related to the Soviet position of anti-imperialism and anti-Americanism. Although the governments and presidents of Nicaragua and Russia have changed, support between the two countries remain close and nearly unabated for over 40 years.

Buses in Managua are Russian, for example, as well as agricultural machinery, fertilizers, medicine and wheat. In addition, the two countries are often supporting each other when facing pressure from the US and its allies.

It is recalled that on January 18, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his “unwavering support” for the re-election of Ortega and his willingness to contribute to Nicaragua’s economic development. Managua has not hesitated in supporting Moscow’s position on the war in Ukraine, especially as both countries are subject to financial, immigration and political sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union.

According to Nicaraguan Finance and Public Credit Minister Iván Acosta, the West’s policy of sanctions against Russia is causing a “strong” blow to the global economy, with the aggravation of the crisis due to high fuel, fertilizer and energy prices.

“The erroneous, aggressive, sanctions policies [are] affecting major oil producers, in this case Russia, and has caused a very strong impact on one of the leading price products. When we talk about oil, we are talking about diesel, gasoline, fertilizers and other petroleum derivatives, which has a lot of impact on industry, and those prices are transferred to the economy,” he said.

Nicaragua, despite its close ties with Russia, has not escaped the impact of rising oil prices, even though the Ortega government has attempted to contain price inflation aggravated by the West’s anti-Russia sanctions.

Acosta explained that Nicaragua established a strategy to avoid the inflationary impact on the local economy by applying four measures aimed at freezing fuel prices. In this way, a rise in the cost of food, transportation, industry and production has mostly been avoided. The strategy is aimed at stabilizing the price of electricity and for now the Central American country has managed to keep fuel prices frozen for twelve consecutive weeks.

One of the measures is focused on incentivizing production for the increase in exports, which in 2022 could reach $4 billion dollars given the increase in the prices of Nicaragua’s main export products, such as gold, beef and coffee. Ortega said on May 4 that Nicaragua is making “enormous efforts” to contain the rise in fuels, mobilizing millions of dollars in resources that could be used in social programs.

Although Washington is attempting to isolate Nicaragua from the rest of the Americas, other states are wondering what the benefits are since they too are suffering from economic crises and high prices instigated by US-led sanctions against Russia. The Biden-organized Summit has proven to be nothing more but an opportunity for the US and its closest allies to denounce Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba rather than dealing with real issues such as poverty, economic stagnation and inflation. In this way, Nicaragua will continue to maintain extremely close relations with Russia.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about attempts by Karl Lauterbach to delay the work of an expert committee with a mandate from the Bundestag to evaluate the effectiveness of lockdowns and other containment measures in Germany. Christian Drosten went so far as to resign from the committee, and gave a rambling radio interview in which he complained that the evaluative body hadn’t been granted enough time and that it had been staffed with the wrong people.

The whole controversy struck me as strange. Surely this was going to be some milquetoast whitewash of the lockdowns, and so you had to wonder why Drosten and Lauterbach were even bothering.

Well, I was wrong: The committee aren’t preparing a whitewash at all. They are poised, instead, to issue a mostly honest report admitting that there is no evidence that German containment has achieved anything. The Süddeutsche Zeitung has obtained a draft of their report, which is set to be released towards the end of this month. Their crack Corona reporter, renowned hypochondriac schoolmarm and go-to eugyppius villain Christina Berndt, is not pleased.

Image on the right: The hypervaccinated Christina Berndt, in a rare maskless appearance. (Source: eugyppius)

It’s fairly clear that the conclusions of the committee represent the quiet consensus of the post-Merkel German political establishment. Its experts were appointed by the government and the Bundestag, with each political party being permitted a number of nominations proportional to their share of electoral representation. Politicians were given every opportunity, in other words, to ensure that the committee didn’t arrive at any undesirable conclusions.

What we’re looking at here, is a surreptitious effort by the political arm to close the door on mass containment, which explains the opposition from Lauterbach and Drosten. These men are merely the leading edge of the public health dictatorship in Germany, which has its deepest roots in academia, the permanent bureaucracy and the press. They will now strike back, and do everything in their power to avoid having their signature policies discredited.

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There are important scraps of information to be gleaned from Berndt’s anathema:

The chapter on the Corona measures is poorly crafted, the selection and commentary of the scientific literature is one-sided, the negative consequences of the measures are overemphasised, important aspects are simply omitted; only a preconceived negative opinion of the Corona measures will find confirmation here, various virological and epidemiological experts told the SZ.

According to the chapter’s authors, there is in the end little evidence for the benefit of many measures, from contact restrictions to 3G rules – with the exception of wearing masks indoors.

From the beginning of this year, as country after country dropped all containment measures, politicians like Markus Söder began hawking a political compromise –vestigial mask mandates to appease the hystericists, and otherwise no restrictions. This is the vision that ultimately won out, and it just can’t be a coincidence that this is exactly what the expert committee ended up supporting.

The chapter is being drafted under the leadership of virologist Hendrik Streeck from the University of Bonn, who was originally supposed to share this task with Christian Drosten from the Charité in Berlin. But Drosten left the committee because, in his view, a sound scientific evaluation wasn’t possible in the allotted time and with the personnel available to the committee …

Streeck has had a more balanced view of containment and the risk posed by SARS-2 from the very beginning. Drosten obviously dropped out, calculating that it would be better to discredit the report from the outside, than lend the authority of his name to its contents.

[M]any important details in the draft report are surprising. It opens with the statement that Germany did not do well during the pandemic. For example, it claims that life expectancy in Germany for 2021 has fallen “by about half a year compared to the pre-Covid year 2019,” while people in Sweden, which critics of the measures regard as a positive example, are living longer. The comparison of 2021 with 2019 seems strange, though, because Sweden experienced massive deaths in 2020, and then imposed stricter measures later.

The selection of studies moreover seems arbitrary. For example, relevant studies that give a good rating to Germany’s handling of the pandemic during the first wave are not mentioned, such as a high-ranking paper by Max Planck researcher Viola Priesemann published in the journal Science. …

Image below: Viola Priesemann is a frightening person. (Source: eugyppius)

Viola Priesemann im Porträt

Here we learn that the report is a not-so-subtle rebuke of the Merkel government specifically: It rates Germany’s pandemic performance poorly, snubs Merkel-adjacent modellers like the forever-wrong Viola Priesemann, and compares German outcomes unfavourably to Sweden, which took the opposite path of minimal mitigation.

Sometimes, studies that evaluate interventions as effective are cast into doubt with succinct statements that they have been “critically received”, without providing a reference. And in numerous places there is no reference at all, only the deliberate insertion of “REF” to suggest that there is something more to come here. An expert who, like other critics of the study, does not want to named, says: “It looks like they’re still looking for the right literature reference, because studies that support an opinion can always be found.”

Or, it’s, you know, a draft, but by all means, get your science friends to provide baseless anonymous criticism of conclusions you don’t like.

The dishonesty continues:

[L]iterature references are sometimes misrepresented in the report. For example, it is claimed that even the WHO, in a report from March 2019, “did not recommend broad contact and movement restrictions for the population in the event of an influenza pandemic due to a lack of scientific evidence.” Yet the report says the opposite. The WHO explicitly recommends avoiding crowds even in the case of a “moderate” influenza pandemic, school closures and masks from the next severity level (“severe”), and closing workplaces and travel restrictions from the “extraordinary” severity level, which probably applies to Covid-19.

This is more evidence that the report is trying to drive a stake through the heart of the lockdown regime. In addition to relying on modellers and avoiding international comparisons, the lockdowners like to elide the crucial distinction between mitigation and containment. Mitigation measures to “slow the spread,” including temporary regional closures, are categorically not the same as “broad restrictions on contact and movement” like lockdowns, border closures and mandatory quarantines of the healthy. Mitigation is when your schools close; containment is when your kids can’t play with their friends. Thus the WHO report, which Berndt misrepresents, says that “Contact tracing,” “quarantine of exposed individuals,” “entry and exit screening” and “border closure” are “not recommended in any circumstances” (p. 3) – to say nothing of lockdowns.

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Mass containment depends upon a whole tapestry of convenient lies and fictions. The middle path would have been to say that the measures are no longer necessary or cost-effective, given the widespread availability of vaccines and the immune resistance the German population has cultivated, while otherwise affirming the theoretical validity of the doctrinal system. Apparently, the report leaked to Christina Berndt doesn’t do that. It’s instead an effort to sink mass containment as a viable policy now and for all time, orchestrated by politicians desperate to end the closures.

For much of 2021, official messaging was dominated by two rival discourses, that I nicknamed Team Lockdown and Team Vaccine. Some limited vaccine scepticism was possible, so long as you expressed deep fanatical devotion to repressive non-pharmaceutical interventions. Conversely, you were allowed to demand an end to lockdowns and other measures, so long as you sang the praises of the vaccines. In 2022, with the rise of Omicron, we have seen the total rout of Team Lockdown and the ascendancy of Team Vaccine everywhere but China.

I expect the Bundestag report to be thoroughly trashed by the German press and academic establishment, but as a sign of some opposition, finally, somewhere, it’s encouraging.

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Scientism, Not Science, Rules the Roost

June 9th, 2022 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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As technocracy and transhumanism have risen to the fore, they have brought with them their own form of science — “scientism” — which is basically the religion of science. In other words, it’s a belief even in the absence of evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence, and this is a very serious problem

The clearest problem with the admonition to “believe the science” is that bona fide experts are found on all sides of any given empirical question

The scientific priesthood is intolerant to new ideas while, simultaneously, search engines and digitization of scientific literature have eroded their authority as gatekeepers of knowledge

The way things look right now, the gatekeepers to the scientific priesthood don’t seem to have any intention to open its doors to outsiders and independent thinkers. If anything, they’re trying to massively increase their control over the information we’re allowed to see and share, even to the point of proposing the creation of certifying boards to police physicians’ sharing of medical opinions

The idea that a group of people can be the sole arbiters of “truth” is irrational. Individual biases always creep in, and the greater the influence of such a group, the more ingrained and dogmatic those biases will become, until the system is corrupted to the core. One could argue that dogmatic faith in nonexistent scientific consensuses is the reason for why we are where we are today

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Science has long been regarded as a stronghold of logic and reason. Scientists don’t draw conclusions based on emotions, feelings or sheer faith. It’s all about building a body of reproducible evidence. Well, that’s what it used to be, but as technocracy and transhumanism have risen to the fore, it has brought with it its own form of science — “scientism” — which is basically the religion of science. Sheldon Richman with The Libertarian Institute writes:1

“The popular slogan today is ‘Believe in science.’ It’s often used as a weapon against people who reject not science in principle but rather one or another prominent scientific proposition, whether it be about the COVID-19 vaccine, climate change … to mention a few …

The clearest problem with the admonition to ‘believe in science’ is that … well-credentialed scientists — that is, bona fide experts — are found on both (or all) sides of a given empirical question … Moreover, no one, not even scientists, are immune from group-think and confirmation bias …

Apparently, under the believers’ model of science, truth comes down from a secular Mount Sinai (Mount Science?) thanks to a set of anointed scientists, and those declarations are not to be questioned. The dissenters can be ignored because they are outside the elect. How did the elect achieve its exalted station? Often, but not always, it was through the political process …

But that’s not science; it’s religion, or at least it’s the stereotype of religion that the ‘science believers’ oppose in the name of enlightenment. What it yields is dogma and, in effect, accusations of heresy. In real science, no elect and no Mount Science exists.

Real science is a rough-and-tumble process of hypothesizing, public testing, attempted replication, theory formation, dissent and rebuttal, refutation (perhaps), revision (perhaps), and confirmation (perhaps). It’s an unending process, as it obviously must be …

The institutional power to declare matters settled by consensus opens the door to all kinds of mischief that violate the spirit of science and potentially harm the public financially and otherwise.”

Technocracy News also added a comment2 to Richman’s article, noting that “Scientism is at the root of both technocracy and transhumanism, indicating that the revolution waged against the world is religious in nature.”

Whether the war against humanity is truly underpinned by religion or not is open for debate and interpretation. But what is clear is that something has shifted science away from its conventional foundation into something that very much resembles religious faith. In other words, it’s a belief even in the absence of evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence, and this is a very serious problem.

Scientific Gatekeeping as a Priesthood

In “Against Scientific Gatekeeping,”3 published in the May 2022 issue of Reason magazine, Dr. Jeffrey Singer argues that “science should be a profession, not a priesthood.” Indeed, yet that’s basically what it has become. Singer starts out by reviewing the early discovery of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment against COVID-19, and the subsequent demonization of anyone who supported its off-label use.

He then goes on to discuss the scientific priesthood’s intolerance to new ideas while, simultaneously, “search engines and the digitization of scientific literature have forever eroded their authority as gatekeepers of knowledge.” He writes:4

“Most people prefer experts, of course, especially when it comes to health care … But a problem arises when some of those experts exert outsized influence over the opinions of other experts and thereby establish an orthodoxy enforced by a priesthood. If anyone, expert or otherwise, questions the orthodoxy, they commit heresy. The result is groupthink, which undermines the scientific process.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided many examples. Most medical scientists, for instance, uncritically accepted the epidemiological pronouncements of government-affiliated physicians who were not epidemiologists. At the same time, they dismissed epidemiologists as ‘fringe’ when those specialists dared to question the conventional wisdom …

The deference to government-endorsed positions is probably related to funding … President Dwight Eisenhower … warned that ‘we should be alert to the … danger that public policy could itself become captive of a scientific technological elite.’ Today we face both problems …

It is easy to understand why the scientific priesthood views the democratization of health care opinions as a threat to its authority and influence. In response, medical experts typically wave the flag of credentialism: If you don’t have an M.D. or another relevant advanced degree, they suggest, you should shut up and do as you’re told.

But credentials are not always proof of competence, and relying on them can lead to the automatic rejection of valuable insights … Scott Atlas, a former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford Medical School, has published and critically reviewed hundreds of medical research papers. He is a member of the Nominating Committee for the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology.

Yet when Atlas commented on COVID-19 issues, the priesthood and its journalistic entourage derided him because he is ‘not an infectious disease expert’ — as if a 30-year career in academic medicine does not provide enough background to understand and analyze public health data. Why? Because this physician had the temerity to contradict the public health establishment.”

The Need to Reassess Dogmatic Thinking

Singer reviews several other examples of bonafide experts who got thrown under the proverbial bus by the medical priesthood during the years of COVID, and highlights instances where we can now, rather conclusively, prove that public health officials made bad calls.

Several studies have concluded that lockdowns had no beneficial impact on infection rates and COVID deaths, for example, while disproportionally harming the young and the poor. Yet no one has publicly admitted this strategy was an unwise one that should be permanently abandoned and never repeated.

Many studies have also demonstrated that natural immunity is better than the COVID jab, yet no changes have been made to the official recommendation to inject everyone, whether COVID recovered or not.

“Just as public health officials must abandon a ‘zero COVID’ strategy and accept that the virus will be endemic, the science priesthood must adapt to a world where specialized knowledge has been democratized,” Singer writes.5

“For scientific knowledge to advance, scientists must reach a rapprochement with the uncredentialed. They must not dismiss lay hypotheses or observations out of hand. They must fight against the understandable desire to avoid any hypothesis that might upset the health bureaucrats who control billions of research grant dollars.

It is always useful to challenge and reassess long-held premises and dogmas. People outside of a field might provide valuable perspectives that can be missed by those within it.”

Effort to Muzzle Doctors Continues

The way things look right now, the gatekeepers to the scientific priesthood don’t seem to have any intention to open its doors to outsiders and independent thinkers.

If anything, they’re trying to massively increase their control over the information we’re allowed to see and share, even to the point of proposing the creation of private medical certifying boards to police physicians’ sharing of medical opinions online and elsewhere. In a May 31, 2022, Substack article, independent medical journalist Paul Thacker writes:6

“This of course, is laughable. We have plenty of evidence that medical boards are incapable of regulating physician behavior simply by looking at the history of drug scandals in America, none of which could have occurred without the complicity of corrupt doctors — few if any of whom were later sanctioned by their own profession.

Anyone notice a medical board going after Duke University’s Dr. Ralph Snyderman for aiding the Sacklers’ opioid scheme and helping spread disinformation that these highly addictive drugs are NOT … highly addictive?

Of course not. Snyderman built up Duke University into the 3rd most prestigious medical school in the States. Despite spreading disinformation about opioids that killed tens of thousands of Americans, he’s obviously a great doctor …

Oddly enough, one of the most prolific tweeters on COVID-19 vaccines is Baylor University’s Dr. Peter Hotez. And while Hotez has spread disinformation about vaccines — in one example, stating that vaccines mandates were never going to happen and were just a dog whistle by anti-vaccine groups — don’t expect any state medical board to come after him.

The reality is that, during the pandemic, the medical profession has become cheerleaders for vaccines, not skeptics. So when a couple MDs write an essay in the NEJM saying we need to confront COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, you automatically know they don’t mean someone like Hotez who has tweeted vaccine misinformation, but who has also religiously promoted COVID-19 vaccines.”

Thacker goes on to detail the history of Dr. Edward Michna, who has spent a large portion of his career promoting and defending the use of opioids for several different drug companies. He’s also conducted several pain trials involving opioids, and despite having received many tens of thousands of dollars from opioid makers, he didn’t disclose those competing interests.

“In coming months, documents will be released, further explaining what the opioid manufacturers did. But nothing … NOTHING will happen to Dr. Edward Michna for defending these companies,” Thacker writes.7 “That’s why nobody should believe … the idea that doctors can regulate doctors. Doctors have had forever to do this, and they continually fail.”

Without Free Discourse, Science Dies

It seems the moral of all these stories is that without free discourse, science cannot flourish and falsehoods become harder to weed out. Free speech is a requirement for any well-functioning system, whether we’re talking about politics, medicine, science or anything else.

The idea that a group of people, no matter how well-intended, can be the sole arbiters of “truth” is irrational on its face, because who among us can claim to know all there is to know? Individual biases always creep in, and the greater the influence of such a group, the more ingrained and dogmatic those biases will become, until the system is corrupted to the core.

One could argue that dogmatic faith in nonexistent scientific consensuses is the reason for why we are where we are today. Gatekeepers to the scientific priesthood have already allowed science to be corrupted to the point its barely recognizable. The answer, then, is not more of the same, but less. We need less censorship and more open-minded sharing of viewpoints, opinions and interpretations.

And when it comes to creating medical boards to police medical “misinformation” shared by doctors, we already know how that would work out. While Thacker doesn’t mention this, many doctors have been targeted by various professional boards, including state medical boards, for publicly opposing COVID measures such as mask and COVID shot mandates. I discussed this in “Medical Boards Hunting Down Doctors Over Mask Mandates.”

Transforming the Health Care System

In his book, “Curable: How an Unlikely Group of Radical Innovators Is Trying to Transform Our Health Care System,” Travis Christofferson addresses questions such as: “What has happened to American health care?” and “What are the foundational disruptions or corruptions in the system?”

His book, in some ways, is based on the theory promoted in Michael Lewis’ book and subsequent film, “Moneyball.” It describes how you can use statistics to massively improve a flawed system.

“Moneyball” showed how, within a simple game of baseball, you can have massive inefficiencies, and by taking away the human biases and just applying statistics to find what is undervalued, you can massively boost the performance of a team.

When I interviewed Christofferson about his book, he offered several examples of how statistics and removal of human biases can be used in the same way to improve inefficiencies within the medical system. For example, the diabetic drug metformin has “massive repositories of data” suggesting it can be useful against a plethora of chronic diseases, including cancer, and it’s extremely affordable.

The reason it’s rarely prescribed for any of these other indications is because there’s a financial motivation to capitalize on more expensive treatments, even if they don’t work well. By focusing on undervalued treatments and low-cost prevention, health care costs could be driven way down, while simultaneously improving patient outcomes.

Another example comes from Geisinger Health in Pennsylvania. By introducing a Fresh Food Farmacy for Type 2 diabetics, Geisinger Health was able to reduce its per-year outlays and cost for Type 2 diabetics by a whopping 80%. Patients with prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes are given a prescription for fresh, whole foods, and allowed two free meals a day from the Farmacy, along with intensive care and educational support.

A third example is Intermountain Health. In addition to paying its doctors a fixed salary plus bonuses based on patients’ health outcomes, they also assess differences between treatments to see which works best.

For example, patients are always given antibiotics before surgery, but it’s never been established when the optimal time to administer the drugs is. Intermountain compared medical records, finding the optimal time was two hours before surgery, which cut their surgical infection rate by more than half.

Bias Corrupts and Corruption Is Inherently Destructive

These are all examples of how we can effectively and efficiently move medicine forward. By silencing debate and discussion, and by ignoring data and statistics, which has become the norm in this COVID era, the conventional health care system is headed for collapse.

This seems particularly true when you consider hospitals have, over the past two years, completely shredded patients’ trust by mistreating and outright killing COVID-19 patients with the most dangerous treatments available. Rather than collaborating with peers, most doctors have blindly followed financially-driven and politically biased protocols handed down from the reigning “priesthood,” and the results have been nothing short of disastrous.

Speaking of disastrous, California has introduced a bill8 that will strip doctors of their medical licenses if they express medical views that the state does not agree with, basically reducing medicine to a state-sanctioned one-size-fits-all endeavor. Absolutely nothing good can come of such a plan. I discussed this in “Bill Seeks to Muzzle Doctors Who Tell the Truth About COVID.”

This bill, AB-2098, was passed by House vote (53 to 20), May 26, 2022, and is currently in the Senate.9 If this law is passed in California, we will probably begin to see similar or identical bills introduced in other states as well.

If your trust in doctors has already waned, implementation of such a law is sure to carpet bomb whatever trust is left into oblivion, because all you’ll be able to get, no matter who you go to, is the state-sponsored opinion. What happens then? How do we care for our health if our doctors are legally prevented from giving us their best advice? This is such a radical departure from sanity and sound practice that it’s hard to even imagine what medicine will look like at that point.

The answer, I believe, will be for good, caring medical professionals to start building parallel health care systems, such as those detailed in Christofferson’s book, “Curable.” We may also have to take on greater responsibility for finding solutions to our own health problems. “Take control of your health” has been my motto and tagline since I started this website, but it’s more important now than ever.

In years past, one of the greatest risks a patient faced was a doctor lacking nutritional know-how. In the future, the greatest risk could be doctors outright lying to you, even to the point of sending you to a more or less certain death, just to stay in practice. I hope it won’t come to that. But prevent it, we must resist and oppose these kinds of treacherous plots wherever and whenever they crop up.

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Notes

1 Libertarian Institute July 30, 2021

2 Technocracy News August 2, 2021

3, 4, 5 Reason May 2022

6, 7 Disinformation Chronicle Substack May 31, 2022

8 California Assembly Bill AB-2098

9 California Assembly Bill AB-2098, History

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The US Is at War with Itself

June 9th, 2022 by Michael Jansen

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US citizens will not come to grips with the growing epidemic of mass shootings, almost all by young men wielding assault rifles. Self-interest prompts US politicians to refuse to address mass and multiple shootings while the public is divided by conflicting, politically-motivated narratives. Last weekend, there were 17 fatalities in 10 multiple shootings across the country. 

Foreign obsevers of the US scene have no problem understanding this unique phenomenon and lay the blame on omnipresent weaponry, particularly AR-15-type long guns. In the US, there are 400 million guns, 20 million of which are assault weapons.  This means 120.5 guns for every 100 residents, an increase from 88 per 100 in 2011. The next highest ratio is 53 per 100 in war-ravaged Yemen.

While US suicides by gun account for 54 per cent of deaths, 43 per cent are homicides, 79 per cent of which are murders committed with guns.

Revolvers and semi-automatic hand guns account for 62 per cent of murders. However, over the past three years assault rifles have been used for 67 per cent of massacres involving the deaths of six or more people, reported Louis Klarevas, a research professor at Columbia University.

Of the 50 US states, only seven plus Washington DC ban assault weapons while just two regulate but do not ban such weapons. A ten-year federal ban enacted in 1994 was successfully negotiated by President Joe Biden when he was a senator. At that time, he made an impassioned plea for adoption of the measure by the Senate. But when the law expired, the ban was not renewed because of the deep divisions within both houses of the US legislature.

In response to the murder of two teachers and 19 elementary school children in Uvalde, Texas, Biden stated, “When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. When the law expired, mass shootings tripled.”

However, that law was deeply flawed because it did not mandate the collection and destruction of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Unfortunately, the impact of the ban was limited since there were 1.5 million assualt weapons owned privately and some 25 million weapons were equipped with large magazines.

It is significant that in the aftermath of the Uvalde massacre, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tabled a bill in parliament for a ban on the sale, transfer and importation of hand-guns and the reconfiguring of rifle magazines so they can hold only five bullets. Canada already has stronger gun regulation than the US.

However, Trudeau did not dare to emulate New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who met Biden the day after the Uvalde shootings, and proffered advice on how to deal with gun violence. Following the 2019 massacre of 21 worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, Ardern rammed through her country’s parliament a ban on and buy of assault weapons and set the end of that year as the deadline for the hand-over.

Nowhere in world other than the US are so many innocent civilians being slaughtered by civilians in schools, shops, and other public places. The US is at war with itself. Banning or curbing guns is vehemently opposed by gun manufacturers, lobbyists and millions of owners. They consistently win when challenged.

Consequently, psychologists study the shooters involved and gun-rights activists argue that the problem is the mental health of perpetrators, not possession of weapons of war. They do not accept that putting the two together creates the motivation and urge to use guns to express rage and frustration and provide the satisfaction of revenge for real or perceived slights, insults and abuses.

It is significant that males commit 98 per cent of mass shootings although females also experience major physical and psychological changes during their teens and young adulthood.

The latest fashion is to blame the traumas of male puberty rather than the shooters themselves. Writing in The New York Times on June 2nd, Glenn Thrush and Matt Richtel report that investigators and researchers dealing with the recent shootings in New York state and Texas say “the age of the accused has emerged as a key factor in understanding how two teenagers became driven to acquire such deadly firepower and how it led them to mass shootings.

“They fit in a critical age range, roughly 15 to 25, that law enforcement officials, researchers and policy experts consider a hazardous crossroads for young men, a period when they are in the throes of developmental changes and societal pressures that can turn them toward violence in general, and, in the rarest cases, mass shootings.”

The article goes on to state:

“Six of the nine deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 2018 were by males who were 21 or younger, representing a shift for mass casualty shootings, which before 2000 were most often initiated by men in their mid-20s, 30s and 40s.”

The blame is placed on an increasingly serious mental health crisis which preceded but was worsened by COVID. Online bullying, widespread marketing of guns by manufacturers, weak state laws and sales to boys 18 and above contribute to the dire situation.

Alabama Republican Congressman Mo Brooks invented a new sexist/racist notion to add to the list of why young men become mass killers: Moral decline caused by single-parent families. He argued on right-wing Fox news that children living in such families are more likely to be on welfare, do poorly in school, and involved in drugs and criminal activity. His remarks were sexist because the majority of single parent families are headed by women and racist because a large proportion of these women are black.

US-centric analysts seeking to excuse the omnipresence of guns do not take into consideration that young males in the same age range in other countries do not engage in mass shootings. They are not driven to ease puberty pain by engaging in senseless, largely suicidal shootings and do not strive to get their hands on guns.

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The Dangers of Regime Change: After Putin

June 9th, 2022 by Ted Snider

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***

The comparison between the crisis in Ukraine and the Cuban missile crisis has occasionally been made. With an honest look at that crisis, history has two lessons to offer for the crisis of today.

The first is that the Cuban missile crisis demonstrates clearly how the US would respond to Russia encroaching on its sphere of influence and how it would respond to Russian weapons on its borders. The response is enshrined in the two century old Monroe Doctrine that bars the door from any European power encroaching on the American continents and that declares “any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere” to be “dangerous to our peace and safety.” It promises that any alliance between a European nation and a nation in the Western hemisphere would be seen as “the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

Kennedy specifically invoked the Monroe Doctrine to justify intervening in Cuba, saying that “The Monroe Doctrine means . . . that we would oppose a foreign power extending its power to the Western Hemisphere.” At around the same time, in April 1961, he would invoke the doctrine more generally. While acknowledging that “any unilateral American intervention, in the absence of an external attack upon ourselves or an ally, would be contrary to . . . our international obligations,” he, nonetheless, said that “If the nations of this hemisphere should fail to meet their commitments against outside Communist penetration then I want it clearly understood that this government will not hesitate in meeting its primary obligations which are to the security of our nation.”

Given its own commitment to the Monroe Doctrine, the US might have anticipated and understood Russian concerns and warnings not to encroach on its borders by moving weapons into Ukraine and Ukraine into NATO.

The second lesson is that the Cuban missile crisis demonstrates how such a crisis can be solved and war avoided. Though American mythology tells a story of the Cuban missile crisis being resolved by Kennedy coldly staring down Khrushchev and forcing a withdrawal, the historical record shows something different. The crisis was resolved when Kennedy negotiated with Khrushchev and promised to remove the US Jupiter missiles that were threatening Russia from their positions in Turkey – and possibly Italy – if Khrushchev would remove the Russian missiles that were threatening the US from Cuba.

It was a quid pro quo agreement that brought the crisis in Cuba under control. Upon Khrushchev’s offer, Kennedy knew that the US would be in an “insupportable position” were he not to accept because “to any man at the United Nations or any other rational man, it will look like a very fair trade.”

The historical lesson was clear as Russian troops moved into Ukraine from the east, and the US and NATO moved into Ukraine from the west.

But there is another crisis from the same period that also offers important historical lessons. In the early days of the Vietnam War, US officials were talking about, as they are hopefully talking about now, “frustrating Soviet ambitions without provoking conflict.” Those were the words of CIA Station Chief in Saigon William Colby. US planners at the time were very cognizant, in the words of Lindsey O’Rourke in Covert Regime Change, that actions could be “potentially costly – especially if [they] escalated to involve the USSR or China.”

In those early days of the Vietnam conflict, the US actively considered solving its problem with North Korea by removing Ho Chi Minh by covert regime change. President Johnson eventually backed away from those coup plans because of the risk of bringing China into the war but also because, as US ambassador to Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. warned, “I do not think it profitable to try to overthrow Ho Chi Minh, as his successor would undoubtedly be tougher than he is.”

The US faced a similar problem in the south. As confidence in President Diem waned, US officials began to talk about a coup. Secretary of State Dulles worried, however, that “no substitute for him has yet been proposed.” A fact finding mission led by Secretary of Defense McNamara similarly warned that “The prospects that a replacement regime would be an improvement appear to be about 50-50.”

The US would, eventually, cooperate in a coup against Diem. It backfired by destabilizing Vietnam even more and, ultimately, contributed to bringing America into war in Vietnam.

In both North and South Vietnam, before engaging in regime change, the US considered the alternative leader that could follow the removal of the regime. Though the US has too many times failed in its care or its calculations, it has long been a crucial part of the coup calculus to identify an acceptable alternative to the government you are taking out.

Though the calls are growing for a coup in Moscow, it is not clear that US planners have careful done their calculations.

On March 26, President Joe Biden clearly called for a coup in Russia. Before he ended a speech delivered in Poland, Biden added the call that “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

Biden’s fixers struggled to retranslate the potentially dangerous comment. He “was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change,” the White House translated. “The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region.” But Biden spurned their awkward attempt to walk back his call for a coup. While saying that he wasn’t “articulating a policy change,” Biden insisted, “I’m not walking anything back.  The fact of the matter is I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward the way Putin is dealing, and the actions of this man – just – just the brutality of it.” Two months later, in an opinion piece in The New York Times, Biden did walk it back, saying “the United States will not try to bring about his ouster in Moscow.”

But if Biden’s two month call for a coup was off the official script, then it was an unofficial script that was widely distributed. On May 11, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the US’s most loyal Western European ally, would repeat the call. Following discussions in Sweden with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, a spokesperson for Johnson said that “relations with Putin could never be normalized.” Andersson, whose country is applying for membership in NATO, joined Johnson in his statement.

Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, also seemed to call for regime change when she said in a speech that “Putin’s assault has been so vicious that we all now understand that the world’s democracies – including our own – can be safe only once the Russian tyrant and his armies are entirely vanquished.”

The call for regime change in Moscow has been heard in Eastern Europe as well. On May 9, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said“From our standpoint, up until the point the current regime is not in power, the countries surrounding it will be, to some extent, in danger. Not just Putin but the whole regime because, you know, one might change Putin and might change his inner circle but another Putin might rise into his place.”

Of course, Zelensky has also hinted at regime change, hoping that, before the eventual peace process and the eventual talks, “we would be discussing the issues of who Ukraine will negotiate, with what president of the Russia Federation,” adding that, “I hope that will be a different president in the Russian Federation.”

But in the calculus of coups, there are many ways in which removing Putin could lead to a worse alternative for the West. A little discussed one is that the removal of Putin could lead to an alternative with a more hardline foreign policy toward the West.

Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at Kent, who has written extensively on Putin, says that Putin has never subscribed to a “virulent anti-Westernism.” He has called Putin “the most European leader Russia has ever had.” During his first several years in office, Sakwa says Putin attempted “to forge a closer relationship with the European Union” and that he “envisaged Russia joining NATO” to form a “greater West” and “even suggested membership [in] NATO.” Putin did not formally ally with the West, not because of a lack of willingness, but because Washington vetoed the idea of Russia’s membership in NATO.

Stephen Cohen, who was Professor Emeritus of Russian studies and politics at Princeton, has pointed out that Putin “long pursued negotiations with the West over the objections of his own hardliners.” Though the West has portrayed Putin’s foreign policy as aggressive toward the West, Cohen says that the historical record points more to a past of US instigations and provocations to which Putin did not react until compelled to. “As a result of this history,” Cohen says, “Putin is often seen in Russia as a belatedly reactive leader abroad, as a not sufficiently ‘aggressive’ one.”

These are the forces that could fill the void left by Western removal of the Putin regime. These forces, this “influential faction in Kremlin politics,” as Cohen calls them “has long insisted . . . that the US-led West is preparing an actual hot war against Russia, and that Putin has not prepared the country adequately,” a warning that may sound more real than it did when first articulated.

Though Putin has now surely given up on relations with the West and has moved to a position of extreme hostility, that was not always so. As recently as the Minsk agreements, and even as late as December, 2021, when Putin sent the US a proposal on mutual security guarantees and requested immediate negotiations, he was still willing to work with the West.

Putin began his presidential career pursuing, like Gorbachev and Yeltsin, partnership with the US, holding back harder line forces in Russia that could be the alternative after regime change. Alexander Lukin, Professor of International Relations at HSE University in Moscow, has argued that the West has had “a fundamentally incorrect understanding” of Putin’s foreign policy. The “main driving force” behind Putin’s foreign policy is domestic policy, “namely, a desire to maintain stability.” For that reason, Putin has avoided expansionism in order to avoid confrontation with the West until Russia “was forced to respond” to the “strategic threat” of “Western encroachments on its traditional sphere of influence and threats to its security.” Hence the hardline criticism that Putin is “belatedly reactive.”

But Putin has been a restrainer not only on expansionism and foreign policy. He has also restrained the Russian nationalists who “believe in creating the ‘Russian world’ by annexing the territories of the neighboring countries populated by ethnic Russians.” Like the political forces that are less reactive and more aggressive, Putin restrains these political forces because they, too, risk confrontation with the West and threaten hard won domestic stability, reacting only when forced to respond with the aim of “neutralizing Western encroachments on its traditional sphere of influence and threats to its security.”

The hardliners in line behind Putin have been critical of this reluctance to confront the West and annex ethnic Russian territories in neighboring countries when they have requested it. Russian hardliners today blame Putin for not going further than the annexation of Crimea following the coup in 2014 by annexing the Donbas as well. Anatol Lieven, senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told me that the hardliners criticize Putin for trusting Germany and France’s promise to ensure the implementation of the Minsk Agreement. The Minsk agreement met Putin’s goal of autonomy for the Donbas. But Minks never happened because Germany and France failed to keep their promise, refusing to break with the US or pressure Ukraine into implementing the agreement. Putin had the cases belli and the military ability at the time to annex the Donbas, and Russian hardliners are angry with Putin for his restraint.

Still today, there are, according to Sakwa, “domestic pressures” on Putin to respond more assertively to Western efforts to isolate Russia economically and politically, by, for example, nationalizing Western assets in Russia. “So far,” Sakwa says, consistent with concerns about regime change, “Putin is holding the line, but he is being pushed to be more radical.”

Western calls for regime change in Russia ignore the coup calculus of the “plausible domestic political alternative.” The only other interpretation is even more reckless. The other possible alternative, Lieven suggests, is that the US is willing to allow hardliners to fill the void left by the removal of Putin both because of the weakened Russia that the coup would escort in and because a new hardline government, more manifestly hostile to the West, would provide the justification for the isolation and subordination of Russia that the US seeks.

Either way, the risk is great and ominous. Removal of Putin through regime change could at last open the door for the hardliners in Russia who are willing to prepare for and to risk greater confrontation with the West. And it is dangerous to assume, history has shown, that a post regime change Russia would remain weak.

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Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.

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Biden Works to Prolong Ukraine War: Craig Murray

June 9th, 2022 by Craig Murray

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I was in Turkey to try to further peace talks, as an experienced diplomat with good contacts there, and as a peace activist. I was not there as a journalist and much of what I discussed was with the understanding of confidence. It will probably be some years before I judge it reasonable and fair to reveal all that I know. But I can give some outline.

Turkey continues to be the centre of diplomatic activity on resolving the Ukraine war. It is therefore particularly revealing, and a sign of Western priorities, that I did not come across a single western journalist there trying to follow and cover the diplomatic process. There are hundreds of Western journalists in Ukraine, effectively embedded with the Ukrainian authorities, producing war porn. There appear to be none seriously covering attempts to make peace.

There was a sea change two weeks ago when Ukraine shifted to a public stance that it would cede no territory at all in a peace deal. On 21 May, Zelensky’s office stated that “The war must end with the complete restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.” Previously while they had been emphatic that no territory in “the East” would be ceded, there had been studied ambiguity about whether that referred to Donbass alone or also the Crimea.

The new Ukrainian stance, that there will be no peace deal without recovering the Crimea, has ended for now any hopes of an early ceasefire. It appears to be a militarily unachievable objective – I cannot think of any scenario in which Russia de facto loses Crimea, without the serious possibility of worldwide nuclear war.

This blow to the peace process was a setback in Ankara, and I should say that every source I spoke with believed the Ukrainians were acting on instructions conveyed from Washington to Zelensky by Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, who openly stated he wanted the war to wear down Russian defence capabilities.

A long war in Ukraine is of course massively in the interest of the US military industrial complex, whose dripping roasts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have gone rather off the heat. It also forwards the strategic objective of severely damaging the Russian economy, although much of that damage is mutual. Why we live in a world where the goal of nations is to damage the lives of inhabitants of other nations is a question which continues to puzzle me.

Turkey has for now turned towards the more limited goal of ensuring that grain supplies can be shipped out from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus. This is essential for developing nations and essential for world food supplies, which were already under pressure before this war began. Turkey is offering to clear sea lanes of mines and to police the ships carrying grain from the port of Odessa, which is still under Ukrainian control. Russia has agreed to the deal.

Ukraine is objecting to this plan to export its own wheat, because it objects to the removal of the mines, which I should be clear were put down in the sea lanes by Ukraine to prevent amphibious attack on Odessa. There is monumental hypocrisy by the West on this, blaming Russia for preventing the export of the grain while it is actually blocked in by Ukraine’s own mines, which they currently refuse to allow Turkey to remove.

On 19 May this was the headline of a UN press release:

Lack of Grain Exports Driving Global Hunger to Famine Levels, as War in Ukraine Continues, Speakers Warn Security Council

As it states, Ukraine and Russia together account for one third of world grain exports and two thirds of world sunflower oil exports. Many of those who die from this war are likely to do so in developing countries, from hunger. The decision of the EU and US to target Russian and Belarussian agricultural exports for sanctions displays an extraordinary callousness towards the very poorest human beings on the globe, who cannot afford rising food prices.

Well, the headline here is that the USA and EU are pushing Ukraine to block any food deal, based on a number of objections including the reduction in the security of Odessa and the claim that Russia will sell looted Ukrainian grain. The view in both Ankara and the developing world is that the big picture, of millions facing starvation, is being lost.

The experience has made me so cynical that I am left wondering if the interests of the powerful agricultural lobbies in both the EU and USA are influencing policy. High world food prices benefit some powerful interests.

I blame Putin for starting a war that does nothing to redress Russian long term security concerns. But the truth is that politicians in the West are equally keen on this war. Boris Johnson yesterday was blatantly promoting it for his own survival. Anybody who makes any effort to stop the killing – Presidents Macron and Erdogan in particular – are immediately and universally denounced by the “liberal” media.

Yet what is the end result that the liberal warmongers wish to achieve? When we reach the stage that Henry Kissinger is a comparative voice of sanity, the political situation is indeed dire.

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When U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about war and peace, we have to listen carefully whether we like it or not. Regarding Taiwan, when asked in Tokyo on May 23 if he was “willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan,” Biden said without hesitation, “yes, that’s the commitment we made.” White House staff rushed to say “our policy has not changed,” but others found it part of escalating Cold War chatter.

The U.S. does not have a security alliance with Taiwan. Rather, it officially recognizes it as part of China. The U.S. State Department website says

“The United States has a long-standing one China policy… We oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.”

But the “no change” claim contrasts with Biden’s meeting with Quad Alliance members, two of whom are equipped with nuclear weapons, U.S. warships passing through the Taiwan Straits and non-stop anti-China rhetoric from Washington. “War Games: The Battle for Taiwan,” a 27–minute segment ran recently on NBC’s Meet the Press—quite likely a co-production with the State and Defense departments, according to columnist Patrick Lawrence.

Meet the Press on Twitter: "WATCH TONIGHT: After Russia invaded Ukraine, it raised an important question: How might the U.S. respond if China were to invade Taiwan? We staged a war game

May 13, 2022. [Source: twitter.com]

China reacted predictably to the Biden statements. “On issues that bear on China’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and other core interests,” Wang Wenbin, a foreign ministry spokesman, said “no one shall expect China to make any compromise or trade-offs.”

“Defending Taiwan Would Be a Mistake,” was the headline of a May 27 New York Times op-ed by China expert Oriana Skylar Mastro of Stanford University. “Simply put,” she wrote, “the United States is outgunned. At the very least a confrontation with China would be an enormous drain on the U.S. military without any assured outcome that America could repel all of China’s forces.” She highlighted a 2018 assessment warning that the U.S. could face a “decisive military defeat” in a war over Taiwan, citing China’s increasingly advanced capabilities and myriad U.S. logistical difficulties. “Several top former U.S. defense officials have reached similar conclusions,” she wrote.

CGTN, China’s Global TV Network, gave another answer. “The Warmonger’s Legacy” appeared on YouTube on May 27. Starting with the Gulf of Tonkin episode of August 1964 off the coast of North Vietnam, then cycling through the endless U.S. wars in the second half of the 20th century, it lets a parade of U.S. presidents make the case. Jimmy Carter comes off best, stating “we know which is the most warlike country on earth—my country, the United States.”

It shows LBJ’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, admitted to dishonesty about the Gulf of Tonkin—where the U.S. had provoked the North Vietnamese into attacking the U.S.S. Maddox—saying “our judgment that we’d been attacked…was wrong.” George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Colin Powell, is heard testifying at the UN about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, and Bush himself declaring that “Saddam Hussein…must leave Iraq within 48 hours.”

Barack Obama shows up to say “the Gaddafi regime is coming to an end.” Trump appears announcing a bombing of Syria, claiming “chemical weapons.” Papa Bush says “air attacks are under way in Iraq” to take out “Saddam Hussein’s nuclear bomb potential.” Bill Clinton declares military victory in Yugoslavia, while two super-imposed screens state that, “In 78 days of bombing, NATO dropped approximately 20 kilograms of explosives for every person in the targeted areas,” and “By supporting Kosovan separatism, NATO showed scant concern for national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Harry Truman appears to say “We’re fighting in Korea for our own nation’s security and survival.” (This one is of special interest to the Chinese, who recently celebrated their role in the Korean War with the blockbuster hit, “The Battle of Lake Changjin.”)

Tricky Dick Nixon shows up declaring that the 1970 invasion of Cambodia was “for the purpose of ending the war in Vietnam.” The movie doesn’t show the killings of anti-war students at Kent State and Jackson State universities, but it does show several protests, with the familiar slogans “Money for Jobs Not War,” and “No Blood for Oil.”

How Nixon's Invasion of Cambodia Triggered a Check on Presidential Power - HISTORY

Dick Nixon pointing to Cambodia on a map while announcing U.S. invasion of Cambodia. [Source: history.com]

Saving the best for last, Joe Biden is presented at a recent NATO conference proclaiming “quite frankly that America is back.” Russian President Vladimir Putin appears, stating “The People’s Republics of Donbas asked for help from Russia.” And European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen heroically declares “our airspace will be closed to every Russian plane.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appears calmly affirming that the Ukrainian government’s war policy “is determined in Washington and London.”

The basic message of this CGTN feature is that China should not be expected to “play nice” in the face of U.S. efforts to extend its war with Russia to include all of Eurasia.

Biden: “What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine”

To deal with the recently changed situation in Ukraine—where Scott Ritter says “Russia is achieving its military objective of liberating the entire territories of both Lugansk and Donetsk”—Biden issued a carefully crafted message as an op-ed in the June 1 New York Times.

The message appears to reflect a new policy, focusing on potential negotiations. “We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia,” he insists. And “we do not seek a war between NATO and Russia.” Whether this can be believed or not, Biden says the flood of new weapons, ammunition, and billions of dollars, is meant to help Ukraine “be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”

This reflects a new reality both on the ground and in the economic war against Russia. As the Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott wrote on June 2, things are not “going according to plan. On the contrary, things are going very badly indeed.” His conclusion is that “sooner or later, a deal will be struck.”

Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins adds that the sanctions policy “has blatantly failed… sanctions are clearly hurting countries in western and central Europe who are imposing them.” A major recession threatens in both Europe and the U.S., as prices for fuel and food skyrocket. “The victims are overwhelmingly the poor,” Jenkins says.

African Union leader Macky Sall, President of Senegal, met with Russian President Putin in Russia on June 3. After talks on food shortages allegedly caused by the war, the leader said “I found Vladimir Putin committed and aware that the crisis and sanctions create serious problems for weak economies, such as African economies.” He said he was leaving Russia “very reassured and very happy with our exchanges.”

President Putin said Russia is “always on Africa’s side,” and is now keen to ramp up cooperation. He said Russia is ready to look for ways to ship grain stuck at Ukrainian ports, which western media falsely claims that Russia is blocking, but demanded the West lift sanctions. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expects to visit Turkey June 8 for talks on creating a “security corridor” to unblock grain exports from Ukraine.

A June 2 New York Times report said “Western nations like the United States, as well as Ukraine, oppose lifting sanctions imposed on Russia.” A UN report says around 25 million tons of grain from last year’s Ukraine harvest are stranded in silos, and another 50 million tons are expected to be harvested in coming months. David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, said: “Right now, Ukraine’s grain silos are full. At the same time, 44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation.” The Timesreport said Turkey has proposed using its ships to transport grain from Odessa which, in addition to getting Ukraine to demine the port, would require an agreement from Russia.

In a June 3 interview, President Putin said Ukraine “must clear the mines and raise the ships they sunk on purpose in the Black Sea to make it difficult to enter the ports to the south of Ukraine… we will not use the demining process to initiate an attack from the sea.” He added there are numerous ways grains from Ukraine could be exported by rail or by sea, with full Russian cooperation.[1]

On June 6 the New York Times lead front-page headline was “Putin Peddles Stolen Grain To Needy World, U.S. says.” The “stolen” grain comes mainly from the Donbas and regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which are occupied by Russian forces, the Times article says. There is no mention of Russia itself as a possible source. According to UC Davis professor Aaron Smith’s Ag Data News, Russia produces 11% of the world’s wheat and Ukraine produces 3%. Russia accounts for 19% of the global wheat export market and Ukraine 9%. Africans and Russians have a shared interest in moving the wheat.

African countries are unlikely to hesitate before buying Russian-supplied grain, no matter where it comes from, said Hassan Khannenje, director of Kenya’s HORN International Institute for Strategic Studies, according to the Times report. Any Western pressure over Russian supplied grain is likely to backfire, he said. A Kenyan Foreign Affairs ministry spokesperson asked “Why would they need to warn us in the first place? This sounds like a propaganda ploy.” Which is clearly what it is given that the population in Donbas and in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia largely welcomes integration with Russia and does not consider its grain to have been stolen.

Negotiations?

All this underscores the urgency for negotiations to end the current war. But whether Washington and its NATO allies on the one hand, and Russia on the other, will decide to talk is an open question. Biden wrote in The New York Times op-ed: “I will not pressure the Ukrainian government—in private or public—to make any territorial concessions.”

He did not say if the U.S. would exert pressure against such concessions, which would surely be required for talks to start. Most recently, Ukrainian President Zelensky has continued to insist on a status quo ante, meaning Russian troops leaving all the areas they have occupied. Neither the Russian government nor the people of the Donbas, Crimea and nearby areas can be expected to give up the gains achieved in the war.

Map Description automatically generated

Map of Ukraine with Russian gains in red. [Source: cnn.com]

Biden said “Ukraine’s talks with Russia are not stalled because Ukraine has turned its back on diplomacy.” He said, instead, that it is Russia’s fault. He may actually believe that.

On June 4, the same week Biden’s op-ed appeared, the Times ran a lead editorial by Christopher Caldwell saying “the administration is closing off avenues of negotiation and working to intensify the war.” It also said the U.S. “is trying to maintain the fiction that arming one’s allies is not the same thing as participating in combat,” adding that the massive U.S. and NATO support is “a powerful incentive not to end the war anytime soon.”

Scott Ritter wrote May 30 that Russia’s recent major battlefield successes in the Donbas “will leave Russia with a number of unfulfilled political objectives”—including denazification, demilitarization, permanent Ukrainian neutrality, and western acceptance of a new European security framework. Whether these objectives can be achieved in negotiation or only continued war is an open question.

Ritter emphasizes that Russia linked its special military operation to Article 51 of the UN Charter, claiming “preemptive, collective self-defense.”

This claim is supported by Ellen Taylor, daughter of Nuremberg prosecutor Telford Taylor, who wrote recently that “Russia, convinced that an attack was imminent, despairing of negotiations, persuaded by information contained in a hacked email, and aware of the danger of waiting any longer, launched its ‘special operation.’”

Taylor cites reports from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that from February 15 to 24, Ukrainian army shellings in the Donbas increased daily from 41 to more than 2,000 on successive days. Taylor says “NATO’s intention was to precipitate an attack. From a legal perspective it was imperative not to be identified as the aggressor. Russia was aware of this too.” She adds that Russian leadership had “the responsibility to protect” its people.

Taylor concludes that “the crime of conspiracy to commit a war of aggression… has to be laid at the feet of NATO and the U.S.” She adds that “the often-repeated claim that Russia’s aggression was unprovoked, is preposterous.”

“Stay the Course”

Biden’s essay ends with some pontification, saying the U.S. will “stay the course with the Ukrainian people because we understand that freedom is not free. That’s what we have always done whenever the enemies of freedom seek to bully and oppress innocent people.”

In some parts of the world—like Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America—it has been the United States that has sought to bully and oppress innocent people. It is happening now, in Yemen and Somalia, and continues in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Many Latin American governments claim it is also happening in their region. Some in Western Europe feel their governments have been bullied by the U.S. to go along with the self-destructive economic war of attrition there. In the second half of the 20th century U.S. interventions in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America have caused millions of deaths, and condemned millions more to extreme poverty and misery, according to The Jakarta Method, by Vincent Bevins.

The U.S., especially the CIA, has teamed up with local oligarchies to suppress democratic initiatives across Latin America: an attempted coup against Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez in 2002, and against his successor Maduro in 2020; successful coups in Haiti in 2004 and Honduras in 2009; “lawfare” (fake legal scandals) leading to impeachments in Paraguay in 2012 and Brazil in 2016; a “self-coup” in Ecuador by President Lenin Moreno in 2017; and a temporarily successful coup against Bolivia’s President Evo Morales in 2019. It is a pattern dating from the 1960s.

This lived experience by the peoples who live outside the NATO alliance makes it increasingly difficult for Biden and his neocon advisers to make credible claims about protecting innocent people from the enemies of freedom. The question is: Who will protect us from Biden and the neocons?

In a recent Black Agenda Report article, contributing editor Danny Haiphong says “Joe Biden is in trouble. The crisis of legitimacy afflicting his administration continues to worsen.” A new AP-NORC poll pegs Biden’s approval rating at 39%. Rising inflation and shortages in basic needs, such as baby formula, have played a major role in Biden’s declining popularity, as has an undue focus on prolonging the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The Biden administration is set to send $40 billion in military aid to Ukraine despite the fact that the war does not make the list of major issues of concern  for voters, let alone the general population.

It may be pressure from below—from ordinary people in the U.S., Europe, and the countries of the global South—that will finally bring enough pressure to achieve a durable peace—one which recognizes the sovereignty of Donbas and the post-2014 status of Crimea, and demilitarization and denazification of a new Ukraine.

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Dee Knight is a member of the DSA International Committee’s Anti-War Subcommittee. He is the author of My Whirlwind Lives: Navigating Decades of Storms, soon to be published by Guernica World Editions. Dee can be reached at: [email protected].

Note

1. In a June 3 interview broadcast on Russia’s Rossiya 1 television network, Russian president Vladimir Putin responded to the accusations that Russia’s actions in Ukraine are worsening the world food and fertilizer price squeezes. He said: “I have already said to all our colleagues many times – let them [Ukraine] demine the ports and let the vessels loaded with grain leave. We will guarantee their peaceful passage to international waters without any problems. There are no problems at all. Go ahead. “They must clear the mines and raise the ships they sunk on purpose in the Black Sea to make it difficult to enter the ports to the south of Ukraine. We are ready to do this; we will not use the demining process to initiate an attack from the sea. I have already said this. This is the first point.” He went on to list other points, notably the numerous ways in which grains from Ukraine could be exported by rail or by sea, with full Russian cooperation

Featured image is from globaltimes.cn

Video: Epstein’s “Black Book”

June 9th, 2022 by Kristina Borjesson

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Investigative reporter Nick Bryant (who was the first to get Epstein’s black book) and I introduce ourselves to Elon Musk as reporters who do care about investigating all things Epstein, including his clients, and explain why he thinks journalists like us do not exist.

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This video was originally published on The Whistleblower Newsroom.

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The Summit of the Americas is not the property of the host nation. The U.S. has no right to exclude, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, but has done so in disregard of their sovereignty. The U.S. is not fit to judge others or to be responsible for bringing nations together. Every leader in the hemisphere should boycott what has become a farcical event.

I applaud the decision by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador not to attend this week’s so-called Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles and hope that by Wednesday a majority of the nations in our region would have joined him. However, I am hoping that unlike President Lopez Obrador who is still sending the Mexican foreign minister, other nations demonstrate that their dignity cannot be coerced and stay away completely. Why do I take this position?

If the threat by the Biden Administration as host of the Summit not to invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, all sovereign nations in the Americas’ region, was not outrageous enough, the announced rationale that the administration did not invite these nations because of their human rights record and authoritarian governance is an absurd indignity that cannot be ignored.

I firmly believe that the U.S. should not be allowed to subvert, degrade, and humiliate nations and the peoples of our region with impunity! A line of demarcation must be drawn between the nations and peoples who represent democracy and life and the parasitic hegemon to the North which can only offer dependence and death. The U.S. has made its choice that is reflected in its public documents. “Full spectrum dominance,” is its stated goal. In other words – waging war against the peoples of our regions and, indeed, the world to maintain global hegemony. It has chosen war, we must choose resistance – on that, there can be no compromise!

The peoples of our region understand that. It is historically imperative that the representatives of the states in our region come to terms with that and commit to resistance and solidarity with the states that are experiencing the most intense pressure from empire. The rhetorical commitment to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela is not enough. The people want actions that go beyond mere denunciations of imperialism. The people are ready to fight.

And part of this fight includes the ideological war of position. We cannot allow the U.S. to obscure its murderous history by dressing that history up in pretty language about human rights.

The idea that the U.S., or any Western nation for that matter, involved in the ongoing imperialist project, could seriously see itself as a protector of human rights is bizarre and dangerous, and must be countered. The fact that the U.S. will still attempt to advance this fiction reflects either the height of arrogance or a society and administration caught in the grip of a collective national psychosis. I am convinced it is both, but more on that later.

A cognitive rupture from objective reality, the inability to locate oneself in relationship to other human beings individually and collectively in the material world are all symptoms of severe mental derangement. Yet, it appears that this is the condition that structures the psychic make-up of all of the leaders of the U.S. and the collective West.

It is what I have referred to as the psychopathology of white supremacy:

A racialized narcissistic cognitive disorder that centers so-called white people’s and European civilization and renders the afflicted with an inability to perceive objective reality in the same way as others. This affliction is not reducible to the race of so-called whites but can affect all those who have come in contact with the ideological and cultural mechanisms of the Pan-European colonial project.

How else can you explain the self-perceptions of the U.S. and West, responsible for the most horrific crimes against humanity in the annuals of human history from genocide, slavery, world wars, the European, African and Indigenous holocausts, wars and subversion since 1945 that have resulted in over 30 million lives lost – but then assert their innocence, moral superiority and right to define the content and range of human rights?

Aileen Teague of the Quincy Institute points out that the U.S. position on disinviting nations to the Summit of the Americas because of their alleged “authoritarian governance,” is “hypocritical” and “inconsistent,” noting the U.S. historical support for Latin American dictators when convenient for US policy.

Yet is it really hypothetical or inconsistent? I think not. U.S. policymakers are operating from an ethical and philosophical framework that informed Western colonial practice in which racialized humanity became divided between those who were placed into the category of “humans” which was constitutive of the historically expanded category of “white” in relationship to everyone else who was “not white,” and therefore, not fully human.

The “others” during the colonial conquest literally did not have any rights that Europeans were bound to recognize and respect from land rights to their very lives. Consequently, for European colonialists they did not perceive any ethical contradictions in their treatment of the “others” and did not judge themselves as deviating from their principles and values. This is what so many non-Europeans do not understand. When Europeans speak to their “traditional values,” it must be understood that those values mean we – the colonized and exploited non-Europeans are not recognized in our full humanity.

Is there any other way to explain the impressive solidarity among “white peoples” on Ukraine in contrast to the tragedies of Yemen, the six million dead in the Congo, Iraq – the list goes on.

That is why it was so correct for the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) to call for a boycott of the Summit of the Americas by all of the states in our region. BAP argued that the U.S. had no moral or political standing to host this gathering because it has consistently demonstrated that it did not respect the principles of self-determination and national sovereignty in the region. But even more importantly, it did not respect the lives of the people of this region.

A boycott is only the minimum that should be done. However, we understand it will be difficult because we know the vindictiveness of the gringo hegemon and the lengths it will go to assert its vicious domination. In the arrogance that is typical of the colonial white supremacist mindset, the Biden White House asserts that the “summit will be successful no matter who attends.”

Yet, if Biden is sitting there by himself, no manner of will or the power to define, will avoid the obvious conclusion that the world had changed, and with that change, the balance of power away from the U.S.

And the people say – let it be done!

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This article was originally published on Black Agenda Report.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the U.S. based United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) and the Steering Committee of the Black is Back Coalition.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

The Devastating Impacts of the COVID-19 Vaccine Confirmed: We Were Lied to: Game Over, We Won. Steve Kirsch

By Steve Kirsch, June 08, 2022

I now have a survey question that, when tested against a neutral audience, gives a very strong signal. Turns out that most people think that the COVID vaccines have killed more people in just 1.5 years than all 70+ vaccines combined over the past 32 years. The more unvaccinated you are, the more likely you are to notice this. If you’ve had four doses, it was nearly tied.

A New Generation of US-trained Extremists Is Fighting Russia. Are We Prepared for the Blowback?

By T.J. Coles, June 08, 2022

US agencies have directly and indirectly trained and empowered Nazis and ultra-nationalists at home and abroad to fight Russians in Ukraine. This program follows the blueprint established by Western intelligence agencies in Afghanistan and Syria.

“The Terrarium Economy” Amidst an Accelerating Concentration of Wealth. The Rise of Corporate Governance

By Emanuel Pastreich, June 08, 2022

We, the vast majority of humanity, and especially the citizens of the United States, live in a terrarium economy. The accelerating concentration of wealth over the past decades, and the resulting control of agriculture, manufacturing, distribution, information and communication by a handful of multinational corporations means that the ultimate decisions of consequence are made by powers beyond our ken and our control.

What Are the Prospects for Peace?

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, June 08, 2022

The US and UK are now equipping Ukraine with missiles that can be used for attacks on Russia’s Black Sea naval base in Crimea. Once such an attack occurs, the US and NATO will be at war with Russia, a situation China could take advantage of by occupying Taiwan.

The Shelling of Donbass Civilians: Two French Journalists Under Ukrainian Artillery Fire for Five Hours

By Laurent Brayard, June 08, 2022

Yesterday 4 June, Christelle and I were waiting for confirmation of a mission to the front line, with the intention of going to the scene of the shelling of civilians by Ukrainian artillery. This kind of mission aims to show the general public that civilians are priority targets of the Ukrainian army and the Kiev regime.

Washington’s Shifting Taiwan Policy Aims for an Asian “Ukraine”

By Brian Berletic, June 08, 2022

The United States is openly talking about its arming of Taiwan no longer in general terms of ensuring “sufficient self-defense,” but rather specifically to “win against China,” thus confirming Beijing’s longstanding claims that Washington has been provoking conflict in what is China’s internal political affairs recognized as such by even the US and its official recognition of the One China Policy.

US Government’s Summit of the Americas Fails: Boycott by Presidents of Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala

By Ben Norton, June 08, 2022

As the US government’s Summit of the Americas opens in Los Angeles, California, the presidents of Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras, and Guatemala have refused to attend, protesting the exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The US government’s Summit of the Americas started on June 6 in Los Angeles, California. And the event proved to be a major diplomatic failure for the Joe Biden administration.

WHO and WEF Globalists Coordinate Their Global ‘Reset’

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, June 08, 2022

Each year, the world’s elite hop into their private jets and descend upon Davos, Switzerland, the location of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual Davos Forum. Here, the self-proclaimed ruling class spend the week discussing their visions of the future and how to impose their ambitions on the rest of the world.

Canadian Immigration Policy and the Toronto Lobby’s ‘Century Initiative’ Project

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, June 08, 2022

Few people know that an obscure political organization, founded in 2011 by a small lobby of businessmen and journalists from Toronto, and bearing the name ‘Century Initiative‘, has proposed to triple the Canadian population by the year 2100.

An Appalling Slur on the Civilisation State That Is India

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, June 08, 2022

The outrage in the Muslim world over the transgression of the red line in anti-Muslim politics in India is understandable, although the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party acted swiftly for damage control. The point is, the world has taken note that anti-Muslim politics has reached a crescendo in India and is undermining the country’s democratic foundations.

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The week-long IAEA Board of Governors meeting moved into its second day, with continued focus on Iran, and the US and European allies offering a draft resolution to the body condemning Iran.

The resolution takes aim at the least substantial and most widely discussed issue, the discovery of uranium traces at undeclared sites in Iran. The resolution echoes IAEA position that Iran has not satisfied their questions about the traces.

The uranium traces have been an IAEA topic for years, and Iran very recently turned over what they say were all the documents explaining it. The US was very keen to continue the IAEA inquiry, and subsequently the IAEA was not satisfied with what they were given.

Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammed Eslami issued a statement today questioningthe IAEA’s impartiality, saying they need to stop the infiltration of IAEA operations by Iran’s enemies.

Speaking of Israel, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett demanded Iran be sent a clear warning and threatened with a “heavy price” during the IAEA meeting. This is roughly in line with what Israel expects of most meetings.

Iran has expressed concern about IAEA monitoring amounting to de facto spying by Israel and others for years, and with Israel coming up with Iranian documents from spying operations. The undeclared sites themselves had their origin in Israel’s spying.

How much of a “price” the IAEA can inflict at this point is unclear, as the US seems to be backing away from Iran talks on its own, and absent a nuclear deal from those talks, Iran’s obligations are far more limited than the West hoped.

If anything this underscores what Israeli officials have been saying recently, that a nuclear deal with Iran, even a “bad” one, would be more desirable than no deal at all.

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Jason Ditz is senior editor of Antiwar.com.

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Spread the word. Confront the US and Canadian governments.

Act in solidarity with Eva Bartlett. Confront the mainstream media.

Video

READ MORE:

Canadan Journalist Added to List of Proclaimed ‘Enemies of Ukraine’

On Ukraine’s war on Donbass, Russia’s denazification operation, and being on Ukraine’s Kill List

Read Eva Bartlett’s article on Mariupol:

Here’s What I Found at the Reported ‘Mass Grave’ Near Mariupol

By Eva Bartlett, April 29, 2022

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US agencies have directly and indirectly trained and empowered Nazis and ultra-nationalists at home and abroad to fight Russians in Ukraine. This program follows the blueprint established by Western intelligence agencies in Afghanistan and Syria.

From 1978 (not ’79 as many believe), the administration of Jimmy Carter decided to “draw the Russians into the Afghan trap,” in the words of the President’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. US intelligence called on its British counterparts to activate networks of Afghan fighters. New generations of extremists joined the fight. Aid, arms, and training poured into Afghanistan. Support increased following the Soviet invasion in December 1979.

Throughout the 1980s, tens of thousands of jihadis from dozens of Muslim-majority countries were flown into the US, Britain, and Pakistan to receive training from the CIA, Green Berets, US Marines, and British SAS and MI6. The foreign extremists later rebranded themselves “al-Qaeda” and launched a series of spectacularly bloody attacks on strategically significant targets that provided justification for a global “war on terror” that continues to serve as ideological cover for contemporary US hegemony.

The multi-billion dollar CIA operation to arm and train the so-called freedom fighters, or Afghan mujahedin, was known as Operation Cyclone. Successive administrations repeated the pattern in the 2010s, initiating Operation Timber Sycamore in a failed effort to depose Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Operation Mermaid Dawn before it in a successful effort to remove Muammar Gaddafi and destabilize Libya.

Today, the CIA, US Special Forces, and other branches of government are training regular units in Ukraine. With US support, far-right elements of those units go on to train and recruit for Nazi paramilitary units and gangs. White nationalist Americans are allowed to travel to Ukraine and train paramilitaries and/or receive training, depending on the individual or group. State-corporate media have confirmed the existence of a major CIA training program involving “irregular” (i.e., terrorist) warfare, but we do not yet know the name of the operation.

As Alex Rubinstein reported for The Grayzone, corporate US media has promoted known US white nationalists fighting in Ukraine as heroes, while whitewashing their records of murder and political violence. And while the Department of Homeland Security expresses “concern” over potential blowback when these openly fascist combat veterans return to the US, the administration of Joseph Biden appears to be doing nothing to stop them from making their way to the battlefield.

The US program in Ukraine bears such striking similarities to Operation Cyclone it could be dubbed “Cyclone 2.0”. The nature of the proxy war has all but been admitted by former US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and the endgame of regime change in nuclear-armed Russia has been acknowledged by President Joe Biden.

In pursuing these objectives, US and British elites are taking a nuclear gamble. As even the DHS has warned, their empowerment of neo-Nazis could open a new chapter in the “war on terror” in which civilians will suffer blowback from battle-hardened extremists – imagine the Buffalo shooter with advanced tactical training. Millions will be considered by authorities to be potential white supremacists, ultranationalists, and Nazis. And under the pretext of fighting white extremism, a new phase of total surveillance and foreign “intervention” might begin in the Caucasus and Baltic regions.

Running the ratline to Ukraine behind volunteer non-profit cover

Typical of the kind of operations taking place, former US Marine Benjamin Busch, ex-Infantry Officer Adrian Bonenberger, and Iraq War veteran Matt Gallagher, traveled to Lviv in Western Ukraine to train dozens of what are described by US media as Ukrainian civilians. Gallagher revealed that US intelligence agents were facilitating travel. Border and justice agencies were not obstructing departures and returns.

“(I reached out to) some friends who work in various government jobs, not so much asking them for permission in any kind of official capacity,” Gallagher stated, “but just wanting to know if there were any potential consequences. The almost universal response to that was, as long as they (the people he was training) are actual citizens, as long as this is focused on self-defense, as long as this is not some covert military, paramilitary operation, you’ll be fine. Some fellow Wake Forest [University] graduates [in North Carolina], who I won’t name because they do work for Uncle Sam, were very helpful in collecting information.”

Operations of this sort laid the groundwork for a mass “volunteer” scheme. The creation of an international volunteer force reflects the interests of the Azov Battalion — the Nazi-linked paramilitary unit that has undergone through several name changes (e.g., Azov Movement, Azov Regiment), reportedly de-Nazified, and has supposedly integrated into regular Ukrainian armed units. In reality, the Azov’s political wing, the National Corps (formerly the Patriots of Ukraine), is described as neo-Nazi by contemporary Western experts and even the US Department of Justice.

In February 2018, Azov stated on Discord: “[We] will have the foreign legion set up within the next 18 months or so.” Chiding the Ukrainian government for blocking their efforts, the National Corps’ young leader, Olena Semenyaka, said: “we hope to create a foreign legion. There we could announce loud and clear when we seek volunteers.” If the far-right Ukrainian puppet government was too soft, Azov leadership did not need to worry because Uncle Sam was there to facilitate the creation of an international volunteer league.

Describing itself as a 501(C)3 non-profit pending (hence no info shows up on the IRS website at the time of writing), Volunteers for Ukraine (VFU) has no overt connections to Azov. It was founded in February 2022 as “United Peacekeepers for Ukraine.” The original website was an extension of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ International Legion of Ukraine website.

The public relations-minded operatives behind the site evidently decided that the dovish name of the organization (“Peacekeepers”) was not likely to encourage anti-Russian fighters to volunteer, so they changed it to Volunteers for Ukraine. At the time of writing, the VFU website features images of protestors holding signs that include “Kill Putin…” and “Putin = Hitler”—a rather stark departure from peacekeeping.

The new site puts names and faces to the organization, including the professed founder, David Ribardo; a former US Infantry Officer and Afghanistan War veteran. Despite the imagery and recent references to combat, Ribardo claims that VFU is a “humanitarian aid organization.”

VFU’s Chief Operations Officer is combat veteran Phillip Chatham, a former Diplomatic Security Missions leader for numerous US lawmakers. “As an In-Country Operations Manager he maintained facility clearances with multiple intelligence agencies,” says the site. The organization is also run by numerous veterans and PR specialists. Promoting VFU on CNN, another veteran, “Seth,” described working with refugees in Poland thanks to “some very gracious donations from some sponsors.”

This offers insight into how such operations are run: anonymous major donors operate veteran pipelines to Ukraine in neighboring countries. Ribardo says that his job includes vetting volunteers to weed out fantasists, “combat tourists,” and extremists, ensuring that only well-trained US veterans enlist.

The number of veterans who have volunteered is not disclosed, but Ribardo says that the figures are unlike anything seen “since World War Two.”

Extremists and accelerationists: “We’re gonna send home a lot of bodybags”

Other Americans fighting in Ukraine’s regular units included: Dalton Kennedy, a member of North Carolina’s branch of the white supremacist Patriot Front; David Kleman of Georgia who has been photographed sporting Nazi imagery; and Army veteran David Plaster of Missouri. According to British press reports, Plaster has trained “thousands of Ukrainians in tactical medicine,” and headed a team that included even elderly veterans, like former Marine Dave Eggen, who said of Russians: “We are going to send home a lot of bodybags.”

One such figure told Buzzfeed that they were questioned by federal agencies but still allowed to travel. “I tell them I don’t have anything to hide. Then they let me go. Every time.” In addition to the above fighters, known fascists are signing up to fight.

By March this year, at least 3000 US citizens were allegedly on the Ukrainian battlefield. In April, John T. Godfrey, the State Department’s Acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism, said of American extremists going to fight: “when they return, they have skill – they typically come back more radicalized than when they left … [T]hey do have hard skills that they are able to, in some cases, use in attacking targets domestically.” In intelligence circles, this is called “blowback.”

In April, I filed a freedom of information request with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to obtain documents on travelers to Ukraine and its neighbors, including Georgia and Poland, from 2014 to the present. The aim was to measure the size of “Cyclone 2.” From logs and incident reports that had come to the attention of the DHS, I wanted to know how many people had been stopped and questioned about their trips by federal or local authorities. The DHS unlawfully ignored my request, as they have a habit of doing: no acknowledgement, no delayed response, nothing.

Had the department answered, it might have confirmed the story of people like “Alex”: a US armed forces veteran who was connected to Ukraine by an anonymous online account. “Alex” ended up in the extremist-heavy Shyrokyne (near Mariupol), fought with Ukraine’s openly fascist party the Right Sector, and ended up recruiting other Americans for the Azov Battalion. (The source is the US and British intelligence cut-out, Bellingcat.)

Newsweek encountered similar obstructions. It noted that Azov’s political wing, the National Corps, has been connected to the US white supremacist Rise Above Movement, Germany’s Third Path, Italy’s Casa Pound, and other extremist groups. In their efforts to assess the scale of such connections in the US, Newsweek reporters approached the Department of Justice, FBI, and DHS for comment. Silence was the answer.

Newsweek pointed to Cossack House in Kiev as the main Azov recruiting center. Loaned to the Azov Battalion by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the center’s library includes Nazi literature and is described by the Azov National Corps leader Semenyaka as “a small state within a state.” The number of Americans currently there is not known.

In addition to white supremacists, members of accelerationist groups — those that want to hasten society’s collapse in order to remold it in their image — are also present in Ukraine.

Former Marine Mike Dunn from Virginia is an informant and once-influential figure in the politically fluid Boogaloo Bois, having commanded its Last Sons of Liberty Faction. “There hasn’t been much activity in the Boogaloo movement since I walked away,” he says. After being exposed as an informant, Dunn disappeared from the scene only to reappear in February this year announcing his intention to fight in Ukraine via Poland by signing up to an undisclosed recruiting station.

“I wouldn’t say that I am necessarily trying to advance the cause of the Boogaloo movement … But I will say that the Boogaloo movement is going to be represented over there.”

But this makes little sense. Who would follow a fink to Ukraine, except for mercenaries and fellow feds? Also, didn’t Dunn leave the movement, so how could he represent it in Ukraine? “I have a few that are following me there, I have one going with me there,” he says.

Henry Hoeft, a former US Army Infantryman and Boogaloo Boy from Ohio, was cautioned by the FBI against fighting in Ukraine, but was simultaneously advised by the Bureau to call the US Embassy if he got into trouble. Hoeft says:

“I get it. They don’t want to be implicated if Russia harms any of us, and they don’t want to escalate the conflict by saying that they’re sending American soldiers over.” (See also Hoeft’s Grayzone interview.)

Dunn, the Boogaloo former leader and informant, confirmed his presence in Washington DC during the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally, but claims that he arrived late and did not participate in storming the Capitol. The Ukrainian Right Sector’s Serhiy Dubynin, an influential media figure working for the major Ukrainian channel, Inter, was also at the Capitol that day, signifying that the DHS-FBI “open-door” policy included Ukrainian extremists who would network in the US and vice versa. Dubynin was photographed with Jake Chansley; the highly-decorated US Navy veteran and self-styled “QAnon Shaman.” Dubynin was heard urging the Stop the Steal demonstrators to escalate from peaceful protest to violence: “Come on! … Do it!”

Fascists and Satanists bring their “fetish for death” to Ukraine

Between 2015 and ‘16, several American extremists went to Ukraine to enlist in regular units. Others formed a Right Sector paramilitary spinoff which according to colleagues “had a fetish for death and torture.” Pluto being the Roman god of hell. Their unit was called Task Force Pluto (TFP), named for the Roman god of death, and was led by a US Army deserter-turned-mercenary, Craig Lang, who had also worked as a contractor for the Ukrainian military. Lang operated alongside Brian Boyenger, an Iraq War veteran who served as a sniper in Ukraine. Lang recruited Americans for Ukraine and Boyenger vetted them.

Other TFP members included former Marines Quinn Rickert and Santi Pirtle. The two compiled video evidence of Lang torturing and murdering a local man as well as beating and drowning a young female (age unknown), as an Austrian called Benjamin Fischer — nicknamed “Bin Laden” — allegedly administered adrenaline injections to keep her conscious during the torture. The Department of Justice requested the evidence from their Ukrainian counterparts.

By 2017, a US military deserter, Alex Zwiefelhofer, had joined Lang via the Right Sector in Ukraine. The pair had planned to fight al-Shabaab in Sudan and the Venezuelan military. Upon questioning Zwiefelhofer, North Carolinian authorities discovered child porn on his phone. (The UK-based satanic group, the Order of Nine Angles and its Tempel ov Blood (sic, ToB) offshoot in the US infiltrate secular far-right groups and encourage child rape, possibly as a honeytrap on behalf of the security services).

Influenced by the SIEGE philosophies of the elderly Nazi pedophile James Mason (not to be confused with the late actor), the Atomwaffen Division (AWD, now called the National Socialist Order) was an apocalyptic-accelerationist group founded in 2015 and disbanded five years later. Mason bragged of there being “a lot of action in Ukraine … That’s pretty impressive.”

Private First Class Jarrett Smith, stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, was a fan of Atomwaffen and a member of the Feuerkrieg Division, founded in the Baltics in late-2018. Smith was also a self-proclaimed satanist, likely connected to the ToB. That group’s leader, Joshua Caleb Sutter, was an FBI informant whose seemed determined to infiltrate and “satanize” Nazi groups with the aim of destroying them from within.

Before joining the Army, Smith was planning to go to Ukraine to fight with the Azov Battalion via his connections to Craig Lang. Before he could go, Smith was set up by an undercover FBI agent and a third party (either an informant or another agent) who put them in touch. The undercover agent contacted Smith through chat forums to ask how to make bombs. In an illustration of how the feds set up fanatical dupes, the agent also said: “Got a liberal texas mayor in my sights (sic)! Boom with that IED [improvised explosive device] and that dude’s dead.”

Via a far-right entity called the Military Order of Centuria, the newly rebranded Azov Movement has been trained by the militaries of America, Britain, Canada, and France.

DHS incident logs note that in December 2018, AWD member Kaleb Cole returned from London with fellow neo-Nazis, Aidan Bruce Umbaugh and Edie Allison Moore. They had visited, among other countries, Ukraine. The DHS log is heavily redacted. Andrew Dymock (alias Blitz), the leader of Britain’s Sonnenkrieg Division (a unit of the AWD), was a member of the occultist Order of Nine Angles and has been pictured wearing an Azov Battalion t-shirt.

Neo-Nazi Andrew Dymock (left), sporting an Azov Battalion t-shirt, with a fellow member of Atomwaffen’s UK chapter

The Rise Above Movement (RAM) is a network of American fascists, some of whom have been convicted of using violence against leftist demonstrators. In 2018, a leading Azov fascist and killer, Sergey Korotkikh, hosted RAM members in Kyiv. National Corps leader Semenyaka also hosted RAM members Michael Miselis of Lawndale, Benjamin Drake Daley of Redondo Beach, and Robert Rundo of Huntington (Calif.). Later that year as RAM members were charged with violence in the US. FBI Special Agent Scott J. Bierwirth said: “the Azov Battalion … is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations.”

According to Time magazine, after the white supremacist Brenton Tarrant murdered 51 people in Christchurch, NZ in 2019, “an arm of the Azov movement helped distribute the terrorist’s raving manifesto.” Among the many countries he reportedly visited was Ukraine.

Today, the neo-Nazi Wotanjugend (Wotan Youth) praises Tarrant as a hero and has distributed his manifesto. Indicative of their sympathies, in April 2020 the Azov National Militia leader Cherkas Mykhailenko conducted an interview with Wotanjugend’s Alexei Levkin. The Azov’s Nazi recruiting station, Cossack House, has also sold Wotanjugend merchandise.

Dire predictions of Ukraine blowback

US intelligence agencies have allowed an open-door policy for veterans, militia, and fascists to travel to Ukraine and its neighbors to kill as many Russian soldiers as possible. The FBI monitors some of the combatants, intervenes in some cases, but typically does nothing. The DHS allows the foreign fighters to travel and return with minimal obstruction. The US charity, Volunteers for Ukraine, is one of the organizations that provides a veneer of legitimacy for the operations that otherwise include extremists.

In Ukraine, meanwhile, US Special Forces are training the National Guard and other regular units, thereby providing a further layer of professional cover. However, with US training, some of these regulars go on to train far-right and Nazi paramilitaries; some Ukrainian, some American. The American fascists return home with the potential to use that training against domestic targets.

Former FBI agent turned consultant, Ali Soufan, notes that in the 1990s, the Afghan Taliban took advantage of constant conflict in the Central Asian country. “Pretty soon the extremists took over. The Taliban was in charge. And we did not wake up until 9/11. This is the parallel now with Ukraine,” Soufan said.

A 2021 report by the Military Academy West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center reinforced his point, stating that the Ukraine conflict “served as a powerful accelerator” for global white supremacy.

Also that year, Elissa Slotkin, chair of the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism declared: “As a former CIA officer who has looked at foreign terrorist organizations in the Middle East most of my career, I was struck by the threat these white supremacist groups pose, the amount of contact they have with extremists in the U.S., the minimal intelligence and diplomatic reporting we have on these groups, and the relative lack of review taken by the U.S. Government.”

Slotkin recommended thirteen white supremacist-extremist organizations including the Azov Battalion be banned. Today, Azov earns gushing praise in Western media and Slotkin is an ardent proponent of massive arms shipments to the Ukrainian military that hosts it.

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T.J. Coles is a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University’s Cognition Institute and the author of several books, the latest being We’ll Tell You What to Think: Wikipedia, Propaganda and the Making of Liberal Consensus.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

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***

We, the vast majority of humanity, and especially the citizens of the United States, live in a terrarium economy. The accelerating concentration of wealth over the past decades, and the resulting control of agriculture, manufacturing, distribution, information and communication by a handful of multinational corporations means that the ultimate decisions of consequence are made by powers beyond our ken and our control.

The terrarium is a self-contained ecosystem within a glass bottle. It may maintain the humidity of the tropics conducive to the growth of ferns and mosses, or orchids and heliconia. It may serve as the home for rare frogs and salamanders, exquisite butterflies and jeweled beetles, or tropical fish and shrimp. It may contain within it a food chain ranging from algae up to iguanas.

But the terrarium’s fragile ecosystem is completely under the control of invisible powers far beyond the ken of the flora and fauna within its glass walls. The denizens of the delicate rain forest have no idea that invisible hands determine the temperature and the moisture, and provide the fertilizer and nutrients essential for their survival. If the masters outside of the terrarium fail to keep up that routine, for even a few days, no one will survive.

Today, citizens find themselves in a similar fix. They inhabit an economy that appears to be functional, that keeps them fed and with a roof over their head, if they are lucky, and the economy makes sense to them on a daily basis.

The terrarium economy from Emanuel Pastreich on Vimeo.

This seemingly complete ecosystem includes the homeless, the middle class, lawyers and doctors, and even the wealthy with assets of up to 50 million dollars. Those little rich men take great pride that they are somehow the equivalents of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, and so they lord over the little people.

The inequities and contradictions of human society are replicated perfectly in this terrarium economy. It has its rich and its poor, its good guys and its bad guys.

But that economy and that political process is enclosed in a hermetically sealed bottle. It is a closed system into which the billionaires pour a bit of financial liquidity here, a bit of inflation there, a bit of positive news when appropriate, and some ominous signs when required.

The owners of the terrarium can manipulate and modify the system without the consent, or even the knowledge, of its citizens. Citizens, by contrast, like Amazon tree frogs, are blithely unaware of their dependency on this contrived hidden hand.

If, suddenly, petroleum and liquid natural gas stop flowing, if, suddenly, corn, wheat, and rice stop traversing the waves in container ships, if, suddenly, accurate information stops circulating in the newspapers, and, if, following a Gresham’s law for the aristocracy, reliable currency dries up, we will be helpless and doomed.

The vast majority will be unable to ascertain the source of the sudden changes and will no doubt attack the politicians and CEOs who occupy the upper stories of the food chain within the visible economy, the economy of the terrarium.

The powers that hide behind comical politicians, however, will watch the show with detached amusement.

Digital Share Cropping 

The residents of the terrarium pay a hidden price in every transaction and in every interaction. They are subject to digital share cropping whereby the invisible master get a pound of flesh every time money, products, or services are exchanged. The launch of digital currencies will make that prison into a living hell.

The distributers in the supply chain, the retailers, the marketing and advertising firms, the manufactures of unnecessary plastic and paper wrappings, the hospitals, the insurance companies, the lawyers, and of course the private equity firms that lurk behind them, all of them, and more, take their generous bite from the breakfast cereal that you buy at the supermarket, or the gallon of gas that you put in your automobile.

You are free to work, but the hidden hand decides what kinds of jobs are available, what the salaries will be, and what the requirements for employment are.

The banks provide endless loans to massive corporations outside of the terrarium, much of which is never paid back, but they show extreme reticence to offer even paltry loans to us.

Intellectuals of all shapes and sizes crawl around in the terrarium proclaiming that this is the best of all possible worlds and praising the market economy, and the genius entrepreneurs who have risen to the top.

The public intellectuals get extra grubs from the masters for their arguments in best seller books that the only solutions are money solutions, and not cooperatives, or barter systems, that offer citizens economic independence.

Democracy and the Republic

The terrarium economy became possible because the term “democracy” was purposely misinterpreted.

We were told over and over that there are “democracies” and that they are superior, but we almost never heard the word “republic.” Yet if a democracy, a government system in which citizens vote for candidates running for public office, loses the administrative infrastructure of a republic, it will become like a tiger without bones.

If there is no functional constitution that regulates the republic, defines the administration of the system, and describes the means for resolving conflicts, then democratic processes like voting for candidates, or passing laws, degenerate into superficial rituals.

A republic is essential to protect the minority against the wrath of a deluded and misguided majority. That threat is all too real. The desires of the citizens are easily fanned, and misdirected, by the few and will not correspond with the long-term interests of the citizens.

These days, that is the norm.

A smaller group of those informed on policy, and on the state of the world, people who are committed to ethical principles, must serve as a regulator, to assure that the system functions ethically.

After all, the truth is by its very nature undemocratic.

A great ocean liner can include thousands of devices maintained by hundreds of sailors. Yet the compass is a unique device that only a limited number of people can create and employ effectively.

If we are voting on the truth, or if we think that the truth is a matter of opinion, then there is no longer a republic, and therefore no democracy either. That, sadly, is precisely the current situation within our terrarium.

The terrarium economy resulted from the transfer of massive parts of the economy, and of the administration of daily life, to the control of accountable third parties. An abominable fourth branch of government, beyond the executive, the legislative and the judicial, slouches towards the desert.

The rise of Corporate governance

That rotten twisted branch, covered in horrific thorns, is neither government as defined by the constitution, nor the small stores, family farms, and local manufacturing that made up traditional society.

A new player, described nowhere in the Constitution, has weaseled its way in through back door to play the central role in governance.

Who might that be? None other than massive, multinational corporations and their evil twins, investment banks. Both are awash in free money printed up for their use by the prostrate Federal Reserve.

They have seized control of much of the economy, and of much of daily life, over the past 40 years in a gradual process invisible to the naked eye. They have lulled us to sleep with a culture of narcissism and indulgence that keeps citizens from focusing on the covert takeover.

These corporations generously sprinkled money on their intellectuals to cook up arguments justifying this new tyranny.

Those experts argued that “the private sector” could handle the tasks of government more efficiently than the wasteful federal government of the United States of America.

But when they said, “Let the private sector do what the bumbling bureaucrats can’t,” what they really meant was, “Let us take authority away from a poorly run and demoralized government and give it to a totalitarian and cynical new government.”

Corporations are government, in every sense of the word, but are far more dangerous in that they have no constitutions to define their administration, they are opaque and unaccountable, and they are run for the benefit of stockholders; not for their employees, and most certainly not for the public.

The experts, conjured up by the rich, ran seminars, wrote books, and set up graduate programs in government in which they argued that government must be run efficiently like corporations. They have privatized huge chucks of government and created habits and policies within the fragments of government that remain that are modelled on the ruthless administration of corporations.

The truth is that the alternative to unaccountable and unresponsive government (something guaranteed to appear in due course in any system) is not private corporations run for profit, but rather local cooperatives run by citizens in a participatory manner.

Corporations and billionaires seized control of journalism and employed donations to universities and research institutes that rendered those sources of authority as their play toys.

The result was a politics of the self, of the incident, and of the scandal that occluded discussion of the republic, of the constitution, or of due process.

The Constitution is treated today as just one more voice in the wilderness, a quiet voice of reason drowned out by the screams and howls of pundits, politicians and plutocrats. Government no longer has the foundations of legitimacy provided by the Constitution is no longer the foundation that gives government legitimacy.

Rather than engaging in a serious discussion about how decisions are made in a republic, those in search of a more just society have been dragged down into endless debates on cultural identity, complaining about injustice without taking action.

There are plenty of voices out there that limn real conspiracies with varied degrees of accuracy. In most cases, however, the forces putting forth that information also are run in a totalitarian manner.

Sadly, the opposition to the cancerous combination of government and corporations that runs the United States does not invite you to join local organizational meetings, does not offer you a role to play in pushing for change, and is not interested in your opinion.

The result?

The United States has lost its compass and is increasing jerked back and forth by obscure battles between tyrannical monsters. The “conservatives” on the one side denounce the COVID-19 fraud, but never demand that the assets of the rich who created it be seized.

These conservatives lead the citizen back to ineffective and deeply compromised figures like Donald Trump or Rand Paul. The “progressives,” on the other hand, take the destruction of the ecosystem seriously, criticize the ruthless domination of corporations, but are silent on the 9.11 fraud and the COVID-19 scam—the two catastrophic attacks that broke the back of our republic. The progressives are happy to feed us slop about cultural identity that obscures real class warfare.

In effect, those conservatives and progressives are but colorful fauna of the terrarium, amusing and intriguing, but incapable of effecting anything on the outside.

The population has dumbed down. Minds have been destroyed by newspapers and schools whose agendas are set by billionaires. Many citizens are no longer capable of even conceiving of world outside of the terrarium.

On the inside, the walls of the terrarium reflect back to its inhabitant his or her own image.

We have no choice but to seize the largest stones in the terrarium and smash those glass walls until they shatter and freedom is possible again. Then, and only then, will we polish and arrange those fragments to form a more perfect republic for all.

*

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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.

What Are the Prospects for Peace?

June 8th, 2022 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

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***

The American war machine consists of the economic and power interests of the US military/security complex and the hegemonic ideology of the neoconservatives.

The former requires an enemy in order to justify the unaccountable power of the security agencies and the $1,000 billion annual budget of the complex.

The latter believes in an exceptional and indispensable United States entitled to hegemonic power over the world.

As armaments industry political campaign donations exercise control over elected officials and as the neoconservatives with their Wolfowitz doctrine are the main shapers of US foreign policy, there are no interest groups or political leaders capable of challenging their dominance.

This means that the chances for peace are zero.

We are being led into nuclear war.

Having provoked a Russian military intervention in Ukraine, the US and its NATO puppets have become combatants in the conflict by their provision of Ukraine with weapons, training, and diplomatic support.

The US and UK are now equipping Ukraine with missiles that can be used for attacks on Russia’s Black Sea naval base in Crimea. Once such an attack occurs, the US and NATO will be at war with Russia, a situation China could take advantage of by occupying Taiwan.

Peace requires an event or events that shake the neoconservatives confidence in their ideology of hegemony and the willingness of elected officials to continue to accommodate the interests of the military security complex, or it requires Russian and Chinese acceptance of US hegemony, an unlikely prospect.

Had the Kremlin responded to the Ukrainian provocation with a blitzkrieg conquest of all of Ukraine, a stunned Europe and Washington would have opened to voices other than the neoconservative ones, and elected officials would have been more mindful of the threat posed by an unbridled military/security complex.

But the limited, drawn out Russian intervention reinforced the West’s view that there was not much fight in the Kremlin. The Kremlin’s toleration for many years of continuous provocations and its toleration of Western-financed subversion inside Russia has conditioned the West to disregard Russian declaration of red lines.

For example, at the initiation of the Russian limited intervention in Ukraine, the Kremlin said that all who intervened in behalf of Ukraine would be treated as combatants. But no Western government paid any heed. Even militarily impotent Denmark sends weapon systems to Ukraine.

It was a strategic blunder for the Kremlin to suppose its operation could be limited. The US and most of Europe are now involved. The limited and time-consuming Russian intervention provided time for the West to fashion a narrative of Russian defeat and to organize weapons shipments.

Once the Russians complete the task of driving the Ukrainians out of the Donbass region, the Russians are likely to confront a new Ukrainian army raised in Western Ukraine. In other words, the Kremlin’s goal of demilitarizing Ukraine is unlikely to result from partial conquest.

It seems clear that the situation is set for a wider war. As Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, said: “The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are galloping ahead.”

The Kremlin Continues to Inform the West that the West is Courting Nuclear War. But No One Listens.

Excerpt from Lavrov UK press conference

Question:

Britain has said it is giving Ukraine multiple rocket launchers to help it defend itself against Russian forces. The U.S. is doing the same thing. You called it a risky path. But if Russia had not attacked Ukraine and there had been no Russian invasion, there would have been no transfer of weapon systems. Do you agree?

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:

You don’t even want to hear our arguments. It’s not about “if we hadn’t attacked, you wouldn’t have sent weapons.” The point is that for twenty years, in fact, you (the British), the Americans, all other NATO member countries have been urged by us to do what everyone signed up to in 1999: no one will strengthen their security at the expense of the security of others. Why can’t you do that? Why did what your prime minister, presidents and prime ministers of all other OSCE countries signed turn out to be a lie? Instead, you tell us that NATO membership is “none of your business” – whoever you want in NATO, you accept. Five times you approached our borders. When the Warsaw Pact and the USSR disappeared, who were you defending against? This is megalomania.

Now Jens Stoltenberg says that it is necessary to globally ensure NATO’s responsibility in the Indo-Pacific region. So your next line of defense will be in the South China Sea. If you look at what is happening, it becomes completely clear: you considered yourself entitled all these years to commit lawlessness far from your borders. I understand that nostalgically this is the British Empire, you have left there thrown “seeds”. You have such nostalgia. They declare areas across the ocean from the United States, where there is allegedly a threat to Washington. Then Iraqi Mosul, then Syrian Raqqa, then Belgrade. In Libya, lawlessness is happening, states have been destroyed.

Imagine for a moment if, in neighboring Ireland, which occupies half of the island concerned, English was abolished, or Belgium, say, abolished French, Switzerland abolished French, German or Italian. How would Europe look at this? I won’t even elaborate on that thought. Europe looked calmly at how the Russian language was banned. It happened in Ukraine. Education, the media, daily communication – all this was forbidden to the Russian language. At the same time, the Russians in Donbass were bombed for eight years by a regime that openly professed and glorified Nazism.

I understand that you need to drill your “truth” into the heads of your audience with “chopped phrases”: “if you had not attacked, we would not have delivered MLRS.” Vladimir Putin commented on the situation that will develop in connection with the arrival of new weapons. I can only add that the more long-range weapons you supply, the further we will move westward from our territory the line from which neo-Nazis threaten the Russian Federation.

In other words, as neo-Nazis sit in Brussels, London and Washington as well as in Kiev, the protection of Russia expands the targets far beyond Donbass.

*

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from South Front

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***

Yesterday 4 June, Christelle and I were waiting for confirmation of a mission to the front line, with the intention of going to the scene of the shelling of civilians by Ukrainian artillery.

This kind of mission aims to show the general public that civilians are priority targets of the Ukrainian army and the Kiev regime.  Not long ago, almost without hiding, the Ukrainian president announced that Donbass would be razed to the ground and that after the war the region would be a real desert, meaning that they would have killed most of the Russian population of Eastern Ukraine before the Maidan.

At around 10.00 am, the Korpus, the press organisation of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Donetsk, announced a first bombardment in the always very targeted district of Petrovski, in the west of the city. The Ukrainian artillery had opened fire on the active Chelyuskintsev mine, so we jumped into our car, accompanied by a fixer and Korpus soldier, whom we like very much, as a person and a professional: Kostia.

A great arrival. What we didn’t know was that this first bombardment, which took place at around 8.30 a.m., continued in this civilian area.

What was targeted here was the mine and its infrastructure, while many miners were at work in the depths of the galleries. As soon as we parked, the first shell fell not far from us with a tremendous crash. On Kostia’s orders, we immediately evacuated the vehicle, a Renault Kangoo, but immediately a second shell hit our area. Leaping behind Kostia’s footsteps, we took refuge next to a building that looked solid, but we did not stay on the ground for long, the danger was too great. In a few steps we had the presence of mind to enter the building where we discovered about fifteen people.

It was in fact a food and bazaar shop, called Soyuz, run by a woman of unfailing courage called Raissa. A few saleswomen, a grandfather who had come to buy water with his 14-year-old grandson, other retired men, two mobilized soldiers on rest, other women who had also come to do some shopping, not to mention a 45-year-old man who was a former soldier in the Donbass militia, these were the people we met in this circumstance. Mixing with them, we soon found places to sit, protected by the thick walls of this solid building. Built during the Soviet Union, with thick walls, a very large cellar and a structure supported by large steel beams, we were now in relative safety.

Five hours of heavy shelling. We couldn’t imagine that we would be here for five hours, four of which were spent under heavy shelling from the unleashed Ukrainian artillery. 122 mm shells, multiple Grad rocket launchers, Ouragan missiles loaded with submunitions and even 152 mm shells, the infernal dance of Ukrainian shells was just beginning. The nervousness was palpable in two men, who were almost distilling panic to those around us, constantly asking us not to film them, getting up, pacing the shop, going outside to pick up debris from previous shells, the situation was critical.

Following the example of Christelle and Kostia, as well as myself, the group seemed to have calmed down, I was sitting next to a young 21 year old soldier, on leave, simply wearing a military cap and a tank top. Regularly, he would point out the start of the shooting, which would then come at us a few seconds later. To the right, to the left, much further away, or very close, shells and rockets kept falling everywhere. After a few long minutes of this treatment, an elderly man lost his patience and went outside under fire, to go home, immediately overpowered by the other men.

It was time, for the shells kept coming. Our retreat looked more and more precarious, with rubble falling from the ceiling onto our heads. It was clear that we were being targeted and we knew that the car we had left outside would be in pieces by the time we got out of this hellhole. A lesser evil, especially as we had not suffered any casualties up to that point. Then a 122 shell hit five meters from where I was sitting, shattering not only the wrought iron door of the main entrance but also the second wooden door of the entrance hatch. Covered in rubble, an elderly man hit in the eyes by the flying stones and plaster shouting amidst the shards of voices, an authoritative female voice said: “Go down to the cellar! To the left, to the left! We had just met the courageous and admirable owner of the place, Raissa.

A grandfather dies in our arms. In single file, with our ears ringing from the impact, we made our way towards the friendly voice. Under our steps crunched many pieces of glass, shop windows and rubble, as we all managed to descend into the bowels of the building. It was a very solid and large cellar, running under the whole building, which also had a second floor. Groping around, some with the light of their phones, others with torches, we found several women and a child. His name was Roman, while a woman started to cry.

Christelle immediately took care of her, she was a shop assistant, whose two children were not far from there at their grandparents’. They, too, had to suffer from the bombing. She said she was not afraid for herself, but for them, it was two girls, 14 and 8 years old. Other civilians were here, a couple in their late sixties, other shop assistants and several elderly grandfathers. In spite of our calmness, and in particular the very reassuring presence of Kostia, the feverishness and a small wind of panic were palpable among these people.

Everything finally seemed to stabilize, especially thanks to Raissa, a woman mistress, who encouraged these people with a strong voice. She was busy with a large multi-flashlight, bringing water and cups, offering food. We noticed that one of the grandfathers had been hit on the hand and forehead by stone chips and was bleeding. Kostia, who had a first aid kit, assisted by Christelle and Raissa, treated his wounds.  Two men, however, could not get used to this cellar, while shells continued to fall here and there, sometimes hitting the building. The 45-year-old former militiaman might have been claustrophobic, he offered vodka which was upstairs, we flatly refused. When a grandfather, without us paying any attention, sneaked up the stairs to the upper floor.

Kostia understood the danger and went upstairs, but another shell was already exploding in the courtyard. This time it was a tragedy. Grabbing his first aid kit, he leapt to his aid, calling the men to the rescue. There were three of us around the old man. He was lying on his back in the middle of the shop. Cane and glasses lay next to him, he was hit very badly, especially in the left lung. The man was trying to catch his breath, we leaned his head on a paltry bottle. Soon the blood was pouring out, his right side was also riddled with shrapnel, he had several broken ribs. We tried to wash his gaping wound, hiding behind two glass refrigerators, illusory protections. We should have carried him to the cellar, but the shells kept falling. At the slightest attempt, we would be mown down and there were only two of us with bulletproof vests and helmets. He died in our arms, and we were powerless to do anything but acknowledge his death.

The relentlessness of the Ukrainian artillery. We all went down into the cellar, the old man covered by a cloth, we could do nothing more for him, we had to take care of the living. As we went down first, our other companions in distress looked at us, worried.

I didn’t dare announce the death of the grandfather, which I finally reported in a whisper. The audience was stunned, as young Roman had just lost his grandfather. We did not know the family relationship he had with the deceased. I spent a lot of time talking to him afterwards. To keep his spirits up, I asked him what he liked, who his family was, what he did at school, his hopes and dreams. He told me he liked to play Minecraft and walk his young dog in the surrounding countryside, or spend time at his grandparents’ house, which just happened to be very close to the place.

I showed him pictures of my own life, talked about my childhood and the discussion spread to other people. Confidence grew, then calm, as shells fell again and again all around. We already knew that we no longer had a car, which had been blown to bits by Ukrainian fire, and following the example of Raissa, whose shop was ravaged by shrapnel as the hours passed, we prayed that there would be no more victims. Material goods were nothing. Christelle told of her six-year commitment, her experiences at the front, what we were doing. They quickly understood that we could not stand Macron’s irresponsible policy, not to mention Zelensky.

The minutes went by like that, very long, the women jumping at each impact, but the saleswoman and mother of the family then found the strength to joke with the militiaman who replied: “I will never again go to buy bread in the early morning, I swear it! Everyone laughed, as after four hours, the boy’s family arrived at our shelter breathless, looking for young Roman.

The reunion was both terrible and joyful, everyone was crying and laughing, but they had taken a huge risk in coming here. When they arrived, they saw the grandfather’s corpse, the shock was enormous, although they already knew the situation, thanks to the young boy’s telephone and to Raissa who had contacted the family to warn them of the events and of Roman’s location. They decided to evacuate the place immediately, their car was waiting outside.

Everyone ran up and into the car, this time luck was with them and they were able to get away at full speed. After four hours of bombardment, which some in the cellar had been enduring for seven hours, the shells began to thin out. However, salvos were still falling, about every 10 minutes. It was necessary to be firm to prevent several of them from getting out of the rubble too quickly, others were already talking about spending the night here.

Open fire on the rescue. At last the firing ceased, but we waited a good hour longer, and then we were able to get out. People ran out of the ruined shop.

Outside our car no longer existed, a shell had fallen very close, it had been destroyed, a huge puddle of drain oil had formed around it. We found an intact camera tripod, glasses and a scarf, all that was left in the scrap heap.

When we came out, the landscape appeared cataclysmic: electric cables chopped up and lying on the ground, branches, debris of all kinds, Grad rockets embedded in the ground, shell holes, burnt-out cars…

The infrastructure and buildings of the mine were in ruins, the fire having caught and ravaged everything. In the courtyard, the miners were coming out in turn. Almost all the cars were destroyed. One lucky miner left with a motorbike, whose tyres were punctured. Cars were popping up everywhere, people were leaving, others were coming to pick up their friends or relatives, an ambulance was rushing by.

The ground was covered with large shrapnel, smoke was coming out of the ruins of the mine. All around was a residential area. Over there was a dovecote and cages that had been destroyed in a courtyard, a large shell hole standing in the middle of the courtyard.

Elsewhere there was Hurricane missile debris, pulverised roofs and more or less dazed people coming out of their houses. Without a car, we waited for a Korpus vehicle to evacuate us, and we took the opportunity to film and photograph.

We were not at ease, we knew that the Ukrainians did not hesitate to open fire on the rescue team. As the rescue vehicle approached the area, suddenly the shooting started again. A first shell and then a second hit the mine, we were very close and in the open.

We were very close and in the open. We ran out of breath to reach the vehicle and jumped into it, which started up with a bang. We were saved. Half an hour later we reached the Korpus, already the news had gone round that we had come under Ukrainian artillery fire.

We were very lucky today. Our reflexes, especially those of Kostia, had saved our lives, we couldn’t help but think that we had good guardian angels too! It was the mine that was targeted by the fire and the surroundings of this civilian area.

This bombardment was designed to destroy and kill.

The debauchery of ammunition on civilian and non-military targets left us pensive… We felt angry, once again, what were the objectives of the Ukraine in this bombing and this destruction?

The Russians do not have fun shooting at areas not occupied by enemies or military equipment. The general impression left by this hot day was that the Ukrainians were reduced to impotence and to expedients of revenge.

Reduced to muddled strategies, punctuated by bloody failures such as the offensives near Kharkov or Kherson, suicide attacks, useless bombing of civilians and infrastructure in the Donbass, it was indeed despair and hatred that prevailed and still prevail in the Ukrainian staffs. They are reduced, before withdrawing sooner or later, to destroying and killing, again and again, in a madness that has already lasted eight years.

Eight years of absurd killing and destruction, in the name of what?

*

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Boris Johnson: The Billionaires’ Useful Idiot

June 8th, 2022 by Peter Oborne

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***

Welcome to British politics this overcast summer day. 

A broken prime minister still in occupation of Downing Street and determined to stay there. This is a recipe for – at best – paralysis, at worst chaos.

More likely both. It’s hard to see what will make Boris Johnson quit.

The prime minister, remember, has powerful allies. Tuesday’s Daily Mail – Britain’s most well-drilled and powerful popular paper – is an essential read for anyone wishing to understand the near-term trajectory of British politics

It contains a series of brutal hatchet jobs on former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt – “Theresa May in trousers” – who the Mail accuses of leading the plotters. On its front page, the Mail lacerates the 148 Tory rebels for pressing the “self-destruct button by opening the door to Smirking Starmer’s coalition of chaos”.

The big newspaper proprietors – Murdoch, Rothermere and the Barclay family – remain loyal to Johnson. Admittedly The Times and the Telegraph are tougher than usual on Johnson this morning, but crucially there are no calls for him to quit.

Murdoch, Mail Newspapers and the Barclays are part of Johnson’s core political base. They all backed him to be Tory leader, all backed him in the 2019 general election, and all have protected Johnson during the harrowing political scandals that have dogged his premiership.

These newspaper magnates are still behind the prime minister today. While this remains the case, Johnson can hope to survive.

Unconditional support

The second half of the coalition backing Johnson are the billionaire Tory donors, who funded Brexit and now – in a mutation of democratic politics – effectively own Johnson’s Conservative Party. In an unprecedented direct intervention by the super-rich in British public life, these donors came together in defence of Johnson yesterday.

They wrote a letter, significantly given as an exclusive to Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper, awarding their unconditional support to Boris Johnson.

As the Sun emphasised, this letter was signed by some of the richest men in Britain including “billionaire JCB boss Lord Bamford, property magnate Sir Tony Gallagher and Carphone Warehouse founder David Ross.”

Other names, reported the Sun, “include multimillionaire financier Howard Shore and mega-rich Simon Reuben – who alongside brother David is worth £16bn.”

The letter, which emphasised the talking points of the Johnson political campaign, announced that Johnson enjoyed the “unwavering support” of the billionaires who signed it.

The authors of the letter seem to have felt no need to say out loud the unspoken threat that they would withhold funds from any Tory leader who dared to supplant Johnson.

But the Johnson campaign team felt no such inhibitions.

Johnson loyalist Nadine Dorries, secretary of state for culture, media and sport, went straight onto national TV and in a remarkable statement told Sky political editor Beth Rigby this: “The Conservative Party donors have said themselves that they aren’t going to support the party if the PM is removed. I think a number of MPs in marginal seats need to hear that, and need to understand what they’re doing: £80 million those donors have donated to the Conservative Party over recent times.”

We can only guess how many Tory MPs were terrified into supporting Johnson by this stark warning, amounting to an attempt at financial blackmail, that Tory donors would stop issuing cheques if they voted the wrong way last night.

But we can say for certain this was a dark moment in modern British democratic politics.

A misleading claim

A Tory cabinet minister setting out in stark terms that billionaires hold a stranglehold over the governing political party. I have never seen this openly stated by a senior, active Tory politician before.

This means it was a revelatory moment that ought, I believe, to redefine the way in which the Johnson premiership should be framed.

So far Johnson’s many media allies have presented the prime minister as a cheekie chappie with the common touch fighting a popular campaign against a distant liberal “elite”. Flawed for certain, a liar and a cheat, but always fighting for ordinary people.

That claim has always been misleading. From the start of his premiership, ex-journalist Johnson has been the creature of the big media owners acting in alliance with deracinated financial capital.

For all of his incompetence, falsehoods and lack of vision, Boris Johnson still has their support today. Over the coming weeks the British media will paint Britain’s ongoing political crisis as the story of an embattled prime minister fighting a desperate struggle for survival.

There’s some truth in that dramatic, easily comprehensible narrative. But much greater forces are at work.

The real enablers

Structural forces. Economic interests which Karl Marx, writing away in the library of the British Museum 150 years ago, would recognise. Or George Orwell writing about class conflict in the 1930s.

The billionaire class put their man, Boris Johnson, in Downing Street three years ago. He suits them well because he does what they want. Johnson is at the apex of a system of government that hands out contracts, supplies favours, slashes regulation, attacks the rule of law, reduces the rights of working people, and favours the marketplace above the state.

The brilliance of Boris Johnson is that he does all of this while pretending to be on the side of ordinary working people. That’s why the super-rich love Boris, the billionaire’s useful idiot.

For all his faults – let’s face it – Johnson was a shambles when he appeared on late-night British TV to declare victory after yesterday’s Tory leadership vote. Dishevelled. Gibbering. Incoherent.

This wounded prime minister blamed the media, shamelessly linked his fortunes to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, and nonsensically claimed he had more supporters than when elected Tory leader three years.

It made for painful viewing. Johnson has not simply lost the support of more than one third of his parliamentary party.

He’s lost contact with reality, but not with the billionaires.

The real story of the next few desperate months is not whether Boris Johnson, a truly wretched and discredited political figure, can survive. It’s about whether the system of government in the interests of the super-rich he has come to represent can be overturned.

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Peter Oborne won best commentary/blogging in both 2022 and 2017, and was also named freelancer of the year in 2016 at the Drum Online Media Awards for articles he wrote for Middle East Eye. He was also named as British Press Awards Columnist of the Year in 2013. He resigned as chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph in 2015. His latest book, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism, was published in February 2021 and was a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. His previous books include The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying, and Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran.

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Plastic particles smaller than 5mm (known as microplastics) are well-documented pollutants in ocean and freshwater habitats. The discovery of microplastics in the most remote rivers of the Himalayas and the deepest trenches of the Pacific Ocean has sparked widespread concern. But how much microplastic lies closer to home – buried in the soil where food is grown?

Our latest study estimated that between 31,000 and 42,000 tonnes of microplastics (or 86 trillion – 710 trillion microplastic particles) are spread on European farmland soils each year, mirroring the concentration of microplastics in ocean surface waters.

The cause is microplastic-laden fertilisers derived from sewage sludge diverted from wastewater treatment plants. These are commonly spread on farmland as a renewable source of fertiliser throughout European countries, in part due to EU directives that aim to promote a circular waste economy.

As well as creating a massive reservoir of environmental microplastics, this practice is effectively undoing the benefit of removing these particles from wastewater. Spreading microplastics onto farmland will eventually return them to natural watercourses, as rain washes water on the surface of soil into rivers, or it eventually infiltrates groundwater.

Wastewater treatment plants remove solid contaminants (such as plastics and other large particles) from raw sewage and drain water using a series of settling tanks. This produces an effluent of clean water that can be released to the environment. The floating material and settled particles from these tanks are combined to form the sludge used as fertiliser.

We found that up to 650 million microplastic particles between 1mm and 5mm in size entered a wastewater treatment plant in south Wales, UK, every day. All of these particles were separated from the incoming sewage and diverted into the sludge rather than being released with the clean effluent. This demonstrates how effective default wastewater treatment can be for removing microplastics.

At this facility, each gram of sewage sludge contained up to 24 microplastic particles, which was roughly 1% of its weight. In Europe, an estimated 8 million to 10 million tonnes of sewage sludge is generated each year, with around 40% sent to farmland. The spreading of sewage sludge on agricultural soil is widely practised across Europe, owing to the nitrogen and phosphorus it offers crops.

UK farms also use sewage sludge as fertiliser. In our study, the UK had the highest amount of microplastic pollution within its soils across all European nations (followed by Spain, Portugal and Germany). Between 500 and 1,000 microplastic particles are applied to each square metre of agricultural land in the UK every year.

A map of Europe with the farm soil microplastic concentrations highlighted in shades of blue.

The relative microplastic burden on European farm soil from direct recycling of sewage sludge. James Lofty, Author provided

A poisoned circular waste economy

At present, there are no adequate solutions to the release of microplastics into the environment from wastewater treatment plants.

Microplastics removed from wastewater are effectively transported to the land, where they reside until being returned to waterways. According to a study conducted in Ontario, Canada, 99% of microplastics in agricultural soil were transported away from where the sludge was initially applied.

Until then, they have the potential to harm life in the soil. As well as being easily consumed and absorbed by animals and plants, microplastics pose a serious threat to the soil ecosystem because they leach toxic chemicals and transport hazardous pathogens. Experiments have shown that the presence of microplastics can stunt earthworm growth and cause them to lose weight.

Microplastics can also change the acidity, water holding capacity and porosity of soil. This affects plant growth and performance by altering the way roots bury into the soil and take up nutrients.

There is currently no European legislation to limit the amount of microplastics embedded in sewage sludge used as fertiliser. Germany has set upper limits for impurities like glass and plastic, allowing up to 0.1% of wet fertiliser weight to constitute plastics larger than 2mm in size. According to the results from the wastewater treatment plant in south Wales, applying sewage sludge would be prohibited if similar legislation were in place in the UK.

For the time being, landowners are likely to continue recycling sewage sludge as sustainable fertiliser, despite the risk of contaminating soils and eventually rivers and the ocean with microplastics.

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PhD Candidate in Hydrodynamics, Cardiff University

Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellow in Marine Engineering, University of Manchester

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Environmental Engineering, Cardiff University

Featured image is from Dylan de Jonge/Unsplash, CC BY-SA