Global Research

Who Will Eventually Own Everything, Including You?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, April 27, 2022

The vast majority of the world’s assets are owned by just two investment firms — BlackRock and the Vanguard Group. Combined, they have ownership in nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms, and through their investment holdings they secretly wield monopoly control over all industries.

Americans Are “In Charge” of the War Says French Journalist Who Returned from Ukraine

By Paul Joseph Watson, April 28, 2022

A French journalist who returned from Ukraine after arriving with volunteer fighters told broadcaster CNews that Americans are directly “in charge” of the war on the ground. The assertion was made by Le Figaro senior international correspondent Georges Malbrunot. Malbrunot said he had accompanied French volunteer fighters, two of whom had previously fought against ISIS.

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and the Age of Bioweapons: 20 Years of Psychological Terror

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, April 27, 2022

A little over 20 years ago, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) conducted a military exercise that involved a “hypothetical scenario” of hijacked planes flying into both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

Uncle Sam’s Bio-Weapons Extravaganza

By Mike Whitney, April 27, 2022

Most of what we know comes from the Russians who investigated the bio-labs that were abandoned following the invasion of Ukraine. These are the people who uncovered the pathogens and other toxic substances that were kept at the 30-or-so facilities around the country.

The Real Threat in the Ukraine Conflict: Crossing the “Red Line” Towards Nuclear War? “The Russians Have Never Read Machiavelli”

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, April 27, 2022

Despite Kremlin warnings that countries that hindered its limited military operation would be treated as combatants, the Russians have taken no steps against the NATO countries that have hindered its operation by imposing sanctions and sending weapons to Ukraine. 

Poland Is Facilitating a US War Plan

By Julian Rose, April 27, 2022

Poland is following the US war plan and has been secretly training AZOV neo-Nazi fighters on its own soil for over a decade. Weapons with origins in the UK and USA are currently being funnelled through the country and over the border into Ukraine for immediate use by the AZOV Brigade and related militant groups.

COVID Absurdity: Toronto Zoo Claims Its Animals Are Voluntarily Getting Injected with the COVID Vaccine

By Ramon Tomey, April 27, 2022

The Toronto Zoo absurdly claimed that animals under its care are “voluntarily” getting injected with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine, implying that zoo animals are granting informed consent to be injected with experimental injections that come with the risk of serious side effects or death.

Towards a Global Food Disaster, Engineered through Acts of Political Sabotage: F. William Engdahl

By F. William Engdahl, April 27, 2022

It’s beginning to look like some bad actors are deliberately taking steps to guarantee a coming global food crisis. Every measure that the Biden Administration strategists have been making to “control energy inflation” is damaging the supply or inflating the price of natural gas, oil and coal to the global economy.

“We are Training Ukrainian Troops in Poland” Says Boris Johnson. “Reveals Military Secrets” to Russia

By Nauman Sadiq, April 27, 2022

Russia’s state investigative body issued a stark warning that it was looking into media reports alleging “sabotage experts” from Britain’s special forces had been deployed to western Ukraine. On Saturday, a defense source told RIA Novosti that at least two teams from the UK’s elite Special Air Service (SAS) forces arrived at a military base near the city of Lviv in western Ukraine.

Long History of US-Russia Confrontation. Analysis of Ukraine-Russia Relations

By Prof. John Ryan, April 27, 2022

This goes way back to the time of Lenin’s revolution in 1917 to replace the Tsar with a communist government. Along with more than a dozen other countries, in 1918 the US sent 13,000 troops to fight Lenin’s Bolshevik forces. Although this was gross interference in another country’s affairs, more than 250,000 foreign troops took part in the war against the Russian forces.

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The Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan is a jewel of parochialism, a darling of nutty consternation.  As a member of a party historically hostile to cutting fossil fuel emissions, he has been, for the most part, at home.  But some of his colleagues have had environmental conversions, hammering out an understanding with their Liberal counterparts about a net zero emissions target by 2050.

This understanding was only reached after much hollering and fuss prior to Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s visit to the climate change conference in Glasgow in 2021. But Canavan was having none of it and was delighted by the conference’s end that countries had agreed to “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal burning.

The communique of COP26 was, according to the Queensland Senator, a “green light” for Australia to keep digging and “supply the world with more coal because that’s what brings people out of poverty.”  There had “never been a higher demand” for coal and a virtuous Australian fossil fuel market would be happy to feed it.

With an election campaign in full swing, Canavan has again attempted to slay the net zero emissions dragon, taking the lead from LNP candidate for the seat of Flynn, Colin Boyce.  Boyce had suggested that the commitment to net zero was flexible, permitting “wiggle room” and a distinct lack of fidelity.

On the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing program, Canavan went one further in roundly proclaiming that “net zero is … dead.”  With such remarks, the accord reached between the Liberals and Nationals about achieving net zero emissions by 2050 seemed, not only shaky but erased.  “[UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson said he is pausing the net zero commitment, Germany is building coal and gas infrastructure, Italy’s reopening coal-fired power plants.  It’s all over.  It’s all over bar the shouting here.”

With the election campaign in full swing, these remarks proved unwelcome to his government colleagues.  “This is not the party’s position, that’s not the Coalition’s position and it’s not the government’s position,” Morrison confirmed.  “That’s his view, it’s no surprise, he’s held it for a long time, it’s been resolved and our policy was set out very clearly.”

The Nationals MP Michelle Landry was less diplomatic.  “Pull your head in, Matt,” she waspishly chided, while Victorian Nationals MP Darren Chester suggested that Canavan had lost not merely the argument but a sense of perspective.  “Matt Canavan is becoming like the Japanese intelligence officer who refused to accept World War II was over and hid in the Philippines jungle for 30 years.”

Former Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, did the media rounds suggesting that Canavan’s remarks were “not helpful”.  The issue of emission targets had been resolved.  “There are enough sensible people in the National Party to ensure people know we are committed to it.”

The discordance in government ranks was a boon to the Labor Party.  “The Liberal and National Parties are in open warfare about their net zero emissions policy, in the middle of an election campaign,” came the assessment from Labor Senator Murray Watt.

Anyone familiar with the Canavan copy book will be touched and dismayed by his entertainingly grotesque readings of climate change.  In 2021, he tweeted photos of snow filled scenes in regional New South Wales mocking the idea that there was a rise in global temperatures.  He has also been unsparing about the authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  “One of the IPCC authors was quoted as saying he hoped this report would scare people so it would help change their vote,” he recalled.

climate change pic.twitter.com/CT5pYjL9oL

— Proud Aussie Matt Canavan (@mattjcan) June 10, 2021

The senator has also become a socialist of sorts, at least when it comes to fossil fuel polluters.  Far from being demonised, those in the industry should be coddled and cushioned from the predatory behaviour of banks refusing to fork out financing for new mines.  “Global banks that want to control who has a job in Australia should be locked out of our country.”  Australians should well “pay higher interest rates but that would be worth it to protect our independence”.

In 2020, he told an Australian national program that the idea of zero emissions was never something that had been put to the electorate.  “The Australian people have never voted for net zero emissions… We seem to try and get bullied into these positions that the Australian people didn’t vote for.” He also attacked the Paris climate agreement as “transferring industrial wealth from the west and from Australia to China, a country that’s bullying and threatening us.”  (It must surely strike Canavan as ironic that China’s demand for Australian commodities, notably iron ore, remains insatiable.)

With such attitudes, Canavan is bound to win a fair share of votes. His unabashed hostility to environmental activists and his adoration of coal continues to sell well as a message in parts of his home state.  It is proving less convincing in Australia’s metropolitan centres, increasingly terrified by a planet on the boil.

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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: Australian Sen. Matthew Canavan (Source: @mattjcan / Twitter)

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A French journalist who returned from Ukraine after arriving with volunteer fighters told broadcaster CNews that Americans are directly “in charge” of the war on the ground.

The assertion was made by Le Figaro senior international correspondent Georges Malbrunot.

Malbrunot said he had accompanied French volunteer fighters, two of whom had previously fought against ISIS.

“I had the surprise, and so did they, to discover that to be able to enter the Ukrainian army, well it’s the Americans who are in charge,” said Malbrunot.

French reporter returning from Ukraine "Americans are directly in charge of the war on the ground." pic.twitter.com/m5yr7far6N

— no one (@antiwar_soldier) April 11, 2022

Adding that he and the volunteers “almost got arrested” by the Americans, who asserted they were in charge, the journalist then revealed that they were forced to sign a contract “until the end of the war.”

“And who is in charge? It’s the Americans, I saw it with my own eyes,” said Malbrunot, adding, “I thought I was with the international brigades, and I found myself facing the Pentagon.”

Malbrunot also mentioned America providing Ukraine with switchblade suicide drones, something highlighted by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a tweet that revealed Ukrainian soldiers were being trained to use the devices in Biloxi, Mississippi.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks to Ukrainian soldiers training on switchblade drones in Biloxi, Mississippi before they return today to defend their country pic.twitter.com/awUaoySgeH

— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) April 10, 2022

Citing a French intelligence source, Malbrunot also tweeted that British SAS units “have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, as did the American Deltas.”

Russia is apparently well aware of the “secret war” being waged in Ukraine by foreign commandos who have been in the region since February.

Both the United States and the UK have publicly asserted that there won’t be “boots on the ground” in Ukraine, but apparently there has been a US-UK military presence since the start of the war.

“Polls showed in the run up to the war the overwhelming majority of Americans wanted our government to stay out of it but our leaders know best and are more than happy to risk World War III in defense of Ukraine’s puppet regime,” writes Chris Menahan.

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Featured image is from Supratim Barman

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A little over 20 years ago, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) conducted a military exercise that involved a “hypothetical scenario” of hijacked planes flying into both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

NORAD had drills of jets as weapons

One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.

NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises occurred. It said the scenarios outlined were regional drills, not regularly scheduled continent-wide exercises. (USA Today, April 18, 2004)

One year later, on October 24-26, 2000, another “hypothetical” military exercise was played out featuring an airline crashing into the Pentagon killing 341 people followed by yet another May 2001 Department of Defense “hypothetical scenario” which saw hundreds of medical personnel training for a “guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner” crashing into the Pentagon.

What arose from the smoke and debris of September 11, 2001 was unlike anything the sleeping masses or international community expected.

The shock effect so traumatized the masses that quite suddenly, citizens found themselves willing to give up their liberties at home while acquiescing to any retaliatory action desired by their government abroad. The scale of horror was so great that the international community banded together and showed their love and solidarity towards America in the wake of the tragedy with candlelight vigils across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and South America. Humanity’s natural tendency to embrace and aid our fellow man in times of crisis expressed itself like a bright light in a world of confused darkness and a hope for a durable peace awoke in the hearts of many.

Alas, as the world came soon to discover, that hope was short lived.

The Neocon Takeover of America

Police State measures grew swiftly with Ashcroft’s Patriot Act of 2001. It is a mistake to call this Ashcroft’s bill however as none other than Joe Biden pointed out that his 1995 Omnibus Terrorism Bill drafted in the wake of the first WTC bombings was the origin of the Ashcroft variant. Biden felt no shame stating publically “I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill.”

While a new type of regime change war was created abroad, dangerous protocols for Cheney’s “Continuity of Government” were set into motion and with these procedures, new mandates for Martial Law were created amplifying the powers, financing and deployment of U.S. military capabilities both within the USA “under crisis conditions” and around the world. It didn’t take long for citizens to begin recognizing stark parallels to the earlier Nazi-run inside job of 1933 when the German Reichstag was burned down and blamed on the communists.

Governments that had no connection to 9/11 were swiftly targeted for destruction using false evidence of “yellow cake” produced in the bowels of MI6, and a broader unipolar military encirclement of both Russia and China was set into motion which President Putin called out brilliantly in his famous 2007 Munich Security Conference Speech.

Of course this should not have been a surprise for anyone who took the time to read the Project for a New American Century manifesto published in October 2000 entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ (RAD).

Under the Chairmanship of William Kristol and co-authored by John Bolton, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Robert Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, and Donald Rumsfeld, RAD stated that to

“further the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one-absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a new Pearl Harbor”.

Going further to describe its Hobbesian agenda, the cabal stated that

“the Cold War was a bipolar world; the 21st century world is- for the moment at least- decidedly unipolar with America as the world’s sole superpower”.

While much has been said about the “inside job” of 9/11, a lesser appreciated terrorist act occurred over several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001 killing five and infecting 17 in the form of envelopes laced with bio-weaponized anthrax.

The Age of Bioweapons and PNAC

This anthrax attack led quickly into the 2004 Bioshield Act with a $5 billion budget and mandate to “pre-empt and defend further bioweapon attacks”. This new chapter of the revolution in military affairs was to be coordinated from the leading bioweapons facility at the Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. Since 2002, over $50 billion has been spent on Bioweapons research and defense to date.

The earlier October 2000 RAD document emphasized the importance which the neocon cabal placed on bioweapons (and other next generation war tech) stating:

“Combat will likely take place in new dimensions: In space, cyber-space and perhaps the world of microbes… advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”.

Lawyer and bioweapons expert Francis Boyle stated in 2007 that Fort Detrick’s mandate includes “acquiring, growing, modifying, storing, packing, and dispersing classical, emerging and genetically engineered pathogens for offensive weapon programs.”

These new post-9/11 practices fully trashed the 1975 UN Convention Against Biological Weapons ratified by the USA by establishing a vast international network of bioweapons labs coordinated from Fort Detrick which would be assigned the role of doing much of the dirty work that the U.S. was “officially” prevented from doing on its own soil.

Where Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag to justify his enabling Acts, the neocons had their 9/11. The difference in the case of America was that Cheney failed to achieve the same level of absolute control over his nation as Hitler captured by 1934 (evidenced by pushback from patriotic American military intelligence circles against Cheney’s Iran war agenda in 2007). With this neocon failure, the republic lurched on.

The Rot Continues Under Obama

Obama’s rise was seen as a hopeful light to many naïve Democrats who still had not realized how a “false left” vs “false right” clash had been slowly constructed over the post WWII years. Either camp increasingly found itself converging towards the same world government agenda through using somewhat dissimilar paths and flavors.

It didn’t take long for many of Obama’s more critically-minded supporters to realize that the mass surveillance/police state measures, regime change wars, and military confrontation of Russia and China begun under Cheney not only failed to stop, but even expanded at faster rates than ever.

In the months before Obama left office in July 2016, the classified Directive 40: National Continuity Policy was enacted creating a line of “Devolution authority” for all branches of the government to a “duplicate chain of individuals secreted outside Washington available in a catastrophic emergency”. Days prior to Trump’s inauguration, Federal Continuity Directive 1 was issued to transfer authority to military forces who could be used to suppress “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.”

The Importance of Knowing This History

There are very clearly two diametrically opposing methods of analyzing, and solving the existential crisis threatening our world currently: Multipolar or Unipolar.

While Russia and China represent a multipolar/pro-nation state vision driven by large scale development projects that benefit all- rich and poor alike exemplified by the New Silk Road, Polar Silk Road and Space Silk Road something much darker is being promoted by the same financial oligarchy that owns both right and left sides of the deep state coin. These latter forces have provably positioned themselves to take control of western governments under crisis conditions and are not afraid to use every weapon in their arsenal to destroy their perceived enemies… including ethnic-targetted pathogens generated in any number of the Pentagon’s global array of 300+ biolabs. This latter uncomfortable reality was asserted days into the launching of COVID-19 in January by leading officials of Iran and even the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Numbers are being systematically misrepresented to convey much greater rates of death vs infections as dozens of leading medical experts have proven. Contaminated test kits and incomptent abuses of PCR tests were used early on to generate false positives while other testing protocols proved incapable of differentiating between covid-19 and the typical coronavirus strains of the flu that average between 7-14% of flu cases every year.

Despite the relative harmlessness of COVID-19, the fact is that evidence of something novel and laboratory generated has been established with leading medical specialists like Dr. Shankara Chetti of South Africa, Dr. Soňa Peková of the Czech Republic) and Dr Meryl Nass of the USA having delivered bountiful evidence that the various waves of the pathogen were not only NOT naturally occurring, but ethnic specific and lab-generated.

After evaluating over 7,000 patients, Dr. Chetty observed early on that the patients who suffered the greatest during each of the four waves encountered in South Africa were ethnic specific with the first wave targeting only blacks, the second only Indians and the third Caucasians and Arabs. Dr Pekova recognized that each wave involved the disappearance of mutations contained in earlier versions of the pathogen which is a scientifically impossible occurrence while also noting that each wave in various nations resulted in allergic reactions targeting different bodily functions (lungs, gastrointestinal, nervous system etc).

Investigative Journalist Whitney Webb’s February 2020 research demonstrated conclusively that DARPA had received funding in tandem with Fort Detrick since 2017 on genetic modification of novel coronaviruses (with a focus on bats) as well as the development of never before used DNA and mRNA vaccines which change the structure of DNA both for an individual and potentially for a whole race (especially with the emergent CRISPR vaccine technology now being brought online).

Chinese foreign ministry spokesmen and Chinese UN representatives have consistently demanded that the west allow Russian biosecurity experts to present their vast array of US-run bioweapon evidence captured during the military operation in Ukraine as well as the massive arsenal of opaque US biolabs that are concentrated in Ukraine, Georgia and Taiwan (as well as 30 other nations)… to no avail.

Lastly, and most importantly, the pre-9/11 military exercises were not merely hypothetical scenarios but exercises which led directly into a new “Pearl Harbor” that modified the behaviour of Americans under terror, panic and misinformation like nothing ever seen before.

The parallels to today’s coronavirus outbreak cannot be missed for anyone who has taken a serious look at the strange case of the Event 201 Global Pandemic Exercise on October 19, 2019 in New York. Event 201 was sponsored by the Michael Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and World Economic Forum which ran simulations under the “hypothetical” scenario of a novel coronavirus pandemic killing 60 million people. Reviewing just one of Event 201’s many recordings openly available on their official site features some very disturbing parallels to the events unfolding today:

This biological wargame scenario was by no means the first of its kind, but rather followed dozens of similar planning sessions which include the Rockefeller Foundation’s Operation Lockstep of 2011, and earlier Dark Winter exercises of June 22-23, 2000 which saw US government officials “playing” a scenario that involved Iraq deploying weaponized smallpox onto the US population justifying a military invasion of course. It took a few months to decide to go with the “planes crashing into building” scenario instead, but the effect was always the same.

Unipolar Martial Law or Multipolar Marshall Plan?

China and Russia both understand the nature of the game and although neither nation has chosen to call out the fraud of the pandemic, both have resisted mRNA gene therapy approaches while also providing alternative treatments like Hydroxychloroquine-Zinc which has been entirely banned in the west.

Although China’s current lockdown in Shanghai is jarring, if one realizes that they have been in a state of Defcon-2 since the start of the pandemic and have been trying to keep control of their sovereign capacity to respond to a new seeding of an ethnically targetted pathogen that could be released at any time, their behaviour becomes completely understandable.

The author delivered additional remarks on this topic to Jesse Zurawell’s TNT Radio which can be viewed here:

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Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , a BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and in 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation.

The Clash of the Two Americas

Vol. 1 & 2

by Matthew Ehret

In his new two volume series The Clash of the Two Americas, Matthew Ehret introduces a new analysis of American history from the vantage point that the globally-extended supranational shadow government that managed the British Empire was never fully defeated and has acted within the USA itself since 1776 as a continuous multi-generational fifth column managing every significant event and assassination of American presidents for the next 250 years.

Click here to order.

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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***

Question– Is the US making bio-weapons in Ukraine?

Answer– That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Unfortunately, there’s no simple “yes or no” answer. It’s more complicated than that.

Question– Can you explain what you mean?

Answer– Sure, but some people might find it a bit confusing.

First, most of what we know comes from the Russians who investigated the bio-labs that were abandoned following the invasion of Ukraine. These are the people who uncovered the pathogens and other toxic substances that were kept at the 30-or-so facilities around the country.

The Russian team has also studied the documents “they received from employees of Ukrainian laboratories on the implementation of military biological programs of the United States.” In other words, the Russians have compiled evidence that the US is violating its obligations under the terms of the Biological Weapons Convention.

Second, we know that the Pentagon –through various channels– pumped $32 million into laboratories located in Kiev, Odessa, Lvov and Kharkov. These biolabs were chosen to oversee a “project aimed at studying the pathogens of the Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis and hantaviruses.”

The Russians believe that interest in these pathogens is due to the fact “their use can be disguised as natural outbreaks of diseases”, which is why the project received additional funding. In other words, the Russians think that the US funding was mainly aimed at biological weapons development. The Chinese appear to agree with Russia on this matter. Here’s what China’s FM said:

“Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian … asked the US to release “relevant details as soon as possible” regarding alleged US biological laboratories in Ukraine….“The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone. It should give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification.”

“According to reports, in these facilities, large quantities of dangerous viruses are stored. Russia has found during its military operation that the US uses these facilities to conduct military plans. (“China… demands ‘full account of its biological military activities“, opindie.com)

You can see that there’s considerable concern among many of the countries the US sees as its rivals. And, their concern is not limited to the fact that the US is fooling around with all manner of highly-contagious and lethal pathogens but, also, that these 336 bio-labs are part of an integrated network under the operational control of the Pentagon. That is the biggest red flag of all!

The Russians have been quite blunt about what they think is going on. Here’s a clip from their official statement: “We believe that components of biological weapons were created on the territory of Ukraine.”

That sums it up perfectly. And they should know, too, after all, it’s the Russians who uncovered the stockpiles of pathogens and the documentation that supports their analysis. Of course, all of this could just be more “Russian disinformation”, that’s what the media would like you to believe. But what the media fails to acknowledge is that a lot of the documents gathered by the Russians have been signed by “real officials and are certified by the seals of their organizations.” In other words, the Russians can verify their analysis with hard evidence.

Here’s another excerpt from the Russian report that helps to shed light on what’s really been going on at these Ukrainian virus factories:

“During the implementation of these projects, six families of viruses (including coronaviruses) and three types of pathogenic bacteria (pathogens of plague, brucellosis and leptospirosis) were identified. This is due to the main characteristics of these pathogens that make them favourable for the purposes of infection: resistance to drugs, rapid speed of spread from animals to humans, etc…..

A study of the documents in the part of the P-781 project on the study of ways of transmitting diseases to humans through bats showed that the work was carried out on the basis of a laboratory in Kharkov.” (“Russia Mod: Briefing on analysis of documents related to US military and biological activities in Ukraine“, The Saker)

Nice, eh? So, the researchers at these facilities chose the pathogens that they believed were:

1. The most infectious
2. The most deadly
3. The most drug resistant

When does it become appropriate to use a term like “diabolical”? Is that too much of a stretch? Here’s more:

“Within the framework of the FLU-FLYWAY project, the Kharkov Institute of Veterinary Medicine studied wild birds as vectors for the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza. At the same time, the conditions under which spread processes can become unmanageable, cause economic damage and pose risks to food security have been assessed.

These documents confirm the involvement of the Kharkov Institute in the collection of avian influenza virus strains with high epidemic potential and capable of overcoming the interspecific barrier….” (“Russia Mod: Briefing on analysis of documents related to US military and biological activities in Ukraine”, The Saker)

Do you understand what they’re saying? The researchers were looking for ways to use migratory birds to transport lethal pathogens to the territories of Washington’s enemies. This is beyond diabolical. 

The Russian report goes on to explain how much of the documentary evidence of potentially-criminal activity was destroyed following Russia’s invasion. Check it out:

“The materials that our Defense Ministry got hold of prove that all serious high-risk research in Ukrainian biolabs was directly supervised by US experts… Our Defense Ministry reports that at this moment the Kiev regime…. hastily covers up all traces so that the Russian side could not get hold of direct evidence of the US and Ukraine violating Article 1 of the BTWC. They rush to shut down all biological programs.

Ukraine’s Health Ministry ordered to eliminate biological agents deposited in biolabs starting from 24 February 2022. We infer from the instructions to lab personnel that the order of elimination of collections suggested that they should be destroyed irrevocably. Having analyzed the destruction certificates, we can say that the Lvov lab alone destroyed 232 containers with pathogens of leptospirosis, 30 – of tularemia, 10 – of brucellosis, 5 – of plague. The total of more than 320 containers was eliminated. Pathogens’ titles and excessive amounts give reason to think that this work was done as part of military biological programs.” (“USNC biolabs in the Ukraine”, The Saker)

In other words, the Russian invasion triggered a mad-dash at the labs where these killer pathogens were being stored. Researchers had to quickly dispose of the evidence before the Russians arrived and figured out what was going on. The lab personnel were performing the same sketchy ritual as a serial killer who scrupulously wipes the bloody fingerprints off the murder weapon before the cops arrive. In other words, they were “covering their tracks.” At the same time, the researchers were told to blame everything on “Russian propaganda.” (But you probably knew that already.)

Question— How have these bio-labs effected the lives of the people living in Ukraine?

According to the Russian MOD: “… attention is drawn to the fact o f a sharp increase in cases of tuberculosis caused by new multi-resistant strains among citizens living in Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics in 2018. …, more than 70 cases of the disease were detected, which ended in a rapid fatal outcome. This may indicate a deliberate infection, or an accidental leakage of the pathogen from one of the biolabs located on the territory of Ukraine.” (“Russian MOD”, The Saker)

So, a number of people who lived around these facilities mysteriously died from weird strains of tuberculosis and other oddball diseases, but we’ll never know for sure whether the deaths were deliberate or not. And, naturally, the perpetrators of these crimes will never be held accountable. It’s tragic.

Of course, it could all be a big coincidence, but I suspect not. I suspect that the Ukrainians are the unwitting lab rats in Uncle Sam’s deadly science project. And there’s more, too. Check out this blurb from Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin:

“It is also no secret to the leadership of our country that the purpose of these biological experiments conducted by the Pentagon using biomaterials obtained from Slavic subjects in Ukraine and other countries neighboring Russia is to develop ‘ethnic weapons’ against the Russian population of Russia.” (“Rogozin: Bioweapons developed in Ukraine…”, The Saker)

This idea that the US is developing bio-agents that selectively target particular ethnic groups is a recurrent theme among critics of America’s mysterious bio-projects. According to Chinese military expert, Song Zhongping,

“The United States kept setting up biological laboratories around rival countries with the goal of developing targeted viral weapons against those countries…The US insists on developing weapons of mass destruction to seek hegemony, which is a gross violation of the Biological Weapons Convention and an assault on human civilization.” Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert.” (“US shuns UN meeting on biological security”, Global Times)

And here’s how author M.K. Bhadrakumar summed it up in a recent article titled “Migratory birds of mass destruction”:

“Russia had released a number of documents related to the biological military activities of the Pentagon, which pointed toward a worldwide project to set up biological laboratories in rival countries with the goal of developing targeted viral weapons against those countries.”…

(According to) General Igor Kirillov, chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, that Washington is creating biological laboratories in different countries and connecting them to a unified system.”(“Migratory birds of mass destruction”, Indian Punchline)

Finally, there is this from author Matthew Ehret who explains the probable origins of “ethnic targeting” with biological weapons. Here’s what he said in an article at the Unz Review:

“The earlier October 2000 RAD document emphasized the importance which the neocon cabal placed on bioweapons ..stating: “Combat will likely take place in new dimensions: In space, cyber-space and perhaps the world of microbes… advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”. (“The Project for a New American Century and the Age of Bioweapons: 20 Years of Psychological Terror“, Matthew Ehret, Unz Review)

Further along in the article, Ehret points to evidence that researchers may have achieved their goal of “selectively targeting particular ethnic groups.” Here’s the money-quote:

“…leading medical specialists like Dr. Shankara Chetti of South Africa, Dr. Soňa Peková of the Czech Republic) and Dr Meryl Nass of the USA having delivered bountiful evidence that the various waves of the pathogen were not only NOT naturally occurring, but ethnic specific and lab-generated.

After evaluating over 7,000 patients, Dr. Chetty observed early on that the patients who suffered the greatest during each of the four waves encountered in South Africa were ethnic specific with the first wave targeting only blacks, the second only Indians and the third Caucasians and Arabs.” (“The Project for a New American Century and the Age of Bioweapons: 20 Years of Psychological Terror“, Matthew Ehret, Unz Review)

Is that where all this is headed: Ethnic specific bioweapons to help usher in the New World Order?

One can only wonder.

We’re also curious about the fact that these 300-plus bio-labs (around the world) are part of a “unified system” that is under the Pentagon’s control. What’s that all about? Why would the Pentagon want a unified system of biological laboratories?

I can think of one reason, although I’m sure there are many more. Let’s say, powerful elites wanted to change our democratic system to a more authoritarian model (The Great Reset) by creating a global crisis that could be used as a pretext for terminating personal freedom, enforcing mandatory vaccination and imposing martial law. If they had a network of biological labs at their disposal, they could easily release the same-identical pathogen in locations around the world creating the perception of a rapidly-spreading virus. In other words, a widespread network of bio-labs could be used to simulate a global pandemic.

Is such a thing even possible?

You bet it is, in fact, the last two years might provide us with an example of how the system actually works.

One last thing: The UN Security Council recently convened an emergency meeting to address the issue of Ukraine’s biological labs. (Arria Formula Meeting on Biological Security.) But did anyone from the Biden administration attend the confab?

No one. The administration boycotted the meeting entirely , which means the US was given the opportunity to make its case before the international community, but decided to pull a no-show instead. Why would that be, we wonder?

A member of the Chinese delegation said it was a sign of a “guilty conscience.”

That sounds about right to me.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney, renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

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

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I still have forebodings about the manner in which the Kremlin is conducting the Ukrainian operation.  There is no doubt that the Russians had to come to the defense of the Donbass republics.  Having done little other than to provide the republics with some weapons and intelligence, for eight years the Kremlin allowed the Ukrainian shelling of Donbass and the occupation of large areas of the Donbass by Nazi militias, while the US and NATO trained and equipped a large Ukrainian army to subdue the republics.

As the year 2022 opened, the republics were faced with an invasion by 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers.  The atrocities committed on the population by the Nazi militias would have been severe. The internal sense of shame in Russia could have eroded the ability of Putin’s government to govern effectively.

As the Kremlin had tolerated so much for eight years with no response other than a fruitless and pointless Minsk Agreement, it is possible that Washington was relying on Putin bringing about his own downfall by accepting yet another provocation, this time a highly shameful one.  It seems that Putin himself understood this as he has said repeatedly that he had no alternative but to intervene to prevent the Ukrainian invasion of the Donbass republics.

That Donbass was the only target of the limited military operation is clear from the fact that Donbass is where the Russian forces and fighting are. The Ukrainian army and Nazi militias have been surrounded in Donbass.  There are no Russian troops operating in Western Ukraine.

Despite Kremlin warnings that countries that hindered its limited military operation would be treated as combatants, the Russians have taken no steps against the NATO countries that have hindered its operation by imposing sanctions and sending weapons to Ukraine.  According to some reports, there are even US and NATO military officers and intelligence services helping the Ukrainian forces.  The inflows of weapons have forced Russia to widen its limited military operation to Western Ukraine where Russia has used precision weapons to destroy the weapon stockpiles and the means of transporting them.  Thus, by sending weapons to Western Ukraine, NATO has forced Russia to expand its operations, thus widening the war.

The Western weapons come into Ukraine mainly from Poland, and Poland has been in the forefront of those demanding harsher measures, even military intervention, against Russia.  Yet Russia has continued to deliver gas to Poland and her other NATO enemies and only cuts them off if they refuse to pay in rubles. Far from treating Poland as a combatant, the Kremlin treats Poland and the rest of her enemies as allies and business partners.  It is the confused message that Russia sends, threatening one thing, but doing another, that is rife with peril.

Such a confused message, like acceptance of provocations, creates opportunity for miscalculation.  My concern remains that Russia’s limited, weak or non-existent responses to provocations invites more and worst provocations until a red line is crossed that results in nuclear war. 

Apparently, the Russians have never read Machiavelli.  They had rather be loved than feared.  

The long drawn-out process of flushing out and destroying the Ukrainian forces in Donbass has created the opportunity for mounting provocations of Russia, supported by Western populations under the influence of war propaganda. These provocations can easily result in a widening of the conflict, resulting in more forceful actions against Russia until the situation explodes.

To prevent a drawn-out process rife with opportunities to pile provocation on provocation is the reason I have thought that Russia needed to act decisively and quickly bring the conflict to an end.  It is this failure that is the real threat in the Ukraine conflict. By trying to save a few Ukrainian lives, Russia might be endangering the lives of hundreds of millions.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

It is not beyond my comprehension to understand the policies of the Israeli government in light of Jewish history under the Nazis. We know Jews have suffered and have been victims. Is it that mentality behind the walls, the indescribable destruction, loss of land, houses, deaths, the decrepit prisons of torture? Are Jews really still victims of paranoia and fear?

Nationalism revisited is now twisted into a parody of the Nazi credo, “Deutschland uber alles” extolling Germany over all others, with only pure Germans as inhabitants. How is it possible that Israeli Jews, whose ancestors have been victims of the worst nightmares of the Final Solution, can turn away in blind denial?  “Get rid of the undesirables who are beneath contempt.”  It is all so familiar yet cruelly deranged how a once-hunted people have become hunters and haters. In my view, this hatred has been projected onto the “other,” a Palestinian.

Many older generations of Jews (certainly not all), their psychology and work left undone, still carry with them scars of the Nazi Holocaust that has remained imprinted and lives in forms of guilt, victimhood and fear of another Holocaust brought on by the enormous antisemitism of today. They must protect Israel for they hear, “without Israel there would be no safe Jews.”  These fears are exported within the context of Zionist racist ideology.  The cycle of abuse plays out endlessly, and this is how I understand  Palestinians to be the last victims of the Holocaust.

It is a painful to attempt to understand what drove the Zionist movement on its determined path to have a Jewish nation state acquired through brute force and violent occupation. I look through a window whose shades have been drawn under the guise of the only democracy in the Middle East.

The shades can no longer hide the window of despair unless one refuses to see the truth. True Zionist nationalism and apartheid is both violent and racist. It lives to destroy. If you have not been there, including the misery of Gaza, it can be difficult to understand  as truth becomes distorted and  lies translate to what one wishes to see. The hatred of Palestinians has been so manipulated throughout Israel, Europe and the US.  I as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany cannot help but see an echo of early Nazi Jew hatred.  I fervently believe these systems destroy the fabric of what it means to be an evolved human being.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African anti-apartheid and human rights activist,  said of Zionist Israel, “This is apartheid, like ours, only worse.” It is only when Israel/Palestine become a unified country living with dignity and equal rights that there can be change. Now there is one-state Israel, an apartheid state. To declare Israel an apartheid state is unbearable but it is the truth.  We need to mobilize international pressure along with churches for a binational democratic state in Israel. I believe it is only the outside world that can force change.

Yes, it is time to step back and reflect, to let go of moral superiority and to remember that we are all connected. We must remember who we are. Zionism was once created to be a safe haven for Jews within a model of a secular nation state. What is that? A nation state for me has resulted in mass evictions of other nationalities and ethnic cleansing. Do Jews who have been victimized have the moral right to occupy and disenfranchise another people?

Nothing about the characterization of Palestinian life is based on reality. It is a myth, a means to end the Palestinian “problem.” It is a fearful and extremely dangerous road. What needs clarification over and over again is that blinded supporters of Zionist Israel  are by the very nature of their support complicit with Zionist Israel’s war crimes.

To pretend Israel is a peace-loving democracy is to be cajoled into a deception. Claiming that what has been done to Palestinians by Zionists is done in the name of Jews is false. What is being done to Palestinians by the Israeli Zionists will never be in my name as a Jew or as a human being.

Zionism in its attempt to hide behind the shade of normalcy is the Nakba, a catastrophe for Palestinians who once lived a rich life on land they called their own. It is also the despair of human rights activists vilified as antisemites, labeled delegitimizers, terrorists and dangerous in order to hide the truth of Israeli crimes. It is the despair of Jews afraid to see the truth of Zionism that is so consumed with racial hate.

The nightmare is leaking through the false pretend Democracy.  Zionism can no longer hide its agenda of a Jewish only state with echoes of “judenrein” from another time.  I understand this as an aberration,  a missing piece of humanity that has led descendants of the final solution to engage in the actions as victimizers and killers while filled with righteous hate. It all sounds too familiar. I remember and then I know despair, for the Palestinian story is also my story.

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Lillian Rosengarten is author of the book “Survival and Conscience: From The Shadow Of Nazi Germany To The Jewish Boat To Gaza.”(October 2015, Just World Books) It has been published in German. (Zambon 7/14). She can be contacted through her website, lillianrosengarten.com

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***

In a clearly politically charged turn of events, residents of Poland have been blocked from gaining access to the Global Research news site. I am currently a resident of Poland and have been affected in this way. 

Over the last few months the Polish political elite has whipped-up a highly abrasive anti Russian anti Putin propaganda drive. This has resulted in a US/NATO orchestrated news media whitewash, having the goal of making it appear as though all ‘atrocities’ being perpetrated in Ukraine are at the hands of ‘barbaric’ Russian soldiers. There is no mention of AZOV neo-Nazi led internecine strife while President Zelensky is portrayed as a swashbuckling hero. 

Poland is following the US war plan and has been secretly training AZOV neo-Nazi fighters on its own soil for over a decade. Weapons with origins in the UK and USA are currently being funnelled through the country and over the border into Ukraine for immediate use by the AZOV Brigade and related militant groups.

Historically, Poland’s relationship with Ukraine has, at best, been uneasy. A violent attack on thousands of Poles resident in Ukraine during World War Two, left an indelible scar on Polish/Ukraine relations which time has not completely healed.

However, no mention is made of this bloodbath by the starkly pro Ukrainian Polish media – whose output echoes that of the global communications dictatorship – now under the control of just six corporations.

Poland fell into the hands of US hegemonic ambitions during the Solidarity trade union’s 1989 uprisings, when economist Jeffrey Sachs infiltrated “Solidarity” discussions on the forming of a workers’ led cooperative to lead the nation out of Communism.

Sachs persuaded the union’s leaders to take a loan from the IMF in order to clear its debts, and the loan’s repayment terms subsequently bankrupted the country leading to a quasi-dependency on US support.

When I first came to Poland I was struck by the ‘Coca Colarisation’ of the culture; its seeming intoxication with ‘US is Best’. Something which has noticeably waned in recent years within Polish society. However, at the political level Poland is still playing poodle to US interests. Throughout the past decade a steady build-up of US missiles and troops has been the predominant military strategy, while Polish army recruitment and State financial spending on the military has been minimal.

NATO headquarters recently shifted from Northern Germany to Krakow in Southern Poland, adding to the sense that Poland is being used as a theatre for strategic Western military operations with the barely covert intention of surrounding Russia’s Western flank with especially sharpened sticks with which to spike the bear at short range.

Given Poland’s long history of occupation by belligerent foreign neighbours, known as ‘the partitions’, it is perhaps understandable that national sentiment concerning Russia is generally uneasy. However, when one observes the situation from a bottom-up perspective, both countries share much in common: they are Slavs – and in this sense are cousins.

The great tragedy of wars whipped-up by the self-interested dark cabal, is that ‘the people’ are out of the picture, their top-down indoctrination being relentlessly pursued by the ruthless global hidden-hand and passed on ‘verbatim’ by imaginatively bankrupt national governments.

Divide and conquer plus the fear factor, are once again being used immediately any sign of unity between peoples shows itself to be gaining momentum. Whereas, left to follow their own natural inclinations the people would come together in unity with no interest in attacking each other.

As the so called ‘refugees’ (Ukraine) pour across the border into Poland, President Zelensky maintains a relentless promotion of the fear which is the hallmark of the AZOV Brigade’s Nazi tactics. It is predominantly this that is causing the mass exodus of Ukraine citizens – and not the Russian army.

Kieve, and large parts of West Ukraine have not been militarily targetted by Putin, and while the press likes to spin a storyline of mass bombardment and beatings, the actual evidence for such has never been been proved.

My personal view is that a solution will be achieved only when the ‘Slav cousins’ recognise the ultimate commonality of their cultural, trading and humanitarian needs. Only then will Eastern Europe experience its true geo-political sense of balance and peace. And that sense of balance will be based upon long standing Eastern European intrinsic values – and not on a further enforcement of US led ‘coca colarisation’ and pugilistic neocolonial hegemony.

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher.  He is President of The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside. Julian’s acclaimed book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is particularly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The Toronto Zoo absurdly claimed that animals under its care are “voluntarily” getting injected with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine, implying that zoo animals are granting informed consent to be injected with experimental injections that come with the risk of serious side effects or death.

Toronto Zoo CEO Dolf DeJong told Canadian news outlet CP24:

“These are voluntary inoculations. The animals choose to come over and interact with the animal care staff, and then are delivered the vaccine. Some days, they participate; some days, they don’t.”

He added that the zoo will keep working until all its 120 animals are vaccinated.

According to DeJong, zoo animals to be vaccinated include primates, weasels, ferrets, tigers and pigs. “We are happy to report we have had no positive cases in any of our animals throughout this pandemic. Being able to add this extra layer of protection allows us to continue doing everything we can to provide them with the highest level of protection and medical care,” the Toronto Zoo CEO said in a press release.

The same press release added that Toronto Zoo staff had been working on “voluntary positive reinforcement training” with their animals for many years. The training has been an “integral step” to ensure the COVID-19 vaccination for animals “results in minimal stress and disruption to the animals’ routines.” (Related: Shameless vaccine promoters now using zoo animals for propaganda: Baby gorilla “gets his flu shot.”)

“Many of the animals willingly present an area of the body, such as an arm or tail, as part of their regular training exercises with their trusted keepers. Desirable treats [are] often used as a reward for their participation. A key component of these training sessions is that the animal always has the choice to participate in the training session, or walk away and try again another time.”

The zoo used COVID-19 vaccines developed and donated by Zoetis, which was formerly known as Pfizer Animal Health. The company was completely spun off from its New York-based parent and became a fully independent firm in 2013.

It is not known if Zoetis’ COVID-19 vaccine is based on Pfizer’s BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine. Nevertheless, Toronto Zoo’s press release reiterated that Zoetis “has received no significant animal adverse event reports from zoo veterinarians” following vaccination with its COVID-19 shot.

Humans cannot voluntarily decline the COVID-19 vaccine

While animals in the Toronto Zoo can choose to walk away from vaccination, human workers in the capital of Canada’s Ontario province are not afforded the same privilege. (The humans are treated like imprisoned animals.)

A notice issued by the city government of Toronto said employees, volunteers and students working for the city must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

“All city employees are required to be fully vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine series by Oct. 30, 2021. For a two-dose vaccine series, employees must receive once dose of [a] COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 30 and two doses of [the] COVID-19 vaccine by Oct. 30. For a single-dose vaccine series, employees must receive the dose by Sept. 30,” stated the notice.

According to the notice, “employees who do not comply with [the mandatory COVID-19] vaccination policy may be subject to discipline, up to and including dismissal.” True enough, the Toronto Sun reported in January that 461 city workers were fired for non-compliance with the vaccine mandate.

A Jan. 5 statement released by the city said the almost 500 terminated workers either refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine or opted not to disclose their vaccination status. It added: “The Jan. 2, 2022 deadline for city employees to be compliant with the COVID-19 vaccination policy was extended from last year in order to provide employees additional time to become educated and obtain a vaccine, as well as to allow greater time between first and second doses.”

The statement from Toronto also mentioned that 248 workers were partially vaccinated with one shot of the two-dose vaccine. Those workers will have a vaccination status meeting with their manager and a union representative, it continued.

“If, at that meeting, the employee is found to still not have two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine – employment could be terminated that day.”

VaccineWars.com has more stories about COVID-19 vaccination for both animals and humans.

Watch the video below that talks about zoo animals being injected with the COVID-19 vaccine.

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G-20 Pressure Failing 

The G-20 members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. Spain is also invited as a permanent guest.

The Biden administration wants to increase pressure on Russia, but finds increasing resistance to do more.

Brazil, Russia, India, and China widely known as BRICs have not bowed to US pressure. Nor have Mexico, Saudi Arabia, or South Africa.

The 2022 G-20 meets in November but those nations are also at an IMF summit right now.

Treasury secretary Janet Yellen plans to avoid Russian officials at meetings this week, while engaging with countries that haven’t joined in sanctions.

Janet Yellen Faces Challenge to Keep Pressure on Russia, While Addressing Global Consequences

The Wall Street Journal reports Janet Yellen Faces Challenge to Keep Pressure on Russia, While Addressing Global Consequences

Hanging over gatherings of finance ministers from around the world at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington this week will be Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as the sanctions campaign the U.S. and its allies have waged in response. As those sanctions efforts have brought the U.S. and its allies closer together, they are also laying bare deep differences in the broader Group of 20 major economies, which includes Russia, China and India, as well as European allies.

Ms. Yellen is expected to boycott some G-20 meetings this week that include Russian officials, and she last week warned countries against deepening their economic ties with Russia after the sanctions, singling out China.

In addition, Ms Yellen’s attempts to build support for an international tax agreement that was the focus of international economic diplomacy last year may not gain traction. Agreement on the deal still faces hurdles both in Congress and among European countries.

US Boycott

Yellen will IMF boycott meetings this week that include Russia. But what does that say about the G-20 summit in November. Will the US even go?

On March 22, Biden proposed booting Russia from the G-20. Reuters comments on the difficulty.

“It’s impossible to remove Russia from G20” unless Moscow makes such a decision on its own, said an official of a G20 member country in Asia. “There’s simply no procedure to deprive Russia of G20 membership.”

With Spain there are 21 G-20 nations so a US boycott would get the group size correct.

G-Whatever Meetings Are Useless

These G-7, G-20, G-Whatever meetings have always been useless.

G-Whatever meetings typically fail over agriculture, but with little fanfare.

Failure is again a given, but usually there is no spotlight on that failure. Now there is.

Seven G-20 nations, Brazil, Russia India, China, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa, refuse to salute US demands.

Sanction Limits 

We are at the limits of sanctions and they have failed. There is little else to do.

The sanctions did nothing to deter Russia, they have only increased costs and added to inflation across the board.

WTIC Oil Price

Meanwhile, oil prices remain well above the price at which Russia invaded Ukraine.

I asked, Oil Prices Jump Again, Hello Mr. President, What Will You Do For an Encore?

Biden’s Preposterous Claim 70 Percent of Inflation Jump is ‘Putin’s Price Hike’

CPI data from BLS, PCE data from BEA, chart by Mish

Inflation woes started with supply chain disruptions and free money stimulus, not Putin.

However, the invasion of Ukraine added to the woes, and so does sanction policy. The unfortunate irony is sanction policy has outright backfired, driving up costs and doing nothing to contain Russia.

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***

Russia’s state investigative body issued a stark warning that it was looking into media reports alleging “sabotage experts” from Britain’s special forces had been deployed to western Ukraine. On Saturday, a defense source told RIA Novosti that at least two teams from the UK’s elite Special Air Service (SAS) forces arrived at a military base near the city of Lviv in western Ukraine.

In a statement, the Investigative Committee said it would follow up the report that covert operators had been sent in “to assist the Ukrainian special services in organizing sabotage on the territory of Ukraine.” It was not clear what steps Russia planned to take in response to SAS involvement in Ukraine. But the fact of possible presence of forces from a NATO country is significant, given that Russia had issued warnings it would target weapons supplies in Ukraine.

During a visit to India earlier this week, flamboyant British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spilled the secret that “we are currently training Ukrainians in Poland in the use of anti-aircraft defense, and actually in the UK in the use of armored vehicles.”

Screenshot from RT World News

Reacting to the diplomatic gaffe, Polish General Waldemar Skrzypczak, an adviser to Poland’s defense minister, angrily denied the allegation that Ukrainian forces were being trained in Poland and said Friday that Boris Johnson was “attempting evil” with his statements about the training of Ukrainian troops abroad amid the conflict with Russia.

By disclosing classified information, Johnson “reveals military secrets” to Russia, the general said. “Training is a military matter and must be kept under wraps. The man should think before saying such things publicly.”

It emerged Friday Ukrainian troops were being trained in Britain in the use of 120 armored patrol vehicles pledged by Boris Johnson during his surprise visit to Kyiv on April 9. “It is only sensible that they get requisite training to make best use of it,” Boris Johnson’s spokesman revealed. “We are always conscious of anything perceived to be escalatory but clearly what is escalatory is the actions of Putin’s regime.”

Members of the Ukrainian government visited a military camp in April on Britain’s Salisbury Plain where they were shown demonstrations of equipment, followed by discussions on how the government can supply weapons. Britain’s military had been training Ukrainian forces since the 2014 Maidan coup toppling Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. But British special forces were withdrawn in February to avoid direct conflict with Russian forces and the possibility of NATO being drawn into the conflict.

Image on the right: A still image taken from Russian state TV footage that it said shows Aiden Aslin, a British fighter captured in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol by Russian forces, at an unknown location, in a still image from a video released on April 18, 2022. RURTR/RUSSIAN STATE TV CHANNEL ROSSYIA 1/Handout via REUTERS TV

Last week, two British citizens, Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin, who went to Ukraine to fight for the now-disbanded “international legion” of foreign mercenaries created by Kyiv in early days of the war and were fighting alongside neo-Nazi Azov militia in Mariupol, were captured by Russian forces and fervently appealed to the British prime minister for their immediate release.

The Britons appeared on Russian state TV and asked to be exchanged for Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian politician who is the leader of Ukraine’s Opposition Platform and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was charged with “high treason” and “aiding terrorism” by the Zelensky government and was placed under house arrest, from where he escaped and was rearrested on April 12. He is currently being held at an undisclosed location by the SBU, the fearsome Ukrainian intelligence agency being used as a tool for political persecution by the autocratic regime.

One of the captives wearing a T-shirt bearing the emblem of Ukraine’s infamous Azov battalion, Aiden Aslin, made a direct appeal to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson: “If Boris Johnson really does care like he says he does about British citizens then he would help pressure Zelensky to do the right thing and return Viktor to his family and return us to our families.”

Image on the left: A still image taken from Russian state TV footage that it said shows Shaun Pinner, a British fighter captured in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol by Russian forces, at an unknown location, in a still image from a video released on April 18, 2022. RURTR/RUSSIAN STATE TV CHANNEL ROSSYIA 1/Handout via REUTERS TV

Asked on Sky News whether a possible swap was something the government would get involved with, Britain’s Northern Ireland minister Brandon Lewis said: “We’re actually going through the process of sanctioning people who are close to Putin regime, we’re not going to be looking at how we can help Russia.” Reading between the lines, neither would the Boris Johnson government be looking at how to help British citizens.

“We always have responsibility for British citizens, which we take seriously. We’ve got to get the balance right in Ukraine and that’s why I say to anybody: do not travel illegally to Ukraine,” Lewis added while conveniently overlooking the fact British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss publicly acknowledged she supported individuals from the United Kingdom who might want to go to Ukraine to join an international force to fight.

She told the BBC on Feb. 27, days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, it was up to people to “make their own decisions,” but argued it was a “battle for democracy.” She said Ukrainians were fighting for freedom, “not just for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe.” The British government is as criminally culpable for inciting citizens to join NATO’s crusade in Ukraine as gullible volunteers who actually joined the fight in the war zone on the call of the government.

Favoring providing lethal weapons only instead of deploying British mercenaries as cannon fodder in Ukraine’s proxy war, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace took a nuanced approach and said with diplomatic overtones Ukraine would instead be supported to “fight every street with every piece of equipment we can get to them.” In other words, Ukraine would be made an “ordnance depot” of NATO powers on Russia’s western flank.

On April 9, Boris Johnson undertook a clandestine visit to Kyiv amidst much secrecy and tweeted a picture sitting beside Zelensky after the visit. Johnson’s trip came a day after the EU’s top executives, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, publicly visited Kyiv and met with Zelensky.

British media hailed the “daredevil feat” of taking the eight-hour train journey in the war zone by the prime minister and compared him to the fabled British secret agent, James Bond 007. During the visit, he pledged 120 “armored vehicles” and new “anti-ship missile systems” to Ukraine.

The British government also announced it would be sending £100 million of military equipment, including more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, helmets, night-vision devices and body armor. The United Kingdom guaranteed an extra $500 million in World Bank lending to Ukraine, taking the total loan guarantee to up to $1 billion.

In addition to the clandestine visit to Kyiv, Boris Johnson is also credited with another highly provocative incident that happened before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Last June, the British Royal Navy Defender breached Russia’s territorial waters in the Black Sea and as many as 20 Russian aircraft conducted “unsafe maneuvers” merely 500 feet above the warship and Britain also lamented shots were fired in the path of the ship.

“British Prime Minister Boris Johnson would not say whether he had personally approved the Defender’s voyage but suggested the Royal Navy was making a point by taking that route,” a Politico report alleged in June. A Telegraph report noted that former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab had raised concerns about the mission, proposed by defense chiefs, and that Boris Johnson was ultimately called in to settle the dispute.

Among the 50-page Ministry of Defense documents discovered at a bus stop in Kent and passed to BBC were papers showing that ministers knew that sending a Royal Navy warship close to Crimea last June would provoke Russia, and did it anyway, sparking an international incident.

Last week, Russia announced banning Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon and ten other British politicians from entering Russia over the United Kingdom’s hostile stance on the war in Ukraine.

Besides Britain, Germany has taken the lead in escalating NATO’s conflict with Russia. On April 15, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced plans to spend an additional €2 billion ($2.16 billion) on military needs, most of which is aimed at providing weapons to Ukraine.

Approximately €400 million ($432.5 million) of the cash is being allocated to the European Peace Facility, a funding mechanism through which military aid is being procured for Ukraine. The remaining part of the additional funds will be deployed directly towards supplies for Kyiv, among other needs. Scholz has pledged €100 billion ($112.7 billion) of the 2022 budget for the armed forces and committed to reaching the target of 2% of GDP spending on defense that is requested by NATO.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Berlin initially provided Ukraine with 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 anti-aircraft Stinger missiles. In mid-March, Germany said that due to security risks, it would not disclose further information about supplies of weapons to Ukraine.

The European Union decided earlier this month to massively increase financial support for Ukraine’s military to €1.5 billion. Most of that support, which is also supposed to allow Kyiv to buy weapons, is financed by Germany. The newly announced financial support would allow Kyiv to directly buy tanks from German defense companies like Rheinmetall.

Germany was specifically considering sending “Marder” light tanks, armored vehicles equipped with anti-tank missiles, to Ukraine. The German defense company Rheinmetall had signaled it could provide 100 such tanks, which were standing on the firm’s grounds, German officials told Politico.

Politicians were also discussing whether Berlin could similarly supply its heavy-combat “Leopard” tanks to Ukraine. Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, told Deutschlandfunk radio on April 14 that Kyiv was “expecting” Berlin to deliver Marder and Leopard tanks, as well as the anti-aircraft “Gepard” tank.

One agreed shipment authorized by the German government includes 56 Czechoslovak-made infantry fighting vehicles that used to be operated by East Germany. Berlin passed the IFVs on to Sweden at the end of the 1990s, which later sold them to a Czech company that now aims to sell them to Kyiv, according to German Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

Clearly, Germany has already provided plenty of “heavy weapons” to Ukraine. The asinine humbugs of Bundeswehr having “depleted its weapons stocks” and the peril of “direct confrontation with Russia” aside, the real reason Berlin is feigning neutrality in the Russo-Ukraine War is the fact that being a manufacturing hub of Europe, Germany is heavily reliant on the import of Russia’s natural gas to meet its massive energy demands and keep the industry running.

Invading Germany would be the last thing in the minds of Russia’s policymakers. All Russia has to do is resort to formidable tools of economic warfare at its disposal against industrialized economies of Europe by halting energy supplies to have as much psychological impact on the decision-making of Europe’s pretentious politicians representing avaricious corporate interests as the “terrifying specter” of “World War III” and “nuclear holocaust.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz even alluded to this fact in a wide-ranging interview with Der Spiegel. Referring to the Biden administration’s behind-the-scenes pressure that Germany should immediately stop importing gas from Russia, Scholz noted: “I absolutely do not see how a gas embargo would end the war. If Putin were open to economic arguments, he would never have begun this crazy war. Secondly, you act as if this was about money. But it’s about avoiding a dramatic economic crisis and the loss of millions of jobs and factories that would never again open their doors.” Scholz added imposing embargo on Russian gas would have considerable consequences “not just for Germany but for the whole of Europe.”

But at the behest of political establishments of the United States and Europe in order to force Germany to act against its national interests and to “do more” to internationally isolate Russia and transfer a large chunk of its arsenal of lethal weapons to Ukraine even if such a confrontational approach against Russia risks German economy going bankrupt, the mainstream media has been tasked to publicize the dubious report of an alleged rift between the Scholz government and the German Greens, the latter being coalition partners of the Scholz-led Social Democrats and purportedly favoring not only providing heavy weapons to Ukraine, but maybe committing German troops to the conflict to “liberate fair maiden Cinderella from the clutches of wicked stepmother.”

It’s ironic that the party calls itself “Greens” while unabashedly promoting undisguised militarism and confrontational approach towards Russia. Perfidious German politicians, despite being largest consumers of Russian gas, are deploying the cunning “good cop, bad cop” strategy against Russia, with the Greens playing the “bad cop” and Chancellor Scholz behaving as the “good cop” in order to ingratiate himself with Russia, even though Germany is one of the largest providers of lethal military assistance to Ukraine following the United States and the United Kingdom.

Despite being an industrial powerhouse of Europe, Germany might have been a sovereign state at liberty to pursue independent foreign policy during the reign of the Third Reich but, since the defeat of the Nazis in the Second World War, it has become a virtual colony of the imperial United States, comparable to Japan and South Korea in the Far East where 45,000 and 28,500 US troops have been deployed, respectively.

In Europe, 400,000 US forces were deployed at the height of the Cold War in the sixties, though the number has since been brought down after European powers developed their own military capacity following the devastation of the Second World War.

The number of American troops deployed in Europe now stands at 50,000 in Germany, 15,000 in Italy, 10,000 in the United Kingdom, and not to mention tens of thousands of additional US troops that have recently been deployed in Eastern Europe since the escalation of hostilities with Russia.

Historically, the NATO military alliance, at least ostensibly, was conceived as a defensive alliance in 1949 during the Cold War in order to offset conventional warfare superiority of the former Soviet Union. The US forged collective defense pact with the West European nations after the Soviet Union reached the threshold to build its first atomic bomb in 1949 and achieved nuclear parity with the US.

But the trans-Atlantic military alliance has outlived its purpose following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and is now being used as an aggressive and expansionist military alliance meant to browbeat and coerce the former Soviet allies, the East European states, to join NATO and its auxiliary economic alliance, the European Union, or risk international economic isolation.

All the militaries of the NATO member states operate under the integrated military command led by the Pentagon. Before being elected president, General Dwight Eisenhower was the first commander of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).

The commander of Allied Command Operations has been given the title Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), and is always a US four-star general officer or flag officer who also serves as the Commander US European Command, and is answerable to the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Among European powers, only France has adopted a relatively flexible stance to the Ukraine conflict and that, too, because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine happened on the eve of presidential elections in France, in which President Macron is in a tight race against far-right candidate Marie Le Pen, with a run-off scheduled to take place Sunday, April 24.

Emmanuel Macron said last week that his dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin had stalled after alleged mass killings were discovered in Ukraine:

“Since the massacres we have discovered in Bucha and in other towns, the war has taken a different turn, so I did not speak to him again directly since, but I don’t rule out doing so in the future.”

It comes as a surprise, though, hearing from the mouth of a Frenchman, whose forebears were responsible for the massacre of millions of Algerians during the Algerian War lasting from 1954 to 1962, that he has abandoned peace dialogue with Russia in protest over alleged “mass killings” in Ukraine.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Middle East and Eurasia regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to Global Research.

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***

Washington is trying to convince Europe that it has the ability to influence China’s relationship with Russia. However, Beijing’s stance on Ukraine and associated threats from the West are unlikely to deter it from deepening cooperation with Moscow.

US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited Brussels from April 19 to 22 and forced the Europeans to listen to Washington’s arguments about the possibility of imposing sanctions on China if it provided material support for Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine. At an event organised by the US and EU-funded “Friends of Europe” group, Sherman again warned that China would face sanctions similar to those being imposed on Russia.

After Sherman’s meeting with Bjoern Seibert, Chief of Staff for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the State Department said the two sides agreed that they must urge China not to circumvent sanctions against Moscow or offer any support for Russia’s special operation in Ukraine.

Effectively, the US is instructing Europeans on the policies they must adopt to counter Russia’s action in Ukraine, making a mockery of the efforts by French President Emmanuel Macron to create a “strategically autonomous” Europe. Macron’s emboldened announcement of Europe’s “strategic autonomy” from the US was exposed as being nothing more than a buzzword with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine as Paris immediately abandoned all efforts of diplomacy after ignoring Moscow’s years-long complaints regarding Ukraine’s illegal and provocative actions in Donbass. This is on top of imposing sanctions that negatively affects the average European citizen.

For all this talk of “strategic autonomy”, Brussels has just once again demonstrated that it is obedient and submissive to Washington. However, despite the EU imposing sanctions, closing its airspace to Russian planes and delivering weapons to Ukraine, the US is clearly not satisfied and sent Sherman to Brussels to ensure that tougher policies against China are also implemented.

The US at the very minimum hopes to divide European countries as many are still unwilling to provoke China due to trade relations. In the context of the US ignoring all international communication norms and continuing its threats of sanctions against China, Beijing unlikely views this as just renewed verbal attacks.

China is using various channels to convey to its European partners its views on the crisis in Ukraine, as well as on efforts to help the conflicting parties resolve the war peacefully. It is recalled that Beijing sent a diplomatic mission led by Huo Yuzhen, China’s special representative for the China-Central and Eastern Europe Investment Cooperation Fund (CEEC). On April 25, the delegation began its European tour in the Czech Republic, with visits to Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia and Estonia also included.

The visit to the Czech Republic is significant since the country will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union from July 1 to December 31. In this way, perhaps the comments by Czech Deputy Foreign Minister Martin Tlapa were too hasty when he made de facto statements on behalf of EU members. At a meeting with the Chinese delegation in Prague, he warned that China’s cooperation with Russia could damage its relations with the EU.

Clearly, the Czech diplomat’s desire to please and appease the US overshadowed his own obligation to follow rudimentary political submissions, or perhaps the EU has amended this principle like many other ethical and legal norms due to the crisis in Ukraine?

Although EU officials concede China is unlikely to enforce the broad sanctions imposed on Moscow by a minority of the world’s recognized UN member states, this has not deterred their efforts to lambast and shame countries for their position. Brussels falsely hoped that Beijing could influence Moscow to stop its demilitarization of Ukraine, but hopes were quickly dispelled at an EU-China virtual summit on April 1 that left Western leaders frustrated and angry that they are international pariahs on the Ukraine issue.

A joint EU-US statement following Sherman’s talks in Brussels vowed to push Chinese leaders on issues such as the inadmissibility of sanctions circumvention, and “reaffirmed that such support would have consequences for our respective relationships with China”.

However, Sherman and EU foreign service chief Stefano Sannino avoided answering a journalist’s question on what potential repercussions could be for China. This suggests that the West actually does not have a clear idea on how and why they could punish China for its relationship with Russia and instead it hopes that threats of sanctions could deter their cooperation.

This of course is extremely naïve as sanctions have never made state leaderships of Middle Powers, like North Korea and Iran, collapse or capitulate. Given this fact, there is little prospect that sanctions will achieve the West’s hopes against Great Powers like Russia and China, especially as only just days before the US-EU forum, Chinese vice foreign minister Le Yucheng assured Russian ambassador Andrey Denisov of Beijing’s aim to “deepen bilateral comprehensive strategic coordination”.

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***

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters on Saturday, that Turkey has banned all Russian planes, both military and civilian, from flying over Turkish airspace while going to Syria. This ban will remain for three months. The surprise move is seen as a bid to increase pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Turkish-Russian relations have been strained, even though the two countries share interests in energy and economy. Experts are warning this new decision by Turkey may end with an escalation between Turkish and Russian forces in Syria.

As the war in Ukraine enters its third month, Turkey seems to be shifting position once again. Turkey has shared interests with both Ukraine and Russia, and is a NATO partner and seemingly a US ally. Except, Turkey has angered the US numerous times over the recent years, and both the Trump and current Biden administrations have had serious differences with Ankara. Turkey has tried to keep a foot in both the West and the East. This balancing act tends to make Turkish President Erdogan appear to be wavering on issues. Ukrainian refugees and Russian exiles have sought shelter in Turkey, while Turkey has been trying to mediate an end to the conflict, hosting meetings between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul, and another between Russia’s Lavrov and Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Antalya. Erdogan is keen on arranging a summit between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy; however, that hope shines dim at the moment. On April 25, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, will visit Ankara before heading to Moscow on the 26th, and finally to Kyiv on the 28th.

Guterres will attempt to mediate between the warring parties in an effort to end the war. Guterres never visited Erdogan in a bid to end the Turkish occupation of Syria, or to end the Turkish sponsorship of Hayat Tahrir al Sham, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, formerly known as Jibhat al Nusra. Journalists wonder if Guterres might mention the thousands of journalists who have been jailed without charges or legality by Erdogan as he wiped out the free press. Judges, lawyers, teachers and police have also been languishing in prison without access to the legal system as Erdogan tightens his grip on power as a dictator in a democratic country. Zelensky criticized Guterres’s decision to head to Moscow before Kyiv, saying there is “no justice and no logic in this order.” He added, “The war is in Ukraine, there are no bodies in the streets of Moscow. It would be logical to go first to Ukraine, to see the people there, the consequences of the occupation.

”The white tents were already in Gazientep before the first Syrian refugee crossed the border at Idlib in 2011. Holding civilians in refugee camps is a message to the world that the Syrian conflict is so bad that its people are willing to flee their homes to seek shelter in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Turkey holds 3.7 million Syrian refugees which is the greatest amount globally.

Erdogan and his ruling AKP party are followers of the global terrorist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Russia. Erdogan fulfilled his part in the Obama-NATO war on Syria for ‘regime change’. The CIA operation “Timber Sycamore” was operated in Turkey as they shipped weapons and terrorists into Syria to kill civilians while pretending to fight the Syrian government. Jibhat al Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate, was effective on the ground and by October 2015 the Russian military was requested to enter Syria to prevent the terrorists from gaining more territory.

Since then, Turkey and Russia have been on opposing sides in Syria. The Sochi Agreement was signed by Erdogan and Putin in late 2019. Under that document, Turkey was to pull its terrorists away from the M4 highway which connects the port of Latakia with the industrial capital of Syria, Aleppo. The M4 runs through the province of Idlib and the radical Islamic terrorists had prevented trucks and cars from safe passage.

The Russian side of the document agreed to a ceasefire on ‘rebels’ but Al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists remained legitimate targets. Turkey never fulfilled the agreement and the M4 has remained closed to trucks and cars, forcing merchandise and people to drive hours out of their way to arrive in Aleppo. Syria also faces a chronic gasoline shortage, and the circuitous route only causes more suffering and pollution.

On April 17, Turkish occupation forces and their radical Islamic mercenaries used heavy artillery to bombard the countryside of Ain Issa, a town north of Raqqa, in northern Syria. They also targeted the villages of Sayda and Ma’lak, and the M4 Highway in the northwest. The shelling caused damage to the residents’ properties, which reflects a Turkish attempt to create a state of fear among the villages’ residents.

Since the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, the northeastern countryside of Ain Issa and the M4 Highway has been subjected to a repeated Turkish shelling. As a result of the invasion of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Tel Abyad by Turkish forces and their mercenaries, the M4 Highway linking Ain Issa town and Tel Tamr was closed in November 2019. In May 2020, the Russian Reconciliation Center in Syria held long talks with Turkish officials. They attempted to allow civilians to use the M4 highway with Russian military protection. However, the Turkish refused to fulfill the agreement, and refused to rein in the terrorists.

In November 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian plane flying inside Syrian airspace. The Turks insisted the plane was over Turkey, but the satellite images proved they were wrong. The radical Islamic terrorists following the Muslim Brotherhood ideology captured the pilot and executed him on the spot, while desecrating his body on video. While Erdogan initially greeted the news of the downed plane euphorically, he later downplayed his emotions when it was proved to be a crime against Russia. Since then, Erdogan has tried to repair his relationship with Putin, and the Sochi agreement looked promising. However, since then Erdogan has proved to be erratic and undependable as a diplomatic partner. This has held true of his relations with the US, EU and NATO.

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***

By bringing the political battles into our bedrooms, social media has made it much more difficult for politicians and other heads of the key institutes to speak lies and to hide information.

Pakistan’s political crisis deepened after the ouster of the former Prime Minister Imran Khan – chairman of the PTI through vote of no-confidence motion, passed in the National Assembly (NA) on April 9, this year by the then joint opposition-PDM—following the order of the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP).

PDM members of the assembly were insisting upon the deputy speaker to start voting on the no-trust move, but those of the PTI wanted to conclude final decision of the House about the foreign conspiracy.

PTI lawmakers remarked that under Article 69 of the Constitution, NA speaker’s ruling has immunity and PTI lawmaker Shireen Mazari called the apex court’s verdict a “judicial coup”.

However, extraordinary developments of midnight of April 9 and April 10, 2022 surprised the nation. In this regard, filing of an emergency petition by Advocate Adnan Iqbal in the Islamabad High Court, seeking to restrain then Premier Khan from de-notifying Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa is notable.

Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial also opened the SCP to initiate contempt of court against the NA speaker, if court’s order on no-trust motion was not implemented.

Sources suggest that Islamabad had been put on high alert and prison vans had been deployed—police had been increased ahead of the no-trust vote against then PM Khan. The FIA [Federal Investigation Agency] immigration was directed to strictly enforce the ban on government officials going abroad. It is unclear that who was behind these moves, while Imran Khan was still prime minister.

BBC on April 10, 2022 indicated:

“When Imran Khan was elected prime minister…had the covert backing of what in Pakistan is referred to as the establishment or the military. The army has either directly or indirectly controlled the country”.

In this respect, the ISPR rejected various false reports of the foreign media, and a report by the BBC Urdu “fake”.

But, fact remains that leaders of the then opposition parties-PDM were calling the ex-Premier Khan as the “selected prime minister”, while saying that the PTI government was installed by the “establishment” through rigging in the elections of 2018. They were using these terms to blame Pakistan Army or army chief.

Meanwhile, NA selected Shehbaz Sharif as the new prime minister after the PTI MNAs boycotted the election and resigned from the lower house.

The former PM Imran Khan decided to go to the public, demanding early elections, and announced to launch a mass movement against the PDM.

On Khan’s call, the PTI on April 10 and April 16, 2022 staged countrywide protests against the “imported government”.

Recently, addressing a massive crowd in Peshawar, Karachi and Lahore, the ex-Premier Khan almost repeated his previous statements. Blaming the US, he said: “A major international conspiracy was carried out against his government and this country…I cannot allow our country to become a slave to anyone”.

Referring to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, he elaborated: One Mir Jaffer has been imposed on us via a conspiracy…the US officials had started meeting the leaders of the then opposition parties at the American embassy…the US official Donald Lu met the Pakistani ambassador…had threatened him that if the no-confidence motion was not successful then it will be very difficult for Pakistan…Pakistan would be “forgiven” if the no-confidence motion succeeds”.

Pakistan’s history is full of constitutional violations. In this context, Gen. Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, the then army chief snatched power from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the elected prime minister—PPP’s chairman in a coup on July 5, 1977. Afterwards, he was executed, which has been called by many renowned persons as a judicial murder.

He stated:

“The United States was not happy with his independent foreign policy…to see Pakistan’s relations flourishing with China and Russia…US questioned my visit to Russia”.

The PTI chairman mentioned that the courts were opened at 12 am on the day of the vote of no confidence, saying,

“I want to ask what crime I was committing that the courts were opened at odd hours”.

The ex-PM Khan appreciated the Army, but, criticised it indirectly, stating:

“I knew the match was fixed…I asked the Supreme Court why it did not investigate the diplomatic cypher”.

He added:

“We don’t want any confrontation but the mistake of imposing the “imported government” can only be rectified by holding immediate elections in the country” and asked the people “to get ready for his call to gathering in Islamabad in the next phase of the movement”.

He also asked the judiciary why they did not take suo motu action when the PTI’s dissident lawmakers betrayed their mandate by violating Constitution’s article 63.

And leaders of the then joint opposition parties challenged the authenticity of the ‘threat letter’.

During a recent press conference, former interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, condemning the criticism of the Pakistan Army on social media, apparently acknowledged the “misunderstandings” of the PTI with the military.

While, during the Formation Commanders’ Conference chaired by Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, the country’s top military brass has taken notice of the recent propaganda campaign by some quarters to malign Pakistan Army and create a division between the institution and society.

But, the Islamabad High Court restrained the FIA from harassing PTI’s social media activists.

In a recent press briefing, DG of ISPR Maj-Gen. Babar Iftikhar stated that the word ‘conspiracy’ was not mentioned in the communiqué issued following the meeting of the National Security Committee. But, he admitted that the demarche was issued to the foreign country [US] over the use of undiplomatic language which tantamount to interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs. Babar added that Imran Khan contacted the military leadership.

Responding to the ISPR statement, Shireen Mazari emphatically clarified that deposed Prime Minister Khan had not called the military leadership for help to break the “political deadlock” …instead “the military sought the meeting through then defence minister [Pervaiz] Khattak…Imran Khan refused option of resigning…DG ISPR stated that Imran Khan’s Russia trip was undertaken after approval from all”.

These contradictory clarifications by the ISPR and PTI are being used by pro and anti-PTI supporters and media persons to vindicate their respective narratives.

Notably, in November 2020 when the PDM had launched a movement to topple the elected regime of PTI, addressing a PDM rally in Gujranwala via a video link from London, ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif accused army chief Bajwa and ISI chief Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed of rigging elections and toppling his government to install Imran Khan in his place.

Since July 28, 2017 when the Supreme Court announced its verdict in connection with the Panama Papers case and disqualified the then PM Nawaz Sharif regarding corruption charges, the deposed prime minister-head of the PML-N and his daughter Maryam Nawaz were, openly, criticising the Supreme Court and Army. Thus, they had been misguiding the people and were provoking them against the key institutions.

Pakistan’s history is full of constitutional violations. In this context, Gen. Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, the then army chief snatched power from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the elected prime minister—PPP’s chairman in a coup on July 5, 1977. Afterwards, he was executed, which has been called by many renowned persons as a judicial murder.

Constitution was also violated on October 12, 1999 by Gen. (R) Pervez Musharraf’s coup, while Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry issued order that as a chief executive, Gen. Musharraf could administer the government’s affairs.

As regards Pakistan’s politicians, they have always claimed that they nourish democratic ideals, but, we could not establish this system on a strong footing, as under the cover of democracy, they prefer their selfish personal interests over the national interests.

Alliances are formed to win the elections or topple the rival regime. Political leaders also misguide the general masses by forming extreme opinion among them against their opponents.

At present, PTI’s workers have been distorting Army’s image in such a way that general masses have forgotten the sacrifices and services of the armed forces.

Unfortunately, some irresponsible leaders of the PTI and PDM are moving the country towards anarchy or civil war. It could be judged from the Punjab Assembly (PA) which turned into a battlefield on April 16, this year just as the voting for the new chief minister was scheduled to take place.

Even, PML-N’s parliamentarian Khawaja Muhammad Asif recently admitted that the coalition partners in the government should move for seeking fresh mandate from masses to avert a civil-war like situation in the country.

Nevertheless, in the past and present, mistakes have been committed by almost all the political, judicial and military entities. Let us forget them. But, it does not mean that politicians and people should particularly tarnish Army’s image as an institute, which is coping with internal and external challenges.

At this critical hour, the government and the opposition leaders, including all other segments of society must show selfless national unity to pull the country out of the ongoing serious crisis.

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Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations and can be reached at [email protected].

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***

Fortunately, President Biden thus far has rejected the most risky policies that hawks are pushing in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Despite being under intense pressure, he continues to rule out proclaiming a no-fly zone, and he flatly rejects suggestions (including from one close political ally) that he consider sending U.S. troops to Ukraine. However, even the policies the administration has embraced entail an unacceptable risk of entangling the United States in a military confrontation with a nuclear-armed power. The United States and some NATO allies are pouring increasingly sophisticated weapons into Ukraine to bolster that country’s resistance to the invasion. Russia recently reiterated its warning that such shipments are legitimate military targets. In addition to lavishing arms on Ukraine, Washington is sharing key military intelligence with Kyiv. The United States is skirting very close to becoming an outright belligerent in an extremely dangerous war.

It would be imprudent for US leaders to put America at such risk even if Ukraine were the most splendid, pristine democracy in history. It is utterly irresponsible to do so for an appalling corrupt and increasingly authoritarian country. Yet that is an accurate characterization of today’s Ukraine.

The twin problems of corruption and repression were evident well before Russia launched its invasion. Ukraine has long been one of the more corrupt countries in the international system, and that situation did not improve appreciably after the so-called Orange Revolution put pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko in the presidency in January 2005. Corruption charges continuously plagued Yushchenko’s presidency. The optics were not improved by his 19-year-old son’s ostentatious lifestyle, including tooling around the streets of Kyiv in a new BMW sports car worth $120,000. Media accounts proliferated about the apparent financial improprieties involving the president and his family.

A similar process occurred after the so-called Maidan revolution in 2014, when U.S.-backed demonstrators overthrew Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovich. The new president who emerged from that turmoil, oligarch Petro Poroshenko, was at least as corrupt as any of his predecessors. Indeed, public frustration at the pervasive financial sleaze in his government was a prominent reason for the victory of maverick comedian Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election.

Efforts to smother domestic critics also became evident just months after the Maidan revolution, and they have accelerated as the years passed. Ukrainian officials harassed political dissidents, adopted censorship measures, and barred foreign journalists they regarded as critics of the government and its policies. Such offensive actions were criticized by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and other independent observers. The neo‐​Nazi Azov Battalion became an integral part of Poroshenko’s military and security apparatus, and it has retained that role during Zelensky’s presidency.

The corruption problem remains extremely tenacious, and the level of repression is rapidly growing worse. At best, the extent of corruption has improved just marginally under Zelensky’s leadership. In its annual report published in January 2022, Transparency International ranked Ukraine 122 out of 180 countries examined, with a score of 32 on a 1 to 100-point scale. By comparison, Russia, with its notorious level of corruption, ranked just modestly lower, 136, with a score of 29.

Kyiv’s track record on democracy and civil liberties before the current war was not much better than its performance regarding corruption. In Freedom House’s 2022 report, Ukraine was listed in the “partly free” category, with a score of 61 out of a possible 100. Other countries in that category included such models of democracy as Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines (55), Serbia (62), and Singapore (47). Interestingly, Hungary, which is a frequent target of vitriolic criticism among progressives in the West because of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s anti-globalist stance and his conservative domestic social policies, ranked 8 points higher than did Ukraine, which is the recipient of uncritical praise from the same Western ideological factions.

Human Rights Watch’s 2021 report on Ukraine also was far from favorable. “Justice for conflict-related abuses by government forces, including arbitrary detentions, torture or ill-treatment remained elusive.” Equally troubling, “the government proposed legislative amendments that threaten freedom of expression and media. Journalists and media workers faced harassment and threats connected to their reporting.” Those were not exactly the characteristics of what Western admirers contend is a “young and vibrant democracy.”

Even before the onset of the war, the level of repression was worrisome under Zelensky. In February 2021, the Ukrainian government closed several opposition media outlets on the basis of allegations that they were Russian propaganda tools. The owner of three of the closed television stations, Viktor Medvedchuk, was indeed a longtime friend of Vladimir Putin, but he was also a Ukrainian citizen supposedly entitled to participate in a free press. In May 2021, the Zelensky government arrested Medvedchuk and charged him with treason. As 2021 drew to a close, there were ominous indications that Ukraine’s “democratic” government was becoming ever more autocratic. In late December, authorities even charged former president Petro Poroshenko with treason. Much as the French Revolution did, Ukraine’s Maidan revolution was becoming increasingly intolerant, and it exhibited signs of devouring some of its own leaders.

Matters have become decidedly worse in a wartime setting. Zelensky promptly used the war as a justification for outlawing 11 opposition parties and combining all national television stations into one platform to ensure a unified message about the war and prevent so-called disinformation. The overall miasma of repression grows thicker. Zelensky fired two top national security officials and accused them of being traitors. Other, lesser known, officials have suffered similar fates. Indeed, vague “treason” allegations have become an all-purpose justification for arresting, torturing, and even assassinating a growing number of regime opponents. The incidents have become far too numerous to discuss in an op-ed, but one can find good, detailed treatments here and here.

Zelensky’s conduct makes a mockery of the hero worship now taking place in much of America’s establishment news media. A typical example is a fawning April 19, 2022, New York Times piece by columnist Bret Stephens describing the many reasons why Americans like the Ukrainian leader so much. One of them is that “We admire Zelensky because he has restored the idea of the free world to its proper place. The free world isn’t a cultural expression, as in ‘the West’; or a security concept, as in NATO; or an economic description, as in ‘the developed world.’ Membership in the free world belongs to any country that subscribes to the notion that the power of the state exists first and foremost to protect the rights of the individual. And the responsibility of the free world is to aid and champion any of its members menaced by invasion and tyranny.”

If that justification and several other equally vapid reasons Stephens cites were not enough, “We admire Zelensky because he holds out the hope that our own troubled democracies may yet elect leaders who can inspire, ennoble, even save us. Perhaps we can do so when the hour isn’t quite as late as it is now for the people of Ukraine and their indomitable leader.” Victims now in Zelensky’s torture chambers would likely disagree with Stephens’ assessment.

Dismissing arguments for intervening militarily in the chronically unstable Balkans, 19^th Century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck contended that the Balkans were “not worth the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” Corrupt and increasingly authoritarian Ukraine is not worth the life of a single American. Risking war with a nuclear-armed Russia that could take the lives of millions of Americans is beyond shameful. The Biden administration needs to take several firm steps back from the abyss.

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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.

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Reviews

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

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

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
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Israel’s 2021 assault on Gaza failed to significantly damage Hamas, with many blaming poor intelligence. What better way to extort information than to offer work to the desperate?

In October 2021, a photograph of a crowd of Palestinian men scrambling to submit applications for low-skilled work in Israel went viral on social media.

In the photograph, the men frantically wave their filled-in forms through a grill towards clerks at a chamber of commerce in the enclave blockaded by Israel since 2007; a blockade that has devastated Gaza’s economy, seen unemployment running at 50 percent and left Palestinians largely cut off from the outside world.

For those impoverished men, unable to feed their families and desperately waving their applications, the prospect of work in Israel, however menial, must have been tantalising.

To better understand the scene in the photograph, you have to go back to September, a month before the picture was taken and four months after Israel had launched its brutal 11-day-military operation on the Gaza Strip.

For it was in September that the Israeli authorities announced that they were going to allow 7,000 Palestinian from Gaza to be employed doing low-skilled jobs in Israel.

A few days later, the Israeli Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat) – the body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs – said that Israeli authorities would allow an additional 3,000 Palestinians from the blockaded Strip to work in Israel, bringing the total to 10,000.

Last month, the quota was increased again to 20,000.

Israel’s move has been seen by many as an attempt to strengthen the fragile calm between Israel and Hamas, the de facto ruling authority of the Gaza Strip, home to over two million residents.

In easing the economic pressures on the Gazan economy by allowing some of its citizens to work in Israel, the theory goes, the uneasy peace following Israel’s devastating military onslaught in May might just hold.

The 15-year Israeli blockade of Gaza has devastated its economy (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

However, as Middle East Eye has discovered, there are many others, among them Palestinian and Israeli experts, as well as rights groups on the ground, who believe that there may be other, undeclared, reasons behind Israel’s move.

For there is a view in Israeli political and military circles that the May offensive against Gaza was a failure, that although the Israeli military caused much destruction and loss of life, it failed to significantly damage Hamas’ missile-launch system and it failed to eliminate any senior members of Hamas’s military or political leadership, meaning the future threat from Hamas remained largely undiminished.

One of the main reasons for these failures, some experts believe, was poor intelligence on the ground identifying targets and the location of key Hamas personnel. And what better way to gain intelligence than to have a steady supply of desperate, impoverished Palestinian men passing daily through checkpoints, where they can be interrogated and perhaps coerced into passing on information?

Work permits

To gain a permit and pass through the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing – which Israel controls in the north of the Strip – Palestinians have to meet very strict Israeli criteria and undergo individual security screenings.

Since the blockade was put in place, the vast majority of Gaza residents have found themselves unable to meet such criteria, meaning they are denied medical treatment, the chance to study abroad, work in Israel or the occupied West Bank, or to be reunited with their families.

Between 2015 and 2020, only 0.1 percent of Palestinians from Gaza were permitted to work in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

However, in the fourth quarter of 2019, Israeli authorities quietly started granting a limited number of merchant and work permits to Gazan Palestinians, in what appeared to be a gesture to restore calm with Hamas. This process was suspended shortly afterwards with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fast forward to September 2021 and the Israeli announcement of the resumption of work permits.

“The decision to increase the quota of merchants was made by the political echelon following a security assessment on the matter,” Cogat said in a statement.

The statement added that the decision was “conditional upon the continued preservation of the region’s security stability for the long term”.

‘Intelligence gap’

In May 2021, Israel launched its devastating military attack on the Gaza Strip, codenamed Guardian of the Walls, less than one month after the Israeli army declared that it had prepared a bank of targets to deter the armed groups, primarily Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

During the attack, General Hidai Zilberman, an Israeli military spokesman, told the Israeli network Army Radio that the country’s forces had a “bank of targets that is full and we want to continue and to create pressure on Hamas”.

On 15 May, the sixth day of the offensive, Israeli cabinet ministers called for an end to the operation since Israel’s target bank had “exhausted itself”, according to Israel’s Channel 13.

On that day, Israeli air strikes flattened a 12-story building in the middle of Gaza City used by a number of news outlets, including Middle East Eye, Al Jazeera and the Associated Press.

The total number of Palestinians killed had reached 140, including 39 children.

But according to Israeli experts, although the operation succeeded in causing great damage to the military capabilities of Hamas, it had failed to achieve its objectives.

Omer Dostri, an Israeli strategy and security specialist, said that the operation had “gaps at the operational level”, failing to deter the armed groups in the coastal enclave.

“In the last operation, as in those that preceded it, the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] failed to significantly thwart and destroy the rocket- and missile-launch system,” Dostri said in an article published in the IDF Maarachot journal.

“Many of the main strategic weapons of the Gaza terrorist forces are still usable… the IDF failed to eliminate any senior members of Hamas’ military or political leadership,” he added.

Dostri said the reason the Israeli army failed to achieve its goals may be “an intelligence gap, a gap [in identifying the targets] by the Air Force, or the fear of harming those uninvolved”.

Following the attack, Israeli army officials said that Hamas could “attack Israel” again, despite the attempts to deter it.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, a week after a ceasefire was reached between Israel and Hamas last May, senior army officials said in internal discussions that it was “impossible to determine how much Hamas had been deterred and how the damage in Gaza would affect its decision whether to launch another campaign soon”.

Keep dropping bombs’

During the 11-day operation, Israeli forces killed 256 Palestinians, of whom 66 were children. Another 1,948 Palestinians, including 610 children, were injured, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Hundreds of places were targeted in densely populated areas of the Strip, including civilian neighbourhoods, using around 2,750 aerial attacks and 2,300 artillery shells.

This may be further proof that the Israeli military failed to properly identify its targets.

In an interview with the UK’s Independent newspaper in 2020, a member of the Israeli air force said that during operations if there was “a lack of targets, the orders were to simply keep dropping bombs” anywhere in order to “make noise”.

Israeli shells land on the Gaza Strip during Israel’s May 2021 bombardment (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

Palestinian officials and Israeli experts believe that there are “undeclared reasons” the Israeli authorities opened the door for thousands of Palestinians from Gaza to work in Israel. One of them, so some experts believe, is to “fill an intelligence gap” by recruiting Palestinian collaborators to collect information on members of the armed groups or certain activities in the Strip.

“Many of those who recently went to attend interviews with the Israeli intelligence service at the Beit Hanoun crossing returned to report having been extorted by the Ministry [of Interior],” Rami Shaqra, a colonel at the Gaza Ministry of Interior, told Middle East Eye.

“Some were offered to collaborate with Israeli officers for work and travel permits or money, and others were not asked to collaborate, but were instead asked suspicious random questions about certain people affiliated with the resistance, their relatives, friends, or even residents in their neighbourhoods.”

He added:

“We are aware that Israel will use this step to attempt to recruit Palestinians to collect information on residents of the Strip, especially as Gaza is now almost a completely closed area and it is getting harder for the occupation to collect certain kinds of information.”

Shaqra said that the security services in Gaza were aware of the threat such a step posed and would “keep a close eye on the matter”.

Mural near the Beit Hanoun crossing between Gaza and Israel which reads ‘What do you think about working for Israel?’, with the response ‘The Palestinian is not a traitor’ (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

Hillel Cohen, an Israeli scholar and author of Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaborators with Zionism 1917-1948, believed that the Israeli authorities were issuing work permits for Palestinians in Gaza as a way of maintaining calm in the Strip – but that they were also aiming to recruit new collaborators.

“The primary [motivation] was to reduce the tension in the [Gaza Strip]. But sure enough, it is used also as a tool [to recruit collaborators],” he told MEE.

Coercion of Palestinians

Since the imposition of the Gaza blockade, human rights organisations have documented dozens of cases in which Israel has used its control over the crossings to coerce Palestinians into collaborating with its intelligence services in exchange for travel and work permits or medical treatment.

The Israeli human rights group Gisha has recently documented cases where Palestinians were denied work permits for refusing to collaborate with Israeli security officers at the Beit Hanoun crossing.

“This practice isn’t new. Israel uses its control over the land crossings to pressure Gaza residents to supply information on members of their communities,” Shai Grunberg, Gisha’s spokesperson, told MEE.

“Residents understand that should they fail to provide the information, Israeli Security Agency (ISA) interrogators may deny them exit, even if they need life-saving medical treatment.”

Grunberg told MEE that following Israel’s decision to grant thousands of Gaza residents work permits, her organisation had documented cases where Israeli officials had extorted permit holders over their right to work.

“One of our clients, who holds a trader permit, told us recently that when he entered the crossing, he was taken aside by Israeli representatives who asked him to collaborate with Israel. He was told that if he refused to do so, he would not be able to complete his journey and exit to Israel,” she said.

“He refused, and the permit that was issued for him at the Palestinian side of the crossing was taken away, and he was sent back to Gaza. He told us that the same thing had happened to him three times in the past two weeks.”

Interrogate, extort, pressure

Muhammed Abu Harbeed, a Palestinian security expert, said that Israeli officers’ interviews with Palestinian workers are used as one of the main tools in the recruitment of collaborators.

“The crossings and the occupied territories are the two main places where the recruitment officer can meet with the victim [collaborator] in order to interrogate, extort and pressure him into [providing information],” he said.

“Israel uses its control over the boundaries for this reason because every day, there are approximately 1,200-2,400 Palestinians who cross the Beit Hanoun crossing, including workers, students and visitors.”

Guards check documents at the Beit Hanoun crossing (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

While workers report dozens of similar experiences, Grunberg said that Gisha had also received complaints from patients who are regularly extorted by Israeli officers over their right to movement and medical treatment.

The Israeli authorities deny claims that such interrogations are used to collect security information or to recruit collaborators.

However, in 2015, Israel’s Channel 10 published a conversation in which Lior Lotan, the Israeli prime minister’s representative for prisoners and missing persons, admitted that the Israeli intelligence services at the Beit Hanoun crossing used their control over the boundary to coerce Palestinians into sharing security information.

“When people, relatives of Hamas big boys, senior people… When they wanted to enter Israel for medical treatment, we told them, ‘no, bring us information on Avera’,” he said, referring to Avera Mengistu, an Israeli who crossed into Gaza in September 2014 and was detained by Hamas.

‘Domestication policy’

Since the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of 1967 – which resulted in the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – Israel has recruited tens of thousands of Palestinians to serve as collaborators and collect information, according to a 1994 report published by the Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem.

As the governing power over Palestinians, Israel is responsible for providing vital services for the occupied people. Their dependence on such services has helped Israel coerce many of them into collaboration – including by extortion, threats and inducements. This is despite international law prohibiting all acts of compelling individuals to collaborate with an occupying power.

According to Hillel Cohen, the Israeli scholar, Israel’s recruitment of Palestinian collaborators was most intense in the 1970s and 1980s, when it used them to collect information on members of Palestinian armed groups, many of whom were later assassinated.

A source close to the Gaza Ministry of Interior told MEE that by allowing thousands of Gaza residents to travel and work in Israel under strict conditions, the Israeli authorities were attempting to implement a “domestication policy”.

“They want to make the Gaza population see this opportunity as a privilege they would not want to lose by joining or supporting the resistance,” the source said.

According to Muhammed Abu Harbeed, the Palestinian security expert, Israel was trying to “change the equation in the Strip”, using its control of crossings to impose a policy of “collective recruitment” of the population.

“Israel imposes different policies and uses various tools to change the current situation […] The political dimension behind this step is greater than the security and operational dimension,” he said.

“Israel wants to give Gaza something that it becomes afraid to lose in case the resistance [attacks] Israel. It works on making the resistance think twice before launching a rocket on the occupied territories, fearing that thousands of Gaza residents would lose their work and thus poverty and unemployment rates would soar.”

Favours not obligations

Less than a month after the Israeli Ministry for Regional Cooperation said the government would raise the number of permits for Palestinians in Gaza to a total of 20,000, Cogat announced the closure of Beit Hanoun crossing in what it said was a response to rockets fired from the Strip amid tensions in Jerusalem over Israeli raids on al-Aqsa Mosque.

“Following the rockets fired towards Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip last night, it was decided that crossings into Israel for Gazan merchants and workers through the Erez Crossing will not be permitted this upcoming Sunday,” Cogat said in a statement on Saturday.

The closure will likely end when relative calm is restored, but similar punitive measures are nothing new to Gaza.

Moshe Dayan, Israel’s then defence minister, said in 1967:

“Let the individual know that he has something to lose. His home can be blown up, his bus licence can be taken away, he can be deported from the region; or the contrary: he can exist with dignity, make money, exploit other Arabs, and travel in [his] bus.”

In his 1995 book The Carrot and the Stick, Shlomo Gazit, Israel’s first coordinator of government activities in the Palestinian territories, wrote that Israel’s policy aimed at “creating a situation in which the population would have something to lose, a situation in which the most effective sanction is the revocation of benefits”.

According to B’tselem, since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, the authorities have seen the granting of vital and civil services to Palestinians as “favours and expressions of goodwill that can be revoked at any time”, rather than an obligation that it shoulders as an occupying power.

The organisation said that, for years, Israel had used two main methods to recruit collaborators: “Making the granting of essential services and permits conditional on collaboration; and promising individuals suspected, accused, or convicted of security and criminal offences the charges would be withdrawn, their sentences lightened, or their conditions improved in exchange for their cooperation and assistance.”

Israel’s repeated targeting of Gaza’s economic sector, as well as the tight restrictions imposed on the Strip’s borders, have continued to push thousands of its residents into unemployment and poverty.

In 2012, Cogat was forced to release a 2008 document that detailed Israel’s “red lines” for “food consumption in the Gaza Strip”, following a legal battle brought by Gisha.

As a result of Israel’s restrictions, two-thirds of the Gaza population were food insecure by the beginning of 2022 (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

The document, drawn up nearly one year after Israel tightened its blockade on the Strip, calculated the minimum number of calories every Palestinian needed to keep them from malnutrition.

As a result of Israel’s restrictions, two-thirds of the Gaza population (64.4 percent) were food insecure by the beginning of 2022.

Following the May offensive, the unemployment rate reached 45 percent, while the poverty rate hit 64 percent, nearly double that of the West Bank and East Jerusalem – with an increase of at least 19 percent in the 15 years since the imposition of the blockade.

Starvation as a tool

The Israeli offensive had catastrophic consequences on the already-fragile economic sector, resulting in the destruction of 20 factories and rendering at least 5,000 workers jobless.

With the situation in the enclave deteriorating, and with tight restrictions imposed on traders, farmers and fishermen, Gaza’s residents found some relief in Israel’s easing of restrictions on work permits.

Abujayyab (a pseudonym, as workers prefer to stay anonymous for fear of losing their work permits), who has a master’s degree in business administration and previously worked as a university lecturer, currently works as a construction worker in Israel due to the “extremely low wages and lack of job opportunities in Gaza”.

He and dozens of others are attending Hebrew courses in Gaza in order to be able to communicate with their employers in Israel. Meanwhile, hundreds of other young men, mostly university graduates, attend the courses in the hope of getting permits to work doing menial jobs in Israel.

Men attending Hebrew courses in Gaza in the hope of getting permits to work doing menial jobs in Israel (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

“My pay at the university was around $420-$560 every six months. It didn’t cover any of my family’s needs; I used to spend it on transportation,” he told MEE.

“In Israel, I get around 350-400 shekels ($110-$140) a day. It’s not that I prefer to work in Israel, but I need work that allows me to buy food for my family.

“If I could find a job paying only 50 shekels a day in Gaza, I would stay and work here.”

Hanine Hassan, Palestinian scholar and vice-chair of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, said that Israel has for decades used starvation as a tool of control over Palestinians in Gaza.

“In addition to the imminent threat to Palestinian lives as workers approach an Israeli checkpoint, those work permits are a nuanced form of forced labour under colonial rule, as Palestinian workers are not offered any other means of survival,” she told MEE.

“The colonial besieging and the systematic de-development of the Gaza Strip over five decades have pushed starved Palestinians to seek Israeli work permits.

“These permits not only represent the exploitation of Palestinian bodies and lands but also force Palestinian workers to contribute to the further eradication of their national liberation and aspirations.”

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The U.S. Army plans to launch a swarm of up to 30 small drones networked into a swarm later this month over the Utah desert as part of an international exercise. Deployed from an advanced echelon of a dual air-assault mission by helicopter-borne troops from the U.S. Army and allied participants, the swarm will be the largest group of interactive air-launched effects (ALEs) the Army has ever tested.

A mix of Area-I’s small Air-Launched, Tube-Integrated, Unmanned System 600 (ALTIUS 600) and Raytheon-built Coyote drones will be launched from a variety of aircraft and ground vehicles at the Army’s 2022 Experimental Demonstration Gateway Exercise (EDGE 22) that runs from April 25 to May 12 at Dugway Proving Ground near Salt Lake City, Utah.

“I think what you’re going to see is an expansive use of electronic warfare and an expansive use of our interactive drone swarm,” Maj. Gen. Walter Rugen, head of the Army’s Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team, told The War Zone in a recent interview. “We feel like we’re going to be flying the largest interactive drone swarm ever in partnership with DARPA and our science and technology experts out of Aviation and Missile Command.”

An ALTIUS-600 is launched from a UH-60 Black Hawk at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona. Courtesy photo provided by Yuma Proving Ground

ALE is shorthand for a variety of unmanned systems launched from aircraft that can then be controlled by the aircraft crew or fly autonomously and feed information back to both the helicopter and networked ground troops.

The ALTIUS-600 model weighs between 20-and 27 pounds, depending on payload, has a range of 276 miles, and endurance of at least four hours. As well as the PILS, the drone can be launched from the Common Launch Tube (CLT) and the Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform (RIwP). It can carry a variety of payloads to perform a range of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and signals intelligence (SIGINT) missions. ALTIUS also can be fitted with a warhead for offensive missions or employed as a counter-drone weapon using Lockheed Martin’s MoRFIUS, or Mobile Radio Frequency-Integrated UAS Suppressor. Area-I last year announced the ALTIUS-700, which has three times the carrying capacity of the -600 with five hours of flight endurance and customizable payloads that include surveillance, counter-UAS, electronic warfare, munitions and signals intelligence.

Block 1 Coyote drones, made by Raytheon, made their first flights in 2007, featuring a rear pusher prop, a set of pop-out wings and a pop-up twin-tail. These initial Coyotes were marketed as low-cost intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms, but ended up being somewhat of a testbed for a wide variety of applications including being air-launched by NOAA aircraft to gather data from inside hurricanes in 2017.

A Coyote on the tarmac at Avon Park Air Force Range in Florida, NOAA

Block 2 didn’t appear publicly until 2018 sporting a more missile-like appearance without wings and was specifically designed as a counter-drone system. A Block 3 version debuted last year developed for Navy unmanned vessels to launch from above and below the surface of the water.

ALEs carrying various sensing capabilities will be launched from aircraft, ground vehicles and by ground troops, then networked together as they fly toward an intended assault landing zone. The swarm will converge on the target area, sense enemy forces using infrared sensors and electronic warfare payloads that can detect signals emissions, fix their positions and feed that information back through the network to command posts and manned assault aircraft, Rugen said.

“We’ll be launching them pretty much, you know, Monster Garage-style, anyway we can,” Rugen said. “Which again shows, in my mind, just the flexibility of our air-launched effects initiatives, because we can launch it from the air. We can launch it from the ground. We can launch from fixed-wing, rotary-wing, any type of ground vehicle.”

An ALTIUS is launched from an Area-I Pneumatically Integrated Launch System (PILS) during EDGE 21. Area-I photo

EDGE 22 is part of a series of rolling experimentation exercises hosted by the Army to evaluate new technologies and operational concepts. Rugen expects about 20 other Defense Department organizations to participate in 2022, including other program executive offices and CFTs, the Army’s ISR Task Force, and the Artificial Intelligence Integration Center and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). At least 50 technology objectives will be tested at the event, including how the U.S. sensor-to-shooter network can operate and intertwine with allied capabilities, which adds another layer of complexity. To identify potential network bottlenecks and speed up the decision-making process, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the U.K. will attempt an air assault alongside the U.S. during the exercise.

EDGE pulls lessons from last fall’s Project Convergence 2021 (PC 21) exercise and paves the way for the upcoming PC 22 later this year.

During PC 21, two ALTIUS 600 drones were launched from and controlled by a UH-60 Black Hawk outfitted with DARPA’s autonomous brain called the Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System, becoming a second and third set of airborne sensors feeding reconnaissance and targeting data back over the secure network. Successful testing on smaller drone swarms has led to the planned multi-vehicle launch of up to 30 drones in support of a pair of air assaults on a defended landing zone behind enemy lines, Rugen said. The swarm will be used to sense, detect, identify and potentially strike enemy positions before manned helicopters arrive on scene.

“Our concept is generating decision dominance, converging our effects at the time and place of our choosing, then generating that overmatch in a very fast and agile way,” Rugen said. “Extending the network out there is going to be important to us.”

The idea is to quickly deploy swarms of spy drones and/or loitering munitions deep behind enemy lines to find and identify enemy forces. Networked together, the swarm can scan wide areas of terrain autonomously and feed video and targeting information to manned platforms holding beyond an enemy’s strike range. The DARPA last year tested a similar concept, though based on small-unit deploying swarms of drones for various missions related to urban combat rather than an air assault. The Army envisions larger unmanned platforms like the MQ-1C Gray Eagle as part of that stand-off equation, as well.

The plan is for each ALE to perform at least one of a set of defined reconnaissance and targeting mission sets listed as”detect, identify, locate, report,” or DILR. Drones in the swarm will carry either passive or active capabilities. Payloads on passive drones include electro-optical or infrared imaging cameras or sensors capable of locating enemy electromagnetic emissions, including from communications systems and radars. Active elements of the swarm could carry electronic jamming equipment to interrupt an opponent’s sensing or communication capabilities, or a warhead to directly strike enemy positions.

This is the same general scenario seen in a video released in April by the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center, seen below:

Once targets have been fixed and identified, some aircraft in the swarm can be employed as suicide drones to strike targets while others act as spotters for indirect fire or precision munitions launched from aircraft. Dividing missions and payloads among the drones in a swarm gives the networked group of drones more flexibility because each aircraft is not required to perform every mission. It also allows individual UAS to be smaller and cheaper because they do not have to carry both recon and strike equipment.

“In this case, that interactive swarm will generate overmatch where the penetration is needed,” Rugen said. “Once we conduct that penetration, we’ll be able to generate and set the conditions for two air assaults, vertical envelopments, one U.S. and one international.”

The Army is weighing what swarms can do on future battlefields when launched in numerous configurations and sizes from all number of platforms, including ground vehicles, high-altitude balloons, long-range missiles and other unmanned systems.

ALTIUS has already been launched from Army MQ-1C unmanned aircraft and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, as well as from an Air Force XQ-58A Valkyrie stealthy unmanned aircraft. Using an Area-I Pneumatically Integrated Launch Systems (PILS) it has been launched in the past from C-130, AC-130J, P-3, and civilian aircraft, as well as from a DAGOR ultra-light tactical vehicle.

All of this is in service of providing the Army with a wider, more detailed view of future battlefields before manned aircraft and ground troops maneuver against enemy forces. ALTIUS has served as a test platform for what eventually will be a family of ALEs with a range of payload and swarming capabilities, which you can read more about in this detailedWar Zone piece.

The Army has tested larger swarms of smaller drones, like this flock of 40 quadcopters at the National Training Center in California, but EDGE 22 will see the largest swarm of air-launched effects to date. U.S. Army Photo by Pv2 James Newsome

Essential to deploying drone swarms, and the larger Army concept of combined arms maneuver is a jam-resistant network sturdy and stealthy enough to operate in a denied or degraded communications environment, Rugen said. Drones themselves can be used as network repeaters to provide beyond-line-of-sight communication between forward-deployed forces and rear command posts.

A tiered, secure network of surveillance and long-range strike capabilities will allow the Army to “shape” conditions before assaulting defended positions and ensuring its forces are striking military targets in highly complex environments like the urban combat being conducted by Russian forces in Ukraine, Rugen said.

“What’s really on my mind, and you can see it play out in Ukraine, is our enemies fire on detect. We fire on identify,” he said. “We’re already in kind of a latent position, because of our culture and our values and we’re gonna hold to that. So we’ve got to speed it up and that’s really what I’m very, very interested in. I want to be faster than them even though they’re kind of cheating.”

However the EDGE 22 experiment with drone swarming turns out, the Army will continue to push toward a highly mobile, networked battlefield. PC22 in the fall could see an even larger swarm performing more complex missions in service of that goal.

*

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April 18, 2022, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle voided the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national mask mandate on airplanes and public transit. The lawsuit was brought by the Health Freedom Defense Fund

The mandate was unlawful because the CDC did not have the statutory authority to issue such a rule. The implementation of it also violated administrative law

As a result of the court ruling, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian Airlines, Southwest, Spirit, Jet Blue and United Airlines have announced they will no longer enforce mask wearing on their flights. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) also will not require masks to be worn at airports

Uber has also issued a statement saying masks will no longer be required to be worn by either drivers or passengers, as has Amtrak

For all of modern medicine, it’s been known that surgical masks do not block viruses. Yet for some reason, long-standing knowledge and scientific evidence was completely ignored and science “rewritten” in the sense that authorities simply declared that masks would work

*

After more than two years of unscientific insanity, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle has finally voided^1,2 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national mask mandate³ on airplanes and public transit. The lawsuit was brought by the Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF), which noted that “There are legal guardrails in place to protect our basic liberties and rights — even during a pandemic.”⁴ And, indeed, this was the message of the court as well.

The CDC had initially issued a “strong recommendation” to wear masks on planes and public transportation in October 2020,⁵ and then turned it into an “order” at the end of January 2021.⁶ As noted by Leslie Manookian with the HFDF:

“When flight attendants announced — repeatedly on each flight — that compliance is required ‘by federal law,’ did you ever wonder: what federal law? I did. And it led us at the Health Freedom Defense Fund to file suit against the mandate in federal court. With assistance from our lawyers at the Davillier Law Group, we learned there is no “federal law” compelling masks for travel.

The CDC does not have the statutory authority to issue a sweeping mandate requiring masking. Nor does the agency have the authority to penalize Americans for non-compliance.

The Biden administration claimed its mask mandate was rooted in authority granted under the Public Health Service Act. However, a careful reading of that law shows Congress never intended to grant such sweeping powers. In fact, the law is limited and specific …”

The CDC had extended its mask requirement as recently as April 13, 2022,⁷ despite pressure from airlines, the hospitality industry and Republican lawmakers to end it. The mandate was scheduled to expire May 3, 2022, but was lifted, “effective immediately,” April 18, 2022, following the court’s verdict.⁸ As reported by NBC Chicago:⁹

“The 59-page ruling¹⁰ from the Florida judge said the CDC failed to justify its decision and did not follow proper rulemaking procedures that left it fatally flawed.”

CDC Acted Unlawfully

In short, the mandate was unlawful because the CDC did not have the statutory authority to issue such a rule. The implementation of it also violated administrative law.

The fact that the CDC and White House have been doing what they know they cannot legally do says a lot about the state of our nation. Lawlessness reigns at the highest levels. As reported by CNN:¹¹

“The first part of the judge’s 59-page ruling¹² turned on the meaning of the word ‘sanitation,’ as it functions in the 1944 statute that gives the federal government the authority — in its efforts to combat communicable diseases — to issue regulations concerning ‘sanitation.’

Mizelle concluded that that the use of the word in the statute was limited to ‘measures that clean something.’ ‘Wearing a mask cleans nothing,’ she wrote. ‘At most, it traps virus droplets. But it neither ‘sanitizes’ the person wearing the mask nor ‘sanitizes’ the conveyance.’

She wrote that the mandate fell outside of the law because ‘the CDC required mask wearing as a measure to keep something clean — explaining that it limits the spread of COVID-19 through prevention, but never contending that it actively destroys or removes it.’

Mizelle suggested that the government’s implementation of the mandate — in which non-complying travelers are ‘forcibly removed from their airplane seats, denied board at the bus steps, and turned away at the train station doors; — was akin to ‘detention and quarantine,’ which are not contemplated in the section of the law in question …

‘As a result, the Mask Mandate is best understood not as sanitation, but as an exercise of the CDC’s power to conditionally release individuals to travel despite concerns that they may spread a communicable disease (and to detain or partially quarantine those who refuse),’ she wrote. ‘But the power to conditionally release and detain is ordinarily limited to individuals entering the United States from a foreign country.’

She added that the mandate also did not fit with a section of the law that would allow for detention of a traveler if he was, upon examination, found to infected.

‘The Mask Mandate complies with neither of these subsections,’ the judge said. ‘It applies to all travelers regardless of their origins or destinations and makes no attempt to sort based on their health.’

Mizelle added that, additionally, the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which dictates the procedures the federal government must follow when implementing certain agency policies.

The Biden administration erred in failing to seek public notice and comment on the policy … She also ruled that the mandate violates that APA’s prohibitions on ‘arbitrary’ and ‘capricious’ agency actions because the CDC had failed to adequately explain its reasoning for implementing the policy …

Other lawsuits that have been filed targeting the mandate … have failed … Unlike … other cases where judges were weighing emergency or preliminary orders, Mizelle was considering the legality of the mandate on the merits.”

At CDC’s Request, White House Justice Department Is Appealing

Immediately following Mizelle’s ruling, the Justice Department stated¹³ it would appeal if the CDC determines that the mask order “remains necessary for the public’s health.” In response, the lead plaintiff, Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF), issued the following statement:¹⁴

“DoJ’s statement is perplexing to say the least and sounds like it comes from health policy advocates not government lawyers. The ruling by the US District Court ruling is a matter of law, not CDC preference or an assessment of ‘current health conditions.’

If there is in fact a public health emergency with clear and irrefutable science supporting CDC’s mask mandate, does it not warrant urgent action? Why would DoJ and CDC not immediately appeal?

HFDF is left with no option but to conclude that the Mask Mandate is really a political matter and not at all about urgent public health issues or the demands of sound science. While DoJ and CDC play politics with Americans’ health and freedoms, HFDF trusts individual Americans to make their own health decisions.”

Unfortunately, the CDC doesn’t see it that way, as the DOJ announced late Wednesday, April 20, 2022, that the CDC had asked them to appeal, and that it had been filed in a Tampa, Florida, federal court.¹⁵ At the same time, the CDC issued a statement saying they’d done it to “protect their public health authority beyond the ongoing assessment”:¹⁶

“It is CDC’s continuing assessment that at this time an order requiring masking in the indoor transportation corridor remains necessary for the public health … CDC believes this is a lawful order, well within CDC’s legal authority to protect public health.”

You can support the Health Freedom Defense Fund and push back against the DoJ and CDC by taking to social media. Please follow and/or like the HFDF on the following platforms, share their content, and invite your followers to do the same:

• Instagram: @healthfreedomdefensefund
• Twitter: @theHFDF
• Facebook: @healthfreedomdefensefund
• Telegram: @HealthFreedomDefense
• MeWe: Health Freedom Defense Fund

You can also give the HFDF a shout-out by posting something similar to this supporter!

Transportation No Longer Requiring Masks

In the meantime, as a result of the court ruling, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian Airlines, Southwest, Spirit, Jet Blue and United Airlines have announced they will no longer enforce mask wearing on their flights.¹⁷ The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) also will not require masks to be worn at airports.

However, some Chicago public transportation agencies will keep the mask mandate in effect until the end of April 2022, per an Illinois executive order. Uber has also issued a statement saying masks will no longer be required to be worn by either drivers or passengers,¹⁸ as has Amtrak and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.¹⁹

Science Was Ignored From the Start

For all of modern medicine, it’s been known that surgical masks do not block viruses. That’s not why they’re used. They’re used during surgery and other medical procedures to prevent the transfer of bacteria-laden saliva to vulnerable patients and open wounds.

Yet for some reason, long-standing knowledge was completely ignored and science “rewritten” in the sense that authorities simply declared that masks would work and that was it. Scientific studies confirming masks don’t work were roundly ignored. Among them:

• A 2009 study published in JAMA, which compared the effectiveness of surgical masks and N95 respirators to prevent seasonal influenza in a hospital setting; 24% of the nurses in the surgical mask group still got the flu, as did 23% of those who wore N95 respirators.²⁰
• A policy review paper published in Emerging Infectious Diseases in May 2020, which concluded, based on 10 randomized controlled trials, that there was “no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks …”²¹
• A 2020 guidance memo by the World Health Organization, which pointed out that “there is no direct evidence (from studies on COVID-19 and in healthy people in the community) on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.”²²
• A large COVID-19-specific randomized controlled surgical mask trial, published November 18, 2020, which showed that a) masks may reduce your risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection by as much as 46%, or it may actually increase your risk by 23%, and b) the vast majority — 97.9% of those who didn’t wear masks, and 98.2% of those who did — remained infection free.^23,24
• A Finnish COVID-19 specific trial published April 7, 2022, which concluded that face mask use had no impact on COVID-19 incidence among 10- to 12-year-olds.²⁵

Comparisons of infection rates (positive test rates) before and after the implementation of universal mask mandates also showed masks mandates had no beneficial effect whatsoever.²⁶ In one investigation,²⁷ states with mask mandates were found to have an average of 27 positive SARS-CoV-2 “cases” per 100,000 people, whereas states with no mask mandates had just 17 cases per 100,000.

Common Sense Finally Breaks Through

Coincidentally, The Washington Post published an article February 11, 2022,²⁸ noting that mask mandates have had no discernible benefit. The reason is simple: Respiratory viruses are airborne and so tiny they flow through most barriers. If you can breathe, the virus will slip through. Yet the WHO has obfuscated and confused the public about this since the beginning.

In late March 2020, the WHO tweeted, “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne.”²⁹ The statement included a “fact check” box, authoritatively stating that information circulating on social media that COVID-19 is airborne is “incorrect” and “misinformation.” It finally admitted in early May 2021 that SARS-CoV-2 was airborne.³⁰ The Washington Post wrote:³¹

“It is intuitive that a barrier ought to prevent germs from being emitted into the air. But if that’s true, why isn’t there more evidence for the benefits of masking two years into the pandemic?

Experts associated with The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota have laid out a more complex analysis: Given the current understanding that the virus is transmitted in fine aerosol particles, it’s likely an infectious dose could easily get through and around loose-fitting cloth or surgical masks …

[States] with mask mandates haven’t fared significantly better than the 35 states that didn’t impose them during the omicron wave … There’s little evidence that mask mandates are the primary reason the pandemic waves eventually fall — though much of the outrage over lifting mandates is based on that assumption.”

CDC Relied on Anecdotal Data to Promote Mask Use

The CDC, in addition to usurping authority it did not have, has also violated public trust by relying on the very lowest forms of scientific evidence. All they offer as the primary piece of “evidence” to back up its mask recommendation is a wholly anecdotal story about two symptomatic hair stylists who interacted with 139 clients during eight days.³²

Sixty-seven of the clients agreed to be interviewed and tested. None tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. The fact that the stylists and all clients “universally wore masks in the salon” was therefore taken as evidence that the masks prevented the spread of infection.

They even ignored their own data,^33,34,35 which showed 70.6% of COVID-19 patients reported “always” wearing a cloth mask or face covering in the 14 days preceding their illness, and 14.4% reported having worn a mask “often.” So, a total of 85% of people who came down with COVID-19 had “often” or “always” worn a mask.

Trust Has Been Violated and Broken by Many Authorities

Many other health authorities have also violated and broken our trust, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which parents rely on for truthful information to protect the health and well-being of their children. In August 2021, the AAP endorsed the CDC’s recommendation for universal masking,³⁶ while simultaneously removing years of information from their website that explained the importance of facial cues to early brain and child development.

In a series of tweets, posted in August 2021, they even claimed there was no evidence to support the concern that masking might harm children’s language development,³⁷ or that masks might compromise breathing.³⁸

Shortly after the AAP took down their facial cue documents and posted their new masking recommendations for children, a retired chief of police questioned the AAP’s motives — and in a telling opinion piece for Law Enforcement Today,³⁹ he revealed that Pfizer is one of the AAP’s largest funders.

During 2020 and 2021, many infants and young children were raised in an environment where they are unable to read facial cues. In the short video above, you’ll see what happens during the “still face” experiment when the infant does not get a response from the mother.

Research^40,41 produced after 2020 has demonstrated that both children and adults struggle to recognize emotion in people who are masked. How this will affect overall child development and whether the children can “catch up” now that mask mandates have been lifted in most areas is yet to be determined.

However, we do have some clues. A retrospective study⁴² published online in late 2020 and updated periodically through early 2021, used data from Germany’s first registry showing the experience children are having wearing masks. Parents, doctors and others were allowed to enter their observations.

The experience of 25,930 children was telling. The average time children were wearing a mask was 270 minutes each day, and there were 24 health issues reported that were associated with mask wearing that fell into the categories of physical, psychological and behavioral issues.

For example, reported effects included irritability (60%), headache (53%), difficulty concentrating (50%), less happiness (49%), reluctance to go to school/kindergarten (44%), malaise (42%), impaired learning (38%), drowsiness or fatigue (37%), shortness of breath (29.7%), dizziness (26.4%), unwilling to move or play (17.9%). Hundreds also experienced “accelerated respiration, tightness in chest, weakness and short-term impairment of consciousness.”

Doctors and Academics Hunted Down for ‘Misinformation’

Medical boards across the country have also shown their true stripes, hunting down doctors who disagreed with the unscientific masking of children. Dr. Jeremy Henrichs, for example, a member of the Mahomet-Seymour school board and a physician for the University of Illinois Athletic Department, was targeted by state investigators who opened an official investigation into his practice due to his opposition to mandatory masks in classrooms.⁴³

August 11, 2021, Henrichs received an email from a medical investigator asking for a “detailed statement on your opinion about masks, and whether you support and will enforce a mask mandate based on your elected position as a school board member.”⁴⁴ “This would fall under the unprofessional-conduct part of the Medical Practice Act,” the email added.⁴⁵

An attorney for Henrichs responded, questioning whether the investigation had legal standing and suggesting it was an attempt to “coerce or intimidate a public official in the performance of his public duties.”

State law prohibits the intimidation of public officials going about their official duties, and in a statement, Henrichs called the overreach a direct threat:⁴⁶

“I have considered authoritative medical evidence that questions the necessity of mandatory masking in our schools. As a result, the IDPFR has threatened my medical licensure unless I expressly support and enforce a mask mandate for all students. The IDPFR has commanded me to ‘toe the line’ or suffer personal and professional consequences.

The IDPFR’s actions constitute a direct threat from the state to the well-being of my family and all board members to freely and independently exercise the duties of elected office.”

After public backlash, the agency issued a letter of apology to Henrichs and backpedaled on their inquiry.⁴⁷ But this was far from an isolated case. Other regulatory bodies have issued similar threats and warnings attempting to silence physicians, including the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), which regulates the practice of medicine in Ontario.

In April 2021, it issued a statement prohibiting physicians from making comments or providing advice that goes against the official narrative.

Physicians aren’t the only ones who have been hunted down for their views. Many academics have also faced the same fate. Professor Mark Crispin Miller, who taught classes on mass persuasion and propaganda at the New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development for the last two decades, is but one example.

After challenging students to investigate current propaganda narratives surrounding mask mandates, Miller was placed under conduct review for spreading “dangerous misinformation.”

Will Common Sense Return?

Now that the court has struck down the CDC’s senseless mask mandate, we will hopefully see mask requirements lifted across the country, even as the CDC’s appeal works it way through the courts. It’s well overdue, seeing how masks never worked to prevent the spread of infection in the first place, and can have serious, possibly permanent, ramifications.

Time will tell if the damage inflicted on our children during these past two years can be undone — and if unelected agencies and officials can continue to get away with running the country in whatever reckless manner suits them.

*

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Notes

^1, 10, 12 US District Court Middle District of Florida Case No: 8:21-cv-1693-KKM-AEP

² Steve Kirsch Substack April 18, 2022

^3, 6, 8 CDC Order: Wearing Facemasks

⁴ The Defender April 22, 2022

⁵ CNBC October 19, 2020

⁷ New York Times April 13, 2022

^9, 17, 18 NBC Chicago April 19, 2022

^11, 19 CNN April 18, 2022

¹³ Department of Justice April 19, 2022

¹⁴ Health Freedom Defense Fund April 20, 2022

¹⁵ KHOU-11. April 20, 2022

¹⁶ CDC Statement on Masks April 20, 2022

²⁰ JAMA 2009;302(17):1865-1871

²¹ Emerging Infectious Diseases May 2020; 26(5)

²² WHO.int Advice on the Use of Masks in the Context of COVID-19

²³ Annals of Internal Medicine November 18, 2020 DOI: 10.7326/M20-6817

²⁴ Spectator November 19, 2020

²⁵ MedRxiv April 7, 2022 DOI: 10.1101/2022.04.22272833

²⁶ The Federalist October 29, 2020

²⁷ Twitter Justin Hart December 20, 2020

^28, 31 Washington Post February 11, 2022

²⁹ Twitter, World Health Organization March 28, 2020

³⁰ Forbes May 4, 2021

³² CDC.gov Human Studies of Masking and SARS-CoV-2 Transmission

³³ CDC.gov MMWR September 11, 2020; 69(36), page 1261 Table

³⁴ CDC MMWR Erratum September 25; 69(38): 1380

³⁵ Breitbart October 14, 2020

³⁶ American Academy of Pediatrics, August 11, 2021

^37, 38 Twitter, August 12, 2021

³⁹ Law Enforcement Today July 20, 2021

⁴⁰ PLOS|One, 2020; doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243708

⁴¹ Frontiers in Psychology, 2021; doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.669432

⁴² Monatsschr Kinderheilkd 2021;169(4):353-365

^43, 44 WCIA August 18, 2021

⁴⁵ The News-Gazette August 20, 2021

⁴⁶ The Center Square August 18, 2021

⁴⁷ The Center Square, IDFPR Apology Letter to Henrichs August 19, 2021

Featured image is from Mercola

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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***

Government data showed that Australia recorded a seven-day average of 72 Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths per day last March. When the first wave of the pandemic hit the country in March 2020, the seven-day average was only four deaths per day. That equates to 1,700 percent increase in COVID-19 deaths.

Meanwhile, official figures from the government of New South Wales (NSW) revealed that throughout March, vaccinated people made up 84 percent of coronavirus deaths in the state.

What happened between 2020 and 2022?

The most significant thing that happened between March 2020 and March 2022 is the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. That’s it: COVID-9 vaccine happened.

Back in March 2020, the Australian population had robust natural immunity. There were no COVID-19 vaccines and the alleged original strain of the virus caused much more severe infections.

Now, COVID-19 vaccines are very much in the picture and natural immunity barely exists among the vaccinated. Data also showed the omicron variant was dominant and caused illness no more severe than the common cold. (Related: Australia’s COVID Medical Network: Aussie regulators, health officials LIED about COVID vaccines.)

The first wave of the pandemic that hit the country as a whole was the least severe. When a second wave hit the country in August 2020, it was more severe. Then deaths fell to almost zero three months before the first COVID-19 vaccine was administered in the country, and they remained at virtually zero until August 2021.

Australia experienced a wave of deaths comparable to the August 2020 wave, but lasted much longer and never declined to near zero again. Deaths were at least steadily declining until the vaccine booster campaign began and deaths were again recorded at an alarming rate.

The largest wave of deaths occurred in January, reaching levels higher than any other previous wave. The figures continue to rise as of writing.

The situation is similar for NSW, although the state didn’t experience the second wave that the whole country did. Now, the number of deaths occurring this month is much higher compared to the record-breaking January to February wave that hit NSW.

Additionally in NSW, deaths fell to virtually zero just before the booster rollout. However, like in the rest of Australia, deaths also increased after vaccine boosters were administered across the state.

Correlation doesn’t always equal causation, but the data suggests a link between COVID-19 booster shots and death among the vaccinated.

The truth behind Australia’s vaccination status

The NSW government had been producing a weekly coronavirus Statistical Report, but recently decided to stop publishing it. Included in these reports was the number of deaths by vaccination status, which showed that the worst day for deaths throughout March was recorded on the 31st:

• There were three deaths among the unvaccinated.
• There were nine deaths among the double-vaccinated.
• There were five deaths among the triple-vaccinated.

Between March 1 and 31, the NSW government revealed that 195 people lost their lives. This is eight times as many deaths as what occurred during the first three months of the pandemic in NSW in 2020.

Of the 195, only 31 were considered unvaccinated. However, even this may not be true because NSW still considers a person unvaccinated within 21 days of actually getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

The highest number of coronavirus deaths was recorded among the double-vaccinated population with 92 deaths while the triple-vaccinated population recorded 67 deaths. There was also one death recorded among the quadruple-vaccinated population.

A chart on the percentage of coronavirus deaths between the vaccinated population as a whole and the unvaccinated population showed that overall the unvaccinated population accounted for 15.8 percent of all coronavirus deaths between March 1 and 31.

The vaccinated population accounted for 84.2 percent, which means over four in every five coronavirus deaths in NSW are among the vaccinated population. This is probably why the NSW government wanted to make the data hard and tedious to find.

Like the rest of the world, Australians have had to deal with strict mandates in an attempt to deal with the coronavirus. They’ve experienced long lockdowns and were unable to travel freely.

Australians were also required to present permits to go to work and had to go through military checkpoints just to leave their homes as they traveled to their offices. Based on the data, there’s no denying many Australians who were practically bullied into getting vaccinated actually put themselves at risk because of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Watch the video below to know more about COVID-19 death rates in America.

*

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The Western media and political classes have lost their minds with their hysterical Russophobia since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Putin is denounced as a modern day Hitler, who according to the cognitively challenged US president, is carrying out acts of genocide in Ukraine.

The Western media and political classes, who are beholden to the interests of the merchants of death in the Military industrial complex, rant and rave about Russian war crimes. Yet they ignore the resurgence of neo-fascism in Germany a country which has a genocidal history of killing tens of millions of people.

This neo-fascist movement in Germany is trying to resurrected the myth of the ‘clean Wehrmacht’. In the 2021 general election  Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 4.7 million votes giving it 83 seats in the Reichstag about 11% of total seats. It has substantial representation in the state parliaments of Germany and is the largest party in states of Saxony and Thuringia. This emerging neo-fascist party is central to the revisionist history which is popular in Germany. It denies the responsibility of the Wehrmacht for killing over 27 million citizens of the Soviet Union and puts it all down to formations such as the SS.

Alexander Gauland, co-founder of the AfD and one of its leading lights in the Bundestag, has commented how, “Germans should be proud of “the achievements of German soldiers” during World War 2. Gauland has gone further and praised the ‘bravery of German soldiers’. According to Gauland millions of German soldiers served with distinction and should take no blame for the criminal policies of the Nazi dictatorship.

This represents yet another attempt to rewrite history and perpetuate the myth of the ‘Clean Wehrmacht’ whose reputation was ‘unblemished’ by the military campaigns that it fought on behalf of Hitler’s genocidal regime.

This myth that was firmly rooted in large parts of the German population was first challenged by the hugely controversial exhibition “War of Annihilation Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944″ that toured 33 cities in the mid to late 1990s. It was received by a deluge of criticism and ‘massive protests’ to such a degree that it was suspended and later re-released after some ‘editing’.

The current conflict in Ukraine is bringing back to the surface how many in German society really feel about Russians. On one of Germany’s most-watched talk shows, commentator Florence Gaub recently stated:

“We should not forget even if Russians look European, they are not European. In a cultural sense. They think differently about violence, or death. … They have no concept of a liberal, post modern life. A concept of life each individual can choose. Instead, life can simply end early with death. Russian life expectancy is quite low, you know, its 70 for men. That’s why they treat death differently, that people simply die.’’

Where have I heard a German speaker dehumanize Russians before?

In 1943 Joseph Goebbels said of Russia:

“It would be mistaken to evaluate it by the standards of Western Europe….The people of the Soviet Union live at a level of brutish primitiveness that we can hardly imagine.’’

Western media outlets and the entire political classes have completely ignored the many war crimes committed by the Ukrainian army in the Donbass since 2014. The most infamous of these war crimes is the Odessa massacre on 2 May 2014 that left over 100 Russian speakers dead at the hands of the neo-Nazi Right Sector.

Over the last eight years the incessant shelling of civilians settlements in Donetsk and Lugansk by Ukrainian forces has led to the deaths of over 10,000 with thousands more wounded and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes.

Every day civilian settlements around Donetsk city are bombarded by Ukrainian artillery causing many casualties amongst civilians. One impartial source for these attacks comes from the daily video reports provided by American journalist Patrick Lancaster. All you have to do is to go to his YouTube channel.

By ignoring these war crimes it suggests that the West condones such attacks on Russian speaking civilians.

The growing neo-fascist movement in Germany and its attempts to whitewash the country’s genocidal past should be a warning to the world. It brings to mind the famous warning that the great Bertolt Brecht gave to German workers after the Second World War:

“For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.”

*

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Dr. Leon Tressell is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The vast majority of the world’s assets are owned by just two investment firms — BlackRock and the Vanguard Group. Combined, they have ownership in nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms, and through their investment holdings they secretly wield monopoly control over all industries

By now you may be familiar with the World Economic Forum slogan, “By 2030, you will own nothing.” To that end, BlackRock and other investment firms are buying up every single-family home they can find, making cash offers of 20% to 50% above asking price

Buying a home has been part of the American dream since the founding of this country. It’s been a significant part of financial success, security and freedom. George Washington declared that “Private Property and freedom are inseparable.” Now, lower to middle class Americans are being intentionally positioned to become permanent renters, which means they cannot build equity

This is wealth redistribution from the low- and middle-class to the upper, and it’s in line with plans for societal reorganization described under banners such as The Great Reset, Build Back Better, Agenda 21 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

These agendas all work together toward the same goal, which is a global monopoly on ownership and wealth, with a clear separation of the haves and have nots; the owners and the owned; the rulers and the ruled; the elite and the serfs

*

The 45-minute video above, “Monopoly — Follow the Money,” provides a comprehensive overview of who really owns the world. As it turns out, the vast majority of the world’s assets are owned by just two investment firms — BlackRock and the Vanguard Group.

Combined, they have ownership in nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms,¹ and through their investment holdings they secretly wield monopoly control over all industries. In short, the idea that there is competition in the marketplace is a clever illusion.

BlackRock Is Buying Up Homes

By now you may be familiar with the World Economic Forum slogan, “By 2030, you will own nothing.” To that end, BlackRock and other investment firms are currently buying up every single-family home they can find, making cash offers of 20% to 50% above-asking price.²

Depending on where you live, you may have noticed that homes are selling within hours of being listed, making house hunting nearly impossible. Home buyers in my home state of Florida are certainly experiencing this phenomenon.

Investment firms are also buying up entire neighborhoods. As just one example, a 124-home neighborhood in Conroe, Texas, was bought for $32 million — 20% above listing — by Fundrise LLC, a real estate crowdfunding company, which then turned around and made all the homes into single-family rentals (SFRs).³

According to investment experts, SFRs are “exceptionally attractive investment assets,” and this is one aspect driving the trend. Demographic changes such as millennials starting families and affordability constraints are also said to be driving factors.⁴ But that really does not fully explain what’s happening.

The War Against Private Property

Buying a home has been part of the American dream since the founding of this country. It’s been a significant part of financial success and security. Now, lower to middle class Americans are being intentionally positioned to become permanent renters, which means they cannot build equity. Their ability to purchase a home, even if they can afford it, is being stripped from them by companies that can outbid them with cash offers.

In a recent episode of “60 Minutes” (above), Lesley Stahl actually did a good job exposing why home prices are going through the roof. It’s not just that these investment companies can snap up homes with the click of a button, but they’re also artificially driving up prices of both homes and rents.

For example, rents in Jacksonville, Florida, rose an average of 31% in 2021, and Austin, Texas, saw rents jump by 40%. The reason appears to be twofold: We’re not building enough housing, and what is being built is being bought by corporate landlords at above-market prices.

Corporate real estate investors don’t even look at the homes they’re bidding on, and typically waive inspections. The home can be in any shape and sell within hours. As Stahl notes, “this puts first-time home buyers at a serious disadvantage,” as they have many hoops to jump through before they can secure a loan and close the deal.

Government estimates we’re currently 4 million homes short, and that shortage continues to grow. One real estate investment firm interviewed by Stahl states that they list, on average, 200 to 300 homes for rent each week, and receive 10,000 leasing inquiries weekly.

Not-So-Hidden Wealth Redistribution

As noted in a tweet by Cultural Husbandry:⁵

“This is wealth redistribution, and it ain’t rich people’s wealth that is getting redistributed. It’s normal American middle class, salt of the earth wealth heading into the hands of the world’s most powerful entities and individuals. The traditional financial vehicle [is] gone forever.

Home equity is the main financial element that middle class families use to build wealth, and BlackRock, a federal reserve funded financial institution is buying up all the houses to make sure that young families can’t build wealth … This is a fundamental reorganization of society.”

Indeed, and it’s right in line with plans for societal reorganization described under banners such as The Great Reset, Build Back Better, Agenda 21 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (see videos below).^6,7

These agendas all work together toward the same goal, which is a global monopoly on ownership and wealth, with a clear separation of the haves and have nots; the owners and the owned; the rulers and the ruled; the elite and the serfs.

‘Sustainable Development’ Agenda Is a Plan to Enslave You

The war against private property goes back decades. In 1976, during the first United Nations’ Conference on Human Settlements, called Habitat 1,⁸ the U.N. stated, in Item 10:⁹

“Land … cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. Public control of land use Is therefore indispensable.”

The idea, apparently, is that private investment firms like Vanguard and BlackRock can prevent social injustice by buying up all private property and renting it out. This way, no one (except their investors) can build wealth.

This is what “equity” is all about, and it has nothing to do with equality. “Social equity” is incredibly unfair, as it strips those with talent and drive of the ability to make something out of themselves.

Private Property and Freedom Are Inseparable

The UN’s Human Settlements agenda, Agenda 21 and the 2030 Sustainable Development agenda are in direct conflict with the U.S. Bill of Rights and the founding principles of this country. George Washington declared, “Private Property and freedom are inseparable.” Similarly, John Adams stated that “Property must be secure, or liberty cannot exist.”

In 1992 at the Earth Summit, under-secretary-general of the Convention on Climate Change and executive director of the UN Environment Program, Maurice Strong, stated that:¹⁰

“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class, involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and workplace air-conditioning, and suburban housing, are not sustainable.”

If meat consumption, frozen foods, fossil fuel use, home appliances, air conditioning and single-family homes are “unsustainable,” it stands to reason that the goal of any sustainable development scheme is to eliminate all of those things. This is easier done in some countries than in others. As explained by the Cook Country News Herald back in 2012:¹¹

“Because Congress does not agree to all these United Nations schemes to steal our property and destroy our economy, they are passed by fiat, executive orders, proclamations, directives and generous grants given to local communities …”

In short, the technocratic elite are trying to circumvent the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights through various means, such as the effort to make the United Nations and the World Health Organization into global centers of power, with member states being forced to comply with whatever agendas they set, thereby undermining national sovereignty.

As explained in the Agenda 21 video above, Agenda 21 doesn’t stop at restricting private home and land ownership. It also includes:

In short, the global elite want you to believe that the only way to save the planet is for you to be their slave. It’s a tragic ultimate outcome for sure. If they are successful, virtually all of your constitutional rights and freedoms will be eliminated.

Who Owns the Farmland and Dictates Food Policy?

Private home ownership isn’t the only thing threatened by the encroaching monopoly of elitists. Bill Gates is now one of the largest private owners of U.S. farmland,¹² and he also wields unrivaled power over global food policy,¹³ as detailed in the AGRA Watch report,¹⁴ “The Man Behind the Curtain: The Gates Foundation’s Influence on the UN Food Systems Summit.”

While Gates is just one man, his clout is significantly leveraged and magnified by the fact that he funds such a large number of companies and organizations that they do his bidding on the sly. When you see long lists of groups, you automatically think there are many players in the game when, in fact, Gates is the singular thread running through most or all of them.

In its 2014 report,¹⁵ “Three Examples of Problems with Gates Foundation Grants,” AGRA Watch highlights why Gates’ massive investments in global food production have failed to solve any of the very real problems we face. First and foremost, many of the solutions that he backs are “Band-Aid solutions” that in fact worsen the root problems.

Examples include the funding of the development of genetically engineered (GE) foods designed to be higher in certain nutrients. The problem is that these crops then end up replacing local diversity with just a few GE varieties that don’t even take local conditions into account. So, by pushing for “fortified” crop varieties, malnutrition actually deepens, as biodiversity is reduced.

Secondly, “a stubborn focus on yield” is at odds with research showing that low yield or insufficient production is not causing world hunger. “There is ample evidence today that the problem instead is poverty and lack of access, which is deepened by destruction of local food systems and commercialization of food,” AGRA Watch notes, adding:

“Grants by the Gates’ Foundation and AGRA continue to focus on yield, priming Africa for a system suited to the needs of the profit-seeking, yield-oriented commercial farmer rather than the peasant or small farmer producing diverse crops for a local community.”

Additional observations can be found in the AGRA Watch article¹⁶ “Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African Programs Are Not Charity,” published December 2017, in which philanthrocapitalism is described as “an attempt to use market processes to do good,” but which is inherently problematic “as markets are ill-suited to producing socially constructive ends.”

Put another way, Gates’ brand of philanthropy creates several new problems for each one it solves. Gates is also invested in the synthetic beef industry, and not surprisingly, he’s been calling on Western nations to transition to a 100% fake beef diet¹⁷ — all in the name of saving the environment. It’s the same argument pushed by Agenda 21 and the rest of the sustainable development schemes.

Media and Medicine Are Completely Controlled

Mainstream media and the pharmaceutical industry are two other important areas that have been taken over by a monopoly-centered “deep state.” Both industries are overwhelmingly owned by BlackRock and Vanguard,¹⁸ so to think the mainstream media will report on the truth is foolhardy to say the least, especially as it pertains to health and medicine.¹⁹

Allopathic medicine, by the way, has been controlled by those in the grip of greed ever since John D. Rockefeller founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1901 and campaigned to eliminate naturopathic medicine, which was the norm, in order to replace it with petroleum-based patented drugs.

Anything that couldn’t be patented was abolished and known cures were dismissed as quackery. Rockefeller accomplished this the same way Gates and other technocrats do it today — through control of the media.

WHO Treaty Is COVID Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

The WHO’s pandemic treaty is perhaps the greatest threat we’ve faced so far, and will go a long way toward implementing The Great Reset. As I noted in a March 2022 article,²⁰ the pandemic treaty is a direct threat to a nation’s sovereignty to make decisions for itself and its citizens, and will erode democracy everywhere, if enacted.

May 24, 2021, the European Council announced it supported the establishment of an international Pandemic Treaty, under which the WHO would have the power to replace the constitutions of individual nations with its own constitution under the banner of “pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”²¹

March 3, 2022, the Council authorized the opening of negotiations for an international agreement. The infographic below, sourced from the European Council’s website,²² summarizes the process.

Click here to enlarge.

There’s simply no question that this treaty is part of the globalists’ plan to monopolize health systems worldwide,²³ and a way for them to force mandatory vaccinations, vaccine passports and digital identities on the uncooperative masses.

Any pandemic-related decision the WHO makes would supersede national and state laws. Eventually, all health-related decisions could come under the WHO’s jurisdiction, as the stated goals of the treaty include not only future pandemic response but also a stronger framework for health with the WHO as the coordinating authority on global health matters more generally.²⁴

Director-general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has also gone on record stating that his “central priority” as director-general of the WHO is to push the world toward universal health coverage.²⁵ As noted by Dr. Peter Breggin,²⁶ referring to Ghebreyesus’ address to the WHO Executive Committee on January 24, 2022, in which he spelled out his global health plan, “The spirit of Communism can be felt throughout the document.”

WEF: ‘World Is Best Managed by Self-Selected Coalition’

The WEF’s 2010 “Global Redesign” report²⁷ argues that the world is best managed by a self-selected coalition of “stakeholders” — multinational corporations, governments, international bodies such as the UN and the WHO, and select civil society organizations — that then make decisions on behalf of the global population.

If you look, you’ll find that all the globalist agendas, regardless of what they’re called, have this aim. They’re all working in lockstep to strip power from the people by making elected officials irrelevant. All the power is to be in the hands of a self-selected, self-nominated elite. If you believe they have any intention of doing what’s best for the people, it’s time to wake up, because you’re clearly dreaming.

For well over 100 years, they’ve done what’s best for them, even though their decisions poisoned our food supply, soils, air and water. Even though it destroyed our environment and resulted in unsafe medicines and toxic foods; even though it led to starvation, disease and death.

They’ve lied, cheated and used every underhanded, immoral and unethical trick in the book. They’ve coerced, bribed and manipulated at will. They’ve slowly but surely infiltrated every area of society with the intention of altering it to serve their own ends.

Technology, which is the foundation upon which technocracy rests, has allowed this self-selected group of megalomaniacs to thrive and build their power structure in the shadows. Only now are they starting to really show their true colors, their desire for absolute power and control.

As noted by New American contributor C. Mitchell Shaw,²⁸ “If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product.” YOU and your personal data are the products of Google, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. These platforms are all selling your personal data for profit. That’s the business they’re in.

Your data are also fed to artificial intelligence, and algorithms are created to profile and manipulate you. Everything you say and do is being used against you. The end goal of these megalomaniacs is always the same: to make money off you, even if it harms or kills you, and to manipulate you into accepting their proposition to rule over you. This all ends when enough people wake up to what they’re doing, and refuse to go along with their program.

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Notes

¹ The Conversation May 10, 2017

² Investment Watch June 11, 2021

^3, 4 Financial Samurai January 8, 2022

⁵ Twitter Cultural Husbandry June 8, 2021

⁶ UN 2030 Agenda

⁷ JBS.org Stop Agenda 2030

⁸ UN Habitat Conferences

⁹ YouTube New American December 21, 2020 at 5:16

¹⁰ International Journal of Environmental Studies June 16, 2016: 339-340

¹¹ Cook County News Herald December 8, 2012

¹² The Guardian April 5, 2021

¹³ Lew Rockwell August 22, 2020

¹⁴ The Man Behind the Curtain: The Gates Foundation’s Influence on the UN Food Systems Summit (PDF)

¹⁵ CAGI.org Three Examples of Problems with Gates Foundation Grants July 21, 2014

¹⁶ Third World Network, Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African Programs Are Not Charity

¹⁷ Forbes March 22, 2021

¹⁸ Rights and Freedoms June 15, 2021

¹⁹ The Defender June 18, 2021

²⁰ Lifesite News March 31, 2022

^{21, 23, 24, 26} America Out Loud February 18, 2022

²² European Council March 3, 2022

²⁵ National Review June 14, 2017

²⁷ WEF, Everybody’s Business, Report of the Global Redesign Initiative, 2010

²⁸ New American September 21, 2020

Featured image is from OffGuardian

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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***

Macron’s second presidency was as calculatingly managed by France’s liberal elite as his first. As the country’s economic and geographic schisms widen further, yesterday’s Yellow Vest protests will seem like a tea party by comparison.

In the end, it happened exactly like the French establishment designed it. I called it last December in a column here at The Cradle.

These are the essentials: Certified Arabophobe Eric Zemmour, who is of Algerian origin, was manufactured by key establishment players of the Institut Montaigne variety to cut off the populist right-wing candidacy of Marine Le Pen. In the end, Zemmour’s electoral performance was dismal, as expected. Yet another candidate pulled off a miracle intervention and was even more useful: ambitious egomaniac opportunist and so-called progressive Jean-Luc Melenchon.

‘Le Petit Roi’ Emmanuel Macron generates less than zero empathy across France. That explains the huge voter abstention of 28 percent in the second round of votes.

The numbers tell the story: There are 48,803,175 French citizens registered to vote. Macron got 18,779,809 votes. Marine Le Pen got 13,297,728 votes. Yet the most eyebrow-raising performance was by the Abstention/Nullified/Blank candidate: 16,674,963 votes.

So the president of France was re-elected by 38.5 percent of voters while the real second place, Absention/Nullified/Blank got 34.2 percent.

That implies that roughly 42 percent of registered French voters bothered to hit the polls basically to bar Le Pen: a brand that remains toxic in vast swathes of urban France – yet hardly as much as before – and even with the whole weight of oligarchic mainstream media engaged in Two Minute Hate campaign mode. The five oligarchies who run the so-called ‘audiovisual landscape’ (PAF, according to the French acronym) of campaign messaging are all Macronists.

Madam Guillotine meets the working classes

Who, in fact, is this illusionist Petit Roi that qualifies at best as a messenger of transnational plutocracy?

From the bowels of the system, arguably the sharpest verdict comes from Mathieu Pigasse, informally referred to in Paris as “the punk banker” because of his infatuation with the British punk-rock band The Clash.

When Macron was a mergers & acquisitions banker at Rothschild & Company, Pigasse was working for the opposition, Lazard Freres. It was Macron who convinced Nestlé’s interests to be handled by Rothschild, while Pigasse was representing Danone.

Pigasse also happens to be one of the major shareholders of Le Monde – which used to be a great newspaper up to the 1980s and now is a shallow carbon copy of the New York Times. Le Monde is Macronist to the core.

Pigasse defines Macron as “the purest product of French elitism, in terms of the Parisian microcosm.” Although Macron is a provinciale from Amiens, he perfectly fit into the Parisian beau monde, which is in itself a quite rarefied, and yes, equally provincial universe, like a village where everyone ‘that matters’ knows everyone.

Pigasse also identifies the establishment characters who invented Macron and placed him at the top of the pyramid – ranging from avowed eugenicist Jacques Attali to Serge Weinberg (ex-CEO of Sanofi), Francois Roussely (ex-president of EDF) and Jean-Pierre Jouyet, a former minister under disgraced former President Nicolas Sarkozy and then number two at the Elysée Palace under the supremely incompetent Francois Hollande.

Attali, incidentally, describes Macronism as a “pro-European modernization, engaged, liberal and optimist. That corresponds to a center-right of modern France” – and then Attali himself gives away the game – “which is not necessarily the whole of France.”

“Not necessarily the whole of France” in fact means the majority of France, if one bothers to leave a few tony Paris arrondissements to talk to people in Pas-de-Calais, Bourgogne or the Var. This ‘real’ France identifies the “social market economy” extolled by Attali and promoted by Macron as a gigantic fake.

It would be too easy to paint the current national divide between, on one side, the elderly and the very young carrying a diploma, living in comfort; and on the other side, the 25 to 60 year olds, without higher education and barely making ends meet. That is, the working class masses.

It is more nuanced than that. Still, the two most important factors in this election are that close to one third of voters didn’t even bother to show up – or nullified their vote (even here in Paris). And that the gullible Melenchon horde handed it over to Le Petit Roi, assuming their leader will become a de facto ‘prime minister.’

The working classes will be literally exterminated throughout another five years of hardcore neoliberalism. France’s until recently stellar social welfare system will be decimated. Retirement age will be extended to 65 years old. Smaller pensions will be barely enough to live on. The super-wealthy will pay much lower taxes while the common worker will pay much higher ones. Education and healthcare will be privatized.

France will merrily catch up with the fast decaying casino capitalism of the US and UK. And don’t forget further travel restrictions and food and fuel shortages.

Islamophobia will not dissolve into a mellow woke rainbow. On the contrary: it will be instrumentalized as the perfect scapegoat for serial Macronist incompetence and corruption.

Meanwhile, in Azovstal…

If we add the spectacular performance of the Absention/Nullifed/Blank candidate plus people who didn’t even bother to vote, we have something like a silent majority of 30 million people who instinctively feels the whole system is rigged.

The winners, of course, are the usual suspects: the BlackRock/McKinsey/Great Reset/weapons industry/EuroNazicrat axis. McKinsey virtually run French government policy – bordering on fiscal fraud – a scandal corporate media did everything to bury. For his part, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, a very close ‘consultant’ of the Elysee Palace, must have popped a few extra bottles of Krug.

And then, there’s France as Great Power. Leader of great swathes of Africa (fresh from receiving a punch in the teeth from Mali); Leader of West Asia (ask the Syrians and Lebanese about it); Leader of the Great Resetting EU; And deeply embedded in the NATO war machine.

Which bring us to the top invisible story before this election, totally buried by corporate media. Yet Turkish intelligence picked it up. The Russians, for their part, have kept themselves deliciously mute, in their trademark ‘strategic ambiguity’ mode.

Denis Pushilin, the head of Donetsk People’s Republic, confirmed once again early this week there are roughly 400 foreign ‘instructors’ cum mercenaries – from NATO – huddling in the bowels of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, with no way out.

Turkish intel maintains that 50 of them are French, some of them high-ranking. That explains what has been established by several Russian sources – but not acknowledged at all by Paris: Macron has placed a flurry of frantic phone calls to Putin to set up a “humanitarian corridor” to extricate his valuable assets.

The measured Russian response has been – once again – trademark geopolitical judo. No “humanitarian corridor” for anyone in Azovstal, be it Azov neo-Nazis or their foreign NATO handlers, and no bombing them to oblivion. Let them starve – and in the end they will be forced to surrender.

Enter the still unconfirmed yet plausible Macron directive: no surrender by any means.  Because surrendering means giving Moscow on a silver plate a series of confessions and all the facts of an illegal, secret operation conducted by the ‘leader of Europe’ on behalf of neo-Nazis.

All bets are off when – and if – the full story breaks out in France. It might as well happen during the upcoming war crimes tribunal to be set up most probably in Donetsk.

Aux armes, citoyens? Well, they have five years down the road to hit the barricades. It may happen sooner than we think.

*

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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.

Featured image is from The Cradle

The COVID Lies

By Dr. Mike Yeadon, April 27, 2022

In this comprehensive review, Dr. Yeadon argues that all the main narratives about SARS-CoV-2 and imposed “measures” are lies. Given the foregoing, it is no longer possible to view the last two years as well- intentioned errors. Instead, the objectives of the perpetrators are most likely to be totalitarian control over the population by means of mandatory digital IDs and cashless central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

The Illusion of Freedom: We’re Only as Free as the Government Allows

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, April 27, 2022

For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

US Diplomacy Continues to be Invisible

By Philip Giraldi, April 26, 2022

Recently, the Zionist focus has been most intense on one area: to kill the stalled negotiations over the renewal of US participation in the currently ineffective multiparty Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran to monitor its nuclear program and prevent its development of a weapon.

Bill Clinton Makes a Pathetic Attempt to Retroactively Justify His Decision to Expand NATO

By Jeremy Kuzmarov, April 26, 2022

With the Ukraine war expanding and the threat of nuclear catastrophe rising, Bill Clinton has written an article in The Atlantic magazine trying to defend what many see as indefensible: his administration’s support for the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in March 1999 into Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic against a pledge by the Bush administration to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.”

EU and UK to Meet Russia’s Demand to Pay for Gas in Rubles

By Telesur, April 26, 2022

Under the European Commission’s proposal, companies will transfer their payments in euros or dollars to a bank account in Russia, from where the currency will be converted into rubles. Payments will be completed once the foreign currency is deposited in the Russian bank.

Ukraine Forces Shell Ukrainian Village with Cluster Bombs

By Al Mayadeen, April 26, 2022

The cluster bombs that the Ukrainian forces used against a village populated with civilians on their own territory are banned by countries around the world for their capacity to haphazardly kill innocent civilians, according to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

US Recruits Israel Against Russia

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, April 26, 2022

Officials in Kiev had earlier drawn up a list of weapons that they urgently needed from the US, which includes anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems. Ukraine is known to have sought advanced weaponry from Israel previously, including the famous “Iron Dome” anti-missile system and the infamous Pegasus spyware for use against Russia.

Giving Up Is Not an Option – Memoirs of a Palestinian American.

By Jim Miles, April 26, 2022

In an interesting short work, Giving up is not an option – Memoirs of a Palestinian American,  Hani Khoury outllines the thread of his life from growing up in Palestine followed by his move to the U.S. for educational purposes.

Cardiologist Says 30 Percent of Vaccinated Pilots Would Fail Health Screenings Due to Vaccine Injuries

By Debra Heine, April 26, 2022

Joshua Yoder, an airline pilot and co-founder of the U.S. Freedom Flyers said during an interview Wednesday that a cardiologist told him that if the airlines were conducting certain health screenings, 30 percent of the pilots currently flying would probably be disqualified due to vaccine-induced heart conditions.

Are COVID Vaccines Causing Liver Failure?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, April 26, 2022

A strange outbreak of severe hepatitis in young children has been reported in the U.S. and Europe, puzzling public health officials. The children were tested for common hepatitis viruses, but they were not to blame, leaving the cause unknown.

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Given the foregoing, it is no longer possible to view the last two years as well- intentioned errors. Instead, the objectives of the perpetrators are most likely to be totalitarian control over the population by means of mandatory digital IDs and cashless central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

In the first part of the article (The Covid Lies), Dr. Yeadon counters the 12 widespread Covid narratives with the following arguments:

1. The infection fatality rate of SARS-CoV-2 is 0.1 – 0.3%, which is not significantly different from some seasonal influenza epidemics.
2. Based on the peer-reviewed articles, at least 30 to 50% of the population has prior cross-immunity.
3. SARS-CoV-2 does discriminate. “The lethality of this virus, as is common with respiratory viruses, is 1000X less in young, healthy people than in elderly people with multiple comorbidities.”
4. Asymptomatic transmission is the “central conceptual deceit” used to “underscore almost every intrusion: masking, mass testing, lockdowns, border restrictions, school closures, even vaccine passports.”
5. PCR test is “the central operational deceit.”
6. Neither cloth nor surgical masks prevent respiratory virus transmission.
7. Lockdown is “epidemiologically irrelevant” and never works. “Only “stay home if you’re sick” works.“
8. “Covid-19 is the most treatable respiratory viral illness ever”. Safe and effective early treatments are available.
9. Based on the peer-reviewed articles, very few clinically significant reinfections of SARS-Cov-2 have ever been confirmed.
10. SARS-CoV-2 mutates slowly, and no variant is even close to escaping naturally-acquired immunity. However, there is the possibility that the so-called vaccines prevent the establishment of immune memory, leading to the repeated infections, which would be a form of acquired immune deficiency.
11. Safety is the top priority in a public health mass intervention, even more than effectiveness. “It was NEVER appropriate to attempt to “end the pandemic” with a novel technology vaccine.”
12. The four gene-based “vaccines” are toxic. The basic rules of selecting vaccine candidates are: 1) the agent has no inherent biological action (non-toxic); 2) the agent should be the genetically most stable part of the virus; 3) the agent should be most different from human proteins. Spike protein as the vaccine does not fit any of the above criteria.

In the second part of the article (How Much of the Covid-19 Narrative Was True? Additional Reflections), Dr. Yeadon further stresses his contention on the Covid-19 narratives on:

• Unprecedented Pronouncements by the senior scientific and medical advisers, such as “Everyone is vulnerable.”
• Instigating Fear
• Using Mass Testing to Promote Fear
• One Dominant Narrative
• More Vaccine Lies
• The Question of Motive

At the end of the article, Dr. Yeadon also provides a list of extra supplemental points to support his conclusions.

Click here to read the full document.

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Dr. Michael Yeadon, PhD, was Formerly Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer Allergy & Respiratory at Pfizer Global R&D. He holds Joint Honours in Biochemistry and Toxicology and a PhD in Respiratory Pharmacology. He is an Independent Consultant and Co-founder & CEO of Ziarco Pharma Ltd.

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***

“Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter. Sooner or later, the people in this country are gonna realize the government … doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety… It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing. Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.”— George Carlin

We’re in a national state of denial.

For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

Case in point: on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court appeared inclined to favor a high school football coach’s right to pray on the field after a game, the high court let stand a lower court ruling that allows police to warrantlessly track people’s location and movements through their personal cell phones, sweeping Americans up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals.

Likewise, although the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead for a death row inmate to have his pastor audibly pray and lay hands on him in the execution chamber, it refused to stop police from using hidden cameras to secretly and warrantlessly record and monitor a person’s activities outside their home over an extended period of time.

For those who have been paying attention, there’s a curious pattern emerging: the government appears reasonably tolerant of those who want to exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner that doesn’t challenge the police state’s hold on power, for example, by praying on a football field or in an execution chamber.

On the other hand, dare to disagree with the government about its war crimes, COVID-19, election outcomes or police brutality, and you’ll find yourself silenced, cited, shut down and/or branded an extremist.

The U.S. government is particularly intolerant of speech that reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. For instance, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the latest victim of the government’s war on dissidents and whistleblowers, is in the process of being extradited to the U.S. to be tried under the Espionage Act for daring to access and disclose military documents that portray the U.S. government and its endless wars abroad as reckless, irresponsible, immoral and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.

Even political protests are fair game for prosecution. In Florida, two protesters are being fined $3000 for political signs proclaiming stating “F—k Biden,” “F—k Trump,” and “F—k Policing 4 Profit” that violate a city ban on “indecent” speech on signs, clothing and other graphic displays.

The trade-off is clear: pray all you want, but don’t mess with the U.S. government.

In this way, the government, having appointed itself a Supreme and Sovereign Ruler, allows us to bask in the illusion of religious freedom while stripping us of every other freedom afforded by the Constitution.

We’re in trouble, folks.

Freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team raids, economic instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation, militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are mile markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated like cattle, to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.

Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction. The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.

We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

For years now, we have suffered the injustices, cruelties, corruption and abuse of an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution or the rights of the citizenry.

We have lingered too long in this strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

We are the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government are in the minority. This corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government: from the power-hungry agencies under the executive branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards government entities and corporations.

The predators of the police state are wreaking havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government doesn’t listen to the citizenry, it refuses to abide by the Constitution, which is our rule of law, and it treats the citizenry as a source of funding and little else.

The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) has sucked the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

This dissolution of that sacred covenant between the citizenry and the government—establishing “we the people” as the masters and the government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen because of one particular incident or one particular president. It is a process, one that began long ago and continues in the present day, aided and abetted by politicians who have mastered the polarizing art of how to “divide and conquer.”

Unfortunately, there is no magic spell to transport us back to a place and time where “we the people” weren’t merely fodder for a corporate gristmill, operated by government hired hands, whose priorities are money and power.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, our freedoms have become casualties in an all-out war on the American people.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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

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***

Today in Florida the only places you need a mask are offices of medical conglomerates, such as Ascension (Sacred Heart), a hospital group that also has doctor’s offices where the MD is hired and not in private practice, and Quest Diagnostics where medical tests are performed.  In bureaucratic organizations, once a rule is introduced the enforcement bureaucracy tends to retain it. 

As the news narrative shifted overnight from the “Covid crisis” to the “Ukrainian crisis,” that is, from one deception to another, the “Russian threat” has replaced the “Covid threat” before people understand what was done to them. 

Covid was a threat, not so much in itself as in the protocols enforced to combat it.  Most of the people who died did so because they were denied effective treatment with Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin for the sole purpose of profit for pharmaceutical companies and profit for those, such as Tony Fauci, associated with them.  The emergency use authorization of the untested mRNA “vaccines” could only happen because “medical authorities” declared that there were no known treatments or cures for Covid.  To make this falsehood stick, scientists on Big Pharma’s payroll wrote “studies” published in prestigious medical journals by gullible or corrupt editors falsely characterizing the known cures as dangerous and ineffective.  To be clear, people died from lack of treatment.

The mRNA “vaccines” are not vaccines in the normal meaning of the word. As evidence conclusively shows, the “vaccines” turn the vaccinated person’s immune system into a weapon against the person’s health, producing in many severe adverse reactions and deaths, and makes the vaccinated more susceptible to Covid.  A large amount of evidence, much of it posted on this website and available in throughly documented form in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci, indicates that the mRNA “vaccines” are more dangerous than Covid.

It is likely that the alleged “pandemic” was an orchestration.  The falsehood that the virus originated in a bat to human transfer in a market in Wuhan China has been disproved. It is a manufactured virus.  It is a fact revealed by NIH documents that Tony Fauci financed “gain-of-function” research first at the University of North Carolina and then at the Wuhan laboratory from which the virus allegedly escaped.  There is circumstantial evidence that the research at Wuhan was financed as a cover-story for the intentional release of the virus for profit and control purposes. Simulations of the “pandemic” were conducted just prior to the appearance of the virus, and the protocols followed the procedures established by the simulation.  This will never be investigated.

The only purposes served by the lockdowns and mask mandates, both ineffective in preventing Covid transmission, was to train and accustom populations to obey mandates that violate constitutionally protected civil liberty.  The vaccine mandates are strictly medical crimes in violation of the Nuremberg Laws preventing coercive testing on human populations.  There are legal efforts underway to hold those responsible for vaccine mandates accountable, but no government will indict itself or its own public health authorities.

In his book, Robert Kennedy describes the massive conflicts of interest between the NIH, CDC, FDA, and WHO and the pharmaceutical industry.  In short, the so-called “public health agencies” are just shills for Big Pharma.  The occasional fines are just window dressing to give the appearance of enforcement, but no pharmaceutical employee, whether executive or scientist, is ever indicted for inflicting death and injury.  As Kennedy puts it: “By all accounts, Anthony Fauci has implemented a system of dysfunctional conflicts and a transactional culture that have made NIAID a seamless appendage of Big Pharma. There is simply no daylight between NIAID and the drugmakers. It’s impossible to say where Pharma ends and NIAID begins.”

Several decades ago the University of Chicago economist George Stigler pointed out that the problem with regulation is that the regulatory agencies are sooner or later captured by the regulated industry and become servants of the industries they were created to regulate.  This has happened in the United States, and the purest example is the pharmaceutical industry.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Remember the Beatles’ song that went like this: “I read the news today, oh boy!”? To be sure there has not been much good news to savor recently, though notably, under the cover provided by the war in Ukraine’s domination of the news cycle, the Israel Lobby in the United States has been working harder than ever to promote the interests of the country that is most dear to its heart. It’s associated media arm has been ignoring the regular killing of Palestinians by Israeli security forces while also dismissing the ultra-violent incursion by the Jewish state’s police at one of Islam’s holiest sites, the al-Aqsa Mosque complex, during Ramadan prayers.

Recently, the Zionist focus has been most intense on one area: to kill the stalled negotiations over the renewal of US participation in the currently ineffective multiparty Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran to monitor its nuclear program and prevent its development of a weapon. Ironically, Israel, unlike Iran, already has an undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal that is even protected from exposure by US officials, who are not allowed to mention it in spite of the fact that its existence is widely acknowledged. Recently, Sam Husseini, a critic of the US pandering to Israeli interests, tweeted how “I recently contacted the offices of @IlhanMN, @AOC, @CoriBush, @RashidaTlaib, @SenSanders and 10 others asking if they would acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons. None would do so.” Not one of the fifteen, mostly describable as progressives, would even confirm that the Israelis possess such weapons, so terrified were they of even mentioning what the entire world knows to be true.

I recently contacted the offices of @IlhanMN, @AOC, @CoriBush, @RashidaTlaib, @SenSanders and 10 others asking if they would acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons. None would do so. My resulting piece — “The Ostrich Caucus" — is in the pilot issue of https://t.co/L5dGpg0oCY pic.twitter.com/cijT0NFqn4

— Sam Husseini (@samhusseini) April 18, 2022

To be sure, the issue of what to do about Iran is certainly the number one foreign policy problem for Israel as it is the only regional opponent of the Jewish state that could reasonably be described as militarily formidable. For something like thirty years successive Israeli governments have been seeking to convince a number of gullible American presidents to treat the Islamic Republic as a serious international threat, which is ridiculous as Iran has neither the necessary resources nor a history of seeking to dominate even its own region. This Israeli persuasion has included manipulation of a bought and paid for Congress and media which support a steady flow of propaganda seeking to depict Iran in the most negative terms, intended to appeal to the American desire to frame its foreign policy in terms of “good versus evil” with the US/Israel always being good no matter what wartime atrocities they might commit.

One might reasonably observe that the pattern of “good versus evil” is also playing out with regard to Russia in Ukraine. Given such a faux ethically based worldview, the US rarely acts in terms of genuine national interests, witness the relationship with Jerusalem more generally speaking. Israel’s security service Mossad has as its motto “By Way of Deception Thou Shalt Do War.” With that in mind it has been hard at work fabricating “intelligence” that the Iranian leadership has initiated a secret nuclear proliferation program. A laptop that surfaced in 2004 through the dissident Iranian group MEK allegedly contained information regarding covert plans for an Iranian nuclear bomb. It was, however, revealed to be a clever Mossad forgery.

Image on the right is from OneWorld

Israel has never quite convinced the White House to take the final step and make war directly against the Iranians, though it came close when a gullible Donald Trump ordered the assassination of senior Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who was in Baghdad for peace talks in January 2020. But Israel has nevertheless managed to obtain what is apparently considerable covert CIA collaboration in its own semi-secret program to kill scientists and technicians that might be involved in nuclear research, while also hacking into and sabotaging Iranian computer systems and other infrastructure. Under Trump, CIA Director Mike Pompeo focused particularly on Iran, setting up a “special action group” to counter its presence and claimed “malign activities” in the Middle East. That task force presumably still exists under the current Director William Burns appointed by Joe Biden.

The Joe Biden Administration has long been dancing around re-joining the JCPOA, which was entered into under President Barack Obama in 2015. President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018, convinced by his neocon and hardline advisers that it would only provide Iran cover to ramp up its secret program and produce a nuclear weapon. Trump’s associates argued that JCPOA would actually make eventual Iranian acquisition of a nuke inevitable.

As of right now, the discussions on JCPOA in Vienna are at a standstill and appear about to break down completely, though some reports alternatively claim that a new agreement is within reach. The Iranians believe that the US is not negotiating in good faith and is failing to take even relatively minor steps that could lead to a reasonable understanding without compromising the vital interests of any of the parties involved. Those steps could include removing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force from the US terrorist list and releasing some frozen Iranian assets, while also cutting back on sanctions. It appears that Biden would actually like to renew the agreement, but his own associates at the State Department, whose top three officials are Zionists, as well as the powerful Israel Lobby are pushing against such a course of action.

In reality the JCPOA is in the interest of the United States, pledged as it is to stop nuclear proliferation, since it permits unannounced inspection of virtually all Iranian research facilities by UN officials. It would make attempted proliferation by Iran extremely difficult, even if an elaborate deception operation were attempted. Nevertheless, a number of the usual journalists and self-proclaimed “experts” continue to push the Trumpean neocon derived argument that the agreement would actually accelerate an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Think tanks like the Foundation of Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) have been lobbying Congress and the White House assiduously, as have some conventionally conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, which argues that reviving JCPOA would be a “dangerous mistake.” In a recent paper it maintains that “Reviving the deeply flawed Iran nuclear deal would reward and empower a hostile dictatorship by lifting sanctions and squandering US bargaining leverage. Iran never fully complied with the JCPOA and is currently in violation of it on several accounts. A much more restrictive agreement is necessary. A new agreement should include Iran’s ballistic missile program, disclosure of its past nuclear weapons efforts, and better protection for Israel and Arab allies.”

The Heritage paper is, of course, more speculative than fact-based and false in several respects, particularly the claim that Iran never fully complied with the agreement. Iran opened up to UN inspectors and it was the United States that continued with sanctions contrary to the intent of the original deal. If Iran were to abandon its missile program and provide “better protection” for Israel and select Arab states it would be basically surrendering its sovereignty in the area of national defense.

Another recent effort to attack JCPOA comes from an article written by two Israelis featured in The Atlantic magazine entitled “A Case Against the Iran Deal: Reviving the JCPOA will ensure either the emergence of a nuclear Iran or a desperate war to stop it.” One of the two authors is Michael Oren, until recently the Israeli Ambassador to the United States. The article’s title is self-explanatory and the argument it makes, largely based on what passes for Israeli “intelligence,” is that Iran has a secret weapons program and already has enough of enriched uranium to begin construction of a weapon within a few months. If its clandestine activities are in a sense shielded by a revived JCPOA, they will no doubt do just that, according to the authors.

Against the Israeli argument which, by implication, calls for war to disarm the Iranians, a sustainable inspection routine run by the UN would seem to be a preferable option but a number of Democratic Party Congressmen apparently do not agree and are pressuring President Biden to rethink his acceptance of the desirability of something like a rapprochement with Iran. Eighteen Democratic Congressmen, led by Josh Gottheimer and Elaine Luria, both of whom are Jewish, are pushing back against the Biden efforts, arguing that the agreement is flawed. Gottheimer added that “We need a longer and stronger deal, not one that is shorter and weaker. It’s time to stand strong against terrorists, protect American values and our allies.” Note the emphasis on protecting “our allies,” though one need not point out that there is only one ally in the region that matters to Washington politicians, particularly to folks like Gottheimer.

Republicans are also on board. They are expressing particular concerned because Russia is a signatory to the agreement and would be a guarantor of it, or at least that is what they are arguing to block any Biden effort to reengage. Pennsylvania Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, who is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, remarked that he was very concerned about a new deal because “Russia should not be at any table with us right now. They’re committing egregious acts of terrorism and murder in a free democracy in Ukraine, in Europe right now.” That Fitzpatrick, on the Foreign Affairs Committee, should be so ignorant of actual US interests as well as regarding the nuances of the Russia-Ukraine conflict illustrates better than anything the abysmal level of ignorance that prevails in the federal government, leading to a collapse of what used to be called Diplomacy 101.

Finally, nothing better illustrates the disarray in US foreign and national security policy than a brief exchange that took place more than three weeks ago in Israel, where US Secretary of State Tony Blinken was trying in part to sell the possibility that the Biden Administration might actually re-enter the JCPOA. Israel of, course, strongly opposes that option, particularly if it involves any concessions to Iran, while Blinken’s State Department persists in repeating the Israeli line that Iran is the “world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” while also asserting that “this administration’s commitment to Israel’s security is sacrosanct.” So, what did an obviously between a rock and a hard place Blinken do? He asked Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett for suggestions of what might be arranged in lieu of an actual agreement. Naftali reportedly suggested harsher sanctions on Iran. When the US senior-most representative involved in crafting foreign policy feels compelled to ask the agenda-driven head of a rogue foreign government to tell him what to do, there is something very wrong in Washington.

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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.

Featured image is from TUR

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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***

With the Ukraine war expanding and the threat of nuclear catastrophe rising, Bill Clinton has written an article in The Atlantic magazine trying to defend what many see as indefensible: his administration’s support for the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in March 1999 into Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic against a pledge by the Bush administration to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.”

Clinton had been warned at the time by Russian President Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) that NATO expansion would result in “nothing but humiliation for Russia” and could provoke a new Cold War.

Yeltsin told Clinton:

“How do you think it looks to us if one bloc [from the Cold War] continued to exist when the Warsaw Pact has been abolished? It’s a new form of encirclement if the one surviving Cold War bloc expands right up to the borders of Russia.”^[1]

A similar warning was issued by George F. Kennan, the father of the Cold War containment doctrine.

He wrote in an op-ed in February 1997 that NATO expansion would amount to a “strategic blunder of epic proportions” and the “most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era,” as it would “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion,” and “restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations,”^[2] which is exactly what happened.

Nearly 20 years after Kennan’s op-ed was published, Clinton’s former Defense Secretary, William J. Perry, gave an interview to the London Guardian in which he acknowledged that the U.S. bore a large degree of blame for the proxy war that had broken out between the U.S. and Russia in eastern Ukraine.

Perry stated:

“Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] started to expand, bringing in Eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia. At that time, we were working closely with Russia and they were beginning to get used to the idea that NATO could be a friend rather than an enemy … but they were very uncomfortable about having NATO right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.”^[3]

Invoking the Trope of Russian Expansion to Justify U.S. Imperialism

In his Atlantic essay, Clinton claimed that his administration had first worked to foster cooperative relations with Boris Yeltsin and democratize Russia, and supported NATO expansion as a fallback to protect European security in case Russia returned to “ultranationalism” and its “aspirations to empire like [in the era of] Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.”^[4]

Guy Mettan, in his book Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria(Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2017), points out that the threat of Russian expansion has been invoked by Western leaders since the era of Charlemagne to justify their own expansionist policies.

The United States during Clinton’s presidency wanted to capitalize on the collapse of the Soviet Union to expand its power and influence in the Eurasian heartland, which geopolitical strategists like Zbigniew Brzezinski viewed as key to global domination.^[5]

NATO expansion under Clinton coincided with support for “color revolutions” targeting pro-Russian and socialist leaders such as Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus,^[6] and aggressive penetration of Central Asia in an attempt to pry its oil wealth away from Russia.

In 1997, the U.S. Department of State told Congress that the Caspian Basin held as much as 200 billion barrels of oil—about ten times the amount found in the North Sea, and one-third of the Persian Gulf’s total reserves.^[7]

In the next three years, the Clinton administration provided $175 million in arms and military training and more than $1 billion in aid to countries in the region. Strategic planners sought to incorporate it into a “vast U.S. dependency,” which NATO would help secure.^[8]

Oil rigs in the Caspian Sea—which the U.S. wanted to control over Russia. [Source: off-shore-technology.com]

Some $302 million was provided to the Georgian government of Eduard Shevardnadze, who had come to power in a coup d’état backed by the Western powers which toppled nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who died under suspicious circumstances a year later.^[9]

Eduard Shevardnadze and President Clinton sign a bilateral investment treaty at the White House in March 1994. [Source: commons.wikimedia.org]

Shevardnadze’s main value to the West was his commitment to protecting the primary oil export pipeline that crossed Georgia from Azerbaijan on the way to Turkey in an attempt to bypass Russia.

Route of Baku-Tbilisi pipeline. [Source: independent.co.uk]

The Clinton administration forged another defense alliance with Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev (1990-2019), who had sold a 20% stake in the Tengiz offshore oil fields to Chevron after being bribed by an oil industry consultant, and carried out military training exercises in Uzbekistan under the auspices of the NATO Partnership for Peace (PFP) Program, in which the U.S. military nurtured “the embryo of a NATO-led military force in Central Asia.”^[10]

Clinton’s essay erroneously makes it seem that NATO expansion was purely defensive and in reaction to potential future Russian aggression—rather than rooted in any U.S. imperial designs. Clinton also omits the role of military lobbies: According to an analysis prepared for The New York Times by a research company in Springfield, Virginia, America’s six largest military contractors spent $51 million on lobbying for NATO expansion between 1996 and 1998.^[11]

Democracy Promotion American-Style

Clinton’s claims about trying to democratize Russia under Yeltsin’s rule are absurd, considering that Clinton expressed full support for Yeltsin after he ordered a siege of the Russian parliament in September 1993.

This was after the parliament repudiated the rapid privatization or “shock therapy” policies supported by the Clinton administration that resulted in the selling off of Russian state assets for a fraction of their worth to Yeltsin’s cronies and a new class of oligarchs.^[12]

Burning of Russian parliament on Yeltsin’s order after constitutional crisis in October 1993. [Source: reddit.com]

The Clinton administration went on to sabotage Russian democracy further when it intervened to rig the 1996 Russian election on Yeltsin’s behalf.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)—which gave nearly $1 million between 1990 and 1992 to the anti-communist Democratic Russia Movement that provided Yeltsin his political base^[13]—received USAID grants for conferences, message development, focus groups, polling methods and television ads that were provided to members of Yeltsin’s political machine.

Three American political consultants also went to work on Yeltsin’s re-election bid promoting dirty tricks urging Yeltsin to “go negative” by rallying the oligarch-controlled Russian media to whip up “a wild anti-Communist psychosis among the people,” as one sympathetic news editor put it.^[14]

Some great democracy promotion.

Madeleine’s Ghost

At the end of his Atlantic essay, Clinton provided a tribute to his former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a Czech émigré who had exclaimed “hallelujah” after Clinton had signed off on NATO expansion in March 1999.

According to Clinton, “few diplomats have ever been so perfectly suited for the times they served as Madeleine….she understood that the end of the Cold War provided the chance to build a Europe free, united, prosperous, and secure for the first time since nation-states arose on the continent.”

Unfortunately, we see today that the policy of NATO expansion has not secured a prosperous, united, and free Europe as Albright envisioned.

Rather it has resulted in a divided and unequal one embroiled in a devastating war that threatens to extend further.

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

1. “Summary Report on One-on-One Meeting Between Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin, May 10, 1995, 10:10 a.m. – 1:19 p.m., St. Catherine’s Hall, The Kremlin,” National Security Archive, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=4950563-Document-04-Summary-report-on-the-one-on-one 

2. George F. Kennan, “A Fateful Error,” The New York Times, February 5, 1997. 
3. Quoted in Thomas L. Friedman, “This Is Putin’s War. But America and NATO Aren’t Innocent Bystanders,” The New York Times, February 21, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/putin-ukraine-nato.html 
4. Bill Clinton, “I Tried to Put Russia on Another Path,” The Atlantic, April 7, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clinton-nato-expansion-ukraine/629499/ 
5. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperative (New York: Basic Books, 1998). Zbig’s son Mark, who served on Clinton’s National Security Council from 1999-2001 and is now U.S. ambassador to Poland, was a key figure carrying out Clinton’s policy of NATO enlargement. 
6. See Stewart Parker, The Last Soviet Republic: Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus (London: Trafford, 2007), 136, 137. 
7. Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York: Holt, 2002), 84, 85. 
8. Klare, Resource Wars, 85. 
9. Lutz Kleveman, The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003), 44; Michael Pullara, The Spy Who Was Left Behind: Russia, the United States, and the True Story of the Betrayal and Assassination of a CIA Agent (New York: Scribner, 2018), 17, 18, 19. 
10. Nasser Saghafi Ameri, “The Emerging NATO: Impact on Europe and Asia,” in Europe and Asia: Perspectives on the Emerging International Order, V.P. Malik and Erhard Crome, eds. (New Delhi: Lancer Publishers & Distributors, 2006), 153; Ken Silverstein, The Secret World of Oil (London: Verso, 2014), 21, 22. Uzbekistan at the time was ruled by Islam Karimov, who was accused of boiling political opponents alive. 
11. Katharine Q. Seelye, “Arms Contractors Spend to Promote an Expanded NATO,” The New York Times, March 30, 1998. 
12. Sean Guillory, “Dermokratiya, USA,” Jacobin, March 13, 2017; David Foglesong, The American Mission and the “Evil Empire”: The Crusade For a “Free Russia” since 1881 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007),208; Helen Thomas, “Clinton Supports Yeltsin in Crisis,” UPI Archives, September 21, 1993, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/09/21/Clinton-supports-Yeltsin-in-crisis/7235748584000/ 
13. Colin Cavell, Exporting ‘Made in America’ Democracy: The National Endowment for Democracy & U.S. Foreign Policy (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002), 110. 

14. Peter Beinart, “The U.S. Needs to Face Up to Its Long History of Election Meddling,” The Atlantic, July 22, 2018; Eleanor Randolph, “Americans Claim Role in Yeltsin Win,” Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1996; Fred Weir, “Betting on Boris,” CovertAction Quarterly(Summer 1996), 38, 41; Holly Sklar and Chip Berlet, “NED, CIA and the Orwellian Democracy Project,” CovertAction Quarterly 39 (Winter 1991-1992); Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, Because He Could (New York: Regan Books, 2004), 171. 

Featured image: Bill Clinton signs NATO expansion legislation in May 1998. [Source: aparchive.com]

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‘World Localization Day’ will be celebrated on 20 June. Organised by the non-profit Local Futures, this annual coming together of people from across the world began in 2020 and focuses on the need to localise supply-chains and recover our connection with nature and community. The stated aim is to “galvanize the worldwide localization movement into a force for systemic change”.  

Local Futures, founded by Helena Norberg-Hodge, urges us to imagine a very different world, one in which most of our food comes from nearby farmers who ensure food security year round and where the money we spend on everyday goods continues to recirculate in the local economy.

We are asked to imagine local businesses providing ample, meaningful employment opportunities, instead of our hard-earned cash being immediately siphoned off to some distant corporate headquarters.

Small farms would be key in this respect. They are integral to local markets and networks, short supply chains, food sovereignty, more diverse cropping systems and healthier diets. And they tend to serve the food requirements of communities rather than the interests of big business, institutional investors and shareholders half a world away.

If the COVID lockdowns and war in Ukraine tell us anything about our food system, it is that decentralised, regional and local community-owned food systems based on short(er) supply chains that can cope with future shocks are now needed more than ever.

The report Towards a Food Revolution: Food Hubs and Cooperatives in the US and Italy offers some pointers for creating sustainable support systems for small food producers and food distribution. Alternative, resilient food models and community supported agriculture are paramount.

Localization involves strengthening and rebuilding local economies and communities and restoring cultural and biological diversity. The ‘economics of happiness’ is central to this vision, rather than an endless quest for GDP growth and the alienation, conflict and misery this brings.

It is something we need to work towards because multi-billionaire globalists have a dystopian future mapped out for humanity which they want to impose on us all – and it is diametrically opposed to what is stated above.

The much-publicised ‘great reset’ is integral to this dystopia. It marks a shift away from ‘liberal democracy’ towards authoritarianism. At the same time, there is the relentless drive towards a distorted notion of a ‘green economy’, underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’.

The great reset is really about capitalism’s end-game. Those promoting it realise the economic and social system must undergo a reset to a ‘new normal’, something that might no longer resemble ‘capitalism’.

End-game capitalism  

Capital can no longer maintain its profitability by exploiting labour alone. This much has been clear for some time. There is only so much surplus value to be extracted before the surplus is insufficient.

Historian Luciana Bohne notes that the shutting down of parts of the economy was already happening pre-COVID as there was insufficient growth, well below the minimum tolerable 3% level to maintain the viability of capitalism. This, despite a decades-long attack on workers and corporate tax cuts.

The system had been on life support for some time. Credit markets had been expanded and personal debt facilitated to maintain consumer demand as workers’ wages were squeezed. Financial products (derivatives, equities, debt, etc) and speculative capitalism were boosted, affording the rich a place to park their profits and make money off money. We have also seen the growth of unproductive rentier capitalism and stock buy backs and massive bail outs courtesy of taxpayers.

Moreover, in capitalism, there is also a tendency for the general rate of profit to fall over time. And this has certainly been the case according to writer Ted Reese, who notes it has trended downwards from an estimated 43% in the 1870s to 17% in the 2000s.

The 2008 financial crash was huge. But by late 2019, an even bigger meltdown was imminent. Many companies could not generate enough profit and falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cashflows and highly leveraged balance sheets were prevalent. In effect, economic growth was already grinding to a halt prior to the massive stock market crash in February 2020.

Fabio Vighi, professor of critical theory, describes how, in late 2019, the Swiss Bank of International Settlements, BlackRock (the world’s most powerful investment fund), G7 central bankers, leading politicians and others worked behind closed doors to avert a massive impending financial meltdown.

The Fed soon began an emergency monetary programme, pumping hundreds of billions of dollars per week into financial markets. Not long after, COVID hit and lockdowns were imposed. The stock market did not collapse because lockdowns occurred. Vighi argues lockdowns were rolled out because financial markets were collapsing.

Closing down the global economy under the guise of fighting a pathogen that mainly posed a risk to the over 80s and the chronically ill seemed illogical to many, but lockdowns allowed the Fed to flood financial markets (COVID relief) with freshly printed money without causing hyperinflation. Vighi says that lockdowns curtailed economic activity, thereby removing demand for the newly printed money (credit) in the physical economy and preventing ‘contagion’.

Using lockdowns and restrictions, smaller enterprises were driven out of business and large sections of the pre-COVID economy were shut down. This amounted to a controlled demolition of parts of the economy while the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Meta (Facebook) and the online payment sector – platforms which are dictating what the ‘new normal’ will look like – were clear winners in all of this.

The rising inflation that we currently witness is being blamed on the wholly avoidable conflict in Ukraine. Although this tells only part of the story, the conflict and sanctions seem to be hitting Europe severely: if you wanted to demolish your own economy or impoverish large sections of the population, this might be a good way to go about it.

However, the massive ‘going direct’ helicopter money given to the financial sector and global conglomerates under the guise of COVID relief was always going to have an impact once the global economy reopened.

Similar extraordinary monetary policy (lockdowns) cannot be ruled out in the future: perhaps on the pretext of another ‘virus’ but possibly based on the notion of curtailing human activity due to ‘climate emergency’. This is because raising interests rates to manage inflation could rapidly disrupt the debt-bloated financial system (an inflated Ponzi scheme) and implode the entire economy.

Permanent austerity   

But lockdowns, restrictions or creating mass unemployment and placing people on programmable digital currencies to micromanage spending and decrease inflationary pressures could help to manage the crisis. ‘Programmable’ means the government determining how much you can spend and what you can spend on.

How could governments legitimise such levels of control? By preaching about reduced consumption according to the creed of ‘sustainability’. This is how you would ‘own nothing and be happy’ if we are to believe this well-publicised slogan of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

But like neoliberal globalization in the 1980s – the great reset is being given a positive spin, something which supposedly symbolises a brave new techno-utopian future.

In the 1980s, to help legitimise the deregulated neoliberal globalisation agenda, government and media instigated an ideological onslaught, driving home the primacy of ‘free enterprise’, individual rights and responsibility and emphasising a shift away from the role of state, trade unions and the collective in society.

Today, we are seeing another ideological shift: individual rights (freedom to choose what is injected into your own body, for instance) are said to undermine the wider needs of society and – in a stark turnaround – individual freedom is now said to pose a threat to ‘national security’, ‘public health’ or ‘safety’.

A near-permanent state of ‘emergency’ due to public health threats, climate catastrophe or conflict (as with the situation in Ukraine) would conveniently place populations on an ongoing ‘war footing’. Notions of individual liberty and democratic principles would be usurped by placing the emphasis on the ‘public interest’ and protecting the population from ‘harm’. This would facilitate the march towards authoritarianism.

As in the 1980s, this messaging is being driven by economic impulses. Neoliberalism privatised, deregulated, exploited workers and optimised debt to the point whereby markets are now kept afloat by endless financial injections.

The WEF says the public will ‘rent’ everything they require: stripping the right of personal ownership under the guise of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘saving the planet’. Where the WEF is concerned, this is little more than code for permanent austerity to be imposed on the mass of the population.

Metaverse future 

At the start of this article, readers were asked to imagine a future based on a certain set of principles associated with localization. For one moment, imagine another. The one being promoted by the WEF, the high-level talking shop and lobby group for elite interests headed by that avowed globalist and transhumanist Klaus Schwab.

As you sit all day unemployed in your high-rise, your ‘food’ will be delivered via an online platform bought courtesy of your programmable universal basic income digital money. Food courtesy of Gates-promoted farms manned by driverless machines, monitored by drones and doused with chemicals to produce crops from patented GM seeds for industrial ‘biomatter’ to be engineered, processed and constituted into something resembling food.

Enjoy and be happy eating your fake food, stripped of satisfying productive endeavour and genuine self-fulfilment. But really, it will not be a problem. You can sit all day and exist virtually in Zuckerberg’s fantasy metaverse. Property-less and happy in your open prison of mass unemployment, state dependency, track and chip health passports and financial exclusion via programmable currency.

A world also in which bodily integrity no longer exists courtesy of a mandatory vaccination agenda linked to emerging digital-biopharmaceutical technologies. The proposed World Health Organization pandemic treaty marks a worrying step in this direction.

This ‘new normal’ would be tyrannical, but the ‘old normal’ – which still thrives – was not something to be celebrated. Global inequality is severe and environmental devastation and human dislocation has been increasing. Dependency and dispossession remain at the core of the system, both on an individual level and at local, regional and national levels. New normal or old normal, these problems will persist and become worse.

Green imperialism  

The ‘green economy’ being heavily promoted is based on the commodification of nature, through privatization, marketization and monetary valuation. Banks and corporations will set the agenda – dressed in the garb of ‘stakeholder capitalism’, a euphemism for governments facilitating the needs of powerful global interests. The fear is that the proposed system will weaken environmental protection laws and regulations to facilitate private capital.

The banking sector will engage in ‘green profiling’ and issue ‘green bonds’ and global corporations will be able to ‘offset’ (greenwash) their environment-degrading activities by, for example, protecting or planting a forest elsewhere (on indigenous people’s land) or perhaps even investing in (imposing) industrial agriculture which grows herbicide-resistant GMO commodity crop monocultures that are misleadingly portrayed as ‘climate friendly’. Imperialism wrapped in green.

Relying on the same thinking and the same interests that led the world to where it is now does not seem like a great idea. This type of ‘green’ is first and foremost a multi-trillion market opportunity for lining pockets and part of a strategy that may well be used to secure compliance required for the ‘new normal’.

The future needs to be rooted in the principles of localization. For this, we need look no further than the economics and the social relations that underpin tribal societies (for example, India’s indigenous peoples). The knowledge and value systems of indigenous peoples promote long-term genuine sustainability by living within the boundaries of nature and emphasise equality, communality and sharing rather than separation, domination and competition.

Self-sufficiency, solidarity, localization and cooperation is the antidote to globalism and the top-down tyranny of programmable digital currencies and unaccountable, monopolistic AI-driven platforms which aim to monitor and dictate every aspect of life.

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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 is from Food and Water Watch

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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***

Following the meeting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on April 24, Kiev is seemingly more determined to not negotiate with Moscow to bring an end to the war. In fact, the US is only encouraging and emboldening Ukraine to continue its war effort despite little prospect for victory. Essentially, the US is hoping Ukraine will be a permanent issue for Russia, and for his part, Zelensky is happily submitting to this demand that will ensure the war will wage on longer than necessary.

Speaking at a news conference at an undisclosed location in Poland near the Ukrainian border, Austin said:

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine. So it has already lost a lot of military capability. And a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”

Blinken for his part told reporters that Vladimir Putin’s attempts to “subjugate Ukraine and take its independence” has “failed” and that as a “result of sanctions” the Russian economy “is in shambles.”

Despite the reality on the ground that the Russian military are on Kiev’s doorstep and that town after town are being captured by Russian-backed separatist forces in Donbass, the top US officials are still encouraging Ukraine to continue its war effort by disingenuously claiming that the Russian military has lost “capability” and admitting that their goal is to see Russia permanently weakened.

In this way, it appears that Austin hopes Ukraine can become some kind of quagmire for Russia that will absorb a lot of its resources, energy and focus – something akin to the 20-year American occupation of Afghanistan. Because of this, Kiev will certainly become more defiant in its negotiations with Moscow.

In support of this endeavour, Austin announced that the US would allocate more than $700 million in direct and indirect military assistance to Ukraine. As reported by the New York Times, the trip to Kiev was planned in top-secret conditions, with Blinken and Austin flying on a US Air Force cargo plane, accompanied by a handful of officials from the departments.

Blinken and Austin’s trip to Kiev was the first by senior US officials to Ukraine since the war began, making it all the more symbolic as it comes at a time when Russian forces are engaged in a massive campaign in Donbass that has already seen major settlements fall and elements of the Ukrainian military and their neo-Nazi Azov Battalion allies reduced to holding nothing but a single factory in the major port city of Mariupol.

A National Security Council spokesperson said on April 21 that the US wants Ukraine to win and “that’s why we’re doing everything we can to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to strengthen the Ukrainians’ hands on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”

Even if Ukraine agrees to maintain a neutral status with external security guarantees, there is every possibility that in only a few years’ time there could be a new Maidan coup in Kiev. This possibility has already made Moscow suspicious, but the US commitment to help Ukraine weaken Russia only heightens this.

The US hosted in Germany on April 26 talks on Ukraine that were led by Austin. General Mark Milley, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said a key goal of the talks was to coordinate mounting security assistance to Kiev that included heavy weaponry, such as howitzers, as well as armed drones and ammunition.

“The next several weeks will be very, very critical,” Milley said. “They need continued support in order to be successful on the battlefield. And that’s really the purpose of this conference.”

In this way, it again highlights that the West is not seeking a way to conclude the war, but a way to maintain it for as long as possible in the daft hope that the Russian military weakens to significant proportions that it will no longer be able to defend its interests, whether it be in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Middle East or elsewhere. Not only will this Western hope fail to materialize, but it also prolongs the suffering of the Ukrainian people.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

According to a recent survey of data on trade in military material between EU and Russian points to the existence of a profitable market, with ample flow of capital and goods. Russia and Western Europe are historically partners with mutually compatible commercial interests, however, given the current context of conflict in Ukraine, the mere existence of the partnership in the past generates scandal.

More than ten EU member states have operated military trade relations with Russia in recent years, totaling more than 350 million euros in transactions, The Telegraph reported. Among these countries, France and Germany stand out significantly, being responsible for more than 78% of bilateral military trade. Missiles, rockets, guns, and bombs are among the various equipment exported by European countries to Russia – much of which is apparently being used by Moscow’s forces in the current special military operation in Ukraine.

What has caused great discomfort in the Western media is the fact that much of this trade was operated “bypassing” a series of trade restrictions imposed by an active collective agreement to embargo Russia, signed in 2014 as a retaliation for the Russian intervention in Crimea. Basically, countries interested in trading military material with Russia used contracts prior to the embargo agreement to justify the continuity of relations, increasing trade and generating profits for the European military industry in the last eight years.

Indeed, the data on the military partnership comes at a delicate moment in relations between Russia and the West. Media agencies have severely criticized any position of Western governments that is not in absolute alignment with the policy of total boycott against Russia. Taking notes on the exports of weapons to Moscow, in this sense, sounds like a real scandal, resulting in denunciations and alarmism about an alleged “European connivence” with Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Commenting on the case, Romanian MEP Cristian Terhes, responsible for the abovementioned data collection research on military trade, said:

“While Ukraine is desperately crying out for weapons to defend itself from Putin’s invasion, Germany and France are silent, but were happy enough to quietly and disgracefully sell their wares to Moscow”.

The situation is particularly serious when we consider the German case. Previously, European newspapers were focused on criticizing Berlin for continuing its billion-dollar partnership with Russian energy companies, despite the current sanctions. Now, everything tends to get worse in mainstream media’s opinion about the German government, as for their respective experts all that matters is that Moscow receives sanctions and economic blockades in every way possible.

As a result, pressure is also increasing for Germany to send military and financial aid to Ukraine. Trying to maintain stable its energy relations with Russia and to avoid an escalation of the conflict, the German government has remained silent so far when questioned about German ability to send heavy weapons to Kiev. Now, with the data on German military trade with Russia being exposed, this pressure to “help Ukraine” will be intensified.

Scholz has already commented on the reasons why he has avoided allowing weapons to be sent to Ukraine. For him, this level of involvement on the part of NATO countries tends to escalate tensions even further, harming European security. For example, these were some of his words about the case during a recent interview:

“That’s why it is all the more important that we consider each step very carefully and coordinate closely with one another (…) To avoid an escalation towards NATO is a top priority for me (…) That’s why I don’t focus on polls or let myself be irritated by shrill calls. The consequences of an error would be dramatic”.

What is curious about all this is the sensationalist way in which the western media opines about international trade. There is nothing ideological about commercial relationships, they are just ties aimed at profits and the supply of products. By selling weapons to Russia, European nations are not contradicting their condemnation of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, they are just stating that they have commercial and strategic interests in maintaining ties with the Russians despite not agreeing with the Kremlin’s decision to launch a military operation on Ukrainian soil.

France and Germany – and the other nations that maintain small military deals with Moscow – only prove that, despite the propagandistic idealism spread by the pro-NATO media, nations are guided by realistic politicians and advisers, who take state interests more seriously than unrealistic issues, such as the idea of ​​”canceling Russia”.

Military trade with Europe represents a small fraction of the Russian arsenal. If pressure from NATO – mainly from the US and UK – for Europe to suspend military trade ties is carried forward, the only harmed party will be Europe itself, which will lose a significant source of business, without any effect being seen in the special operation.

Finally, it is necessary to mention that the act of “bypassing” – not violating – collective embargo agreements is a common practice in the global scenario and that it does not represent any illegality according to international law. If there were ties between Europeans and Russians before 2014, the subsequent embargo cannot dissolve them as there is an international principle of justice that states that law does not retroact – it only legislates from the moment it was created. There is no media alarmism or pressure from NATO able to change the evident legality of trade between Europe and Russia.

It would be better to respect free decisions of each state and abdicate outdated measures of economic embargo in the face of the European interest in maintaining mutually benefitted trade ties.

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

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On April 1, a decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin came into force, requiring nonfriendly countries that have imposed illegal sanctions on Moscow to pay for Russian gas in rubles.

Under the European Commission’s proposal, companies will transfer their payments in euros or dollars to a bank account in Russia, from where the currency will be converted into rubles. Payments will be completed once the foreign currency is deposited in the Russian bank.

Amid sanctions imposed by London on Gazprom, the British Treasury has issued a temporary waiver allowing British companies to transfer funds to Russia’s Gazprombank to pay for gas. UK firms will be able to meet Moscow’s new demand to pay for gas in rubles through the waiver of sanctions, which will last until May 31.

The Russian ruble-based mechanism emerged in response to sanctions imposed by European and Western countries since the start of Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine on February 24. Russia has said that this mechanism will provide the country with payment guarantees.

To get around US forced sanction, EU changes tune on ruble gas payments. The settlement switch may be possible without breaching sanctions, the European Commission says. pic.twitter.com/68hgHGsLMO

— [email protected] (@frederickcheng5) April 22, 2022

Similarly, the decree also followed the decision of Western governments to illegally freeze the foreign currency assets of the Central Bank of Russia held in their countries. Moscow recently promised to take those governments to court over the measure to fight for the freeing up of the funds.

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A report by The New York Times has revealed that Ukrainian troops fired cluster munitions, banned by 110 countries around the world, on a Ukrainian village.

The cluster bombs that the Ukrainian forces used against a village populated with civilians on their own territory are banned by countries around the world for their capacity to haphazardly kill innocent civilians, according to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Almost 20% of these munitions fail to detonate on impact, and remain a threat to civilians long after hostilities end, killing and maiming them indiscriminately.

The United States, Ukraine, Russia, China, Brazil, “Israel” and Pakistan have opposed signing the treaty.

“It’s not surprising, but it’s definitely dismaying to hear that evidence has emerged indicating that Ukraine may have used cluster munitions in this current conflict,” said Mary Wareham, advocacy director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch. “Cluster munitions are unacceptable weapons that are killing and maiming civilians across Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense declined to comment.

Ukrainian forces had also used cluster bombs in 2015 in battles against the breakaway republics of Lugansk and Donetsk to the country’s east. More recently, they fired such munitions on Donetsk on March 14, killing 20 people and wounding 37 others.

Donetsk republic leader, Denis Pushilin, said that downtown Donetsk was hit by a Ukrainian Tochka-U missile filled with cluster munitions.

“We would need further information to see whether we can confirm that,” UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said Monday when asked whether the UN had any evidence of Ukrainian forces using cluster munitions.

The head of the Defense Ministry’s National Defense Management Center, General Mikhail Mezentsev, touched on Ukraine’s actions in Donetsk, revealing the toll of the Ukrainian Tochka-U attack, a missile containing cluster munition. He described the bombing as a “war crime.”

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Featured image: Part of an Uragan cluster munition that was most likely fired by Ukrainian forces in Husarivka (Source: NYT)

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For more than one reason, the US President Joe Biden’s call with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday is hugely consequential. This has been Biden’s second phone conversation with Bennett in four weeks. On March 30 Biden called to express his “deepest condolences” following the terrorist attacks that killed 11 people in three Israeli cities.

This time around, his call coincided with the joint meeting of the US secretaries of state and defence with the Ukrainian president in Kiev on Sunday signifying that Washington is raising the ante in the conflict with Russia and marking a shift in the conflict, signalling readiness to wade deeper into the conflict after initial qualms.

The US and NATO allies are showing readiness to supply heavier equipment and more advanced weapons systems to Ukraine. After the trip to Kiev, Defence Secretary Austin told journalists in Poland that Ukraine can win the war against Russia if it has the right equipment.

“We believe that we can win, they can win if they have the right equipment, the right support,” he said.

Officials in Kiev had earlier drawn up a list of weapons that they urgently needed from the US, which includes anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems. Ukraine is known to have sought advanced weaponry from Israel previously, including the famous “Iron Dome” anti-missile system and the infamous Pegasus spyware for use against Russia. But Israel didn’t want to stick out its neck for Ukraine due to fears of jeopardising its tacit deconfliction measures with Moscow during its operations against Iranian targets in Syria. 

However, things changed dramatically in the past fortnight or so, as Israel gave up its neutrality toward Russia’s special operation and accused Moscow of committing war crimes. Biden’s conversation with Bennett took place as Russia-Israel relations began plummeting. Interestingly, the White House readout flagged a pointed reference by Biden to Israel’s Iron Dome system. 

Both the White House readout (here) and the statement from Bennett’s office (here) mentioned the situation around Iran. It is entirely conceivable that the sudden unexplained shift in Israel’s stance vis-a-vis Russia in the Ukraine conflict is prompted by some sort of modus vivendi with the Biden Administration regarding the lifting of sanctions against Iran. 

Israel has been pulling out all stops to prevent the Biden administration from conceding the Iranian demand for the removal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) from Washington’s watchlist on terror groups. The Israeli statement not only mentioned that the IRGC issue was  discussed but quoted Bennett as saying, “I am sure that President Biden, who is a true friend of Israel and cares about its security, will not allow the IRGC to be removed from the list of terrorist organisations. Israel has clarified its position on the issue: The IRGC is the largest terrorist organisation in the world.” Biden has accepted an invitation from Bennett to visit Israel “in the coming months.” 

In the entire West Asian landscape, there is not a single country other than Israel that the US can count on today as an ally against Russia. Clearly, the security climate in West Asia will change phenomenally if the Biden Administration were to turn its back at this point on the negotiations relating to JCPOA. The White House readout highlighted that Biden and Bennett discussed “shared regional and global security challenges, including the threat posed by Iran and its proxies.” 

A powerful lobby in the Beltway, starting with none other than the Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is opposed to any deal with Iran. These lobbyists argue that with Iran continuing to rapidly escalate its nuclear program and making clear that its ballistic missiles and regional policies are not negotiable, there is little left for the US to salvage out of the JCPOA.  

Speaking at the US Senate Armed Services Committee, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said recently, “In my personal opinion I believe the IRGC Quds Force to be a terrorist organisation and I do not support them being delisted from the Foreign Terrorist Organisations list.” Again, in an open letter to Biden, 70 national security professionals have opposed the delisting of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organisation. In another open letter, 46 retired US generals and admirals have opposed the ongoing nuclear deal. 

Viewed from another angle, now that Europe is not contemplating an oil / gas embargo against Russia, Washington is no longer under pressure to lift the sanctions against Iran’s energy exports. And at any rate, the US will be mindful of the possibility that Iran may provide a lifeline to Russia to beat Western sanctions. 

Meanwhile, Biden administration’s priority is also shifting away from economic sanctions against Russia to “finally breaking the back of Russia’s ability to project power outside of Russia to threaten Georgia, to threaten Moldova, to threaten our Baltic allies” — to borrow the words of former US Army Europe Commander Ben Hodges from a recent interview. 

Austin has called at short notice a meeting tomorrow at the American base in Germany with counterparts from allied countries to discuss the scope for vastly increased military supplies to Ukraine on a long-term basis. Biden’s call to Bennett just prior to that meeting suggests that the US may have persuaded Israel to be an active participant in the war in Ukraine, which would “bleed” Russia “white.” 

What motivates Israel would be that the Biden administration is willing to accommodate Israeli concerns over a US-Iran nuclear deal. That explains Bennett’s “confidence” that Biden will not concede Iran’s demand to remove IRGC from the terror watchlist.  

The bottom line is that Tehran is left with no other option now but to either accept a new deal or stick to its demands and pay for the consequences. The US estimates that Tehran, having come so close to the US lifting the sanctions, which will of course be a game changer for Iran’s besieged economy, would think twice about walking away with empty hands. 

Biden’s call with Bennett messages to Tehran that the US is prepared to turn to other options if the negotiations fail in Vienna. 

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***

Former NATO top commander Gen. Philip Breedlove is the latest big name to come out for putting troops on the ground in Ukraine. Breedlove, who has been angling for weeks for a more muscular policy against Russia, told The Times of London that it’s time for real action. And he may have the ear of the White House: the article says he’s named as one of “several high-ranking retired commanders advising the Biden administration on Ukraine.”

“So what could the West do? Well, right now there are no Russian troops west of the Dnieper River. So why don’t we put Nato troops into western Ukraine to carry out humanitarian missions and to set up a forward arms supply base?”

Of course it wouldn’t stop there. Most likely Russia will react aggressively, if not explosively, since setting up “a forward arms supply base” would be fully entering this war on the side of Ukraine. NATO would be a co-belligerent in every way, with its 40,000 troops now stationed on alliance’s eastern front considered future enemy combatants. At the end of April, the Pentagon mobilized some 14,000 troops, along with F-35 strike fighters and Apache helicopters to Poland, Hungary, and the Baltics. A total of 100,000 U.S. troops now spread across Europe would no doubt be on some level of alert if NATO entered the fray.

Breedlove, who served as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander from 2013 to 2016, said this move was essential for the protection of Odesa, a strategic Ukrainian port city on the Black Sea.

“If Odesa falls, Ukraine will become a land-locked country with no access to the Black Sea. The impact on Ukraine’s GDP would be huge. It would be ruinous for the economy,” he told the Times.

“The West is saying it is providing everything Ukraine needs to defend against the Russians. But the people of Mariupol had to fight without Stingers [anti-aircraft missiles]. That was a failure by the West.”

He added:

“Now we need to make sure that the Ukrainians win the battle for Odesa.”

Earlier this month, Breedlove was complaining that the West’s fears of nuclear war were working in Putin’s favor.

“We have been so worried about nuclear weapons and World War III that we have allowed ourselves to be fully deterred. And [Putin], frankly, is completely undeterred. He has switched into the most horrific war against the citizens of Ukraine, it is beyond criminal at this point.”

U.S. weakness on this score bleeds over to our relations with Iran, North Korea, and China, he asserts:

“The message we’re sending to the entire world is if you get a nuclear weapon, you’re going to have a certain reaction from the West and certainly from the United States…[that’s all]. And I don’t think that’s the message we want to send them.”

Of course, a month before this Breedlove said he was “not advocating a war” when asked about what appeared to be his support for a “humanitarian no fly zone.” Today, advocating NATO involvement directly in Ukraine would be a giant leap beyond that, and who knows what kind of opening for others coming down with similar war fever in Washington. Last week, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons was forced to walk back comments he made that suggested he too, was in favor of putting troops on the ground against Russia.

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Featured image: General Philip Breedlove, then Supreme Allied Commander Europe, in 2014. (NATO)

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First published on WSWS in July 2019

***

Judge Emma Arbuthnot has refused to recuse herself from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s US extradition hearings. This is what “class justice” looks like.

Arbuthnot, Chief Magistrate and Senior District Judge for England and Wales, is flouting fundamental legal principles to ensure that she presides over a show trial against Assange, due to resume at Westminster Magistrates Court on February 25. If extradited, Assange faces charges under the Espionage Act, carrying a 175-year prison sentence. Further charges are pending, which could include the death penalty.

The “Guide to Judicial Conduct” in England and Wales, published in 2018, states that,

“Judicial independence is a cornerstone of our system of government in a democratic society and a safeguard of the freedom and rights of the citizen under the rule of law. The judiciary must be seen to be independent of the legislative and executive arms of government both as individuals and as a whole.”

Arbuthnot should have automatically recused herself on this basis.

Her husband, James Norwich Arbuthnot, is a Conservative member of the House of Lords. He is intimately connected with the British armed forces and security services, whose criminal operations were exposed by WikiLeaks.

As a Tory MP, Lord Arbuthnot was between 2005 and 2014 the chair of the Defence Select Committee, the body overseeing the Ministry of Defence and Britain’s armed forces. His watch covered ongoing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the wars for regime change in Libya and Syria.

He is currently co-chair of the UK advisory board for defence manufacturer Thales and is an advisory board member of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI). Lord Arbuthnot is also a former director at security and intelligence consultancy firm SC Strategy, where he worked for two years alongside co-directors Lord Carlile and Sir John Scarlett.

Carlile is a prominent defender of MI5 who supported the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (nicknamed the Snoopers’ Charter) enabling the British state to access internet connection records without a warrant. He argued that Edward Snowden’s exposures of illegal mass state surveillance “amounted to a criminal act.’’ He oversaw the implementation of anti-terror legislation and reviewed national security procedures in Northern Ireland.

Scarlett is former head of MI6 and chair of the government’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). He oversaw the production of a report arguing for the right of the secret services to “collect bulk communications data” and was responsible for compiling the “dodgy dossier” on Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

The activities of Lord Arbuthnot and his colleagues were the subject of thousands of WikiLeaks disclosures. There are almost 2,000 references in the WikiLeaks’ database to Thales and nearly 450 to RUSI. Lord Arbuthnot himself can be found in over 50 entries.

As Assange’s legal team and UN Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer have argued, this “strong conflict of interest” requires Lady Arbuthnot to stand down from Assange’s case. Her husband’s entire political life has been dedicated to crushing the sort of transparency and accountability advocated by WikiLeaks.

The “Guide to Judicial Conduct” explicitly states, “Where a close member of a judge’s family is politically active, the judge needs to bear in mind the possibility that, in some proceedings, that political activity might raise concerns about the judge’s own impartiality and detachment from the political process and should act accordingly.”

Furthermore, “personal animosity towards a party is also a compelling reason for disqualification.”

Arbuthnot’s animosity toward Assange is on public record.

No legal argument will convince Arbuthnot to recuse herself. Her connections via her family to the security services are the very reason she has been selected to oversee this case. The British ruling class requires an official to rubber stamp Assange’s transfer to the US, in what amounts to an extraordinary rendition.

Two previous instances of judges recusing themselves from English court cases provide a stark contrast to the WikiLeaks founder’s case.

The first involves Arbuthnot herself. In August 2018, she was obliged to stand down from a case against Uber after the Observer revealed that her husband had a business interest in the ride hailing company via SC Strategy and its client, the Qatar Investment Authority. A judicial spokesman said “as soon as this link was pointed out to her, she assigned the case to a fellow judge. It is essential that judges not only are, but are seen to be, absolutely impartial.”

No such concerns are evident in the case of Assange. Not one article in the mainstream media has reported on the glaring contradiction between Arbuthnot’s actions in 2018 versus today.

The second instance is of a judge failing to recuse himself in 1998 during the attempt to extradite former Chilean dictator, torturer and executioner Augusto Pinochet to face criminal charges in Spain.

Lord Hoffmann was savaged for failing to make clear his connections with the human rights group Amnesty International, which was a party to the case. He was chair of the charity’s fundraising department in a voluntary capacity. Hoffmann had been one of three Law Lords out of five to vote to overturn a High Court decision affirming Pinochet’s claimed immunity from prosecution due to his being a head of state at the time of his crimes. In an unprecedented move, the House of Lords’ verdict against Pinochet (involving Hoffmann) was scrapped by five law lords and only re-confirmed a year later—with significant qualifications invalidating most of the charges against Pinochet.

The Law Lords, led by Lord Browne-Wilkinson, developed arguments which would absolutely require Arbuthnot to recuse herself from the Assange case. Previously, whether a judge was automatically disqualified from a case depended on having a financial interest in its outcome. Lord Browne-Wilkinson’s decision extended the principle of automatic disqualification to apply to the much looser categories of non-financial “interests” or support for “causes.”

The overturn verdict accepted Pinochet’s claim that he had been denied the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states, “Any judge in respect of whom there is a legitimate reason to fear a lack of impartiality must withdraw.”

Denunciations of Hoffmann were brutal. The Guardian reported January 16, 1999 that five law lords had “criticised Lord Hoffmann for flouting the basic principle that ‘justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done.’ The devastating criticism cast doubt over Lord Hoffmann’s future as a law lord.”

The Guardian continued,

“The judges accuse Lord Hoffmann of ignoring a basic judicial tenet learned by every student in the first year of law school. So well-known is the rule, said Lord Hope, that no civil court in the United Kingdom has had a judgment set aside for a breach of it this century… ‘Judges are well aware they should not sit in a case where they have even the slightest personal interest in it, either as defendant or as prosecutor,’ Lord Hope said.

“Lord Hutton said public confidence in the integrity of the administration of justice would be shaken if Lord Hoffmann’s deciding vote that General Pinochet could be prosecuted was allowed to stand.”

In January 2000, the Blair Labour government’s Home Secretary Jack Straw intervened to protect the mass murderer, overruling the House of Lords and insisting that extradition proceedings should be halted on the grounds of Pinochet’s supposed ill-health. Pinochet arrived back in Chile on March 3, landing at Santiago Airport where he rose from his wheelchair to the cheers of his fascistic supporters.

Clearly, “judicial impartiality” means one thing when it comes to defending a vicious dictator and long-time ally of US and British imperialism. It means another when it amounts to persecuting a world-renowned journalist who has exposed the crimes of the ruling class.

Assange’s scalp must be taken at all costs to further imperialism’s colonial-style wars of conquest and the global assault on the social and democratic rights of the working class. To silence him forever, not only the judiciary but the entire state apparatus and its defenders in the media are shedding all democratic and liberal pretensions.

The Socialist Equality Party backs the demands being raised by Assange’s supporters that Arbuthnot recuse herself. But we warn that the sole force capable of freeing Assange is the international working class mobilized in a collective political struggle against the ruling class and its legal apparatus.

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***

In an interesting short work, Giving up is not an option – Memoirs of a Palestinian American,  Hani Khoury outllines the thread of his life from growing up in Palestine followed by his move to the U.S. for educational purposes.  Along the way he hits upon several themes – one of the main ones being his path through life with a disability that kept him confined to a wheelchair for most of his life.   Two other themes intermix with this:  first are comments on Palestine and Israel; and another large theme is education, in particular the study of mathematics.

Khoury was born in Nablus with spinal muscular atrophy, a disability in Palestine severely limiting accessibility to already limited activities.  Education became his focus and at the age of eighteen he moved to the U.S. to continue his studies, a journey that occupied thirty years of his life as student and educator.

A very human context is given, a personal perception of historical events while in school, an examination of the moral aspects of occupation, and comments on the dehumanizing actions by occupiers in everyday life.  It was his “Misfortune to live and grow up under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world.”

Education

Having experienced and looked at the different religions of his native land, Khoury says his beliefs are of a secular humanist, based partly on “the fruits of science”  and “education as a philosophy of liberation, for it can and should provide all of us with hope for a better future.”

Relating to his specialty in the field of mathematics, he tends to indicate that math, with its required thinking skills, is a major component of critical thought leading to democracy.  Again speaking of education and democracy he says, “ Informed engagement in civic and political life are essential prerequisites for democracy….including mathematics education.”   While I believe he gives too much emphasis to math’s influence on critical thinking skills and democracy, it is readily understood from his personal life story and success as a math teacher.

A return to Palestine

After many years of teaching, Khoury returns to his hometown, Nablus.  He provides a precis of the historical changes that have occurred between his departure and return.  He notes the failure of the Oslo Accords, the security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority [PA], and the common strategic interests Israel has with the U.S.: oil, geopolitics, and military superiority.

In his summary he says the PA “has failed the aspirations of the Palestinian people.”  On the settlements he indicates their “massive spread” is “impossible to reverse,” leading to the current apartheid system and the future need for a democratic unitary state.

He concludes with notes on international law, but more personally on education, risk taking, courage and honesty, and, as per the title, not giving up.  Giving up is not an option – Memoirs of a Palestinian American is a short readily accessible read and provides a unique Palestinian view of a life directed towards education and critical reasoning as a necessary part of life and democracy.

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Jim Miles is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Joshua Yoder, an airline pilot and co-founder of the U.S. Freedom Flyers said during an interview Wednesday that a cardiologist told him that if the airlines were conducting certain health screenings, 30 percent of the pilots currently flying would probably be disqualified due to vaccine-induced heart conditions.

Yoder told tech millionaire and Vaccine Safety Research Foundation founder Steve Kirsch that his group has received hundreds of reports about pilots flying planes while suffering from adverse side effects from the COVID vaccines.

The most prominent health issues being reported, the pilot noted, include chest pains, myocarditis, and pericarditis. Yoder said that three vaccinated pilot called him yesterday and said that they’re “currently flying with chest pains,” and another one said he is being treated by a cardiologist. He noted that the pilots want to remain anonymous because they don’t want to lose their jobs.

Yoder said the U.S. Freedom Flyers would like to find a solution for these pilots, and work with doctors, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), airlines, and unions to come up with a protocol so they have “some kind of immunity” that would allow the pilots to talk openly about what is happening to them.

The USFF formed last fall to help employees in the transportation industry oppose the federal laws surrounding vaccinations.

“I’m afraid if we keep going down this path, at some point it’s going to end in catastrophe,” he said.

“If passengers actually knew what was going on at the airlines and the FAA, they would be livid, and everyone would be jumping on a class action suit against all of them,” he said.

Yoder said that world renowned cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told him that if the pilots were regularly tested, a significant number of them would probably have to be grounded.

“He [McCullough] said that if every vaccinated pilot were to be screened, there would be somewhere around a 30 percent loss in manpower,” Yoder told Kirsch.

McCullough, along with Idaho pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole, Robert Kennedy Jr, Lt. Col Teresa Long M.D., Lt. Col. Peter Chambers D.O. and other experts signed letter to the Federal Aviation Administration and the major airlines on Dec. 15, 2021, urging them to flag all vaccinated pilots, and administer EKGs, D-dimer tests, troponin tests, and cardiac MRIs to assess their health.

The doctors warned that adverse events from vaccination could cause “a pilot (to lose) control of his aircraft” and lead to “untold devastation.”

As American Greatness reported on Wednesday, an American Airlines pilot recently suffered a cardiac arrest six minutes after landing his airbus at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

Captain Robert Snow nearly died when his heart stopped on April 9, according to Yoder.

“They had to shock him three times with the AED [automated external defibrillator] to bring him back,” he said.

Yoder noted that Snow was taken to Baylor, Scott and White Health Center, which is only ten minutes from both American Airlines, and the union (the Allied Pilots Association), yet no one from the airline or union called Snow while he was in the hospital, or stopped by to visit him. The only thing the airline did was fly his family to the hospital to meet with him.

Snow called the U.S. Freedom Fliers for help, and the group assembled a “world-class” team of doctors and lawyers to assist him. Snow is now recuperating at home, Yoder said.

Yoder acknowledged that it is pretty clear that Snow’s cardiac arrest was caused by the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, but the pilot has been undergoing a series of tests to confirm it.

Yoder told Kirsch that the airline industry does not seem to want to deal with the potentially dangerous incident.

“American Airlines is trying to create as much distance between themselves and this incident as humanely possible,” he said. “So is the FAA, and so are the unions. We can’t even get a response.”

Yoder said that Snow would be speaking out soon, and when he does “you’re going to hear some very interesting details that are going to be very damning for American Airlines, the Allied Pilots Association, the FAA, and everyone else involved.”

Yoder also mentioned two other pilots who have bravely come forward to talk about their vaccine injuries.

Pilot Greg Pierson has spoken out against the COVID vaccines ever since he suffered a stroke after getting the jab under duress, last year. Pierson said during an interview last December that if he had had his stroke while piloting a plane, he could have caused a crash.

WATCH AND SHARE Brave Pilot Greg Pearson Speaks Out About The Dangers Of The #Vaccine #ClotShot #Booster #vaccineinjury #VaccineSideEffects #VaccineAdverseEffects #VaccineAdverseReaction pic.twitter.com/MficeyMOu0

— information Chaser🕷 (@tsubject) December 31, 2021

Cody Flint was an agricultural pilot up until he was vaccinated in February of 2021. A couple of days after his jab, he suffered a mid-flight blackout, landing safely only “by the grace of God,” he says.

Flint was diagnosed with a neurological disorder that caused him to have severe headaches and vertigo.

Since then, his career has collapsed, he’s had multiple surgeries and countless doctor visits. And so far, nobody responsible for vaccine development or roll out has been willing to talk to him, or others like him.

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Debra Heine is a conservative Catholic mom of six and longtime political pundit. She has written for several conservative news websites over the years, including Breitbart and PJ Media.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

As of April 8, 2022, 74 cases of severe hepatitis that health officials can’t explain have been reported in children up to 10 years old

In October 2021, a case report involving a 47-year-old, previously healthy, man demonstrated conclusive evidence that COVID-19 shots may trigger hepatitis

A Journal of Hepatology paper noted that seven additional cases of suspected immune-mediated hepatitis have been reported following COVID-19 shots

Researchers have uncovered innate immune suppression triggered by COVID-19 shots and other disturbances that could cause liver disease

Recently released Pfizer documents also show that, in the first week after the shot, people of all ages experienced a temporary weakening of the immune system; could this increased susceptibility to infection also be playing a role in hepatitis and other cases of liver disease?

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A strange outbreak of severe hepatitis in young children has been reported in the U.S. and Europe, puzzling public health officials. The children were tested for common hepatitis viruses, but they were not to blame, leaving the cause unknown.

In a news release, Graham Cooke, a professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London, suggested that if the hepatitis was caused by COVID-19, “it would be surprising not to see it more widely distributed across the country given the high prevalence of (COVID-19) at the moment.”¹

Potential links to COVID-19 injections appear not to have been widely explored yet, even though the shots have been previously associated with the development of hepatitis.² British health officials did state, however, that none of the affected children had received a COVID-19 shot.³

Young Children Developing Mysterious Liver Disease

In the U.S., nine children in Alabama have developed severe hepatitis, or inflammation of the liver, that health officials can’t explain. All of the children were ages 6 years and younger and were previously healthy.⁴ Symptoms of the liver disease include diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, along with jaundice in some. Liver enzymes were also elevated.

Five of the children tested positive for adenovirus type 41, which are respiratory viruses that can cause the common cold. Health officials have suggested that adenovirus type 41 could be to blame, but Dr. Wes Stubblefield, district medical officer for the Alabama Department of Public Health, admitted to NBC News, “This is unusual. This virus hasn’t, in the past, been associated with this constellation of signs, symptoms and injury.”⁵

Others have also discounted this theory, as adenoviruses are extremely common in children, meaning that it’s quite possible they could test positive for adenoviruses without them being the cause of the hepatitis.⁶ As of April 8, 2022, 74 cases of hepatitis had been reported in children up to 10 years old. Some of the children required hospitalization and six have undergone liver transplants, but no deaths were reported as of April 11, 2022.

With the increase in cases reported over the last month, the World Health Organization expects that more cases of the mysterious hepatitis illness will be uncovered in children. So far, laboratory testing has ruled out hepatitis type A, B, C, and E viruses, along with hepatitis D where applicable.

“Overall,” WHO reported, “the etiology of the current hepatitis cases is still considered unknown and remains under active investigation. Laboratory testing for additional infections, chemicals and toxins is underway for the identified cases.”⁷

COVID-19 Shots May Trigger Hepatitis

A case report involving a 47-year-old, previously healthy man demonstrates conclusive evidence that COVID-19 shots may trigger hepatitis. “Immune-mediated hepatitis with the Moderna vaccine,” researchers wrote in the Journal of Hepatology in October 2021, “[is] no longer a coincidence but confirmed.”⁸

The man featured in the case report received his first Moderna COVID-19 shot on April 26, 2021. Three days later, he developed malaise and jaundice, a yellowing of the skin that can occur if your liver isn’t processing red blood cells efficiently; it’s a hallmark of hepatitis, and a symptom being experienced by some of the children noted above.

The man had his liver function tested four years earlier, with tests coming back normal, and had no history of acetaminophen usage, which can cause liver damage, and only minimal alcohol usage. Yet, three days after the shot, liver tests showed concerning results:⁹

“Investigations on the 30th April showed serum bilirubin 190 μmol/L (normal 0-20), alanine aminotransferase (ALT) 1,048 U/L (normal 10-49), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) 229 U/L (normal 30-130) …”

By the end of June, the man’s jaundice and liver function tests improved, but then he received a second dose of the Moderna shot on July 6, 2021. Within days, the jaundice returned and liver function tests declined. “The pattern of injury on histology was consistent with acute hepatitis, with features of autoimmune hepatitis or possible drug-induced liver injury (DILI), triggering an autoimmune-like hepatitis,” the researchers explained, adding:¹⁰

“This case illustrates immune-mediated hepatitis secondary to the Moderna vaccine, which on inadvertent re-exposure led to worsening liver injury with deranged synthetic function. This occurred in a well man with no other medical problems. The onset of jaundice associated with the mRNA vaccine was unusually rapid.”

Hepatitis Cases Reported Following Shots

The case report above isn’t an isolated one. The Journal of Hepatology paper noted that seven additional cases of suspected immune-mediated hepatitis have been reported following COVID-19 shots, including both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s.

They hope to raise awareness so that vaccination centers will routinely check for signs of immune-mediated hepatitis prior to administering second doses and state, “Long-term follow up of identified individuals will be essential in determining the prognosis of this immune-mediated liver injury.”¹¹

In a separate letter to the editor, published in the Journal of Hepatology in June 2021, researchers again raised concerns that COVID-19 shots could cause hepatitis. In this case, a 56-year-old woman developed severe autoimmune hepatitis following her first dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 shot.¹²

Prior to this, in April 2021, researchers also described a case of autoimmune hepatitis that developed after a COVID-19 shot, this time in a 35-year-old woman who was three months postpartum. In autoimmune hepatitis, the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the liver, causing inflammation and damage, and it’s possible the shot triggered the autoimmunity via spike-directed antibodies:¹³

“To our knowledge, this is the first reported episode of autoimmune hepatitis developing post-COVID-19 vaccination, raising concern regarding the possibility of vaccine-induced autoimmunity. As causality cannot be proven, it is possible that this association is just coincidental.

However, severe cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection are characterized by an autoinflammatory dysregulation that contributes to tissue damage. As the viral spike protein appears to be responsible for this, it is plausible that spike-directed antibodies induced by vaccination may also trigger autoimmune conditions in predisposed individuals.”

Is Immune Suppression to Blame?

Researchers from Ireland noted in November 2021, “It is speculated that SARS-CoV-2 can disturb self-tolerance and trigger autoimmune responses through cross-reactivity with host cells and that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines may trigger the same response.” They also reported the cause of autoimmune hepatitis that developed after a COVID-19 injection in a 71-year-old woman with no risk factors for autoimmune disease.

She noticed jaundice four days after the shot and had “markedly abnormal” liver function tests. The researchers raised the possibility that this is a case of vaccine-related drug-induced liver injury and, like the other teams that reported similar cases, noted:¹⁴

“These findings raise the question as to whether COVID-19 mRNA vaccination can, through activation of the innate immune system and subsequent non-specific activation of autoreactive lymphocytes, lead to the development of autoimmune diseases including AIH or trigger a drug-induced liver injury with features of AIH.

The trigger, if any, may become more apparent over time, especially following withdrawal of immunosuppression. As with other autoimmune diseases associated with vaccines the causality or casualty factor will prove difficult to tease apart … But it does beg the question of whether or not these individuals should receive the second dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.”

Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and colleagues have also highlighted the innate immune suppression triggered by COVID-19 shots.¹⁵

mRNA COVID-19 shots teach your cells to produce a protein, or piece of protein, that triggers an immune response, including the production of antibodies.¹⁶ However, because natural mRNA is easily broken down, this means the experimental gene therapy needs a special delivery system to make it to the body’s cells.

The shots use lipid nanoparticles that contain polyethylene glycol (PEG)¹⁷ for this purpose. The mRNA is wrapped in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) that carry it to your cells, and the LNPs are “PEGylated” — that is, chemically attached to PEG molecules to increase stability.¹⁸

Usually, if you were to inject RNA into your body, enzymes would immediately break it apart, but the COVID-19 shots are specifically designed so that doesn’t happen. As such, “mRNA vaccines promote sustained synthesis of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein,” Seneff and colleagues write in Food and Chemical Toxicology.¹⁹ The spike protein is not only neurotoxic but also impairs DNA repair mechanisms, while suppression of type I interferon responses result in impaired innate immunity, they explain.²⁰

COVID Shot Disturbances Could Cause Liver Disease

Seneff’s research suggests genetic modifications introduced by COVID-19 shots may induce immune cells to release large quantities of exosomes into circulation. Exosomes are extracellular vesicles that contain protein, DNA, RNA and other constituents, and may contain mRNA along with spike protein. According to Seneff and colleagues:²¹

“[W]e present evidence that vaccination induces a profound impairment in type I interferon signaling, which has diverse adverse consequences to human health. Immune cells that have taken up the vaccine nanoparticles release into circulation large numbers of exosomes containing spike protein along with critical microRNAs that induce a signaling response in recipient cells at distant sites.

We also identify potential profound disturbances in regulatory control of protein synthesis and cancer surveillance. These disturbances potentially have a causal link to neurodegenerative disease, myocarditis, immune thrombocytopenia, Bell’s palsy, liver disease, impaired adaptive immunity, impaired DNA damage response and tumorigenesis.”

In one example noted in their study, the shot appears to have caused a case of viral reactivation that led to liver failure. The case involved an 82-year-old woman who had hepatitis C (HCV) in 2007. Just days after she received a Pfizer COVID-19 shot, “a strong increase in HCV load occurred,” along with jaundice. She died from liver failure three weeks after the injection.²²

They also report that the release of exosomes containing microRNAs following COVID-19 shots could interfere with IRF9 synthesis, leading to reduced synthesis of sulfatide in the liver. This cascade, they believe, could represent a “plausible factor” in the multiple case reports that have found liver damage following COVID-19 shots.²³

When they reviewed data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), including symptoms that “clearly represent serious liver problems,” they identified 731 events following COVID-19 shots — representing more than 97% of cases out of all vaccines in 2021.²⁴

Pfizer documents released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in April 2022 must also be taken into account. Buried in one of the documents is the statement, “Clinical laboratory evaluation showed a transient decrease in lymphocytes that was observed in all age and dose groups after Dose 1, which resolved within approximately one week …”²⁵

What this means is Pfizer knew that, in the first week after the shot, people of all ages experienced transient immunosuppression, or put another way, a temporary weakening of the immune system, after the first dose. Could this increased susceptibility to infection also be playing a role in hepatitis and other cases of liver disease following the shots? An investigation is warranted to find out.

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Notes

^1, 3, 6 Yahoo April 19, 2022

^2, 8 Journal of Hepatology October 4, 2021

^4, 5 NBC News April 15, 2022

⁷ WHO April 15, 2022

⁹ Journal of Hepatology October 4, 2021, Case description

¹⁰ Journal of Hepatology October 4, 2021, Case description, Discussion

¹¹ Journal of Hepatology October 4, 2021, Discussion

¹² Journal of Hepatology June 17, 2021

¹³ Journal of Hepatology April 13, 2021

¹⁴ J Hepatol. 2021 Nov; 75(5): 1252–1254

^15, 19, 21 Food and Chemical Toxicology June 2022, Volume 164, 113008

¹⁶ U.S. CDC December 18, 2020

¹⁷ Anthrax Vaccine January 11, 2021

¹⁸ Science December 21, 2020

²⁰ Food and Chemical Toxicology June 2022, Volume 164, 113008, Highlights

²² Food and Chemical Toxicology June 2022, Volume 164, 113008, Section 9

²³ Food and Chemical Toxicology June 2022, Volume 164, 113008, Section 11

²⁴ Food and Chemical Toxicology June 2022, Volume 164, 113008, Section 15.2

²⁵ The Naked Emperor Substack March 29, 2022

Featured image is from The Conservative Woman

Lady Emma Arbuthnot: Who Is Behind the Chief Judge Who Was Trying Julian Assange?

By Manlio Dinucci, April 25, 2022

Judge Lady Arbuthnot is married to Lord James Arbuthnot, a well-known Tory “hawk,” and former Minister for Defense Procurements, with links to the Military-Industrial Complex, British and US intelligence.

China’s Security Pact with the Solomon Islands: The Misbegotten Notion that the South Pacific Is a US Sphere of Influence

By Daniel Larison, April 25, 2022

The U.S. is scrambling to check the growth of Chinese influence in the Pacific nation of the Solomon Islands after Beijing struck a security pact with the islands that would allow China to dock their ships, deploy security forces to protect Chinese-built infrastructure, and help the government restore order.

The Triumph of Deceit: How Thinking in Labels Has Killed Democracy. France’s Presidential Election

By Eric Zuesse, April 25, 2022

On April 19th, Glenn Greenwald, who is not only a great lawyer but one of the world’s most brilliant investigative and analytical journalists, headlined “The WashPost’s Doxxing of @LibsOfTikTok Reveals Who Corporate Journalists See as Their Targets”, and he exposed how the billionaires (the controlling owners of those mega-corporations) have used their ownership and control of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media in order to blackball and blacklist, from their liberal media, anyone or anything that would constitute a real threat against their own control over the media, over the government, and over their profit and nonprofit corporations.

The Tragedy of Julian Assange

By Emanuel Pastreich, April 25, 2022

We must understand that the end of journalism, and the end of justice, are products of the massive concentration of wealth, a process that has produced new political players who are rarely mentioned in the media at all.

Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand: The Slaughter of the Unthinking by the Unaccountable

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, April 25, 2022

ANZAC, the name of the Australian New Zealand Army Corps, hardly sounds promising as the basis of a religion.  But since the needless, bungled operation in the Dardanelles that led to the slaughter of Australian and New Zealand Troops in April 1915, along with Turkish, British and French soldiers, the acronym has become scented, meaningful and powerful.

Kiev Says Ready to Attack Crimean Bridge at First Opportunity

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, April 25, 2022

The Ukrainian government seems to be willing to further increase its military actions just to continue a conflict in which it has no chance of winning. On April 21, a Kiev official announced that they are about to bomb and destroy the Crimean Bridge.

Ukraine Is a Pawn on “The Grand Chessboard”

By Rick Sterling, April 25, 2022

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book “The Grand Chessboard” was published 25 years ago. His assumptions and strategies for maintaining U.S. global dominance have been hugely influential in US foreign policy. As the conflict in Ukraine evolves, with the potential of escalating into world war, we can see where this policy leads and how crucial it is to re-evaluate.

Another Layer of Corruption in the Opioid Scandal Revealed

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, April 25, 2022

In 2021, McKinsey & Company, one of the largest consultants to corporations and governments worldwide, settled a lawsuit brought by 47 state attorneys general over its role in the U.S. opioid crisis. The firm agreed to pay $573 million in fines for driving up sales of Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin painkiller, even as Americans were dying in droves.

Gitmo Detainees Held at Former CIA-run Camp Should Get Reduced Sentences, Lawyers Say

By Middle East Eye, April 25, 2022

Defence lawyers have argued that prisoners held at a secretive CIA-run camp at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre should receive reduced sentences because the conditions to which they were subject were “exceedingly disturbing”.

Video: WashPost’s Doxing of @LibsOfTikTok Reveals Who Corporate Journalists See as Their Targets

By Glenn Greenwald, April 25, 2022

Trump-era corporate journalism ceased viewing real power centers as adversaries (CIA/NSA/FBI/WallSt). The real enemy are citizens with the wrong politics. Rather than confront real power centers, the largest and richest media corporations – e.g. the Bezos-owned WPost – allied with those factions and attack citizens.

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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On April 19th, Glenn Greenwald, who is not only a great lawyer but one of the world’s most brilliant investigative and analytical journalists, headlined “The WashPost’s Doxxing of @LibsOfTikTok Reveals Who Corporate Journalists See as Their Targets”, and he exposed how the billionaires (the controlling owners of those mega-corporations) have used their ownership and control of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media in order to blackball and blacklist, from their liberal media, anyone or anything that would constitute a real threat against their own control over the media, over the government, and over their profit and nonprofit corporations.

In short: he exposed that the money-power people won’t allow their control to be effectively challenged or weakened. He explained how fascism, and even nazism (racist fascism), can be liberal, and not ONLY conservative — can be leftist, and not ONLY rightist; can be far left, and not ONLY far right. (His presentation there includes also a brief summary of how he had switched from being a lawyer, to his becoming an investigative journalist — a profession that he describes as, and was attracted to on account of its being aimed at — “exposing the secrets and crimes and improprieties of the most powerful actors in society.”)

Greenwald, being the genius that he is, was able there quickly to expose — rip off the mask of — nazism, and to reveal it so deeply as to penetrate beyond and beneath the superficial level of the standard ideological labels, so that the public might ultimately become able to be freed from the lies by which the billionaire-class has captured and mentally enslaved the public — enslaved them into neoconservative-neoliberal beliefs and commitments that benefit ONLY the super-wealthy, such as are those billionaires themselves.

That masking is the phenomenon which has caused the publics in all of the U.S.-and-allied nations to think in terms of “us” versus “them” as being inter-ethnic, or inter-‘racial’, or inter-religious, INSTEAD OF as being inter-economic-class: the owners of mega-corporations, versus the employees and customers of mega-corporations — the super-wealthy versus all of the “ethnicities,” and all of the ‘races’, and all of the “religions.” (While the other partisan distinctions do play a role, that role is, in reality, vastly less powerful than that of the one distinction which is the same in ALL countries, and which actually controls almost all countries’ governments — the distinction between the rich versus the poor.)

Labor unions become crushed in this way (by the public’s having the wrong targets — targets that aren’t the billionaires).

Consumers’ rights to safe products become crushed in this way. All protections of the weak against the strong become crushed in this way. All accountability (obligations that the owners have toward their employees and other agents, and toward their corporations’ customers) become crushed in this way. And “this way” can be liberal, and not ONLY conservative. Fascism and even nazism can be liberal, and not only conservative. (The only difference there, is the difference between liberal billionaires versus conservative billionaires, but rule by ANY billionaires is an aristocracy not a democracy. It doesn’t represent the public; it represents the super-rich.)

France’s Presidential Election

A good example of this phenomenon is the French election for that nation’s Presidency, on April 24th, between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron: On April 24th occurred the second and final round of voting for the next French President. Macron beat Le Pen by 58% to 42% — a 16% lead above Le Pen — and the reason why that happened was this engineered-by-the-super-rich confusion of ideological labels.

Screenshot from The National

On the night prior to the April 24th election, Politico’s French “Poll of Polls” showed very clearly that immediately after the first-round voting on April 10th, Le Pen rose and Macron fell in the voter preferences, so that at the time of the April 20th lone Presidential candidates’ debate between the two top finishers in the first round (Le Pen and Macron), the voters’ preference of Macron over Le Pen was at its lowest point ever, around 6%, but that between the 20th and the 23rd, it had grown back to around 10% — which it had previously been.

This had happened despite the major polling organization Elabe having found that whereas only 16% of viewers of the debate said that Le Pen came across as “arrogant,” 50% of its viewers said that Macron came across that way.

Yet in that same poll, 59% said Macron won the debate, while only 39% said Le Pen did. So: very clearly, the French public viewed Le Pen’s “non-arrogant” performance in that debate to have attracted them less than Macron’s “arrogant” performance in it did. What could explain this? It was purely the labeling thing. Not only did the report of that poll refer to Le Pen as being “la candidate d’extrême droite” (the candidate of the extreme right), but all of France’s ‘news’-media did.

And yet, Le Pen, on issue after issue during that debate, was advocating a more progressive, or more social-democratic, a more leftist, position than the moderate conservative (pro-corporate-dictatorship) Macron did, and she stated very clearly what she would do differently than what Macron had done as President, virtually all of which was to Macron’s left — she was consistently favoring the rights of the poor over the rights of the rich, workers over stockholders, small businesses over the mega-corporations, economic competition over concentrated economic power and monopolies, and consumers over the big corporations.

While Macron praised the former French Empire, Le Pen did not: she was anti-imperialistic. Though those were all views that were closer to the polled policy-preferences of French voters than were the positions that Macron espoused and had been practicing as France’s President, her expressed views appealed to the voters less than did the more right-wing views that Macron expressed and had done. What seems to have been absolutely decisive is that all of the French media, and all of France’s leading politicians — prominently including the leading leftist candidate in the first round, the socialist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who had come in third with 22% of the vote in the first round, and who, as Wikipedia accurately summarized, “advised his voters not to vote for Le Pen in the second round, but did not endorse Macron” — even Melenchon and other “leftists” were referring to Le Pen as being “far-right.” (In fact, Melenchon’s Party, when they had met to decide on their recommendation to voters, “The option of voting for Le Pen was not given to respondents.” They said: no Melenchon follower should even consider voting for her.)

In other words: Melenchon and other self-declared “leftists” were advising their followers to prefer actually the (by far) more conservative candidate. Those ‘leftists’ were saying: if you’re going to vote for a candidate in the second round (but please do not), then vote for Macron. Melenchon and all of the self-alleged “leftist” parties said that Le Pen is “far-right” (and thus ideologically beyond the pale). That label was believed by “leftist” voters. Those voters followed the labelings that were being applied by the leading people who had been describing themselves as “leftists.” It’s like, in a sense, a mob mentality, but not against a minority ethnic group; it was instead against an ideological label, no matter how fraudulently that ideological label was actually being applied. Furthermore, in France, which had been so brutalized by Hitler’s Nazis, no political label is even nearly as toxic to a candidate as is the label “far right.” That label, alone, prevented the Presidential candidate who had the (by far) most progressive platform and political commitments, from defeating France’s incumbent, very unpopular, moderate conservative President Macron. That is how France’s billionaires won — yet again. As their Reuters ‘news’ report said, “One notable winner has been the hard-left Jean-Luc Melenchon, who scored 22% in the first round and has already staked a claim to become Macron’s prime minister in an awkward ‘cohabitation’ if his group does well in the June vote.” Another report on the outcome said “Leftist voters — unable to identify with either the centrist president or Ms Le Pen’s fiercely nationalist platform — were agonising with the choice on Sunday. Some trooped reluctantly to polling stations solely to stop Ms Le Pen, casting joyless votes for Mr Macron.”

On the morning of the April 24th vote, the American ZeroHedge financial news site bannered “As France Votes For President, Wall Street Warns Le Pen Upset Would Be Bigger Shock Than Brexit”. France’s ‘leftists’ and ‘news’-media had been campaigning actually for the same candidate (Macron) that the billionaires had been backing in this contest. Whereas many of those ‘leftists’ might have been doing it because they were sincerely suckered, few if any of the billionaires had been like that — they instead had been financing that suckering.

The same thing had happened during the 2017 contest, which likewise had been between Le Pen and Macron. (The only difference then was Le Pen’s greater emphasis then on “protecting our borders” against an unlimited influx of Muslims and possibly even jihadist ones into France. In 2022, that was no longer a big issue for her, and the Party that Le Pen had inherited — which once had been conservative — became even more progressive than it was in 2017.)

The 2022 result, in other words, was basically history repeating itself. And this is the way that billionaires continue effectively to rule a country, by getting the public to vote for labels instead of for policies. The public fall for it time after time; they don’t turn against the people who were lying to them before. They vote for them yet again. There is thus no accountability. It’s easy for people to do if they pay more attention to labels than to policies. And no democracy can actually function in that way. And none does. Only an aristocracy can. And it does.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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Gloating over “poetic justice” dispensed to Russia, the official Twitter account of Ukraine’s defense ministry tweeted Thursday: “Corruption and irresponsibility in Russia has dealt another insidious blow to its war efforts. In Tver, a research institute that develops Russia’s Iskander missiles and systems for SU-27 and TU-160 bombers, which have been destroying peaceful Ukrainian cities, has burned down.”

Corruption and irresponsibility in russia has dealt another insidious blow to its war efforts. In Tver, a research institute that develops russia’s Iskander missiles and systems for SU-27 and TU-160 bombers, which have been destroying peaceful Ukrainian cities, has burned down.

— Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU) April 21, 2022

The blaze that engulfed an administrative building of Russia’s top-secret aerospace defense forces’ central research institute, which operates under the Russian defense ministry and develops Russia’s nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, quickly engulfed the building’s upper three floors, forcing those inside to jump from windows and causing the roof to cave in. The research institute is located in Tver, a city about 160km (100 miles) northwest of Moscow.

The blaze that started in one of the rooms on the second floor of the administrative building spanned across some thousand square meters. Photographs of the main building showed it was completely gutted by fire. Seven people were killed in the fire while 25 were injured and at least 10 people were missing, therefore the number of casualties could increase further.

The incident was followed hours later by unconfirmed reports of a fire at one of Russia’s largest chemical plants. Images on social media purported to show a large fire at the Dmitrievsky chemical plant in Kinsehma about 400km (250 miles) northeast of Moscow.

Although Ukraine’s defense ministry promptly pinned the blame for these acts of sabotage deep inside Russia on alleged “corruption and irresponsibility in Russia,” resorting to “plausible deniability” would convince nobody, least of all Russia.

For humanitarian reasons, Russia has delivered substantial amount of aid to the people in the recently liberated areas in east Ukraine and accepted over half a million refugees displaced by the conflict, mainly from Russian-majority Donbas region. Reportedly, scores of covert operatives of the SBU, Ukraine’s notorious intelligence agency, have infiltrated into Russia disguised as refugees.

These saboteurs have been trained and equipped by the CIA. Among other state-of-the-art espionage equipment, these undercover agents have been trained to operate a recently unveiled version of portable Switchblade drone that has specifically been designed for sabotage operations in Ukraine and Russia by the US Air Force.

The Phoenix Ghost, a lethal drone produced by California-based Aevex Aerospace, that the Pentagon is reluctant to detail, except to say it will take on many of the qualities of the kamikaze Switchblade drones already in the theater, has specifically been tailored for targeting Russia’s military and industrial infrastructure.

“It provides the same sort of tactical capability that a Switchblade does,” a defense official told media. “As you know, Switchblade is a one-way drone, if you will, and it clearly is designed to deliver a punch. It’s a tactical UAS [unmanned aerial system], and the Phoenix Ghost is of that same category.”

The small Switchblade 300 weighs about 6 pounds and can fit in a backpack. It’s tube-launched, and when fired, can hit targets up to 10 kilometers away, according to Aerovironment’s website. It can loiter for up to 15 minutes and be called off target if necessary, though most of the 700 Switchblade drones provided to Ukraine’s security forces by the Pentagon were Switchblade 600 variant having anti-armor capabilities.

In addition to 700 Switchblade drones previously provided to Ukraine’s security forces by the Pentagon, the 121 Phoenix Ghost drones are part of the latest $800-million security assistance package to Ukraine, announced Thursday by President Joe Biden. The package also includes 72 155mm howitzers and 144,000 artillery rounds; 72 Tactical Vehicles to tow 155mm howitzers and field equipment and spare parts.

Clearly, Ukraine’s intelligence operatives disguised as refugees and equipped with portable drones, among other advanced espionage equipment, have infiltrated Russian cities. All they needed to do was to find a secure location in any city, and the remotely operated drones with a range of 10 km could easily target any military or industrial site the covert operatives were tasked to sabotage.

Besides the portable kamikaze drones, Ukraine officials were also in talks with General Atomics to procure one of the most lethal drones to have ever been developed by the defense production industry, the MQ-9 Reaper armed drones, Forbes reported, citing a manufacturer spokesperson.

“We have aircraft available now for immediate transfer,” General Atomics spokesman C. Mark Brinkley told Forbes correspondent last week. “With support from the U.S. government, those aircraft could be in the hands of Ukrainian military pilots in a matter of days.”

Although Ukraine’s security forces already have the Turkish-made TB-2 Bayraktar, the MQ-9A payload capacity of 1,700 kilograms (3,800 pounds) allows it to carry more deadly and longer-range munitions than the TB-2 at 150 kilograms (330 pounds).

More importantly, the American aircraft’s superior range of 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) to the 150 kilometers of the TB-2 affords takeoff from safer positions and strikes deeper into enemy territory.

In addition, the aircraft’s superior ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) capacity would allow the Ukrainian military much more accurate monitoring of enemy troop movements.

According to the outlet, the drone’s estimated cost of $32 million apiece, plus ground stations, spare parts and training valued at $600 million, wouldn’t be a “significant hurdle,” as the tab would be picked up by the US.

Besides the prohibitive cost, another reason the US has thus far hesitated from providing larger armed drones to Ukraine is that so far, the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper have only been tested in areas – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria – where the adversary lacked serious air defense capabilities.

Whereas Russia’s globally acclaimed military equipment – including S-300 and -400 air defense systems, Kinzhal hypersonic and Kalibr cruise missiles and Sukhoi aircraft – would decimate slow-flying Predators and Reapers as easily as the Russian Air Force eliminated the Ukrainian MiG fleet in the early days of the military campaign.

In addition to mounting subversive acts deep inside Russia’s territory using Ukrainian intelligence operatives, the Pentagon announced Tuesday Ukraine’s military had received additional aircraft in a deal facilitated by Washington as well as parts for repairs to get damaged aircraft flying again. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby did not offer details on which countries provided aircraft, but acknowledged new transfers.

“They have received additional aircraft and aircraft parts to help them get more aircraft in the air,” Kirby told a news briefing. “We certainly have helped with the trans-shipment of some additional spare parts that have helped with their aircraft needs, but we have not transported whole aircraft,” he added.

Apparently, the Pentagon did not take Ukraine’s military authorities into confidence before making the announcement, because the official Twitter account of Ukraine’s air force tweeted Wednesday:

“Officially, Ukraine did not receive new aircraft from partners! With the assistance of the US Government, @KpsZSU received spare parts and components for the restoration and repair of the fleet of aircraft in the Armed Forces, which will allow to put into service more equipment.”

After being severely castigated and reprimanded by his bosses at the Pentagon for spilling the secret, Kirby backtracked on his previous statement and sheepishly apologized hours after the denial of the aircraft transfer by Ukraine’s air force on Wednesday.

“I was mistaken,” Kirby said, adding that, although he did not say that “Ukraine had received ‘whole aircraft’,” that was “the impression that I gave you.” The spokesman explained that he himself got a misguided impression about another nation following through with its offer to provide Ukraine with “whole fixed-wing aircraft.” “It has not. So, I was in error in saying that, in past tense, they had been given whole aircraft. I regret the error,” Kirby added.

Considering that Kirby is a Biden administration official and “Sleepy Joe” himself has a reputation of making frequent gaffes, the Pentagon spokesman could be forgiven for “the slip of the tongue.” But his previous statement, affirming the aircraft transfer to Ukraine, was clear and unambiguous.

Kirby told a news briefing Tuesday Ukraine had “received additional aircraft and aircraft parts.” After a reporter inquired whether the US had transferred the whole aircraft to Ukraine, implying the delivery of some of the 16 Mi-17 helicopters pledged by the Biden administration in the $800 million military assistance package to Ukraine, the official replied: “We certainly have helped with the trans-shipment of some additional spare parts that have helped with their aircraft needs, but we have not transported whole aircraft,” implying the US hadn’t transferred any of the rotary-wing aircraft from the Pentagon’s own armory till then, and instead a third country had delivered fixed-wing aircraft to Ukraine.

Rather than an oversight on the part of the Pentagon spokesman, the comedy of errors appeared to be a result of lack of coordination between military authorities of Ukraine and the United States. The real reason Ukraine’s air force officials want to keep aircraft transfer under the wraps is that previously Russian forces claimed to have destroyed an S-300 air defense system that Slovakia transferred to Ukraine in a Kalibr cruise missiles strike hitting a hangar on the southern outskirts of the city of Dnepropetrovsk.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu boasted last month that 123 of Ukraine’s 152 fighter jets had been destroyed, as well as 77 of its 149 helicopters and 152 of its 180 long- and medium-range air defense systems, while its naval forces had been totally eliminated.

As demilitarization of Ukraine, alongside denazification and liberation of Donbas, was one of the principal objectives of Russia’s month-long military campaign lasting from late February to late March, therefore Russian forces would never allow vital military assets, especially air defense systems and fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, to remain in the possession of Ukraine’s air force. Ukraine’s aircraft are safe only as long as they remain grounded and concealed from Russia’s advanced air surveillance systems.

Although the Pentagon spokesman refused to identify the country that delivered the aircraft to Ukraine due to secrecy of the shady transfer deal, the only NATO member state that was in talks with Washington and Kyiv to transfer its Soviet-era fleet of a dozen MiG-29 aircraft was Slovakia.

Reportedly, a batch of Ukraine’s highly skilled pilots traveled to Slovakia last week, took the delivery of the aircraft and then flew them all the way to concealed air force hangars at military airports in Kyiv while maintaining low altitudes in order to avoid detection by Russia’s advanced air surveillance systems. The Pentagon that has deployed extensive ISR, or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, assets along Ukraine’s borders fully coordinated the entire clandestine operation of transferring the aircraft.

After the scuttled aircraft-transfer deal that would’ve seen Poland handing over its fleet of 28 Soviet-era MiG-29s to Ukraine in return for the United States “backfilling” the Polish Air Force with American F-16s last month, Slovakia was in talks with NATO about an arrangement that could allow Bratislava to send fighter jets to Ukraine, Prime Minister Eduard Heger told reporters on April 11.

Eduard Heger said his government wanted to “move away from reliance on the Soviet MiGs” in any case. “This is equipment that we want to finish anyway, because we’re waiting for the F-16s,” he added, referring to US-made jets that Slovakia was scheduled to receive in 2024, though Bratislava could receive American fighter jets earlier as it has now delivered on the pledge of transferring the dozen MiG-29 aircraft Slovakia was reported to have to Ukraine.

In early March, Poland made a similar offer of transferring its fleet of 28 Soviet-era MiG-29s to Ukraine in return for receiving American F-16s, but the Pentagon rejected the proposal due to apprehensions over direct confrontation with Russian forces in Ukraine.

The prospect of flying combat aircraft from NATO territory into the war zone “raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance,” the Pentagon said on March 9. “It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby added.

But considering that Slovak aircraft have already been delivered to Ukraine, it seems plausible that the Polish proposal of transferring its aircraft might also be reconsidered by the Biden administration and Ukraine could receive additional Polish MiG-29 aircraft in the coming weeks.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Middle East and Eurasia regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to Global Research.

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***

We bring to the attention of our readers excerpts from this timely report by Al Jazeera. Our thanks to Al Jazeera for bring this article to our attention.

***

Russia is investigating whether sabotage experts from the United Kingdom’s Special Air Service (SAS) special forces have been deployed to western Ukraine.

Russia’s top state investigative body said on Saturday it was looking into a Russian media report alleging that the SAS had been sent to the Lviv region in Western Ukraine.  …

In a statement, Russia’s Investigative Committee said it would follow up on the report that the SAS had been sent in “to assist the Ukrainian special services in organising sabotage on the territory of Ukraine”.

The British Ministry of Defence had no immediate comment on the Russian investigation.

…

‘Requisite training’

Since the start of the war, the UK has provided Ukraine with anti-ship, anti-aircraft and light anti-tank weapons, which have proved useful for mobile Ukrainian fighters to use against Russia’s armoured vehicles.

The British government confirmed this week that a small number of Ukrainian troops are being trained in the UK for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion.

…

The United States military is also training Ukrainian troops on using howitzer artillery while the UK is training Ukrainians in Poland to use anti-aircraft weapons.

Click here to read the full article.

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***

The decision of a London Court to honor the request from the United States government for the extradition of Julian Assange, whistleblower and founder of the famed Wikileaks website which revealed the criminal actions of the United States military to the world, is most certainly of historic significance.

If the British government gives final approval for this extradition to the United States, Assange will be the likely subject for show trial in which he will be charged with capital offenses under the rarely employed, and constitutionally flawed, Espionage Act.

At that trial we will witness the collapse of the republican government of the United States of America into a morass resembling the decayed imperial governance of the Roman Empire under the emperors Caligula and Nero.

The 18 criminal charges filed against Assange for releasing classified diplomatic cables that documented the criminal and immoral actions of the United States military are being held up as grounds for him to spend 175 years in prison. Granted the decline in his health as a result of his imprisonment, it is unlikely he will serve out that term.

This charge is a transparent travesty which would be comic were it not so profoundly tragic.

But there is more to this case than meets the eye. Assange has become the popular face for resistance to technofascism and to the rise of totalitarian governance. That is all well and fine, but there are questions that need to be asked about why Assange has this special status, questions which few, if any, dare to ask.

Why is Assange constantly in the news while numerous Americans, Europeans, and others, who have been dismissed from their jobs, thrown out of the country, or suffered even worse fates, do not even exist in the alternative media?

Has Assange, for all the tragedy of his case, come to serve as a limited hangout for intellectuals, a means for citizens to pat themselves on the back without addressing the broader rise of totalitarian governance around the world, at every level, without considering the thousands of victims of similar persecution?

Also, why do we accept the narrative of a dispute between nation states, the United States, Great Britain, or Sweden, which are engaged in a process of negotiations? Why do we attribute this tragedy to the greed, the cruelty and the foolishness of politicians?

That narrative is increasingly distant from reality. In fact, the United States and the United Kingdom have ceased to serve as functional republics and are run directly by private equity, lobbying firms of the super-rich, private intelligence companies, and a broad range of pay-to-play consulting operations whose make up, whose structure, is hidden from us in even the reports of the truth seekers.

Talking about the tragedy of Assange without addressing the transformation of governance and without painting a detailed picture of who actually makes the decisions, is disservice for the public, one that misleads and that keeps us from focusing on the real source of the problem in institutional decay, and the real revolutionary solution.

Then there is the problem of Assange’s selective reporting. I understand, and I sympathize with, his desire to get his story out and to avoid the fate of others. But the assumption that he was a unique victim of the persecution of truth tellers is questionable.

Assange studiously avoided difficult questions about the 9.11 incident and he stayed away from a discussion of the details of how privatized elements in the US military and intelligence, cooperating with operatives from Israel (and elsewhere) played a role in gutting the United States government and in reducing it, and Israel as well, to for-hire puppets of the powerful.

Without an analysis of the structural shifts in the United States that resulted in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks (and that are also linked to the Oklahoma bombings), without a consideration of how such operations as 9/11 are planned and carried out in a limbo land inhabited by military contractors that lies in between Washington and Tel Aviv, the documentation of specific crimes is of limited value.

Moreover, Assange does not engage in an analysis of class issues. He seems allergic to the serious consideration of the possibility that we are looking at something beyond a particular nation state (granted some are in deeper than others) but rather the effort of a class of the super-rich to use new technologies to dumb us all down, to consolidate the control of all resources, and to control the entire world.

That the United States will play the role of the bad guy in the Assange show trial is without any doubt true. But I seriously doubt that the senile Joe Biden, or his cabinet of political figures created by multinational corporations through WestExec, Palm Island Capital Partners and the Asia Group, will be the ones behind the curtain who pull the strings.

Freeing Julian Assange is absolutely essential to restoring the rule of law and to defending freedom of the press. It is regrettable that Assange spoke so little about the thousands of others who have suffered similar fates-but that is now all in the past.

We must understand that the end of journalism, and the end of justice, are products of the massive concentration of wealth, a process that has produced new political players who are rarely mentioned in the media at all.

That is to say that those who most want to punish Assange, are not on trial and in many cases their names are unknown to the public.

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This article was originally published on US Provisional Government.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Um Krieg zu führen, müssen die Herrscher das Volk hinter sich bringen. Deshalb werden mit Hilfe der Massenmedien Feindbilder aufgebaut und irrationale Ängste geschürt. Damit werden Furcht und Gehorsam der Untertanen verstärkt. Machiavelli, ein Mensch, der weiß, worin die Regierungsmacht besteht, wie man sie erwirbt und erhält, soll gesagt haben: „Auf der Kriegskunst beruht das ganze Geheimnis der Macht eines Herrschers.“ Leo Tolstoy (1)

Das ist auch heute so: Vor zwei Jahren wurden die Bürger durch eine weltweit ausgerufene Virus-Epidemie in panische Angst versetzt, was einen Gehorsamsreflex ausgelöste, wie man ihn nur aus Diktaturen kennt. Mit der Androhung einer Betrafung bei Verweigerung einer genverändernden „Impfung“ wird der Angst-Pegel konstant gehalten.

Seit einem Monat kommt ein Krieg im Herzen Europas hinzu; weitere Kriege folgen bereits. Wieder werden bei den Bürgern starke Ängste ausgelöst; dieses mal vor einem möglichen Atomkrieg und dem „jüngsten Gericht“. Dabei wird verdrängt, dass wir alle an den miserablen gesellschaftlichen Verhältnissen in der Welt mitschuldig sind.

Denkt man die verfügbaren Nachrichten zusammen, gelangt man zu der Überzeugung, dass die „schicksalhaften“ Weltereignisse die Bürger gedanklich absorbieren und abhalten sollen, mutig und entschlossen auf das hinzuschauen, was allen bevorsteht: Nichts mehr besitzen – und glücklich sein damit. Das bisherige Menschsein wird dabei gänzlich in Frage gestellt. Auf dem Weg dorthin sollen irrationale Ängste die Bürger in Atem gehalten, ihr Denken gelähmt und sie dazu gebracht werden, das Schicksalhafte bereitwillig und demütig hinzunehmen.

Als Kinder unserer Zeit waren wir leider nicht in der Lage, die leuchtenden Menetekel an der Wand richtig zu deuten.

Die Pläne der Philanthropen David Rockefellers Jr. und Bill Gates sind seit eineinhalb Jahrzehnten bekannt. Sie waren der Auffassung, dass man das angeblich bedrohliche Bevölkerungswachstum durch eine dramatische Bevölkerungsreduktion auf eine Milliarde Menschen eindämmen sollte. Doch wer nahm sie ernst?

Zu dieser tödlichen Agenda passt sowohl das theoretisch durchgespielte Modell, durch einen Atomkrieg circa eine Milliarde Menschen für immer auszulöschen (2) als auch Hitlers „Masterplan Eugenik“, der bei Klaus Schwab, dem Gründer des „World Economic Forums“ bis heute weiterlebt. Die Präsidenten Vladimir Putin und Xi Jinping waren oder sind noch Teil von Klaus Schwabs „Big Club“.

Dass man Politikern keinesfalls die Lösung der Menschheitsprobleme übertragen sollte, wissen die meisten von uns nicht erst seit Tolstojs „Rede gegen den Krieg“ von 1905 und seiner Warnung, dass die Regierenden „häufig die schlechtesten, unbedeutendsten, grausamsten, sittenlosesten und besonders die verlogensten Menschen sind“. (3)

Von Russlands Außenminister Sergei Lawrow konnten wir vor kurzem erfahren, dass Russlands Militäroperation in der Ukraine darauf abzielt, „der rücksichtslosen Expansion und dem rücksichtslosen Streben nach totaler Vorherrschaft der USA und der übrigen westlichen Länder auf der internationalen Bühne ein Ende zu bereiten“ (4). Wer wird die neue Welt anführen?

Die Idee der Abschaffung von Nationalstaaten gibt es lange vor der Ausrufung der Weltgesundheitsorganisation WHO zur neuen Weltregierung und die „Umwandlung“ von sogenannten Demokratien oder „stillen Diktaturen“ in „offene Diktaturen“ sind aus allen Teilen der Welt hinlänglich bekannt.

Wir Menschen haben unser Gefühlsleben und unsere Reaktionsweisen nicht erkannt

Da wir Menschen unser Gefühlsleben und unsere Reaktionsweisen aus Mangel an Psychologie nicht erkannt haben, überraschen uns nicht nur die aggressiven diabolischen Pläne der Herrschenden, sondern auch unsere absoluten Gehorsamsreflexe. Somit stehen wir unversehens am Rande des Abgrunds.

Unser Geist ist nicht frei und die anerzogene Ängstlichkeit vor den Mitmenschen können wir nicht abwerfen. Von Kindesbeinen an bläut man uns ein, an kirchliche und staatliche Autoritäten zu glauben und ihnen hörig zu sein als seien wir „tote Körper“ (Ignatius von Loyola). Staat und Kirche agieren dabei als Spießgesellen, die sich wie zwei Beutelschneider verstehen (Jean Meslier). Deshalb weisen erwachsene Menschen in weltanschaulichen Dingen jene geistigen und seelischen Beeinträchtigungen auf, die ihnen in der Kindheit zugefügt wurden.

Viele von ihnen reagieren auf Politiker wie Kinder oder wie die primitiven Urmenschen reagierten – in Form eines „magischen Autoritätsglaubens“: kritiklos und umnebelt von Stimmungen, Gefühlen und Glücksverheißungen. Und das hat Folgen: die Autoritätsgläubigkeit führt unweigerlich zur Autoritätshörigkeit, die in der Regel den Reflex eines absoluten geistigen Gehorsams und eine Verstandeslähmung auslöst. Vollsinnige Erwachsene können dann nicht mehr selbständig denken und vernünftig urteilen und übergeben die Entscheidungsgewalt sittenlosen Politikern.

Was tun? 

Die Meinung des einen oder anderen Präsidenten ist nicht entscheidend. Entscheidend ist, dass sich die Präsidenten der drei Großmächte mit den hinter ihnen stehenden „Welt-Beherrschern“ wohl darin einig sind, dass diejenigen, die „oben“ sind, gegenüber denjenigen, die „unten“ sind, die Oberhand behalten müssen. Dass diejenigen, die „oben“ sind, genauso arm sind wie die „unten“, wissen die „da oben“ nicht. Für die „da unten“ prophezeit WEF-Gründer Klaus Schwab: „Sie werden in 10 Jahren nichts mehr besitzen – und glücklich damit sein.“

Da wir Menschen solange wir atmen die Hoffnung nicht aufgeben, werden wir den Traum einer freiheitlichen und gerechten Welt weiterträumen – ungeachtet aller Mühsal und Widrigkeiten.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Lehrer (Rektor a. D.), Doktor der Pädagogik (Dr. paed.) und Diplom-Psychologe (Schwerpunkte: Klinische-, Pädagogische- und Medien-Psychologie). Als Pensionär arbeitete er viele Jahre als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und pädagogisch-psychologischen Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung und eine Erziehung zum Gemeinsinn und Frieden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Noten 

1. Tolstoj, L. N. (1983). Rede gegen den Krieg. Politische Flugschriften. Herausgegeben von Peter Urban. Insel Verlag. Frankfurt am Main, S. 74

2. https://www.pravda-tv.com/2022/04/ukraine-eskalation-us-kriegssimulation-sagte-atomkrieg-voraus-video/

3. Tolstoj, L. N. (1983). Rede gegen den Krieg. Politische Flugschriften. Herausgegeben von Peter Urban. Insel Verlag. Frankfurt am Main, S. 74

4. https://de.rt.com/russland/135976-lawrow-russlands.militaeroperation-in-ukraine/

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This incisive article by Manlio Dinucci first published by Global Research on September 18, 2020 points “conflict of interest” of chief judge Emma Arbuthnot who conducted the trial for the extradition of Julian Assange.

Judge Lady Arbuthnot is married to Lord James Arbuthnot, a well-known Tory “hawk,” and former Minister for Defense Procurements, with links to the Military-Industrial Complex, British and US intelligence.

Was Judge Emma Arbuthnot in conflict of interest? In 2020, she refused recusal. Did Assange’s lawyers issue a request for her recusal?

***

Emma Arbuthnot is the chief judge who conducted the trial for the extradition of Julian Assange in London to the USA, where a 175 year prison sentence awaits him for “espionage,” that is, for having published evidence of US war crimes, including videos of civilians’ killings in Iraq and Afghanistan, as an investigative journalist. At the trial, assigned to Judge Vanessa Baraitser, every defense request was denied.

 In 2018, after Sweden’s sexual assault charges fell through, Judge Arbuthnot refused to cancel the arrest warrant, so that Assange could not obtain asylum in Ecuador. Arbuthnot rejected the United Nations Working Group’s findings on the arbitrary detention of Assange. The UN Officer’s remarks against torture also went unheard:

“Assange is detained in extreme conditions of unjustified isolation, and shows the typical symptoms of prolonged exposure to psychological torture.”

In 2020, while thousands of detainees were transferred to house arrest as an anti-Coronavirus measure, Assange remained in prison, exposed to the infection in compromised physical condition.

 In court, Assange cannot consult with lawyers, but is kept isolated in an armored glass cage, and threatened with expulsion if he opens his mouth. What is behind this persistence?

Being Lord James Arbuthnot’s wife, married to a well-known Tory “hawk,” former Minister for Defense Procurements, linked to the Military-Industrial Complex and to the Secret Services, Judge Arbuthnot has the title of “Lady.” Lord Arbuthnot is, among other things, Chairman of the British Advisory board of Thales, a French multinational specialized in aerospace military systems, and a member of Montrose Associates, specialized in Strategic Intelligence (highly paid positions).

Lord Arbuthnot is also part of the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), an influential transatlantic think-tank linked to the US Government and Intelligence Agency. Last July, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke at a round table of the HJS in London: since he was the CIA Director in 2017, he accused WikiLeaks, founded by Assange, of being “an enemy spy service.”

The Henry Jackson Society led the same campaign accusing Assange of “sowing doubts on the moral position of Western democratic governments, with the support of autocratic regimes.” Ms. Priti Patel, current United Kingdom Secretary of the Interior, who is responsible for the extradition order of Assange was until recently on the political board of the HJS, alongside Lord Arbuthnot.

Lady Arbuthnot is essentially connected to this pressure group that is conducting a pounding campaign for the extradition of Assange, directed by Lord Arbuthnot and other influential characters.

She was appointed by the Queen as chief magistrate in September 2016, after WikiLeaks published the most compromising documents for the USA in March. These documents included emails from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealing the true purpose of the NATO war on Libya: to prevent Libya from using its gold reserves to create a pan-African currency alternative to the dollar and the CFA franc, the currency imposed by France on 14 former colonies.

The real “crime” for which Assange is being tried is that of opening cracks in the political-media silence wall that covers the real interests of powerful elites who, operating in the “Deep State,” play the war card. It is this occult power that subjects Julian Assange to a trial, instructed by Lady Arbuthnot, who recalls those of the Holy Inquisition as to how the accused is treated.

If Assange is extradited to the US, he would be subjected to “special administrative measures” much harsher than those in Britain: he would be isolated in a small cell, unable to contact his family or speak, not even through lawyers who would be indicted if they brought forth his message. In other words, he would be sentenced to death.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

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

Featured image: Lady Emma and Lord James Arbuthnot of Edrom at Buckingham Palace in May 2017 [Source: Instagram]

Dear Readers,

Global Research is going through a difficult period. Various procedures of censorship (search engines, social media templates, mainstream media smears, etc.) are ongoing. 

In the course of the last week, Global Research has been the object of a diabolical DoS (“A Denial of Service”) cyberattack, which consists in bombarding globalresearch.ca with millions of malicious requests. Over the last week, we have been assaulted with more than 700 million malicious requests from 5 countries.

The ultimate intent of this coordinated cyberattack was to shut down Global Research while making our website inaccessible to our readers. “DoS attacks accomplish this by flooding the target with traffic, or sending it information that triggers a crash”.   

Thanks to our security specialists, the cyberattacks have failed. Nonetheless, this has had impacts on our readers as well as on our weekly traffic. 

To ensure our security, for several countries, we have now inserted the familiar “Manage Challenge, with boats and trains”.  

We are at the crossroads of one of the most serious crises in world history.

Freedom of Expression is threatened in the most despicable fashion. 

Extending over 20 years, a vast data bank of more than 100,000 Global Research articles by renowned journalists, scholars, scientists, human rights and anti-war activists is threatened.

Our request to our readers and authors: continue with the promotion of Global Research articles through referrals and cross-posts, forwarding to friends and colleagues.

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***

The Ukrainian government seems to be willing to further increase its military actions just to continue a conflict in which it has no chance of winning. On April 21, a Kiev official announced that they are about to bomb and destroy the Crimean Bridge.

In a recent speech, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, revealed that Kiev’s armed forces are ready to attack the bridge at any time, having plans to act at the first possible opportunity. His words during an interview with Radio NV leave no doubt about the Ukrainian intentions: “If we had the ability to do it, we would have already done it. If there is an opportunity to do it, we will definitely do it”. Danilov also commented on the reasons behind the plan, mentioning the strategic value of the bridge, which destruction would largely obstruct the movement of Russian troops.

There are many problems with Danilov’s statement. In fact, it is possible to speak of a “strategic value” in its destruction of the Crimean Bridge, but this is far from implying any justification. Many anti-humanitarian measures have “strategic value” but should be avoided simply because they are legally and ethically wrong procedures. For example, it is precisely to avoid unreasonable civilian casualties and damage to historical heritage that Moscow refrains from excessive using of air force during the special military operation in Ukraine. No doubt there would also be strategic value in escalating the use of air force.

Carefully measuring one’s own acts to avoid mass victims should be the attitude of any side during a conflict. And this is what should be expected of Kiev, considering that the destruction of the bridge would cause civilian casualties, since non-military people still circulate in the region and would completely obstruct the flow of goods between Crimea and the rest of the Russian territory, which could lead to large supply deficits and social crises.

But, apart from the humanitarian and ethical argument, the main factor is another: Kiev is announcing military attacks on the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation. Both Kerch and Taman, cities connected by the bridge, are part of Russia, so the attack would hit a non-border Russian zone and its respective marine territory, generating a serious provocation. The risk of escalating the conflict into Russia’s sovereign territory may be too high for the Ukrainian side.

The words of Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, confirm this prediction of reaction in the event of an attack: “I hope he [Oleksiy Danilov] understands what Russia would target in retaliation”. Earlier, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had already announced that Moscow would interpret a bombing of the bridge as a terrorist attack and announced that Moscow is already acting to prevent any Ukrainian action in this regard:

“Such a statement [about the potential bombing of the Crimean Bridge] is nothing but an announcement of a possible terrorist act; this is unacceptable (…) All the necessary security measures and precautions by the relevant service are being taken around the bridge and all strategic facilities”.

Still, it is necessary to emphasize the omission of Western countries and international organizations in this case. Kiev announces that it is organizing terrorist-like attitudes and Moscow condemns it, but with no statement of the rest of international society. Ignoring Kiev’s threats seems to have become standard, commonplace action in recent years while, on the other hand, actions of the Russian army are automatically condemned.

Finally, Kiev is on the verge of an escalation of the conflict in which it will not be able to deal with the consequences. If there’s really a plan going on to destroy the bridge, the best thing to do is to abort it.

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

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***

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book “The Grand Chessboard” was published 25 years ago. His assumptions and strategies for maintaining U.S. global dominance have been hugely influential in US foreign policy. As the conflict in Ukraine evolves, with the potential of escalating into world war, we can see where this policy leads and how crucial it is to re-evaluate.

The need to dominate Eurasia

The basic premise of “The Grand Chessboard” is outlined in the introduction:

• with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States is the sole global power
• Europe and Asia (Eurasia) together have the largest land area, population and economy
• U.S. must control Eurasia and prevent another country from challenging US dominance

Brzezinski sums up the situation:

“America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe’s central arena.” He adds “It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of challenging America.”

The book  surveys the different nations in Eurasia, from Japan in the east to the UK in the west. The entire land mass of Europe and Asia is covered. This is the “grand chessboard” and Brzezinski analyzes how the US should “play” different pieces on the board to keep potential rivals down and the US in control.

Brzezinski’s Influence

Brzezinski was a very powerful National Security Advisor to President Carter. Before that, he founded the Trilateral Commission. Later he taught Madeleine Albright and many other key figures in US foreign policy.

Brzezinski initiated the “Afghanistan Trap”. That was the secret 1979 US program to mobilize and support mujahedin foreign fighters to invade and destabilize Afghanistan. In this period, Afghanistan was undergoing dramatic positive changes. As described by Canadian academic John Ryan, “Afghanistan once had a progressive secular government, with broad popular support. It had enacted progressive reforms and gave equal rights to women.”

The Brzezinski plan was to utilize reactionary local forces and foreign fighters to create enough mayhem that the government would ask the neighboring Soviet Union to send military support. The overall goal was to “bog down the Soviet army” and  “give them their own Vietnam”.

With enormous funding from the US and Saudi Arabia beginning in 1978, the plan resulted in chaos, starvation and bloodshed in Afghanistan which continues to today. Approximately 6 million Afghans became refugees fleeing the chaos and war.

Years later, when interviewed about this policy, Brzezinski was proud and explicit:

“We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.” When asked if he had regrets for the decades of mayhem in Afghanistan, he was clear: “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? …. Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire…. What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

Afghanistan was a pawn in the US campaign against the Soviet Union. The amorality of US foreign policy is clear and consistent, from the destruction of Afghanistan beginning in 1978 continuing to the current starvation caused by US freezing of Afghan government reserves.

Pulse nightclub exterior, with holes made by the BearCat and bullet holes (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

The blow-back is also clear. The foreign fighters trained by the US and Saudis became Al Qaeda and then ISIS. The 2016 Orlando nightclub massacre, where 49 died and 53 were wounded was perpetrated by the son of an Afghan refugee who never would have come to the US if his country had not been intentionally destabilized. Paul Fitzgerald eloquently describes the tragedy in his article Brzezinski’s vision to lure Soviets into Afghan Trap now Orlando’s nightmare.

US Supremacy and Exceptionalism

The “Grand Chessboard” assumes US supremacy and exceptionalism and adds the strategy for implementing and enforcing this “primacy” on the biggest and most important arena: Eurasia.

Brzezinski does not countenance a multi-polar world.

“A world without US primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth ….” and “The only real alternative to American global leadership in the foreseeable future is international anarchy.”

These assertions continue today as the US foreign policy establishment repeatedly talks about  the “rules based order” and “international community”, ignoring the fact that the West is a small fraction of humanity. Toward the end of his book, Brzezinski suggests the “upgrading” the United Nations and a “new distribution of responsibilities and privileges” that take into account the “changed realities of global power.”

The importance of NATO and Ukraine 

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, many people in the West believed NATO was no longer needed. NATO claimed to be strictly a defensive alliance and its only rival had disbanded.

Brzezinski and other US hawks saw that NATO could be used to expand US hegemony and keep weapons purchases flowing. Thus he wrote that, “an enlarged NATO will serve well both  the short-term and the longer-term goals of U.S. policy.”

Brzezinski was adamant that Russian concerns or fears should be dismissed. “Any accommodation with Russia on the issue of NATO enlargement should not entail an outcome that has the effect of making Russia a de facto decision making member of the alliance.” Brzezinski was skillful at presenting an aggressive and offensive policy in the best light.

Brzezinski presents Ukraine as the pivotal country for containing Russia. He says,

“Ukraine is the critical state, insofar as Russia’s future evolution is concerned.” He says, “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”

This is another example of his skillful wording because Ukraine as part of a hostile military alliance does not only prevent a Russian “empire”; it presents a potential threat.  Kyiv is less than 500 miles from Moscow and Ukraine was a major route of the Nazi invasion.

Brzezinski was well aware of the controversial nature of Ukraine’s borders. On page 104 he gives a quote that shows many people of eastern Ukraine wanted out of Ukraine since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The 1996 quote from a Moscow newspaper reports,

“In the foreseeable future events in eastern Ukraine confront Russia with a very difficult problem. Mass manifestations of discontent … will be accompanied by appeals to Russia, or even demands, to take over the region.”

Despite this reality, Brzezinski is dismissive of Russian rights and complaints. He bluntly says,

“Europe is America’s essential geopolitical bridgehead on the Eurasian continent.” and “Western Europe and increasingly Central Europe remain largely an American protectorate.”

The unstated assumption is that the US has every right to dominate Eurasia from afar.

Brzezinski advises Russia to decentralize with the free market and a loose confederation of “European Russia, a Siberian Russia and a Far Eastern Republic”.

Afghanistan is the model

Brzezinski realizes that Russia presents a potential challenge to US domination of Eurasia, especially if it allies with China. In the “Grand Chessboard”, he writes,

“If the middle space rebuffs the West, becomes an assertive single entity, and either gains control over the South or forms an alliance with the major Eastern actor, then America’s primacy in Eurasia shrinks dramatically.” Russia is the “middle space” and China is the “major Eastern actor”.

What was feared by the US strategist has happened:  For the past 20 years, Russia and China have been building an alliance dedicated to ending US hegemony and beginning a new era in international relations.

This may be why the US aggressively provoked the crisis in Ukraine. The list of provocations is clear:  moral and material support for Maidan protests,  rejection of the EU agreement (“F*** the EU”), the sniper murders and violent 2014 coup, ignoring the Minsk Agreement approved by the UN Security Council, NATO advisors and training for ultra-nationalists, lethal weaponry to Ukraine, refusal to accept Ukrainian non-membership in NATO, threats to invade Donbass and Crimea.

Before Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, active duty soldier and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said

“They actually want Russia to invade Ukraine. Why would they? Because it gives the Biden administration a clear excuse to levy draconian sanctions… against Russia and the Russian people and number two, it cements this cold war in place. The military industrial complex is the one who benefits from this. They clearly control the Biden administration. Warmongers on both sides in Washington who have been drumming up these tensions. If they get Russia to invade Ukraine it locks in this new cold war, the military industrial complex starts to make a ton more money …. Who pays the price?  The American people … the Ukrainian people … the Russian people pay the price. It undermines our own national security but the military industrial complex which controls so many of our elected officials wins and they run to the bank.”

This is accurate but the reasons for the provocations go deeper. Hillary Clinton recently summed up the wishes and dreams of Washington hawks:

“The Russians invaded Afghanistan back in 1980 … a lot of countries supplied arms, advice and even some advisors to those who were recruited to fight Russia….a  well funded insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan…. I think that is the model people are now looking toward.”

US foreign policy has been consistent from Brzezinski to Madeleine Albright,  Hillary Clinton and on to Victoria Nuland.  The results are seen in Aghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine.

As with Afghanistan,  the US “didn’t push Russia to intervene” but “knowingly increased the probability that they would.” The purpose is the same in both cases: to use a pawn to undermine and potentially eliminate a rival. We expect the US will make every to prolong the bloodshed and war, to bog down the Russian army and prevent a peaceful settlement. The US goal is just what Joe Biden said: regime change in Moscow.

Like Afghanistan, Ukraine is just a pawn on the chessboard.

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Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist in the SF Bay Area. He can be contacted at [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

“Data was very easily used by influencers and decision-makers to fit particular narratives,” Norman Fenton, Ph.D., a mathematician at Queen Mary University of London, said in an interview on “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast.”

From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Norman Fenton, Ph.D., could see health officials were misusing data and misleading the public.

A professor of risk information management at Queen Mary University of London, Fenton is a mathematician who focuses on critical decision-making and quantifying uncertainty.

Throughout the pandemic, he closely examined and criticized how officials used data to make decisions about lockdowns, testing and vaccines.

Fenton spoke last week with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast.”

“When the COVID pandemic emerged, what kind of challenges did you specifically see?” Kennedy asked Fenton.

Fenton replied:

“It was clear I think from the start that most of the data that governments put out — not just the UK government, but most governments around the world … were kind of misleading because it was based on very easily manipulated statistics.”

This was true of both the nature of COVID itself and the vaccines, Fenton said.

“There was an immediate rush to draw conclusions, which were sort of based on over-simplistic data on case numbers and deaths,” he said.  “… the problem was that that data was very easily used by influencers and decision-makers to fit particular narratives that exaggerated the scale of the crisis.”

Fenton’s team published some of the first research providing more accurate estimates about the infection rate versus the fatality rate compared with official estimates he said were based on faulty data.

The research showed the virus was more widespread than people assumed, but nowhere near as dangerous as was being claimed.

Fenton also addressed issues with PCR tests.

Although it was clear early on that a proper understanding of the virus depended on accurate diagnostic tests, he said, “we were initially led to believe that the PCR test was an accurate diagnostic test.”

“But later, of course, we discovered that wasn’t true. And the impact of that has been catastrophic,” he said.

Kennedy agreed.

“The magnitude of [the epidemic] was enormously and deceptively amplified by the misuse of the PCR test,” he said.

Fenton first came under attack in the summer and early fall of 2020, when he challenged how COVID deaths were classified, he said, and questioned the widespread testing of asymptomatic people.

“That was when we were finding the real problems about the false positives and the scale of the false positives,” Fenton said.

Excessive testing led to “absolutely ridiculous decisions,” he said, including new lockdowns.

Information concerning deaths following COVID vaccination also was manipulated, Fenton said, as part of the official claim that the vaccine was the only way to keep people from becoming seriously ill and dying.

Data adjusted to take into account misclassification show a peak in mortality shortly after vaccination, he said, cautioning:

“Now, of course, it could well be that these are people who are indeed immunosuppressed seriously. Also … the vaccination might just be bringing forward the death, which would’ve occurred shortly afterward anyway.

“But nevertheless, that’s what we believe is there in the data, but is of course being hidden.”

Watch the full podcast here or click the image below:

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Susan C. Olmstead is the assistant editor of The Defender.

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The most severe level of inflation since the 1980s is affecting the average US and European citizen more so then ever. The price of gasoline and the price of electricity, caused by anti-Russia sanctions, are constantly increasing, and interestingly even America’s beloved fast food is becoming more expensive.

According to the US Department of Labor, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 8.5% in the year to the end of March. In February, the index was 7.9%. Gasoline prices broke records, rising more than $4 a gallon. Not far behind are electricity bills and rent that account for about a third of total spending. Shipping costs have increased and the price of fast food, obsessively loved by Americans, hit the highest increase in 41 years. According to the Big Mac Index, the price of the popular McDonald’s burger rose 7% last year. In the past 10 years, the price of the Big Mac jumped 40%.

US President Joe Biden blamed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for rising inflation in America, saying on April 14 that the 70% increase in pricing last month was a result of “Putin’s price hike.”

“Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has driven up gas prices and food prices all over the world,” Biden said, adding: “What people don’t know is that 70% of the increase in inflation was the consequence of Putin’s Price Hike because of the impact on oil prices. Seventy percent.”

However, this is disingenuous as commodity prices in the US began to rise last year. Biden is attempting to halt the wave of disapproval he is receiving for allowing the average American citizen to economically suffer by blaming Moscow instead of admitting his own mistakes.

At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic when the US economy was struggling to stay afloat as politicians shut down the economy, the Federal Reserve began aggressively printing trillions of dollars, swelling the Fed’s balance sheet to nearly $9 trillion in 2021.

“You flooded the system with money,” 60 Minutes journalist Scott Pelley said in a 2021 interview with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

“Yes, we did,” Powell replied. “That’s another way to think about it. We did.”

Although the Federal Reserve aggressively pumped more money, they also decided to keep interest rates near zero. Pumping dollars in huge volumes only brings profits to banks and investors in the stock market. But as a result, all commodities have risen sharply: from grains and oil to transportation services.

The Fed insisted that inflation is only a short-term phenomenon, but their sluggishness has hit American pockets hard. In this way, inflation was already a result of bad American economic policy, but it has only been exacerbated by the anti-Russia sanctions.

It is recalled that on March 8, Biden officially announced a ban on energy imports from Russia despite warnings that the decision would impact consumers. Unsurprisingly, the price of oil immediately rose to $130 per barrel. The sharp drop in oil and gas use has led to rising fuel prices and rising inflation. However, Biden of course does not want to mention this as he would rather blame Putin for his own mistakes.

At the same time, Washington is putting pressure on the EU to give up energy imports from Russia. Unfortunately for Biden though, as the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen highlighted, some European countries were completely dependent on Russian oil and gas.

Meanwhile, prices in Europe are also skyrocketing. In March, inflation in 19 EU countries reached 7.5%. Inflation was particularly severe for some others though, hitting double digits in four member states, with Lithuania leading the way with 15.6%.

The inflation rate in Germany reached 7.3%, the highest level in 40 years. According to Karl von Rohr, deputy governor of Deutsche Bank, inflation for the year in Germany will be at 7-8%. Deutsche Bank experts also predicted that inflation would exceed 10% in the event of a complete embargo on Russian energy.

In March, energy prices in Europe recorded the biggest increase. In second place was food, alcohol and tobacco. In third place are services. Unfortunately for Europe, prices will continue to rise, especially as the Ukraine war and anti-Russia sanctions have created supply chain and logistics disruptions, as well as shortages of raw materials.

The UK is not protected either and inflation has also soared to record levels. The annual inflation rate rose to 7.0% in March, the highest level since March 1992. Electricity and gas bills rose 54% – from £1,227 to £1,971, and it is expected that energy prices will again increase in October.

This deadly mix of bad economic policy and sanctioning Russia without an exit strategy means that the average Western citizen is being most affected. Just as sanctions never saw the downfall of Castro in Cuba, Assad in Syria or Kim Jong-Un in North Korea, it will not lead to a capitulation of Putin or the Russian state, effectively meaning that sanctions are a pointless exercise that only further concentrates wealth into fewer hands in the West and out of the average citizen.

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In 2021, McKinsey & Company, one of the largest consultants to corporations and governments worldwide, settled a lawsuit brought by 47 state attorneys general over its role in the U.S. opioid crisis

A U.S. House investigation reveals McKinsey was advising the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the safety of opioids, while at the same time advising Purdue how to maximize sales

Jeff Smith, a senior McKinsey consultant, worked on a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) for OxyContin while simultaneously advising the FDA about the drug’s safety

McKinsey promoted its FDA connections when pitching services to its pharmaceutical clients. The FDA, meanwhile, claims it had no idea McKinsey was working with Purdue

Purdue knew the dangers of its drug, covered it up, and hired FDA insiders to advise its sales strategy and how to influence the FDA. They also hired Publicis to manage its marketing. Publicis, the world’s largest PR company, funds and partners with “fact checking” organizations to suppress and censor the truth

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In 2021, McKinsey & Company, one of the largest consultants to corporations and governments worldwide, settled a lawsuit brought by 47 state attorneys general over its role in the U.S. opioid crisis. The firm agreed to pay $573 million in fines¹ for driving up sales of Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin painkiller, even as Americans were dying in droves.

Between 1999 and 2019, nearly 500,000 Americans died from overdoses involving opioid drugs,² and false advertising and bribery were at the heart of this tragedy. As reported by The New York Times:³

“McKinsey’s extensive work with Purdue included advising it to focus on selling lucrative high-dose pills, the records show, even after the drugmaker pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal criminal charges that it had misled doctors and regulators about OxyContin’s risks. The firm also told Purdue that it could ‘band together’ with other opioid makers to head off ‘strict treatment’ by the Food and Drug Administration.”

Worse Than We Thought

We now find out that the situation is even more corrupt than we previously thought. A U.S. House investigation^4,5,6 into McKinsey, based on materials obtained through the discovery process of this and other lawsuits, has revealed McKinsey was advising the FDA on the safety of opioids, while at the same time advising Purdue how to maximize sales.

In one instance, McKinsey wrote “scripts” for Purdue to use in its meeting with the FDA to discuss the safety of OxyContin in pediatric populations. In another, Jeff Smith, a senior McKinsey consultant, worked on a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) for OxyContin while simultaneously advising the FDA about the drug’s safety.⁷

As noted by investigative journalist Paul Thacker,⁸ “Just think about that for a moment — for years McKinsey played both cop and robber.” As reported by The New York Times, April 13, 2022:⁹

“Since 2010, at least 22 McKinsey consultants have worked for both Purdue and the FDA, some at the same time, according to the committee’s 53-page report …

The firm provided no evidence to the committee that it had disclosed the potential conflicts of interest as required under federal contracting rules — an ‘apparent violation,’ the report said.

McKinsey also allowed employees advising Purdue to help shape materials that were intended for government officials and agencies, including a memo in 2018 prepared for Alex M. Azar II, then the incoming secretary of health and human Services under President Donald J. Trump.

References to the severity of the opioid crisis in a draft version of the memo, the documents show, were cut before it was sent to Mr. Azar.

‘Today’s report shows that at the same time the FDA was relying on McKinsey’s advice to ensure drug safety and protect American lives, the firm was also being paid by the very companies fueling the deadly opioid epidemic to help them avoid tougher regulation of these dangerous drugs,’ Representative Carolyn Maloney, the New York Democrat who chairs the committee, said in a statement …

A bipartisan group of lawmakers last month introduced legislation¹⁰ aimed at preventing conflicts of interest in federal contracting, citing McKinsey’s experience with Purdue and the FDA.”

The FDA, in response, has stated that it “relies on its contractors to assess and report potential conflicts of interest,” The New York Times reports.¹¹ In other words, it’s just pointing fingers and refusing to take responsibility for working with advisers that clearly could, and should, be suspected of having ulterior motives, based on their client base.

Isn’t it obvious that McKinsey, working to improve sales for its opioid-making clients, might give the FDA biased advise on behalf of those clients? Remarkably, in October 2021, the FDA wrote¹² to senators claiming they had no idea McKinsey was even working for Purdue, and didn’t find out about it until media reported it in early 2021.

It seems beyond irrationally foolish that the press could find out about it, but not the FDA — somewhat like the head of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, going on CNN and quoting Pfizer press releases as factual data.

McKinsey Advised FDA on Opioid Safety

The FDA hired McKinsey as an adviser in 2011. The company worked with the FDA office overseeing drug companies plans to monitor safety of risky products such as opioids, and internal documents show that, on multiple occasions, McKinsey promoted its FDA connections when pitching services to its pharmaceutical clients.¹³

For example, in a 2009 sales pitch, McKinsey wrote that it provided direct support to regulators, “and as such have developed insights into the perspectives of the regulators themselves.”¹⁴

In a 2014 email to Purdue’s chief executive, McKinsey consultant Rob Rosiello wrote, “We serve the broadest range of stakeholders that matter for Purdue. One client we can disclose is the FDA, who we have supported for over five years.”¹⁵

Evidence also suggests McKinsey took “steps to limit material that could be subpoenaed” once Purdue was sued, The New York Times reports.¹⁶ In one instance, printed hardcopies of slide decks were sent to Purdue instead of being emailed because they knew Purdue staff would be deposed and didn’t want their email correspondence to “get sucked into it.”

Did McKinsey Influence FDA Commissioner?

The Interim Majority Staff report¹⁷ by the Committee on Oversight and Reform, titled “The Firm and the FDA: McKinsey & Company’s Conflicts of Interest at the Heart of the Opioid Epidemic,” published April 13, 2022, also includes emails in which McKinsey employees claim to have influenced an opioid safety speech by then-FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb.

Gottlieb denies the accusation, but the fact that McKinsey was working so intimately with the FDA means they certainly would have been capable of such influence. Gottlieb also has financial ties to the opioid industry, having received $45,000 in speaker’s fees from companies that manufacture and distribute opioids.¹⁸

In 2012, Gottlieb also wrote a Wall Street Journal essay, attacking the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for pursuing the criminal activity of opioid distributors, saying it would burden patients, “including those with legitimate prescriptions who may be profiled at the pharmacy counter and turned away.”¹⁹

Intent to Harm

What we have here is a picture of gross conflicts of interest with an apparent intent to harm. Purdue Pharma was as crooked as they come, conducting sham studies and bribing doctors to prescribe its highly addictive opioid, while its consultant, McKinsey advised the FDA on the drug’s safety.

At the same time, Purdue also worked with the Publicis Groupe — the largest PR company in the world as of November 2021²⁰ — which funded the startup of NewsGuard, a “fact checking” group that rates websites on criteria of “credibility” and “transparency.” In April 2021, Publicis partnered with NewsGuard specifically “to fight the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation about COVID-19 and its vaccines.”²¹

NewsGuard’s health-related service, HealthGuard,²² is also partnered with the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — a progressive U.K.-based cancel-culture leader²³ with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that has labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as “threats to national security.”

At the beginning of May 2021, the Massachusetts attorney general filed a lawsuit^24,25 against Publicis Health, accusing the Publicis subsidiary of helping Purdue create the deceptive marketing materials used to mislead doctors into prescribing OxyContin.^26,27,28,29

Like Purdue, Publicis also cashed in on the opioid addiction it helped create by pitching its services to organizations working to end addiction. As reported by Forbes,³⁰ the agency “won the account to work on drugfree.org after touting how it’s been ‘immersed in the evolving national opioid medication dialogue going on between pharma companies, the government and FDA, and the public via inside access as a trusted and informed consulting partner.’”

So, to summarize, Purdue knew the dangers of its drug, covered them up, hired FDA insiders to advise its sales strategy and influence the FDA, and is connected with a PR company that had the ability to suppress and censor negative news to manage its marketing. It’s hard to describe this scheme as anything but intentional mass murder.

The Spin Doctors

The reality may even be worse, and much larger, than that, seeing how Publicis is also a partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF),³¹ which is leading the call for a “reset” of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of life.³²

As detailed in the featured video, Publicis’ fingerprints can be found throughout the net of censorship and misdirection that is now being cast across the digital landscape. As the No. 1 PR company in the world, Publicis has just the right credentials and influence to pull off a deception of this size.

It’s part of an enormous network that includes international drug companies, fact checkers and credibility raters, Google, Microsoft, public libraries, schools, the banking industry, the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense, the World Health Organization and Disney, just to name a few. As noted by investigative reporter David Marks in “How PR Giant Publicis Promotes Greed, Deception on Behalf of World’s Most Powerful”:³³

“The essential skill of these expert spin doctors is their ability to fabricate a favorable interpretation of damaging information or activity or diminish the impact of the truth.

Through tried and true psychological ploys, repetition of false information or casting doubt on factual realities, ad agencies and PR firms target those who need to be influenced on behalf of their clients …

An examination of one of the largest entities neck-deep in managing these mass psychological operations reveals the depth of the dysfunction afflicting the planet. The vast activities of the Publicis Groupe demonstrate how the tentacles of greed, profit and privilege connect the catastrophic agendas of the most powerful enterprises on Earth …

Using sophisticated social psychology and incorporating the cutting edge of artificial intelligence, Publicis PR experts are masters of damage control, the manipulation of words and people, and of selling the unsellable. Publicis is organizing influential activities worldwide, overtly revealing its mission and priorities.

… [Its] website reveals who actually benefits from the company’s services: ‘The entire Publicis Groupe transformation was designed to put clients at the center of all we do. Their needs and objectives drive the solutions we provide in order to help them win and grow’ …

In considering the range of activities Publicis engages in, the dots are so close there is no need to connect them. The PR giant’s methodology is transparent.

Whether promoting opioids or pushing vaccines, rebranding status quo profiteering as a Great Reset, supporting cigarette sales, disguising the true nature of the fossil fuel industry, increasing soft drink consumption or covering for assassinations — Publicis has all the skills and facilities to create whatever fabrications are needed to sell products and influence how their wealthy collaborators are viewed.

The Publicis Groupe and its allies are at the hub of a worldwide insidious, destructive disinformation campaign, relying on the duplicitous ways of advertising and public relations in the loyal service of clients.”

A Plan to Drug the Useless Eaters?

As a WEF partner and global PR machine for some of the most powerful industries on the planet, it seems reasonable to assume Publicis is helping to coordinate the WEF’s Great Reset agenda. Sadly, that includes not only the management and control of the peoples of the earth, but also the elimination of “undesirables.”

In a 2015 interview (video above), Yuval Noah Harari, a history professor and adviser to WEF founder Klaus Schwab, discussed what Schwab refers to as The Fourth Industrial Revolution (i.e., transhumanism), noting that we’re now learning to “produce bodies and minds” (meaning augmented bodies, and cloud and artificial intelligence-connected minds) and that one of the greatest challenges we face will be what to do with all the people that have become obsolete in the process.

How will unaugmented people find meaning in life when they’re basically “useless, meaningless”? How will they spend their time when there’s no work, no opportunity to move up in some kind of profession? His guess is that the answer will be “a combination of drugs and computer games.”

This raises a disturbing question. Was the opioid crisis the result of an intentional plan — a conspiracy in the literal sense of the word — to hook the masses on an addictive drug? This is purely speculative, of course, but it surely fits in with The Great Reset agenda as a whole.

If people are addicted, the drug and medical industries make money (and they’re without doubt part of The Great Reset network), and if people die, well, that’s in accordance with The Great Reset plan too, as they insist there are too many “useless eaters” on the planet, and they either must be managed or eliminated.

Publicis Is Part of the Global Monopoly

In closing, it’s worth noting that Publicis is partially owned by the Vanguard Group,³⁴ one of the two largest asset management firms in the world. Together with BlackRock, Vanguard has a hidden monopoly on global asset holdings and exerts control through their ownership of some 1,600 American companies.³⁵

Combined, BlackRock and Vanguard own nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms.³⁶ To learn more about how Vanguard and BlackRock own just about everything in the world, and have monopoly control over all industries, check out the 45-minute video above, “Monopoly — Follow the Money.”

In short, the idea that there is competition in the marketplace is a cleverly disguised illusion. In reality, everything is controlled by a small group of asset managers that win no matter what. The end goal is to own and control all the world’s assets, which includes people.

The WEF slogan “You’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy” really summarizes The Great Reset plan for mankind. They will own everything; you will own nothing, not even your own body, and you’ll be too drugged up and lost in a make-believe computer game world to realize you’re a slave. If they can somehow make a profit from your useless existence, they’ll let you live. If they can’t, you’ll be eliminated. That’s really what the plan comes down to.

The plan for global authoritarianism is advancing with each passing day, but all is not lost yet. By informing ourselves and sharing what we know with others, we can reach the critical mass needed to end their plan and take back control.

It’s going to require standing together, unified in favor of freedom and liberty. It’s going to require legal and legislative efforts to weed out the corruption and infiltration that has occurred throughout the corporate world and our governments. It’s going to require honest men and women to step into positions of power that they never wanted. It may take a lot of time and effort, but if we want our descendants to experience freedom, no price can be too great to pay.

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Notes

^1, 3 New York Times February 3, 2021 (Archived)

² CDC Opioid Epidemic

^4, 17 Interim Majority Staff report, Committee on Oversight and Reform, The Firm and the FDA: McKinsey & Company’s Conflicts of […] April 13, 2022

^5, 7 Endpoint News April 13, 2022

⁶ Epoch Times April 16, 2022

^8, 18, 19 The Disinformation Chronicle April 19, 2022

^{9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16} New York Times April 13, 2022 (Archived)

¹⁰ S.3905, To Prevent Organizational Conflicts of Interest in Federal Acquisition, and for Other Purposes

¹² Maggie Hassan Senate October 27, 2021

²⁰ Forbes November 3, 2021

²¹ Twitter Publicis Health Media April 27, 2021

²² NewsGuard HealthGuard

²³ Off-Guardian August 11, 2020

²⁴ Commonwealth of Massachusetts Superior Court Complaint CA No. 21-1055 (PDF)

²⁵ STAT News May 6, 2021

²⁶ Boston Globe May 8, 2021

^27, 30 Forbes May 7, 2021

²⁸ CommonHealth May 7, 2021

²⁹ Courthouse News May 6, 2021

³¹ World Economic Forum, Publicis Groupe

³² World Economic Forum, The Great Reset

^33, 34 Abundant Hope January 6, 2022

³⁵ The Puppet Masters Portfolios July 31, 2021

³⁶ The Conversation May 10, 2017

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Vaccine-free Canadians hoping to cross into the United States via a land border will still be banned from entry after the Biden administration extended a rule mandating that non-U.S. citizens going into the U.S. have the COVID shots.

According to an update yesterday from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the vaccine mandate for land border crossings remains in place indefinitely.

“As of Thursday, April 21, 2022, DHS will extend COVID-19-related land border entry requirements. Non-U.S. travelers seeking to enter the United States via land ports of entry and ferry terminals at the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada borders are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and provide proof of vaccination upon request,” the DHS said.

The department noted that the restrictions apply to “non-U.S. travelers who are traveling for essential or non-essential reasons. They do not apply to U.S. citizens, Lawful Permanent Residents, or U.S. nationals.”

The “temporary rule” mandating COVID jabs via land border crossings was originally put in place on January 22. According to the U.S Federal Registry, it was set to expire at midnight April 21 before being extended.

Travelers entering the United States by air are mandated as well to prove they have the COVID jabs.

Republican U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York blasted the Biden administration’s extension of the COVID land border vaccine mandate.

In a statement, she said such mandates hurt northern communities and show the “Biden administration’s hypocrisy.”

“For over two years, communities in Upstate New York and the North Country have been devastated by Northern Border travel restrictions, which hurt tourism, harm supply chain, and keep families apart. Instead of leading the way for our Canadian partners by dropping all restrictions on Northern Border travel, the Biden Administration is doubling down on harmful restrictions on Northern Border travel, while proposing an end to Title 42, which will fuel illegal immigration across the Southern Border,” Stefanik said.

According to the DHS, upon entry into the U.S. via a land border, one must “verbally attest to their COVID-19 vaccination status,” and if asked for proof of the vaccine, must show the border agent a “CDC-approved COVID-19 vaccination, as outlined on the CDC website.”

Despite the land border mandate being in place, some have said that they were never asked about their vaccine status by border guards when crossing into the United States.

LifeSiteNews spoke with one individual, who asked to remain anonymous, and he said he had no issues driving into the U.S. via a land border last month despite not having the vaccine.

“They never asked me if I had the jabs, so I was just let on through, and honestly, these jab rules are an afront to a person’s personal dignity and rights as a human,” the individual said.

“Coming back into Canada will be a pain as they still make you quarantine as I don’t have the jabs.”

Others without the jabs trying to cross into the United States via land borders have not been so lucky.

A recent report in the Western Standard documents the horror story of a man without the COVID vaccine who tried in vain to get to Costa Rica. After being denied traveling by air, he tried to cross into the U.S. via car at a land border but was turned back.

While in the past the DHS allowed an “essential” travel exemption, this has been removed.

Children under age 18 are exempt from the rule, however, and there are no COVID testing requirements in place.

The DHS does list some narrow exemptions that could allow a vaccine-free person to cross via a land border. These include diplomats, people issued “a humanitarian or emergency exception by the Secretary of Homeland Security,” and those deemed a “national interest, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

Also, there is an exemption for “individuals with medical contraindications to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine as specified in the CDC order.”

Before the rule was put in place in January, the vaccine-free were allowed to cross via land borders into the U.S., including truckers.

However, when the Canadian government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mandated that all truckers and others be vaccinated for entry into Canada via land borders starting January 15, the U.S. under President Joe Biden quickly enacted a similar rule.

The Trudeau COVID jab land border mandate was met with fierce opposition from many in the trucking industry, as well as some Conservative Party of Canada MPs.

It was also the catalyst for the trucker Freedom Convoy, which saw thousands of Canadians descend upon Ottawa to demand an end to all COVID mandates.

The Freedom Convoy, however, was crushed by Trudeau in an unprecedented move when he enacted the Emergencies Act to clear them out.

Civil liberties groups have called for an independent public inquiry into Trudeau’s use of the EA.

Also in place in Canada is a travel ban by air, rail or sea for those who have chosen not to get the COVID vaccines.

COVID vaccine mandates have split Canadian society and the shots themselves approved for use in Canada have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children.

They also have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies. As a result of this, many Catholics and other Christians refuse to take them.

COVID-19 has extremely high survivability among most groups, and studies show a minimal risk of asymptomatic spread. Research also indicates that post-infection natural immunity is far superior to vaccine-induced immunity.

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International organisations have written to Home Secretary Priti Patel urging her to reject the US government’s request for the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The 20 press freedom, free expression and journalists’ organisations have also requested a meeting with Ms Patel to discuss their concerns over the case.

The letter was sent after chief magistrate Paul Goldspring referred Mr Assange’s case to Ms Patel, paving the way for him to face prosecution for exposing US war crimes.

Ms Patel is now responsible for deciding in the next two months whether to accept the extradition request.

Mr Assange’s lawyers warn that the prosecution is politically motivated and that their client faces up to 175 years in jail.

Signatories of the letter to Ms Patel include Reporters Without Borders, Article 19, Big Brother Watch, Pen International, the International Federation of Journalists, the National Union of Journalists and the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom.

In the letter, the organisations express “serious concerns” about the possibility of extraditing the WikiLeaks founder, including over his physical and mental health.

They warn that Mr Assange would be unable to adequately defend himself in US courts due to a lack of a public interest defence in the Espionage Act and that his prosecution would set a dangerous precedent for journalism internationally.

The letter reads:

“We ask you, Home Secretary, to honour the UK government’s commitment to protecting and promoting media freedom and reject the US extradition request.

“We ask you to release Mr Assange from Belmarsh prison and allow him to return to his young family after many years of isolation.

“Finally, we ask you to publicly commit to ensuring that no publisher, journalist or source ever again faces detention in the UK for publishing information in the public interest.”

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Ask a hundred Americans and you’ll be lucky to find even one who’s ever heard of Minsk II. But ask those same Americans how the Ukraine war started, and you’ll like get ‘Russian President Putin woke up one day and decided to re-establish the Soviet empire, starting with Ukraine.’

That is because our government and its slavishly loyal media have created a false narrative for maximum propaganda to support pouring billions in weaponry into the Ukraine war zone, ensuring that death and destruction will proceed endlessly.

Minsk II was the 2015 agreement hammered out by Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany to end the civil war in Ukraine between the pro-west, ultra-nationalist government and the pro-Russian Ukrainians in the eastern Donbas provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk.

Why a civil war in Ukraine? Historically, Ukraine was cobbled together first by the Russian Empire, then the Soviet Union over 4 centuries, containing disparate peoples. The main ones were the Western leaning, Ukrainian speaking people in the north and west, and the Russian speaking in the east and south.

Their relationship was always toxic, but under Soviet rule relative peace prevailed. Once freed from Soviet rule in 1999, the tension between the two disparate groups resurfaced. Fifteen years on the U.S. essentially blew up whatever chance for peaceful resolution by aiding a coup which violently removed Russian-leaning President Yanukovych, replacing him with an ultra-nationalist government under Petro Poroshenko.

Leaders meeting in Minsk: Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko (L), Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (2nd L), Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko (R), Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel (C) and France’s President Francois Hollande pose for a family photo during peace talks in Minsk, February 11, 2015.

Thus began the civil war in the Donbas that has killed over 14,000 Ukrainians in Kiev’s effort to subjugate and marginalize the hated Russian-leaning Ukrainians. And leading the carnage for the past 3 years is current president Volodymyr Zelensky. Calling him the new Churchill doesn’t quite fit.

But Ukraine had an off ramp from civil war early on in the form of the Minsk and then the Minsk II agreements in 2014 and 2015. The latter called for autonomy for the breakaway provinces Donetsk and Lugansk, amnesty to the combatants and representation in the Ukraine government.

But goaded by the U.S. and the ultra-nationalists with the real power, both post coup presidents Poroshenko and Zelensky opted to continue the civil war to both retake the breakaway provinces and recapture the Crimea, seized by Russia after the 2014 coup threatened their naval base at Sebastopol in the Crimea.

In the months leading up to Russia’s criminal war, Ukraine, with the help of weaponry and training by Uncle Sam, dramatically increased its criminal shelling of the Donbas, even massing a hundred thousand troops for a possible invasion predicted for March.

Did that, and the threat of NATO’s encroachment in Ukraine up to Russia’s borders, make Russia’s invasion legal or necessary for Russia’s national defense? Of course not. But expecting Russia would sit back and do nothing made their invasion virtually inevitable.

On February 24, that inevitability occurred, costing thousands of senseless deaths, putting the world in danger of worldwide recession, millions of poor worldwide facing starvation from food shortages and worst of all….nuclear war.

Millions of words have been spilled by our government and our media framing this war as the madman in the Kremlin and his dreams of a reconstituted Soviet empire. But they could do better with just two words that Ukraine and U.S. refused to honor and implement: Minsk II.

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Defence lawyers have argued that prisoners held at a secretive CIA-run camp at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre should receive reduced sentences because the conditions to which they were subject were “exceedingly disturbing”.

Lawyers for the detainees held at Camp 7 from 2006 to 2021 are currently inspecting the site, and have told The New York Times that conditions at the camp were substandard, with the experience of imprisonment there being like getting “buried alive”.

They are currently gathering information and evidence, including taking photographs and bringing experts to inspect the now-abandoned site. The attorneys also want anything that the men said while detained at the camp to be excluded from their cases, arguing that the camp was “indistinguishable” from the CIA black sites where detainees were tortured.

Susan Hensler, who represents Iraqi detainee Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, told The Times that the place was “chilling” and “akin to being entombed”.

“You’re disappeared off the face of the map at Camp 7,” said Alka Pradhan, who represents Ammar al-Baluchi, a defendant in the 9/11 case.

Another criminal defence lawyer, Christine Funk, said of the camp:

“I’ve seen everything from minimum to medium to maximum security [prisons]. I’d stay in any one of them rather than stay in that prison down at Guantanamo.”

Camp 7 was a once-secret prison camp that held the most high-level detainees who were transferred to the site in 2006 after being held in CIA custody.

However, after several years, military officers described the site as in need of an entirely new facility with the current camp having serious structural problems, including its foundation having shifted.

The military had sent multiple funding requests in the tens of millions of dollars.

But instead of building a new facility, it was closed in April 2021. The US military had long refused to acknowledge the location of the camp, and journalists have been denied access to it.

“It feels like there’s an element of unpredictability built into that prison at Guantanamo, by design, that is its own form of torture,” Funk told The Times. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The Biden administration has repeatedly stated it aims to close the prison.

Of the 37 prisoners that currently remain in the prison, 19 have been approved for transfer, six are in indefinite detention, 10 are awaiting trial, and two have been convicted, including Majid Khan who has finished his sentence and is in need of a country to be transferred to.

Earlier this week, the US approved the transfer of another detainee, Said bin Brahim bin Umran Bakush, the last Algerian national to be held at the detention facility.

Last month, Mohammed al-Qahtani was transferred to his home country of Saudi Arabia where he will receive treatment for schizophrenia after nearly two decades of imprisonment.

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