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The occasions when an activist, writer or commentator triumph over defamation lawsuits launched by a thin-skinned politician are rare in Australia.  When it comes to matters regarding the law of reputation, Australia remains a place where parliamentarians, as a species, thrive in the knowledge they can use favourable provisions to protect their hurt feelings and soiled reputations.

The country, in also lacking a bill of rights protecting free speech and the press, has further emboldened politicians.  At best, the Australian High Court has only left an anaemic implied right “to protect freedom of communication on political subjects”, which should really be read as a restraint on executive and legislative power, never to be personally exercised.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton, ever the nasty enforcer of the Morrison government, was one who had every reason to feel confident when he took refugee activist Shane Bazzi to court in April last year.  In February 2021, Bazzi published a six-word tweet: “Peter Dutton is a rape apologist.”

The tweet was made some hours after Dutton had told a press conference that he had not been furnished with the finer details of a rape allegation made by former Coalition staffer Britney Higgins.  The context here was also important.  Dutton had, when Home Affairs Minister, characterised refugee women being held on Nauru, one of Australia’s carceral domains, as “trying it on” to get access to the Australian mainland for medical treatment.

The following month, Dutton promised that he would start to “pick out some” individuals who were “trending on Twitter or have the anonymity of different Twitter accounts” posting “all these statements and tweets that are frankly defamatory.” It was an informal declaration of war against critics.

In instigating proceedings against Bazzi, Dutton claimed in the trial that he was “deeply offended” by the contents of the tweet.  He accepted that, “As a minister for immigration or home affairs … people make comments that are false or untrue, offensive, profane, but that’s part of the rough and tumble.”  But Bazzi had gone one step too far.   “It was somebody that held himself out as an authority or a journalist.”  His remarks “went beyond” the tolerably bruising nature of politics. “And it went against who I am, my beliefs … I thought it was hurtful.”

In finding for Dutton in November and awarding $35,000 in damages, Justice Richard White ruled that the tweet had been defamatory, and that Bazzi could not resort to the defence of honest opinion.  Dutton failed to gain damages in three of the four imputations, while also troubling the judge with his hunger in pursuing the defendant for the full legal bill.  But in his remarks on Bazzi’s claim of honest opinion, White was dismissive.  “Bazzi may have used the word ‘apologist’ without an understanding of the meaning he was, in fact conveying.”  If this had been the case, “it would follow that he did not hold the opinion actually conveyed by the words.”

On May 17, Bazzi found that he had convinced the Full Court of the Federal Court that the reasoning behind the six-word tweet, and the purportedly defamatory imputations it conveyed, was flawed.  Justices Steven Rares and Darryl Rangiah, in a joint judgment, found that Justice White had erred in not explaining “how the reader would understand the whole (or any part) of the tweet to convey the imputation.”  They also noted that Justice White had found the meaning of the word “apologist” was not that of an excuser but of a defender.  “When the material is read with Mr Bazzi’s six words, the reader would conclude that the tweet was suggesting that Mr Dutton was sceptical about claims of rape and in that way was an apologist.”  It was “very different from imputing that he excuses rape itself.”

The judges put much stock in the context of the tweet, and the need to read it alongside Dutton’s previous remarks on the women held on Nauru as recorded in The Guardian.  “The reader would perceive that the message in the tweet consisted of both parts, Mr Bazzi’s six word statement and The Guardian material, read together.”  When read together, the reader “would understand that the point that the tweet was conveying was that a ‘rape apologist’ behaves in the way Mr Dutton had in expressing scepticism about the claims of rape.  That is a far cry from conveying the meaning that he excuses rape itself.”

Justice Michael Wigney also found that the primary judge had erred in finding the tweet defamatory and “substantially agreed” with the two other justices.  It was “tolerably clear” that Bazzi’s statement “was about, or responsive to, the extract from The Guardian article.”  The primary judge had erred in how the ordinary reasonable Twitter user would have read the tweet, downplaying, for instance, the significance of the link to the article.

Accordingly, “It was wrong for the primary judge, in analysing whether Mr Bazzi’s tweet conveyed the alleged imputation, to dissect and segregate the tweet in the way he did.”  While the tweet did convey “an impression that is derogatory and critical of [Dutton’s] attitude to rape or rape allegations,” it did “not go so far as to convey the impression that [Dutton] is a person who excuses rape”.

Dutton’s litigious boldness was much in keeping with the Morrison government’s general hostility to social media outlets and the internet, in general.  Prime Minister Scott Morrison has shown a willingness to do battle with social media and making the platforms assume greater responsibility for material hosted on their sites.  Taking advantage of the killings in Christchurch in March 2019, he exploited the chance to pursue a global agenda of online censorship.  “We urge online platforms to step up the ambition and pace of their efforts to prevent terrorist and VECT (violent extremism conducive to terrorism) content being streamed, uploaded, or re-uploaded.”

In the latter part of last year, the government announced that it was drafting laws that would make social media companies gather user details and permit courts to force the divulging of user identities in defamation proceedings.  While a re-elected Morrison government will be a dark day for internet freedoms and expression, Dutton’s defeat is a cause for genuine celebration.  It also heralds the need to water down the persistently draconian nature of laws that do all too much in protecting that strange animal known as the offended politician.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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***

A Syrian military bus was attacked on Friday, which killed 12 soldiers and wounded 14, between the towns of Nubl and Al Zahra, west of Aleppo at 9:30 am.  The attack was carried out by the Turkish sponsored ‘Sultan Shah’ terrorist group, which used a TOW anti-tank rocket. The Obama administration, by act of the US Congress, sent the Radical Islamic terrorists based in northwest Syria the US made TOW anti-tank missiles.

The Al Qaeda branch in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as Jibhat al Nusra, posted a video on its Telegram channel on Friday showing a rocket hitting the bus.  HTS is in control of Idlib, which is the last terrorist controlled area in Syria.

In 2017, President Trump shut down the CIA program which was funding and providing weapons to the Radical Islamic terrorists fighting to over throw the Syrian government to establish an Islamic State in Syria. President Obama had devised the war on Syria for regime change while utilizing Radical Islamic terrorists from Syria and around the world, including the US, UK, France, Belgium, and Australia.

Hours after the deadliest attack against Syrian government forces so far this year, Russian warplanes carried out air strikes on terrorist areas in the northwest.

The Syrian people have suffered under attack since March 2011 by a US-NATO backed war for regime change.  The Muslim Brotherhood was utilized in Turkey to establish the political arm of the terrorists, as the US and EU recognized the Syrian opposition Coalition in Istanbul as the only legitimate representative of the Syrian people. The Muslim Brotherhood is recognized as a terrorist group by Egypt, UAE, Russia and Syria.  US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has tried repeatedly to get the US Congress to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, but has not been successful due to the strong support for the terrorist group by members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican. The Muslim Brotherhood is an ally of Israel, who is a close ally of the US.

Since the 2018 invasion of Syria by Turkey, the northwest of Syria along the Turkish border has become a safe-haven for Radical Islamic terrorist groups who receive full support from the administration of President Erdogan, who heads the AKP party in Turkey, which is a Muslim Brotherhood allied party.

The Syrian war is long over, but Idlib remains a hot-spot due to the protection and occupation of Turkey.  Russia and Turkey reached agreement in Sochi, that Turkey should remove the Al Qaeda linked groups from the civilians in Idlib, and to allow the M4 highway linking Latakia to Aleppo to be used safely by trucks and civilian cars.  However, Turkey never fulfilled their side of the agreement, and the highway remains unsafe for use due to the occupation of the Radical Islamic terrorists supported by Turkish outposts.

Russian and Syrian air force targeted several positions of the ‘Sultan Shah’ terrorists in retaliation for the deadly bus attack.

Mohammad al-Jassim, also called Abu Amsha, is the leader of the Turkish-backed ‘Sultan Shah’ terrorist group, which is known among the people as al-Amshat faction. In 2019 he chanted, “Thank you Turkey, Thank you Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”

Abu Amsha is detested among the people because his faction members practice war crimes and steal from the citizens in Afrin, and other Turkish occupied locations.  They kidnapped a citizen in Alkana village, and demanded his relatives to pay $20,000 USD in order to be released.  They have extorted money from citizens while promising protection.

Since the 2018 Turkish invasion, which they called Olive Branch Operation, the security situation in Syria has deteriorated in those areas Turkey occupies and allows their Radical Islamic terrorist groups, such as ‘Sultan Shah’ to operate freely.  Turkey is carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign, removing Syrians at gun-point using the terrorist groups to hand over Syrian lands, homes and businesses to Syrian refugees returning from Turkey and to the terrorists and their families who were brought to the northwest under negotiations brokered by Russia to liberate areas under terrorist control.

Syrian refugees in Turkey were deported and resettled in Afrin and areas of Turkish occupation. Afrin is an agricultural area between Idlib and Aleppo which is famous for its olive trees and the production of olive oil.  Turkey has allowed the terrorists, including the ‘Sultan Shah’ group to steal the olive oil and send it to Turkey which is then bottled and sold both inside Turkey and abroad as a Turkish product.  Customers in Los Angeles saw bottles of olive oil labeled as made in Kessab and Afrin and sold in the US by Turkish companies.

Turkey’s occupation of Syria should be called operation Olive Oil not operation Olive Branch.  Turkey is in a domestic economic crisis, Erdogan needed a way to support financially the terrorists he was using in Syria, so the sales from the stolen olive oil are the method he is using.  But, the theft of olive oil is just one source.

Syrian antiquities, using Turkish bulldozers and excavators manned by terrorists of the ‘Sultan Shah’ group and others, have been unearthed, with the  valuable artifacts then taken to Turkey and sold to antiquities dealers in the US and Europe.  This illegal revenue brings in much more than the stolen olive oil.

The ‘Sultan Shah’ group extorts taxes on owners of farm tractors and agricultural machinery. The group also extorts money from relatives of those they have kidnapped in the form of ransom, sometimes up to $200,000 USD. The group devised a tiered tax on all agricultural lands: 15%, 25%, and 35% of the crop production to be paid to the terrorists.

In August 2021, the head of the Syrian opposition Coalition, Salem Abdel Aziz al-Muslat, honored  Abu Amsha, the head of ‘Sultan Shah’, and gave him a Medal of Honor.  This is the US supported opposition Coalition, regarded by President Biden and the US Congress as the only legitimate representative of the Syrian people. The ‘Sultan Shah’ group is well documented by human rights groups and international activist groups as having carried out murders, kidnapping, extortion and ethnic-cleansing.

When Americans pay their taxes, do they ever consider where their tax dollars are going to?  The White House and the US Congress belong to the American people, and it is the American people who are responsible for war crimes and atrocities committed abroad by US supported groups.  President Biden, President Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and others have chanted a mantra for 11 years, “The only solution for Syria is a political solution.”  Yet, the group that the US recognizes as the only legitimate representative of the Syrian people is handing out a medal of honor to a documented war criminal, murderer, kidnapper and extortionist.  American values are touted as freedom, democracy and justice.  American values have become a hollow phrase, and a source of ridicule by people throughout Syria.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

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***

NBC’s Meet the Press just aired an absolutely freakish segment in which the influential narrative management firm Center for a New American Security (CNAS) ran war games simulating a direct US hot war with China.

CNAS is funded by the Pentagon and by military-industrial complex corporations Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, as well as the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, which as Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp notes is the de facto Taiwanese embassy in the US.

The war game simulates a conflict over Taiwan which we are informed is set in the year 2027, in which China launches strikes on the US military in order to open the way to an invasion of the island. We are not told why there needs to be a specific year inserted into mainstream American consciousness about when we can expect such a conflict, but then we are also not told why NBC is platforming a war machine think tank’s simulation of a military conflict with China at all.

Go inside our exclusive war game with @CNASdc —

The year is 2027. The briefing: China is poised to attack Taiwan

Which side would prevail? Would China attack the U.S. mainland? Could nuclear war break out?

Watch the full episode on @PeacockTV and at https://t.co/CN76hzJHEj pic.twitter.com/XOjyry0QEY

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) May 15, 2022

It happens that the Center for a New American Security was the home of the man assigned by the Biden administration to lead the Pentagon task force responsible for re-evaluating the administration’s posture toward China. That man, Ely Ratner, is on record saying that the Trump administration was insufficiently hawkish toward China. Ratner is now the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs in the Biden administration.

It also happens that the Center for a New American Security has openly boasted about the great many of its other “experts and alumni” who have assumed senior leadership positions within the Biden administration.

It also happens that CNAS co-founder Michele Flournoy, who appeared in the Meet the Press war games segment and was at one time a heavy favorite to become Biden’s Pentagon chief, wrote a Foreign Affairs op-ed in 2020 arguing that the US needed to develop “the capability to credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines, and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours.”

It also happens that CNAS CEO Richard Fontaine has been featured all over the mass media pushing empire narratives about Russia and China, telling Bloomberg just the other day that the war in Ukraine could serve the empire’s long-term interests against China.

“The war in Ukraine could end up being bad for the pivot in the short-term, but good in the long-term,” Fontaine said. “If Russia emerges from this conflict as a weakened version of itself and Germany makes good on its defense spending pledges, both trends could allow the US to focus more on the Indo-Pacific in the long run.”

NBC News teaming up with neocon think tank CNAS whose top donors from 2020-2021 were Northrop Grumman and the Pentagon. Other notable donors include Raytheon, Taiwan's de facto embassy in the US, and Lockheed Martin.
https://t.co/23GJv8INtO https://t.co/DBSNEc5zXY

— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) May 15, 2022

It also happens that CNAS is routinely cited by the mass media as an authoritative source on all things China and Russia, with no mention ever made of the conflict of interest arising from their war machine funding. Just in the last few days here’s a recent NPR interview about NATO expansion with CNAS senior fellow Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a Washington Post quote from CNAS fellow Jacob Stokes about the Chinese threat to Taiwan, a Financial Times quote from CNAS “Indo-Pacific expert” Lisa Curtis (who I’ve previously noted was cited by the mass media for her “expert” opposition to the US Afghanistan withdrawal), and a Foreign Policy citation of the aforementioned Richard Fontaine saying “The aim of U.S. policy toward China should be to ensure that Beijing is either unwilling or unable to overturn the regional and global order.”

As we’ve discussed previously, citing war machine-funded think tanks as expert analysis without even disclosing their financial conflict of interest is plainly journalistic malpractice. But it happens all the time in the mass media anyway, because the mass media exist to circulate propaganda, not journalism.

This is getting so, so crazy. That the mass media are now openly teaming up with war machine think tanks to begin seeding the normalization of a hot war with China into the minds of the public indicates that the propaganda campaign to manufacture consent for the US-centralized empire’s final Hail Mary grab at unipolar domination is escalating even further. The mass-scale psychological manipulation is getting more and more overt and more and more shameless.

This is headed somewhere very, very bad. Hopefully humanity wakes up in time to stop these lunatics from driving us off a precipice from which there is no return.

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During a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this past week, President Emmanuel Macron insisted that France would step up its military and humanitarian support for Ukraine.

There is no question that Macron is committed in this respect. Following his re-election during the final round against challenger Marine Le Pen, he was adamant about his desire to work actively during his second term to restore Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, while always maintaining close coordination with his European partners and allies. He also indicated France’s readiness to contribute to an agreement that provides security guarantees for Ukraine.

Of course, a key part of this support is the supply of weapons. Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, France has always refused to specify exactly what type of armaments it was sending to Kiev.

The secret was finally revealed by Macron himself during an interview he gave on Thursday 21^stApril to news media outlet Ouest France.

When asked if Europe was in the process of supplying heavy weapons, especially tanks, as Germany has done with its Leopard tanks, he replied:

Everyone takes their responsibilities with their political balances, and I do not interfere in the political life of others. We are very coordinated. The day before yesterday I spoke to Chancellor Scholz on this subject. We still deliver substantial equipment, from the MILAN [anti-tank missiles] to the Caesars [guns], including several types of weapons. I think we have to continue on this path. Always with a red line, which is not to enter into co-belligerence.

The interviewer went on asking if tanks were necessary, and this is Macron’s reply:

Some countries have made this choice. It is a debate at the heart of German political life, it is a choice that belongs sovereignly to Germany, and we respect it. We have the same strategy as the Chancellor, which is to say: we must help the Ukrainians as much as possible, but we must be careful never to be co-belligerent.

Furthermore, Agence France-Presse (AFP) asked the Élysée Palace for comments, but they did not specify the number of MILAN missiles and Caesar guns delivered, so as not to “give operational information” which could be used by the Russian Army.

Milan anti-tank missiles.

An Elysian source specified that a few dozen MILAN anti-tank missiles (French-German manufactured) “have already been given” to the Ukrainian armed forces, confirming that these weapons were taken from the stocks of the French armed forces, according to the Elysée Palace (although these numbers seems very conservative).

The delivery of the Caesars guns was already in progress at the time, and is believed to have been shipped out with thousands of potentially lethal shells en route to Ukraine.

Spurred on by a voracious defense industry lobby, western leaders have been pouring unprecedented amounts of money and arms into this conflict zone. Since the start of Russian’s military intervention in Ukraine, some 13 billion euros worth of humanitarian, military, and financial support has been provided by G7 and European Union countries, according to data provided by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and reported by Bloomberg.

According to L’Opinion, French aid covers several different areas. One of the most important contributions also relates to satellite imagery. France has several observation satellites (Helios, Pléiades and CSO) which allow it to provide images several times a day to the Ukrainian general staff. It is likely that this activity will place the French in close collaboration with the allies, particularly with the United States military.

Referring to French aid which is worth a total of 120 million euros (if not more), French news media L’Opinion clarified that France also offered Javelin anti-tank missiles, and Mistral short-range anti-aircraft missiles.

Light missiles:

France delivered at least three types of light missiles:

1. Old MILAN anti-tank systems
2. Javelins anti-tank missiles (US made)
3. Mistral Short-range Anti-Aircraft Missiles

The French government is yet to release the exact volume of these deliveries.

The supply of these weapon systems was also accompanied by the training of Ukrainian military personnel called upon to implement them.

It is not a state secret that Emmanuel Macron likes to pose as the guarantor of the Paris Agreement for the climate and sometimes as the Ambassador of the One Health Approach which was resumed in his 24^th May 2021 speech which he gave at the 74th World Health Assembly in the presence of Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

This article will now focus on the actual weapons France and its allies are sending to Ukraine and examine the real danger they represent – not only for the environment, but also to people’s health.

According to the various statements made by Macron’s government, we can gather that Milan missiles, Caesar guns and shells, are the bulk of these deliveries. It is very clear that this material was chosen because it meets the following criteria:

• End-of-life equipment (old)
• Depleted uranium bombs/missiles

This second item is by far the most problematic. Before analyzing these weapons it is important to understand the knowledge and perception associated with the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions in military warfare.

Which raises the obvious question: are France and NATO shipping depleted uranium weaponry into Ukraine? As this article will demonstrate, the preponderance of evidence strongly indicates that they are doing this. And the ramifications are huge, not just politically, but also legally, environmentally, as well as regarding health effects to combatants in this war. Most importantly though, we are really talking about the long-term public health for people living in and around the country of Ukraine – through the careless spreading of highly toxic and radioactive material in the region.

What is Depleted Uranium?

Watch this brief video presentation of the risks posed by DU munitions:

According to the European Commission and their Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER), depleted uranium is a dense metal produced as a by-product of enrichment of natural uranium for nuclear fuel. It is still radioactive, but at a lower level than the material at the beginning of the process. It is used in armour-piercing ammunition, shells and bombs, in order to provide more penetrating power. Such munitions were used in many wars including in both Gulf Wars in Iraq, and also in NATO’s war against Yugoslavia, specifically in battle theatres like Serbia and Kosovo.

Their repeated use has raised concerns about health threats from exposure to the distributed uranium material and particle dust. Many studies have reported evidence of its prevalence, as well as a lack thereof, depending on whose report you are reading. Suffice to say, reporting on this subject still remains very controversial.

The European commission is well aware of the hazards such weapons represent, here for instance one of the many replies from the European Commission, addressed to Florent Pirot, the Secretary of the European Association Against Depleted Uranium (EAADU):

For this reason, France’s weapons deliveries into the Ukraine war zone will have international implications. The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) appears to be advocating for a ban on the use of uranium in all conventional weapons and weapon systems, and is engaged in monitoring, health care, compensation, and environmental remediation for communities affected by its use. However, this group has a very limited definition of DU weapons and munitions.

Sadly the ICBUW seems to believe that only a limited number of depleted uranium weapons, namely 105 and 120 mm tank shells, and small caliber bullets (15/25/30 mm) represent an actual danger to people and the environment, which naturally triggers the usual criticism towards the US government and others like it when such munitions are used, and therefore completely ignoring aircraft-dropped bombs (GBUs), cruise missiles, and other types of anti-tank missiles.

Why would that be?

The topic of depleted uranium is a sensitive one, even though governments have more or less acknowledged the use of uranium in these weapons. Yet, the fact remains that they are used much more widely, because of uranium being the best penetrator against tanks and bunkers.

During our research, we were amazed to find so many reports and cases where higher concentrations of uranium were found near bomb craters and other sites where missiles and bombs have landed. We are meant to believe missiles or bombs land away from the populated areas, but in the reality of warfare, such assumptions are simply not accurate.

An excellent article published 19 June 2016 by Florent Pirot the EAADU Secretary, provides a trove of information and data on this subject including a link to The Washington Spectator who published a damning report entitled “Irradiated Iraq: The Nuclear Nightmare We Left Behind,” which describes the health effects, including horrendous birth defects, resulting from the US military’s prolific use of weapons made with depleted uranium.

Although Barbara Koeppel, who wrote this article faced the wrath of the usual scientific experts (which reminds me of the scientific experts of the COVID 19 so-called pandemic), it is hard to ignore the alarm sounded in 2000 of Dr. Rosalie Bertell, a cancer research scientist and consultant to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (she died in 2012), who stated that, “DU is some thousand times more radioactive than the uranium found in soil and rock.

“Regardless of whether the bombs, bullets, or missiles are made with depleted, un-depleted, or slightly enriched uranium, they are all radioactive”.

Now let’s take a look at the weapons and ammunitions Macron is currently sending to Ukraine.

MILAN anti-tank guided missile

The MILAN is a product of Euromissile, a Franco-German missile development program dating back to the 1960s. The system entered service in 1972 as a second generation anti-tank guided missile, and soon became a standard anti-tank weapon throughout NATO, in use by most of the alliance’s individual armies.

With its rather short range (2000 meters), it is an old anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), and is known for its depleted uranium contents.

To put things into perspective, it is important to be aware that between 1986 and 2003, European armies such as the Italian Army’s combat units, were equipped with MILAN shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles, which emitted thorium-232, a notoriously radioactive metal which emits particles that are six times more hazardous to human health than those released by already hazardous depleted uranium.

Below you can see in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Defense Forces are undergoing intensive training in mastering MILAN-2 anti-tank systems.

The MILAN-2 ATGM in service in Ukraine, footage from a CNN video (April 2022).

The MILAN system was designed as per the requirements of the German and French armed forces whilst still considering the general requirements of NATO Command for such weapons.

Thus, the international association Euromissile has developed a system that, due to its high performance, has become the most widely used (after the TOW ATGM) of all anti-tank missiles, currently deployed in different countries.

The MILAN anti-tank system is used by military ground forces in 40 countries, including Germany, France, other NATO countries, and of course now Ukraine.

Watch this brief presentation on the MILAN 2 anti-tank system:

The use of depleted uranium weapons is again causing concern. I am saying this with the people of Serbia and Kosovo in mind, who discovered that the conflict which ended in 1999-2000 had left serious levels of radioactive contamination, just as it did in Kuwait some nine years before.

Why do the United States and NATO allies continue to use a waste product of the nuclear industry in their weapons? Some commentators allege that it is a conspiracy between the military and the nuclear industry to dispose of dangerous waste in hostile countries. While this may be partly true, the real reasons are certainly more complex.

As we speak, depleted uranium munitions are being fired on a regular basis at one of France’s military testing grounds, known as Canjuers. Many French soldiers have reported on the danger associated with the MILAN anti-tank guided missile. The following is the kind of comment you will hear from soldiers using it:

“Depleted uranium, we use it everyday in Canjuers” – they said “Do not come near the target, it is contaminated with depleted uranium, this is dangerous” (soldier explaining what the officer told them when training with Milan missiles in Canjuers).

More of these testimonies can be found here.

The ‘Javelin’ anti-tank missile

The Javelin, although known largely as an anti-tank missile packing a high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) round that can penetrate the latest armor, is really a multi-role shoulder-launched missile system capable of taking out everything from heavy armor, to troops hiding behind cover, to low and slow flying aircraft. Its reusable command launch unit can also be used independently as a thermal imaging surveillance system which can drastically improve austerely equipped troops’ ability to surveil their surroundings, especially at night. It features wide-angle viewing modes as well as a zoom-in mode of up to 12X.

Javelin anti-tank missile.

Ukraine has recently received American, but also French military support which includes thousands of Javelin anti-tank missiles. All the data presented by the Ukrainian military confirms that these Javelins have depleted uranium warheads. The missile and its launcher – the Command Launch Unit – together weigh 48.8 pounds, while the missile alone weighs 33 pounds, due to the extreme density and weight of DU material.

According to Florent Pirot’s article, the Javelin missiles’ depleted uranium remain a terrible threat for the environment long after the battle is over – so much so, that it will make it impossible to live in an area where these weapons were used, and not until a magnetic cleaning operation is enforced, and even then it still remains work that requires several passings in order to be left in a satisfactory state.

Pirot goes on to describe this as a crime to use these DU weapons, and unfortunately the Ukrainians’ belief they have achieved some tactical military superiority is somewhat naive, if not gullible, with respect to the low range and severe long-term risks posed by these weapons.

Given its incredibly dense nature, depleted uranium has been used for both tank armor and also in anti-tank ammunition. Depleted uranium is uranium with much of the U-235 removed. It is basically what is left over after the process of enrichment. Coupled with a shaped charge, a depleted uranium round and the DU dart contained inside it, can go through most tank armor, hence, the reason why Javelin anti-tank missiles have now become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.

On April 5, 2010, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress on a possible Foreign Military Sale to France of 260 JAVELIN Anti-Tank Guided Missiles, 76 Command Launch Units with Integrated Day/Thermal Sights, and associated equipment, parts, and logistical support, for an estimated cost of $69 million.

It is fair to assume that France took possession of Javelin antitank missiles from the US, and sent some of its armed forces stock to Ukraine.

Mistral Short Range Anti-Aircraft Missiles (SATCP)

The MISTRAL is manufactured by Matra (now MBDA). Its first version was put into service in the French army in 1989. It is a very short-range surface-to-air weapon system intended to complete the surface-to-air coverage of the armored and mechanized corps. It provides isolated units with their own air defense capability. Its targets are airplanes flying up to Mach 1.2 between 10m and 3000m and helicopters in motion or hovering. Its range is over 6km.

Watch the following brief presentation on the MISTRAL mobile SAM system:

UK Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapon (NLAW)

We thought it would be unfair to not mention the British government, who out of the kindness of their heart have donated thousands of Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapon (NLAW) anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) to Ukraine.

This missile system weighs 12.5 kg each, and has a range of no more than 1 kilometre. These features indicate that these missiles (made by Sweden’s leading defense contractor Saab Bofors, and manufactured in Ireland) include a substantial amount of depleted uranium. Given its density, even relatively small quantities of DU would add significant mass to a missile, greatly curtailing its range, but with the added benefit of its armor penetrating ability.

These missiles explode above the tank to spray it with DU together with the surroundings.

We now know that there have likely been at least 8 shipments of these missiles sent. “Thousands” of NLAWs have been promised, meaning thousands of kilograms of depleted uranium has already entered Ukraine.

Journalist Fra Hughes from Al Mayadeen explains the potential legal conundrum for countries like Sweden who are trafficking arms under the cover of a NATO-sponsored proxy war:

“One of the communications unveiled quite clearly that the Swedish government does not want the Ukraine government to publicly acknowledge its acceptance of these deadly weapons, which were dispatched on March 25, 2022, one day after the Swedish Parliament confirmed it would send aid to Ukraine.

There are many military weapons manufactured by both private arms companies and governments, which are in contravention of international law and or the Geneva convention.

Examples include depleted uranium which is used in ammunition that remains radioactive for decades. The American army used these munitions in Fallujah (Iraq), leading to severe birth abnormalities among the local population.

Air to ground missiles and bombs containing phosphorous are also banned under international law.”

Again, these weapons are a known environmental and radioactive hazard, and when used in areas where civilians live, one can easily see why some, including weapons experts, regard their prolific use as a crime against humanity.

Click here to continue reading.

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***

On May 16, the main “fortress of the Ukrainian Resistance” fell. Ukrainian militants blockaded at the Azovstal plant in the city of Mariupol raised the white flag and asked for evacuation of the wounded. As a result of the Russian shelling, the members of the Ukrainian nationalist Azov regiment were recently cut off from a water source on the territory of the facility.

The commander of the Vostok Brigade of the DPR Alexander Khodakovsky revealed that first nine Ukrainian servicemen raised a white flag and left the territory of Azovstal. The brigade commander explained that they represented a larger group of militants who asked for surrender. The Russian side agreed to the negotiations.

 As a result of negotiations with representatives of Ukrainian servicemen, an agreement was reached on the evacuation of the gravely wounded Ukrainian militants.

Another ceasefire regime has been declared by the Russian military in the area. A humanitarian corridor has been secured for the evacuation of wounded Ukrainian servicemen to a medical facility in the city of Novoazovsk in the Donetsk People’s Republic in order to provide them with the necessary medical assistance.

At the same time, judging by the claims of the Ukrainian officials not only gravely wounded militants have been evacuated.

Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Anna Malyar reported that 53 seriously wounded from Azovstal were taken to the hospital in Novoazovsk, another 221 people were sent to Olenivka. They are expected to be exchanged.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that part of the Ukrainian military surrendered. At the same time, he assured that the work on rescuing the remaining military from Azovstal and their return to the territory controlled by Kiev continues.

On May 17, Russian state media reported that the interrogation of Ukrainian prisoners of war from Azovstal has begun in the village of Elenovka. Among the Ukrainian military who surrendered, 144 people are fighters of the National Guard.

So far, the Russian Ministry of Defence has not confirmed the exchange of the surrendered militants.

According to some unconfirmed reports, the surrender is part of a big prisoner exchange deal.

Kiev reportedly demands that all Ukrainian fighters from Azovstal should be exchanged for Russian prisoners of war.

In turn, the Kremlin reportedly refuses to exchange nazi members of the Azov regiment as they committed numerous war crimes. The exchange of other servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine however can be negotiated.

In this regard, Kiev PR managers have launched new information campaign, in order to shift the emphasis from the Azov regiment to the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, border guards, and police officers blockaded in the Azovstal plant.

Taking into account the Russian reports that the majority of the surrendered militants are not members of the nationalist battalion, this scenario is likely possible.

At the same time, suspicions rise. Some needed Ukrainian nazi fighters can be exchanged under the guise of the ordinary Ukrainian servicemen.

The evacuation showcased the weakness of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion and its lack of resilience, which damaged the prestige of the MSM-promoted formation. However, in practice the Kiev regime is set to wage another propaganda campaign. It is likely to claim that it has managed to convince the “cruel Russians” to evacuate the “brave defenders of the Motherland”. This would play into the hand of war propaganda of Kiev, MSM and NATO against Russia and help the Ukrainian leadership boost the morale of its remaining forces.

Russia’s concessions to the nazi fighters, together with earlier inconsistent actions of Moscow in diplomatic talks with Kiev, undermine the moral and psychological state of members of Russian-led forces involved in the military operation in Ukraine.

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“I love those who can smile in trouble.”  Leonardo da Vinci

“I’m going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.”  Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“For forth he goes and visits all his host;
Bids them good morrow with a modest smile,
And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen. William Shakespeare, “Othello”

***

There are many devastating impacts of the Covid-19 mandates which in several countries are still ongoing:

The fear campaign, quarantines, engineered economic collapse contributing to poverty and mass unemployment,  the destabilization of civil society (including education, health, culture, sports), not to mention the imposition Worldwide of a “vaccine” which is heralded as a “solution” to the alleged Covid-19 pandemic.

But there is another dimension which is barely addressed:

The Covid mandates have over more than two years affected how human beings interact with one another, at the individual, family and social levels as well as in the arena of politics.

The Covid mandates have relentlessly prohibited social gatherings, family meetings, Church reunions, social movements, etc. allegedly as a means to combating a non-existent “pandemic”. 

But there is something else which is fundamental, intimately related to how people Worldwide communicate with one another.

“It’s the Right to Smile” 

Smiling as a facial expression has existed since the dawn of mankind. It is an inherent feature of human beings.

Coupled with mandatory social distancing, the Covid mask hides our faces and prevents us from expressing our feelings while meeting and interacting with our fellow human beings.

The mandates create an aura of social despair.

Smiling and laughter reduces stress, encourages dialogue, exchange, solidarity, conflict resolution.

Smiling also constitutes a means to confronting the Covid-19 fear campaign.

(It contributes to healthy breathing, the “intake of oxygen-rich air”, it stimulates our vital organs, including our heart and lungs).

British actor John Cleese once said: “Laughter connects you with people”

Smiling is also a means of expressing love and emotion, which has been suppressed by the Covid mandates.

Is it relevant?

The devastating impacts of the covid mandates on mental health, (including a wave of suicides) which are largely the result of social engineering are amply documented.

These impacts are in large part due to restrictions on exchange, dialogue, socializing with fellow human beings, relations between children and parents, teachers and students, etc.

For details see Chapter XI my E-book entitled The 2020-22 Worldwide Corona Crisis.

Smiling Contributes to Mental Health. 

“Smiling is a Fundamental Human Right” as Well as a Means to Combating “Political Tyranny”.

Beware of  the “Fake Smile” of Billionaire Philanthropists and Corrupt Politicians

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***

A white racist gunman targeted and killed 10 African Americans in a supermarket in an African American community in Buffalo, New York.

The 18-year-old shooter, Payton Gendron, has been heavily influenced by the white supremacist ideology of replacement theory which encourages violent attacks against African Americans and other nationalities in the United States.

According to reports, Gendron drove more than 200 miles in New York state to this location where on several occasions, he visited the store in order to map out his murderous attacks against innocent people. One witness said that he had talked to Gendron the day before outside the supermarket for over 90 minutes.

This massacre follows numerous incidents over the last few years where gunmen motivated by racist beliefs have carried out mass shootings aimed at killing as many of a particular targeted group as possible. The proliferation of racist and neo-fascist websites and other digital platforms serves as a conduit for exchanging views which are largely based upon false notions of conspiracies to eliminate the European people.

Those killed by Gendron were Roberta A. Drury of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 32; Margus D. Morrison of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 52; Andre Mackneil of Auburn, N.Y. – age 53; Aaron Salter of Lockport, N.Y. – age 55; Geraldine Talley of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 62; Celestine Chaney of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 65; Heyward Patterson of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 67; Katherine Massey of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 72
Pearl Young of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 77; Ruth Whitfield of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 86.

In addition to those who died from their wounds, three other people sustained injuries that have been assessed as non-life threatening. Two of those injured have already been released from the hospital. These injured persons are Zaire Goodman of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 20 (treated and released from ECMC); Jennifer Warrington of Tonawanda, N.Y. – age 50 (treated and released from ECMC); Christopher Braden of Lackawanna, N.Y. – age 55.

An article published by CBS News points out that:

“More than 600 pages of messages thought to be written on the social media platform Discord by the man accused of killing 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo appear to show his months-long, unfolding plan to kill as many Black people as he could. The messages, which begin in November, are laced with racist and anti-Semitic tirades…. The messages continued until a few days before the attack, with the final posts including photos of an assault rifle on which racist slurs were scrawled along with the names of other mass shooters. Ten people were killed in the shooting, including a church deacon, the mother of the city’s former fire commissioner, and a ‘beloved’ security guard who tried to incapacitate the shooter. Upon encountering police, the suspect put his gun to his chin, police said — but officers on the scene convinced him to put the gun down and he was taken into custody. He has been charged with murder in the first degree — the most severe murder charge under New York law — and has pleaded not guilty.”

Interestingly enough the gunman was apprehended alive with no injuries inflicted by the police. This scenario drastically conflicts with the continuing deaths of African Americans in their interactions with law-enforcement where oftentimes the victims were not armed.

The city of Buffalo has an African American population of 36% in comparison to 47% for European Americans. This municipality has continued to lose population since its peak in 1950 as an industrial magnate for migration by African Americans and other nationalities.

Biden and First Lady Visits Buffalo in Failed Attempt Minimize the Growing Racial Divide

U.S. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden traveled to Buffalo on May 17 in order to meet with the family members of those killed in the race massacre of May 14. During his address while in Buffalo, Biden denounced white supremacist ideology and proclaimed that these beliefs had no place in the U.S.

Nonetheless, he did not say that the U.S. was founded on white supremacist principles related to the forced removal and genocide carried out against the Indigenous Native American population along with the importation of millions of Africans for the purpose of enslavement. The British colonies which later became the U.S. after a seven-year war of separation, did not eliminate slavery as an economic system when they announced in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal.

Of course, Africans and Native Americans were not considered fully human and therefore had no specific rights that the white ruling interests were bound to respect. It would take another 90 years after the 1776 founding of the U.S. as a Republic for legalized involuntary servitude to be outlawed. The collapse of chattel slavery was a direct result of the Civil War of 1861-1865 which left an estimated 620,000 dead.

Even after the end of slavery and the advent of Reconstruction, within a decade, the federal government had abandoned its Congressional decisions to enforce civil rights laws providing African Americans with the right to due process and the franchise. The extrajudicial killings of African Americans by mobs and law-enforcement claimed thousands of lives between the 1880s and the Great Depression. Even in the third decade of the 21st century, African Americans are disproportionately represented in the prison industrial complex while they are subjected to severe injury and death at the hands of vigilantes and the police.

The Biden administration along with the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate cannot pass legislation which benefits the African American people and other oppressed groups. For example, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act has failed in the legislature although millions demonstrated across the U.S. in the aftermath of his murder by the Minneapolis police two years ago.

A news website entitled Black Wall Street raised serious questions about the administration of Biden in regard to its commitment to end institutional racism and brutality. Although Biden denounced the use of racism and ethnic bigotry, there were no specific plans enunciated which could achieve these goals.

The Black Wall Street report emphasized:

“Biden’s words sound great, but where is any policy to back up those sweeping words? The inaction of his administration to do nothing more than announce the ban on ghost guns leaves ample room for these killings to occur with regularity to citizens of all ethnicities and backgrounds. With racism fueling his shooting spree, an 18-year-old White man live-streamed his slaughter of innocent generations of Black people just looking to feed themselves and their families.  As the President blames Congress for gun legislation delay, domestic terrorism continues on. Biden has done little to address the festering and outright racism that’s only grown more sinister since he took office. Whether or not Congress votes to ban ghost guns, implement universal background checks, or restrict assault rifles, Biden’s words will come and go until actions are taken to save the lives of innocent Americans. While Black voters wain on Biden like America at large, another reckless racist mass shooting exposes the leadership gap in America that has been void seemingly forever.”

Such articles emanating from African American author Ezekiel J. Walker of Charlotte, North Carolina, provides a strong indication of the dissatisfaction with the Biden administration in relation to the concerns of this core constituency of the Democratic Party electorate. Amid midterm primaries and run off elections during 2022, it remains to be seen how the current racial situation and the worsening economic crisis will influence the overall participation and voting patterns.

Undoubtedly, the victory over racism will require an independent struggle waged by African Americans and their allies. There must be a total overhaul of the existing system to eradicate national oppression and economic exploitation in order to realize a genuinely just and equal society.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Buffalo area where racist gunmen killed 10 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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***

Just two weeks before Israeli forces assassinated beloved Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, the International Federation of Journalists, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians had submitted a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court accusing Israel of systematically targeting Palestinian journalists.

“The targeting of journalists and media organisations in Palestine violates the right to life and freedom of expression,” said Anthony Bellanger, the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists.

In a moment when the Israeli government’s propaganda machine is working hard to keep mainstream news organizations mired in reporting on Israeli efforts to raise questions about who shot the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, we must insist on understanding her killing within the broader and ongoing context of Israeli violence against Palestinian journalists.

“It was revealing that the Israeli military spokesperson described Shireen and her colleague, Ali al-Samudi, who was shot in the back, as being ‘armed with cameras, if you will permit me to say that,’” writes James Zogby in The Nation. “That is what good journalists do—they arm themselves with cameras and laptops. They witness events as they happen and tell stories so that readers and viewers can understand the human drama that is unfolding. It appears that Israel finds this profoundly—even existentially—threatening. Why else would they have killed dozens of Palestinian journalists in the past two decades?”

It was perhaps no accident that Israel targeted Abu Akleh on May 11, four days before Palestinians commemorated the 74-year anniversary of the Nakba (the Arabic word for “catastrophe”). On May 15, Palestinians mourn the violent founding of Israel on Palestinian land.

For 25 years, Abu Akleh had documented Israeli war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory for Al Jazeera. “Abu Akleh herself embodied Palestinian humanity by speaking truth to power,” Al Jazeera reported. She was covering an arrest operation by Israeli forces near the entrance to the Jenin refugee camp when she was assassinated. Although she was wearing a flak vest marked “PRESS,” an Israeli military sniper shot her below the ear — the only part of her head not covered by her protective helmet — clearly evidencing an intent to kill.

Al Jazeera journalist Shatha Hanaysha, also wearing a helmet and vest labeled as press, tried to reach Abu Akleh, but soldiers “did not stop firing even after she collapsed,” Hanaysha said. “I couldn’t even extend my arm to pull her because of the shots. The army was adamant on shooting to kill.”

Ali al-Samudi, another journalist with Al Jazeera who was also wearing a press vest, was shot in the back while covering the same event as Abu Akleh. He survived and is being treated for his wounds.

Thousands of mourners came out to honor Abu Akleh. To add insult to injury, as her casket was being carried through the streets, Israeli occupation forces attacked them, “beating and kicking the mourners,” then “forcing pallbearers to nearly drop the coffin.”

“Now, the occupying power has spoken back by shooting her in the head and attacking her mourners — a response that can only be classified as acute and multitiered state savagery, in keeping with Israel’s modus operandi of refusing to let Palestinians live, die, or be buried in peace,” writes Belen Fernandez at Al Jazeera.

ICC Complaint Filed Over Israeli Killings of Palestinian Journalists

Assassinations (extrajudicial executions) constitute war crimes under the Geneva Conventions.

On March 3, 2021, Fatou Bensouda, the former ICC chief prosecutor, had announced that the ICC was mounting an investigation into war crimes committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip since Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge, during which Israeli forces killed 2,251 Palestinians.

Bensouda found a reasonable basis to believe that Israeli forces committed war crimes — including willful killing, willfully causing serious injury, disproportionate use of force, and the transfer of Israelis into Palestinian territory. Bensouda also determined there was a reasonable basis to investigate possible war crimes by Palestinians, including intentional attacks against civilians, using civilians as human shields, and torture and willful killing.

In October 2021, Israel designated six leading Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist” organizations with absolutely no evidence. This was done in retaliation for their support of the ICC investigation and the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

The BDS movement was launched by 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005. It called for boycott, divestment and sanctions, described as “nonviolent punitive measures” that will last until Israel complies fully with international law by 1.) ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling its barrier wall (85 percent of which is on Palestinian land); 2.) recognizing the fundamental rights of Arab Palestinian citizens in Israel to full equality; and 3.) respecting, promoting and protecting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their land as mandated by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.

Calls for Independent Investigation of Abu Akleh’s Killing

The killing of Abu Akleh has led to calls for an independent, impartial investigation and galvanized opposition to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

On May 13, UN human rights experts condemned Abu Akleh’s killing, saying it “is part of a continuation of the high rate of attacks against media workers, particularly Palestinian journalists. More than 40 Palestinian journalists have reportedly been killed since 2000, with hundreds injured or targeted for violence.”

The UN experts included four special rapporteurs: 1.) on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967; 2.) on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; 3.) on violence against women, its causes and consequences; and 4.) on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. They said Abu Akleh’s killing may amount to a war crime and demanded “a prompt, independent, impartial, effective, thorough and transparent investigation.”

“Authorities have an obligation not to harm journalists and to protect them from harm under international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” the rapporteurs noted. They added that the targeting of journalists working in the occupied Palestinian territory and the Israeli government’s failure to properly investigate killings of media personnel violate the rights to life and to effective remedies. Decrying “the litany of extrajudicial executions,” they said the safety of journalists is crucial to guaranteeing the rights to freedom of expression and media freedom.

Noting that 2021 marked the highest number of Palestinian deaths since Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge, the experts declared, “The unsustainable situation is inherent to the context of protracted military occupation, in which violence and repression are used to perpetuate a system of Palestinian subjugation.” They called for “the dismantlement of the occupation, including the Gaza blockade and the illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

More than 6,000 people have signed a statement initiated by the antiwar and anti-imperialist group CODEPINK, calling for a thorough and impartial investigation of Abu Akleh’s killing and the immediate suspension of United States military aid to Israel. The U.S. enables Israeli war crimes and its illegal occupation by providing it with $3.8 billion in unconditional military assistance annually, in spite of the classification of Israel as an apartheid state by leading human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Israeli group B’Tselem.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) said Abu Akleh’s killing amounts to the war crime of willful killing under the ICC’s Rome Statute. BNC called for accountability for the perpetrators, those who gave the orders, “and the entire political leadership of apartheid Israel.”

“Though Israel killed Shireen Abu Akleh, her blood is also on the hands of the enablers, funders and defenders of apartheid, primarily the US, EU, UK, Canada and Australia,” BNC noted in a statement. “We call for public BDS pressure to end the West’s colonial hypocrisy and shameless complicity in Israeli crimes and ongoing Nakba against Indigenous Palestinians.”

BNC condemned “the Western indifference to Palestinians, which enables Israel’s impunity, directly contributing to our ongoing Nakba. We reiterate our call for meaningful solidarity with Palestinians facing ethnic cleansing, massacres, colonial dispossession and apartheid.”

Moreover, BNC cited the hypocrisy in the contrasting responses of the West to human rights violations in Ukraine and Palestine. Citing Palestinians’ “empathy with the suffering of Ukranians,” BNC stated that, “the West’s blanket boycotts and sanctions against Russia while continuing its complicity in and unconditional support for Israel’s apartheid, military occupation and settler-colonialism against Palestinians is racist, enraging and hypocritical,” adding, “Ironically, these sanctions and boycotts demolish anti-BDS excuses by Israel and anti-Palestinian apologists.”

BNC recommends that people strategically channel their anger by working with progressive networks to pressure governments and parliaments to end military-security cooperation and trade with apartheid Israel, ban all goods and services in Israel’s illegal settlements, stop material support for pillaged and disputed Israeli fracked gas, and demand a UN investigation of Israeli apartheid.

It is also calling for people outraged at Israeli abuses to mobilize community pressure on churches, unions, student groups and city councils to end all relations with companies complicit in apartheid Israel’s system of oppression and divest from Israeli and international companies and banks complicit in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity; to cancel academic, sports, cultural and tourism engagements in Israel; and join local BDS campaigns and solidarity groups.

People can also take concerted action to end U.S. military support to Israel. If the United States continues to fund Israel’s brutal and illegal occupation, journalists like Shireen Abu Akleh who document its war crimes will continue to be assassinated.

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Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. She is co-host of “Law and Disorder” radio. 

Featured image is from Middle East Eye

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***

The world awaits the decision of U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel in the case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher who has been a political prisoner in London since his arrest at the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2019. Last month, a British court sent the case to Patel, who is now charged with deciding whether to hand Assange to the United States – a decision that entails a judgment about whether the U.S. will kill him. Dozens of international human rights and press freedom groups – including Amnesty International, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and Reporters Without Borders – have opposed extradition as a “grave threat to press freedom both in the United States and abroad.”

The WikiLeaks revelations, described in greater detail elsewhere, laid bare the unspeakable horror of the United States’ war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraqand its torture of hundreds of people at its prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, among other grave human rights violations. The world learned, for example, that those detainees at Gitmo included a 14-year-old child and hundreds of innocent people, and that US military forces and their corporate agents wantonly killed tens of thousands of non-combatants, including innocent families with small children. We learned that the US government consistently lied to the public about these and other crimes, obstructing journalists’ attempts to uncover and share the truth.

Ultimately, what we really learned from these revelations is that there is nothing the United States foreign policy establishment says that can be taken at face value, without questions and close scrutiny. The hypocrisy of US claims that Assange’s actions present a threat to the safety of Americans is blindingly clear to students of American foreign policy. The problem for Assange is that his public service actually did serve the people – not the Washington, DC military and intelligence community, the political elite, and the arms manufacturers.

The United States is arguably the world’s least trustworthy state actor; it is also among the worst offenders when it comes to waging aggressive wars of choice, attacking journalistic freedoms, torturing perceived enemies, and detaining prisoners indefinitely and without charges or due process. The United States has consistently flouted its obligations under existing nuclear nonproliferation agreements and, in 2019, withdrew from the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. As Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, has said, “The US believes it can have non-proliferation globally without taking any responsibility to implement its own obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty.” Similarly and unsurprisingly, the US has also long rejected efforts to add accountability mechanisms such as inspections provisions to the Biological Weapons Convention, designed to prevent governments from developing and stockpiling bioweapons.

The United States’ record of lies and broken promises makes Assange’s case particularly important not only to Americans, but to the entire world. Were we not so desensitized by decades of focused, expertly-crafted propaganda, we couldn’t live with these facts without ourselves joining the Assanges of the world in a truth-telling mission to stop every organization that participates in these crimes. Americans simply do not live in the country they hear about on the news, the government again and again failing to live up to the high ideals expressed in its founding documents and its pretty PR.

We need more Julian Assanges, not less – more who are willing to sacrifice everything to cut through the fog of euphemism and propaganda that gives cover to the prevailing system: we call it “foreign policy,” but we are talking about war and imperialism. We call them “defense contractors” when what we mean is “war profiteers.” We now have the system of which President Eisenhower warned: we see the total, all-consuming, “economic, political, even spiritual” influence “of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.” We see the “disastrous rise of misplaced power” that has subordinated our “liberties and democratic processes.” We cannot hope to topple this system in favor of genuinely democratic institutions if we are not willing even to confront the truth, and we cannot confront the truth if no one is permitted to publish it.

It is time for all Americans to have an honest conversation about the kinds of actions we permit our government to carry out around the world. The hope after Vietnam was that the conversation on the US Empire and its destructive role in the world had fundamentally changed, that Americans were no longer willing to tolerate endless wars that harm both ordinary Americans and the rest of the world. To be clear, this is not about Julian Assange or WikiLeaks, not really. Because when Assange is no longer with us, which could be tragically soon if the US government has its way, there will be others brave enough to bring the truth to the people, who believe that we deserve to see it and understand what’s being done in our names.

Whatever your politics, whether you know it or not, Assange’s case affects you and your freedom to think, say, and write what you believe. It affects our collective ability – as a species – to live in societies in which information is not tightly controlled by a very small group of the rich and powerful. Again, some perspective is in order: Assange, like every one of us, will be gone soon, regardless of what the United States does with his case from here on. What we’re really talking about, then, is the future of the freedom to think, to inquire, and to publish, all of which are necessary conditions for anything that can appropriately be called a free society.

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David S. D’Amato is an attorney, businessman, and independent researcher. He is a Policy Advisor to both the Heartland Institute and the Future of Freedom Foundation. He has written in Newsweek, Investor’s Business Daily, RealClearPolitics, The Washington Examiner, and many other popular and scholarly publications, and his work has been cited by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, among others.

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

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***

The Biden administration will ease sanctions on President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela in exchange for a commitment from the government to dialogue in Mexico City with Venezuela’s opposition movement, sources familiar with the matter told McClatchy and the Miami Herald, marking a turning point in Washington’s pressure campaign on Caracas.

The new U.S. sanctions relief will allow Chevron, a major energy company, to begin talks over potential future oil production in Venezuela, and will remove Carlos Erik Malpica-Flores, a former high-ranking energy official in Venezuela and the nephew of Maduro’s wife, from a U.S. sanctions list.

Maduro walked away from talks with the Venezuelan opposition last fall, all but collapsing the fragile diplomatic effort. The country’s democratic leader, Juan Guaidó, whose movement has faltered over the past year, has rested his negotiating position on continued U.S. sanctions.

Read the full article here.

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Michael Wilner is McClatchy’s Senior National Security and White House Correspondent. A member of the White House team since 2019, he led coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. Wilner previously served as Washington bureau chief for The Jerusalem Post. He holds degrees from Claremont McKenna College and Columbia University and is a native of New York City.

Featured image: The US government continues to view Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido (left) as the rightful leader of Venezuela, not Nicolas Maduro (right). (Alexandros Michailidis/StringerAl/Shutterstock)

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As news of the COVID pandemic winds down around the world, we’re suddenly seeing warnings of another pandemic brewing — bird flu, aka avian influenza (H5N1)

Natural bird flu is notoriously harmless to humans, but Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony Fauci have, for many years, funded research to develop a bird flu pathogen capable of infecting humans

Some of that research has been undertaken in Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine

Gates funded research by Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka, in which the bird flu virus was mixed with the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) virus, creating an airborne hybrid capable of completely evading the human immune system, effectively rendering humans defenseless against it

The U.S. and other countries have already started stockpiling H5N1 vaccine, and the H5N1 vaccine Audenz is being marketed “for 2022.” As if on cue, the first-ever H5N1-positive case was identified in the U.S. at the end of April 2022

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As news of the COVID pandemic winds down around the world, we’re suddenly seeing warnings of another pandemic brewing — bird flu, aka avian influenza (H5N1). In a March 30, 2022, CenterPoint interview, former Director for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, stated:¹

“I believe the great pandemic still in the future, and that’s going to be a bird flu pandemic for man. It’s going to have significant mortality in the 10 to 50% range. It’s going to be trouble.”

Anyone who knows a little about bird flu is likely to wonder where Redfield and other “experts” are getting their predictions from, as natural bird flu is notoriously harmless to humans.

In early April 2022, news of a highly pathogenic bird flu ripping through chicken and turkey flocks in the U.S., triggering the slaughter of millions of these animals, was reported.^2,3 Historically, however, the bird flu has never posed a threat to mankind — that is until scientists started tinkering with it, creating a hybrid with human pandemic potential.

Natural Bird Flu Has Never Posed a Human Threat

As reported by Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director for the Organic Consumers Association:⁴

“H5N1 kills more than half of the people who get it, but H5N1 has circled the globe for decades and there have only ever been 860 human infections worldwide …

H5N1 isn’t transmitted person-to-person⁵ … There are no food safety risks associated with H5N1. If farm workers and meat packers don’t get bird flu in filthy factory farms or slaughterhouses, it’s no surprise the rest of us don’t get bird flu from eating raw eggs or handling raw chicken.”

Despite that, the U.S. and other countries have already started stockpiling H5N1 vaccine, and the H5N1 vaccine Audenz is being marketed “for 2022.”⁶ The approval for this vaccine was granted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January 2020, followed by a supplemental approval in 2021. As if on cue, the first-ever H5N1-positive case was identified in the U.S. at the end of April 2022.⁷

Bird Flu Has Already Been Weaponized

By the looks of it, the only way a human bird flu would appear would be if it was created, and wouldn’t you know it, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has funded gain of function research with the intention to make H5N1 transmissible to humans, as has global vaccine profiteer Bill Gates, Baden-Mayer notes.⁸

Some of that research has been undertaken in Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine.^9,10,11 For more details on this, be sure to read Baden-Mayer’s extensive article.¹² Not surprisingly, Gates has warned that another pandemic will emerge — something other than coronavirus — and that this yet-to-come pandemic “will get attention this time.”¹³

In the featured video, Christian Westbrook, aka the Ice Age Farmer,¹⁴ details Gates’ funding of Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka in Wisconsin, to identify mutations in various bird flu viruses that might have pandemic potential. Fauci has also funded Kawaoka’s work since 1990.¹⁵

In one experiment, Kawaoka mixed bird flu virus with the Spanish flu virus, resulting in a highly lethal respiratory virus with human transmission capability. Kawaoka has also played around with mixtures of H5N1 and the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) virus, creating an airborne hybrid^16,17,18 capable of completely evading the human immune system, effectively rendering humans defenseless against it.¹⁹ On a side note, this extremely risky research was done at a biosafety level 2 lab!²⁰

Around the same time, another team of Dutch researchers, led by virologist Ron Fouchier, also created an airborne version of the bird flu, using a combination of genetic engineering and serial infection of ferrets.²¹ Fouchier’s work was also funded by Fauci.

So, the bird flu has been manipulated and tinkered with in a variety of different ways, making it both airborne (which it was not initially) and capable of cross-species infection.

A decade ago, the work of Kawaoka and others sparked widespread concern about gain of function research, as it was readily recognized that it could accidentally CAUSE a human pandemic.^22,23 As a result, the U.S. government in 2014 issued a temporary ban on gain of function research on certain viruses, which remained in place until December 2017.²⁴

We’ve recently discovered that this ban was circumvented by Fauci, who continued to fund gain of function research on coronaviruses in China during those years. And, today, it looks as though weaponized bird flu might eventually be intentionally released to achieve the geopolitical aims of the technocratic elite, to which Gates belongs.

 A Ploy to Force-Eliminate Meat Consumption?

Westbrook (the Ice Age Farmer), suspects weaponized bird flu may be released to usher in The Great Reset and Fourth Industrial Revolution, which includes the elimination of traditional farming and meat consumption in favor of patented lab-created “foods.”

Indeed, millions of poultry are currently being culled in the name of food safety, and deer — a popular food among hunters — are being targeted for COVID vaccination to prevent cross-species transfer of a mutated virus.^25,26 Not surprisingly, the test being used to identify these outbreaks is the fraudulent PCR test that allowed for the fabrication of COVID “cases.”

In early April 2022, North Carolina chick sellers were told they will not even be permitted to restock.²⁷ They’re allowed to sell the chicks they already have on hand, but that’s it. How long that restriction is supposed to remain in place is unclear, but the way things are going, it may well be permanent.

Jacob Thompson of Wine Press News also believes bird flu is being used as a convenient excuse to rid the market of natural beef and poultry:²⁸

“… did you catch that little subtle influence and propaganda of COVID in animals transmitting to us? It is becoming clearer that that is where the narrative is heading … The wicked handlers need to get the masses off of meats, and so, the ‘solution’ will be to artificially kill them off, vaccinate them to death, and mandate it be taken off the shelves.”

Controlled Demolition of the Protein Supply

As noted by Westbrook, we now have mainstream media warning we may one day soon face “an apocalyptic bird flu” capable of wiping out half the world’s population. Meanwhile, Gates and others have funded the creation of just such a pathogen for the last 15 years, and the U.S. Department of Defense has funded research to figure out how to attach viruses to migratory birds.²⁹

Yet we’re being indoctrinated to believe that lethal human bird flu, if it does emerge, did so through natural evolution. Don’t be fooled. To quote Westbrook, what we’re looking at is “a controlled demolition of the protein supply.” There’s nothing accidental or natural about it.

Fertilizer shortages are also having a devastating impact on our food supply by limiting the amount of corn and soy that can be planted this year, and these shortages in turn mean farmers cannot feed their livestock, including chickens, so egg shortages are now looming on the horizon as well.

If you still struggle to put the puzzle pieces of manufactured food scarcity, famine and The Great Reset together, just consider how easy it will be for the global cabal to control populations when they’re starving to death. In a global famine, they can then present themselves as the “saviors” and hand out digital IDs that will allow you to collect a ration of processed food.

Of course, that digital ID will also function as a vaccine passport, so to get your food you’ll have to take whatever vaccine they tell you to, and it will be connected to a centrally controlled programmable currency that can be confiscated if you fail to comply. The end game is simply to create such widespread calamity that the people of the world willingly surrender all rights and freedoms.

Past Bird Flu Hoaxes

In 2005, President George Bush and U.S. officials warned bird flu would kill 2 million Americans and 150 million globally. It was a ridiculous threat that never materialized, but it did further the bioweapons industrial complex. Gain of function research was funded to the tune of billions of dollars and justified as “necessary” for the development of vaccines.

However, it was really a dual use program to create bioweapons that could then enrich Big Pharma. In 2006, I became so convinced by the evidence AGAINST the possibility of a bird flu pandemic that I wrote the book “The Great Bird Flu Hoax,” detailing the massive fraud involved. The book went on to become a New York Times bestseller. In it, I explained how:

• Multinational drug companies and food corporations pour billions into manipulating your perception of health and the daily news, just to increase their profits, and the health threats (and ethics breaches) they are really responsible for.
• Scientists are bought by drug companies and other big business to report whatever “research findings” they have been paid to report.
• Government is more than just complicit — it actively works with the drug companies and other stalwarts of the conventional health care paradigm, and are directly responsible for raising false alarms in order to draw your attention away from the real public health and safety issues they perpetuate.

In the years since, threats of a bird flu (or swine flu) pandemic have emerged several times, yet the outcome is always the same: Nothing. In 2009, pandemic experts used fear to hype the swine flu, causing millions to roll up their sleeves for the fast-tracked 2009 H1N1 vaccine.

It was exceptionally reactive, harming far more people than the virus itself. (Still, the injuries from the H1N1 vaccine are a drop in the bucket compared to the injuries caused by the experimental mRNA COVID shots.)

In 2013, mutated bird flu was back again, with the World Health Organization calling it “one of the most lethal” strains. But while it reportedly killed 22 in China, researchers could find no evidence of sustained transmission between people, which is a prerequisite for a pandemic flu virus. In the end, the pandemic narrative went nowhere.

May 6, 2022, I was contacted by Associated Press reporter David Klepper, who asked whether I still feel the avian flu was a hoax, (based on my NYT bestselling book “The Great Bird Flu Hoax”) and whether I’ve changed my mind about the possibility of a human bird flu pandemic, in light of our recent experience with COVID-19 and the current outbreaks in poultry. The short answer is no, I have not.

Bird flu is heavily present in the U.S., and millions of birds are currently being culled, but the natural virus is not very transmissible or lethal to humans. If we do end up with a lethal human bird flu, there’s every reason to suspect it was manmade. There’s also every reason to suspect a bird flu vaccine will be either ineffective, hazardous or both. As I told Klepper in my emailed response:

“The truth is dangerous in an empire of lies … The NIH and FDA are both responsible for the development and leak of this virus [SARS-CoV-2], as well as failing to provide basic and inexpensive information that would have saved people’s lives.

A two-dose injection of genetic code was promised to be 95% effective at stopping transmission of the virus, yet today four doses completely fail at preventing anyone from getting or spreading COVID-19 … Americans clearly understand that the federal government and major media have lied to them repeatedly, and are completely corrupted by the pharmaceutical companies.

The federal government has completely failed the American people and has continued to lie about gain of function research. Hundreds of bioweapons laboratories are operating around the world, and US researchers are collaborating with them utilizing NIH taxpayer funds.

They are jeopardizing millions of lives while enriching themselves and the pharmaceutical companies. Vaccine passports will be leveraged to roll out a long planned digital identification system combined with digital currencies; it will allow for complete control of transactions based on compliance and behavior.

If the bird flu becomes highly transmissible and lethal to humans, it will be an engineered virus from U.S. or Chinese government-funded biolabs.”

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Notes

^1, 25, 27 Wine Press News April 29, 2022

² The Conversation April 7, 2022

³ QZ May 9, 2022

^{4, 8, 9, 12, 15} OCA April 22, 2022

⁵ AIER.org March 22, 2020

^6, 7 Precision Vaccination Audenz for 2022

¹⁰ Youtube Ice Age Farmer

^{11, 13, 14, 29} Ice Age Farmer April 8, 2022

¹⁶ Journal of Virology May 2009; 83(10): 5278-5281

^17, 21, 22 Cidrap June 21, 2012

¹⁸ Scott McPherson February 22, 2010

^19, 20 Business Insider July 1, 2014

²³ Science May 2, 2012

²⁴ Nature December 19, 2017

²⁶ Reuters April 4, 2022

²⁸ Wine Press News January 24, 2022

Featured image: MILLIONS OF ANIMALS ARE SLAUGHTERED IN SILENCE. Here, a container with killed chickens from a large chicken farm in Alford, Lincolnshire can be seen. British authorities claim it is due to the largest bird flu outbreak ever in the UK. Across the Western world, millions of chickens are now being gassed to death beyond public awareness. Dairy and meat cattle have also begun to be killed by abandoned European farmers. Still: The Lincolnite / YouTube

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

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First published on May 14, 2022

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The Angel Warrior Network & Punisher Dallas is diving into learning about WHO (World Health Order) actually is. What their agenda is. How are they funded and Why do they want our sovereignty? Peter Koenig gives us some insight after years of working for them and other closely related companies. Join us for details and many links below will be listed for even more information.

Below is transcript of the interview.

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Angel Warrior Network (AWN): Please tell us about WHO, your experience with them, who they work for, who finances them, how WHO was created…. And more.

Peter Koenig (PK): Before anything else — What we must know about is the new WHO Pandemic Treaty. 

The World Health Organization has started drafting a Global Pandemic Treaty on pandemic preparedness that would grant WHO absolute power over global biosecurity, such as the power to implement digital identities / vaccine passports, mandatory vaccinations, travel restrictions, lockdowns, standardized medical care and more.

See this “The Corbett Report’s”, where independent journalist James Corbett reviews what this Treaty is all about in details.

This Pandemic Treaty, if implemented, will change the global landscape and strip you and me of some of our most basic rights and freedoms.

Make no mistake, the WHO Pandemic Treaty is a direct attack on the sovereignty of its member states, as well as a direct attack on your bodily autonomy.

It is a back door to Global Governance, to Global Tyranny imposed by Fear over your Health.

AWN: Is there a WHO meeting May 22-26, 2022 where WHO is seeking to be given complete sovereignty over the people of the United States and of the world, for that matter?  

PK: Yes, there is.

It’s called the “Pandemic Treaty”, as mentioned before.

There is a ridiculously short period foreseen for comments – 16 and 17 June 2022 – indicating that they are not interested in receiving comments, especially not critical comments or objections.

Then there are new debates scheduled more intermediary presentations and perhaps again comments?

For now, the plan is that a final version of the Pandemic Treaty would be presented to the World Health Assembly (WHA) in the Fall of 2023 and if approved, the Pandemic Treaty will become “International Law” (sic) overruling every nation of the world’s sovereign Constitution.

Please Note: There is no provision of any International Law that would give the UN, let alone a UN agency, power to override individual and sovereign nations’ constitutions. NONE!

What is being planned is totally and absolutely illegal, by any standard of legality that humans have ever created. Any traditional laws as we know them, international or national laws, are overturned or simply ignored. They do no longer exist for the all-commandeering cabal, the dark cult which is currently hanging over humanity and pretending commandeering humanity.

People must know that. People MUST reject the US and EU-supported/promoted WHO’s planned “Pandemic Treaty”.

We can still stop it – but we MUST follow the truth, MUST follow the LIGHT.

Evil cannot survive in the Light, as a thief cannot survive in the light; he will be caught, arrested and immobilized.

We must not be afraid; FEAR is their weapon.

But we must be determined to work in the LIGHT and to seek the truth, not propaganda but the TRUTH.

AWN: Who are the top contributors to the WHO?

PK: The largest contributor is the US, followed by Bill Gates. Bill Gates was number 2 until recently. By now, he may have been taken over by a number of pharmas – like the about 20 vaxx pharmas of GAVI (The Vaccine Alliance) – housed in a modern glass-building just next door of WHO… that speaks for itself.

GAVI is a non-tax paying NGO – maybe the world’s richest NGO, next to the World Economic Forum or the WEF, also an NGO, also housed in Geneva and also tax-exempt.

The vaxx corporations lobbying for new Covid “variants” more and different vaxxes, none of them, of course as effective as they should be, especially as far as Covid-19 is concerned. But the Vaxx-Alliance comes along with lots of money and influence.

When President Trump, who knew very well what’s behind WHO, took the US off WHO, Gates was for a short while the largest single contributor to WHO; larger than any mandatory member country contribution.

In the meantime, under President Biden, the Globalist President, the US is back… as a key member of WHO, and again the main contributor.

Let’s look at the funding of WHO:

Depending on the year, between two-thirds and three quarters of WHO’s total budget comes from private contributions, most of them from Bill Gates and the pharma industry, i.e., GAVI and others.

The balance – the lesser portion of WHO’s budget funding – comes from member countries’ mandatory contributions. This is quite different from regular specialized UN agencies, like ILO, WTO, UNICEF, others, where close to 100% of their budget stems from member countries’ contribution.

The proximity between WHO and GAVI, their way of being intertwined assures a constant interchange of ideas, policy proposals, of course vaccination ideas… as we know them, as well as “create” diseases (yes, Covid was lab-created, as was Ebola, HIV and many others) — real or fake, but at least in the minds of people they are real, generating fear, and fear generates obedience and submission. Fear, constant fear propaganda, creates weakness of will-power, and willingness to survive.

This is done with hugely psychological and generously taxpayer-funded propaganda, to serve at least two purposes,

(i) lucrativeness of the vaxx pharmas, and

(ii) trial and error of “emergency” vaxxes, for example the so-called Covid-19 mRNA-“vaccination”. Judging from the tens of thousands of vaxx injuries and deaths following vaccination.

Mind you, vaccination started only in December 2020, so these tremendous numbers of injuries and deaths occurred within less than 18 months, and the numbers are rapidly increasing, as time goes on.

One might assume that there is another than a health agenda behind the vaxxes, one helping to reduce the world population. A eugenist agenda?

As we experience it today, it seems to work as country statistics indicate. In the US it is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS. It is a passive reporting system, meaning it relies on individuals to send in reports of their experiences. On average, only about 1% to 5% of vaxx injuries or deaths are reported. Yet, VAERS reports way more deaths from the vaxxes than from Covid.

In Europe, vaxx injuries and deaths are reported to the European Medicines Agency, or EMA. The proportion of reporting is about the same as in the US. These are estimates only, as nobody verifies the figures.

When we listen to Dr. Mike Yeadon, former VP of Pfizer and Chief Science Officer of Pfizer, all those who have been vaxxed with mRNA-jab, most of them by coercion or lie-propaganda, may develop potentially deadly diseases within the next 2-5 years.

Many will die – for reasons which will be difficult to trace back to the vaxx. But overall death statistics will show the onslaught and increase of annual death rates, coinciding with the forced, coerced mass vaccination.

Such trial vaxxes, as are mRNA injections, can only be used in an emergency. Thus, in 2009, on the occasion of the (fabricated) Swine Flu (H1N1) epidemic, WHO changed the rules for how a pandemic could be declared.

Today it has nothing to do anymore with the ratio of death to disease, and the number of infections. Declaring a pandemic is simply based on how far spread the disease is. Covid, for example, traveled the world extending itself from one day to the next over the entire globe.

Apparently most scared-to-death people don’t realize, or don’t want to realize, how nonsensical such declarations are. Because they come from WHO and from governments, from the authorities you always believed in and counted on them to protect you. Therefore, it is impossible for you to think that they miserably lie to you.

That is called “cognitive dissonance”; according to psychologists, it is one of the most difficult mental diseases to heal.

We know latest since Covid that propaganda can spread a disease in a matter of hours, not even days, around the world – which is enough reason to declare a pandemic.

Under this new rule, WHO can declare the annual flu as a pandemic – with a vigorous vaxx mandate.

AWN: How and by whom was WHO created?

PK: In many ways, WHO is not a real UN agency, like most others.

It was created in 1948 by the Rockefellers as a world health agency, following the pattern of the PAHO scheme. PAHO, the Pan-American Heath Organization, was created in 1902.

The new WHO was then integrated into the UN system, at the behest of – and with the money of – Rockefeller’s Standard Oil fortunes.

At that time Standard Oil had literally a world monopoly on oil supply, it was broken up under the Anti-Trust Law in the 1990’s, but then somehow recomposed into different corporations of which the bulk is still in Rockefellers possession.

There is more – until the mid-fifties approximately, most medicines were plant-based. Rockefeller changed all this; as the owner of the biggest oil production company, he knew that plant chemicals could be replicated by petro-chemicals.

Hence, medication of all types, needed or not – more or less dangerous ones — skyrocketed, multiplied exponentially, when Rockefeller’s idea of oil-based medicine was realized. That’s also when Big Pharma bloomed, and with the new (since 2009) pandemic rule, and soon – God forbid – the new Pandemic Treaty, will make sure that the pharma bonanza continues forever.

We must not forget, Rockefeller and Gates, for that matter are among the world’s most notorious eugenists.

To expand on Henry Kissinger’s infamous saying:

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

Add this: “Who controls health, decides over life and death.”

That maybe very well the Rockefeller-Gates reason to control WHO – and to control the world population’s health, i.e., life and death.

Image below: WHO Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus and Bill Gates (Source: Covert Geopolitics)

AWN: WHO is Dr. Tedros, the WHO Director General?

P.K. The official Wikipedia version says:

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is an Ethiopian public health researcher, and official who has been Director-General of the World Health Organization since 2017. Tedros is the first African in that role, and was endorsed by the African Union.

Tedros is (was?) also a lead-member of the Ethiopian/Eritrean Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a leftist rebel group.

He is a biologist by training.

Dr. Tedros is also the first WHO DG who is not a medical doctor.

He was born in 1965 in Asmara, the capital of what today is known as independent Eritrea.

But now comes the agenda of his career:

Gates met Tedros at Addis Ababa University when Tedros was moderating a speech of Gates on the importance of vaccines.

Tedros was selected by Bill Gates, first as Board member of GAVI; later Gates proposed him as DG of WHO.

Tedros eventually was approved by the WHO General Assembly in 2017.

Of course, why would the WHO General Assembly not approve a candidate proposed by Bill Gates, the organization’s second largest donor? At one time, namely when Trump made the US exit WHO, Gates was the biggest single donor of WHO.

The bulk of funding of UN agencies usually comes from member contributions, and some trust funds of private donors.

As mentioned before – in the case of WHO – the far biggest proportion of WHO’s budget comes from private sources, i.e., the Bill Gates Foundation and the pharma industry’s myriad of “philanthropic” Trust Funds.

AWN: How does Bill Gates tie in? 

PK: Bill Gates is everywhere.

• He is behind the WHO agenda – he is the world’s vaxx-czar.
• He is the creator of GAVI
• He selected Dr Tedros as WHO DG.
• He promotes the mRNA, experimental injections – never been approved by CDC, nor any other national vaccine approval board as a vaccination.
• Gates convinced WHO to declare Covid as a Health Emergency in March 2020, so CDC could grant the mRNA (non)-vaxxes an emergency permission.
• He is the “inventor of Agenda 2021” – leading to the Vaccination passport through a QR-coded electronic data collecting system, that can hold up to 30,000 individual data-entry per person.

And more.

Gates is everywhere.

He promotes the manmade (sic) climate change agenda.

He buys huge surfaces of agricultural land in the US and elsewhere, so he can eventually help dictate what people have to eat, and more specifically, what people are no longer allowed to eat – transforming the bovine industry into an artificial meat industry.

As to the QR code, and extension of Agenda 2021 – who controls the QR code system, knows you better than you know yourself. It makes you vulnerable and manipulable.

The QR code is extremely dangerous, has invaded every corner of our lives and MUST be stopped. But it can be stopped only, if people know what it is.

Bill Gates is also a notorious admitted eugenist and so was his father, so are the Rockefellers, and many more of the infamous billionaires.

Bill Gates is also a Globalist and he defends the Globalist Agenda, one that leads to a One World Order, to a Global Governance, if we do not stop it. It’s the Plan of the Great Reset, and of the UN Agenda 2030.

AWN: What about Population Control?

PK: What we are confronted with has been under preparation for many decades – maybe as long as 100 years.

It is a diabolical plan to control the world’s population, under many different pretexts – manmade climate change is one of them, it’s a lie a BIG LIE.

Just as a sideline –

• Climate change has always existed – you can go back to history for millions of years; the variations of temps are between 2 to maximum 5 degrees C.
• The main cause for temperature/climate changes is our sun, solar movements, solar activities.
• When solar activities cease for a while – which has happened twice, some 640 and 710 million years ago, the so-called Cryogenian period — the world became like an ice ball, the Snowball Earth.

Google says: Scientists contend that at least two Snowball Earth glaciations occurred during the Cryogenian period, roughly 640 and 710 million years ago. Each lasted about 10 million years or so. The main evidence of the severity of these events comes from geological evidence of glaciers near the equator.

So, don’t fall for the climate change LIE.

It’s just another strategy to scare you, to make us feel guilty, to instill fear in Us, the People.

The current agenda, the so-called UN Agenda 2030, in ten years it has to be carried through. We are currently in year three. Agenda 2030 is identical with the WEF’s Great Reset, and synonymous with the WEF’s 4^th Industrial Revolution.

The Great Reset’s, alias Agenda 2030, three major goals are:

1. Massive depopulation – the eugenists agenda. This may happen partly (largely) as a result of the mRNA-fake vaxxes, partly due to the artificial famine being created by the Ukraine war, supply chain disruptions, full or partial lockdowns, and because of the abject misery that poverty will instill and impose – leading to suicide and all sorts of diseases, some of them indeed deadly.

It is also important to know that nothing, but absolutely NOTHING happens as a coincidence.

1. Transferring of assets / capital from the bottom and the middle of the social stratum, to the top – to the already-billionaires, and to the gigantic Financial Corporations, mentioned before, BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity and more, and finally

Klaus Schwab’s wet dream, the Fourth Industrial Revolution:

1. Digitization and robotization of everything – money, work processes – even the human brain. According to Yuval Noah Harari, Klaus Schwab’s top adviser – we, humans are ‘hackable animals’ – his words – and transformable into transhumans, basically robotization. See this CNN video (12 min).

At the end, when all is successfully implemented by 2030, the Great Reset makes us believe “You Own Nothing, But You Are Happy”

This will not happen as WE SHALL OVERCOME.

LIGHT WILL REIGN OVER DARKNESS.

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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.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, without convening its vaccine advisory panel of independent experts to discuss Pfizer’s data on 5- to 11-year-olds — and based on a study subset of only 67 children, CNBC reported.

The FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the boosters despite data showing higher infection rates among fully vaccinated children in the 5 to 11 age group compared to unvaccinated children, no studies testing the efficacy of the vaccine against the current dominant BA.2 COVID-19 variant and two new studies showing that for vaccinated people who get Omicron, the infection provides better protection against future infections than a second booster dose.

The vaccine advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is scheduled to meet Thursday. The agency and its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, are expected to sign off on the boosters, The Washington Post reported.

Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said data increasingly show protection provided by two shots wanes over time, but the agency determined a third shot could help boost protection for children in the 5 to 11 age group and the “benefits outweigh the risks.”

The FDA authorized the third shot after analyzing data from an ongoing Pfizer clinical trial in which a small subset of only 67 children in the age group had higher antibody levels one month after receiving a booster dose.

As The Defender reported, antibody levels alone are not indicative of immune protection. When it comes to COVID-19, T cell and natural killer cell responses are the crucial part of immune protection.

Pfizer has not published its actual data, precluding experts from conducting this analysis.

The authorized booster dose, the same strength as the first two doses, generated neutralizing antibodies to Omicron and the ancestral Wuhan version of the virus, according to The New York Times.

The FDA said it did not identify any new safety concerns and found the children in the trial experienced the same mild side effects other people do after receiving a booster.

However, a subset of only 67 children is not large enough to detect potential adverse events like myocarditis, and it is unknown how rapidly any protection provided wanes because trial participants were not followed beyond a 28-day period.

About 8.1 million, or 28%, of children ages 5 to 11, received their primary series of two COVID-19 vaccine doses as of May 11, according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Those children will now be eligible for a third dose five months after their second dose based on data obtained from the 67 children who were followed for only one month.

COVID cases higher in vaccinated children aged 5 to 11, CDC data show

According to the latest CDC data, since February, higher COVID-19 case rates were recorded among fully vaccinated children compared to unvaccinated children in the 5 to 11 age group.

The CDC on Feb. 12 reported a weekly case rate of 250.02 per 10,000 population in fully vaccinated children ages 5 to 11, compared to 245.82 for unvaccinated children in the same age group.

The trend continued through the third week of March, which is the latest week of available data.

“Several factors likely affect crude case rates by vaccination and booster dose status, making interpretation of recent trends difficult,” CDC spokesperson Jasmine Reed told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Limitations include higher prevalence of previous infection among the unvaccinated and unboosted groups, difficulty in accounting for time since vaccination and waning protection, and possible differences in testing practices (such as at-home tests) and prevention behaviors by age and vaccination status,” Reed said. “These limitations appear to have less impact on the death rates presented here.”

According to CDC data, the gap between fully vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in all age groups has grown increasingly smaller, with the death rate showing the same trend for people over age 50.

For people under age 50, death rates are almost identical between the vaccinated and unvaccinated since the beginning of the vaccine rollout.

Data show COVID-19 vaccines have a “negligible effect” on people, said Dr. Peter McCullough, a prominent cardiologist and epidemiologist.

“With these results in hand, it is clear the vaccines are having a negligible effect in populations,” McCullough told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Given the overall poor safety profile and lack of any assurances on long-term safety, Americans should be cautious in considering additional injections of these products.”

Having COVID may be more effective than getting a booster, studies show

Two new studies show, for people who are vaccinated against COVID-19, getting a breakthrough Omicron infection may provide better protection than receiving a second booster, Fortune reported.

One study conducted by German biotechnology company BioNTech SE assessed vaccinated individuals who had breakthrough COVID-19 infection associated with the Omicron variant.

BioNTech found these individuals had a better B-cell response than individuals who had received a booster but had not been infected.

According to MD Anderson Center, B cells are a type of white blood cell that create antibodies that bind to pathogens or foreign substances and neutralize them. B cells bind to a virus and prevent it from entering a normal cell causing infection. They also recruit other cells to help destroy infected cells.

A second study by the University of Washington and Vir Biotechnology investigated the immune responses of various groups based on vaccination and infection status.

The study analyzed blood samples of individuals who had been vaccinated and then caught the Delta or Omicron variants and compared them with those who had COVID-19 first and were then vaccinated, those who had been vaccinated but were not previously infected and those who were infected but had never received a COVID-19 vaccine.

The study found vaccinated individuals with breakthrough Omicron infection produced antibodies that formed a strong defense against other variants of the virus. Unvaccinated people who caught Omicron did not have a similarly robust immune response.

Efficacy of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine wanes rapidly

A study published May 13 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found protection from Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine turned negatively effective among children and adolescents five months after receiving a second dose — meaning recipients were more likely to get COVID-19 five months after being vaccinated.

Vaccine effectiveness “was no longer significantly different from 0 during month 3 after the second dose,” the researchers wrote. They also found protection against hospitalization waned significantly over time.

In adolescents, the authors said, efficacy increased again with boosters.

Most non-randomized studies attempting to determine vaccine efficacy (VE) had “common flaws,” including no accounting for baseline prior COVID-19 infection, no reporting for those who received a booster within a six-month time window and no adjudication of hospitalization or death due to COVID-19 or other conditions, McCullough told The Epoch Times.

“As a result, most studies of COVID-19 VE have biases towards overestimating any clinical benefit of vaccination,” McCullough said.

As The Defender reported on May 13, a different study published in JAMA showed second and third doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine provided protection against the Omicron variant for only a few weeks.

“Our study found a rapid decline in Omicron-specific serum neutralizing antibody titers only a few weeks after the second and third doses of [the Pfizer-BioNTech] BNT162b2,” the authors wrote.

A preprint study released in February showed Pfizer’s two-dose regimen of its COVID-19 vaccine for children was only 12% effective against Omicron in children ages 9 to 11, and the effectiveness of the vaccine “declined rapidly” for children 5 to 11.

Researchers at the New York State Department of Health and the University at Albany School of Public Health examined the effectiveness of the vaccine in children 5 to 11 and adolescents 12 to 17 from Dec. 13, 2021, to Jan. 30, 2022, and determined the effectiveness of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine declined rapidly for children, particularly those 5-11 years.

According to a Danish study of 128 people who had received two or three doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, levels of Omicron-specific “neutralizing” antibodies decline rapidly after a second and third dose of Pfizer’s shot.

Compared to original and Delta variants, researchers found the proportion of Omicron-specific antibodies detected in participants’ blood dropped “rapidly” from 76% four weeks after the second dose to 53% at weeks 8 to 10 and 19% at weeks 12 to 14.

After the third shot, neutralizing antibodies against Omicron fell 5.4-fold between week 3 and week 8.

Last month, Moderna requested EUA for its COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 6 months to 6 years. Pfizer plans to seek EUA for a three-dose regimen for the same age group.

The FDA’s top vaccine official told a congressional committee on May 6 COVID-19 vaccines for children under 6 will not have to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain EUA.

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

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According to Western authorities and media reports Ukraine has been winning the war, but, notwithstanding all the weapon’s shipments from the West, this narrative can only be described as propaganda, for a number of reasons. Amid this triumphalist rhetoric, the US-led West seems to have chosen the path of full-spectrum conflict with Moscow, as one can see in the recent G7 joint statement.

And yet, strangely, French President Emmanuel Macron’s own remarks during Europe Day contained a conciliatory tone about not “humiliating” Moscow should Kiev win.

The US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, in turn has asked May 13 for a conversation with his counterpart, Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, to talk about “an immediate ceasefire”. This was the very first talk the two officials had since the beginning of the Russian military operations in February. Thus, we are seeing contradictory signs.

Moreover, Austin also showed he is interested in keeping lines of communication open with the Kremlin. The one-hour long phone call was requested by Washington. This is the same Lloyd Austin who, in April 26, stated he believed Kiev would win the war, with American help.

Echoing Austin’s change of tone, Macron reportedly has asked Ukraine to make some “concessions”, to which President Volodymyr Zelensky replied in a May 13 interview with Italian TV channel RAI that “we won’t help Putin save face by paying with our territory”. This has generated some embarrassment and has prompted a reply from the French presidency, stating that Macron in fact has never “asked President Zelenskyy for any concession.” The same day the G7 announced its intentions to further contain and isolate Moscow, Macron stated, during his address to the European Parliament, on May 9, that “we are not at war with Russia”, adding that Europe’s duty is to “stand with Ukraine to achieve a ceasefire, then build peace.”

Macron and Austin are not alone. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a long talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 13 over the telephone, according to a recent Twitter publication of his, stated that there must be a “ceasefire” in Ukraine “as quickly as possible”. Interestingly there was no talk of Russia immediately retreating, which would be a strange thing if it were true that Kiev is “winning” the war.

Three points from my long phone call with #Putin today:
There must be a ceasefire in #Ukraine as quickly as possible.
The claim that Nazis are in power there is false.
And I also reminded him about Russia’s responsibility for the global food situation.

— Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz (@Bundeskanzler) May 13, 2022

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi in turn has also echoed the same theme about a ceasefire.

The fact that the speeches of leaders from the three EU largest countries are thus aligned is a clear sign that something is changing. This reflects popular opinion also: according to a recent survey across 27 Western countries (conducted by polling company Ipsos), support for diplomatic talks with Russia has increased precisely in France, Germany and Italy.

These are certainly not the only problems that should worry the US. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for example, has threatened to block Sweden and Finland NATO bids. With Turkey being such a relevant NATO member, this is yet another sign of the contradictions within the alliance.

In spite of the aforementioned Austin statements, the American take on this is still somewhat more complicated, though. According to the Politico website, a high-ranking Washington official has admitted the US worries about a “fracture”, considering these recent European developments. Within American society itself, however, concerned voices, even in the conservative camp, are increasingly more skeptical about the current US policy regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war. As inflation rises, the 40 billion-dollar package to help Kiev, which is being discussed in Congress, is under a lot of criticism.

While Western officials are starting to change their tone and are apparently willing to start some dialogue with Moscow, the Ukrainian President in turn is maintaining his triumphalist uncompromising tone. Kiev, however, is largely dependent on the West, and in the long run would have no choice, but to play along.

The problem is that any “appeasement” endeavors will face a harsh internal reaction from the very extremist forces the West has been supporting.

One should recall Dmytro Yarosh’s 2019 threatening remarks about Zelensky “losing his life” and ending up “hanging on a tree on Khreshchatyk (in the Kiev’s center)” if he “betrayed” Ukrainian nationalists. Yarosh, a far-right activist, is nowadays an adviser to Valerii Zaluzhny, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

This also explains why countries such as Germany are increasingly reluctant to further arm Kiev – the risk of weapons ending up in the hands of unpredictable extremist groups is too high.

By now, it has become abundantly clear that today’s conflict in Ukraine is a proxy Western war against Russia.

The attitude of the United States and EU leaders regarding the crisis has been one of open confrontation without compromise – and of fueling tensions. However, as we can see, there are signs that this approach could be starting to decline.

In early May, referring to the former US President, American intellectual Noam Chomsky, stated, in an interview, that only one “Western statesman” is advocating “a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine, instead of looking for ways to encourage and prolong it”, namely “Donald Trump”. Chomsky’s remark seemed accurate back then, but this might be changing now.

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

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Thirteen years after a federal investigation blasted the U.S. Census Bureau for hiring criminals to enter American homes to gather statistics for the decennial count, a new audit reveals the disturbing practice continues. In fact, more than a decade after the problem was exposed workers for the 2020 count were not properly vetted and many with criminal records had direct interactions with the public. The most recent probe, conducted by the Department of Commerce Inspector General, found that “dozens of employees who worked on address canvassing in advance of the 2020 census had major issues flagged on their investigations, which typically means employees are automatically disqualified from their federal jobs.”

Chunks of the 28-page report are redacted but the gist is well conveyed, that the Census Bureau has long failed to screen its workforce and therefore endangers the public. It’s not like there isn’t a vetting system in place. When one of the 248 regional offices recruit a candidate, the Census Investigative Services (CIS) at the agency’s headquarters in Suitland, Maryland is charged with conducting a pre-employment suitability review. The process includes sending fingerprints to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a credit history as well as self-disclosed criminal record to CIS for review. Nevertheless, the Bureau still hires felons—including sex offenders—at regional offices nationwide. As an example, a few years ago the Charlotte, North Carolina Area Census Office (ACO) employed a man convicted of a felony involving sex with a child as a regional recruiting manager because despite his criminal record, he passed the Census Bureau’s background check.

The Bureau’s negligent security practices have been on the radar of federal lawmakers for years. Over a decade ago, Congressional investigators slammed the agency for failing to adequately conduct mandatory background checks for tens of thousands of workers, resulting in the hiring of hundreds of violent criminals. At the time, the probe found that more than 35,000 temporary census workers were employed without the proper criminal background check, which includes fingerprinting. That means that more than one-fifth of the canvassing workforce did not get properly processed or fully screened for employment eligibility, creating an obvious security risk. More than 200 of those were subsequently determined to have criminal records yet were in constant contact with the public while canvassing for the 2010 census. Investigators said the criminal record checks were bungled because the Census Bureau’s incompetent staff was poorly trained to conduct them.

Twelve years ago Judicial Watch reported that the Census Bureau knowingly hired a registered sex offender with a long criminal history to make home visits even though such convicts are banned from working for the agency. The embarrassing gaffe came to light when a young mother in a New Jersey suburb recognized the census worker who came to her home from the state’s registered sex offender database. She initially thought it was safe to provide the man with information because he was a legitimate government worker with a badge and bag sporting the U.S. Census Bureau’s official logo. Incredibly, the sex offender used a fake name to get the census job but failed a fingerprint check after getting hired. The agency still let him to complete four days of training and allowed him to visit homes even though he did not pass the background check.

The latest audit, released last week, shows that virtually nothing has changed after all these years and that the Bureau has done little to improve its derelict hiring practices. Investigators found that at least 6,802 census workers were not properly adjudicated, “resulting in persons with significant issues working for the Bureau and, in some instances, contacting households during the 2020 Census NRFU [Nonresponse Followup] operation.” In cases when CIS adjudicators actually vetted employees, the watchdog found that they often failed to request necessary documentation to assess the severity of the issues raised. Stressing that background checks are a critical process to help protect the nation’s interests by establishing trust in the federal workforce, the IG points out the obvious in its recent report: “The lack of oversight increases the risk of unknowingly allowing unsuitable individuals into positions of public trust, which could cause harm to the bureau.”

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The New York Times has a job to do – and it has done that job spectacularly well over the past few months.  The Times is a leader, in the opinion of this writer, the leader in spelling out the US narrative on the war in Ukraine, a tale designed to keep up morale, give the war a high moral purpose and justify the untold billions pouring from the taxpayers’ pockets into Joe Biden’s proxy war on Russia. Day in and day out in page after page of word and picture it has been instructing one and all, including politicians and lower level opinion shapers, exactly what to think about the war in Ukraine.

So, when the Times says that things are not going well for the US and its man in Kiev, Volodymyr Zelensky, it is a man bites dog kind of story.  It tells us that some truths have gone from uncomfortable to undeniable.  Such was nature of the page one story on May 11, headlined “Russians Hold Much of the East, Setbacks Aside.”

Screenshot from NYT

Even that anti-narrative headline softens the bitter truth.  The first paragraph of the story fesses up more completely, stating, “Obscured in the daily fighting is the geographic reality that Russia has made gains on the ground.” Not “holding” ground but “gaining” ground.  Not exactly a morale booster.

The Times goes on, “The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its forces in eastern Ukraine had advanced to the border between Donetsk and Luhansk, the two Russian-speaking provinces where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraine’s army for eight years.” Here it reminds us that the first shots in this war were not fired on February 24, as the narrative goes, but eight long years ago in the Donbas.  It is a jolting reminder for those who base their support for the war on “who fired the first shot,” that their “moral” view has a considerable blind spot.

The Times continues: “…. the Donbas seizure, combined with the Russian invasion’s early success in seizing parts of southern Ukraine adjoining the Crimean peninsula ….gives the Kremlin enormous leverage in any future negotiation to halt the conflict.”

It goes on: “And the Russians enjoy the added advantage of naval dominance in the Black Sea, the only maritime route for Ukrainian trade, which they have paralyzed with an embargo that could eventually starve Ukraine economically and is already contributing to a global grain shortage.”  More bad news.

More, “Russia has all but achieved one of its primary objectives: seizing a land bridge connecting Russian territory to the Crimean peninsula.”  And, “The last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in this area, at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, has been whittled to a few hundred hungry troops now confined mostly to bunkers.”  Ouch!

Finally, turning its attention to the economy, the Times states: “The war has “put Ukraine’s economy under enormous stress, with the heavy devastation of infrastructure and production capacities,” the bank said in an economic update. It estimated that 30 percent to 50 percent of Ukrainian businesses have shut down, 10 percent of the population has fled the country and a further 15 percent is displaced internally.”  That is a grand total of 25% of the population displaced from their homes.

This sad tale of failure, misery and death is broken up by considerable verbiage, some anecdotes from the front and the testimony of Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, whose testimony is guarded but bleak.  But read with thought, there is a big failure looming over the enterprise.

So, in a panic the US continues to throw mountains of cash at the problem, about $63 billion if one includes the recent infusion of about $40 million about to whistle through the Senate and already passed by the House with only 57 Nays, all Republican.  (And therein lies another story,  the demise of antiwar sentiment in the Democratic Party and its rebirth among the populist Tucker Carlson Republicanswho have joined with the GOP libertarians on this one.)

But why this abrupt shift in tone by the Times.  Lax editorial oversight?  this does not appear to be the case, because right on cue on the same day we are treated to an Opinion piece entitled: “America and Its Allies Want to Bleed Russia. They Really Shouldn’t.”  It suggests that it is time for the U.S. to wave the white flag

The piece concludes thus:

“But the longer the war, the worse the damage to Ukraine and the greater the risk of escalation. A decisive military result in eastern Ukraine may prove elusive. Yet the less dramatic outcome of a festering stalemate is hardly better. Indefinite protraction of the war, as in Syria, is too dangerous with nuclear-armed participants.

“Diplomatic efforts ought to be the centerpiece of a new Ukraine strategy. Instead, the war’s boundaries are being expanded and the war itself recast as a struggle between democracy and autocracy, in which the Donbas is the frontier of freedom. This is not just declamatory extravagance. It is reckless. The risks hardly need to be stated.”

It appears some in the Foreign Policy Elite and other precincts of the Deep State have seen the looming disaster for the proxy war on Russia being waged by Biden, Nuland, Blinken and the rest of the neocon cabal.  The prospect of nuclear holocaust lying at the end of this road may be enough to rouse them from their Exceptionalist torpor. They seem to want to stop the train that they have set in motion before it runs off the cliff.  It is not clear whether they will prevail.  But it is clear that we need to drive those responsible for this dangerous debacle out of power -before it is too late.

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In recent months there have been an abundance of reports on how the conflict in Ukraine is exacerbating food scarcity in Africa. The argument is that Ukraine, ordinarily a large exporter of wheat, is not shipping food to the rest of the world. This includes African nations, some of which are large importers of Ukrainian wheat, resulting in shortages of food, and higher prices, contributing to Africa’s food insecurity.

Food Crisis Staggering in Africa

According to Global Report on Food Crisis 2022, eight of the countries facing the most severe food shortages are in Africa, affecting over 81 million Africans. The breakdown is:

DRC 25.9 million people, Afghanistan 22.8 million, Nigeria 19.5 million, Yemen 19 million, Ethiopia between 14-15 million, South Sudan 7.7 million, Somalia 6 million, Sudan 6 million, Pakistan 4.7 million, Haiti 4.5 million, Niger 4.4 million and, lastly, Kenya 3.4 million, as reported by News24

These nations have been given an Integrated Phase Classification 3 (IPC3), which is defined as households that have either:

Food consumption gaps that are reflected by high or above-usual acute malnutrition; OR  Are marginally able to meet minimum food needs but only by depleting essential livelihood assets or through crisis-coping strategies.

News24 also reports that according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, in 2020,“approximately 323.3 million people in Africa or 29.5% of the population ran out of food or went without eating that year.”

The United Nations-(UN News) reports that “276 million people around the globe were already facing hunger at the beginning of the year. That number could rise by 47 million if the war continues according to the WFP (World Food Pogramme), with the steepest rise in Sub-Saharan Africa.” (emphasis added)

Industrialization to End Hunger

With abundant hect-acres of fertile soil and arable land, coupled with many water systems, African nations should have already achieved food self-sufficiency. Ironically, sadly, most nations are farther away from being able to feed their populations through their own production of food than they were during the 1960 and 1970s.

African nations are undermining their own economies by importing large amounts of food. According to President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina,

“Africa’s annual food import bill of $35 billion, estimated to rise to $110 billion by 2025, weakens African economies, decimates its agriculture and exports jobs from the continent.”

In reality, Africa’s huge import bill is hindering nations from developing the capacity to eliminate poverty and hunger. Nations using their precious foreign exchange to buy food that they can grow themselves is more than counter-productive. What is needed to end food insecurity is for Africa nations to build their own robust agricultural and manufacturing sectors. There are oligarchical financial interests, steeped in the colonial mind-set, who do not want Africa nations to develop, to become industrialized. There are others, even well-meaning, who believe that African nations should remain agrarian societies. As an expert in physical economics, I can assure you that this approach will fail, and will only lead to more poverty and death.

President George Washington’s brilliant Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, fortunately won the battle against Thomas Jefferson and the slaved based agrarian South, to create a manufacturing industry in the newly established United states. Africa must do the same.

With sixty percent of the world’s arable land that remains uncultivated, it is obvious that Africa can significantly increase food production in the short term. However, this does not obviate the need for rapid expansion of industry, beyond those businesses devoted only to the extraction of resources. Instead of spending tens of billions of dollars for imported wheat and rice that can be grown indigenously, that money should be investmented in infrastructure, and on valued-added production.

Aid is Insufficient

David Beasley, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday, May 11, that $5 billion is needed to avoid famine and migration due to COVID-19 and the loss of food from Ukraine. He told the Senators,

“If you do not respond now, we will see destabilization, mass starvation, and migration on an unprecedented scale, and at a far greater cost. A massive influx of refugees to Western countries could soon become a reality.”

Morally we are compelled to acquiesce to Beasley’s legitimate request, although it is doubtful that the nations of the advanced sector will actually come up with the money.

How many hundreds of billions of dollars have been expended on providing aid to countries in need? What would be the results if an equivalent amount of money were spent on development. Emergency aid is required to prevent our fellow human beings from perishing. However, emergency aid does not contribute to creating durable economic transformation that would eliminate the conditions that are the cause for food deprivation. Aid does not increase the productive powers of labor; it does not increase the productivity of the economy. While we can do no less than be the Good-Samaritan, what is the tangible long term effect of exclusively delivering aid?

Infrastructure Crucial

Deficits in critical categories of hard infrastructure, especially roads, railroads, and electricity, is depriving nations of precisely those elements of physical economy required to increase the production of real wealth. Why don’t the G7 and European donor nations “grant” an equivalent amount of “aid money” for investment in infrastructure and building nascent industries? Disbursing money either through outright endowments or long-term low interest loans for development has the potential to change the dynamics of poverty and hunger plaguing African nations.

For example, consider irrigation. Bringing water to farmland would substantially increase food production. Most African nations irrigate 5% or less of their land. Worse, many nations still depend on backward modes of subsistence farming. What would be required to double or triple irrigation? Primarily, energy to pump the water is essential, but African nations are energy starved. Pipes to transport the water. Advanced machinery would be required to harvest the increased yields. Roads and railroads would be needed to transport the crops to markets.

Given Africa’s untapped agricultural potential, with investments in these basic classifications of infrastructure; hunger could be eliminated.

In October 2020, in response to an earlier food crisis, I delineated the following necessary actions (below) that should have been taken. These measures are still valid today, and should be implemented now, without delay.

Emergency Action Required

1. We must urgently deliver food to starving people. One single human being dying from starvation is intolerable. Every creative soul that perishes is a loss to the human race.
2. Nations producing food surpluses must allocate food shipments to feed starving people.
3. Logistics for delivery will have to done in a military fashion or directly by qualified military personnel supported by governments.
4. Roads, railways, and bridges constructed for emergency food delivery can serve as an initial platform for expansion to a higher plateau of infrastructure required for economic growth.
5. Debts must be suspended to enable nations to direct money away from onerous payments of debt service to growing and distributing food.
6. A new financial architecture-a New Bretton Woods must be established with a facility to issue credit to finance critical categories of infrastructure necessary for economic growth and food production.

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Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 30 years. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com where this article was originally published. Mr. Freeman’s stated personal mission is; to eliminate poverty and hunger in Africa by applying the scientific economic principles of Alexander Hamilton.

Featured image: David Beasley, the head of the World Food Program, visiting Sanaa, Yemen, September 2018, where the world’s worst hunger crisis continues to unfold. (courtesy WFP/Marco Frattini, September 2018)

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Finland and Sweden are obviously being pushed into a suicide pact for US-NATO expansionist plan towards Russia’s borders. 

France24 reported on the not-so new development, “the Finnish government officially announced its intention to join NATO on Sunday, as Sweden’s ruling party was to hold a decisive meeting that could pave the way for a joint application.” Finland’s announcement ends a 75-year-old policy as a neutral country with no military alignments with NATO.  Sweden had a similar policy of its military being non-aligned for centuries is also following in Finland’s footsteps.

“Today, the President of the Republic and the Government’s Foreign Policy Committee have jointly agreed that Finland will apply for NATO membership, after consulting parliament,” Finnish President Sauli Niinisto who held a joint press conference with Prime Minister Sanna Marin last Sunday and declared “This is a historic day. A new era is opening”, Niinisto said.

The US-NATO alliance wants a hot war with Russia by pushing Finland and Sweden to join an aggressive military alliance known as NATO. 

The European military alliance has invaded and literally destroyed several nations in its history including Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq and to an extent, it has helped the US-Israel alliance destabilize Syria for some time, all with Washington’s blessing of course.

Finland is now following Washington’s long-term goal of trying to destabilize and turn Russia into a third world country by sacrificing itself as cannon fodder.  Seriously, what can Finland do to a superpower with over 6,000 nuclear warheads and a military that can take on NATO even without help from its closest allies in the region including Belarus, China and Iran.

But this makes all the sense in the world because Washington and its Military-Industrial Complex will benefit from a new conflict between Finland, Sweden and Russia.  The US and its NATO allies will push Finland to fight until the last remaining Finn against Russia just like they did with the Ukrainians.  The Kremlin Press Service released a statement on the situation according to the Associated Press (AP) that

“Putin told Sauli Niinisto Finland’s abandonment “of its traditional policy of military neutrality would be an error since there are no threats to Finland’s security” and that “Such a change in the country’s foreign policy could negatively affect Russian-Finnish relations, which had been built in the spirit of good neighborliness and partnership for many years, and were mutually beneficial.”

It is important to understand that Finland purchases most of its weapons from the US as well as Israel, Germany, Norway and Sweden which is basically a profitable business opportunity for Western arms manufacturers.

Last December, Finland ordered 64 new F-35s to replace their F/A-18 combat jets in a deal worth $9.4 billion that benefits Lockheed Martin, a major US arms manufacturer.  According to globalfirepower.com, a website dedicated in accessing the military power of all nations around the world ranks Finland’s military at 53 out of 142 with over 23,000 active personnel, 192 total aircraft, 200 tanks, 63 rocket projectors and a Naval force with 246 total assets including 8 patrol vessels won’t even make a dent against Russia’s military forces.  Russia ranks at number 2 with over 850,000 active personal and a wide range of advanced military hardware.  Not even NATO would be able to protect Finland from Russia’s military advances if a conflict were to take place.

However, one important fact about Finland that needs to be explained is that the Nordic country has blood on its hands for many years since it signed agreements to cooperate with NATO going back to 1994 including intelligence sharing and participating in military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.  For some time, Finland has been slowly integrating its military and intelligence capabilities with NATO while ignoring Russia’s red line following in the footsteps of the neo-Nazi government of Ukraine.

In September 2012, a security policy paper was published by Charly Salonius-Pasternak from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs titled ‘Not Just Another Arms Deal: The security policy implications of the United States selling advanced missiles to Finland’ on the security guarantees the US will provide to Finland after they purchased F/A-18 Hornet fighters and advanced missiles to counter Russia.

But it is not just an arms deal, it’s a security policy that ensures the US-NATO alliance will back Finland against a future conflict with Russia “however, it would be a mistake to view this merely as an arms deal. It is much more and has significant political and military implications. The deal is a notable security policy win for Finland.”  Clearly the goal is for NATO to expand its presence close to Russia’s borders “The deal does not change the strategic military balance in the region, but it does positively impact Finland’s military capabilities vis-à-vis Russia.”  Charly Salonius-Pasternak admits that the US is the “European bulwark”against Russian aggression:

For Russia, the acquisition of these advanced capabilities by Finland is a double-edged sword: it may delay Finland’s application to become a member of NATO, but at the cost of a drastically improved ability by Finland to withstand and respond to a broader range of military strikes and pressure.

The strengthening bilateral relationship with the United States has improved Finland’s defence. A desire to deepen that bilateral relationship suggests that Finland knows that even NATO membership by itself would not be sufficient for Finnish defence needs; rather, Finland needs a web of multilateral, multinational and bilateral relationships for its security. It also suggests that clear-eyed realism drives Finnish security policy thinking: that Finland knows that it is still the United States that serves as the European bulwark (and provider of guarantees) against potential external aggression; and, that NATO is a necessary but not sufficient component for broader European defence, mainly because most European states have ignored their own defence for too long

The US-NATO alliance just lost a war against the Taliban and now they want a war against nuclear-armed Russian forces.  It’s a tragic comedy in the making.

The stick has been passed along to the Finnish government to poke the Russian bear; but how far will the US-NATO alliance go in order to de-stabilize Russia?  The Finnish people are now at risk of being targeted by Russia because Washington’s reckless foreign policy does not care who will be sacrificed in order to fulfill an agenda of US-NATO global hegemony over Russia and the rest of the world.

It seems that members of the global elite (or the New World Order) don’t care that a world war can take place which can go nuclear since they have bunkers in faraway places like New Zealand to avoid a “global apocalypse” while countries like Finland and Sweden turn into cannon fodder for their global agenda.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCN

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How Can Tree Planting Alleviate Multidimensional Poverty?

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***

Our world today is facing many serious challenges. Apart from the current global pandemic, there are two issues that are most urgent to address: the environmental destruction of Planet Earth and the serious impoverishment and unbearable living conditions of many of its inhabitants, particularly in rural areas. To create a better and sustainable future for all, we need joint efforts and local solutions for these global threats.

Tree planting is one strategy that offers many benefits in this regard. Planting fruit and cash crop trees with rural communities can create income and employment opportunities while at the same time improving environmental conditions and contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The ecological benefits of trees have been well known for many years. Interest and research on their social impacts has also gradually increased in recent decades, as has attention to multidimensional poverty — the assumption that poverty cannot be measured in monetary terms alone. Yet, comprehensive studies specifically on the relationship of trees and multidimensional poverty are still lacking.

Nevertheless, it is clear that fruit tree-planting projects and the income they generate not only help alleviate monetary poverty, but directly impact many different areas of life. However, not all people benefit equally from such projects, and issues of land ownership as well as traditional gender roles largely determine the benefits that can be derived from them.

A Study of Trees’ Potential for Multidimensional Poverty Alleviation in Morocco

A recent study developed in cooperation with High Atlas Foundation (HAF) investigated the relationship of fruit trees and multidimensional poverty in Morocco. HAF is a U.S.- and Morocco-based NGO that focuses on sustainable development projects in areas such as agriculture, empowerment, youth development, and education. Since its inception, HAF has planted more than 4 million fruit trees in Morocco and today operates 14 nurseries in partnership with local communities.

Now, for the first time, the social effects of these tree-planting projects have been extensively researched through a 2020 household survey in two villages in Toubkal in the High Atlas Mountains. Both villages had very similar conditions in terms of location, environment as well as village size and structure, but had major differences in terms of their tree plantings. The number of reported trees — mainly walnut, cherry, and apple — was about five times higher in one of the villages (2,856 trees by 25 households as opposed to 579 by 23 households in the other village).

Investigating the potential of tree planting for poverty alleviation, the study addressed the interconnections between fruit tree agriculture and multiple aspects of poverty in general, as well as in the specific Moroccan context. Therefore the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which measures poverty in the dimensions of health, education and living-standards, was used as an instrument and adapted to the local situation.

Because of the underlying multidimensional approach to poverty, the research was able to shed light on various aspects of the phenomenon that go beyond traditional monetary measures. The concept of multidimensional poverty does not define poverty by measures of income or consumption alone. Rather, like in Amartya Sen’s capability approach, it can encompass various factors such as education, gender, health status, place of residence, or social security, that directly or indirectly affect people’s ability to lead self-determined lives free from poverty.

The study showed that the village with more trees had a significantly lower poverty level (a lower MPI and lower population share of people identified as multidimensionally poor). In addition, the people of this village not only experienced fewer multiple deprivations, but also fewer individual deprivations in most MPI indicators (except for improved sanitation and ownership of several assets). In particular, there were large differences in long-term child mortality, children’s school attendance, and households’ main cooking fuel. Specifically, fewer households reported the loss of a child in recent decades, more school-aged children were attending school, and more households used clean cooking fuels such as gas.

Many of these development advances are due to the growing wealth in the wake of tree-planting projects that began in the commune as early as the 1990s. Several community members highlighted the many positive changes having since taken place. For example, Mohamed Himmi, former president of the commune, described how rising prosperity has enabled greater mobility among the population and, in this context, increased opportunities for better employment and education, e.g., in urban centers.

But fruit trees are not only a source of household income. Their fruits also provide many health benefits and are an important addition to families’ diets, helping parents and children live healthier lives. These examples illustrate how trees contribute to families’ sustenance and income, and how they can be used to alleviate multiple aspects of poverty. Many more positive effects on people and the environment could be listed, only some of which the study conducted was able to observe.

Vulnerable Groups Falling through the Cracks

Although planting fruit trees has a positive impact on various aspects of human life, these benefits mainly apply to only some privileged groups while some of the most vulnerable groups of people may not benefit equally from increased wealth and social developments.

Especially in terms of gender equality, projects that focus only on planting fruit trees often don’t improve the prospects of women in a village, as their benefits are very limited due to male control over land and household income. This was evidenced by the fact that while the wealthier Toubkal village had higher male school enrollment and employment rates, the same could not be said of its women. In fact, although the other village, where fewer trees were planted, performed worse overall on most poverty indicators, women’s participation in education and employment was higher because of more individual and collective awareness and action in those areas.

It is true that female unemployment rates still are strikingly high in both villages ranging from 89 to 100 percent. However, some villagers are making efforts to provide better education for women and girls, and in one village some girls are now even attending secondary school, which is a major development in the area. Clearly, developing self-help structures and empowering women has a greater influence on improving their life situation than merely increasing wealth does.

Poor, landless farmers are another often-overlooked group when it comes to shared prosperity through tree planting as this requires at least a small piece of land or a home garden. Therefore, the extent to which one can benefit from trees depends largely on the size of the land available. Conversely, those who own more land and can plant more trees can naturally earn more profits.

The resulting problem is reinforced social stratification if tree planting projects are not well implemented and monitored, leaving behind those for whom poverty alleviation is actually most urgent. Providing land to the landless and planting on communal land would help to counteract these tendencies.

Moving Forward

Specially targeted interventions are therefore needed to reach the most vulnerable groups and to spread the benefits of tree planting to all community members. This study enabled HAF to rethink and inspire new projects. The High Atlas Foundation is now seeking financial partners to implement a women’s project to plant organic gardens and build a tree nursery on unused community land in one of the Toubkal villages. Also, an existing nursery is now completely female-managed. In addition, women are taking action to improve their living situation by engaging in empowerment workshops facilitated by HAF.

Exciting projects like these will further improve the positive impact of fruit trees on multidimensional poverty in the future. Let’s hope that more NGOs, researchers, and development practitioners will realize the great potential of such projects and help to plant trees to create a better future on our planet.

*

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Nora Martetschläger is a German social worker who researched on fruit trees and multidimensional poverty in Morocco for her Master’s Thesis in International Social Work. Currently she is working in a youth center in Germany.

Featured image is from the author

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

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***

As you may know, some organizations, including SouthFront are talking about UAF “successes” in the Karkhov region as the RF pulls back and re-positions to strengthen itself in the Izyum area.

SouthFront has generally taken the position that the Russians are fighting with one hand tied behind their collective back, and need to devote more resources to the Ukraine — and just get it over with.

Theirs is a more conventional military view than mine, although I admire their commitment to honest reporting, which they do very well.

Still, they tend to focus on Russian losses, since they think them unnecessary. SF has been accused of being pro-Russian and is banned in lots of places such as Facebook, but they report on military matters globally and they try to be objective as possible — in the end with much less bias than the Western media or Western intelligence services.

SF has a good video about Kharkov that illustrates this.

My interpretation of this video is that SouthFront sees successful UAF “counteroffensives” in the Kharkov region directed towards the Russian border, which the Banderites have also shelled. In other words, the so-called “war” is not over for the Ukraine.

War on? War off? There are lots of different points of view. It’s kinda like discussion about whether a TV series will be cancelled or not.

Gonzalo Lira says the Ukraine is finished and cites Lloyd Austin’s call to Shoigu asking for a ceasefire, a tactic that the West used in Syria to gain time to arm up jihadist forces, when they were losing. The jihadists still lost. And the Russians know better than to trust the Americans.

Scott Ritter seems to partially agree with Lira. But he still sees the West as keeping the conflict going. He is also a Marine. He sees this conflict as the kind of war he was taught to fight, the kind of war Americans fight — and not as Putin does—as a conflict, which is only partly military.

Ritter appears to think that Russia needs to just declare a hot war on the Ukraine, now effectively a rump state, and just steam roll Kiev and take Galicia. That would require another 100,000 men, leaving the RF with 80% reserves.

Given Putin’s very legalistic approach to conflict and his efforts to bolster the established framework of international law that the US continually flouts, not to mention his emphasis on a moral victory, Russia would need a real cassus belli for “war” according to the Ritter’s and the Western definition, which means “total war” — the shock & awe stuff for which the US is famous for.

Putin, by contrast, knows that WWIII started a long time ago, and is in essence economic since “total war” would mean the end of all mankind, defeat for everyone. He’s been planning for a long time.

As far as the conflict in Ukraine, I agree with both Gonzalo and Ritter. I do not think the main elements of their arguments are really opposed.

Despite the Ukraine having the third largest army in Europe at the start of the conflict, it lost air supremacy and mobility in the first week, which finished it as a fighting force as effectively as Japan’s loss of its carrier fleet in 1944.

The Japanese, of course, kept on fighting and the Americans suffered losses, but their goals and the results were never in doubt. Now, it is the Ukrainians fighting a lost war and the Russians taking some but not devastating losses. Again, goals and results are not in doubt.

Despite what SF implies, there are no “successful” UAF counteroffensives — if you understand “offensive” to imply a strategic operation, as opposed to local tactical operations such as taking a village here or there, or a bridge — attacks using a tiny fraction of available forces.

A good example is that recent Russian push across the Seversky Donetsk River, which the Russians tried first with a small force, which was opposed by an unexpectedly and much larger Ukrainian force. Let us keep in mind that river crossings are risky — giving an advantage to defenders and attackers normally need an advantage in numbers. Outnumbered they may still prevail but they will take some losses.

The UK Ministry of defense published “intelligence” claiming the Russians failed to cross the river and suffered heavy losses. The UK seems to be relying on UAF reports including photographic evidence, half of which show destroyed or abandoned vehicles, labelled “Russian” but which are actually Ukrainian. They are Russian-designed but no longer used by the RF — only by the Ukrainians. The giveaway is the small turret.

OK. UK intelligence is a LOT less reliable than SouthFront which tries to report facts, rather than spread propaganda.

What we do know from river crossing incident is that Russian troops were initially outnumbered by at least 2:1, perhaps 3:1. But crossed anyway.

While the RF probably needed to secure the river crossing for future operations, they have otherwise redeployed in the Kharkov Oblast, giving up positions in villages where there is no strategic advantage, the UAF attacks, knowing there is minimal resistance. This strategy allows more effective use of RF forces, while sparing civilian lives.

Still, despite reclaiming villages, the UAF is losing. Although claiming to be winning, as the Japanese did until the Emperor surrendered.

Unfortunately, that means ever more attempts at false flags. For example, the SBU blew up a fertilizer storage facility near the village of Dolgenkoye in the Kharkiv region, hoping to poison the local population and blame the Russian army.

Didn’t work!

There were warnings about the possibility of this kind of atrocity published earlier, which undermines its propaganda value if it happens — so the attack merely confirmed Russian intelligence and Ukrainian duplicity.

Proof of Ukrainian atrocities, which have been available for a long time, is suddenly appearing in the Western press imparts credibility to the Russian version of events.

Russian progress is slow but it establishes realities on the ground that are hard to deny.

The Russians are actually seen as the “Good Guys”, handing out humanitarian aid, treating POWs with respect and overall pretty honest.

The Banderites are monsters. killing and raping, and getting caught in lies and huge exaggerations.

Whatever the facts, the Public is tired of the old story and wants something new, even if that means role reversal where the Good Guys turn out to be the Bad Guys.

The UAF was initially a very capable foe. And it is still armed and dangerous — perhaps more so — if you have lost — you have nothing to lose. The worst atrocities often come from desperation.

SouthFront sees the UAF as heading towards the Russian border in Kharkov, and shelling Russian villages.

But, as the Banderites roll East, their supply lines extend and become increasingly exposed, along with the possibility of encirclement and destruction should the Russians decide to attack with a few BTGS from the East, and simultaneously from Izyum once that area is secure. Are the Russians setting up another “cauldron”?

In addition, the strikes on civilian targets in Russia, is a casus belli. The Russians have already threatened precision missile strikes against “decision-making centers” which presumably means government offices in Kiev.

Of course, Zelensky says he has not attacked Russian villages.

The Russians just need a wee bit more provocation, more ammunition from the Banderite crazies, as it were. They are cautious. For them, it’s strategy — goals, roles, and poles — the poles indicating course and boundaries.

However, the Ukrainians, like the Japanese at the end of WWII, have no viable strategy — they are just tactically reactive.

They do not think ahead — maybe because they have had no “ahead” — no future —not since the few weeks of the “operation” . But since they cannot see the road ahead, there are no boundaries.

The Russians, by contrast, have strategy and they can take their time, aware that their economic counteroffensive against the Empire is paying off. Russia is doing fine??; the West is heading for recession.

Biden started a war to cover up the cumulative effects of failed neoliberal economic policies, while doubling down on those policies. but polls indicate that Americans are slowly but surely tired of banging the drums for a war that sucks money out of the national budget. Oh sure, they all wave the flag, but their arms are getting tired — and they want beer and pizza — -only they can’t afford it.

Even the NYT is coming around, with an op-ed admitting — more or less — that Russia holds all the cards — and it is time to negotiate. They say the fear nuclear war. But what they fear is economic collapse: Putin’s decision to insist on payment in rubles for all exports is an economic atomic bomb. The US faces a huge recession — which will ultimately affect semi-autarkic economies like Russia and China much less.

As Bill Clinton’s former campaign once put it, “It’s the economy, stupid”. He should have said, “It’s always the economy, stupid”.

Since people see Empty now when they open their wallets or turn on the engine of their cars, the Democrats could very well lose Congress in the Fall, especially if the Supreme Court delays sending abortion rights back to the States, or the Republicans are equivocal on the issue.

After that, the aging, witless Lameduck, the US calls President, will be a sitting duck for just about anyone, even the Donald.

***

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Julian Macfarlane is a Canadian media analyst / writer. 40 years in Japan. Worked for every major Japanese company including Toyota as media advisor in the Middle East and also most government ministries including the Foreign Ministry and Prime Minister’s Office.  More than 200 articles on political events and propaganda. Other of “Ageing Young: You’re Never Too Old To Rock ‘n Roll”, a seminal study of evolutionary psychology.  https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/ 

Featured image: Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on May 6, 2021. [State Department photo by Ron Przysucha]

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

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***

There have been several particularly disturbing stories in the media over the past week even if one chooses to tune out the US Congress’s pending astonishing overwhelming approval of a grant of $39.8 billion to Ukraine to continue the war to “weaken” Russia. Even so-called progressives in the Democratic Party voted for the war. So now the United States will be at war with Russia through proxy, like it or not, and the consequences could be devastating, particularly if NATO member Poland intervenes directly, as it has been threatening, but few in Washington seem to be awake to that reality. And only Senator Rand Paul, who is asking for an inspector general to supervise the cash flow, is seriously wondering how much of the “aid” will be stolen by President Volodymyr Zelensky and his cronies. Ukraine has long been distinguished as the most corrupt country in Europe.

Another revolting story concerns the murder of a Palestinian Christian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who also happens to be an American citizen. She was shot dead by an Israeli sniper who hit her in the neck in the small gap between a protective helmet and vest. She was covering Israeli Army violence directed against protesting Palestinians in the West Bank town of Jenin for al-Jazeera and the vest was labelled “Press” in large letters.

Israel initially sought to blame her death on Palestinian “gunmen” who allegedly were in the area, but that story would not wash when confronted with the eyewitness testimony of others who were on the scene and it was eventually conceded that an Israeli soldier “might have” fired the fatal shot. Last Friday, preceding Shireen’s funeral at the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin in occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli police providing “security” were seen kicking and using batons to beat mourners seeking to carry the coffin from the hospital to the church. The police also hurled stun and smoke grenades into the crowd after several plastic water bottles were allegedly thrown in their direction. Abu Akleh’s home was also searched by police and it will no doubt be claimed that she was a “terrorist,” standard Israeli practice for many of those whom they murder.

Whenever an American citizen is killed under questionable circumstances overseas it is the responsibility of the local US Embassy to demand an investigation and explanation of what occurred. To be sure, the ardently Zionist US Ambassador Thomas Nides in Jerusalem has called for an inquiry, but let’s see what happens in this case as the mainstream media conspires to make the story disappear even though a number of Democratic congressmen (and no Republicans) have called for a response. Former Israeli army spokesman Avi Benayahu has already opined that “Let’s assume Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by IDF. No need to apologize for that.” Nevertheless, some form of inquiry acceptable to Israel will no doubt take place, but the Israeli government and the country’s courts have a history of exonerating soldiers and armed settlers when they kill Palestinians. Recently, a Palestinian was sentenced to nine months in prison for slapping an armed settler who was threatening his family while Israeli soldiers and settlers who have killed non-threatening Palestinians, including children, rarely receive any punishment at all.

And being an American citizen makes no difference. History tells us that Israel can kill Americans with impunity judging from the massacre of 34 American sailors on board the USS Liberty in 1967 and the Rachel Corrie murder-by-bulldozer in 2003. A Turkish-American boy Furkan Dogan who was on an aid ship to Gaza in 2010 was also murdered by Israeli soldiers who boarded the vessel, also killing eight others. No Israeli has been punished for any of the deaths.

This has to stop but the problem is in Washington, not in Jerusalem. Israel kills and kills because it knows it can get away with it due to American enabling of the process. It is an embarrassment that a series of US Ambassadors to Israel have been little more than apologists for the Jewish state. And we have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declaring “I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.” Meanwhile President Joe Biden has self-declared as a “Zionist” while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calls himself in Hebrew the “shomer yisroel” or defender of Israel in the Senate. And then there is House Intelligence Committee head Adam Schiff’s son sporting a Mossad t-shirt. And what about the regular mass “pilgrimages” by groups of Congressmen to Israel during recesses, an exercise in obtaining the approval of whichever unindicted felon is in charge of that rogue country that pretends to pass for a “democracy”?

As much as one would like to see all the traitors in Congress and the White House who give Israel a free pass on its monstrous behavior held accountable, such an outcome is unimaginable because enough of them have been bought or intimidated to such an extent that they remain silent or chant like a chorus in a Greek tragedy that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” And there is also the Jewish dominated mainstream media: the NY Times report on this latest murder had a headline reading that Shireen Abu Akleh had somehow “Died,” not that she was murdered by the Israelis, to whom the American taxpayer gives $10 million every single day! It is shameful and disgusting!

A related tale also concerns Israel and the United States. David Brog is running for Congress from Nevada. Brog is the former executive director of Pastor John Hagee’s Texas-based Christians United For Israel even though he is Jewish. Indeed, he has made Israel the focal point of his campaign based on his contention that “he brings a lifetime of dedication and a depth of knowledge to lead on pro-Israel causes.” He has said

“I don’t just want to be a friend of Israel. I want to be a leader on Israel and a champion of Israel… We have to be very quick to reach out and broaden our coalition to all people of goodwill who love Israel and hate antisemitism.”

Brog, who is not from Nevada, has not surprisingly raised considerably more money than other GOP candidates vying for the position and he has also received the backing of former Trump administration Jewish officials, including David Friedman, the ex-US Ambassador to Israel, and Elan Carr, the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. Friedman and Carr co-hosted a virtual fundraiser for Brog two weeks ago.

Brog is a one trick pony and his trick is to keep saying Israel over and over again to bring in the Shekels from the likes of Israel born Miriam Adelson, who inherited her husband’s casino fortune and lives in Las Vegas. It is disconcerting to see a politician running for national office in the United States so he can advance the interests of a foreign country, yet that is what Brog is doing openly. One would hope a lot of Nevada voters will see the issue in the same fashion, but Brog will have big bucks and the pro-Israel media supporting him. In any event, I have to wish the “malocchio” or evil eye on Brog and I hope he loses in his run and loses big. The United States does not need yet another ardent Israel booster in Congress or anywhere else in the public space!

Another tale that is developing surrounds the publication of the latest tell-all book by a survivor of the Donald Trump administration. Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who was fired by Trump after the 2020 election, has described a series of catastrophic proposals by the president relating to national security and defense, including using missiles fired from the US to take on Mexican drug cartels. Another idea floated by Trump, if Esper is not lying, was to use soldiers to shoot protesters in Washington in the wake of the George Floyd death in Minneapolis in May 2020. Other former senior Trump officials have also been claiming that Trump often asked whether China had developed a top-secret hurricane gun that could be firing storms at the United States. And John Bolton, in his book, asserts that Trump asked if Finland were part of Russia.

But to my mind the most interesting revelation made by Esper is the back story, also set in the Middle East, relating to the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, which illustrates much that is wrong with the national security state that the United States has evolved into. According to Esper, Trump lied after the assassination was criticized by saying that Soleimani was actively preparing attacks on four American Embassies in the Mideast region. Esper confirms that there was no intelligence to back up that claim, but interestingly goes beyond that to make clear that there was no specific intelligence at all suggesting that such an attack was imminent or even being planned. There were only generic regional security threats that many embassies in the world respond to and make preparations to defend against.

One recalls the back story at the time, with the Iraqi government claiming that Soleimani, widely regarded as the second most powerful official in Iran after the Ayatollah, was in Baghdad to discuss peace arrangements and that the US Embassy had been informed of his planned trip and had raised no objection to it. Instead, the US used the opportunity to launch an armed drone to kill him and nine Iraqi militia members that were accompanying him from the airport. In other words, there was no imminent threat, nor even a plausible threat, and the US went ahead any way and killed a senior Iranian government official. That is unambiguously a war crime. Will anyone be held accountable? Of course not!

But finally there is also a bit of good news. The White House press secretary who is replacing Jen Psaki is Karine Jean-Pierre. She is a woman, black and lesbian, so clearly she passes the Democratic Party template for such a position but she lacks the mandatory Israel connection. It turns out that she once criticized the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and even called for it to be boycotted. She is already being attacked by the usual groups and individuals, so let’s see how long she lasts!

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

After recent changes on the front lines in eastern Ukraine, fighting continues in the same areas. Russian forces adhere to the tactics of pounding enemy positions with artillery and aircraft before advancing deep into the Ukrainian defense. The AFU are attempting to counterattack, quite successfully in some sectors of the front.

Amid battles on the front lines, Ukrainian troops continue senseless shelling of civilians in the People’s republics as well as in Russia.

On May 11, the AFU launched an artillery strike on the Russian village of Solokhi in the Belgorod region. As a result of the attack, 1 civilian was killed and seven others were injured. In response, Russian troops launched several strikes on the positions of Ukrainian forces in the Chernihiv region.

Explosions were also heard in the village of Dubovoye in the Belgorod region. There were reports of shooting at the border near the village of Shebekino.

As a result of another shelling of the city of Donetsk by the Ukrainian MLRS, at least one civilian was killed. The villages of Yasinovataya and Gorlovka were also shelled by Ukrainian forces.

Meanwhile, the AFU is approaching the Russian border in the Kharkiv region.

According to unconfirmed reports, the AFU reached the state border of the Russian Federation in the area of the village of Ternovka. Ukrainian forces are pushing Russian troops out of the village of Cossack Lopan. Fighting also continues north of Old Saltov.

In the area of Izyum, Russian troops recently managed to take control of the villages of Velikaya Kamyshevakha, after which their advance stopped. On the other hand, the AFU’s attempts to counterattack Russian positions have not yet been crowned with any success.

The AFU attempted to stage the use of chemical weapons by Russian units to the south of Izyum.

Ukrainian forces blew up a tank with ammonium nitrate. According to the statement of the Russian Defense Ministry, Ukrainian nationalists under the leadership of the Security Service of Ukraine blew up a fertilizer storage facility near the village of Dolgenkoye in the Kharkiv region. They aimed to poison the local population and blame the Russian army for this.

To the east, the city of Liman, where fierce fighting continues, is still firmly in the hands of the AFU. At the same time, a slight advance of Russian forces was reported south of the city near the village of Yampol. The AFU were forced to retreat due to heavy losses.

In the area of Severodonetsk-Lisichansk, fierce fighting continues. The LPR troops with support of Russian forces took control over the settlements of Voevodovka and Yuzhny. Chechen fighters also reported on the liberation of the Zarya powder factory.

The offensive of the LPR on the village of Belogorovka has not yielded successful results at the moment. The AFU reportedly destroyed the Russian pontoon bridge. In the direction of Lisichansk, there are battles along the Orekhov — Toshkovka line.

In the area south of Kremennaya, forcing of the Seversky Donets by Russian troops and the breakthrough towards the grouping operating from Popasnaya have not yet succeeded.

Russian troops are slowly breaking through the defense of the AFU to the north of Popasnaya. Part of the Ukrainian forces retreated in the direction of Loskutovka. The AFU are strengthening their positions near Gorsky, waiting for the breakthrough of defensive lines near Orekhovo.

According to local sources, the AFU blew up a dam near Avdiivka in order to slow down the advance of the DPR army and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

Over the past few weeks, there have been no successes claimed by any of the parties on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk near the village of Maryinka. Russian official sources claim that part of the village is still in the hands of the DPR Armed Forces and fighting continues on the outskirts. According to unofficial reports, the village fell again under the partial control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the DPR command is urgently pulling together forces to recapture previously taken positions.

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***

In November 2021, Brook Jackson, a whistleblower who worked on Pfizer’s Phase 3 COVID jab trial in the fall of 2020, warned she’d seen evidence of fraud in the trial.

With the release of Pfizer trial data — which they tried to withhold for 75 years — additional problems suggestive of fraud and data manipulation are coming to light.

Trial site 1231, located in Argentina, somehow managed to recruit 10% of the total trial participants, 4,501 in all, and they did so in just three weeks, and without a contract research organization — a feat that has many questioning whether fraud was committed.

The lead investigator for trial site 1231 is Dr. Fernando Polack, who also happens to be a consultant for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (RBPAC), a current adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, an investigator for Fundación Infant, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, and the first author of Pfizer’s paper, “Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine,” published at the end of December 2021.

Site 1231 held a second enrollment session, given the designation of “site 4444.” The 4444 trial site data raise another red flag. It supposedly enrolled 1,275 patients in a single week, from September 22 through 27, 2020 — the last week that recruitment could take place to meet the data cutoff for the FDA meeting in December 2020. Was “site 4444” fabricating data to create the appearance that the jab was having an effect?

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In November 2021, Brook Jackson, a whistleblower who worked on Pfizer’s Phase 3 COVID jab trial in the fall of 2020, warned she’d seen evidence of fraud in the trial.

Data were falsified, patients were unblinded, the company hired poorly trained people to administer the injections, and follow-up on reported side effects lagged way behind. The revelation was published in The British Medical Journal. In his November 2, 2021, report, investigative journalist Paul Thacker wrote:¹

“Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal COVID-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight …

[F]or researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety … Staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding.”

Jackson, a former regional director of Ventavia Research Group, a research organization charged with testing Pfizer’s COVID jab at several sites in Texas, repeatedly “informed her superiors of poor laboratory management, patient safety concerns and data integrity issues,” Thacker wrote.

When her concerns were ignored, she finally called the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and filed a complaint via email. Jackson was fired later that day after just two weeks on the job. According to her separation letter, management decided she was “not a good fit” for the company after all.

She provided The BMJ with “dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings and emails” proving her concerns were valid, and according to Jackson, this was the first time she’d ever been fired in her 20-year career as a clinical research coordinator.

BMJ Report Censored

Disturbingly, social media actually censored this BMJ article and published pure falsehoods in an effort to “debunk” it. Mind you, the BMJ is one of the oldest and most respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world! The Facebook “fact check” was done by Lead Stories, a Facebook contractor, which claimed the BMJ “did NOT reveal disqualifying and ignored reports of flaws in Pfizer’s” trials.²

In response, The BMJ slammed the fact check, calling it “inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.”^3,4,5 In an open letter⁶ addressed to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, The BMJ urged Zuckerberg to “act swiftly” to correct the erroneous fact check, review the processes that allowed it to occur in the first place, and “generally to reconsider your investment in and approach to fact checking overall.” As noted by The BMJ in its letter, the Lead Stories’ fact check:⁷

• Inaccurately referred to The BMJ as a “news blog”
• Failed to specify any assertions of fact that The BMJ article got wrong
• Published the fact check on the Lead Stories’ website under a URL that contains the phrase “hoax-alert”

Pfizer Trial Data Raises Suspicions of Fraud

Now, with the release of Pfizer trial data⁸ — which they tried to withhold for 75 years — internet sleuths are finding additional problems suggestive of fraud and data manipulation. May 9, 2022, a Twitter user named Jikkyleaks posted a series of tweets questioning data from Pfizer trial sites 1231 and 4444.⁹

Trial site 1231, located in Argentina, somehow managed to recruit 10% of the total trial participants, 4,501 in all, and they did so in just three weeks, and without a contract research organization (CRO). CROs like the Ventavia Research Group, which Jackson worked for, provide clinical trial management services. The lead investigator for trial site 1231 is Dr. Fernando Polack,¹⁰ who also happens to be:¹¹

• A consultant for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (RBPAC) since 2017
• A current adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee
• An investigator for Fundación Infant,¹² which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation¹³
• The first author of Pfizer’s paper,¹⁴ “Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine,” published at the end of December 2021

As noted by Jikkyleaks, Polack “is literally the busiest doctor on the planet,” because in addition to all those roles, he also managed to single-handedly enroll 4,500 patients in three weeks, which entails filling out some 250 pages of case report forms (CRFs) for each patient. That’s about 1,125,000 pages total. (CRFs are documents used in clinical research to record standardized data from each patient, including adverse events.)

This recruitment also took place seven days a week, which is another red flag. “Weekend recruitment for a clinical trial would be odd. Staff are needed to fill out that many record forms (CRFs) and there are potential risks to the trial, so you need medical staff. It would be highly unusual,” Jikkyleaks notes.

Is Polack just a super-humanly efficient trial investigator, or could this be evidence of fraud? As noted by Steve Kirsch in the featured video and an accompanying Substack article,¹⁵ Polack is the coordinator for a network of 26 hospitals in Argentina, so perhaps it’s possible he could have recruited 57 patients per week per hospital, but it seems highly unlikely.

Questions Surround Site 4444 Data

Now, “site 4444” does not exist. It’s actually the same as site 1231. It appears site 1231 held a second enrollment session, and these were for some reason given the designation of 4444. The 4444 trial site data raise another red flag.

Site 4444 (the second enrollment session for site 1231) supposedly enrolled 1,275 patients in a single week, from September 22 through 27, 2020, and the suspicious thing about that — aside from the speed — is the fact that this was the last week that recruitment could take place to meet the data cutoff for the FDA meeting in December 2020. Jikkyleads writes:¹⁶

“My guess: they needed enough numbers of ‘positive PCR tests’ in the placebo group to show a difference between groups for that VRBPAC meeting on the 10th Dec, and they didn’t have them. So, site 4444 appeared and gave them their ‘perfect’ result. Bravo.”

Kirsch notes:¹⁷

“Was there fraud in the Pfizer trial? Without a doubt. The story of Maddie de Garay is a clear case of that. Brook Jackson has evidence of fraud; she has 17 lawyers working for her. If there wasn’t fraud, these lawyers wouldn’t be wasting their time.

This new data on Site 1231/4444 looks suspicious to me. It looks too good to be true. But we can’t make the call without more information. Undoubtedly, the mainstream media will not look into this, Pfizer will remain silent, and Polack will be unreachable for comment. The lack of transparency should be troubling to everyone. That is the one thing we can say for sure.”

Pfizer Documents Reveal COVID Jab Dangers

Among the tens of thousands of Pfizer documents released by the FDA so far, we now also have clear evidence of harm. For nurse educator John Campbell, featured in the video above, these documents appear to have served as a “red pill,”¹⁸ waking him up to the possibility that the jabs may indeed be far more dangerous than anyone expected, including himself.

In the video, Campbell reviews the documents listed as “5.3.6. Postmarketing Experience,” which were originally marked “confidential.” They reveal that, cumulatively, through February 28, 2021, Pfizer received 42,086 adverse event reports, including 1,223 deaths.

To have 1,223 fatalities and 42,086 reports of injury in the first three months is a significant safety signal, especially when you consider that the 1976 swine flu vaccine was pulled after only 25 deaths.

As noted by Campbell, “It would have been good to know about this at the time, wouldn’t it?” referring to the rollout of the jabs. Campbell has been fairly consistent in his support of the “safe and effective” vaccine narrative, but “This has just destroyed trust in authority,” he said.

158,000 Recorded Side Effects — A World Record?

The first really large tranche of more than 10,000 Pfizer documents was released March 1, 2022. (You can find them all on PHMPT.org.¹⁹) In this batch were no less than nine single-space pages of “adverse events of special interest,” listed in alphabetical order²⁰ — 158,000 in all!

To see the first page, click the link below. The first side effect on this shockingly exhaustive list is a rare condition known as 1p36 deletion syndrome. This condition, caused by the deletion of DNA in chromosome 1p36, results in developmental delays, severe intellectual disability, seizures, vision problems, hearing loss, breathing problems, brain anomalies, congenital heart defects, cardiomyopathy, renal anomalies, genital malformation, metabolic problems and more.^21,22

Life expectancy depends on the amount of DNA that has been deleted. This, at bare minimum, sounds like something a pregnant woman might want to know before she gets the shot.

CRF Anomalies Raise Questions of Fraud

After reviewing some of the released CRFs in the March 1 tranche, investigative journalist Sonia Elijah also discovered several problems, including the following:²³

In closing, Elijah wrote:²⁴

“All the evidence gleaned over a limited time appears to back up whistleblower Jackson’s claims of poor trial site data management and raises questions as to how Ventavia conducted the Pfizer clinical trials.

The errors and anomalies in the CRFs also allude to her claims that the clinical research associates were not trained adequately, with many having had no prior clinical experience history. If such egregious findings are true at these sites, could they manifest at other trial sites around North America and beyond?”

Can You Trust Pfizer?

Pfizer, which was quickly given emergency use authorization (EUA) for its COVID-19 mRNA gene therapy shot, has a long list of criminal verdicts against it:

As noted in the journal Healthcare Policy in 2010,³¹ “Pfizer has been a ‘habitual offender,’ persistently engaging in illegal and corrupt marketing practices, bribing physicians and suppressing adverse trial results.” The article also highlights the crimes of Johnson & Johnson, another COVID jab maker.

Despite its tarnished history, we’re now expected to trust that everything Pfizer does is above-board. I don’t think so. A company that continues getting caught committing the same crimes over and over again clearly has a deeply established ethical rot within its corporate structure that fines simply have no effect over.

Has Pfizer committed fraud in its COVID jab trials as well? It sure looks that way. Time will tell whether attorneys will have enough for a conviction in the future. If fraud did take place, Pfizer can (and likely will) be held liable for the more than one million injuries its injection has caused in the U.S. alone, and we all look forward to that reckoning.

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Notes

¹ The BMJ 2021; 375:n2635

^2, 3 Reclaim the Net December 17, 2021

⁴ Medscape December 20, 2021

⁵ ZeroHedge December 20, 2021

^6, 7 The BMJ 2021;375:n2635

⁸ Icandecide.org Released Pfizer Data

^9, 11, 16 Twitter Jikkyleaks May 9, 2022

¹⁰ DavidHealy.org March 24, 2022

¹² Infant.org.ar

¹³ Gates Foundation Fundacion Infant

¹⁴ NEJM 2020; 383: 2603-2615

^15, 17 Steve Kirsch Substack May 9, 2022

¹⁸ Steve Kirsch Substack March 11, 2022

¹⁹ PHMPT.org Pfizer Documents

²⁰ Peckford42 WordPress March 3, 2022

²¹ Applied Clinical Genetics 2015; 8: 189-200

²² Medicinenet.com 1p36 Deletion Syndrome

^23, 24 Trial Site News March 7, 2022

^{25, 26, 27, 29, 31} Healthcare Policy May 2010; 5(4): 16-25

²⁸ U.S. Department of Justice September 2, 2009

³⁰ U.S. Department of Justice May 24, 2018

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***

Even by Washington standards, the Biden Administration’s recent request for $33 billion for military aid to Ukraine was shocking. Surely a coalition of antiwar progressives and budget-hawk Republicans would oppose the dangerous and expensive involvement of the US in the Russia/Ukraine conflict? No! Not only did Congress not object: they added nearly seven billion MORE dollars to the package!

In the end, not a single House Democrat voted against further US involvement in the war, and just 57 Republicans said “no” to funding yet another undeclared war.

On the Senate side, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) both demanded immediate passage of the huge giveaway to Ukraine. That’s Washington’s bipartisanship for you.

Then the junior Senator from Kentucky came to the Senate Floor and did the unthinkable in Washington: he delayed the vote.

“My oath of office is to the national security of the United States of America,” Sen. Rand Paul said. “We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy.” He went on to point out that the US has spent nearly as much on Ukraine’s military as the entire military budget of Russia and that the US government has sent more military money to Ukraine than it spent in the entire first year of the US war in Afghanistan.

Sen. Paul put the package into perspective: this massive giveaway to Ukraine equals nearly the entire yearly budget of the US State Department and is larger than the budget of the Department of Homeland Security!

Schumer was furious with Paul, accusing him of “preventing swift passage of Ukraine aid because he wants to add at the last minute his own changes directly into the bill.”

What was he trying to add to the bill? In his own words, “All I requested is an amendment to be included in the final bill that allows for the Inspector General to oversee how funds are spent.”

He wanted at least a bit of oversight on the nearly $50 billion in total that Washington has sent to what Transparency International deems one of the most corrupt countries on earth. Is that really too much to ask?

For Washington, the answer is “yes.” The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) was an endless thorn in Washington’s side, because he actually did his job and reported on the billions of dollars that were stolen in Afghanistan.

In its final report on the 20 year Afghanistan war, SIGAR reviewed approximately $63 billion of the total $134 billion appropriated to Afghanistan and found that nearly $19 billion of the amount was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse. Nearly one third of the funds they reviewed were outright wasted or stolen by corrupt Afghan officials. Does anyone think it would be any different in Ukraine?

Maybe that’s why they were so furious that Sen. Paul proposed that we perhaps keep track of this $40 billion to make sure it’s not wasted: Washington doesn’t want to know. And, more importantly, Washington doesn’t want us to know.

The temporary pause is important. It gives Americans a little time to let their Senators know that they do not support this ridiculous and wasteful giveaway to Ukraine. Inflation is ripping through the country. Gas prices are through the roof. Our infrastructure is crumbling. The dollar is teetering. And we’re giving money away?

The vote appears set for Wednesday. Time to let your Senators know what you think about it!

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***

The U.S. news media’s treatment of the Ukraine issue has long been characterized by flagrant favoritism. Reports from organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Transparency International, and Freedom House showing that Ukraine’s actual conduct differed markedly from its carefully crafted image as a dedicated young democracy received little coverage in the mainstream press. That willingness to conceal Ukraine’s corruption and authoritarianism has grown even worse since the outbreak of war with Russia. Media coverage moved quickly from ignoring or minimizing inconvenient information about Kyiv’s political and economic system to channeling outright Ukrainian propaganda.

For example, multiple unfiltered stories from Ukrayinska Pravda and other Ukrainian news outlets have become a nearly daily feature on Yahoo’s news feed. Official statements and press releases from Ukraine’s government also appear on Yahoo and other outlets, frequently without an acknowledgment that the accuracy of those accounts could not be confirmed. Contents in the Washington Post and the New York Times, which set the agenda and tone throughout much of the US news media on any issue, similarly have conveyed a solidly pro-Ukraine perspective. Moreover, there are very few competing accounts in those outlets from Russian news sources or even from American analyses that challenge the dominant narrative.

The willingness of the US press to foster a favorable image of Ukraine knows few bounds. During the early weeks of the war, American news outlets even circulated the story about the “Ghost of Kyiv” – the fighter pilot who supposedly became an ace in a matter of days by shooting down numerous Russian warplanes. That account had all the earmarks of transparent propaganda, and the Ukrainian military ultimately conceded that the story was fictional. In the meantime, however, it had served its purpose well as propaganda for credulous Western audiences, and the US press aided that effort. Indeed, the coverage of Kyiv’s retraction of the story was noticeably limited.

An especially egregious performance has occurred with respect to the role of the Azov battalion (now the Azov regiment) in Ukraine’s defense effort. The Azov battalion was notorious for years before the Russian invasion as a bastion of extreme nationalists and outright Nazis. That aspect proved to be more than just a source of embarrassment for Ukraine’s supporters when the unit became a crucial player in the battle for the city of Mariupol. The Western (especially US) press sought to portray Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian siege as a heroic effort similar to battle of Stalingrad in World War II.

The prominence of the Azov regiment among the defenders certainly should have complicated that media portrayal. Yet most accounts simply focused on the suffering of Mariupol’s population, the heartless villainy of the Russian aggressors, and the tenacity of the city’s brave defenders. Such accounts typically ignored the presence of Azov fighters among the defenders or failed to disclose their ideological pedigree. A Washington Post story, for example, merely described the Azov regiment as “a nationalist outfit.” Other news accounts referred to the Azov forces in a similar vague manner, occasionally with a perfunctory acknowledgment that the regiment was controversial.

One article, though, engaged in a more extensive whitewash. A May 11, 2022, Wall Street Journal column by Jillian Kay Melchior featured an interview she had conducted with Bohdan Krotevych, the Azov regiment’s chief of staff in Mariupol. The following passage was typical of the article’s tone.

The Azov Regiment is known for its courage – and controversy. US media has reported that some members espoused neo-Nazi ideology, a claim the Kremlin has taken up. I asked Mr. Krotevych about the unit’s reputation. “Like in other units, including military units of the US army, there are some individuals who hold Nazi views,” he says. But labeling the entire regiment neo-Nazi “is like calling all Americans racist because the KKK exists in the US”

Amazingly, Melchior let that absurd, self-serving statement pass without making an effort to provide a clarification or rebuttal. Even a brief counterpoint might have mentioned that the Azov regiment uses banners and insignia that bear a striking resemblance to counterparts used by the Nazi SS and other portions of Adolf Hitler’s regime. Most Americans (much less the US military) do not openly display KKK regalia. The rest of the story is nearly as defective, allowing Krotevych to come across to readers as a heroic figure.

It is hardly a new aspect of the US media’s performance regarding foreign conflicts that journalists are willing to sanitize the image of whatever faction Washington favors. Most of the mainstream media did that with respect to the Kosovo Liberation Army during the conflict in the Balkans. The same has been true of news stories and commentaries on insurgents trying to unseat Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad. Very few accounts accurately describe the most influential components of the rebel forces as the jihadists that they are.

However, the coverage of the Ukraine war threatens to achieve a new low in media integrity and credibility. When the establishment press whitewashes the behavior of outright neo-Nazis, something is terribly amiss.

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Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 12 books and more than 950 articles on international affairs.

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***

Washington has been accused of continuing its theft of Syrian oil as some 70 tankers were reported to have left the country via the illegal al-Waleed crossing into neighbouring Iraq.

The convoy was spotted leaving Syria’s northern Hasakah province accompanied by 15 lorries loaded with military equipment and six armoured vehicles on Friday, local sources reported.

It comes just a day after 46 US vehicles were seen using the same border crossing with the Syrian government warning Washington against the plunder of its resources.

Oil and wheat are regularly taken out of the country and sold abroad, depriving millions of Syrians of much-needed supplies as they suffer the effect of crippling US sanctions.

Tens of thousands of barrels of Syrian oil are believed to have been shipped out of the country into Iraq by US forces.

In a further development last week US acting assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland announced a partial waiver from the Caesar Act restrictions for areas that are not under government control.

“The United States intends in the next few days to issue a general license to facilitate private economic investment activity in non-regime-held areas liberated from Isis in Syria,” she said following a meeting in Morocco.

The exemptions will apply to areas under the control of Turkish-backed jihadist groups along with those governed by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Ms Nuland claims that the general licence, which excludes oil, will enable US companies to invest in agriculture, health, education and other areas to bring much-needed investment to help reconstruction.

The news has been welcomed by a number of Western liberal academics and supporters of the so-called Autonomous Area of North-East Syria which had lobbied for the exemptions.

But critics said it was a clear attempt by the US to annex northern Syria and divide the country.

Journalist Vanessa Beeley said Ms Nuland and Washington were “deliberately enflaming local grievances and enabling ISIS recruitment and expansion.”

She accused the US of genocide by “withholding means of sustaining life to innocent civilians in order to coerce an entire nation into submission,” which she described as economic terrorism.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has consistently asked US occupying forces to leave the country and has vowed to regain all territory currently held by foreign forces.

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***

The Queen’s Speech was interesting this year.

For all the people outside the UK who don’t understand what the “Queens Speech” actually is, it’s a farcical state occasion in which the Queen (or, in this case, Prince Charles since her majesty is ill/secretly dead/having “mobility issues”) makes a speech about what “her government” intends to do for the next 12 months.

Of course, the Queen doesn’t actually write the speech, or have any input on its content, or have any control at all over what “her” government intends to do. She’s just a mouthpiece in a big gold hat.

It’s the UK equivalent of the State of the Union, only done in Halloween costumes made out of shiny stolen rocks.

The whole thing is nothing but a grand, gilt statement of intent from the British Deep State, wrapped in mink and draped in medals they never earned. It’s a joke, but it is worth listening to.

Or, if you have a sensitive stomach, you can just read the full text the next day on the UK government’s website (that’s what I do).

A lot of the content is entirely predictable.

More money to Ukraine, with a promise the UK will “lead the way in championing security around the world”. More online censorship via the “Online Safety Bill”. A compulsory register for homeschooled children via the “Schools Reform Bill”.

There’s also mention of “securing the constitution” by introducing the UK’s own “Bill of Rights”. We broke down that particular Trojan Horse back in February.

But the part I found most interesting is the stated plan to “encourage agricultural and scientific innovation at home” via the proposed Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill.

The proposed bill (which, for some reason is not available through the parliament website) follows on from DEFRA’s announced “loosened regulation” of genetic research back in January.

To quote the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB), the legislation would “take certain precision breeding techniques out of the scope of restrictive GMO rules”.

Essentially, this would see new “gene-edited” foods as distinct from old-fashioned “genetically modified” foods, and therefore not subject to the same rules and oversight.

The claimed distinction is that gene editing, as opposed to genetic modification, doesn’t introduce DNA from other species. Therefore, in effect, is merely speeding up what could potentially naturally happen over time.

Now, you might think this is just semantics, and that such a law will just provide a loophole for ALL “genetically modified” foods to simply rebrand themselves as “genetically edited” foods, and thereby avoid regulation. But that is disgustingly cynical and shame on you for even thinking it.

All in all, this is pretty on-message stuff, and not especially surprising. What’s noteworthy is – by pure happenstance, I’m sure – it appears to coincide with a renewed push on the GM food front in other countries all over the world.

In December 2021, Switzerland added an amendment to its moratorium on GMO crops, permitting the use of certain “gene editing” techniques.

Last month, Egypt announced their new strain of GM wheat. Just two days ago, Ethiopia’s National Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center announced they had researched, and the country will now be growing, genetically modified cotton and maize.

Despite Russia’s sweeping ban on the cultivation and/or importing of genetically modified crops, they have nonetheless created a 111 billion Ruble project to create up to 30 varieties of genetically edited plants and farm animals.

Britain’s deregulation of GM food is always described as a “post-Brexit” move – with the EU chided around the world for its “precautionary principle” on GM crops – and yet as long ago as last April, the EU was calling for a “rethink” on GM crops.

In fact, just today, European Biotechnology Magazine reports:

The EU Commission has launched its final consultation on the deregulation of new breeding techniques in agriculture

Why This? Why Now?

So, we’re seeing a sudden increase in the variety of GM crops available and a simultaneous push for deregulation of the industry in Western nations.

Why would they be doing this now?

Well, there is a food crisis.

Or, more accurately, they have just created a food crisis. And as the cliched Hegelian dialectic inevitably goes, their manufactured “problem” is now in need of their contrived “solution”.

We should expect to see genetic engineering pitched as a solution to our food crisis in the very near future…like yesterday. Or indeed, two months ago.

That’s how fast they work now, with barely a pretence at concealing the plan. Spitting out the answer so fast they make it obvious they knew the question beforehand.

On March 15th, when the “special operation” in Ukraine was less than 3 weeks old, the Time was already headlining:

War forces farmers to think again about GM crops

…and reporting:

Genetic modification could make Britain’s food system less susceptible to geopolitical turmoil

A week later Verdict published an article titled “Improving food self-sufficiency with GM crops during geopolitical crises”

Last week, the Times of Israel asked:

Can gene editing help farmers satisfy the rising demand for food?

Four days ago, the Manila Times published an article titled “In times of food scarcity: Revisiting genetically modified crops”.

Two days ago (so before the Queen’s speech specifically mentioning the gene editing bill), Scotland’s Press & Journal ran an opinion piece headlined: “Scottish Government must lift GM crop ban to ease cost of living crisis”.

Yesterday, the “information services” company IHS Markit published an article on GM regulation in Europe, in which they claimed:

The Ukraine-Russia conflict has demonstrated the fragility and vulnerability of global and European food supply chains. Around the world, governments in leading agricultural-producing countries are now catching up with the United States, both to better legislate gene-edited (GE) products, as well as differentiate them from the older Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) technology, and its negative connotations to some consumers, commentators, farmers, retailers, politicians and lawmakers.

And just today, the Genetic Literacy Project published an article by Ukrainian-Canadian David Zaruk, railing against the EU’s “precautionary principle” on GMOs and calling for an embracing of “new technology” to prevent widespread hunger and increase food sovereignty.

It goes on and on and on.

…Let’s Not Forget Climate Change, Guys

Of course, it’s not all about the food crisis – giving corporate giants free rein to genetically alter all the food we eat will also be good for the planet. They talk about that a lot recently.

On February 8th this year, the University of Bonn published a new study claiming “Genetic engineering can have a positive effect on the climate”

On February 24th this year, the Cornell-based NGO “Alliance for Science” published an article claiming “GMOs could shrink Europe’s climate footprint”, based on the study mentioned above.

In a response to the Queen’s Speech, the UK’s National Institute of Agriculture and Botany claimed that genetic modification will make farming “more sustainable”.

In a reminder we’re not just talking about crops but genetically engineering livestock as well, in February Deutsche Welle suggested that genetically altered “Climate sheep and eco pigs could combat global heating”.

Three weeks ago, Stuff.NZ asked simply:

Can GM save the planet?”

The narrative is clearly set: Genetically engineered food will save us all from the food crisis, and global warming too. Plus anything else they can think of.

The Knives Are Out for Organics

Not content with the semi-constant fluffing of the GM business, the MSM are also turning their guns on organic farming and giving it both barrels.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Ukraine Crisis Reveals the Folly of Organic Farming: As food prices skyrocket, the world needs to admit it can’t live without modern, efficient agriculture.

The Telegraph blames organic farming policies for “tipping Sri Lanka into bloody chaos”

The “Allliance for Science” article mentioned above goes out of its way to criticise the EU’s pro-organic “farm to fork” plans, claiming “[organic farming] has lower yields and would be associated with increases in global [greenhouse gas] emissions by causing land-use changes elsewhere”.

Meanwhile, Erik Fyrwald, the CEO of the Swiss agrochemicals group Syngenta (so possessing somewhat of a conflict of interests), told Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag that the West must “stop organic farming to help future food crisis”, adding that organic farming is worse for the planet, because ploughing up fields releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

We already saw wellness “cults” accused of peddling “anti-vax conspiracy theories” last year, this will easily extend to organic farmers and their customers.

NOTE: In an interesting (again, probably totally accidental) parallel, the currently simmering “Bird Flu outbreak” has also hit organic and free-range farmers hard, with one (sponsored) Guardian article asking if “year-round” bird flu could spell “the end of free-range eggs”.

Conclusion

Having just seen how the Covid19 “vaccine” campaign unfolded, it’s not hard to see how the pro-GM push will go from here. Genome-edited crops and farm animals are going to become the new “settled science”.

They will be sold to the public as cheaper, more nutritious, better for the environment and good for “preventing future pandemics” (yes, they literally did say that already).

Naturally, anyone who resists the push for gene-edited food, and/or mourns the planned death of organic farming, will be accused of “questioning the science”.

Eating British GM foods will be “doing your part” and “helping Ukraine”, while people who want more expensive organic products will be deemed “unpatriotic” or “selfish”.

Just as we saw Covid sceptics denounced as spreading “Russian disinformation”, despite Russia’s willing complicity in the Covid lie, those who argue against genome-edited food will be said to be “sharing Russian talking points” or “doing Putin’s work for him” despite Russia being well onboard the gene-editing train.

It all gets very predictable from there. Organic farmers will probably be “anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist Russian spies” by the end of the summer.

…This probably explains why Bill Gates was buying up so much farmland last year, too.

*

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***

While we are all familiar with Sun Tzu, the Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher who penned the incomparable Art of War, less known is the Strategikon, the Byzantium equivalent on warfare.

Sixth century Byzantium really needed a manual, threatened as it was from the east, successively by Sassanid Persia, Arabs and Turks, and from the north, by waves of steppe invaders, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, semi-nomadic Turkic Pechenegs and Magyars.

Byzantium could not prevail just by following the classic pattern of Roman Empire raw power – they simply didn’t have the means for it.

So military force needed to be subordinate to diplomacy, a less costly means of avoiding or resolving conflict. And here we can make a fascinating connection with today’s Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin and his diplomacy chief Sergei Lavrov.

But when military means became necessary for Byzantium – as in Russia’s Operation Z – it was preferable to use weaponry to contain or punish adversaries, instead of attacking with full force.

Strategic primacy, for Byzantium, more than diplomatic or military, was a psychological affair. The word Strategia itself is derived from the Greek strategos – which does not mean “General” in military terms, as the west believes, but historically corresponds to a managerial politico-military function.

It all starts with si vis pacem para bellum: “If you want peace prepare for war.” Confrontation must develop simultaneously on multiple levels: grand strategy, military strategy, operative, tactical.

But brilliant tactics, excellent operative intel and even massive victories in a larger war theater cannot compensate for a lethal mistake in terms of grand strategy. Just look at the Nazis in WWII.

Those who built up an empire such as the Romans, or maintained one for centuries like the Byzantines, never succeeded without following this logic.

Those clueless Pentagon and CIA ‘experts’

On Operation Z, the Russians revel in total strategic ambiguity, which has the collective west completely discombobulated. The Pentagon does not have the necessary intellectual firepower to out-smart the Russian General Staff. Only a few outliers understand that this is not a war – since the Ukraine Armed Forces have been irretrievably routed – but actually what Russian military and naval expert Andrei Martyanov calls a “combined arms police operation,” a work-in-progress on demilitarization and denazification.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is even more abysmal in terms of getting everything wrong, as recently demonstrated by its chief Avril Haines during her questioning on Capitol Hill. History shows that the CIA strategically blew it all the way from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. Ukraine is no different.

Ukraine was never about a military win. What is being accomplished is the slow, painful destruction of the European Union (EU) economy, coupled with extraordinary weapons profits for the western military-industrial complex and creeping security rule by those nations’ political elites.

The latter, in turn, have been totally baffled by Russia’s C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) capabilities, coupled with the stunning inefficiency of their own constellation of Javelins, NLAWs, Stingers and Turkish Bayraktar drones.

This ignorance reaches way beyond tactics and the operational and strategic realm. As Martyanov delightfully points out, they “wouldn’t know what hit them on the modern battlefield with near-peer, forget about peer.”

The caliber of ‘strategic’ advice from the NATO realm was self-evident in the Serpent Island fiasco – a direct order issued by British ‘consultants’ to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, thought the whole thing was suicidal. He was proven right.

All the Russians had to do was launch a few choice anti-ship and surface Onyx missiles from bastions stationed in Crimea on airports south of Odessa. In no time, Serpent Island was back under Russian control – even as high-ranking British and American marine officers ‘disappeared’ during the Ukrainian landing on the island. They were the ‘strategic’ NATO actors on the spot, doling out the lousy advice.

Extra evidence that the Ukraine debacle is predominantly about money laundering – not competent military strategy – is Capitol Hill approving a hefty extra $40 billion in ‘aid’ to Kiev. It’s just another western military-industrial complex bonanza, duly noted by Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev.

Russian forces, meanwhile, have brought diplomacy to the battlefield, handing over 10 tons of humanitarian assistance to the people of liberated Kherson – with the deputy head of the military-civil administration of the region, Kirill Stremousov, announcing that Kherson wants to become part of the Russian Federation.

In parallel, Georgy Muradov, deputy prime minister of the government of Crimea, has “no doubts that the liberated territories of the south of the former Ukraine will become another region of Russia. This, as we assess from our communication with the inhabitants of the region, is the will of the people themselves, most of whom lived for eight years under conditions of repression and bullying by the Ukronazis.”

Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, is adamant that the DPR is on the verge of liberating “its territories within constitutional borders,” and then a referendum on joining Russia will take place. When it comes to the Luhansk People’s Republic, the integration process may even come earlier: the only area left to be liberated is the urban region of Lysychansk-Severodonetsk.

The ‘Stalingrad of Donbass’

As much as there’s an energetic debate among the best Russian analysts about the pace of Operation Z, Russian military planning proceeds methodically, as if taking all the time it needs to solidify facts on the ground.

Arguably the best example is the fate of Azov neo-Nazis at Azovstal in Mariupol – the best-equipped unit of the Ukrainians, hands down. In the end, they were totally outmatched by a numerically inferior Russian/Chechen Spetsnaz contingent, and in record time for such a big city.

Another example is the advance on Izyum, in the Kharkov region – a key bridgehead in the frontline. The Russian Ministry of Defense follows the pattern of grinding the enemy while slowly advancing; if they face serious resistance, they stop and smash the Ukrainian defensive lines with non-stop missile and artillery strikes.

Popasnaya in Luhansk, dubbed by many Russian analysts as “Mariupol on steroids”, or “the Stalingrad of Donbass,” is now under total control of the Luhansk People’s Republic, after they managed to breach a de facto fortress with linked underground trenches between most civilian houses. Popasnaya is extremely important strategically, as its capture breaks the first, most powerful line of defense of the Ukrainians in Donbass.

That will probably lead to the next stage, with an offensive on Bakhmut along the H-32 highway. The frontline will be aligned, north to south. Bakhmut will be the key to taking control of the M-03 highway, the main route to Slavyansk from the south.

This is just an illustration of the Russian General Staff applying its trademark, methodical, painstaking strategy, where the main imperative could be defined as a personnel-preserving forward drive. With the added benefit of committing just a fraction of overall Russian firepower.

Russian strategy on the battlefield stands in stark contrast with the EU’s obstinacy in being reduced to the status of an American dog’s lunch, with Brussels leading entire national economies to varying degrees of certified collapse and chaos.

Once again it was up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – a diplomatic master – to encapsulate it.

Question: “What do you think of Josep Borrell’s (Lavrov’s EU counterpart) initiative to give Ukraine frozen Russian assets as ‘reparations?’ Can we say that the masks have come off and the west is moving on to open robbery?”

Lavrov: “You could say it is theft, which they are not trying to hide … This is becoming a habit for the west … We may soon see the post of the EU chief diplomat abolished because the EU has virtually no foreign policy of its own and acts entirely in solidarity with the approaches imposed by the United States.”

The EU cannot even come up with a strategy to defend its own economic battlefield – just watching as its energy supply is de facto, incrementally turned off by the US. Here we are at the realm where the US tactically excels: economic/financial blackmail. We can’t call these ‘strategic’ moves because they almost always backfire against US hegemonic interests.

Compare it with Russia reaching its biggest surplus in history, with the rise and rise of commodity prices and the upcoming role of the stronger and stronger ruble as a resource-based currency also backed by gold.

Moscow is spending way less than the NATO contingent in the Ukrainian theater. NATO has already wasted $50 billion – and counting – while the Russians spent $4 billion, give or take, and already conquered Mariupol, Berdyansk, Kherson and Melitopol, created a land corridor to Crimea (and secured its water supply), controls the Sea of Azov and its major port city, and liberated strategically vital Volnovakha and Popasnaya in Donbass, as well as Izyum near Kharkov.

That doesn’t even include Russia hurling the entire, collective west into a level of recession not seen since the 1970s.

The Russian strategic victory, as it stands, is military, economic, and may even coalesce geopolitically. Centuries after the Byzantine Strategikon was penned, the Global South would be very much interested in getting acquainted with the 21st century Russian version of the Art of War.

*

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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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***

Some service members requesting religious exemptions from vaccine mandates are separated from their families indefinitely, and a subset has also been kicked off base, according to a legal group aiding them and challenging the military mandate in court.

The Army is stalling religious accommodation requests (RARs) from service members seeking exemptions from the military’s sweeping COVID-19 vaccination mandate, leaving objectors in “limbo and frozen in time,” claims religious freedom legal defense organization Liberty Counsel.

“The Army will not process the RARs,” wrote Mat Staver, chairman and founder of the Christian nonprofit. “Instead, it is effectively holding hostage every military member who files an RAR, whether the member is in the states or in a foreign country. The Army hopes the pressure of being separated from family with their careers frozen will force the faithful to bow the knee to Joe Biden.”

Liberty Counsel shared a message April 29 from “Sheldon,” an Army service member who is stuck in South Korea even though his one-year “unaccompanied” tour ended in December.

“I’m being held hostage here, separated from my family, including my 9-month-old daughter who barely knows me because of my pending exemption request,” Sheldon wrote, adding that his wife’s “mental health is deteriorating” under the stress of indefinite separation.

Staver told Just the News his organization was working with about 1,100 service members and does calls every week to gather more stories.

One service member transferring from Hawaii to Florida is stuck without family in Alabama, a required training location before Florida, while an intended East Coast transfer who already sent a car and furniture is stuck in California and can’t live on base, according to Staver.

Army media relations officer Lt. Col. Terry Kelley told Just the News he couldn’t comment on a pseudonymous service member’s case, but wrote in an email he was “unaware of any policy directing unvaccinated Soldiers must reside off base.”

Given the Army’s response, Staver clarified “there is no written policy” but that Liberty Counsel has dealt with several situations where a soldier or couple was verbally ordered to leave the base and given no housing reimbursement, leading some to live out of their cars.

Staver said he would ask service members to provide any written explanations they were given for eviction for Just the News to review.

Kelley also shared Army vaccination rates and exemption request tallies as of May 5. Among 4,302 religious requests, eight have been approved and 927 rejected.

“They’re not denying anybody” the chance to appeal, just sitting on requests to avoid litigation, Staver said. By keeping service members in limbo and putting them on menial details such as “broom closet” work, the Army’s goal is coercing vaccinations, he claimed.

*

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Featured image: Pfc. Shaniah Edwards, Medical Detachment, prepares to administer the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to soldiers and airmen at the Joint Force Headquarters, February 12, 2021. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Leona C. Hendrickson – Source.)

The War in Ukraine. Scott Ritter’s Switcheroo: “Why I Radically Changed My Overall Assessment”

By Mike Whitney, May 16, 2022

On Sunday, the foreign policy blogs were abuzz with the news that Scott Ritter had done “an about-face in his assessment of the war”. It appears that the ex-Marine had examined recent developments in Ukraine and concluded that it’s going to be much harder for Russia to win than he had originally thought…

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

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 16, 2022

Although the Ukraine conflict has so-far been limited to conventional weapons coupled with “economic warfare”, the use of a large array of sophisticated WMDs including nuclear weapons is on the drawing board of the Pentagon. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the total number of nuclear warheads Worldwide is of the order of 13,000.  Russia and the United States “each have around 4,000 warheads in their military stockpiles”.

Did CIA Train Ukrainian Torturers?

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, May 16, 2022

Western media accuse Russia of perpetrating war crimes in Ukraine and committing human rights violations against civilians and prisoners. However, these same agencies are absolutely silent in the face of the evident practices of torture by Kiev’s agents against their enemies, which, curiously, present several similarities with the already known torture techniques applied by the CIA, according to a recent report by a journalist.

The NATO-Russia Conflict in Ukraine Prevents Progress at the China-EU Summit

By Jan Oberg, May 16, 2022

Since 1949, NATO has promised its taxpayers that they would live in peace. But today’s Europe is closer to catastrophe than ever before. The world-domineering Western paradigm of security politics has come to its end. But more dollars and weapons are pumped into it.

Why Ukraine War Has No Winners

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, May 16, 2022

The US President Joe Biden and Britain’s Boris Johnson vow that they will be satisfied with nothing less than a Russian defeat. The New Europeans — Poland and the Baltic States principally — also demand an apocalyptic end to Russia’s history.

Pfizer Appears to Have Committed Fraud, and If It Can be Proven in Court, Then Pfizer Will be Liable for All Injuries and Deaths Caused by Its COVID Vaccines

By Ethan Huff, May 16, 2022

The so-called “clinical trials” that Pfizer conducted on its messenger RNA (mRNA) Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “vaccine” appear to have been completely fraudulent, which means the company could one day be held liable for all associated injuries and deaths.

Neoliberalism Coupled with GMO: Farmers’ Struggle Not Over, Corporate Takeover of Indian Agriculture Still Looms

By Colin Todhunter and Ranjit Singh Srai, May 16, 2022

The government’s apparent reluctance to implement the demands of farmers might indicate that the global corporations and financial institutions behind the legislation remain steadfast in seeking to secure what the laws aimed to bring about – the full-scale neoliberal marketisation of India’s agrifood sector, including the displacement of peasant farmers and independent, indigenous enterprises.     

Video: Bill Gates Says Adults Over 50 Will Probably Have to Get COVID Boosters Every 6 Months… Until We Get Better Vaccines

By Cristina Laila, May 16, 2022

Why doesn’t Anderson Cooper ask his own doctor when he should get another booster shot? Bill Gates answered the question as if he’s a doctor: “It’ll be safe every six months…they might even make that shorter for people over 60 or 70… so we’re in for ongoing vaccination to stay absolutely safe.”

A ‘Precision Breeding’ Bill to Fast-track GMO Deregulation in England

By Beyond GM, May 16, 2022

According to the government purpose of the proposed Bill is to remove unnecessary barriers inherited from the EU to enable the development and marketing of precision bred plants and animals, which will drive economic growth and position the UK as the leading country in which to invest in agri-food research and innovation.

Cause to Fear a Remilitarized Japan

By Ra Mason, May 16, 2022

Japan is proposing to double its defense budget to around US$106 billion, or 2% of its gross domestic product (GDP). This move – like recent pledges by Germany to massively increase its military spending in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – brings the country full circle since it was militarily neutered following defeat in the second world war.

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***

Never underestimate the potency, and deceptive malice, of the British political mind.  In responding to the threat posed by Imperial Germany during the First World War, the British propaganda campaign made much of the atrocity tale, the nun raping German and the baby bayoneting Hun.  The effectiveness of the campaign was so impressive it sowed doubt amongst a generation about the reliability of war crimes accounts.

In its efforts to try to win US support for its cause against Hitler in World War II, the train of British propaganda again operated with a concerted effect, demonising isolationists and denigrating supporters and members of the America First Committee.  The great hope there was that Britain would fight the Germans to the last American.  It led to one of the largest covert operations in UK history conducted under the auspices of an agency known as “British Security Coordination”.  During the course of its operations, BSC subject matter entered the American political bloodstream, aided by the injecting activities of Walter Winchell, Drew Pearson, a radio station (WRUL) and the Overseas News Agency (ONA).

During the Cold War, the black propagandists were again in high demand.  In 2021, the Observer revealed that the Information Research Department (IRD) had done its bit to egg on the massacres of communists and sympathisers in Indonesia in 1965.  Pamphlets supposedly authored by seething Indonesian patriots but cooked up by the dark musings of the IRD, called for the elimination of the Indonesian communist party, the PKI.  The deaths that followed numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

The IRD, which had, at its height in the mid-1960s, a staff of 360, had a primary purpose: to counter Soviet propaganda and its effects in Britain.  It had its origins in the opening shots of the Cold War, established in 1948 but found itself behind the efforts of various sections of Whitehall already dedicated to the anti-Soviet effort.

Its program was more engaged and more ambitious than previously thought.  “It’s very clear now,” Rory Cormac, an authority on subversion and intelligence history, explained to the Guardian, “that the UK engaged in more black propaganda than historians assume and these efforts were more systemic, ambitious and offensive.  Despite official denials, [this] went far beyond merely exposing Soviet disinformation.”

The effects of propaganda can be perversely insidious.  Allies or friendly nations can be used and abused if the aim is to advance the security of the propagandist.  As Howard Becker laconically puts it in describing the consequences of black propaganda, “truth or falsity, as determined by any standard, is not raised.  Propaganda which achieves its end may be entirely true, it may be entirely false; expedient rationality alone governs the choice of means.”

The IRD shows that, while it was more modest in scale to its US, Soviet and East European counterparts, it could hold its own in terms of inventiveness.  It specialised in creating fake news sources and false statements designed to stir pots of racial tension, create instability, and foster social and political chaos.

A feature of the black propaganda campaign was the forging of statements by official Soviet bodies and entities.  The Soviet-run news agency Novosti was something of a favourite, given the release of 11 fake statements supposedly authored by the body between 1965 and 1972.

In the wake of Israel’s lightning victory during the Six-Day War of 1967, the outfit drafted a number of documents claiming to be authored by disgruntled Muslim organisations sore at defeat and seeking answers.  One did not have to look far for the culprit of godless Communism.  “Why is the Arab nation at this time afflicted by so much sorry and disaster?” asks a statement purportedly issued from the League of Believers, a fictional Islamist organisation.  “Why were the brave forces defeated in the jihad by the evil heathen Zionists?”  The reason: that “we are departing from the right path, we are following the course chosen for us by the communist-atheists for whom religion is a form of social disease.”

Other material focused on existing and influential organisations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.  One pamphlet from the IRD, supposedly issued by the group, takes issue with the quality of Soviet weaponry.  As for the Soviets themselves, they were “filthy-tongued atheists” who had little time for Egyptians, mere “peasants who lived all their lives nursing reactionary superstitions”.

In Africa, propaganda efforts were made to malign the activities of Soviet front organisations such as the World Federation of Democratic Youth.  Nationalist, revolutionary figures were also targeted.  A statement from early 1963, forged by the IRD, has the WFDY falsely accusing Africans of being morally feeble, uncivilised, and “primitive”.  The theme is repeated in another forged statement three years later, and in a fake release by Novosti noting the poor quality of African students enrolled at an international university in Moscow.

These recent revelations do have a certain flavour of told-you-so obviousness, but serve as reminders that the news, however official, reeks when consulted between the lines (and lies).  Cormac reminds us that the current UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has her own “government information cell”, a distant echo of the IRD.  It pays to look behind the merits of the next news bulletin, if only to be disillusioned.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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Geopolitical Update: Historic Shifts In Europe’s Balance Of Power As NATO Expands North With Sweden And Finland Joining The Military Alliance  

Sweden’s ruling party dropped the country’s historic military nonalignment on Sunday and agreed to join NATO, shortly after Finland’s leaders officially announced they would do the same.

Media reports from Europe and other places said:

The moves were major steps in ending decades of military neutrality for the two Nordic nations, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continued to dramatically shift security considerations in Europe.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said their accession would be a “turning point for security” in Europe. “Their membership in NATO would increase our shared security, demonstrate that NATO’s door is open, and that aggression does not pay.”

“We arre now facing a fundamentally changed security environment in Europe,” Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said.

Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said:

While the country’s “200-year-long standing policy of military nonalignment has served Sweden well,” the nation now faced a “fundamental change,” she said. “As a member of NATO, Sweden not only achieves more security, but also contributes to more security.”

Speaking at a news conference earlier in Helsinki alongside Prime Minister Sanna Marin, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto described Sunday as a “historic day.”

Image on the right: Niinistö with US President Joe Biden in the White House in 2022 (Licensed under public domain)

Sweden had been closely coordinating with Helsinki on its decision to join the military alliance.

Once formal requests are submitted, each of NATO’s 30 member nations must approve, a process that could take months or longer.

At the heart of NATO is Article 5, which says that “an armed attack against one or more” members “shall be considered an attack against them all.”

Among Russia’s preinvasion demands was a rollback of NATO’s “open door” policy, under which countries once part of the Soviet Union have joined the alliance. Instead of a rollback, the Russian invasion appears to be producing further expansion, right on Russia’s roughly 800-mile border with Finland.

Both decisions represent a seminal shift in military thinking on the continent.

Finland’s leaders said Thursday that the countries should join NATO without delay, but the formal decision came Sunday after the president and a committee on foreign and security policy finalized a report on Finland’s accession to the alliance. The report will be submitted to Parliament on Monday.

Sweden’s course was also advanced last week, when the ruling party leadership presented a paper exploring the pros and cons of NATO membership. “Finland will maximize its security,” Niinisto said.

“In Finland, we still have the parliamentary process ahead of us,” Marin said, “but I trust the Parliament will debate this historic decision with determination and responsibility.”

The announcements came as NATO foreign ministers and those of Finland, Sweden and Ukraine met in Berlin to discuss the Nordic countries’ path to membership and military assistance to Kyiv.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was “very confident” that NATO would reach consensus on admitting Sweden and Finland to the military alliance. “I heard almost across the board very strong support” for adding the Nordic countries, he said.

Blinken did not offer a timeline for their accession, noting that the organization has a “process.”

When NATO was formed with the intention of balancing the security threats from the Soviet Union and its allies, Finland and Sweden chose instead to adopt a position of neutrality and nonalignment.

NATO requires unanimity on the approval of new members, and Turkey has expressed skepticism over admitting Finland and Sweden to the alliance. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticized the countries as “home to many terrorist organizations.”

The comments — referring mainly to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a militant organization known as the PKK — were seen as a threat by Turkey to veto any NATO expansion.

U.S. officials are hoping to smooth out differences within the alliance, and Blinken spoke to Turkey’s foreign minister on Sunday but said he did not want to “characterize” those discussions.

In response to questions about whether Turkey will block or significantly delay membership for the Nordic countries, Stoltenberg expressed confidence that NATO would move swiftly.

“Turkey has made it clear: Their intention is not to block membership. Therefore, I am confident we’ll be able to address the concerns that Turkey has expressed in a way that doesn’t delay the accession process,” he said, without offering a specific timeline.

Baerbock also said the two countries could join “very quickly” if they made that decision.

“Our doors are more than open, and if their parliaments and their societies are going to decide to join NATO, this will make us even stronger,” she said. Germany is prepared to do everything it can for a “quick ratification process,” she added.

During the Berlin meeting, Blinken also met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to discuss military aid for Ukraine and the continuation of food exports to the developing world.

“More weapons and other aid is on the way to Ukraine,” Kuleba tweeted after the meeting. “We agreed to work closely together to ensure that Ukrainian food exports reach consumers in Africa and Asia.”

The State Department said Blinken discussed “details regarding the latest tranche of U.S. security assistance to bolster Ukraine’s defenses” and potential solutions to exporting Ukraine’s grain to international markets. The ongoing fighting in Ukraine, a major food exporter, has been linked to rising food prices and inflation in the developing world.

Putin-Niinisto Talk

Niinisto told Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone about Helsinki’s plans to join NATO, Interfax news agency cited Bloomberg as saying on Saturday.

According to TASS, Putin and Niinisto had a “sincere exchange of views over the announced decision by Finland’s leadership to apply for NATO membership,” the press service of the Kremlin said.

“Putin stressed that rejecting the traditional policy of military neutrality would be wrong since there are no threats to Finland’s security. Such a change in the country’s foreign policy course could have a negative effect on Russia-Finland relations, which have been built over the course of many years in the spirit of neighborliness and partnership cooperation and have a mutually beneficial nature,” the Kremlin noted.

Uncertainty Added To Europe, Say Chinese Analysts

Chinese analysts said that this could add new uncertainty to the security of Europe, but it does not mean there will be new military conflicts in the continent as they believe Russia can solve its concerns with these two countries in political ways, otherwise they will fall into a U.S. trap to further worsen the security situation of Europe.

The U.S. can deploy missile defense systems and other military equipment in the territories of NATO members, to weaken the nuclear deterrence of Russia and maximize the military advantage against Russia, said analysts, noting that this is the fundamental reason why the tensions between Russia and some other European countries cannot be effectively resolved, and also a reason that causes the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

No Stationing Of Nuclear Weapons, NATO Bases On Sweden’s Territory, Says Ruling Party

The ruling Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Sweden supported the country’s entry into NATO with one reservation: the alliance must not station nuclear weapons and permanent bases on the territory of the kingdom. The relevant statement has been posted on the website of this political force.

“The party board has at its meeting on May 15, 2022 decided that the party will work toward Sweden applying for membership in NATO,” the Social Democrats said in a statement.

At the same time Sweden expressed “unilateral reservations against the deployment of nuclear weapons and permanent bases on Swedish territory.”

On May 13, a cross-party parliamentary report was released in the country, which concluded that NATO membership would increase the security level of the kingdom. The debate on this document will be held in Parliament on May 16, on the same day the Swedish government will hold an additional meeting to make a formal decision on the application to join the alliance. According to the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper, the kingdom can send documents to Brussels on May 17.

U.S. Ready To Provide Military Support To New NATO Hopefuls

The U.S. is prepared, if needed, to provide Sweden and Finland with military support as these countries await NATO’s response to their membership applications, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby has said.

In a BBC interview which was recorded on Friday and broadcast on Sunday, Kirby said that Russia’s warnings are “clearly concerning.”

“But it is not up to Russia to determine whether Finland and Sweden become NATO allies, it’s up to the people of Finland and the people of Sweden,” the US military spokesman said.

When asked if the U.S. would send troops to defend Finland and Sweden if they were attacked, Kirby first said that he would not want to speculate on a hypothetical scenario but nevertheless gave a detailed response.

“If in the period of their application to NATO and their accession to NATO they would need some additional capabilities or support … we will be able to provide some additional support if needed,” he said.

NATO Confident Of Overcoming Turkey’s Objections

NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana has said he is sure the organisation will be able to overcome Turkey’s objections to Finland and Sweden becoming new members.

“Turkey is an important ally and expressed concerns that are addressed between friends and allies,” Geoana told reporters during an informal NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Berlin on Sunday.

“I am confident if these countries [Finland and Sweden] decide to seek membership in NATO we will be able to welcome them, to find all conditions for consensus to be met,” he added.

Finland and Sweden stayed out of NATO during the Cold War.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters at the meeting that Berlin “has prepared everything to do a quick ratification process” of the Finnish and Swedish bids, adding that NATO ministers agreed that the process, which usually takes a year, should be accelerated.

However, those plans could be derailed by Turkey’s opposition to Finland and Sweden’s membership.

On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed the two Nordic nations as “guesthouses for terrorist organizations,” referring the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKP/C), which have been outlawed in Turkey. “At this point, it is not possible for us to have a positive approach” to their bids, he said.

Erdogan’s top adviser Ibrahim Kalin clarified to Reuters on Saturday that Ankara was “not closing the door” for Helsinki and Stockholm, but was “basically raising this issue as a matter of national security for Turkey.”

Ukraine Can Defeat Russia, Says NATO Sec. Gen.

Ukraine can score a victory in its fight against Russian forces, as the situation on the battleground is not developing according to Moscow’s plans, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg claimed on Sunday.

Speaking to the reporters after informal meetings of the military bloc’s foreign ministers, Stoltenberg revealed that the main topics of the discussions were “strong support for Ukraine, the further strengthening of NATO’s deterrence and defense, and the longer-term implications of the war,” including the alliance’s future stance towards Russia.

“Russia’s war in Ukraine is not going as Moscow had planned. They failed to take Kiev. They are pulling back from around Kharkiv, their major offensive in the Donbass has stalled. Russia is not achieving its strategic objectives,” Stoltenberg said.

He added that, contrary to the alleged wishes of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine continues its fight, “NATO is stronger than ever” and the US and Europe are “solidly united.”

“Ukraine can win this war. Ukrainians are bravely defending their homeland,” the NATO SG said, adding that weapons supplies and other support from its backers are “making a real difference on the battlefield.”

Therefore, Stoltenberg argued, the bloc should continue supporting Ukraine.

The SG revealed that the June NATO summit in Madrid will see members making “important decisions,” including measures aimed at reinforcing the bloc’s deterrence posture.

No Capitulation 

Russia insists that it is fulfilling all its objectives in Ukraine and will not turn off its intended path. During a TV broadcast on Saturday, the Russian Ambassador in the U.S. said there would be no “capitulation.”

“We will never give up, we will not step back,” he claimed.

Earlier this month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Russian “military operation” in Ukraine was going “according to plan.”

Moscow has consistently warned the West against “pumping up” Ukraine with weapons, claiming that it would only lead to prolongation of the conflict and create long-term problems. It has also stressed that any foreign weapons on Ukrainian territory would be considered as legitimate targets.

EU Candidate Serbia Accuses West Of Hypocrisy

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said his “guts turn” when he hears Western countries talk about their respect for the territorial integrity of Ukraine, while simultaneously insisting on the independence of the Serbian breakaway region of Kosovo.

During a Sunday broadcast on Prva TV, Vucic claimed there were no principles in modern international politics and accused the West of double standards and hypocrisy when it comes to the Ukraine and Kosovo conflicts. Serbia is a candidate for EU membership.

Belgrade does not recognize Kosovo’s 2008 self-declaration of independence and considers the territory to be a Serbian province. Nearly 100 countries, including the U.S. – but not Russia – have recognized the independence of the region.

“My guts turn when I hear about the principles and respect for territorial integrity. They (the Western countries) ask us to respect someone’s integrity, and what about ours?” said Vucic.

As the G7 pledged that it would never accept the violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the Serbian government will continue to insist on the same principle for its own country, Vucic argued.

“For Serbia to give up its integrity, it can only happen with a gun to the forehead, and not to us but to our children,” he stressed.

The Serbian leader also questioned why, if Russia is really committing terrible crimes in Ukraine, NATO is not bombing it as it did in former Yugoslavia in 1999.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that Moscow’s move to recognize the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk was based on the Kosovo precedent.

Belgrade has taken a neutral stance in relation to the conflict, with Vucic vowing to punish Serbs if they attempt to fight on either side.

Serbia Will Fight Sanctions Pressure

Despite suffering “enormous damage,” Serbia will fight to maintain its policy of not joining the Western sanctions introduced against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, its president has insisted.

“We have lasted eighty days” without restricting Russia and “the price we pay is huge,” Alexander Vucic told local broadcaster Prva on Sunday. Serbia lacks access to the capital market and can’t service its foreign loans, which affects the well-being of the population, he complained.

“They say: ‘Vucic is announcing the introduction of Russian sanctions.’ No, we will fight as long as we can. We suffered enormous damage, but we aren’t looking for ‘a thank you’,” the president insisted.

Serbia is acting this way because it is “a sovereign and independent country” that is well aware of “how unfair and unnecessary” the sanctions are, he said.

The issue of restrictions against Moscow is also closely linked to the supply of Russian gas and oil, on which Serbia is entirely dependent, Vucic said, expressing hope that Belgrade will be able to agree a “good price” on energy at the upcoming talks between the sides.

Last month, the Serbian president claimed that he was blackmailed into placing restrictions on his country’s ally Russia, with Belgrade being threatened with energy sanctions of its own if it refused.

Zelensky Bans Ukrainian Opposition Parties

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday signed into law a bill establishing a mechanism to outlaw political parties, who oppose his policies on western integration. The legislation is aimed at political parties deemed to be engaging into “anti-Ukrainian” activities.

The list of wrongdoings which can be used as a pretext to ban a faction suggests that challenging the official position of the Ukrainian authorities on the ongoing conflict with Moscow can lead to a ban.

Specifically, it outlaws denial of the “aggression against Ukraine,” calling it an internal conflict, a civil war and so on. Any positive remarks about those deemed to be perpetrating “aggression” are prohibited as well, including referring to the forces of the breakaway Donetsk as Lugansk republics as “insurgents.”

The new legislation also outlines a simplified procedure to ban a political party. It now requires a court ruling, with all related cases – including pending ones – transferred to a court in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv for as long as the country is under martial law. A ruling on such cases is final and cannot be appealed.

In March, Ukraine’s national Security Council suspended multiple political parties it deemed to be “pro-Russian.” The list included assorted minor, primarily left-wing parties, as well as Ukraine’s second-largest group ‘Opposition Platform – For Life’, led by Viktor Medvedchuk, a businessman with alleged ties to Russia. Having previously been placed under house arrest, in April of last year the politician ended up in custody of the country’s security services.

His initial incarceration came after his faction passed out Zelensky’s Servant of the People in terms of popularity, according to polling.

Pentagon Chief And Ukraine’s counterpart Talk About Phone Call With Russian Defense Minister

Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin told Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov in a phone conversation on Sunday about his conversation with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu on May 13, US Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said in a written statement following the talks.

According to him, Austin and Reznikov discussed the situation in Ukraine and the needs of Kiev in armaments.

“Secretary Austin provided an update on his May 13th phone call with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu in which he urged an immediate end to the conflict in Ukraine and emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication. Secretary Austin reiterated the unwavering U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and security assistance efforts to bolster Ukraine’s capacity to counter Russian aggression. The leaders pledged to remain in close contact,” Kirby said.

Oil Prices Drop On Profit-Taking, Supply Fears Linger

A Reuters report from Tokyo said:

Oil prices slipped on Monday, giving up earlier gains as investors took profits after a surge in the previous session, but global supply fears loomed with the European Union preparing to phase in a ban on imports from Russia.

Brent crude futures were down 64 cents, or 0.6%, at $110.91 a barrel at 0137 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures dropped 60 cents, or 0.5%, to $109.89 a barrel.

Both benchmarks, which jumped about 4% last Friday, earlier increased by more than $1 a barrel, with WTI reaching its highest since March 28 of $111.71.

“Oil markets are expected to gain this week as a pending ban by the European Union on Russian oil will further tighten global supplies of crude and fuels,” said Kazuhiko Saito, chief analyst at Fujitomi Securities Co Ltd.

The EU still aims to agree a phased embargo on Russia oil this month despite concerns about supply in eastern Europe, four diplomats and officials said on Friday, rejecting suggestions of a delay or watering down proposals.

Last week, Moscow slapped sanctions on several European energy companies, causing worries about supplies.

U.S. Gasoline Futures Set A Fresh All-Time High The Reuters report added:

Meanwhile, U.S. gasoline futures set a fresh all-time high again on Monday as falling stockpiles fuelled supply concerns.

“Oil prices remained bullish, especially WTI’s near-term contract, as U.S. gasoline prices continued to rise amid weaker imports of petroleum products from Europe,” Fujitomi Securities’ Saito said.

On the supply side, U.S. energy firms in the week to May 13 added oil and natural gas rigs for an eighth week in a row as high prices and prodding by the federal government prompted drillers to return to the wellpad.

Elsewhere OPEC+ – the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies including Russia – has been undershooting previously agreed plans for output increases due to under-investment in oilfields in some OPEC members and, more recently, losses in Russian output.

The latest monthly report from OPEC showed its output in April rose by 153,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 28.65 million bpd, lagging the 254,000 bpd rise that OPEC is allowed under the OPEC+ deal.

Saudi Aramco Net Profit Soars 82% In Q1 On High Oil Prices

Another Reuters report from Dubai said:

State-owned oil producer Saudi Aramco on Sunday reported an almost 82% rise in first-quarter net profit, broadly in line with analyst forecasts, helped by strong oil prices.

Aramco, which is at par with Apple Inc as the world’s most valuable company, reported a net income of $39.5 billion for the quarter to March 31 from $21.7 billion a year earlier.

The world’s top oil exporter was forecast to post a net income of $38.5 billion, according to a median estimate from 12 analysts provided by the company.

Aramco, which listed in 2019 with the sale of a 1.7% stake mainly to the Saudi public and regional institutions, said its earnings were the highest in any quarter since it went public, boosted by crude prices, volumes sold and improved downstream margins.

The Reuters report said:

Earnings by global energy companies such as BP and Shell have risen to their highest in at least a decade on the back of rising commodities prices, even as many of them incur mostly write-downs from exiting Russia.

Brent crude prices ended the first quarter up almost 70% to $107.91 a barrel from end of March 2021.

OPEC+ agreed this month to another modest increase in its monthly oil output target, arguing it could not be blamed for disruptions to Russian supply that have driven up prices. It also said China’s coronavirus lockdowns was threatening the outlook for demand.

“Our view is Brent will end up lower in the second half of the year and so we are expecting (Aramco) earnings to pull back and for the second quarter to be a peak,” said Yousef Husseini, associate director for equity research at EFG Hermes.

The company declared a dividend of $18.8 billion to be paid in the second quarter, in line with market expectations, and approved the distribution of one bonus share for every 10 shares held in the company.

Aramco said it saw improved downstream margins in the first quarter and is looking to develop opportunities in the downstream sector.

“During the first quarter, our strategic downstream expansion progressed further in both Asia and Europe, and we continue to develop opportunities that complement our growth objectives,” Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said in a statement.

Shares of the company have risen 37% since the start of the year, outperforming the Saudi index which is up nearly 14%.

German Industry Issues Warning Over Impact Of Cutting Russian Gas Deliveries

Media reports from Germany said:

The cessation of Russian gas deliveries would have a catastrophic effect on the German economy, according to Siegfried Russwurm, president of the country’s biggest industry association BDI.

“The consequences of cutting off Russian gas supplies would be catastrophic,” he told tabloid Bild am Sonntag in an interview published on Saturday evening.

Russwurm added that such a step would deprive the country’s businesses of the fuel, forcing them to shut down production lines.

“A host of companies in this case would be completely cut off from gas supplies,” he said. “In many cases, the affected firms will be forced to stop production, some enterprises may never be able to start it again.”

Berlin believes Russia may stop gas supplies over sanctions imposed on Moscow and the supply of weapons by Germany to Ukraine. Earlier this week, German vice-chancellor and economy minister, Robert Habeck, said the country was not yet ready for a total embargo on Russian gas.

On Wednesday, Russia imposed sanctions on Gazprom’s European subsidiaries including Gazprom Germania, an energy trading, storage and transmission business that Germany placed under trusteeship last month to secure supplies. The sanctions list also includes Gazprom Schweiz AG, Gazprom Marketing & Trading USA, Vemex, Wingas, and EuRoPol GAZ.

Earlier, Ukraine suspended the flow of Russian natural gas to Europe, while blaming Moscow for the disruption. Russian gas had previously been flowing uninterrupted through pipelines across Ukraine despite tensions between the two countries.

Egypt Assesses Impact Of Ukraine-Related Crisis

Egypt’s economy has sustained losses of up to 130 billion Egyptian pounds ($7 billion) amid the Ukrainian crisis, according to the country’s Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly.

“The aftermath of the war has placed a huge financial burden on us and we have invested 130 billion pounds to cover rising prices for strategic goods,” Madbouly said on Sunday, pointing out that the indirect consequences of the events in Ukraine are estimated at another over $18 billion.

According to the PM, the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine has sent prices for vital produce soaring, having posed enormous challenges to the Egyptian economy.

“In May 2021, the price of a barrel of oil was $67, now it has reached $112, while a ton of wheat cost $270 a year ago, now we pay for the same volumes based on a price of $435 per ton,” Madbouly explained.

“Previously, we had imported 42% of grain, while 31% of tourists were from Russia and Ukraine, and now we have to look for alternative markets.”

The PM also said that Egypt had managed to restore tourism after the Covid-19 pandemic and “achieve budget profitability of $5.8 billion ahead of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis.”

He added that despite Covid-related crisis and turmoil in the movement of world trade, the nation saw an unprecedented increase in income from the Suez Canal.

Egypt’s unemployment rate dropped to 7.2% in January-March, down from 7.4% in the previous quarter, the state statistics agency CAPMAS said on Sunday.

The agency also reported that Egypt’s annual inflation rate surged to 14.9% in April, significantly higher than the previous month’s 12.1%.

In March, Egypt’s Central Bank raised its key interest rate for the first time since 2017, citing inflationary pressures triggered by the coronavirus pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which hiked oil prices to record highs.

Germany Warns Of Brutal Global Hunger

Skyrocketing food prices worldwide are the result of Russia pursuing a hybrid war strategy, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock claimed on Saturday following a G7 meeting.

However, Moscow immediately hit back by blaming Western sanctions for the spike.

“Russia made a conscious decision to turn the war against Ukraine into a ‘grain war,’” the German minister insisted. This, she alleged, is now affecting a wide range of states, especially those in Africa.

”There is a threat of brutal hunger,” she said.

“We must not be naive about this,” Baerbock warned. “It’s not collateral damage, it’s a perfectly deliberate instrument in a hybrid war that is currently being waged.”

She said the countries of the G7 wanted to look for alternative ways of delivering grain from Ukraine to the world.

Earlier in the week, the US State Department tweeted: “While Ukraine used to export up to five million tons of grain per month, shipments have all but stopped due to the Kremlin’s blockade of Ukrainian ports.” Washington claimed that such actions put “millions at risk of famine.”

Ukraine is currently unable to export about 90 million tons of agricultural products, as Russia has blocked Ukrainian ports, its Prime Minister Denys Shmygal told local media. The country produces a significant share of world food – about 27% of its sunflower seeds, 5% of its barley, 3% of its wheat and rapeseed, and 2% of its corn.

Russia is the largest exporter of wheat in the world. Although it has the ability to export grain, it also faces problems due to sanctions and its own requirements.

Russia’s Response To German Accusation

Responding to the German foreign minister’s comments, Moscow accused the West of causing the spike in food prices.

“Prices are rising due to sanctions imposed by the collective West under pressure from the United States. This is if we talk about the direct reason. Failure to understand this is a sign of either stupidity or deliberate misleading of the public,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in her Telegram channel.

According to the diplomat, the threat to Ukraine’s statehood is also the work of the West. “Ms. Baerbock’s predecessors are also involved in it, who not only interfered in the situation in this country, but modeled Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy in manual mode,” she wrote.

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This article was first published in April 2022.

The first public hearings on the proposed “Pandemic Treaty” are closed, with the next round due to start in mid-June.

We’ve been trying to keep this issue on our front page, entirely because the mainstream is so keen to ignore it and keep churning out partisan war porn and propaganda.

When we – and others – linked to the public submissions page, there was such a response that the WHO’s website actually briefly crashed, or they pretended it crashed so people would stop sending them letters.

Either way, it’s a win. Hopefully one we can replicate in the summer.

Until then, the signs are that what scant press coverage there is, mostly across the metaphorical back-pages of the internet, will be focused on making the treaty “strong enough” and ensuring national governments can be “held accountable”.

An article in the UK’s Telegraph from April 12th headlines:

Real risk a pandemic treaty could be ‘too watered down’ to stop new outbreaks

It focuses on a report from the Panel for a Global Public Health Convention (GPHC), and quotes one of the report’s authors Dame Barbara Stocking:

Our biggest fear […] is it’s too easy to think that accountability doesn’t matter. To have a treaty that does not have compliance in it, well frankly then there’s no point in having a treaty,”

The GPHC report goes on to say that the current International Health Regulations are “too weak”, and calls for the creation of a new “independent” international body to “assess government preparedness” and “publicly rebuke or praise countries, depending on their compliance with a set of agreed requirements”.

Another article, published by the London School of Economics and co-written by members of the German Alliance on Climate Change and Health (KLUG), also pushes the idea of “accountability” and “compliance” pretty hard:

For this treaty to have teeth, the organisation that governs it needs to have the power – either political or legal – to enforce compliance.

It also echoes the UN report from May 2021 in calling for more powers for the WHO:

In its current form, the WHO does not possess such powers […]To move on with the treaty, WHO therefore needs to be empowered — financially, and politically.

It recommends the involvement of “non-state actors” such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation and International Labour Organisation in the negotiations, and suggests the treaty offer financial incentives for the early reporting of “health emergencies” [emphasis added]:

In case of a declared health emergency, resources need to flow to countries in which the emergency is occurring, triggering response elements such as financing and technical support. These are especially relevant for LMICs, and could be used to encourage and enhance the timely sharing of information by states, reassuring them that they will not be subject to arbitrary trade and travel sanctions for reporting, but instead be provided with the necessary financial and technical resources they require to effectively respond to the outbreak.

It doesn’t stop there, however. They also raise the question of countries being punished for “non-compliance”:

[The treaty should possess] An adaptable incentive regime, [including] sanctions such as public reprimands, economic sanctions, or denial of benefits.

To translate these suggestions from bureaucrat into English:

• If you report “disease outbreaks” in a “timely manner”, you will get “financial resources” to deal with them.
• If you don’t report disease outbreaks, or don’t follow the WHO’s directions, you will lose out on international aid and face trade embargoes and sanctions.

In combination, these proposed rules would literally incentivize reporting possible “disease outbreaks”. Far from preventing “future pandemics”, they would actively encourage them.

National governments who refuse to play ball being punished, and those who play along getting paid off is not new. We have already seen that with Covid.

Two African countries – Burundi and Tanzania – had Presidents who banned the WHO from their borders, and refused to go along with the Pandemic narrative. Both Presidents died unexpectedly within months of that decision, only to be replaced by new Presidents who instantly reversed their predecessor’s covid policies.

Less than a week after the death of President Pierre Nkurunziza, the IMF agreed to forgive almost 25 million dollars of Burundi’s national debt in order to help combat the Covid19 “crisis”.

Just five months after the death of President John Magufuli, the new government of Tanzania received 600 million dollars from the IMF to “address the covid19 pandemic”.

It’s pretty clear what happened here, isn’t it?

Globalists backed coups and rewarded the perpetrators with “international aid”. The proposals for the Pandemic treaty would simply legitimise this process, moving it from covert back channels to overtofficial ones.

Now, before we discuss the implications of new powers, let’s remind ourselves of the power the WHO already possesses:

• The World Health Organization is the only institution in the world empowered to declare a “pandemic” or Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
• The Director-General of the WHO – an unelected position – is the only individual who controls that power.

We have already seen the WHO abuse these powers in order to create a fake pandemic out of thin air…and I’m not talking about covid.

Prior to 2008, the WHO could only declare an influenza pandemic if there were “enormous numbers of deaths and illness” AND there was a new and distinct subtype. In 2008 the WHO loosened the definition of “influenza pandemic” to remove these two conditions.

As a 2010 letter to the British Medical Journal pointed out, these changes meant “many seasonal flu viruses could be classified as pandemic influenza.”

If the WHO had not made those changes, the 2009 “Swine flu” outbreak could never have been called a pandemic, and would likely have passed without notice.

Instead, dozens of countries spent millions upon millions of dollars on swine flu vaccines they did not need and did not work, to fight a “pandemic” that resulted in fewer than 20,000 deaths. Many of those responsible for advising the WHO to declare swine flu a public health emergency were later shown to have financial ties to vaccine manufacturers.

Despite this historical example of blatant corruption, one proposed clause of the Pandemic Treaty would make it even easier to declare a PHEIC. According to the May 2021 report “Covid19: Make it the Last Pandemic” [emphasis added]:

Future declarations of a PHEIC by the WHO Director-General should be based on the precautionary principle where warranted

Yes, the proposed treaty could allow the DG of the WHO to declare a state of global emergency to prevent a potential pandemic, not in response to one. A kind of pandemic pre-crime.

If you combine this with the proposed “financial aid” for developing nations reporting “potential health emergencies”, you can see what they’re building – essentially bribing third world governments to give the WHO a pretext for declaring a state of emergency.

We already know the other key points likely to be included in a pandemic treaty. They will almost certainly try to introduce international vaccine passports, and pour funding into big Pharma’s pockets to produce “vaccines” ever faster and with even less safety testing.

But all of that could pale in comparison to the legal powers potentially being handed to the director-general of the WHO (or whatever new “independent” body they may decide to create) to punish, rebuke or reward national governments.

A “Pandemic Treaty” that overrides or overrules national or local governments would hand supranational powers to an unelected bureaucrat or “expert”, who could exercise them entirely at his own discretion and on completely subjective criteria.

This is the very definition of technocratic globalism.

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This was first published in August 2021.

If we have come this far then we have fully isolated, characterized, and genetically sequenced an exogenous virus particle. However, we still have to show it is causally related to a disease. This is carried out by exposing a group of healthy subjects (animals are usually used) to this isolated, purified virus in the manner in which the disease is thought to be transmitted. If the animals get sick with the same disease, as confirmed by clinical and autopsy findings, one has now shown that the virus actually causes a disease. This demonstrates infectivity and transmission of an infectious agent.

None of these steps has even been attempted with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, nor have all these steps been successfully performed for any so-called pathogenic virus. Our research indicates that a single study showing these steps does not exist in the medical literature.

Instead, since 1954, virologists have taken unpurified samples from a relatively few people, often less than ten, with a similar disease. They then minimally process this sample and inoculate this unpurified sample onto tissue culture containing usually four to six other types of material — all of which contain identical genetic material as to what is called a “virus.” The tissue culture is starved and poisoned and naturally disintegrates into many types of particles, some of which contain genetic material. Against all common sense, logic, use of the English language and scientific integrity, this process is called “virus isolation.” This brew containing fragments of genetic material from many sources is then subjected to genetic analysis, which then creates in a computer-simulation process the alleged sequence of the alleged virus, a so called in silico genome. At no time is an actual virus confirmed by electron microscopy. At no time is a genome extracted and sequenced from an actual virus. This is scientific fraud.

The observation that the unpurified specimen — inoculated onto tissue culture along with toxic antibiotics, bovine fetal tissue, amniotic fluid and other tissues — destroys the kidney tissue onto which it is inoculated is given as evidence of the virus’ existence and pathogenicity. This is scientific fraud.

From now on, when anyone gives you a paper that suggests the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been isolated, please check the methods sections. If the researchers used Vero cells or any other culture method, you know that their process was not isolation. You will hear the following excuses for why actual isolation isn’t done:

1. There were not enough virus particles found in samples from patients to analyze.
2. Viruses are intracellular parasites; they can’t be found outside the cell in this manner.

If No. 1 is correct, and we can’t find the virus in the sputum of sick people, then on what evidence do we think the virus is dangerous or even lethal? If No. 2 is correct, then how is the virus spread from person to person? We are told it emerges from the cell to infect others. Then why isn’t it possible to find it?

Finally, questioning these virology techniques and conclusions is not some distraction or divisive issue. Shining the light on this truth is essential to stop this terrible fraud that humanity is confronting.

For, as we now know, if the virus has never been isolated, sequenced or shown to cause illness, if the virus is imaginary, then why are we wearing masks, social distancing and putting the whole world into prison?

Finally, if pathogenic viruses don’t exist, then what is going into those injectable devices erroneously called “vaccines,” and what is their purpose? This scientific question is the most urgent and relevant one of our time.

We are correct. The SARS-CoV2 virus does not exist.

Sally Fallon Morell, MA

Dr. Thomas Cowan, MD

Dr. Andrew Kaufman, MD

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Notes

¹ Isolation, characterization and analysis of bacteriophages from the haloalkaline lake Elmenteita, KenyaJuliah Khayeli Akhwale et al, PLOS One, Published: April 25, 2019. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0215734 — accessed 2/15/21

² “Extracellular Vesicles Derived From Apoptotic Cells: An Essential Link Between Death and Regeneration,” Maojiao Li1 et al, Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, 2020 October 2. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2020.573511/full — accessed 2/15/21

³ “The Role of Extracellular Vesicles as Allies of HIV, HCV and SARS Viruses,” Flavia Giannessi, et al, Viruses, 2020 May

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While elite control over human societies started to gather pace with the Neolithic revolution 12,000 years ago, it was rapidly accelerated with the dawn of human civilization 7,000 years later. Since that time, ‘ordinary’ human beings like you and me have fought an unending sequence of battles to defend ourselves against these ongoing efforts by elites to kill or control us and capture the bulk of Earth’s resources for their own use.

We have had to fight off elites in a vast range of contexts: Pharaohs and Emperors politically, the Popes and other Vatican officials religiously, the City of London Corporation and other financial elites economically, monarchs and political elites nationally, and now a Global Elite that exercises enormous control technologically, economically, politically, militarily and otherwise over the entire world. For a fuller explanation of this point, see ‘Why Activists Fail’.

But there is a profound difference between all of the battles in earlier eras and the one we are in now.

If we lose this battle, there will be no subsequent battle.

The Long War against humanity will have been lost, once and for all.

Why? Because this battle is for everything that it means to be human – human identity, human freedom, human rights, privacy, dignity, free will and anything else that makes life worth living – and for control of the Earth and all its resources.

And while it is true that no human has any of these elements in anything like its entirety – who would claim to be fully ‘free’ in this world? – and many humans still lack all of these elements in any meaningful form, it is nevertheless true that the totalitarian nature of the program being imposed on us will transform the very concept of ‘human’ in a way that has only been conceived in the past 100 years or so and not previously attempted. Moreover, if successful, any ‘free will’ that humans might still possess will be utterly eliminated.

How is this Happening? The Deep Level

Despite the unending efforts of those people aware enough to perceive the true depth of this conflict, elites have been able to use a long series of techniques to ensure that the vast bulk of ‘ordinary’ people either do not perceive the conflict or waste their dissent by expressing it within frameworks designed and controlled by elites for that precise purpose. By doing this, it appears that dissent is ‘allowed’ and valued when, in fact, it is simply dissipated.

Thus, one key way in which elites have been able to subdue effective resistance is to convince us to believe in the delusion of ‘democracy’: to make us believe the twin delusions that we actually make choices about who will govern us and that those we elect will then represent us.

See ‘Killing Democracy Once and for All: The Global Elite’s Coup d’état That Is Destroying Life as We Know It’.

A second way in which elites have been able to distract us from where the real power in society lies is by convincing us that we have ‘legal recourse’ against injustice, including against elites who kill and exploit us. See

‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’.

A third way in which elites retain control over societies is by designing compulsory education systems that ensure that whatever unique emotional, intellectual, sensory and physical potential a child has at birth is either utterly eliminated within a few years of that birth or channeled to serve elite will.

See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

And, of course, elites control populations by using extensive propaganda – marketed variously as ‘education’, ‘entertainment’ and ‘news’ – to ensure the passive submission of the bulk of the population to elite directives.

In short, an unending sequence of violence – ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ – is used to terrorize the individual throughout childhood and adolescence into submissive obedience. This violence ensures that only a rare individual survives with any sense of ‘Self’, with the capacity to critique society and resist violence and exploitation strategically. See

‘Why Violence?’ and

‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So here we are in 2022, deeply engaged in the final battle to defend humanity, with most of the population unaware of what is happening and the bulk of those who are aware dissipating their dissent through elite-controlled channels.

Hence, as the World Economic Forum puts it so clearly in one of its promotional videos: By 2030, ‘You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.’

See ‘8 predictions for the world in 2030’.

And that could well become true for the simple reason that key measures of the transformation taking place are shifting wealth from those with less to those who will shortly own everything, including you, as Dr Joseph Mercola points out – see ‘Who Will Eventually Own Everything, Including You?’ – and the technologies that will destroy your volition will also remove any concept of happiness.

In short, a transhuman slave needs nothing and experiences only those emotions that are programmed. A transhuman slave, whether as worker, soldier or consumer, will simply perform its programmed tasks until it is no longer functional and is ‘decommissioned’.

A human being without free will cannot resist because they do not know that they are enslaved.

How is this Happening? The Superficial Level

Well, under cover of a ‘virus’ that has never been isolated (and hence proven to exist) – see ‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’, ‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’ and

‘187 health/science institutions globally all failed to cite even 1 record of “SARS-COV-2” purification, by anyone, anywhere, ever’ – the Global Elite has been implementing its final ‘kill and control’ agenda via the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ which details changes to some 200 areas of human life. See ‘The Great Reset’. As a matter of interest, do you remember being consulted about whether, for example, you would prefer to eat laboratory-grown ‘meat’ and insects rather than real food?

In fact, this ‘Great Reset’ is a long-planned and complex series of actions designed to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population and leave those left alive as transhuman slaves in a technocratic world. For some detail, see

‘The Global Elite’s “Kill and Control” Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security’ and

‘Sleepwalking into Hell: The Global Elite’s Technological Coup d’état Against Humanity’.

Every day, while most people content themselves with trying to get on with living some version of the life that they experienced prior to 2020, another detail is mapped out and another measure is taken by compliant politicians in one or more countries around the world to destroy everything we have ever known. And the noose is ever-tightening.

Let me offer you just a taste of what else is happening, beyond what is ordinarily discussed as part of the ‘Great Reset’, as elements of the Global Elite’s agenda, about which you are not being consulted or even given thoughtful critiques to consider in government and corporate media.

The World Health Organization: International Health Regulations & the Pandemic Treaty

The World  Health Organization continues to promote its initiative to create a ‘Pandemic Treaty’. Using wonderful-sounding words such as ‘to build a more robust global health architecture that will protect future generations’, the Treaty sounds like something we have all been dreaming about. See

‘Global leaders unite in urgent call for international pandemic treaty’.

But like all elite initiatives of this nature, the devil is in the detail and, often enough, hidden in plain sight. Rather than offer a detailed critique here, you can consider several fine critiques by thoughtful scholars in the following articles or videos:

• James Roguski: ‘These proposed amendments will cede additional sovereignty, control and legal authority over to the World Health Organization.’ See ‘WAKE UP and Smell the Burning of Our Constitution’.

• Kit Knightly: The ‘Pandemic Treaty’ would ‘hand supranational powers to an unelected bureaucrat or “expert”, who could exercise them entirely at his own discretion and on completely subjective criteria. This is the very definition of technocratic globalism.’ See ‘“Pandemic Treaty” will hand WHO keys to global government’.
• Tessa Lena: ‘the proposed World Health Organization pandemic treaty… can potentially eradicate national sovereignty as we know it’. See ‘WHO Pandemic Treaty and the Banality of Evil’.
• Dr Joseph Mercola: ‘Make no mistake, the WHO pandemic treaty is a direct attack on the sovereignty of its member states, as well as a direct attack on your bodily autonomy.’ See ‘The WHO Pandemic Treaty. A Backdoor to Global Governance: “Stripping Away Individual Rights and Liberties”’.
• Professor Anthony J. Hall: ‘The creation of such a treaty would strip away jurisdiction from national, state, and provincial governments. Elected governments would cede away the right to formulate local health care policies through democratic means in the public interest.’ See ‘“Financial Reset” and Economic Warfare against Humanity: How Global Relations Should Be Restructured to Ensure National Sovereignty’.

But it would be unwise to ascribe too much significance to these latest, ongoing encroachments on national sovereignty. As explained above, the Global Elite has long exercised control over national governments (as well as international organizations) and the ongoing formalization of this process through the various measures outlined immediately above are simply the latest (health) details in this long-standing process.

Consequently, rather than focusing our resistance on these latest details by, yet again, falling for the trap of lobbying elite agents, as suggested by organizations such as the World Council for Health – see ‘#StopTheWHO: How You Can Take a Stand Against International Health Regulation Amendments’ – it is superior strategy to focus our resistance on the entire elite agenda by undermining elite power at its source.

World Government Summit

The World Government Summit was held in Dubai on 29-30 March 2022. See ‘World Government Summit 2022’. The event was sponsored and hosted by the United Arab Emirates, that bastion of ruthless dictatorship and human rights abuses – see ‘United Arab Emirates 2021’ – and brought together ‘thought leaders, global experts and decision makers from around the globe to share and contribute to the development of tools, policies, and models that are essential in shaping future governments.’ See ‘World Government Summit 2022’.

Klaus Schwab at the 2022 World Government Summit (Source: The Last American Vagabond)

‘The World Government Summit community is an opportunity for thought-leaders from the public and private sectors to join forces with world-renowned experts to design a better life for citizens across the world. Through Memberships and Partnerships, the Summit brings together change makers to shape a better future for humanity.’ See ‘World Government Summit: Community’.

It is reassuring to know that the WGS felt that the views of constituencies of ‘ordinary’ people – women, indigenous peoples, working people, the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, farmers, non-white peoples, religious people… – were not required and that the ‘world renowned experts’ were quite capable of designing ‘a better life for citizens across the world’ without even consulting us. Surely, after all, these high profile people fully understand the daily struggles of those who battle to survive, have a different worldview or are just simply not white, wealthy and ‘well-connected’.

In any case, as the host country’s long record reminds us, human rights are to be eviscerated in the world that is now being introduced, which is why those attending the Summit were obviously very supportive of the UAE’s ruthless approach to human rights.

As Derrick Broze noted in his thoughtful critique of this gathering: ‘Anyone with a functioning brain should… pay attention to this little known gathering of globalist Technocrats… [who] imagine a world where the tyrannical technological systems are invisible and the average person has zero recourse for preventing exclusion or punishment based on their social credit score.’ See ‘While You Were Distracted by Will Smith, the International Elitists Met at The World Government Summit’.

The Great Narrative

The Great Narrative was a forum sponsored by the World Economic Forum from 10-13 November 2021. According to the WEF: It was ‘a collaborative effort of the world’s leading thinkers to fashion longer-term perspectives and co-create a narrative that can help guide the creation of a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable vision for our collective future.’ The gathering involved ‘Top thinkers from a variety of geographies and disciplines – including futurists, scientists and philosophers – [to] contribute fresh ideas for the future.’

See ‘The Great Narrative’.

Again, perhaps like me, you find it difficult to identify with the people at this gathering. I wonder if they could see things from your perspective? Or mine?

The good news is that Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, authors of the original book on Covid-19: The Great Reset, also wrote a book about The Great Narrative: For a Better Future. So at least you can read what they are doing to you and plan to do to you. As long as you can read between the lines.

But, again, Derrick Broze has been kind enough to offer a thoughtful critique:

Authoritarians use great narratives to legitimize their own power, and they do this by claiming to have knowledge and understanding that speaks to a universal truth…. With this understanding, the WEF’s call for a ‘Great Narrative’ should be seen for what it truly is – an attempt to displace all other visions of the future of humankind by placing the WEF and their partners at the heart of a narrative which paints them as the heroes of our time. This fits perfectly with the Technocratic philosophy employed by WEF founder Klaus Schwab. He envisions a future where ‘public-private partnerships’ of government and private business and so-called philanthropies use their wealth, influence, and power to design the future they believe is best for humanity. In actuality, the Technocrat philosophy merges with a Transhumanist mindset that sees humanity as limited, flawed, and in need of augmentation by technology in order to accelerate what Schwab calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution…. Of course, for Schwab and other globalists, the 4IR also lends itself towards more central planning and top-down control. The goal is a track and trace society where all transactions are logged, every person has a digital ID that can be tracked, and social malcontents are locked out of society via social credit scores. See ‘The Great Narrative and The Metaverse, Part 1: A Dystopian Vision of the Future’.

Sound like the sort of world that will be good for you?

Defeating the Global Elite’s Agenda

As you ponder the enormity of this elite project, I hope it will encourage you to deeply consider what meaningful resistance in this context will entail. We cannot succeed if we beg elite agents, including politicians, to fix it for us. In the last 18 months, five presidents who resisted the elite-driven narrative have been assassinated to remind us of that.

A Global Elite that is criminally insane – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – is dealing with us ruthlessly and comprehensively.

So resisting it effectively and, ultimately, defeating its agenda, will require focused, strategic action that undermines the power of the Elite to implement its plan.

If you are interested in being part of this strategy, you can read how to do so on the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ website which offers further analysis, resources and a list of 29 strategic goals for doing so.

This includes campaigning to cause all sectors of society to refuse to develop and make available, or to purchase/use, technologies associated with the fourth industrial revolution and transhumanism (including 5G and 6G, military weapons, artificial intelligence [AI], big data, nanotechnology and biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things [IoT], and quantum computing) because these technologies will subvert human identity, human freedom, human dignity, human volition and/or human privacy.

See ‘Strategic Goals related to resisting the fourth industrial revolution and/or transhumanism’.

Beyond this it involves engaging with frontline personnel – ranging from police, the military (as well as veterans) and firefighters to healthcare professionals as well as emergency call-takers – to not enforce elite directives that are being implemented by governments. For just a few examples of frontline worker organizations already resisting part or all of the elite program,

see Police for Freedom, Global Veterans Alliance, World Doctors Alliance, Operation Freedom of Choice, Australian Firefighters Alliance and Bravest For Choice.

In addition and more simply, you can download a one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, now available in 15 languages (Czech, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish & Slovak) with more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here:

‘The 7 Days Campaign to Resist the Great Reset’.

Notably, these latter actions avoid certain problems. Because they involve actions by people dispersed throughout the population, rather than people concentrated in one location (as with rallies), they are extremely difficult to interrupt. Hence, they virtually eliminate the risk of violent repression.

If strategically resisting the ‘Great Reset’ (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group (with a link available from the website).

Conclusion

The insane Global Elite has launched the final stage of a long-planned program to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population and enslave those left alive. They have agents (including international organizations such as the UN and WHO, politicians, medical personnel, government and corporate media) throughout society playing a part in implementing this program on their behalf.

If we are to defeat this program we must mobilize sufficient thoughtful and courageous people to act strategically to undermine the power of the Global Elite to inflict this program upon us. This can be done as described above.

As you ponder your involvement, remember this. If we do not fight successfully now to defend our humanity, no human being will have the opportunity to fight in future. It is ‘now or never’ for us all.

In that sense, this is the final battle.

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. He is a regular contributor to ‘Global Research’.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with a handbag full of unique message on Russia-Ukraine crisis and its geopolitical implications, has made a snapshot trip to North Africa and the Middle East, including visiting Algeria and Oman. Given what has been referred to as “special military operation” in Ukraine republic and the pressure of Western sanctions, and the fear of isolation, it is however important for Moscow to maintain several-years-old traditional ties with its partners in these two regions.

Within the Maghreb, Algeria remains one of the reliable partners for Moscow, and consequently Lavrov noting that Moscow and Algiers are united by strong and friendly relations, highlighted plans to boost military and technical cooperation, and also to ensure the renewal of a strategic agreement (treaty) that aims at scaling up  bilateral relations. The Declaration on Strategic Partnership signed on April 4, 2001 promotes the development of political dialogue and stepping up cooperation between the two parties.

“All these years we have been actively developing trade and economic cooperation,” Russia’s top diplomat said at a meeting with his Algerian counterpart Ramtane Lamamra. According the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports, Lavrov noted that given “the rapidly developing friendly ties” it was necessary to maintain the high level of cooperation to sign “a new inter-state strategic document, which will reflect the new quality of our relations.”

The two diplomats were together meeting early April, when Lamamra visited Moscow as part of an Arab League delegation for negotiations on Ukraine. On the other hand, Lavrov last visited Algeria in 2019. Reports indicate that Algeria is among Russia’s three major trade partners in Africa. Besides economic cooperation, Moscow and Algiers claim fighting against terrorism. Algeria has been making its contributions to the International Counterterrorism Database established on Russia’s initiative.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, on May 10, received Lavrov, both noted that Algiers is in favour of building further and stronger a comprehensive partnership, especially with a long history and one which is founded on principles of friendship and trust, with the Russian Federation. During the meeting, he reiterated an invitation to President of Algeria Abdelmadjid Tebboune on behalf of President of Russia Vladimir Putin to pay an official visit to the Russian Federation.

These developments are of particular significance this year as Russia and Algeria mark 60 years of diplomatic ties. The fast-growing trade and economic ties between the two countries was also highlighted. Algeria is one of Russia’s biggest trading partners on the African continent, with trade reaching $3 billion in 2022. In addition, Russia and Algeria work together closely under OPEC+ and the Gas Exporting Countries Forum.

Reports highlighted the development of military-technical cooperation, which has firm roots and good prospects. Moscow appreciates the trust Algerian friends put in the matter of strengthening Algeria’s defence capability. There are good prospects for continuing this trend. In addition, many Russian companies are interested in implementing joint projects with Algerian partners in energy, mineral resources, geological exploration, and pharmaceuticals.

Lavrov’s trip was aimed at ensuring that there are no plans to violate their obligations to Russia, particularly in the field of oil and gas supplies. In addition, Moscow sought to demonstrate that it continued to have its attention focused on the Middle East, the local Russian media Kommersant writes in its assessment and analytical news report.

The countries of the region have not joined the West’s sanctions against Moscow but they are concerned about the conflict’s impact on economic stability. Middle Eastern nations are considering the benefits that could be derived from the situation.

Western politicians are visiting the region one after another, hoping to find alternatives to Russian oil and gas. Major gas exporters, Qatar and Algeria, have found themselves in the center of the spotlight. Doha is already in talks with European partners. As for Algeria, it “cannot – and, most importantly, has no desire to – offer additional amounts of gas to Europe,” Director of the Center for African Studies at the Higher School of Economics Andrey Maslov noted.

In Oman located in the Middle East, Lavrov held meetings with Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said and Deputy Prime Minister for the Council of Ministers of Oman Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Said. Both separate discussions were based on the entire range of Russian-Omani relations.

The meetings appreciated Sultanate’s balanced and objective position on regional situations like the Syrian settlement, and that of Syria’s return to the League of Arab States. The Sultanate of Oman, which never closed its embassy in Damascus, can be instrumental in this regard.

Oman plays an important role in strengthening stability and security in the Gulf region. Muscat’s balanced position makes it an important neutral platform for various diplomatic initiatives. This approach absolutely resonates with Russia’s Collective Security Concept for the Persian Gulf.

“We noted Oman and Gulf Cooperation Council countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, positive role in advancing a Yemeni settlement,” Lavrov noted in remarks. “We are on the same page with the understanding that we must do everything we can to resume direct Palestinian-Israeli talks and to find ways to finally resolve this drawn-out conflict based on available internationally accepted legal solutions.”

Lavrov’s visit to Oman has a great significance as well.

“Oman has always sought to take a special position and have its own opinion on all issues. Oman is also an experienced mediator in regional affairs, including the Yemen issue and Iran’s nuclear program,” Russian International Affairs Council expert Kirill Semenov noted.

All in all, Lavrov’s tour of the Middle East turned out to be a timely one amid speculations in the regional media about Russia’s declining role in the Middle East and its diminishing presence in Syria.

“Russia is focused on maintaining its presence in the areas that it finds crucial, primarily near its military bases in Latakia and Tartus, as well as in the areas where the presence of Russian troops is envisaged by agreements, particularly with Turkey. In other places, it may be about a temporary presence,” Semenov explained.

The Arab world is also seeking peace in Ukraine. In early April, the Arab League said it was ready to contribute to a peaceful resolution between Russia and Ukraine, and a delegation led by Secretary General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit was sent to Moscow from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, the UAE and Sudan.

The Al Arabiya television channel reported citing its sources that the Arab League was prepared to offer its mediation to Russia and Ukraine and to host the negotiations. However, the group announced no specific initiatives a month after the report. As a member of the Arab League contract group, Algeria used this month’s negotiations to discuss some steps towards establishing peace in Ukraine republic.

In the meanwhile, as a direct result of the “special military operation” launched on February 24, Russia has come under a raft of stringent sanctions imposed by the United States and Canada, European Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and a host of other countries.

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

Featured image is from Russian Foreign Ministry/TASS

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Western media accuse Russia of perpetrating war crimes in Ukraine and committing human rights violations against civilians and prisoners. However, these same agencies are absolutely silent in the face of the evident practices of torture by Kiev’s agents against their enemies, which, curiously, present several similarities with the already known torture techniques applied by the CIA, according to a recent report by a journalist. The matter raises suspicions about a possible “instruction” that would be transmitted by American intelligence to Ukrainian neo-Nazis on “how to torture”.

On May 6, a meeting was held at the United Nations Security Council in order to discuss topics concerning the war crimes committed by Kiev against the population of Donbass during the eight years of conflict. Various evidence was presented, showing that such crimes are real and constitute indeed a serious problem in the region. The proofs included photos, videos, oral testimonies from residents of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as many other materials collected by journalists on the ground.

One of the journalist team’s leaders is the Dutch independent reporter Sonja van den Ende, who categorically claims that there is irrefutable evidence of the collaboration between Ukrainian official forces and neo-Nazi battalions in the execution of such crimes, showing that the practice is institutionalized and not restricted to isolated paramilitary groups. She also states that, despite the material presented, some Western countries – mainly US, UK, and France – showed an “arrogant” attitude, being disrespectful to the delicacy of the subject and ignoring the evidence of suffering of the people of Donbass, as well as despising the work of journalists.

These were some of her words:

“I participated in the UN Security Council Arria-Formula meeting on 6 May 2022 (…) The goal of this meeting was to present to the United Nations (UN) members evidence about war crimes committed by the Ukrainian Army in cooperation with the Azov Battalion which was provided by us, journalists on the ground, in Donbass. The evidence was presented in the form of videos and oral testimonies, from residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, especially Mariupol, Volnovakha and Melitiopol (…) [However] They (Western countries) completely ignored us and didn’t ask any questions (…) I personally made some remarks at the end of the meeting. I asked them if they want WWIII and why they don’t listen to us, the journalists, who are working on the ground”.

More than simply ignoring the gravity of the facts, the representatives of the Western powers even tried to deny the irrefutable evidence of such crimes. Rodney Hunter, political coordinator for the US Mission to the United Nations, claimed that Russia was “misusing” the Council’s functions and “spewing falsehoods, disinformation, lies and false narratives”. He ignored the fact that the accusations were not simply “made by Russia” but corroborated by an international team of journalists.

In fact, this Western attitude was already expected by all analysts who study the Ukrainian case. Silence and disdain have already become central hallmarks of the way Kiev’s allies deal with the countless evidence of war crimes, genocide and torture committed by the Ukrainian armed forces and Russophobic neo-Nazi militias. Russia has been trying to resolve the case in international instances for a long time, but without success, as is the case with the lawsuit filed within the European Court and ignored by the judges. The impossibility of peaceful resolution was one of the reasons why the military operation became inevitable.

What seems most shocking, however, is the fact that the reports pointed out by Van den Ende states as a conclusion that there is a similarity in practices between the acts of torture witnessed in the Donbass and those practiced by US agents in other parts of the world. Some of the journalists who participated in the investigations in Donbass, including Sonja herself, had previously participated in similar activities elsewhere, investigating crimes of torture committed by Americans. These professionals see an extreme similarity of practices in both cases and believe that this is not a mere coincidence.

The Dutch journalist stated that the torture techniques she saw practiced in a secret Ukrainian prison in Mariupol are strikingly similar to those practiced by the CIA in clandestine detention sites around the world. These techniques include acts of extreme violence, such as the so-called “enhanced interrogations”, where the interrogated are physically hurt in order to give information – a practice that was already confirmed by the US Senate, in 2014, to have been used by the CIA against prisoners.

Furthermore, Van den Ende claims that she has found evidence that Ukrainian neo-Nazis practice the so-called “waterboarding”, a drowning technique that is also widely used by the CIA, which leads her to believe that the Azov Battalion and other Ukrainian nationalist militias have been specifically trained by the Americans on “how to torture” their detainees.

Considering the high level of proximity between US intelligence and Ukrainian neo-Nazis, it does not seem surprising that the US has in fact operated some sort of clandestine training, teaching torture techniques considered “efficient”. What is surprising is that international organizations remain silent in the face of such an absurd fact. Something so serious cannot in any way be ignored: sanctions must be applied against the US for its connivance with Ukrainian crimes in Donbass.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

It’s amazing how NATO and the EU can watch the crisis in Ukraine and not reflect on issues like these:

1) Prioritising weapons over all other security tools creates neither security nor sustainable peace; it creates hubris, anti-intellectualism and militarism.

2) Alliances can only thrive if they appoint enemies.

3) Military deterrence doesn’t work but stimulates escalation. With confrontational policies and offensive weapons, there can never be common security, stability or peace.

4) Applying one set of rules for “us” – e.g. the international rules-based order in contravention of UN-based international law – and another for “them” is moral fraud.

5) Creating hard borders with polarisation is unwise. Lacking empathy and a sense of history makes for counterproductive, self-destructive decisions.

6) Peace is about analysing the conflicts – or problems – that always stand between the parties. War happens when conflicts are neglected.

Since 1949, NATO has promised its taxpayers that they would live in peace. But today’s Europe is closer to catastrophe than ever before.

The world-domineering Western paradigm of security politics has come to its end. But more dollars and weapons are pumped into it.

By and large, the EU sides with and submits to US policies because, as a Union, it has failed to develop an independent comprehensive one-voice foreign and security policy.

Immediately after the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, it resorted to tit-for-tat devoid of analyses of the longer-term consequences to basically cut off – cancel – everything Russian. This is blind punishment and hate mood as if Russia would not exist in the future.

Next, it argued that China should put pressure on Russia and “help” the West to stop that war and that China should face negative consequences if it doesn’t.

Whether this is a genuine plea for help or another way of promoting the Western Cold War agenda vis-a-vis China remains to be seen. This attitude will prevent progress at the upcoming China-EU summit.

The West’s sanctions on Russia are extraordinarily ill-considered and will have self-destructive consequences. For a while, they will surely hurt the Russian innocent people, but they will, beyond a doubt,  boomerang back on the West, with a deep socio-economic crisis following.

Russia will see no reason to work with the West in the future – and will orient itself toward countries including Iran, India, and China. Contrary to the increasingly unreal and autistic perceptions of the West, the whole world does not support its reactions to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.

The European Union has displayed a politically and rhetorically anti-China stand – on issues related to China’s Xinjiang, Hongkong, Taiwan, as well as provacation of Lithuania – but is now asking China to “help” solve a problem which several Union members have contributed vitally to as NATO members.

NATO’s confrontational expansion was always unwise. NATO should have been closed down when the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union dissolved.

History is catching up. The EU has failed miserably in living up to its own Lisbon Treaty and failed to work for peace inside the Union and the world.

If the EU/NATO members had distanced themselves from the US-promoted coup in Kiev in 2014 and insisted on other security arrangements for Ukraine’s future instead of full NATO membership, the world would not be in this dangerous situation.

The US and NATO want to tie up Russia’s militarily for as long as possible and undermine its economy and society, then turn to what it foolishly believes is its No.1 adversary: China.

Russia, of course, has other options and should negotiate a ceasefire and a new future relationship with Ukraine. The EU will have to become more independent to contribute constructively to the emerging multi-polar world order.

Europe desperately needs an entirely new all-European security and peace system, a kind of European UN, based on common security with Russia, trans-armament toward defensive military structures, non-threatening postures, early warning and – above all – civilian, civilised negotiations, instead of defunct and militarist escalatory deterrence.

In this sense, the NATO-Russia conflict in Ukraine could be used as a constructive turning point. It should mark the end of the outdated NATO paradigm and its peaceless policies.

It would be good for humanity if the East and West Europeans could creatively recognise their common interests and thereby do good for the future of humanity and practise cooperation instead of confrontation with China.

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Jan Oberg is director at the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research in Lund, Sweden.

Featured image: China-EU relationship (Photo: VCG)

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***

The war in Ukraine is quintessentially Clausewitzean. And to understand it, we need to return to Carl von Clausewitz, the doyen of modern war, who recognised that war is practically limitless in variety, “complex and changeable,” and noting that every age has its particular kind of war with “its own limiting conditions and its own particular preconceptions.” 

Clausewitz’s contemporaneous observations of the character of nineteenth-century warfare are often misinterpreted confusingly as an advocacy of the unchanging nature of war itself. This paradigmatic complacency has engendered the Western narrative of the Ukraine conflict. 

Evidently, the Russian side did not conform to the Western narrative. The ensuing bewilderment threatens to fragment western unity. Not all NATO countries are anymore speaking in one voice. 

The US President Joe Biden and Britain’s Boris Johnson vow that they will be satisfied with nothing less than a Russian defeat. The New Europeans — Poland and the Baltic States principally — also demand an apocalyptic end to Russia’s history. Somewhat aloof stands Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz who merely says he doesn’t want Russia to “win.” France’s Emmanuel Macron keeps saying that without engaging Russia, European security architecture cannot be built. Then, there are outright sceptics like Greece, Turkey and Hungary. 

Biden and Johnson have the upper hand since they manipulate the current set-up in Kiev and leverage the war. But even these two hardened politicians seem to realise lately that things are more complicated. The Joint Vision Statement issued in Washington yesterday following the US-ASEAN special summit completely eschews the usual American rhetoric and hyperbole over Russian “aggression.”

It omits any references to Russia or the Western sanctions and instead underlines “the importance of an immediate cessation of hostilities and creating an enabling environment for peaceful resolution.” (See my blog Indo-Pacific strategy adrift in an illusion.) 

Nonetheless, incredible as it may seem, the fact remains that the US Congress is offering Biden a massive war budget to help Ukraine, which exceeds the state department’s annual budget and is more than what he proposes to spend on green energy projects in the US. 

Equally, the EU, which imposed such harsh sanctions on Russia, are realising belatedly that the sanctions are hurting European economies more than the Russian economy. In some European countries, the annual rate of inflation is approaching 20%, while prices in the eurozone increased by over 11%, on average. During a videoconference in Moscow on Thursday, President Putin highlighted that:

• Russian companies are steadily replacing Western partners who left due to sanctions; 
• 130 million tonnes of grain expected in Russia’s harvest this year, including 87 million tonnes of wheat — “an all-time high in Russian history”; 
• Inflation rates in Russia have fallen several-fold on March levels;
• Budget surplus have reached 2.7 trillion rubles; 
• There has been a record-breaking foreign trade surplus; 
• The ruble is posting “better results than all other foreign currencies” since early 2022.  

Critical voices are heard lately that anti-Russia sanctions are only exacerbating the US inflation crisis, and that prioritising aid to Ukraine is distracting Biden from more important domestic issues. Senator Rand Paul has demanded auditing of the gravy train to Ukraine, citing the analogy of Afghan war. He noted that the latest spending package will bring total US aid to Ukraine to $60 billion since the conflict began in February, which is nearly as much as Russia earmarks annually for its entire defence budget! 

Yet, Russia has no timeline for this war. It is taking its own time to systematically destroy Ukraine’s military capabilities, industrial base and infrastructure comprehensively. Biden and Johnson thought attrition would set in, as Russia is fighting the “collective West,” after all.  

But Putin reminded them on Thursday that Russia won World War II “not only by fighting on the frontlines, but also because of its economic might. At the time, it [Russia] had to confront not only Germany’s industrial potential, but Europe as a whole, enslaved as it was by the Nazis.” Putin deliberately shot off a stark reminder that will resonate in Europe. 

An EU consensus on oil embargo against Russia already seems elusive. Twenty European companies have so far complied with Moscow’s end-May deadline to make payments for gas purchases in ruble currency. And they include Germany, Europe’s powerhouse. 

The EU’s top executives, Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, two ardent Atlanticists and hardcore Russophobes, pushed the envelope too far. Will EU unity survive these cracks? Scholz’s call to Putin Friday, which reopened a line of communication after several weeks, needs to be understood against this backdrop. Interestingly, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin also spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu on Friday — their first conversation since Russian operations began in February. 

Indeed, it is entirely conceivable that the time may be approaching to revisit the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. The closure of all Russian pipelines passing through Poland and Ukraine’s pipeline shutdown leaves Germany tantalisingly close to electricity shortage interrupting industrial production. (here and here)

Bloomberg reports, citing data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that despite Western sanctions, Russia’s oil export revenue jumped some 50% in 2022. Russian shipments have increased by some 620,000 barrels per day in April, returning to their pre-sanctions average. Due to increased demand, more shipments were directed toward Asia. Ironically, the EU, despite the executive’s hardline stance, has so far remained the largest market for Russian fuel with 43% of the country’s oil exports going to the bloc in April, the IEA estimated.

Paradigms, to be relevant, must accurately reflect the reality. When that is no longer possible, the paradigms must be replaced, or the leaderships that rely upon them will inevitably fail. Politicians like Biden and Johnson are used to thinking in terms of a Westphalian world, and are taking time to come to terms with anomalies in the existing paradigm when new powerful trends are dramatically altering the concept of war. 

Karl Marx called it the “annihilation of space by time.” The phenomenon of regional conflict has become extinct, and localised violence has global implications thanks to advancement of transportation and communication and technologies. The paradigm-shifting present period is caused by a military-industrial revolution, which makes it a period of sharp, discontinuous change where existing military regimes are being upended by new more dominant ones, leaving old ways of warfare behind. 

One would have thought that on a Clausewitzian battlefield, ancient armies arrayed against one another would fire and manoeuver according to the commander’s directions. But in Ukraine, by contrast, these have been replaced with ambient forms of physical and nonphysical violence—sniping, lethal drones, hypersonic missiles, electronic attack, spoofing, disinformation on the other and so on. Russia is practising a warfare that the West is not used to — where wars aren’t won anymore. It is highly unlikely that there will be a ceremonial occasion bringing the Ukraine war to an end. 

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Featured image: Russia expects grain harvest of 130 million tonnes of grain, including 87 million tonnes of wheat – “an all-time high in Russian history,” says President Vladimir Putin, Moscow, May 12, 2022 (Source: Indian Punchline)

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Early on Wednesday morning, Israeli forces shot and killed Shireen Abu Akleh, the veteran Palestinian journalist and senior correspondent with Al Jazeera Arabic, during a raid just outside a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. 

Abu Akleh, 51, was shot by a sniper as she attempted to cover the raid in Jenin, an incident her employer, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network described as “a blatant murder, violating international laws and norms”. At the time of the shooting, Akleh was wearing a vest that clearly identified her as a member of the press.

The incident, which also resulted in her colleague Ali Asmoadi being shot in the back, was witnessed by several other journalists including Middle East Eye contributor Shatha Hanaysha.

Akleh was transferred to Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin where she was pronounced dead.

As news of the shooting spread, the Israeli government began unrolling a series of statements and videos that contradicted events leading up to her death.

Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs released a video in which it claimed that “Palestinian terrorists, firing indiscriminately, are likely to have hit Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqla”.

Exactly an hour later after that statement was issued, the Israeli government released a statement on behalf of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in which his office attempted to further diffuse responsibility that added a cloud of uncertainty over the killing.

“According to the information we have gathered, it appears likely that armed Palestinians – who were firing indiscriminately at the time – were responsible for the unfortunate death of the journalist,” Bennett was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Hananya Naftali, an Israeli influencer who works with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also released a flurry of social media posts in which he falsely claimed that Abu Akleh had been buried almost immediately “because the Palestinian Authority wants to conceal the truth”.

Thirty minutes later, he performed a u-turn on this claim, too. Abu Akleh is scheduled to be buried on Friday.

It wasn’t long before mainstream western media news outlets began presenting the story as unclear.

Huwaida Arraf, long-time Palestinian-American activist and congressional nominee, told Middle East Eye that none of this was surprising.

“Israel’s propaganda machine plays a big role here. They deliberately muddle facts and present misinformation that the mainstream media faithfully repeats,” she said.

‘Clashes’ and ‘Palestinian bullets’

In its depiction of Abu Akleh’s murder, The Guardian described Al Jazeera as having “accused” Israel of killing one of its journalists, immediately balancing this claim by platforming the Israeli position that the journalist “may have been hit by Palestinian fire”.

Whereas Al Jazeera’s “accusation” was backed by witness testimony, the Israeli retort that it took place in the middle of clashes or a result of Palestinian cross fire came without any evidence.

Likewise, The Associated Press wrote that Abu Akleh had been “killed by gunfire”, purposefully obscuring the strong allegation that it was an Israeli sniper who had killed her.

The story also echoed Israeli talking points of “chaotic circumstances”, relegating Al Jazeera’s claim of a “targeted assassination” as hyperbole.

But the most alarming coverage came from the The New York Times which not only followed Israel’s official narrative, it also mischaracterised Al Jazeera’s official statement.

“Al Jazeera said one of its journalists was killed in the West Bank city of Jenin during clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen,” the Times wrote.

Al Jazeera did not mention clashes in its statement.

The New York Times issued a correction later on Wednesday, claiming to have “misstated” Al Jazeera’s comments.

“[Al Jazeera] said she was killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Jenin; it did not say she was killed during clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen,” the correction at the bottom of the story read.

“By the time corrections are made, people are no longer paying attention. In this case, plenty of journalists who were there when Shireen was killed, stated in no uncertain terms that it was the Israelis who shot at them,” Arraf said.

And even though the Times issued a correction, the erroneous reference to clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters remained in the story.

The Times only removed its attribution to Al Jazeera. In fact, by Thursday afternoon the story still claimed that there remained uncertainty over the details around the event, and that clashes were ongoing when the shooting took place.

“The circumstances surrounding the shooting of the journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American, were not immediately clear but it happened as clashes between the Israeli military and Palestinian gunmen took place in the city,” the Times wrote.

The New York Times did not respond to MEE’s response for clarity or comment by the time of publication.

Outrage towards mainstream coverage

The mainstream media’s coverage of Abu Akleh’s murder has left Palestinian rights activists in the United States aggrieved.

Much of the outrage is rooted in the knowledge that Israeli violence continues unabated with little recourse for justice.

According to Reporters Without Borders, at least 144 Palestinian journalists have been wounded by Israeli forces across the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem since 2018.

In May 2021, Israeli air strikes on Gaza destroyed Al Jalaa Tower, which housed a number of media offices used by outlets including MEE, Al Jazeera, the Associated Press, and other local media organisations.

In late April 2022, a formal complaint was filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC), alleging that Israel‘s “systematic targeting” of Palestinian journalists and its failure to investigate their killings amounts to war crimes.

“The hypocrisy of mainstream media coverage was on full display when journalists were positively covering Ukrainian civilians’ making and using Molotov cocktails as a form of brave resistance. Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian kids dead for holding a Molotov cocktail and you don’t hear a peep from the same journalists,” Arraf said.

Even though the Israeli military has yet to conclude its investigation, only publishing initial findings of its probe, the Israeli army has continued to push the message that there are indications that Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinian fire.

An unnamed Israeli official told Haaretz that this “PR blitz” has already influenced leading news organisations including The Associated Press, Sky News, the BBC, and AFP.

The official said that these agencies – which initially reported that Abu Akleh had been killed by Israeli fire – were now reporting that the circumstances of her death are under investigation.

‘Parroting Israeli talking points’

Nerdeen Kiswani, co-chair of Within Our Lifetime, a Palestinian American youth-led grassroots organisation based in New York City, described the mainstream media’s coverage as “disgusting, painful and hurtful”.

“You know, they’re not even saying who killed her. They’re just saying she died, you know, or that she got shot and they’re not really ascribing blame to the perpetrators in this situation,” Kiswani told MEE.

“And that is devastating because she spent her whole life uncovering Israeli violence and Israeli colonialism against Palestinian people. And then when they take away her life, the mainstream media won’t even do the due diligence of simply reporting the fact on who killed her.”

In response to the Times’ coverage, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an anti-Zionist organisation opposed to Israeli occupation, called on its members to write to newspaper’s editors to demand better coverage.

“Instead of reporting the facts – as confirmed by other journalists present at the scene, by video footage and by rights groups like B’Tselem – western media has simply parroted talking points from the Israeli military,” Sonya E Meyerson-Knox, communications director of JVP, told MEE.

“And so, instead of describing how an Israeli military sniper fired at the head of a clearly identified journalist, we have reports of “unclear circumstances” and no attribution of who actually killed Shireen. Biased reporting like this isn’t just racist, it’s broadcasting free propaganda for an apartheid regime.”

Others like Azadeh Shahshahani, director of Project South, said that if media coverage continued in this vein, it “would make them no less than complicit in covering up war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

“As we have seen with the war on Ukraine, media coverage is instrumental in shaping public opinion and guiding public policy. It is incumbent upon media outlets to start telling the truth about the atrocities of Israeli Apartheid,” Shahshahani said.

Several Palestinian organisations have said they would hold a rally on Friday evening outside the New York Times’ headquarters in Manhattan. Within our Lifetime said they will hold a vigil for Abu Akleh at the annual Nakba rally in Brooklyn on Sunday.

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

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***

The following is an unpublished transcript of an interview I did for a TV channel that covers issues of interest to the worldwide Sikh diaspora. It concerns three pieces of farm legislation in India that were repealed in late 2021 after a prolonged protest by India’s farmers that gained global support and recognition.

Although the interview took place before the laws were repealed, the issues discussed remain highly relevant. That is because farmers are concerned that the government is dragging its feet on a number of issues more than six months after the legislation was repealed, not least a guaranteed minimum support price for produce procured by the public and private sectors, loan default injustices and other matters that have fuelled and deepened the country’s agrarian crisis.

The government’s apparent reluctance to implement the demands of farmers might indicate that the global corporations and financial institutions behind the legislation remain steadfast in seeking to secure what the laws aimed to bring about – the full-scale neoliberal marketisation of India’s agrifood sector, including the displacement of peasant farmers and independent, indigenous enterprises.     

The interview took place with prominent UK-based campaigner Ranjit Singh Srai.

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Ranjit Singh Srai (RSS): There has been much said about PM Modi’s new farm laws in terms of the motivation and the potential effect on farmers as well as the wider population. The government’s narrative has been pushed by its media friends and those taking part in the agitation have had their arguments patronisingly rubbished and simply been targeted as foreign agents, criminals and even terrorists. How do you see the outcome of any implementation of these new laws and the motivation behind them?

Colin Todhunter (CT): The new farm laws are being narrowly framed by certain commentators and sections of the corporate media. We hear they will be good for farmers and good for consumers. Farmers will have more freedom of choice when it comes to selling their produce and we will see more distribution networks and opportunities emerge.

We also hear that farmers will receive good prices as well. Farmers are concerned about the minimum support price mechanism being done away with. But we also hear that this will not occur and, even if it does, it will not matter so much because farmers will still be receiving good prices as a result of the farm legislation.

So, it is all being portrayed as a great success for farmers, for consumers and for the agribusiness corporations. Once this narrative is established, as it has been, it becomes easy to portray anyone who questions any of it as being somehow politically motivated.

But this depiction of those who protest or raise uncomfortable questions about the farm laws is little more than a diversion. To properly understand the new legislation and the reasons behind it, we must go back 30 years to India’s foreign exchange crisis.

At that time, the IMF and the World Bank granted India the equivalent of £90 billion worth of loans (around double that figure in 2022 given inflation) in return for the government dismantling its state seed supply system and reducing public funding for agriculture. India was also directed to shift towards the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange and to move 400 million people from the countryside into the cities.

Although many factors are at play, reducing the public sector’s role and the consequent lack of support for agriculture in general have to a large extent fuelled the ongoing agrarian crisis in the country.

This plan for agriculture has been going on for a long time regardless of which party has been in power. But under the current administration and with the implementation of the three farm laws, this programme is set to be accelerated.

The farm legislation is intended to drastically dilute the role of the public sector in agriculture, reducing it to a mere facilitator of private capital, leading to the entrenchment of industrial agriculture and the replacement of small-scale farms. To put it in simple terms, the legislation is intended to deliver a knockout blow to small holder agriculture and the peasantry.

(It must be added here that this form of agriculture remains vital. Contrary to much mainstream thinking, it can be said that rural India subsidises urban India. It provides a vast but cheap pool of labour to work in more menial positions. Millions migrate between city and village, especially when times get tough. When work dries up – or when the COVID-related lockdown was enforced – they headed back to their villages to survive. Moreover, the money earned in the city can be insufficient to live on and farming activities bring in much-needed revenue.)

The norm will eventually be industrial GMO commodity crop agriculture suited to the needs of the likes of Cargill, Archer Daniel Midlands and India’s giant retail and agribusiness giants as well as global agritech seed and chemical corporations. It could result in hundreds of millions of former rural dwellers without any work given that India is heading towards or is already experiencing jobless growth.

It is unfortunate that prominent journalists and media outlets in India are celebrating the new farm legislation and have attempted to discredit farmers who are protesting as being anti national. As if handing over the sector to foreign corporations is in anyway serving the national interest. What prominent figures are actually doing, whether they are aware of it or not, is cheerleading for the destruction of local markets and small-scale enterprises – farmers, hawkers, food processers or mom and pop corner stores.

By implication, they are helping to ensure that India is surrendering control over its agrifood sector to global players. They are doing the bidding of the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and global agrifood corporations which want India to eradicate its buffer food stocks and dismantle the public food distribution system.

To understand what is planned for agriculture, we also need to understand what is planned for retail. This, too, could decimate millions of livelihoods in the retail sector. For example, Walmart entered India in 2016 with a multibillion dollar takeover of the retail start-up Jet.com. In 2018, this was followed by a takeover of India’s largest online retail platform, Flipkart. Today, Walmart and Amazon control almost two thirds of India’s digital retail sector.

In 2020, Facebook and a US based private equity firm committed over 7 billion U.S. dollars to Reliance Jio. It means that customers will soon be able to shop using Facebook’s chat application, WhatsApp.

These are key developments because, by monopolising digital retail platforms, these companies will not only control data about consumption and consumer preferences but will also control data on production, logistics, who needs what, when they need it, who should produce it, who should move it and when it should be moved. The online world and the offline world are not separate; they are intertwined. E-commerce platforms will be able to shape the entire physical economy.

What is concerning is that Amazon and Walmart have sufficient global clout to ensure they become a duopoly, controlling much of Indian agriculture, including the nature of agricultural production itself. Markets will no longer matter; so-called platforms will take over.

At the same time, the aim is to allow financial speculators and global agribusiness to buy up rural land and amalgamate it. The end game is a system of contract farming that serves the interests of big tech, big agribusiness and big retail. Small-holder agriculture and small-scale retail are regarded as impediments to this.

Through what is called ‘data-driven agriculture’, with the data owned and controlled by corporate interests, the farmer will be told how much production is expected, how much rain is anticipated, what type of soil quality there is, what type of genetically engineered seeds and input are required and when the produce needs to be ready.

Traders manufacturers and cultivators who remain in the system will become slaves to the platforms and stripped of any independence. It is a clear concern that India will cede control of its entire economy its politics and its culture to these all-powerful modern-day East India companies.

By reducing public sector buffer stocks, side-lining the role of the Food Corporation of India and by introducing corporate-dictated contract farming and full-scale neoliberal marketisation for the sale and procurement of produce, India will be sacrificing its farmers and its own food security for the benefit of a handful of unscrupulous billionaires who run Walmart, Reliance, Amazon, Facebook and the like.

Bayer, Cargill and the big tech giants and the rest of the corporate entourage that will benefit from the new legislation are depicted as the saviours of Indian agriculture and Indian farmers. But we should remind ourselves of how Monsanto sucked around $900 million from Indian farmers courtesy of its genetically modified seeds, while leaving small-scale and marginal farmers in what a pre-eminent US academic called a “corporate noose” of dependency and indebtedness.

Despite what industry-funded lobbyists and academics might say, BT cotton in India has been a failure. Monsanto helped itself, not Indian farmers.

RSS: PM Modi’s Hindutva, based on majoritarianism and authoritarianism, is working closely with and is supported by huge corporations that are taking over many sectors of the economy. To what extent do you see these new agricultural laws in that context?

CT: Both foreign and home-grown billionaires like Adani and Ambani have pushed for the farm laws and are determining policy in India. We are witnessing a crisis of democracy. The new farm legislation is but a symptom of this crisis.

Neoliberal globalisation is ultimately based on the deregulation of international capital flows, euphemistically called financial liberalisation. The dismantling of Bretton Woods and the deregulation of global capital movements have deepened the level of dependency of nation states on capital markets. In India, we can see the implications.

Global finance is in a position to dictate domestic policy. Successive administrations have made the country dependent on volatile flows of foreign capital and India’s foreign exchange reserves have been built up by borrowing and foreign investments. For policymakers, the fear of capital flight is ever present. Policies are often governed by the drive to attract and retain foreign capital inflows.

The Indian government has chosen to submit to the regime of foreign finance, awaiting signals on how much it can spend and giving up any notion of economic sovereignty. And as the state withdraws from aspects of public policy (under World Bank directives), the space left open becomes occupied by private players. We will see this with the new farm laws because this is what they are designed to  facilitate.

It is clear that the ongoing farmers protest in India is not just about farming. Given that around 60% of the population still rely on agriculture for a living, we are witnessing a struggle for the heart and soul of the country.

There is an intensifying struggle over space between local markets and global markets. The former are the domain of independent small-scale producers, cultivators and enterprises. The latter are dominated by large scale international retailers, commodity traders and the rapidly growing and highly influential e-commerce companies.

It is essential to protect local markets and indigenous, independent small-scale enterprises and farmers. This will ensure that India has more control over its food supply, the ability to determine its own policies and its own economic independence. In other words, the protection of food and national sovereignty and the capacity to pursue genuine democratic development.

But as a result of the farm legislation, we could see India bidding for food with borrowed funds on the open market. Instead of the Food Corporation of India continuing to procure and physically hold food stocks, thereby ensuring a degree of food security, the country will be at the mercy of international traders. This is why Modi places so much stress on the policy of foreign direct investment. Foreign reserves will be needed to procure food stocks. This constitutes a recipe for further dependency. It constitutes a reliance on foreign finance and global corporations.

Mainstream economic thinking passes this subjugation off as liberalisation. How the inability to determine your own economic policies and surrendering food security to outside forces is in anyway liberating is perplexing to say the least.

It is interesting to note that various reports from international human rights organisations recently downgraded India from being a free democracy to a partially free democracy. One report says India is now an electoral autocracy. How they ever considered India to be a free democracy in the first place is open to question. But these reports focused on the increase in anti-Muslim sentiment, clampdowns on freedom of expression and the restrictions on civil society since PM Modi took power.

The undermining of liberty in all these areas is cause for concern in its own right, but this trend towards divisiveness and authoritarianism serves another purpose. It diverts attention from the corporate takeover of the country, including agriculture. Whether it involves a divide and rule strategy along religious lines, the churning out of nationalistic sentiments, the suppression of free speech, pushing the farm bills through parliament without proper debate or the use of the police and the media to undermine the farmers protest, a major undemocratic heist is underway that will fundamentally adversely impact people’s livelihoods and the cultural and social fabric of the country.

RSS: You have, in your writings, linked self-determination with economic sovereignty and the need to challenge the authority and machinery of an over-powerful central state. To what extent can we protect the sovereignty of people and their livelihoods when, since 1947, one colonial master was simply replaced by another?

CT: On one side of this equation, there are the interests of a handful of multi billionaires who own corporations and platforms that seek to control India. On the other side, there are the interests of hundreds of millions of vendors, cultivators and small-scale enterprises who are regarded by these rich individuals as collateral damage to be displaced in their quest for ever-greater profit.

Indian farmers are on the frontline against global capitalism and a colonial style de-industrialisation of the economy. This is where the struggle for democracy and the future of India is taking place.

March to Delhi (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

There is a need for a fundamental reorganisation of the prevailing globalised food system. We require a system that reduces dependency on global conglomerates, external proprietary inputs, long supply chains, distant volatile commodity markets and patented technologies. Practical solutions to the agrarian crisis – it is a global crisis and these solutions universally apply – must be based on placing the farmer at the centre of policies. Policies centred on localisation, self-sufficiency, food sovereignty and agroecological principles.

India, like other countries, must delink from neoliberal globalisation. It must manage foreign trade and expand indigenous markets by protecting and encouraging small-scale enterprises, including smallholder agriculture. It must increase welfare expenditure by the state and commit to a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and income.

Genuine food security, in principle, derives from food sovereignty, which, in a broad sense, is based on the right of people and sovereign states and regions to democratically determine their own agricultural and food policies. Instead of rolling back the public sector and surrendering the food security of the nation to foreign corporations, there is a need for India to further expand official procurement and public distribution.

This would occur by extending government procurement to additional states in India and expanding the range of produce under the public distribution system. It would not only boost rural incomes but also address hunger and malnutrition, which is still a major issue in the country. If policymakers are really serious about boosting the rural economy, they would reject the corporate agenda and a reliance on rigged and unstable markets.

And if the various coronavirus-related lockdowns have shown anything, it is that regional and locally owned food systems are now required more than ever. But a solution that would genuinely address rural distress and malnutrition does not suit the agenda of global corporations.

This is why ordinary people need to push back and assert self-determination and democratic development, involving challenging the dominance of private capital and disputing the authority of central states which work to consolidate state-corporate power above the heads of ordinary people.

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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] 

Featured image: Ensemble of Government buildings on Rajpath in New Delhi, India (Licensed under FAL)

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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Discussions in Berlin about the supply of heavy equipment to Ukraine are ongoing, with lobbying for such supplies having the aim of forming a certain public opinion to drag Germany into a confrontation with Russia. The intense debate in the German government over the supply of heavy weapons to Ukraine, including the Flakpanzer Gepard anti-aircraft guns, leads to the country completely abandoning a less militaristic policy that was forced on the country after its defeat in World War II.

In addition, 60 Ukrainian soldiers arrived in Germany on May 11 to begin 40 days training on the five-man operated Howitzer 2000 artillery system, and other training centers are reportedly opened/opening, thus making the European economic powerhouse a proxy of Ukraine and a participant in the conflict.

Elements of the German government are lobbying for the supply of heavy weapons to Ukraine, particularly Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the other hand, takes a more cautious and balanced position, stating that the possibility of the Bundeswehr supplying more heavy weapons to Ukraine is practically exhausted. At the same time, he noted that Germany would continue to provide financial and military assistance to Ukraine.

None-the-less, Germany is still delaying the transfer of the Flakpanzer Gepard to Ukraine. According to Welt, citing a source in the Ukrainian government, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht did not provide correct information for obtaining weapons. The Minister did not inform the Ukrainian government that they would have to order the Flakpanzer Gepard directly from Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW). The German outlet reports that Kiev was told that it would receive tanks directly from the federal government.

The head of the German Defense Ministry announced that the contract would be between Ukraine and KMW, therefore excluding the participation of the federal government whose role was only to give permission for a deal. As a result, the actual timing of Gepard deliveries has not yet been determined.

What is being omitted from discussions is that German-supplied weapons, and from other Western countries, could end up in the hands of neo-Nazis organizations like the Azov Battalion and even onwards to extremist Islamic groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. According to Iraqi security military expert Jalil Khalaf: “America has sent a lot of weapons and so-called neo-Nazi volunteers to Ukraine. The very fact of this is a great danger not only for these countries, but also for the whole world, because no one rules out that these weapons can go to extremists or even IS.”

It is recalled that ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations in Syria received Western-made weapons that were initially supplied to so-called “moderate rebel groups.” With Ukraine still having access to the Black Sea via the major port city of Odessa and being within a close flight proximity, Western weapons could very much be smuggled from Ukraine in the post-war period to Islamic terrorist organizations on Russia’s frontier in the Caucasus, keeping in mind that both ISIS and Al-Qaeda have a presence in the region.

A US intelligence source told CNN on April 19, when speaking about weapons accountability in Ukraine, that:

“We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero. It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”

In addition, a US defense official said that in making the decision to send billions of dollars of weapons and equipment into Ukraine, the Biden administration factored in the risk that some of the shipments may ultimately end up in supposed unexpected places. But right now, the official said, the administration views a failure to adequately arm Ukraine as a greater risk.

It is more than likely that the West, including the US and Germany, very well know that these weapons end up in the hands of Far Right extremists like the Azov Battalion and Right Sector, but put the responsibility onto Ukraine under the guise of not knowing where weapons end up once they enter the country. There is every possibility that in a post-war Ukraine, especially if the country maintains access to the Black Sea, the weapons will be recycled on another Russian frontier, just as Western-made weapons used to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi were redirected against Syria.

Although Germany claims it was de-Nazified when it was defeated in World War II, by supplying weapons to a Ukraine that glorifies World War II Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera – weapons which will more than likely be used by neo-Nazi paramilitary groups that were absorbed into the Republican Guard and officialised, Berlin demonstrates that it is reluctant to take a neutral posture and considering the prospects to be actively involved in the conflict to support Ukraine. In light of the normalization of Ukrainian neo-Nazis across the Western media sphere and a Europe increasingly submissive to Washington’s interests, Berlin is still willing to militarily supply a regime that upholds Nazi ideology.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Why is Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates giving medical advice on national television?

Bill Gates this weekend appeared on CNN and told Anderson Cooper’s audience that people over the age of 50 will probably have to get Covid boosters every 6 months until we get a better vaccine.

“For people over 50 or 60, they’ll probably have to be boosted every 6 months until we get even better vaccines,” Bill Gates said.

Anderson Cooper asked Bill Gates a follow up question on Covid booster shots as if he was interviewing a medical expert.

“I’ve been trying to figure this out for myself – I assume you know the answer to this so I’ll just ask you, when do you get boosted again?” Anderson Cooper asked Bill Gates.

Why doesn’t Anderson Cooper ask his own doctor when he should get another booster shot?

Bill Gates answered the question as if he’s a doctor: “It’ll be safe every six months…they might even make that shorter for people over 60 or 70… so we’re in for ongoing vaccination to stay absolutely safe.”

VIDEO:

Bill Gates: For people over 50 or 60, they'll probably have to get boosted every 6 months until we get even better vaccines; so we're in for ongoing vaccination to stay absolutely safe… pic.twitter.com/zqHXbCPzkK

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) May 15, 2022

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Cristina began writing for The Gateway Pundit in 2016 and she is currently the Associate Editor.

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Courts in the United Kingdom are likely to overturn fines imposed on businesses that defied Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown mandates.

Attorney Lucinda Nicholls made this claim, citing 25 cases she handled that challenged these penalties. Of this total, 23 have had their fines revoked by magistrates, while two are being appealed. She added that more than 800 businesses have “strong cases” to have their fines overturned.

“The biggest issue is enforcement of the legislation,” said the criminal defense attorney for London law firm Nicholls and Nicholls.

“It’s been quite easy to recognize where there have been problems in the enforcement and prosecution of these types of cases. [But even after] highlighting such significant problems, prosecutors are still insistent on proceeding – and it makes no sense. We’ve been in scenarios where costs have just added and added, and we’ve written to the local authority saying ‘Why are you doing this? This is completely unnecessary.’”

The challenges to the COVID-19 fines have been attributed to law enforcement being unaware of exemptions to lockdown regulations that are complex yet ever-changing. Gyms and fitness centers were among those businesses that were apt to have their fines revoked, according to Nicholls.

“If you had a body mass index of more than 40, under the regulations – you were entitled to go to a gym for exercise. Therefore, gyms were allowed to be open for that category of customer,” she explained.

The lawyer based her claim on a precedent – that of entrepreneur Alex Lowndes. He and his wife Amber, owners of Gainz Fitness & Strength in Bedford, were issued a prohibition notice by the area’s borough council for staying open. The Lowndeses were eventually fined £10,000 ($12,220), but this was recently overturned by a magistrate. (Related: Australian state to seize savings, homes, driver’s licenses of people with unpaid COVID fines.)

Alex dubbed the charge against him as “flimsy” and “inept,” and also lobbed criticism at the local prosecutors. “It was a blood lust in the end. They should have looked at it even six months in and said ‘This is a waste of time.’ But they kept going and going. They brought in an external [lawyer]; kept spending money; [used] resources, time [and] everything else – and it just got out of control,” he commented.

Gyms were among the first targets of COVID medical tyranny

A spokesperson for the borough council defended the move to sue the gym owners.

“We brought this case because there was ample and sufficient evidence for a successful prosecution following the non-payment of a fixed penalty notice and because it was in the public interest to prosecute, and the judge stated that they found no fault with how the council brought the prosecution.” said the spokesperson.

Alex also stood by his decision to keep his gym open. He explained: “It became clear [that COVID-19] was an airborne disease [that] you’re more prone to if you’re unhealthy, overweight, etc. – and gyms contributed a very small amount to the spread of the virus.”

“From a mental health point, gyms are really important. People depend on them and I think people underestimate that.”

The Bedford gym owner concluded that contesting the fine in court “was based on principle,” adding: “We should never have shut [down] in the first place, and we stand by what we did at the time.

The case of Gainz Fitness & Strength was similar to that of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, New Jersey. The fitness center first made the news when it chose to reopen in May 2020, amid a COVID-19 lockdown put in place by Gov. Phil Murphy. Gym owners Ian Smith and Frank Trumbetti were present at the gym, and even accommodated law enforcement officers that informed them of Murphy’s lockdown orders.

After two years of back-and-forth discussions with authorities in the Garden State, which even reached the point of Atilis Gym’s business license being revoked, Smith and Trumbetti’s decision to stand their ground and keep the gym open paid off. Borough authorities eventually reinstated the gym’s license, with Smith remarking that the move serves as a testament that “nothing would make us kneel.”

“They took our business license [and] our ability to pursue the American Dream. [But] we were right all along. To date, [we have had] 391,683 visits to our facility and people got healthier, happier and better,” Smith wrote in an April 6 post on the gym’s website.

Resist.news has more stories about gyms and other establishments defying COVID-19 lockdowns.

Watch Lou Uridel, owner of MetroFlex Gym in Oceanside, California, talking about businesses struggling with COVID-19 restrictions.

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***

The UK government has set out plans for further deregulation of GMOs in today’s Queen’s Speech.

Prince Charles, who delivered the speech on the Queen’s behalf said:

“My Ministers will encourage agricultural and scientific innovation at home. Legislation will unlock the potential of new technologies to promote sustainable and efficient farming and food production.”

The new Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill will use the same inaccurate, imprecise and cynical terminology of the recent Statutory Instrument to exempt a hypothetical subclass of GMOs that:

• could have occurred naturally, or;
• could have been created using traditional breeding

According to Pat Thomas, a director of Beyond GM

“These new regulatory criteria, which are poorly defined, scientifically unclear and were highly disputed during the passage of the statutory instrument, will likely continue to be disputed as the UK grapples with how best to regulate genetically engineered crops. The government’s goal is total deregulation but last year’s public consultation showed that 85% of respondents wanted to see gene editing regulated as GMO.”

She noted that Defra continues to mislead the media and others about the outcome of the consultation by suggesting there was a high degree of support for deregulation amongst public sector bodies and academic institutions when, in fact, the total number of respondents from these groups represent only a minority (1%) of the responses to the public consultation.

In addition, according to the A Bigger Conversation report Filling in the Blanks: What Defra Didn’t Say – An Alternative Analysis of the UK Government’s Consultation on the Regulation of Genetic Technologies, numerous key stakeholders and relevant bodies responding to the consultation expressed a large degree of scepticism about Defra’s contention that GMOs that “could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding” could form the basis of scientifically sound regulation.

Science “superpowers”?

According to the government purpose of the proposed Bill is to remove unnecessary barriers inherited from the EU to enable the development and marketing of precision bred plants and animals, which will drive economic growth and position the UK as the leading country in which to invest in agri-food research and innovation.

This, it says, will

• Enable precision breeding technologies to improve the sustainability, resilience, and productivity of agricultural systems. Technologies such as gene editing have the potential to increase disease resistance in crops, which can reduce pesticide use, lower costs to farmers and increase food production.
• Unlock innovation to help us cement our place as a science superpower, and to help meet the ambitions in the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan.

Thomas notes that the two field trials thus far enabled by the Statutory Instrument meet none of those criteria. One, a GMO camelina (false flax) engineered to have an altered fatty acid profile has been the subject of several trials in the UK already. and the other, A vitamin D-containing tomato describes tomatoes “grown in pots on the research centre grounds”.

“In spite of the government view that we need GMOs to fight pressing ecological crises like climate change, drought and world hunger, neither of these crops addresses these issues. The camelina is intended for farmed fish feed and the nutraceutical industry and the vitamin D tomato also appears to be the subject of pharmaceutical rather than agricultural/environmental interest,” said Thomas.

Cynical semantics

The main elements of the Bill, which will extend to England and Wales, but apply to England only are:

• Creating a new, simpler regulatory regime for precision bred plants and animals that have genetic changes that could have arisen through traditional breeding or natural processes. No changes will be made to the regulation of animals until animal welfare is safeguarded.
• Introducing two notification systems for research and marketing purposes where breeders and researchers will need to notify Defra of precision bred organisms. The information collected on precision bred organisms will be published on a public register.
• Establishing a new science-based authorisation process for food and feed products developed using precision bred organisms.

Beyond GM has been calling for a public register of all GMOs used in breeding, but are clear it should include all GMOs and not just those deemed to be “precision breeding”.

Thomas also questions the use of the phrase “precision breeding” in relation to the government’s plan: “For years the UK government has tried to bury its intentions around deregulation under cynical semantics like sustainable intensification, new breeding technique, speed breeding and precision breeding. It’s all genetic engineering and an equitable public debate depends on transparent and clear language. Government has used this obfuscation to spin a narrative that gene editing is different from genetic engineering when it is just a different type of genetic engineering that brings with it all the same concerns and unresolved conflicts as older style techniques.”

She notes that moves to deregulate GMO food and feed products excludes any citizen engagement, and will be based on narrow scientific criteria devised and implemented by a small group of biased, prejudicial ‘specialists’ who represent vested interests. The process will eb inadequate in protecting  non-GMO, agroecological and organic businesses and see the UK abandoning crucial safeguards such as labelling, thereby denying citizens the right to choose not to buy or eat genetically engineered food products.

“Given the strong public concerns about genome editing and the fact that much of the science is unsettled and even contested, Beyond GM is calling for more widespread and inclusive debate.” says Thomas “We are also calling for a much broader approach to regulation that goes beyond limited and sterile laboratory science and embraces the social sciences, environmental concerns, food justice and ethics. No substantial change legislation should be made without reference to these considerations.”

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***

The US House of Representatives just approved another massive military “aid” package for the Ukraine War. The Biden administration had initially requested $33 billion in new money for the war, but leaders of both parties in Congress, eager to support the war, quickly said this was not enough, and raised the total for this package to $40 billion, a truly staggering total. The administration had already spent $14 billion before this latest weapons package. The latest spending spree (at a time when many Americans are struggling with crushing debt loads, lack of baby formula and other key supplies, and skyrocketing inflation) brings the total spent in Ukraine in 3 months to $54 billion on the books (not counting all the dark money for the spy agencies). The official annual budget for the War in Afghanistan averaged $46 billion…The sum the US has already spent on this war in a few months is quickly approaching the annual military budget of the entire Russian military.

This money goes to companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, etc. These merchants of death make up the military industrial complex; they promote the permanent war economy, and have a vested interest in ensuring the US continues to engage in and support devastating wars abroad that destroy whole countries and societies, lead to millions of deaths and untold horrors like what we have seen in Yemen over the past few years. These same corporate and state ghouls are salivating over the profits to be made in a new cold war with China. In this conflict for global dominance they see a shining opportunity to bleed the taxpayers of this country dry, looking to get blood from a stone in our country where the rich pay and big corporations no real taxes, but the middle class and poor are bled dry, being pushed deeper and deeper into debt-peonage and wage slavery by rising tax rates, shrinking paychecks, and red hot inflation (itself a result of the Federal Reserve’s reckless money printing to bailout the banks numerous times since 2008).

And yet not one of the so-called progressive Democrats could find a spine to stand against this weapons package. Not AOC, not Ilhan Omar, not any of them. This is not so surprising when one considers their spinelessness on Yemen (introducing a War Powers Resolution under Trump, knowing he would veto it, bur refusing to do so now that Biden is president), their posturing around Palestine (where they consistently rotate turns supporting more military funding for Israel), and countless other betrayals and hypocrisies.

Of all the “squad” only Cori Bush has released a statement justifying her vote for the bill. The others have remained silent and refused to respond to requests for comment on why they voted to fund the war machine after so many promises (clearly hollow) to end “the forever war.” Bush’s statement, like the entire legacy of the Squad, is a pathetic excuse for progressive politics. First, she claims that this $40 billion in military funding is about “strengthen[ing] the Ukrainian people’s fight against oppression and tyranny.” She makes no mention of the fact that key US leaders from Hillary Clinton to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have made it clear that they want this war to drag out as long as possible to bleed Russia. In the course of such a prolonged conflict, we can only imagine the cost the people of Ukraine will pay. In short, this bill is both about padding the pockets of the military industrial complex and also about sacrificing Ukraine to weaken Russia as a rival to the US and NATO. As many have noted, the US elite are more than happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.

At the end of her statement, Bush includes a hollow note that

“The sheer size of the package given an already inflated Pentagon budget should not go without critique. I remain concerned about the increased risks of direct war and the potential for direct military confrontation.”

This is akin to helping someone pour gasoline on a fire, and then saying that one remains concerned about the risk of the fire spreading! This is what we can expect from Bush, the squad, and the entire so-called progressive wing of the democratic party.

With “allies” like this in Congress, who needs enemies? Chris Hedges – a great American public intellectual who was forced out of his job as the Middle East Bureau Chief at New York Times for his opposition to the Iraq War – has often emphasized that the only way to get any meaningful change in this country is not by lobbying/begging the Democrats or the Republicans, but through mass movements, protests, and acts of civil disobedience which scare the elite. From the powerful movement of the Bonus Marchers (WWI veterans protesting the government’s refusal to pay them their bonuses) in the 1930s, to the great coal strikes, and acts of civil disobedience in the Civil Rights Movement, change in this country has always been driven by the common people, the salt of the earth, not the decadent and corrupt elite in Washington.

The time has come to cast aside illusions about our so-called representatives in Washington, to stop believing in the lie of the Democratic Party as the supposed lesser of two evils, and to redouble our efforts to build up a renewed antiwar movement. Likewise, while a few dozen Republicans voted against the $40 billion, this is no reason for optimism that the Republican Party can be a vehicle for real change. During the Iraq War, once the protests swelled in size, many Democrats made court theater by feigning opposition to the war when Bush was president, only to support continued escalations and drone strikes once Obama was elected. As Howard Zinn notes over and over again in A People’s History of the United States, the two parties are part of one unified system of corporate monopoly rule. They exist to co-opt, mislead, and ultimate destroy movements that seek to change this system of oligarchical control of nearly every aspect of our country.

As long as we remain beholden to the Democrat or Republican Party politics, our movements will be gobbled up, defanged, and spat back out; regurgitated as pliant pawns of the corporate state and the military industrial complex, able to offer only the mildest of criticisms, and utterly impotent and unable to stand against the machinations of the megalomaniacs who run this country and are driving us all towards the brink of WWIII.

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Ryan Costello is an organizer in New York City with United Against War and Militarism and a member of the Yemen Peace Vigil.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Global COVID Summit Declaration Representing 17,000 Physicians and Medical Scientists

By Dr. Robert Malone, May 15, 2022

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.

Palestinian Flag Is Raised in Jerusalem as American Journalist Is Laid to Rest

By Steven Sahiounie, May 16, 2022

On Friday, the funeral route began at the French Hospital just outside the New Gate at noon.  As the pallbearers lifted her coffin onto their shoulders in the process of loading the coffin into a hearse, the Israeli police set off stun grenades and rushed forward and brutally beat the pallbearers and other mourners, including women, with metal batons.

The Removal of Imran Khan: Dismantling Pakistan’s Relationships with China and Russia

By Michael Welch and Abdul Jabbar, May 15, 2022

On this week’s Global Research News Hour, Jabbar, this week’s feature guest, takes us through just how far back the new government in charge has taken the country already, away from partnership with Russia and China and towards advancing U.S. geopolitical aims.

Rogues and Spyware: Pegasus Strikes in Spain

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, May 15, 2022

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Defence Minister Margarita Robles, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and 18 Catalan separatists are the latest high-profile targets to feature in the Pegasus canon.  Sánchez’s phone was hacked twice in May 2021, with officials claiming that there was at least one data leak.

Are These Chemicals Part of a Depopulation Agenda? “Chemicals can Impact Fertility Directly or Indirectly”. Environmental Factors

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, May 15, 2022

A great number of chemicals can impact fertility either directly or indirectly, but the most concerning class are endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) such as phthalates. EDCs disrupt hormones, including sex hormones necessary for reproductive function, such as testosterone.

Weapons and Billions for War

By Manlio Dinucci, May 15, 2022

Well-deserved congratulations: while the U.S. Congress is allocating an additional $40 billion to arm Kiev’s forces in the war against Russia, adding to the $14 billion already allocated in March, Draghi has been working to open a similar channel of war funding in Europe through a “European Union Solidarity Trust Fund for Ukraine” and a “resilience package” worth an initial €2 billion provided to Kiev by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Can Europe Survive Without Russian Coal and Oil? Here’s What It Means for Skyrocketing Prices…

By Chris MacIntosh, May 15, 2022

So the EU, already in the middle of the worst energy crisis since the Arab oil crisis and likely worse, is now pushing to eliminate imports of Russian coal. Just so you understand the importance of Russian coal to Europe… Some 70% of Europe’s thermal coal comes from Russia. Coal accounts for about 20% of continental Europe’s electricity production (as of 2019; perhaps it is 25% now).

Video: Dr. McCullough: Battling the Biopharmaceutical Complex for Our Lives

By Dr. Peter McCullough, John Leake, and Kristina Borjesson, May 15, 2022

A fascinating discussion with Dr. Peter McCullough and crime writer John Leake about their new book, “The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Biopharmaceutical Complex.”

When Truth is Mixed with Falsehoods: The Subtleties of Anti-Russia Leftist Rhetoric

By Edward Curtin, May 15, 2022

The right-wing and the neocons are obvious in their pernicious agendas; nothing is really hidden; therefore they can and should be opposed. But many leftists serve two masters and are far subtler. Ostensibly on the side of regular people and opposed to imperialism and the predations of the elites at home and abroad, they are often tricksters of beguiling rhetoric that their followers miss. Rhetoric that indirectly fuels the wars they say they oppose.

Why Funding Ukraine Is Just Dead Wrong

By Revolver, May 15, 2022

If the Biden Administration cared about protecting America’s well-being, then instead of financing Ukraine’s war effort, it would be working for a negotiated end to the war by the quickest means possible.

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The funeral of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on Friday was one of the largest gatherings of Palestinians in recent memory in Occupied East Jerusalem. Her brother, Anton Abu Akleh, had arrived from the US to oversee her funeral.  He was called into Israeli Occupation police headquarters where they ordered him to not allow any traditional Palestinian funeral customs to be followed, such as: not carrying the coffin on the shoulders of pallbearers and not allowing any Palestinian flags to be displayed. 

The Israeli Occupation forces killed Shireen Abu Akleh, and they wanted to orchestrate her funeral as well.

Image on the right: Israeli forces attacking Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral

On Friday, the funeral route began at the French Hospital just outside the New Gate at noon.  As the pallbearers lifted her coffin onto their shoulders in the process of loading the coffin into a hearse, the Israeli police set off stun grenades and rushed forward and brutally beat the pallbearers and other mourners, including women, with metal batons. Videos of the scene showed a mixed crowd of men and women mourners who were there to accompany the coffin to the church and were beaten severely by the police, while none of the mourners had any weapons, or posed any threat.  The unprovoked attack by the Israeli police, wearing full riot gear, was so forceful that at one point the coffin almost touched the ground, but at the last moment, one pallbearer was able to catch the edge and hold the coffin aloft once more.

The threat to the Israeli government, which prompted the violent response, was the presence of thousands of Palestinians carrying hundreds of Palestinian flags.  The Israeli police were attacking and beating unarmed civilians, living under a brutal military occupation now lasting 74 years.  The occupation of Palestine and subjugation of five million people is a threat to Israel that they are deadly afraid of.

From there the coffin was taken to the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin in Jerusalem’s Old City. After her funeral service, the coffin was then transported to the Melkite Catholic Cemetery section of the Mount Zion Cemetery complex where she was laid to rest next to her parents.  She was born in Jerusalem, and her mother as well, but her father was from Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

Rima Baqleh said,

“This is the least I can do, participate in the funeral of this iconic woman who has changed the history of Palestine,” she said. “For the first time, she managed to raise the Palestinian flag by thousands of Palestinian people in [Jerusalem’s] Jaffa Gate.”

On Wednesday morning, Abu Akleh was assassinated by an Israeli sniper while standing with a group of four journalists reporting on an Israeli raid into Jenin in the Occupied West Bank. The 25-year veteran journalist for Al Jazeera was wearing a blue flak jacket marked “PRESS” and a helmet.  According to eyewitness accounts from the other journalists, one of whom was shot in the back, there were no Palestinian fighters present, only the Israeli commandos. Al Jazeera and many other international groups and bodies have demanded an impartial investigation into her killing.

Abu Akleh is just the latest American citizen to be brutally murdered by Israelis. The US has made condolence-type statements in the aftermath of her killing, but no one expects any further action to be taken against Israel, which is the closest ally to the US.  Israel has been called an Apartheid State by the Human Rights Watch and has been deemed a racist state by other international groups.  Israel stands in defiance of dozens of UN resolutions, and yet the US remains its staunch supporter.  The US government speaks from one side of its mouth, saying they must defend freedom and democracy around the world, like in Ukraine, and from the other side of its mouth, they support and enable the brutal military occupation of Palestine and the Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity which have been documented for decades.

If American values are freedom and democracy for all, then Israel does not stand for American values but stands for the exact opposite.  The American people are supposed to be in control of their government, but sadly they are not.  Elected officials enable Israel to act with impunity, while the US taxpayer pays the bills in Israel, with no accountability.  The US State Department policies in the Middle East have remained unchanged, and unchallenged for the last 74 years, regardless of what political party holds the Oval Office.

Marches were held for Abu Akleh in Jenin on Wednesday, and in Nablus, where doctors conducted an autopsy on her body. Her body was then brought to Ramallah, where a memorial service was held for her at the Palestinian Authority’s presidential compound on Thursday, with thousands in attendance. On Thursday, Israeli police raided the home of Abu Akleh and removed the Palestinian flag.

At dawn on Friday, before the funeral procession began, the Israeli Defense Forces raided Jenin, injuring 13 Palestinians, including two in critical condition.  The Occupation forces shelled Palestinian homes during a siege lasting four hours before arresting two men inside the home.

Sgt. Maj. Noam Raz, of the Israeli Defense Forces, died during the raid, which featured Israeli Forces using anti-tank grenades to bombard the home.

Image below: Syrian air defenses reacting to the Israeli missiles

Since March 22, dozens have died in Israel and Occupied Palestine as a result of acts of resistance to occupation, as well as Israeli raids and brutality. The raids in Jenin in the Occupied West Bank are the latest in an escalation of tensions.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced that Israel had launched 22 missiles at Syria on Friday evening. The Syrian air defense system shot down 16 of the 22 missiles and one drone. The targets were the port of Banias and the Syrian Research Center at Misyaf.  Israel used six F-16 jets in the attack which originated from the Mediterranean Sea near Banias, which houses the main oil refinery for Syria.

While Syrians were viewing the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh on TV all day, by evening the news reports turned to news of the Israeli attack on Syria.  Five people were killed in the attack, including a civilian, seven were wounded, and farmlands were burned.

The five Syrian Army martyrs

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

All images in this article are from Mideast Discourse

This article was first published in December 2014 under the title: America is on a “Hot War Footing”: House Legislation Paves the Way for War with Russia?

Legislation had already been envisaged in 2014, to wage war on Russia. H. RES. 758 not only accused Russia of having invaded Ukraine, it also invoked article 5 of the Washington Treaty, namely NATO’s  doctrine of collective security.

It  was first introduced by Rep. Kinzinger (Illinois) on November 18 2014, it was adopted by 411-10 in an almost unanimous vote on the morning of December 4th. (Kinzinger is at it again)

According to Supreme Allied Commander General Breedlove, NATO needs “pre-positioned supplies, pre-positioned capabilities and a basing area ready to rapidly accept follow-on forces”: “He plans to recommend placing supplies — weapons, ammunition and ration packs — at the headquarters to enable a sudden influx of thousands of Nato troops” (Times, August 22, 2014, emphasis added). 

And the Senate had adopted the  Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) calling for the militarization of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States and the stationing of US and NATO troops on Russia’s doorstep.  

The House Resolution was adopted. In the words of Dennis Kucinich in an open letter published on December 2:

The resolution demands Russia to be isolated …  In other words, ‘let’s get ready for war with Russia.’

This is exactly the type of sabre rattling which led to the initiation and escalation of the Cold War. It is time we demanded that the US employ diplomacy, not more military expenditures, in the quest for international order.

Both the House and the Senate had given a Green-light to the Obama-Biden Administration to wage war against Russia in December 2014. 

These 2014 legislative initiatives  constitute a preamble to the 2022 Ukraine War.

We are currently in a World War III Scenario. 

We call upon Members of the House of the Senate to take a firm stance in favor of peace negotiations. 

Michel Chossudovsky, May 15, 2022

Below is the full text of my December 4 2014 article

***

America is on a war footing.  While, a World War Three Scenario has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than ten years, military action against Russia [2014] is now contemplated at an “operational level”.

Similarly, both the Senate and the House have introduced enabling legislation [2014] which provides legitimacy to the conduct of a war against Russia.

We are not dealing with a “Cold War”. None of the safeguards of the Cold War era prevail. 

There has been a breakdown in East-West diplomacy [during the Obama-Biden administration] coupled with extensive war propaganda. In turn the United Nations has turned a blind eye to extensive war crimes committed by the Western military alliance.  

The adoption of a major piece of legislation by the US House of Representatives on December 4th (H. Res. 758)  would provide (pending a vote in the Senate) a de facto green light to the US president and commander in chief to initiate –without congressional approval– a process of military confrontation with Russia.  

Global security is at stake. This historic vote –which potentially could affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people Worldwide– has received virtually no media coverage. A total media blackout prevails.   

The World is at a dangerous crossroads.

Moscow has responded to US-NATO threats. Its borders are threatened. 

On December 3, [2014] the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation announced the inauguration of a new military-political entity which would take over in the case of war. 

Russia is launching a new national defense facility, which is meant to monitor threats to national security in peacetime, but would take control of the entire country in case of war. (RT, December 3, 2014)

Timeline of War Preparations

In May 2014, the  Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) was  introduced in the US Senate (S 2277), calling for the militarization of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States and the stationing of US and NATO troops on Russia’s doorstep:

S.2277 – Russian Aggression Prevention Act of 2014

Directs the President to: (1) implement a plan for increasing U.S. and NATO support for the armed forces of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and other NATO member-states; and (2) direct the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO to seek consideration for permanently basing NATO forces in such countries.

Directs the President to submit a plan to Congress for accelerating NATO and European missile defense efforts.

While The S 2277 resolution was sent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for review, its essential premises are already in the process of being implemented.  In mid-July, NATO’s Europe commander General Philip Breedlove in consultation with the Pentagon and Britain’s Ministry of Defence, called for:

 “stockpiling a base in Poland with enough weapons, ammunition and other supplies to support a rapid deployment of thousands of troops against Russia”.(RT, July 24, 2014).

According to General Breedlove, NATO needs “pre-positioned supplies, pre-positioned capabilities and a basing area ready to rapidly accept follow-on forces”:

“He plans to recommend placing supplies — weapons, ammunition and ration packs — at the headquarters to enable a sudden influx of thousands of Nato troops” (Times, August 22, 2014, emphasis added)

Breedlove’s “Blitzkrieg scenario” –which could potentially lead to military escalation– was reaffirmed at the September NATO Summit in Wales.  A so-called NATO action plan directed against the Russian Federation was decided upon.  The Wales Summit had given the “green light”.

Barely a month later, in October,  US-NATO military drills were held in the Baltic States. In early November, a second round of drills was held in both the Baltic States and Eastern Europe.

As part of this broader endeavour, NATO’s Iron Sword 2014 military exercises –involving the participation of nine member countries of the Atlantic Alliance– were launched in Lithuania in early November:

 ”US tanks rolled in to Lithuania earlier this month is a show of force to Russia that it’s not welcome in the region.”

The military exercises were explicitly directed against Russia. According to Moscow, they consisted in “increasing operation readiness” as well the transfer of NATO “military infrastructure to the Russian borders”.

In response to NATO deployments on Russia’s borders,  the Russian Federation also conducted in early November extensive  war games in the sea of Barent.  The Russian drills consisted in testing “its entire nuclear triad consisting of strategic bombers; submarines” and the “silo-based Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile  launched from Plesetsk in Arkhangelsk Oblast” on November 1st.

The US House of Representatives H.Res. 758 Resolution

On 18 November,  a major resolution H. Res. 758 was introduced in the House of Representatives. Its main thrust consists in portraying Russia as an “Aggressor Nation”, which has invaded Ukraine and calling for military action directed against Russia:

You can watch Rep. Kinzinger’s floor speech on the legislation 

H.RES.758 — Whereas upon entering office in 2009, President Barack Obama announced his intention to `reset’ relations with the Russian Federation, which was described by former United States Ambassador… (Introduced in House – IH)

HRES 758 IH

113th CONGRESS

2d Session

H. RES. 758

Strongly condemning the actions of the Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, which has carried out a policy of aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination.

(The full text of H. RES. 758 is contained in annex to this article)

H. Res. 758 not only accuses Russia of having invaded Ukraine, it also invokes article 5 of the Washington Treaty, namely NATO’s  doctrine of collective security.

An attack on one member of the Atlantic alliance is an attack on all members of the Alliance.

The underlying narrative is supported by a string of baseless accusations directed against the Russian Federation.

It accuses Russia of having invaded Ukraine. It states without evidence that Russia was behind the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17,  it accuses Russia of military aggression.

Ironically, it also accuses the Russian Federation of having imposed economic sanctions not only on Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova but also on several unnamed member states of the European Union.  The resolution accuses the Russian Federation of having used “the supply of energy for political and economic coercion.”

In essence, House Resolution 758 were it to become law would provide a de facto green light to the President  of the United States to declare war on the Russian Federation, without the formal permission of the US Congress.

In this regard, it could be interpreted as “mildly unconstitutional” in that it contravenes the substance of Article 1, Section 8, of the US Constitution which  vests in the Congress “the Power to declare war…”

The resolution urges the President of the United States in consultation with the US Congress to:

“conduct a review of the force posture, readiness, and responsibilities of the United States Armed Forces and the forces of other members of NATO to determine if the contributions and actions of each is sufficient to meet the obligations of collective self defence under article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and to specify the measures needed to remedy any deficiencies” .

What the above paragraph suggests is that the US is contemplating the use of NATO’s collective security doctrine under article 5 with a views to triggering a process of military confrontation with the Russian Federation.

The structure of military alliances is of crucial significance. Washington’s intent is to isolate Russia. Article 5 is a convenient mechanism imposed by the US on Western Europe. It forces NATO member states, most of which are members of the European Union, to act wage war on Washington’s behalf.

Moreover, a referendum on Ukraine’s membership in NATO is contemplated.  In case Ukraine becomes a member of NATO and/or redefines its security agreement with NATO, article 5 could be invoked as a justification to wage a NATO sponsored war on Russia.

“Fast Legislation”

The speed at which this legislation was adopted is unusual in US Congressional history.

House resolution 758 was introduced on November 18th, it was rushed off to the Foreign Affairs Committee and rushed back to the plenary of the House for debate and adoption.

Two weeks (16 days) after it was first introduced by Rep. Kinzinger (Illinois) on November 18, it was adopted by 411-10 in an almost unanimous vote on the morning of December 4th.

Members of Congress are puppets. Their vote is controlled by Washington’s lobby groups. For the defence contractors, Wall Street and the Texas oil giants, “war is good for business”.

In the words of Dennis Kucinich in an open letter published on December 2:

The resolution demands Russia to be isolated …  In other words, ‘let’s get ready for war with Russia.’

This is exactly the type of sabre rattling which led to the initiation and escalation of the Cold War. It is time we demanded that the US employ diplomacy, not more military expenditures, in the quest for international order.

Media Blackout

One would expect that this historic decision would has been the object of extensive news coverage.

In fact what happened was a total news blackout.

The nation’s media failed to provide coverage of the debate in House of Representatives and the adoption of H Res 758 on December 4.

The mainstream media had been instructed not to cover the Congressional decision.

Nobody dared to raise its dramatic implications.  its impacts on “global security”.  “World War III is not front page news.”

And without mainstream news concerning US-NATO war preparations, the broader public remains unaware of the importance of the Congressional decision. .

Author’s Note and Update

The FBI has recently released thousands of pages of material “relating to its investigation of Saudi government links to the 9/11 attacks”,

The thrust of this investigation is to accuse the so-called state sponsors of Al Qaeda which was allegedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Lest we forget, the justification of the invasion of Afghanistan in early October 2001 was because the Taliban government was allegedly supportive of Al Qaeda. 

The following text was first published in December 2015

***

US foreign  policy has nurtured Al Qaeda, a creation of the CIA for more than 35 years, with the support of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s  infamous  General Intelligence Presidency (GIP).  

Lest we forget Osama bin Laden was recruited in 1979 by the CIA at the outset of the Soviet- Afghan war.  

A complex network of Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations overseen by US and allied intelligence agencies has unfolded, extending across the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, Western China, South and South East Asia. 

Rand Corporation  Report 2012

While mainstream analysis regarding CIA covert  support of “jihadist” terrorist entities is a taboo, the Western media (quoting expert opinion) will often place the blame on the intelligence agencies of America’s closest allies including Pakistan’s ISI  and Saudi Arabia’s GIP, i.e. for supporting terrorist entities (in defiance of the US). According to the Rand Corporation:

“Pakistan poses a particular challenge. As America’s relationship with Pakistan deteriorates, how long will the United States be able to pressure a state whose intelligence service [i.e Pakistan’s ISI which is in close liaison with the CIA] has ties with some of al Qaeda’s allies, such as the Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba?” (Set Jones, Resurgence of Al Qaeda,  Rand Corporation  Report 2012)

The Islamic State Caliphate:  A Project of US Intelligence

Today’s Al Qaeda most recent “affiliate”, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) based in Raqqa, Northern Syria is not only protected by the US and its allies, it is trained and financed by US-NATO, with the support of Turkey, Israel and Washington’s Persian Gulf allies.

In a bitter irony, the caliphate project as an instrument of propaganda has been on the drawing board of US intelligence for more than ten years.  In December 2004, under the Bush Administration, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) predicted that in the year 2020 a New Caliphate extending from the Mediterranean to Central Asia and South East Asia would emerge, threatening Western democracy and Western values.

And now in an unusual about turn, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has configured a coalition of 34 mainly Muslim countries “to go after the Islamic state”.

In a bitter irony, the key protagonists of this counterterrorism initiative endorsed by the “international community” are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey, i.e. countries which have relentlessly supported “Islamic terrorism” from the very outset in close liaison with Washington. In the words of Hillary Clinton in her declassified Emails: “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

Counter terrorism by the state sponsors of terrorism? A  New Normal? The propaganda campaign appears to have reached an impasse. According to the official statement:

“The [34] countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations centre based in Riyadh to co-ordinate and support military operations,”

Arab News December 2015

This “military alliance” will work in liaison with Obama’s counter-terrorism bombing campaign involving a coalition of some 20 countries initiated against the Islamic State in August-September 2014. The evidence, however, confirms that the bombing raids have avoided targeting the ISIL, which is integrated by mercenaries including special forces, who are in permanent liaison with US-NATO.

Screen shot, Daily Mail 

KSA Defense Minister Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, confirmed (December 14, 2015) that the campaign “would co-ordinate efforts to fight terrorism” specifically in Iraq and Syria in coordination  “with major powers and international organisations”, i.e NATO, the US, the EU.

In an unusual twist, the State sponsors of terrorism are now indulging in counterterrorism. The Islamic State in the Arabian peninsula, namely the House of Saud which is predicated on the tenets of Wahhabism is going after the Islamic State (ISIL) in Northern Syria. 

Known and documented, Saudi Arabia has played a key strategic role in promoting and financing terrorism on behalf of Washington. Moreover, Saudi weapons purchases from the US and Canada are also being used to equip and arm various “opposition” rebel groups in Syria including the ISIL and Al Nusrah.

It is worth noting: recruited by America’s ally, a large number of ISIS mercenaries are convicted criminals released from Saudi prisons on condition they join the ISIL. Saudi death row inmates were recruited to join the terror brigades.  (January 23, 2013)

It’s a theater of the absurd. It’s like asking Al Capone to lead a coalition of Chicago criminal syndicates to go after organized crime. In this case, the criminal syndicate based in Riyadh is acting on behalf of its Western sponsors.

And the media applauds in chorus without acknowledging several of their own reports which confirm that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Qatar, Jordan, et al.  have been involved in recruiting, training and financing Islamic terrorists. The practice of beheading civilians by ISIS operative in Syria emanates from Saudi Arabia.  In the words of an earlier Daily Telegraph report (April 2014):

“We should not be blind to the fact that there is a project out there to destroy [Syria’s]  rich, pluralist, and unbelievably intricate culture and replace it with a monochrome version of Wahhabi Islam”.

What the mainstream media invariably fails to mention is that Saudi Arabia is a “go-between” and that Wahhabi Islam is being used and applied by Washington. In turn, the public is led to believe that this is a bona fide war of religion and that Muslims are waging war against Western civilization.

This “version of Wahhabism” has nothing to with Islam, it’s “Made in America”, its a diabolical tool of US foreign policy, which consists in applying and manipulating the ideology of Wahhabism as a means of recruiting and indoctrinating terrorists to wage a “jihad” on behalf of Uncle Sam.  US-NATO’s war without borders goes unnoticed; World public opinion is led to believe that Islam is waging a war against the West and that US-NATO are acting in “self-defense” against an elusive outside enemy based in the Middle East.

Politicians, journalists  and intelligence analysts are lying to themselves. Everybody knows that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are behind the terrorists and we also know that the US is behind Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The US is the main architect of this terrorist undertaking which consists in sponsoring terrorists with a view to destabilizing and destroying sovereign countries in defiance of international law.

In 2013, the European Parliament published a detailed report (excerpt below) confirming the role of Saudi Arabia in spreading Wahhabi-Salafist ideology to terror groups in a large number of countries. The report, however, failed to acknowledge that these actions were conducted as part of a US foreign policy and intelligence agenda. (Excerpt (screenshot), p. 7 below)

 Screenshot, p. 7 of European Parliament Report

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

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a

***

“I feel we are back in 1939; Munich. Czechslovakia has been taken. Will the word community appease a market of 1.2bn or will it stand up for justice and humanity? If a conventional war starts between 2 countries, nuclear countries anything could happen.

“Supposing a country 7 times smaller than its neighbour; faced with a question. Either you surrender, or you fight till the end. I ask myself this question. And my belief is ‘La ilaha illAllah’, there is no God but one. We will FIGHT!”

– Imran Khan, from his speech at the United Nations General Assembly Seventy-fourth session, 9th plenary meeting (September 27, 2019) [1]

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\

A month following the vote of his political rivals to eject him from power, Imran Khan is riding perhaps the biggest waves of popularity that he has ever surfed upon! [2]

And with legions of supporters propping up his stature, he has launched the campaign “Ghulami Na Manzoor,” a call to unseat the “Imported government” of the recently installed Prime Minister Shehbaaz Sharif. Starting after May 20th, less than a week from the time this is written, a new vote of confidence will be launched from the very grassroots population against the individuals who have conspired to remove the leader they put in place nearly four years ago.[3]

The onslaught of the public would enter into Islamabad and hound the Prime Minister everywhere he goes with slogans of “thief and traitor.” Those unable to make the trip would protest locally in their own communities. [4]

That being said, the actual rules of governance would not likely recognize such tactics as anything more than a protest. Power appears to have returned to the old guard leaving U.S. interests in their leading role in the Pakistan stage.

One writer who has taken an interest in the current Pakistan plight, Abdul Jabbar, described the situation in Pakistan as being the latest example of what he calls Indirect Colonialism. HE puts it bluntly:

“In this kind of colonialism, the colonizing power uses local self-seeking, nation-betraying leaders to sacrifice national interests for the sake of self-advancement.

“The colonizer does not have to spend its resources on launching a formal invasion to occupy a country. Local corrupt politicians prostitute national interest to do the colonizer’s bidding.” [5]

On this week’s Global Research News Hour, Jabbar, this week’s feature guest, takes us through just how far back the new government in charge has taken the country already, away from partnership with Russia and China and towards advancing U.S. geopolitical aims. But this interview is preceded by a replay of one of Imran Khan’s most impassioned speeches, the one at the UN General Assembly relating to Islamophobia and the ever contentious Kashmir region. Toward the end of the program, we bring to the attention of listeners the role of a local terrorist army now appearing to attack Chinese in the province of Balochistan.

Imran Khan is the recently removed Prime Minister of Pakistan. He currently commands broad support within the grassroots population of the West Asian country.

Abdul Jabbar is a scholar originally from Pakistan. He has taught interdisciplinary studies (including political science) in the United States for nearly half a century, so he has been following the developments in Pakistan with great interest and concern, both from professional and personal points of view.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 355)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

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Transcript – Interview with Abdul Jabbar, May 9, 2022

Global Research News Hour: This is Michael Welch for the Global Research News Hour, and the story of the Pakistan coup against Imran Khan is still an ongoing issue. Now one month into the new regime is in power, and Imran is delighting the many hundreds of thousands in the streets.

So we’re going to get a take by a new individual. His name is Abdul Jabbar. He taught English and Interdisciplinary Studies for 36 years on a full-time basis at City College of San Francisco, including visiting professorship at University of California-Berkeley, he’s a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship and two National Endowment for the Humanities Awards, he received his PhD in English from Case Western University in Cleveland Ohio, and has written three books, his latest, The Promise, Reality, and Potential of American Cultural Diversity is in the process of publication. He’s published several articles on literary, political, and similar topics. His video lectures are available on YouTube, and has been following developments in Pakistan with great interest and concern both from professional and personal points of view. Professor Jabbar, welcome to the Global Research News Hour.

Abdul Jabbar: Thank you for having me on the program Michael.

GR: Since Imran Khan was replaced from power one month ago, has there been any fundamental changes in terms of policy that he’s brought forward?

AJ: His policies have been completely turned around. His policy was for independent foreign policy, that was a major concern and that has been completely diluted with the new government because the new government is really [inaudible] in a sham When you have a coup like this, I don’t think we have any idea. For us, it’s just a matter of simple foreign policy decision to bring in someone who will cooperate with our view of the region. We don’t think much more than that. It leads to so many ramifications for the affected country, it’s hard to even imagine.

So right now, what’s happening is that the new prime minister is scrambling all over the world to get funding. He got some funding from Saudi Arabia and requesting the IMF to extend the loan. And you know every new regime that comes in uses the previous regime for causing the problems, but you know time will tell, I am not sure to what extent is it accusations that there was bad governance on the part of Imran Khan’s government. I’m not so sure to what extent I can believe it, but mainly what is of concern is the assassination attempts on Imran Khan. When we make foreign policy decisions to replace someone, I don’t think we really deep down want the person to be eliminated.

But the local people who take power, they have to then guard themselves against reprisal, repercussions, so they just eliminate the person, the opponent. So this time there is a lot of talk of assassinating Imran Khan, and a lot of warnings from the government, and a lot of advice from even the military that he should not call his big meeting where he expects about two million people to show up this month. There’s attempt also to have him arrested, so that’s the situation right now.

GR: So you mean to say that the deals with, the defense deal between Russia and Pakistan is over, that Pakistan is no longer part of the CPEC with China?

AJ: The deal with Russia was close to being completed when Imran Khan was overthrown, so that hasn’t gone through. That was a huge breakthrough for Pakistan’s economy, 30% discount oil, 30% discount on wheat, and Imran was just working for the benefit of the masses who are struggling with this global inflation with COVID thrown in. And that was not completely carried out, and I think it will not happen. The US will dictate terms. The US government will dictate terms with regard to Russia for sure. With China, remember China is the biggest investor in Pakistan’s market. With close to 60 billion dollars of investment in the program called CPEC, which means China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

And they are, well there are many projects which are going to be very beneficial to Pakistan in China, US has never liked the close relation of Pakistan to China. Because China is a potential threat to US economy, and the US government forgets that in 1971, Pakistan that enabled the first meeting between US and China, it was a secret meeting when Kissinger flew to Islamabad to Pakistan, and then Pakistan government arranged that secret meeting. So they were brought together, the two powers, so Pakistan was instrumental in doing that. So my take is Michael that Pakistan could play a centre role to bring either Russia and the US to clear the tensions. Pakistan believes in, believds under Imran Khan, no bases in Pakistan, no foreign bases.

No participation in foreign and I don’t know what is going to happen now with terrorism in Pakistan. All the Taliban are attacking Pakistan. Pakistan retaliated and there were 47 Taliban killed inside Afghanistan. So this is been happening in the past and now this will escalate…. Terrorism brought under control under Imran Khan because he [inaudible] will have a negotiated settlement with the Taliban  is no [inaudible] resolution. He was perfectly right. What we, out of 20 years of war, was to replace the Taliban with Taliban with trillions of dollars of expense and so many debts. So I think that the reversal it has taken place in the foreign policy with the new government.

GR: What can you tell me about the new prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif?

AJ: Shehbaz Sharif has many cases pending against him for corruption and money laundering like his older brother. He has power to have those cases honed in the federal judiciaries.  The judiciaries in the system of the whole [inaudible] [inaudible] situations is totally still the same that was there before Imran Khan. The system is the same, he tried to change from one. He failed miserably. Because the system is there and what they do is, like whenever there’s a hearing, the judges will postpone the hearing to the next day, to the next day. So Imran was furious, a few times he said the Judiciary is not doing its job.

So he had a lot of cases. He doesn’t have a clean slate. You can say that he’s almost like on the hill, and so are many of his cabinet members. But he’s a good manager, when he was chief minister of Punjab which is the biggest province in Pakistan. He did some good work and building his home city Lahore, and the area, so he, he’s a good manager, and I believe he will do whatever the US wants him to do, and since he may be able to get Pakistan some benefit in the short run.

But the people are not going to accept it. See millions of people are coming out all over the world. They demand election. In the elections, Imran will have two-thirds of majority that he needs. His problem was, Michael, that he didn’t have an absolute majority when he won elections in 2018. He had to work, compromise, with people with whom he totally disagreed. So it was very difficult. Now if the elections are held, he will have an absolute majority, and even then implement the vision that got postponed, because of the corruption in all these institutions that he inherited.

GR: It sort of brings us to your latest essay, American Style Colonialism and Imperialism with Pakistan the Latest Victim. You lay out how the status as an American conquest is protected by the local puppets who succeed one another. Every once in a while, somebody will actually place the interests of the country ahead of the welfare of US wealth and undue political interests. In Pakistan, before Khan, we had Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 1977. What were the dynamics that played out in that case?

AJ: 2007,  think she was assassinated. ‘77 is when Zia-ul-Haq overthrew the democratic government of Bhutto and then he was hanged by Zia-ul-Haq. That is the last clear demonstration of US interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan. It was in 1977, July 5th, to be accurate, I had flown to Pakistan on a visit on July 4th because I know the people there didn’t travel much it was an American plane. So I travelled and I woke up to the news that the country’s government is overthrown and I came to know, I heard some people in the military, some friends, I came to know that the last pieces of the strategy were finalized in the American embassy on [inaudible].  So Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was overthrown. And then a couple of years later he was executed. What happened to the country since then, what did Zia-ul-Haq bring to the country, this is mind-boggling.

He has done the most amount of damage to the country single-handedly. It was a liberal democracy under Bhutto. Bhutto was not perfect. Just talking about the democracy that was in place, and it was a liberal democracy. Zia-ul-Haq brought in the extreme Wahhabi, Saudi Arabian imported version of Islam. And curtailing women’s rights, freedom of speech, and he came for 90 days to have elections but he stayed in power until he was assass– he was killed in an airplane crash. So that also were brought in all kinds of terrorists from over the world.

So they were funded by the US through Pakistan, the US and Saudi Arabia funded them under Zia-ul-Haq to fight the Soviet Union ‘79 invasion of Afghanistan. And so just imagine, those people came from 40 different countries, and they landed in Afghanistan with the help of Pakistan ISI and the US training. So what happened, they destroyed the social fabric of the society. Because once the war was over. they were there. They weren’t leaving. I grew up in Pakistan. I don’t remember any household owning Kalashnikov. And after the Soviet invasion, the US and this [inaudible] for the US, all that changed the country’s society completely.

We could walk in Pakistan at 1 a.m. 2 a.m. freely, but then it was just a matter of being caught for ransom if you go to visit Pakistan. Things changed under Imran Khan simply because he said we should be in negotiated settlement and it is cultural imperialism to command another culture to obey us. And that was why he was respected by the Taliban, then we started calling him Taliban Khan. So really ironic.

GR: The elections in Pakistan are set for 2023. What do you think will take place in the interim to foil Khan’s attempts to return to power? I made you mentioned a possible assassination. Are there other things they could do to finish him off in case he can avoid assassination?

AJ: Just yesterday he said that there are a lot of attempts from all kinds of quarters. He expects some of those, but even if he’s assassinated it will not change the momentum because the youth, which is more aware than ever before, they want the restoration of the government that is representative of their will. And his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which means just “his party,” Pakistan Movement for Justice, they will sweep the election. And the current government is trying to postpone the election until as you said 2023. And that, in the interim, many things can happen. You can have… Hopefully the worst scenario is civil war. That is nobody wishes. In Syria, we didn’t think anything would happen when we interfered others interfered, one side was Russia, on the other side was the US, the proxy war. Two and a quarter million people have been killed, so many millions displaced… We don’t know, you see when these things happen, they have their own momentum.

They take the ugliest possible terms, you can’t imagine, so what will happen Michael is anybody’s guess. The worst scenario is civil war. Within my own family there’s a civil war going on. So I can tell you that this, there’s a lot of tension, people and Saudi Arabia there was a spontaneous demonstration against Shehbaz. He had gone to Saudi Arabia and get funding. Here it pretty much is a convention to go to those holy sites in Saudi Arabia to offer prayers. So Shehbaz went there, Shehbaz Sharif and the crowd saw him recognized him and the Pakistan is living in Saudi Arabia they erupted with “Thief! Thief!” And there was a pretty much of a riot. The police came in and then more people joined in and Sharif and his Entourage were attacked and the Saudi Arabian government arrested people from both sides, and they have some draconian punishment for that. Saudi Arabia doesn’t…the government doesn’t want any protest, especially at that time in that place. And as you know they don’t like protest, period. So they’re going to give huge sentences.

The worst part of that incident was to me an FIR registered in a city in Pakistan to implicate to introduce the idea of assassinating Imran on religious grounds that he has done a sacrilege to a holy site because he’s behind the whole riot, that he instigated it. He was in Pakistan of course, there is no legal ability to this and it won’t win in the court. The problem is it instigates, it unleashes a tsunami of hatred and fanaticism.

It was a governor in Pakistan who simply said the blasphemy laws should be used carefully because a Christian woman was being hanged according to sources for blasphemy. And he intervened, he said, blasphemy is a very sensitive legal item, we have to use it very carefully. He was assassinated by a fanatic. Because he thought if he was being too soft on Christian minority and defaming and blaspheming the prophet. So this was the attempt to create a legal basis First Information Report. FIR is a legal document the police registered. And then it unleashes all these currents of hate, totally unfounded. So, you know, that is the worst-case scenario that could happen, that kind of assassination could take place.

Civil war is a possibility, and it’s also possible to be very hopeful, that the current government will continue until the election and the interim will not see any big upheavals other than Imran Khan [inaudible] And he insists on nonviolence. He does not want his followers to do any violence. So, it is possible that probably will be the best-case scenario short of elections.

GR: Well, that’s fascinating reality is playing out. Professor Jabbar I’m afraid we’re out of time now , but you brought us a lot to think about. Thank you for joining us.

AJ: Thank you very much for having me on your program!

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Notes:

1. Full Transcript of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s speech at the UNGA (September 28, 2019), Business Recorder; https://www.brecorder.com/news/524851
2. https://www.dawn.com/news/1686378
3. https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/pakistan-news/ousted-from-power-imran-khan-launches-campaign-to-unseat-imported-govt-in-pakistan-articleshow.html
4. ibid
5. https://multipolarista.com/2022/04/25/indirect-colonialism-us-pakistan-imran-khan/

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***

Weapons, lacking sentience and moral orientation, are there to be used by all.  Once out, these creations can never be rebottled.  Effective spyware, that most malicious of surveillance tools, is one such creation, available to entities and governments of all stripes.  The targets are standard: dissidents, journalists, legislators, activists, even the odd jurist.

Pegasus spyware, the fiendishly effective creation of Israel’s unscrupulous NSO Group, has become something of a regular in the news cycles on cyber security.  Created in 2010, it was the brainchild of three engineers who had cut their teeth working for the cyber outfit Unit 8200 of the Israeli Defence Forces: Niv Carmi, Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie.

NSO found itself at the vanguard of an Israeli charm offensive, regularly hosting officials from Mossad at its headquarters in Herzliya in the company of delegations from African and Arab countries.  Cyber capabilities would be one way of getting into their good books.

The record of the company was such as to pique the interest of the US Department of Commerce, which announced last November that it would be adding NSO Group and another Israeli cyber company Candiru (now renamed Saito Tech) to its entity list “based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.”

In July 2021, the Pegasus Project, an initiative of 17 media organisations and civil society groups, revealed that 50,000 phone numbers of interest to a number of governments had appeared on a list of hackable targets.  All had been targets of Pegasus.

The government clients of the NSO Group are extensive, spanning the authoritarian and liberal democratic spectrum.  Most notoriously, Pegasus has found its way into the surveillance armoury of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which allegedly monitored calls made by the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a fellow dissident, Omar Abdulaziz.  In October 2018, Khashoggi, on orders of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was butchered on the grounds of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a hit squad. NSO subsequently became the subject of a legal suit, with lawyers for Abdulaziz arguing that the hacking of his phone “contributed in a significant manner to the decision to murder Mr Khashoggi.”

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Defence Minister Margarita Robles, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and 18 Catalan separatists are the latest high-profile targets to feature in the Pegasus canon.  Sánchez’s phone was hacked twice in May 2021, with officials claiming that there was at least one data leak.  This was the result of, according to the government, an “illicit and external” operation, conducted by bodies with no state authorisation.

Ironically enough, Robles herself had defended the targeting of the 18 Catalan separatists, claiming that the surveillance had been conducted with court approval.  “In this country,” she insisted at a press conference, “no-one is investigated for their political ideals.”

The backdrop of the entire scandal is even more sinister, with Citizen Lab revealing last month that over 60 Catalan legislators, jurists, Members of the European Parliament, journalists and family members were targeted by the Pegasus spyware between 2015 and 2020.  (Citizen Lab found that 63 individuals had been targeted or infected with Pegasus, with four others being the victims of the Candiru spyware.)  Confirmed targets include Elisenda Paluzie and Sònia Urpí Garcia, who both work for the Assemblea Nacional Catalana, an organisation that campaigns for the independence of Catalonia.

The phone of Catalan journalist Meritxell Bonet was also hacked in June 2019 during the final days of a Supreme Court case against her husband Jordi Cuixart.  Cuixart, former president of the Catalan association Òmnium Cultural, was charged and sentenced on grounds of sedition.

The investigation by Citizen Lab did not conclusively attribute “the operations to a specific entity, but strong circumstantial evidence suggests a nexus with Spanish authorities.”  Amnesty International Technology and Human Rights researcher Likhita Banerji put the case simply. “The Spanish government needs to come clean over whether or not it is a customer of NSO Group.  It must also conduct a thorough, independent investigation into the use of Pegasus spyware against the Catalans identified in this investigation.”

Heads were bound to roll, and the main casualty in this affair was the first woman to head Spain’s CNI intelligence agency, Paz Esteban.  Esteban’s defence of the Catalan hackings proved identical to that of Robles: they had been done with judicial and legal approval.  But she needed a scalp for an increasingly embarrassing situation and had no desire to have her reasons parroted back to her.  “You speak of dismissal,” she stated tersely, “I speak of substitution.”

While the implications for the Spanish government are distinctly smelly, one should not forget who the Victor Frankenstein here is.  NSO has had a few scrapes in Israel itself.  It survived a lawsuit by Amnesty International in 2020 to review its security export license.  But there is little danger of that company losing the support of Israel’s Ministry of Defence.  In Israel, cybersecurity continues to be the poster child of technological prowess, lucrative, opaque and distinctly unaccountable to parliamentarians and the courts.

*

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from Indian Punchline

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***

In 1992, researchers published data showing the quality of sperm counts in men had been cut nearly in half over the previous 50 years. A 2017 systematic review confirmed this trend, showing a 50% to 60% drop in total sperm count among men in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand between 1973 and 2011

Testosterone has also declined in tandem with lower sperm counts, while miscarriage rates among women and erectile dysfunction among men have been steadily rising

We can rule out genetics as the cause, because the decline in sperm count is simply too rapid. That leaves us with environmental causes. Environmental causes can be broadly divided into two broad categories: Lifestyle and chemicals

Lifestyle factors that negatively impact fertility include obesity, smoking, binge drinking and stress

A great number of chemicals can impact fertility either directly or indirectly, but the most concerning class are endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) such as phthalates. EDCs disrupt hormones, including sex hormones necessary for reproductive function, such as testosterone

*

In the After Skool video above, Shanna H. Swan, Ph.D., a leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologist and professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn school of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, examines the role of environmental toxins in reproductive health.

In 1992, researchers published data showing the quality of sperm counts in men had been cut nearly in half over the previous 50 years. According to this study:¹

“Linear regression of data weighted by number of men in each study showed a significant decrease in mean sperm count from 113 x 10(6)/ml in 1940 to 66 x 10(6)/ml in 1990 and in seminal volume from 3.40 ml to 2.75 ml, indicating an even more pronounced decrease in sperm production than expressed by the decline in sperm density …

As male fertility is to some extent correlated with sperm count the results may reflect an overall reduction in male fertility. The biological significance of these changes is emphasized by a concomitant increase in the incidence of genitourinary abnormalities such as testicular cancer and possibly also cryptorchidism and hypospadias, suggesting a growing impact of factors with serious effects on male gonadal function.”

Are Humans Going Extinct?

Swan was initially skeptical, but she decided to look into it some more. To her amazement, after reviewing each of the 60 studies included in that 1992 analysis, she could find nothing to indicate that the finding was a fluke. It was the most stable trend she’d ever come across, and she spent the next 20 years investigating why human reproduction is plummeting.

In 2017, she published a systematic review and meta-regression analysis² showing a 50% to 60% drop in total sperm count among men in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand between 1973 and 2011. Overall, men in these countries had a 52.4% decline in sperm concentration and a 59.3% decline in total sperm count (sperm concentration multiplied by the total volume of an ejaculate).

Swan refers to this shocking 39-year decline as “the 1% effect,” meaning the cumulative effect that an annual change of just 1% has over time. Testosterone has also declined in tandem with lower sperm counts, while miscarriage rates among women and erectile dysfunction among men have been steadily rising.

If these trends continue, and there’s no indication that they won’t, in the not-so-distant future, we’ll be looking at a male population that is completely infertile. At that point, the human population will become extinct. Along the way, however, we’ll be facing a number of other pressing problems.

How Will We Care for Aging Baby Boomers?

Historically, the age distribution of the population has looked like a pyramid. The bottom largest section was children, the middle, slightly smaller section was working adults, and the top of the pyramid was seniors. This worked out well, because the younger population was able to financially support and care for the much smaller older segment.

We no longer have that pyramid. In most countries, the population distribution now looks like a light bulb, with a narrow base of children, a bulbous segment of adults, and a narrowing but still very large segment of older adults.

Part of the equation is the fact that life spans have gotten longer, which is wonderful. But the funds to support this aging population — through social security and Medicare in the U.S., for example — are dwindling, as the payer base is shrinking so dramatically.

Another problem is the fact that we won’t have the labor force required to keep the economy afloat. There aren’t enough children to fill all the jobs after the adult population retires.

What’s the Cause?

According to Swan, there are likely a whole host of factors contributing to this reproductive calamity. We can, however, rule out genetics, because the decline in sperm count is simply too rapid. A 50% decline in just two generations cannot be explained by genetics.

That leaves us with environmental causes. Environmental causes can be broadly divided into two broad categories: Lifestyle and chemicals. Lifestyle factors that negatively impact fertility include:

• Obesity
• Smoking
• Binge drinking
• Stress

On the chemical side, we know that a great number of chemicals can impact fertility either directly or indirectly, but the most concerning class are endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).³ EDCs disrupt hormones, including sex hormones necessary for reproductive function.

Many EDCs will mimic hormones, effectively taking their place. But, of course, the chemical doesn’t function the way the natural hormone does, so whatever that hormone controls won’t function well either. As explained in the 2019 report, “Male Infertility and Environmental Factors”:⁴

“Classically the EDCs bind to the androgen or estrogen receptor triggering an agonist or antagonist action. These in turn lead to increased or decreased gene expression of sex-specific genes.

In addition, EDCs act on steroidogenic enzymes and the metabolism of hormones, for example, inhibit the activity of 5-α reductase, which is the most important enzyme in the production of dihydrotestosterone and hence the regulation of the masculinization of the external genitalia and the prostate.

Furthermore, P450 enzymes in the liver that metabolize steroid hormones may be affected. In animal models EDCs affect hormone receptor levels. In addition to the effect on hormone action, animal experiments suggest that EDCs may also result in epigenetic changes and miRNA levels.”

Swan suspects EDCs are a primary culprit in infertility, in part because we’re surrounded by them every day of our lives. We’re exposed to them through our food, water, personal care products, furniture, building materials, plastics and much more.

In Utero Exposure to EDCs Can Drive Down Fertility

The most vulnerable time of a person’s life is in utero. This is when the building blocks for your reproductive system are laid down, and exposure to EDCs at this time can wreak havoc with a child’s adult reproductive capacity. Since the fetus shares the mother’s body, everything the mother is exposed to, the fetus is exposed to.

As explained in the video, a boy’s reproductive system is dependent on a certain level of testosterone for proper development. If the testosterone level is too low, his reproductive system will be impaired to some degree. In short, without sufficient testosterone, the boy’s reproductive system will “default” to female. He will be feminized, or as Swan describes it, “incompletely masculinized.”

Phthalates Are in Everybody

Swan was tipped off to investigate phthalates by a chemist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who noted that these EDCs have been found in everybody, including pregnant women.

Specifically, phthalates have been shown to disrupt the reproductive development of males, because they lower testosterone levels and incomplete male development in animals has now become so prevalent, there’s even a name for it: phthalate syndrome.

Animal studies have shown that when a pregnant mother is fed phthalates in early pregnancy, her male offspring will have smaller and less developed reproductive organs. His testicles may not be descended, his penis may be smaller, and his anogenital distance (the distance between the anus and the genitals) tends to be shorter.

Swan was the first to study the anogenital distance in human male infants, and was able to confirm phthalate syndrome is occurring in humans as well. Boys born of women with high levels of phthalic metabolites in their urine — specifically those that lower testosterone — had phthalate syndrome, and the severity was dose-dependent.

Swan then replicated the study with another set of mothers and their babies, and found the same result. The next question then is, does a shorter anogenital distance result in lower sperm count? According to Swan, boys with a short anogenital distance are more likely to have reproductive defects such as undescended testicles and defects of the penis. He’s also more likely to develop testicular cancer at an earlier age than normal, and he’s more likely to be sub-fertile.

So, it is her professional conclusion that phthalate exposure in utero is “undoubtedly part of the explanation of the decrease in sperm count and fertility.” Phthalates and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have also been linked to reduced bone mineral density in male teens,⁵ which could have significant implications later in life.

Common Sources of Phthalate Exposure

Phthalates are found in plastics. They’re what make the plastic soft and flexible, so wherever you find soft and pliable plastic, you find phthalates. Examples include:

• Vinyl clothing, such as raincoats and rubber boots
• Plastic shower curtains
• Plastic tubing of all kinds
• Foods that have been processed through plastic tubing, such as dairy products (the milking machines have plastic tubing)

Phthalates also increase absorption and help retain scent and color, so you’ll find them in:

• Cosmetics, perfumes and personal care products
• Scented household products such as laundry soap and air fresheners
• Pesticides

As noted by Swan, phthalates are only one class of EDCs. There are several others, including phytoestrogens, dioxins, flame retardants, phenols, PCBs and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Phthalates, however, are among the most hazardous for male reproductive health due to their ability to block testosterone.

Joe Rogan also recently interviewed Shaw about this. An excerpt is included below. The full interview is available on Spotify.

Phenols Increase Female Sex Hormones

The phenols, such as bisphenol-A (BPA), have the opposite effect in that they make plastic more rigid and hard. In the human body, they increase the female hormone estrogen, resulting in breast development and a flabby midsection. BPA also damages the DNA in sperm.⁶ Like phthalates, BPA and other bisphenols are extremely pervasive. They’re found in:

The Good News

The good news here is that many of the chemicals that are most harmful to reproduction are not persistent, and your body can eliminate them in four to six hours.

Sperm production take about 70 days from start to finish, so over time, a man may be able to reverse some of the damage, provided it’s not congenital. The problem, of course, is that most people are exposed to multiple sources 24/7, so successful detox means you have to stop taking them in.

Another piece of good news is that researchers have shown that if you clean up the environment of the offspring from a toxic, unhealthy rat, normal reproductive capacity is restored after three generations of clean living.

While this is a relatively quick fix for rats, the life span of which is only two years, it’s not quite as simple for humans. Three generations in human terms is about 75 years, “but we can start in that direction,” Swan says, by making sure we a) don’t expose children to EDCs in utero, and b) eliminate further exposure during childhood if the child was exposed in utero.

Forever Chemicals in Our Food and Water

While phthalates and bisphenols are nonpersistent, PFAS — a class of chemicals that are pervasive in soil, water, and human bodies — are so persistent they’re known as “forever chemicals.” In Maine, farmers are now blowing the whistle, warning that PFAS on farmland are a “slow-motion disaster.”⁷

How do the chemicals get there? While spills and seepage from industrial sites are part of the problem in some areas, the most prevalent source of the contamination is biosolids — toxic human waste sludge — which is being marketed as an affordable fertilizer.

In 2019, I wrote about how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed to adequately regulate the biosolids industry, thereby allowing massive quantities of toxic materials to be introduced into our food supply.

You can learn more about this in the Natural News documentary “Biosludged,” above. PFAS accumulate in the soil and is transferred into your food. Proof of this can be seen in food testing, which in 2017 found PFAS chemicals in 10 of the 91 foods tested.

Chocolate cake had the highest amount — 250 times above the advisory limit for drinking water. (There’s currently no limit for food.) Nearly half of the meat and fish tested also contained double the advisory limit for water. Leafy greens grown within 10 miles of a PFAS plant also contained very high amounts. As you might expect, PFAS also accumulate in your body.

Maine Takes Action

In Maine, PFAS contaminated water wells have sparked both outrage and action. A March 2022 article in The Maine Monitor spells out the game plan:⁸

“Maine is the first state to comprehensively test for the impacts of forever chemicals from sludge spreading on farmland, a practice occurring nationwide where fully half of wastewater sludge is land-applied. Consequently, Maine has had to pioneer policy actions, moving to implement recommendations of a year-long PFAS task force.

The next policy step must be passage of LD 1911, which would ban land application of sludge and the land application or sale of compost derived from sludge. Two dozen companies and municipalities are licensed to convert sludge into compost, despite the state’s own finding that 89% of finished compost samples exceeded the screening level for PFOA, a common PFAS compound.

Adam Nordell, co-owner of Songbird Farm in Unity — another site of high PFAS contamination — summarized the importance of LD 1911 this way: ‘No one can undo the historic contamination of our land. But we know enough now to turn off the tap.’

A second bill before the Legislature, LD 1639, would prevent the state-owned Juniper Ridge landfill, managed by Casella Waste Systems, from accepting construction and demolition debris that originated out of state and is laden with PFAS and other toxics, increasing the contaminated leachate entering the Penobscot River.”

Toxic Pesticides

Communities in Maryland and Massachusetts have also confirmed that pesticides used against mosquitoes were contaminated with PFAS, even though they’re not supposed to contain such chemicals. In April 2022, the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) reported:⁹

“EPA claimed that there were no PFAS chemicals used in this way, but independent testing¹⁰revealed that there was PFAS contamination in pesticides being used by mosquito control districts — of 14 mosquito control products tested, half were found to contain PFAS. These products are heavily applied across communities, often weekly, from Spring through Fall.

In response to these concerns, EPA claimed that the PFAS contamination was due to leaching from fluorinated plastic HDPE storage containers. While this explanation has been touted by many as proof that PFAS contamination of pesticides is not a serious concern, the testing in Maryland and Massachusetts revealed that three products were contaminated from another source than the containers.

Beyond this kind of contamination, PFAS are active ingredients in at least 40 pesticide products used worldwide. And this only accounts for pesticides that include PFAS as an active ingredient.

PFAS products are a popular surfactant (helps spray more easily) so PFAS may also be used as inert ingredients in pesticides, which unfortunately don’t have to be reported since chemical composition falls under ‘trade secret’ jurisdiction.

It is clear that PFAS are present in a variety of commonly-used pesticide products, regardless of storage conditions. No research has been done on the synergistic effects of PFAS and pesticides — which we know pose their own set of human and environmental health risks.”

Again and again, the EPA has failed in its duty to protect public health from chemicals that wreak havoc on human health, fetal development and fertility. As noted by PAN, “EPA has engaged in a regulatory stalling tactic — changing the definition of what is considered to be a PFAS to shirk responsibility.”

The new “working definition” of PFAS has been considerably narrowed from what it was, thereby excluding many chemicals used in drugs and pesticides. To counter the EPA’s deliberate shortcomings, the U.S. Congress has also introduced a bill (HR.5987 — the PFAS Definition Improvement Act¹¹) that would require the EPA to use the widest and most comprehensive definition of PFAS.

I join PAN in urging you to call on your representatives to co-sponsor this bill. Maine and Maryland have also proposed bills to prevent PFAS contamination in pesticides specifically.

It’s hard to be optimistic when faced with such dire statistics as a 1% reduction in male fertility per year. But if we care about life, we must at least try to turn things around. One step in the right direction would be to eliminate EDCs from common use. In the meantime, men and women of childbearing age would be wise to take precautions and clear out anything that might expose them to these chemicals in their day-to-day lives, before they try to conceive.

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Notes

¹ BMJ September 12, 1992, 305(6854): 609-613

² Human Reproduction Update November-December 2017; 23(6): 646-659

^3, 4 Global Reproductive Health 2019; 4(2): e28

⁵ Newswise April 29, 2022

⁶ WTOL11 April 29, 2022, Updated May 2, 2022

^7, 8 The Maine Monitor March 13, 2022

⁹ PANNA.org April 20, 2022

¹⁰ Maryland Pesticide Network March 26, 2021

¹¹ HR.5987

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***

President Biden, receiving Italy’s PM Draghi at the White House, said,

“The thing I most appreciate about you is your effort from the beginning to bring NATO and the EU in sync in helping Ukraine.”

Well-deserved congratulations: while the U.S. Congress is allocating an additional $40 billion to arm Kiev’s forces in the war against Russia, adding to the $14 billion already allocated in March, Draghi has been working to open a similar channel of war funding in Europe through a “European Union Solidarity Trust Fund for Ukraine” and a “resilience package” worth an initial €2 billion provided to Kiev by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

At the same time Mario Draghi and other G7 leaders (of which Italy is a member along with the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Japan) allocated $24 billion to support Ukraine in its war against Russia. Draghi’s role is also important in the financing to Kiev decided by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, initially amounting to about $5 billion.

Thanks to this funding, in the months before and after the war the United States and its allies supplied Kiev forces with 85,000 missiles, more than 50 million rounds of ammunition of all calibers including for long-range howitzers, drones and other advanced weapons systems. Kiev forces, particularly those of the Azov Regiment and other neo-Nazi formations, are not only armed but directed by NATO.

The colossal spending on the war against Russia, which is set to increase and become permanent, is paid for by the citizens of Italy and Europe directly and indirectly by cutting social spending.

Added to this is the growing expense resulting from the EU Directive to accept and keep all Ukrainians arriving (without the need for visas) in Italy and other European countries.

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This article was originally published in Italian on byoblu.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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***

Wait, you mean dirty stinky polluting coal? That coal?

Which brings me to….

EU to Block Russian Coal

So the EU, already in the middle of the worst energy crisis since the Arab oil crisis and likely worse, is now pushing to eliminate imports of Russian coal. Just so you understand the importance of Russian coal to Europe…

Some 70% of Europe’s thermal coal comes from Russia. Coal accounts for about 20% of continental Europe’s electricity production (as of 2019; perhaps it is 25% now).

Watching the news is enough to drive a man to drink or to put his drink through the telly.

But fear not, there is a silver lining.

Sure, the Russians can take their coal and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine! This works well for a populace now being riled up to the hysterical level, but the question remains: who are they going to find to replace that coal? Are the EU not aware that there is no spare capacity in the big coal exporting nations? Did no one tell the Europeans that coal is base load? Are they not aware they can’t get anymore gas to offset any deficiency in coal? My goodness, when you look at this purely rationally, the only conclusion we can come to is that the energy crisis in Europe is very much in its infancy.

If you thought that there is an issue with respect to security of oil supplies, security over supplies of coal is a different dimension. Indonesia, Australia, and Russia accounted for some 75% of world coal trade in 2019.

Whether or not Brussels can get an agreement by EU state members to ban the import of coal remains to be seen…. But given the EU’s neo-marxist Malthusian ideology and the recent “reported” war crimes committed by Russian troops, it does appear that there is a way “better than even” odds of a ban being agreed to.

But wait. There is more — a blockade of Russian oil? This is becoming more scary by the day!

Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, said yesterday that it is now more a question of when, rather than if, the EU imposes a blockade on Russian oil.

The topic will be on the table for debate at Monday’s foreign affairs council meeting, Borrell said, adding: “Sooner or later — I hope sooner — it will happen.”

Preparations for an oil ban, potentially as part of a sixth package of EU sanctions, reflect a marked hardening in the mood among member states, driven by the reports of atrocities committed by Russian troops in Bucha and other areas that were under occupation.

Political pressure for action is only mounting. In a symbolic vote, the European Parliament yesterday backed by a large majority an immediate full embargo on Russian oil, coal, gas and — in a potential sign of things to come — nuclear fuel.

It isn’t hard to figure out where this is all heading (you ain’t seen nothing yet when it comes to rising commodity prices). What keeps us awake at night is where this all heads politically and socially.

What we do expect from the “great resetters” is the following:

We’ll be told that this world of fossil fuel consumption is clearly unsustainable. See, look, they’ll say from their ivory towers, pointing to spiraling prices. The reason you’re freezing is because it’s unsustainable. The reason you can’t afford the food at the supermarket or that it’s simply not on the shelves any longer is because — you guessed it — it is unsustainable.

Bugs. That’s their answer.

Middle class lifestyles will be curbed as we’re instructed to strive for “sustainability” and transition to shitty pod apartment living and mass transit, while eating synthetic foods grown in labs. But fear not, the Obamas, Clintons, Klaus’ will still keep their mansions, and Silicon Valley futurists will insist on exemptions for their yachts and private jets.

The truth is that left-wing governments have deliberately curtailed drilling and capex spending on domestic energy. They shut nuclear power plants and subsidized costly, inefficient solar and wind projects. Germany froze after their wind turbines stopped working, and they import most of their energy now.

But it’s not just the sausage eaters, as across the West we’re seeing the same thing. We have now ended up not with any form of “green sustainable utopia,” but instead with fuel shortages, rocketing prices, energy dependency often on the world’s most repressive regimes, and we’re about to have severe food shortages. All of this is directly because of these initiatives.

But watch, they will lay the blame on Putin.

***

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The risks that lie ahead are too big and dangerous to ignore. That’s why contrarian money manager Chris Macintosh just released the most critical report on these trends, What Happens Next. This free special report explains precisely what’s coming down the pike and what it means for your wealth and well-being. Click here to access it now.

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***

While the so-called liberal and conservative media – all stenographers for the intelligence agencies – pour forth the most blatant propaganda about Russia and Ukraine that is so conspicuous that it is comedic if it weren’t so dangerous, the self-depicted cognoscenti also ingest subtler messages, often from the alternative media.

A woman I know and who knows my sociological analyses of propaganda contacted me to tell me there was an excellent article about the war in Ukraine at The Intercept, an on-line publication funded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar I have long considered a leading example of much deceptive reporting wherein truth is mixed with falsehoods to convey a “liberal” narrative that fundamentally supports the ruling elites while seeming to oppose them.  This, of course, is nothing new since it’s been the modus operandi of all corporate media in their own ideological and disingenuous ways, such as The New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Fox News, CNN, NBC, etc. for a very long time.

Nevertheless, out of respect for her judgment and knowing how deeply she feels for all suffering people, I read the article.  Written by Alice Speri, its title sounded ambiguous – “The Left in Europe Confronts NATO’s Resurgence After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine” – until I saw the subtitle that begins with these words: “Russia’s brutal invasion complicates…”  But I read on.  By the fourth paragraph, it became clear where this article was going.  Speri writes that “In Ukraine, by contrast [with Iraq], it was Russia that had staged an illegal, unprovoked invasion, and U.S.-led support to Ukraine was understood by many as crucial to stave off even worse atrocities than those the Russian military had already committed.” [my emphasis]

While ostensibly about European anti-war and anti-NATO activists caught on the horns of a dilemma, the piece goes on to assert that although US/NATO was guilty of wrongful expansion over many years, Russia has been an aggressor in Ukraine and Georgia and is guilty of terrible war crimes, etc.

There is not a word about the U.S. engineered coup in 2014, the CIA and Pentagon backed mercenaries in Ukraine, or its support for the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and Ukraine’s years of attacks on the Donbass where many thousands have been killed.  It is assumed these actions are not criminal or provocations.  And there is this:

The uncertain response of Europe’s peace activists is both a reflection of a brutal, unprovoked invasion that stunned the world and of an anti-war movement that has grown smaller and more marginalized over the years. The left in both Europe and the U.S. have struggled to respond to a wave of support for Ukraine that is at cross purposes with a decades long effort to     untangle Europe from a U.S.-led military alliance. [my emphasis]

In other words, the article, couched in anti-war rhetoric, was anti-Russia propaganda.  When I told my friend my analysis, she refused to discuss it and got angry with me, as if I therefore were a proponent of war.  I have found this is a common response.

This got me thinking again about why people so often miss the untruths lying within articles that are in many parts truthful and accurate.  I notice this constantly.  They are like little seeds slipped in as if no one will notice; they work their magic nearly unconsciously.  Few do notice them, for they are often imperceptible.  But they have their effects and are cumulative and are far more powerful over time than blatant statements that will turn people off, especially those who think propaganda doesn’t work on them.  This is the power of successful propaganda, whether purposeful  or not.  It particularly works well on “intellectual” and highly schooled people.

For example, in a recent printed  interview, Noam Chomsky, after being introduced as a modern day Galileo, Newton, and Descartes rolled into one, talks about propaganda, its history, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, etc.  What he says is historically accurate and informative for anyone not knowing this history.  He speaks wisely of U.S. media propaganda concerning its unprovoked war against Iraq and he accurately calls the war in Ukraine “provoked.”  And then, concerning the war in Ukraine, he drops this startling statement:

I don’t think there are ‘significant lies’ in war reporting. The U.S. media are   generally doing a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine. That’s valuable, just as it’s valuable that international investigations are underway in preparation for possible war crimes trials.

In the blink of an eye, Chomsky says something so incredibly untrue that unless one thinks of him as a modern day Galileo, which many do, it may pass as true and you will smoothly move on to the next paragraph.  Yet it is a statement so false as to be laughable.  The media propaganda concerning events in Ukraine has been so blatantly false and ridiculous that a careful reader will stop suddenly and think: Did he just say that?

So now Chomsky views the media, such as The New York Times and its ilk, that he has correctly castigated for propagandizing for the U.S. in Iraq and East Timor, to use two examples, is doing “a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine,” as if suddenly they were no longer spokespeople for the CIA and U.S. disinformation.  And he says this when we are in the midst of the greatest propaganda blitz since WW I, with its censorship, Disinformation Governance Board, de-platforming of dissidents, etc., that border on a parody of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. 

Even slicker is his casual assertion that the media are doing a good job reporting Russia’s war crimes after he earlier has said this about propaganda:

So it continues. Particularly in the more free societies, where means of state violence have been constrained by popular activism, it is of great importance to devise methods of manufacturing consent, and to ensure that they are internalized, becoming as invisible as the air we breathe, particularly in articulate educated circles. Imposing war-myths is a regular feature of these enterprises.

This is simply masterful.  Explain what propaganda is at its best and how you oppose it and then drop a soupçon of it into your analysis.  And while he is at it, Chomsky makes sure to praise Chris Hedges, one of his followers, who has himself recently wrote an article – The Age of Self-Delusion – that also contains valid points appealing to those sick of wars, but which also contains the following words:

Putin’s revanchism is matched by our own.

The disorganization, ineptitude, and low morale of the Russian army   conscripts, along with the repeated intelligence failures by the Russian high command, apparently convinced Russia would roll over Ukraine in a few days, exposes the lie that Russia is a global menace.

‘The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself,’ historian Andrew Bacevich writes.

But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public. Russia must be inflated to become a global menace, despite nine weeks of humiliating military failures. [my emphasis]

Russia’s revanchism?  Where?  Revanchism?  What lost territory has the U.S. ever waged war to recover?  Iraq, Syria, Cuba, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, etc.?  The U.S.’s history is a history not of revanchism but of imperial conquest, of seizing or controlling territory, while Russia’s war in Ukraine is clearly an act of self-defense after years of U.S./NATO/Ukraine provocations and threats, which Hedges recognizes. “Nine weeks of humiliating military failures”? – when they control a large section of eastern and southern Ukraine, including the Donbass. But his false message is subtly woven, like Chomsky’s, into sentences that are true.

“But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public.”  No, it is exactly what the media spokespeople for the war makers – i.e. The New York Times (Hedges former employer, which he never fails to mention and for whom he covered the Clinton administration’s savage destruction of Yugoslavia), CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post, the New York Post, etc. impart to the public every day for their masters.  Headlines that read how Russia, while allegedly committing daily war crimes, is failing in its war aims and that the mythic hero Zelensky is leading Ukrainians to victory.  Words to the effect that “The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself” presented as fact.

Yes, they do inflate the Russian monster myth, only to then puncture it with the myth of David defeating Goliath.

But being in the business of mind games (too much consistency leads to clarity and gives the game away), one can expect them to scramble their messages on an ongoing basis to serve the U.S. agenda in Ukraine and further NATO expansion in the undeclared war with Russia, for which the Ukrainian people will be sacrificed.  Orwell called it “doublethink”:

Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.  To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality one denies – all this is indispensably necessary….with the lie always one step ahead of the truth.

Revealing while concealing and interjecting inoculating shots of untruths that will only get cursory attention from their readers, the writers mentioned here and others have great appeal for the left intelligentsia. For people who basically worship those they have imbued with infallibility and genius, it is very hard to read sentences carefully and smell a skunk.  The subterfuge is often very adroit and appeals to readers’ sense of outrage at what happened in the past – e.g. the George W. Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Chomsky, of course, is the leader of the pack, and his followers are legion, including Hedges.  For decades they have been either avoiding or supporting the official versions of the assassinations of JFK and RFK, the attacks of September 11, 2001 that led directly to the war on terror and so many wars of aggression, and the recent Covid-19 propaganda with its devastating lockdowns and crackdowns on civil liberties.  They are far from historical amnesiacs, of course, but obviously consider these foundational events of no importance, for otherwise they would have addressed them.  If you expect them to explain, you will be waiting a long time.

In a recent article – How the organized Left got Covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy – Christian Parenti writes this about Chomsky:

Almost the entire left intelligentsia has remained psychically stuck in March 2020. Its members have applauded the new biosecurity repression and calumniated as liars, grifters, and fascists any and all who dissented. Typically, they did so without even engaging evidence and while shirking public debate. Among the most visible in this has been Noam Chomsky, the self-described anarcho-syndicalist who called for the unvaccinated to “remove themselves from society,” and suggested that they should be allowed to go hungry if they refuse to submit.

Parenti’s critique of the left’s response (not just Chomsky’s and Hedges’) to Covid also applies to those foundational events mentioned above, which raises deeper questions about the CIA’s and NSA’s penetration  of the media in general, a subject beyond the scope of this analysis.

For those, like the liberal woman who referred me to The Intercept article, who would no doubt say of what I have written here: Why are you picking on leftists? my reply is quite simple.

The right-wing and the neocons are obvious in their pernicious agendas; nothing is really hidden; therefore they can and should be opposed. But many leftists serve two masters and are far subtler. Ostensibly on the side of regular people and opposed to imperialism and the predations of the elites at home and abroad, they are often tricksters of beguiling rhetoric that their followers miss. Rhetoric that indirectly fuels the wars they say they oppose.

Smelling skunks is not as obvious as it might seem.  Being nocturnal, they come forth when most are sleeping.

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

Featured image is from Kim Petersen

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

To order his book click the cover page.

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

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

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

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***

A fascinating discussion with Dr. Peter McCullough and crime writer John Leake about their new book,

THE COURAGE TO FACE COVID 19: PREVENTING HOSPITALIZATION AND DEATH WHILE BATTLING THE BIOPHARMACEUTICAL COMPLEX.

The book traces the travails of cardiologist/epidemiologist McCullough, who became an early leader in devising successful treatment protocols for covid patients and, after making it his mission to get the word out about the protocols, has been persistently attacked by what he describes as the biopharmaceutical complex while becoming a global leader among physicians and others seeking to save people around the world from the complex’s deadly agenda.

To purchase THE COURAGE TO FACE COVID 19: PREVENTING HOSPITALIZATION AND DEATH WHILE BATTLING THE BIOPHARMACEUTICAL COMPLEX, go here: couragetofacecovid.com

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This interview was originally published on The Whistleblower Newsroom.

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