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As the Russia-Ukraine war enters a new phase, former Swiss intelligence officer, senior United Nations official, and NATO advisor Jacques Baud analyzes the conflict and argues that the US and its allies are exploiting Ukraine in a longstanding campaign to bleed its Russian neighbor.

Guest: Jacques Baud. Former intelligence officer with the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service who has served in a number of senior security and advisory positions at NATO, the United Nations, and with the Swiss military.

Transcript

AARON MATÉ:  Welcome to Pushback.  I’m Aaron Maté.  Joining me is Jacques Baud.  He has served in a number of senior security and advisory positions at NATO, the UN, and with the Swiss military.  He is also a former strategic intelligence officer with the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service.  Jacques, thank you for joining me.

JACQUES BAUD:  I thank you for inviting me.

AARON MATÉ:  Let me just start by asking you to talk more about your background and how it has informed your visibility into the crisis in Ukraine.

JACQUES BAUD:  Well, as you just said, I’m a strategic intelligence officer.  I used to be in charge of the Warsaw Pact forces in strategic…that was during the Cold War, but still, I have a good visibility on what’s going on in Eastern Europe.  I used to speak and read Russian as well, so that gives me some access to some documents.  And recently I had been seconded to NATO as head of the struggle against proliferation of small arms.  And in that capacity, I was involved in several projects from 2014 onwards with NATO in Ukraine.  And so, I know the context quite well.  I was also monitoring the possible influx of small armaments in the Donbas in 2014.  And I have also worked—because in my previous assignment in the UN, I used to work on the restoration of armored forces, so when the Ukrainian armed forces got some problems with personnel issues, with suicide, with all these kind of things that you had in 2014, also problems in recruiting military—I was asked to participate on the NATO side on several projects in restoring Ukrainian armed forces.  And so that’s a little bit, in a nutshell, my background regarding this area.

AARON MATÉ:  You’ve written a lengthy article which I will link to in the show notes for this segment, and you lay out the causes of the Ukraine conflict in three major areas.  There is the strategic level, the expansion of NATO; the political level, which is what you call the Western refusal to implement the Minsk agreements; and operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of the Donbas over the past years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.

Let me ask you to start there.  Talk about what you call the dramatic increase on civilians inside the Donbas in February, the period that led to the Russian invasion, immediate period, and how this escalation of attacks, as you say, helped lead to this war, this Russian invasion.

JACQUES BAUD:  Well, I think we have to understand, as you know, that the war in fact hasn’t started on 24 February this year.  It started already in 2014.  But I think that the Russians always hoped that this conflict could be solved on a political level, in fact; I mean the Minsk agreements and all that.  So, basically what led to the decision to launch an offensive in the Donbas was not what happened since 2014.  There was a trigger for that, and the trigger is two things; I mean, it came in two phases, if you want.

The first is the decision and the law adopted by [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy in March 2021—that means last year—to reconquer Crimea by force, and that started a build-up of the Russian armored for…not the Russian, [rather] the Ukrainian armored forces in the southern parts of the country.  And so, I think the Russians were perfectly aware of this build-up.  They were aware that an operation was to be launched against the Republics of the Donbas, but they did not know when, and, of course, they were just observing that, and then came the real trigger.

You may remember that—I think it was on the 16th of February—Joe Biden, during a press conference, told that he knew that the Russians would attack.  And how would he know that?  Because I still have some contacts, and nobody actually thought that the Russians—before end of January, beginning of February—I think nobody thought that the Russians would attack Ukraine.  So, there must have been something that made Biden aware that the Russians would attack.  And this something, in fact, is the intensification of the artillery shelling of the Donbas starting on the 16th of February, and this increase in the shelling was observed, in fact, by the [Border] Observer Mission of the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe], and they recorded this increase of violation, and it’s a massive violation.  I mean, we are talking about something that is about 30 times more than what it used to be, because the last eight years you had a lot of violations from both sides, by the way.  But suddenly on the 16th of February you had a massive increase of violation on the Ukrainian side.  So, for the Russians, Vladimir Putin in particular, that was the sign that the operation—the Ukrainian operation—was about to start.

And then everything started; I mean, all the events came very quickly.  That means that if we look at the figures, you can see that there’s, as I said, a massive increase from the 16th-17th, and then it reached kind of a maximum on the 18th of February, and that was continuing.

And the Russian parliament, the Duma, also was aware of this possible offensive, and they passed a resolution asking Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the two self-proclaimed Republics in the Donbas.  And that’s what Putin decided to do on the 21st of February.  And just after adopting the decrees, the law recognizing the independence of the two Republics, Vladimir Putin signed a friendship and assistance agreement with those two Republics.  Why did he do that?  So that would allow the Republics to ask for military help in case of attack.  And that’s why, on the 24th of February when Vladimir Putin decided to launch the offensive, it could invoke Article 51 of the UN Charter that provides for assistance in case of attack.

AARON MATÉ:  And as you noted, the OSCE documented a big increase in ceasefire violations, artillery firing on the rebel-held side, but do you think, based on what you observed of the positioning of Ukrainian troops, do you think that the threat of an imminent invasion or assault by the Ukrainian forces was real?  Can you gauge that from how they were positioned on the other side of the front line?

JACQUES BAUD:  Yes.  Absolutely.  I mean, we had reports, and those reports were available during the last couple of months.  Since last year we knew that the Ukrainians were building up their forces in the south of the country, not on the eastern border with Russia but on the border with the contact line with Donbas.  And, as a matter of fact, as we have seen from the 24th of February, the Russians had almost no resistance in the start of the offensive, especially in the north.  And so, they could, what they have done since then, they could surround the Ukrainian forces in the south, in the southeast part of the country—that means between the two Republics of the Donbas and the Ukraine mainland, if you want.  And that’s where the bulk of the Ukrainian forces are today.  And according to the…that’s exactly the Russian doctrine to fight, I mean operational doctrine.  Their main offensive was on the south, clearly, because the objective stated by Vladimir Putin—we can probably come back on these details later on—but this was demilitarization and denazification.

Both objectives, in fact, were about to be done or to be reached in the south of the country, and that’s where the main efforts of the offensive was done.  In the offensive order, the effort against Kiev is a so-called secondary effort, and it had, as a fact, you had two functions basically.  First of all, to put some pressure on the political leadership in Kiev because the name of the game is to bring the Ukrainians to the negotiations.  That was the first objective of this second effort.

The second objective of this second effort was to bind or to pin down the rest of the Ukrainian armed forces so that they could not reinforce the main forces which are in the Donbas area.  And that worked quite well.  So that means that the Russians could surround, as I said, the main forces, the bulk of the armed forces—the Ukrainian armed forces.  Once they have achieved that they could withdraw some troops from Kiev, and that’s what they have done since end of March.  They have pulled several units in order to reinforce what they want; I mean their own forces to carry on under the main battle in the Donbas area.  So now they are pulling, and they have pulled these troops from the Kiev area, and these troops will now help to flank for the vanguard, the offensive against the main forces in the Donbas.  And that’s what some called the ‘mother of all battles’ that is currently going on in the Donbas area, where you have—nobody knows exactly the number of Ukrainian troops; estimates vary from sixty thousand to eighty thousand who are surrounded—and the forces would be cut in smaller cauldrons and then destroyed or neutralized.

AARON MATÉ:  It’s pretty clear to me that Zelenskyy’s government had no interest in serious diplomacy on all the critical issues that could have avoided a war, and I think the main factor is what I presume to be US pressure behind the scenes, which we can’t fully prove now.  But I imagine evidence of that might come out later.  And certainly, the open hostility of Ukraine’s far right, who essentially threatened Zelenskyy’s life if he made peace with Russia.  And these threats have dogged him throughout his presidency and continued right up to the eve of the invasion, and it led to people like his top security official saying in late January that the implementation of the Minsk accords would lead to Ukraine’s destruction—after Zelenskyy was elected on a platform of implementing Minsk—and that carried over to the final talks on implementing the Minsk accords that were brokered by Germany and France.

At those talks in February, Zelenskyy’s government all of a sudden refused to even speak to the representatives of the rebels, which makes an accord possible.  And meanwhile you had developments like this, which we just learned about from The Wall Street Journal, which was that the German chancellor [Olaf] Scholz on February 19th told Zelenskyy that, quote, “Ukraine should renounce its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality as part of a wider European security deal between the West and Russia.”  And this pact Scholz proposed would be signed by Biden and Putin, but Zelenskyy rejected this—rejected out of hand.

But my question is, because I think it’s pretty conclusive that the Zelenskyy-Ukraine side sabotaged diplomacy, but what about Russia?  Do you think Russia exhausted all of its diplomatic options to avoid a war?  For example, why not go to the UN and ask for a peacekeeping force in the Donbas?  And second of all, if the aim is to protect the people of the Donbas, why invade far beyond the Donbas and not just go there?

JACQUES BAUD:  Well, I think the Russians have totally lost faith in the West.  I think that’s the main thing.  They don’t trust the West anymore, and that’s why I think now they rely on a total victory on the military side in order to have some benefits in the negotiation.

I think Zelenskyy…I’m not sure exactly if he’s so reluctant to have peace.  I think he cannot do it.  I think from the very beginning he was caught between his…remember that he was elected with the idea of achieving peace in the Donbas.  That was his objective; that was his program as president.

But I think the West—and I would say the Americans and the British didn’t want this peace to occur.  And of course, the Germans and the French who were the guarantors of the Minsk agreement for the Ukrainian side, they never really implemented this—their function.  I mean, they have never done their job, clearly.  And especially France, which is simultaneously a member of the Security Council.  Because I will just remind you that the Minsk agreements were also part of a resolution of the Security Council.  So, meaning that they have not only the signature of the different parties that was done in Minsk, but you have also the members of the Security Council who were responsible for implementation of the agreement, and nobody wanted to have this agreement made.  So that means that, I think, there was a lot of pressure on Zelenskyy so that he wouldn’t even talk to the representatives of the two breakaway Republics.

And after that we have seen, by the way, that we have several indications that Zelenskyy was not completely, or is not completely, in control of what’s going on in Ukraine.  I think the extreme, let’s say, nationalist extreme right—I don’t know exactly what is the right term because it’s a mixture of everything—but these forces definitely prevent him, or prevented him, so far to do anything.  And we can see also that he’s back and forth regarding peace.  As soon as he started, you may remember that at the end of February, as soon as Zelenskyy indicated that he might be willing to start negotiations, this was the time where these negotiations were to take place in Belarus.  Within hours after Zelenskyy decided that, the European Union came with a decision providing for half a billion arms to Ukraine, meaning that the Americans, certainly, but I think the West as a whole, made every possible effort to prevent a political solution to the conflict, and I think the Russians are aware of that.

Now we have also to understand that the Russians have a different understanding of how to wage a war on the Western powers, especially the US.  That means that in the West we tend to, if we negotiate, we negotiate up to a certain point and then negotiations stop, and we start war.  And that’s war, period.  In the Russian way of doing things, it’s different.  You start a war, but you never leave the diplomatic track, and you go on both ways, in fact.  You put mental pressure and you try to achieve an objective, also with diplomatic means.  This is very much a Clausewitzian approach to war—when [Prussian general and military theorist Carl von] Clausewitz, as you know, defined war as the continuation of politics with other means.

That’s exactly how the Russians see that.  That’s why during the whole offensive, and even at the very beginning of the offensive, they started, or they indicated they were willing, to negotiate.  So, the Russians certainly want to negotiate, but they don’t trust the Western countries—I mean the West at large—to facilitate that negotiation.  And that’s the reason why they didn’t come to the Security Council.  By the way, they know that, probably, because, as you know, this physical war that we witness now is part of a broader war that was started years ago against Russia, and I think, in fact, Ukraine is just…I mean, nobody is interested in Ukraine, I think.  The target, the aim, the objective is to weaken Russia, and once it will be done with Russia, they will do the same with China, and you can already see.  I mean, we have seen that now, the Ukrainian crisis has overshadowed the rest, but you could have a very similar scenario happening with Taiwan, for instance.  So, the Chinese are aware of that.  That’s the reason why they don’t want to give up their, let’s say, relationship with Russia.

Now, the name of the game is weakening Russia, and you know that there have been several studies done by the Rand Corporation on extending Russia, overextending Russia, and so on, and where the whole scenario is…

AARON MATÉ:  Just to explain that for people who aren’t familiar with it, Rand is a Pentagon-type think tank, and they did a study in 2019 looking at all the different ways in which the US could overextend and unbalance Russia, and the top option was to send weapons to Ukraine to fuel a conflict there that could draw Russia in, which is exactly what’s happened.

JACQUES BAUD:  Absolutely.  And I think that this is a complete design for weakening Russia, and that’s exactly what we see unfolding right now.  We could have anticipated that, and I think Putin anticipated that.  And I think he understood that, if on the end of February, I mean, on the 24th of February, or let’s say just before because he had to make the decision before, but in the days before deciding on the offensive, he understood that he could not do nothing.  He had to do something.  The Russian public opinion would never have understood why Russia would remain just observing the Donbas Republics being invaded or destroyed by Ukraine.

So, nobody would have understood that.  So, he was obliged to go.  And then, I think…and that’s what, if you remember what he said on the 24th of February, he said regardless of what he would do, the amount of sanctions he will receive would be the same.  So basically, he knew that the slightest intervention in the Donbas would trigger a massive launch of sanctions, so he knew that.  So, then he decided, ‘Okay, then I have to go for the maximal option,’ because one option would have been just to reinforce, don’t mess with the Republics and just defend the Republics on the line of contact.  But he decided to go for the larger option, which is to destroy those forces that threatened Donbas.

And that’s where you have those two objectives.  Demilitarization, which is not the whole demilitarization of all Ukraine, but it was to suppress the military threat that was on the Donbas; that’s the main objective of that.  There’s a lot of misunderstanding of what he said and, of course, he was not very clear, but that’s part of the Russian way of communicating and doing things.  They want to keep options open, and that’s the reason why they say the minimum things and they just say what’s necessary.  And this is exactly what Putin meant on the 21st, what he said about suppressing the military threat against the Donbas.  Denazification had nothing to do with killing Zelenskyy or destroying the leadership in Kiev.  That was definitely not the idea, and, as a matter of fact, as I said, the main way they conceive war is to combine a physical action and diplomatic action.  So that means that in such a way of doing you have to keep a leadership and you have to keep them in order to negotiate, and that’s why there was no way you would kill or destroy the leadership in Kiev.

So, denazification was basically not about the 2.5 percent of the extreme right in Kiev.  That was about the 100 percent of Azov people in Mariupol and Kharkov, and this kind of thing.  So, we tend to misunderstand because some people said, ‘Well, but, you know, why denazify?  Because there is only 2.5 percent of political rightwing parties, only 2.5 percent or something like that, so it’s meaningless.  So, why denazify?  It makes no sense.’  But it was not about that.  It was definitely about those groups that were in fact recruited from 2014 by the Ukrainians in order to, let’s say, I would say pacify or control.  I don’t know exactly what’s the right word for that, but to fight in Donbas.  These people were extremists, fanatics, and these people were dangerous.

AARON MATÉ:  And one of the points you make in your article, which I didn’t know, is that part of the reason why Ukraine had this need for militias, far-right militias and foreign mercenaries, is because of a high rate of defection inside its own military ranks, people not wanting to serve, and even defecting to the other side of the rebellion in the Donbas.

JACQUES BAUD:  Exactly.  In fact, I noticed that, as I told you, I was in NATO and was monitoring the influx of weapons in the Donbas, and what we noticed is that we couldn’t identify import of weapons or export of weapons from the Russian side to the Donbas.  But what we could see is that you had a lot of Ukrainian units who defected, in fact, and complete battalions.  And in 2014, most of the heavy artillery that the Donbas gained were from defectors.  The whole units defected with ammunition and people and all that.  The reason is that the Ukrainian army was based on a territorial…was manned and organized on a territorial way.  That means you had a lot of Russian-speak[ers] in the armed forces.  Once they were sent to fight in the Donbas, they didn’t even want to fight their own colleagues and Russian-speaking people, so they preferred to defect.

And in addition to that you had in 2014, I mean in 2014 to 2017, in that period the leadership of the Ukrainian army was extremely poor.  You had a lot of corruption.  I’m not sure that the military was prepared for such a kind of war, in fact, because the war that was fought at that time by the rebels was very similar to what you can see in the Middle East today, or in the last years.  That made very mobile units moving around very rapidly, much faster than the heavy units that the Ukrainian army had, and, as a result, if we see the pattern of the different battles that were fought in 2014, 2015, you could see that the Ukrainians could never lead.  They had never the initiative.  The initiative was always with the rebels.  And it was not guerrilla.  That’s important to say.  It was kind of extremely mobile warfare.  And in addition to that you had, I think, the army was not really prepared to fight in general.  So, you had a lot of suicides, you had a lot of alcohol problems, you had a lot of accidents, you had a lot of murders within the Ukrainian army.

And that led a lot of young Ukrainians to leave the country, because they didn’t want to join the army.  And what I’m saying is, I mean, it was recorded and reported by official reports in the UK and the US, I think.  They made some very interesting reports on the low rate of recruitment of individuals, because people didn’t want simply to join the army.  And that’s the reason why NATO was involved, and I was involved in such a program, trying to reshuffle the image of the army and find solutions to improve the recruitment condition of the army, and things like that.

But the solutions that were provided by NATO were in fact institutional solutions that would take time, and in order to compensate with lack of personnel and probably to have more aggressive military personnel, they started to use internationalists and mercenaries, as a matter of fact.  Nobody knows exactly the number of these paramilitaries or extreme rights militias.  Reuters put the figure at one hundred thousand.  I’m not able to verify that, but that was a figure given by Reuters.  And that seems to fit what we can observe now in the different regions of the country.  So, these paramilitaries took a major role not in mobile warfare, and I would say [not in] the normal field warfare, but they were used in maintaining order within cities.  And that’s exactly what you have today in Mariupol, for instance, where you had those people, because they are not equipped for field operations.  They are equipped for urban warfare.  They have light equipment, they have some armored vehicles, but they don’t really have tanks, anything like this.

So, this is definitely units that are meant for urban warfare.  That’s what they do in major cities.  And these guys are extremely fanatic, we can say, and they are extremely dangerous.  And that explains the way Mariupol, the battles and the extremely brutal fights that you have in Mariupol as an example, and we probably will see the same thing in Kharkov, for instance.

AARON MATÉ:  As we wrap, I want to ask you about some of the recent atrocities that we’ve seen reported.  There were reports of mass civilian killings by Russia inside the town of Bucha and also killings of Ukrainian forces, and then you had the attack on the train station in Kramatorsk.  I’m wondering if you’ve evaluated both of these incidents and what you make of them.

JACQUES BAUD:  Well, there are two things in that.  And the first is that the indication we have on both incidents to me indicates that the Russians were not responsible for that.  But, in fact, we don’t know.  I think that’s what we have to say.  I mean, if we’re honest, we don’t know what happened.  The indications we have, everything, all the elements we have tends to point at Ukrainian responsibilities, but we don’t know.

What disturbs me in the whole thing is not so much that we don’t know, because in war there’s always such situations, there are always situations where you don’t know exactly who is really responsible.  What disturbs me is that Western leaders started to make decisions without knowing what’s going on and what happened.

And that’s something that disturbs me quite deeply, that before having any result of any kind of inquiry, of investigation, and I mean international, impartial investigation, without having that we start already to take sanctions, to make decisions, and I think that illustrates how the whole decision-making process in the West was perverted.  Since February or even before, in fact, because we had a similar thing after the hijacking—or not hijacking, by the way, it was not a hijacking—but the incident in Belarus with this Ryanair flight.  You may remember last May, last year, that people started to react just minutes after the incident was reported in the press, even they didn’t know what was going on!  So, that’s this way of doing from the political leadership in Europe, I mean the European Union, but also in European countries.  That disturbs me as an intelligence officer.  How can you make a decision with such impact on populations or on whole countries that disturbs even our own economies?  So, it tends to backfire on us.  But we take decisions without even knowing what’s going on, and that, I think, indicates an extremely immature leadership that we have in the West in general.  That’s certainly the case in the US, but I think in this example of the Ukraine crisis shows that the European leadership is not better than what you have in the US.  It’s probably even worse, I think, sometimes.  So, that’s what should worry us, that you have people deciding based on nothing, and that’s extremely dangerous.

AARON MATÉ:  Jacques Baud, he is a former strategic intelligence officer with the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service, also served in a number of senior security and advisory positions at NATO, the UN, and the Swiss military.  Jacques, thank you very much for your time and insight.

JACQUES BAUD:  Thank you for everything.  Thank you.

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Aaron Maté is a journalist and producer. He hosts Pushback with Aaron Maté on The Grayzone. In 2019, Maté was awarded the Izzy Award (named after I.F. Stone) for outstanding achievement in independent media for his coverage of Russiagate in The Nation magazine. Previously, he was a host/producer for The Real News and Democracy Now!.

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Food shortages and skyrocketing food prices now appear inevitable. The global food price index hit its highest recorded level in March 2022, rising 12.6% in a single month. On average, food prices were one-third higher than in March 2021. In the U.S., food prices rose 9% in 2021, and are predicted to rise another 4.5% to 5% in the next 12 months

Inflation was already ramping up well before Russia went into Ukraine, thanks to the uncontrolled printing of fiat currencies that occurred in response to the COVID pandemic. Governments’ COVID responses have also wreaked havoc with global supply chains, causing disruptions that continue to this day

Ukraine has ceased exports of wheat, oats, millet, buckwheat and cattle, and Russia has banned exports of fertilizer.

Together, Russia and Belarus provide nearly 40% of the global exports of potash, a key fertilizer ingredient. Russia also exports 48% of the global ammonium nitrate, and combined with Ukraine, they export 28% of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium fertilizers. Experts are now predicting fertilizer prices may double as a result of Russia’s ban on fertilizer exports

The long-term answer lies in regenerative biodynamic farming, which does not use any chemical inputs

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In the featured video, “Breaking Points” cohosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti discuss one of the greatest threats currently facing the people of the world, namely food shortages and skyrocketing food prices.

According to a recent NPR report,¹ the global food price index hit its highest recorded level in March 2022, rising 12.6% in a single month.² On average, food prices were one-third higher than in March 2021. In the U.S., food prices rose 9% in 2021, and are predicted to rise another 4.5% to 5% in the next 12 months.³

But while the Ukraine conflict is cited as the primary cause, it’s not the sole reason. Price inflation was already ramping up well before Russia went into Ukraine, thanks to the uncontrolled printing of fiat currencies that occurred in response to the COVID pandemic. Governments’ COVID response have also wreaked havoc with global supply chains, causing disruptions that continue to this day.

The climate has also been uncooperative, causing poor harvests around the world. China, for example, has reported it expects the lowest harvest yields in history this year, thanks to serious flooding of its farmland in the fall of 2021.⁴

Compounding Crises Threaten Global Food Productivity

That said, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is certainly making a bad problem worse. Ukraine is known as “the bread basket” of Europe, responsible for producing and exporting 12% of all food calories traded on the international market. Russia is also a major exporter of food, and together with Ukraine, the two countries account for nearly 30% of global wheat exports, nearly 20% of the world’s corn and more than 80% of the sunflower oil.⁵

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s projections, wheat exports from Russia and Ukraine will be reduced by more than 7 million metric tons in 2022. At the same time, the Ukrainian government has decided to ban all export of wheat, oats, millet, buckwheat and cattle, to ensure food safety for its own people, while Russia has banned exports of fertilizer.⁶

As reported by Wired, the current food crisis in Ukraine is made up of several components, and the effects will have a worldwide rippling effect, thanks to our dependency on global trade:⁷

“Goods that have already been harvested — last autumn’s corn, for instance — can’t be transported out of the country; ports and shipping routes are closed down, and international trading companies have ceased operations for safety. (Plus, while those crops sit in bins, destruction of the country’s power grid takes out the temperature controls and ventilation that keep them from spoiling.)

This year’s wheat, which will be ready in July, can’t be harvested if there’s no fuel for combines and no labor to run them. Farmers are struggling over whether to plant for next season — if they can even obtain seeds and fertilizer, for which supplies look uncertain …

Analysts worry that the countries that buy the most wheat from Ukraine — predominantly in Africa and the Middle East — will have the hardest time paying as prices rise.”

Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist and professor in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois told Wired magazine:⁸

“This crisis is beyond the normal ability to shuffle supplies around. We’ve exploded that system, and the cost is going to be extreme economic pain.”

Serious Fertilizer Shortage Looms

Together, Russia and Belarus provide nearly 40% of the global exports of potash, a key fertilizer ingredient. Russia also exports 48% of the global ammonium nitrate, and combined with Ukraine, they export 28% of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium fertilizers.⁹

Experts are now predicting fertilizer prices may double as a result of Russia’s ban on fertilizer exports. For some farmers, that will be a death knell that causes them to go out of business. The rest will be forced to charge more for their commodities, resulting in skyrocketing food prices.

Biodynamic Solutions

Are there any solutions to this pressing dilemma? I would argue that there are, but it’ll require rapid response and adaptation from farmers everywhere. As explained in “Kiss the Ground,” a documentary about biodynamic farming, a beautiful harmony exists within nature, and we can benefit by tapping into that natural system with biodynamic practices rather than working against it.

As noted in the film, a preview of which is included above, “Biodynamic farming is simply farming in service of life.” While it requires a leap of faith to make the transition, the results speak for themselves. Biodiversity improves rapidly on farms that make the transition, and the quality of the food (and the quality of life of the farmer) is greatly augmented.

Biodynamic agriculture builds upon the foundation of organic farming. That means zero pesticides and synthetic fertilizers are used. But biodynamic then goes a step further. The goal is to make the land better than it was before. It doesn’t just stop the destruction of soil, but actually regenerates it.

The farm as a whole is basically viewed as one organism, where each part of the farm supports the rest. Livestock have their role, as do microorganisms and beneficial insects. Rather than working against you, they’re now working for you to improve the fertility of the soil and the quality of the food grown in it.

Biodynamic farming is really about being a part of nature and working with it rather than trying to conquer nature through unnatural and ultimately destructive means.

Biodynamic farming can also, over time, help stabilize the climate. Not only do biodynamic farmers not pollute the air, water or soil in the first place, but the plants also pull carbon from the air, depositing it back into the soil where it does the most good, and requires far less watering. Regenerative practices also prevent the loss of topsoil and increase rainfall.

For example, regenerative ranchers in Northern Mexico, in the Chihuahuan Desert, who have added 1 million acres of rotational grazing, report getting 15% to 20% more rainfall than their neighbors who haven’t regenerated their land.

Support Biodynamic Farming

Many of the food products we sell under the Mercola brand are produced by Demeter certified biodynamic farmers in eight countries. Demeter is the oldest ecological certification in the world. Most recently, we’ve initiated the first-ever standards for Demeter Certified Biodynamic supplements as well.¹⁰

We also fund the Billion Agave Project, initiated by Regeneration International on a regenerative farm in Mexico run by the Organic Consumers Association. It’s a fantastic solution that solves several problems at once.

This project is a game-changing ecosystem-regeneration and reforestation strategy that uses a combination of agave plants and mesquite (a nitrogen-fixing companion tree), to salvage and regenerate degraded semi-arid lands that aren’t suitable for other crops.

Forty percent of the world is arid or semi-arid and in danger of becoming desert where nothing will grow. But we can reverse this process using native plants and permaculture techniques such as this one.

By taking a limb from a healthy mesquite tree, adding some natural hormones and wrapping the branch with a bag filled with compost, you will, after three to four months, have a small tree ready for planting as new roots grow into the compost-filled bag. At that point, you can either plant it into a container or directly into the soil.

This process is known as “air layering.” A 1-year-old mesquite tree grown in this way will be as big as a 7-year-old mesquite tree grown from seed, significantly speeding up the reforestation effort. The roots of the mesquite tree can burrow hundreds of feet down in search of water, and they in turn provide nutrition for other plants, as they exchange liquid carbon from the tree for the nutrients from the soil.

In this way, the mesquite supports the growth of the agave without need for chemical fertilizers, and the agave can then be used to produce a fermented nutrition-rich biomass that supports grazing livestock that otherwise might not have enough to eat.

A Way to Support Grazing Cattle on Semi-Arid Lands

Agave is best known for producing tequila, but a local farmer in Mexico discovered he could use the massive leaves, which are typically discarded as junk, to produce a nutrient-rich livestock feed. Cows, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and even sheepdogs enjoy it.

The feed is produced by finely chopping up the leaves, each of which can weigh 40 to 80 pounds, and then fermenting them in a closed container. To this fermented mash, you can then add mesquite pods at a ratio of 80% to 90% agave leaf and 10% to 20% mesquite pods. This mix is superior to alfalfa in terms of nutrition, but costs only a third or a quarter of the price.

A big part of the cost-savings is from the reduced water consumption. Alfalfa needs about 26 times more water than agave and mesquite. Most of the animals on the farm eat the natural vegetation and get the agave mash as a supplement.

However, by adding garbanzo beans — another low-water crop — you could produce a feed that the animals could live on exclusively. Considering some areas are now considering culling their livestock herds due to a shortage in cattle feed,¹¹ this could be a novel solution in some instances.

New Market Opportunities

Changing the farming subsidies to prioritize regenerative farming would go a long way to changing the status quo, but private investing is another route to success that is now coming to the fore.

There’s a new type of asset being developed on the stock exchange called Natural Asset Stocks, or Natural Asset Corporations. The government of Costa Rica, for example, is putting all government-owned forests and farmlands into a Natural Asset Corporation.

This is a type of stock different from anything we’ve seen so far. Basically, these stocks will allow fund managers, private investors and corporations to invest in natural assets. The part you end up owning is the ecosystem services of that land.

So, for example, you could own the environmental services resulting from the Billion Agave Project, which include carbon sequestration amounts and water savings. Over time, as the whole system matures and the soils are regenerated, your asset rises in value.

This new asset system will allow Wall Street to divert financial assets into ecosystem assets that benefit the planet in a multitude of ways, and still get a return on their money.

The Organic Consumers Association has also developed a system of verification to go along with this new asset system. Using modern technology, it will be able to accurately measure things like the number and size of plants and the health of the soil.

They’re also using a blockchain accounting system to verify the calculations and make it very difficult to cheat. So, anyone who invests in a natural asset will be able to verify, several years down the road, at a very low cost, whether the asset has improved or degenerated.

Regenerative Farming Could Save the World

A number of people have pushed regenerative farming for decades, warning that the current chemical-dependent monoculture is unsustainable in the long run, and subject to geopolitical disruptions. We’re seeing the reality of those warnings right now.

Had heed been taken sooner, we wouldn’t be in such a precarious position right now. But hindsight is 20/20, and I believe many farmers will now be forced to make the tough choice to make the conversion to biodynamic if they want to survive in the long term.

Their transition is not going to bring immediate help to the global population, as it takes a number of years to turn depleted soils into soils that can support food production without chemical inputs. But we have to start thinking in the longer term if any of us are to survive.

As a nonfarmer, you can support this effort by buying food from regenerative and biodynamic farmers. Regenerative International, incorporated in 2014, has built a global network of regenerative farmers and ranchers, with some 400 affiliates in 60 countries.

You can find a map of these regenerative farms on RegenerationInternational.org. Of course, you can also implement regenerative strategies in your own garden, even if it’s a small one. The future does look bleak at the moment, with food shortages and skyrocketing prices appearing inevitable, but doing nothing is not the answer. We must all start thinking ahead and make wiser choices.

The globalization of food production has led us to the brink of disaster. The answer is to return to locally grown foods. Similarly, our reliance on chemical-dependent monocultures has just been proven to be a weak link that needs to be replaced by regenerative methods that don’t need chemicals to thrive. We have the answers to the problem. We just need to implement them, as rapidly as possible.

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Notes

¹ NPR April 8, 2022

^2, 3, 9 National Interest April 11, 2022

⁴ Bloomberg March 22, 2022

^{5, 6, 7, 8} Wired March 11, 2022

¹⁰ Regeneration International June 25, 2021

¹¹ Reuters March 18, 2022

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***

The Russian Ministry of Defence offer of surrender terms to the personnel of the extreme nationalist neo-Nazi battalions and foreign mercenaries in the Azovstal iron and steel works to end hostilities by 1.00 pm Moscow time on Sunday would only have been a proforma gesture.

Moscow’s statement said, that radio interceptions at Azovstal — as many as 367 in the past twenty-four hours — showed that the militants were in a hopeless situation, practically without food and water, and were seeking permission to lay down arms and surrender but “the Kiev authorities categorically forbid them to do this.”

Yesterday, Denis Pushilin, Head of the Donetsk administration, openly called for “elimination” of the neo-Nazi militants holed up in Azovstal. 

Azovstal is a massive Soviet-era plant, a city within the city of Mariupol. There is an underground city beneath the plant built in the Soviet era which includes Cold-War realities — structures to withstand bombing, blockades, and even nuclear strike. The Russian estimation is that a maximum of 2500 people could be holding out in the underground city equipped with armoured vehicles and huge arsenal of weapons and ammunition. 

The Russian side is in some hurry to finish off the operation in Mariupol. The forces there are are urgently needed to be redeployed to the Donbass front. Kiev, on the other hand, is banking on delaying the Russian operation which gives it more time to reinforce its forces in Donbass. 

President Zelensky has once again switched tack to speak about the diplomatic track. His latest stance is that Ukraine is ready to discuss abandoning its bid to join NATO and the status of Crimea with Russia, but not until Moscow halts hostilities and withdraws its troops! 

The Ukrainian armed forces already lost 23,367 people while 1,464 people surrendered in Mariupol as of yesterday and another 2,500 are blocked at the city’s Azovstal plant. As for the Donbass, Russian forces enjoy superiority in numbers, logistics, firepower and terrain and a defeat on that front will leave Zelensky no choice but to seek a negotiated settlement on Russian terms. (See a relatively balanced prognosis by the American military analyst Colonel (Retd.) Daniel Davis, The Battle For Donbas Will Be A Tough Fight For Ukraine.) 

Indeed, Zelensky and his American mentors hope that the battle for Donbass is wide open. The point is, although much of the war in eastern Ukraine will be fought in areas of open ground, Russian forces also have to take several significant population centres to achieve their objectives in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, including Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Lysychansk, Slovyansk, and Kramatorsk as well as several smaller towns. 

The Russian performance so far does not bode well for rapid success against built-up areas. Again, the weapons provided by the West have helped Ukrainian forces significantly to prevent Russia controlling the skies. The Ukrainian side is counting on these factors to stem the tide of the battle. Plus, of course, their morale is high.  

Be that as it may, this time around, there is no confusion in the Russian mind that a peace settlement is round the corner. The Russians are unlikely to allow themselves to be hoodwinked again, when they took Zelensky for his word, trooped into the talks at Istanbul where an agreement was initialled on the basis of which, in an extravagantly emotional gesture of goodwill, they withdrew troops from Kiev and other northern territories, but only to see their interlocutors in Kiev backtrack on the terms of the agreement. 

The strange Russian behaviour conveyed misperceptions that the Kremlin might be looking for the exit door. Evidently, that has emboldened the Western powers to embark upon a large-scale rearmament project for Ukraine, including transfer of heavy offensive systems, high-precision ammunition, modern air defence systems, American Stinger missiles, etc. for use in the upcoming new phase of military confrontation.

It is an open secret that military personnel of the NATO countries are deployed alongside the Ukrainian forces under the guise of “foreign volunteers.” The foreign fighters are led by US officers and the whole command of the Ukrainian armed forces is concentrated mainly in the hands of the Americans. 

Arguably, the sinking of the warship Moskva fits into this paradigm. Russian analysts estimate that the last week’s missile strike on the Russian flag ship Moskva was actually masterminded and coordinated by the Pentagon. According to the ADS-B Exchange flight tracking site, a US Navy plane with electronic gear was spotted near the village of Zhurilovka in eastern Romania in the vicinity of the stricken ship Moskva (which probably guided the missile attacks.) Read here and here.

The implied message is: ‘Bring ‘em on.’ In military terms, though, the sinking of the ageing warship, 43 years old, may not be a game changer for the Russian operation. Everything now hinges on the offensive in Donbass — and, potentially further Russian operation in Kherson and Odessa without which the NATO will continue to pose acute threat to Russia in the Black Sea region. The NATO is already slouching toward Moldova.

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Featured image: Russian forces take control of strategic city pf Mariupol (Source: IP)

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***

Although the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and other elements of the Ukrainian military are only holding onto a few key areas of Mariupol, Kiev stubbornly does not recognize their inevitable defeat in the port city. Kiev carefully hides its own losses and forces its troops to continue resisting and suffer unjustified losses despite not even having enough ammunition or infantry to continue the battle.

As far back as April 11, writing on Facebook, the Ukrainian 36th Brigade admitted that all infantry soldiers had been killed and that “shootings battles” against Russian forces were now being conducted by artillerymen, anti-aircraft gunners, radio operators, drivers and even the cooks and musicians from the orchestra.

Over a week later and the number of Ukrainian servicemen who remain in Mariupol is not exactly known. According to Russian intelligence, no more than 700 Ukrainian fighters remain inside the last pockets of resistance, including about 200 foreign mercenaries. They hide in the underground facilities of the Azovstal plant with little to no ammunition, medicine and provisions.

Despite having obviously lost contact with its own forces and not wanting to admit the impossibility of their evacuation or sending military reinforcements to help them, Kiev declared the continuation of resistance to the bitter end. In effect, Ukrainian authorities have doomed their soldiers and foreign fighters to a senseless death unless they as individuals make the decision to surrender.

On April 11, during a failed breakthrough, three tanks, five infantry fighting vehicles and seven armored vehicles of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were destroyed. As of April 14, 2,673 people surrendered to the Russian military in the Greek-founded port city, the largest number of people who surrendered since Russian military operation in Donbass began in February.

Although Kiev’s forces have openly announced they will commit war crimes by killing Prisoners of War (PoW) and wounded Russian soldiers, with a video appearing online on March 28 of Ukrainian soldiers doing exactly that, other videos show Russian soldiers feeding captured Ukrainian troops, something that would certainly not appear in the mainstream Western media.

With Western media not reporting as such, this information is still distributed through Ukrainian social media and has resulted in thousands surrendering. Even Western media are struggling to find evidence and testimonies of Ukrainian soldiers being tortured, beaten or humiliated. This is strikingly different from the massacres perpetrated against Russian and Donbass forces.

Ukrainian prisoners are allowed to call their relatives and notify them that they are still alive. In fact, unlike their Russian counterparts, captured Ukrainian PoW’s that are cleared of war crimes are already participating in the clearing of rubble and destruction to clean up cities affected by the war.

An uncomfortable fact for Western mainstream media is that all the so-called “national battalions”, i.e. the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, Tornado and Aidar, are official units of the National Guard of Ukraine, which falls under the command of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. However, during wartime, which means since 2014, the National Guard obeys the orders of the Ukrainian commander-in-chief and the Ministry of Defense, meaning that both the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Guard are professional military outfits.

At the same time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have much greater capabilities, firepower and technical means than the National Guard, and therefore the damage from the actions of the Army in Donbass is much greater. Ukrainian artillerymen have been targeting and killing civilians in Donbass for years,.. This has been extensively reported on by human rights organizations and the United Nations but sidelined and ignored by Western media.

Measures like releasing Ukrainian prisoners to their families after writing a receipt/contract stating that they refuse to participate in further hostilities and pledge not to fight again, so long as they had not previously committed war crimes, may look naïve but it is with the hope of minimizing casualties on both sides and deradicalizing the Far-Right Kiev regime.

Despite the reality that Mariupol has effectively fallen, Kiev is still unwilling to announce a surrender of its forces in the city, effectively dooming hundreds of Ukrainians and foreign fighters to their death. It is not known why Kiev insists on fighting to the last man in Mariupol, but after eight years since Donbass forces failed to capture the city, the domination of the Azov Battalion has effectively come to an end.

Although ignored by Western media, witness testimonies show that the Mariupol-based Azov Battalion enforced Ukrainization on the city’s inhabitants, so-much-so that those speaking Russian were fined, and in the most extreme cases executed, as happened to an ethnic Greek only 10 days before the Russian military operation began on February 24.

With Kiev unwilling to backtrack on its racist extremism and insistence on indiscriminately targeting Donbass civilians, emboldened by the idea that it would have the complete backing of the West, Ukraine has now completely lost access to the Azov Sea with the Russian capture of Mariupol.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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***

 

While the Pentagon and the United States State Department continues to provide a distorted rationale for the instigation of a major military conflict in Eastern Europe, billions of dollars are being utilized to transfer offensive weapons aimed at preventing a peaceful resolution to the current war in Ukraine.

Although the corporate and government-controlled media outlets in Western Europe and North America have reported to the public on a daily basis that their own administrations cannot be blamed for the current war in Ukraine, for any serious observer, the culpability for the tensions now existence on an international level can be traced back to the desire by imperialism to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

NATO was formed in 1949 in the aftermath of the Second World War and the initiation of the Cold War by Washington against the rising socialist and national liberation movements around the world. In 1949, only two countries on the African continent were independent, Ethiopia and Liberia. Both of these countries in 1949 were highly compromised due to the intervention of the United States and Britain in their internal affairs stemming from the legacy of African enslavement and the rise of imperialist fascism during the 1920s and 1930s. The founding members of NATO were all in North America and Western Europe being Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.

Many of these states were involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade and colonialism. All of them benefited from the super-exploitation of African and other oppressed peoples after the transformation of the world economic system beginning in the 15th century. The outcomes of the World War I and World War II left the U.S. as the dominant imperialist power in the world.

The only real and effective challenge to the hegemony of the U.S. and its allies during the post WWII period were the socialist states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the People’s Republic of China (PRC) founded in 1949 after more than two decades of armed struggle, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) consolidated in 1948, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north which declared independence in August 1945, along with the other anti-capitalist, anti-colonial and anti-neo-colonial movements arising in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America, which were objectively bolstered by the burgeoning African American and workers’ struggles which developed during the late 1940s and 1950s.

The position of the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s represented the height of political hypocrisy. African Americans were being denied fundamental civil rights protections which were originally put in place during the period after the Civil War (1861-1865). There were Civil Acts and amendments to the U.S. Constitution between 1866-1875 ostensibly designed to reconstruct some semblance of democratic governance. Nonetheless, the Reconstruction process was overthrown during the latter decades of the 19th century placing African Americans in the social position of neo-slavery at worst and second-class citizenship at best.

Participants in the leading civil rights organizations after WWII were pressured to denounce the socialist camp and pledge allegiance to U.S. imperialism as the only legitimate system of governance not only domestically but internationally. Those leading activists and public figures who refused to adopt the Cold War policies of Washington were subjected to investigations, prosecution, imprisonment, economic isolation and exile. All the while African Americans were being lynched by mobs, killed without justification by police, executed by the state and denied fundamental due process and equal protection under the law.

Military Interventions to Halt National Liberation

Two examples of repression and mass killings by countries in the aftermath of WWII were carried out in French-controlled Algeria and the British-dominated Gold Coast (later known as Ghana after independence in 1957). These acts by the colonial powers were designed to preserve imperialist rule in Africa. Both Britain and France were founding members of NATO.

In Algeria on the same day as Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied forces, French troops massacred thousands of people across the North African state for merely demonstrating against the racist and repressive policies of Paris. France had colonized Algeria since 1830 and would not relinquish control until the people waged an eight-year armed and diplomatic struggle aimed at national liberation.

Even France24 in a report published during 2021 said of the historical event: “On May 8, 1945, thousands had rallied in Setif as allied powers, including colonial ruler France, marked a hard-won victory in Europe over Nazi Germany. ‘Long live the allied victory,’ demonstrators shouted.

But the festive gathering soon turned into a demonstration for an end to colonial rule, with cries of ‘Long live independent Algeria!’ That was a provocation for French police, incensed by the appearance, for the first time, of Algerian flags. As they ordered the removal of the green and white standards, scuffles broke out. Demonstrator Bouzid Saal, 22, refused to drop his flag — so a French policeman shot him dead. Outrage tore through the massive crowd. The ensuing riots and revenge attacks on Europeans sparked a wave of repression by French authorities that left as many as 45,000 dead, according to Algerian official figures. French historians put the toll at up to 20,000, including 86 European civilians and 16 soldiers. The killings would have a transformative impact on the nascent anti-colonial movement. A full-blown independence war broke out nine years later, finally leading to the country’s independence in 1962…. The French launched a 15-day campaign of violence, targeting Setif and the surrounding rural region, bombing villages and hamlets indiscriminately. General Raymond Duval led French authorities’ ruthless clampdown, imposing martial law and a curfew on a patch of territory stretching from Setif to the sea, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north. Nationalist leaders were detained on pure suspicion, and villages suspected of harboring separatists were strafed by the air force and set ablaze. Women, children and the elderly were massacred, and some 44 villages were destroyed in 15 days of retribution. Executions continued until November 1945, and some 4,000 people were arrested.” (See this)

Of course, the official propaganda of the U.S. is that the purpose of their intervention in WWII was to fight against fascism and spread democracy in Europe. Yet the Allies utilized repression in an attempt to prevent the majority of people around the globe suffering under the yoke of western domination from achieving freedom and national independence.

In recent months the Algerian government has been involved in a diplomatic row with France as well as Spain over the legacy of colonialism and the status of the Western Sahara, which remains under the control of the Kingdom of Morocco with the support of the imperialist centers of authority in Europe and North America. French President Emmanuel Macron made statements suggesting that Algeria as a country did not exist prior to 1830 and the history of the anti-colonial movement, as told by Algiers, were a fabrication. These provocative comments by Macron and the role of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez who endorsed the continued colonization of the Western Sahara under Moroccan tutelage, represents the contemporary attitude of NATO member-states.

The second example related to the founding NATO member-states’ historic repression against anti-colonial movements occurred in the Gold Coast on February 28, 1948. African veterans of the war combined with traditional leaders boycotting the inflated prices of British-controlled goods, held peaceful protests to request adequate pensions and benefits for their military service for London as well as reasonable costs for commodities. British security forces opened fire on the demonstrators marching to Christiansborg Castle (Osu) to present their petition to colonial authorities when three leaders of the protest were assassinated. Later as the African masses rose up in rebellion against the massacre, the British arrested scores of people deemed as the organizers of the unrest. This series of events in 1948 led to the independence struggle headed by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah who founded the Convention People’s Party in June 1949, just over one year later, creating the conditions for another eight-year campaign to achieve freedom from Britain on March 6, 1957.

Nkrumah had been brought back to the Gold Coast in late 1947 to work as an organizer for the then United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), an anti-colonial grouping. In the aftermath of the event of February 1948, sharp differences would surface between Nkrumah and other leading UGCC officials.

A source on the events of 1948 in the Gold Coast notes:

“The people’s protests lasted five days. By 1st March the colonial governor had declared a state of emergency and put in place a new Riot Act. On 12th March the governor ordered the arrest of ‘The Big Six,’ leading members of the UGCC, which included Kwame Nkrumah, as he believed they were responsible for orchestrating the disturbances. The Big Six were incarcerated in remote northern parts of the country. It was around this time that Nkrumah and the other five began to have significant disagreements over the direction of the movement for independence. By 1949 Nkrumah had broken away from the UGCC to form the Convention People’s Party (CPP) taking the masses of the people with him. The CPP, through a campaign of ‘Positive Action,’ achieved an end to the Gold Coast colony and brought the new dawn of independent Ghana on 6th March 1957.” (See this)

The independence movements in Africa utilized various forms of organizational tactics aimed at achieving victory over colonialism. In the former Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola, Africans had no other choice than to resort to arms in their fight against Lisbon. Portugal received maximum logistical and diplomatic support from NATO in their war against the national liberation movements of the PAIGC, MPLA and FRELIMO in Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique respectively.

Azores island in the Atlantic served as a NATO base of operations against the guerrilla movements in Africa. Under the U.S. administration of President Richard Nixon from 1969-1974, the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger even wrote memorandums encouraging the Pentagon and NATO unconditional support for fascist-colonial Portugal. These memoranda were also designed to undermine the morale of the liberation movements and solidarity efforts in the West seeking to end colonial rule of tens of millions of African people.

After the failure of the war by Lisbon to defeat the liberation movements, a military coup occurred in Portugal in April 1974. Although the question of NATO membership did not initially arise, a debate would erupt over the future role of the country within the military alliance. Portugal relinquished control over its African colonies, however, the European country remained within the western sphere of influence including membership in NATO.

NATO and Imperialism in the 21st Century

Over the last two decades, NATO has enhanced its profile through participation in numerous U.S.-coordinated military operations in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya. These interventions have left untold numbers of civilians and government personnel dead, injured and displaced.

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Yugoslavia erupted in micro-nationalist warfare which lasted until the conclusion of the decade. The 1999 bombing of Serbia, including the capital of Belgrade, was designed to solidify the dominance of the Pentagon-NATO alliance in Europe and consequently throughout broader geo-political regions of the world. Serbia was subjected to massive airstrikes for over two months. The following year, even after the government in Belgrade had been functionally neutralized, then President Slobodan Milosevic was overthrown, kidnapped and brought to the Netherlands to stand trial in a U.S.-engineered special tribunal on war crimes. Milosevic later died in detention while in subsequent years, several of the newly-independent states in the area were recruited into NATO.

Source: Global Times

Afghanistan in 2001 was bombed, invaded and occupied by the U.S. which mobilized other NATO states to engage in the 20-year war ostensibly aimed at ending jihadist terrorism in Central Asia. After eight months in office President Joe Biden ordered the withdrawal of Pentagon forces from Afghanistan. Other NATO states had already exited the country. The character of the pullout from Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of 13 Marines stationed outside the airport at Kabul during the evacuation.

In retaliation, the U.S. launched a drone strike on innocent people in Kabul killing members of a family which had cooperated with the NATO occupation. At present, there is a widespread humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan leaving millions displaced, impoverished and hungry. To add even more distress to the Afghan people, Biden expropriated $3.5 billion in assets being held in U.S. banks. Consequently, the White House has turned its back on the victims of a disastrous NATO intervention and occupation leaving tens of millions without employment, food, medicines and the capacity to generate income and international trade. (See this)

This humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan by the Pentagon and NATO has served to further damage the popular standing of the Biden presidency. Nonetheless, there has been no reduction in the Pentagon budget which strangles the working and oppressed masses in the U.S. At present the war in Ukraine has taken center stage in regard foreign and domestic policy. Countries around the world are being pressured into rallying alongside imperialism in its war drive to expand the NATO project through the destabilization of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China in the Far East.

In the North African state of Libya during the early months of 2011, the U.S. backed counter-revolutionary rebel elements sought to overthrow the Jamahiriya government led by Col. Muammar Gaddafi. The United Nations Security Council at the time voted to pass two resolutions which authorized a total arms and economic blockade against Libya as well as the establishment of a so-called no-fly zone which is merely another form of war declaration. A similar no-fly zone had been imposed over Iraq during the 1990s accompanied by draconian sanctions which killed an estimated one million people, many of whom were women, children and seniors. (See this)

After the ground operations in Libya, which began on February 17 were not reaping the desired results by imperialism, a massive blanket bombing of the oil-rich country by the Pentagon and NATO was launched on March 19 which lasted for seven months. There were reports that anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000 people were killed and two million displaced. The longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi was targeted and assassinated as he was attempting to exit the areas around Sirte.

The impact of the destruction of Libya as in the cases of Yugoslavia and Afghanistan had regional and international implications. Instability due to the dislocation of millions during and after the air campaign fueled further destabilization in neighboring Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad.

Libya since 2011 has become a notorious center for human trafficking and internecine conflict that has spilled over into other states prompting migration across the Mediterranean into Southern Europe. The human traffickers engage in dangerous methods of transportation across North Africa and the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands die every year seeking to escape the detention centers and continuing sectarian battles in Libya.

The migration of Africans and Asians to Southern Europe has provided a political rationale for the growth of ultra-right groupings and governments committed to ending entry into their countries by people of color. European Union (EU) coast guard units routinely intercept migrants at sea to repatriate them back to Africa. In Europe, migrants are often confined to detention centers where they are harassed by the authorities.

Moreover, on a political electoral level, the migration question has become a major wedge issue in Europe and the U.S. Successive administrations in Washington led by Democrats and Republicans have failed to develop a comprehensive immigration policy. At least part of this inability to adequately address the issue lies in the refusal to abandon the imperialist foreign policy of Washington and Wall Street.

Imperialist wars of occupation since 2001 involving Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Syria, Yemen, Libya, among other states, are at the root of the dislocation of tens of millions. This is the largest number of refugees and internally displaced persons since the conclusion of WWII.

The UN Refugee Agency reports on its website that:

“At least 82.4 million people around the world have been forced to flee their homes. Among them are nearly 26.4 million refugees, around half of whom are under the age of 18. There are also millions of stateless people, who have been denied a nationality and lack access to basic rights such as education, health care, employment and freedom of movement. At a time when 1 in every 95 people on earth has fled their home as a result of conflict or persecution, our work at UNHCR is more important than ever before.”

These figures are rarely reported on in the U.S. media, and when they are, it is not done in a manner which links the unprecedented levels of displacement with imperialist wars waged by the Pentagon, NATO and its allies around the globe. Absent a social and historical context in which to explain the origins of the crisis, people are encouraged to believe that the refugee, IDP and migrant situations are somehow a result of the purported moral deficiencies of people in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Yet the African, Latin American and Asian geo-political regions are still being targeted by NATO for containment, exploitation and conquest.

By absolving itself of culpability, the U.S. can attempt to justify its denial of entry to migrants and refugees and their discriminatory treatment while awaiting a decision on whether they can legally live in the country. Within the immigration laws and policies of the U.S., racism is often utilized to limit the number of peoples of African, Asian and Latin American descent into the U.S.

In the Horn of Africa state of Somalia there has been instability for the last three decades due to the political and military interference of the U.S. and NATO. More recently in 2006-2007, the administration of President George W. Bush encouraged troops from Ethiopia under the TPLF-EPRDF leadership of Meles Zenawi to invade Somalia in order to prevent the consolidation of power by the Islamic Courts Union.

Airstrikes by the Pentagon and the British Royal Air Force were initiated on a regular base in Somalia under the guise of preventing terrorism. Numerous attempts to form a unified civilian transitional government have not been able to include the Al-Shabaab underground armed guerrillas. Al-Shabaab has since its emergence as the major opponents to the western-backed federal government, has split into at least two identifiable factions.

For the last fifteen years, the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), which included troops from several regional states including Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Uganda, has failed to military defeat al-Shabaab. Once again in recent weeks, the mandate of AMISOM was extended for another year with no real prospect of a final resolution to the conflict in Somalia.

Much of the military training and weaponry are supplied by the U.S. and its NATO allies for AMISOM. The putative peacekeeping operations also maintains UN Security Council diplomatic backing and funding. U.S. soldiers and other personnel working with intelligence agencies have been killed in action in Somalia. Suicide bombings and other armed attacks take place in several areas of the country including the capital of Mogadishu.

Relationships developed between AU member states with the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and NATO are not just on a bilateral basis. NATO itself has outlined an extensive program of engagement, training and collaboration with the AU Secretariat in Addis Ababa. The same reasons cited by AFRICOM for its deployments of thousands of troops on the continent mirrors the language of NATO. Both institutions claim that they are invited to participate in joint training exercises with African military forces from various regions.

In addition, a significant number of African officers are trained in Pentagon war colleges in the U.S. Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, some of these ranking soldiers have been involved in military coups against elected governments. This has been the case in Mali, Guinea and Libya where internal conflict and lack of democratization is objectively underwritten by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

AU-affiliated regional organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have been unable to reverse a series of military coups taking place in Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad. ECOWAS along with France and the U.S. have issued statements opposing the military usurpation of power yet these coup regimes remain in office with absolute impunity.

Therefore, the training supplied by the Pentagon and NATO cannot ensure stability and security on the African continent. In order for AU member-states to achieve genuine independence and sovereignty it must come from the internal dynamics within the political structures established by the democratic forces operating inside these countries. The western bourgeois democracies represented by NATO have never extended the notions of self-determination and independent foreign policies to the underdeveloped nations and regions of the world.

In language provided by NATO in regard to its cooperation with AU member-states, the military alliance says:

“Since 2005, NATO has been cooperating with the African Union (AU) – a regional organization with 55 members created in 2002. The NATO-AU relationship started modestly with AU requests for logistics and airlift support for its mission in Sudan. The cooperation has evolved over time and, although primarily based on ad-hoc military-technical cooperation, NATO Allies are committed to expanding cooperation with the AU to make it an integral part of NATO’s efforts to work more closely with partners in tackling security challenges emanating from the south.” (See this)

However, over the last 17 years the degree of instability in Africa has heightened substantially particularly since the Pentagon-NATO engineered counter-revolution in Libya during 2011. Conditions have deteriorated in some countries such as the Central African Republic and Mali that the governments of these states, even the military juntas, are turning towards Moscow for security assistance and training. (See this)

France and the U.S. have taken great exception to the presence of Russian-based military advisors in the CAR and Mali. The Wagner group, a defense services corporation which operates as a private enterprise, has been present in Mali in recent months prompting threats by Paris to withdraw its military assistance to Bamako. In response, the military junta in Mali ordered the French ambassador to leave the West African state within 72 hours. (See this)

In the same above-quoted NATO document on AU cooperation, it goes on to emphasize:

“In January 2007, the AU made a general request to all partners, including NATO, for financial and logistical support to AMISOM. It later made a specific request to NATO in May 2007, requesting strategic airlift support for AU member states willing to deploy in Somalia under AMISOM. In June 2007, the North Atlantic Council (NAC) agreed, in principle, to support this request and NATO’s support was initially authorized until August 2007. Strategic sealift support was requested at a later stage and agreed in principle by the NAC in September 2009. The AU’s strategic airlift and sealift support requests for AMISOM have been renewed on an annual basis. The current NAC agreement to support the AU with strategic air- and sealift for AMISOM extends until January 2022…. NATO has a liaison office at the headquarters of the AU. The liaison office is comprised of a Senior Military Liaison Officer, a Deputy and one support staff. The liaison office provides, at the AU’s request, subject matter experts, who work in the AU’s Political Affairs, Peace and Security Department alongside African counterparts. The NATO Senior Military Liaison Officer is the primary coordinator for the Alliance’s activities with the AU. The size of NATO’s presence on the ground in Addis Ababa is based upon the requests from the AU and the availability of resources from Allies.”

How can the AU member-states secure and protect the interests of the 1.3 billion people on the continent with these levels of penetration by NATO within its military structures? These contradictions must be corrected in order to build viable internal defense mechanisms, combined with strategies and tactics which are compatible with the needs of the workers, youth and farmers in Africa. Neo-colonialism is manifested in the economic and subsequent military policies of contemporary African states. The source of what is described as “Islamic terrorism” has its origins in the counterinsurgency efforts by Washington to undermine those governments seeking to build genuine independence, unity and socialism. The jihadist groupings founded and funded by Washington and its allies serve the interests of the Pentagon and NATO by providing a rationale for sanctions, bombings, invasions and the installation of puppet regimes beholden to the interests of imperialism.

Global Impact of NATO Expansion in Eastern Europe: Food Deficits and Energy Crises

One of the most alarming aspects of the war in Ukraine and the ongoing sanctions against the Russian Federation are the sharp rise in prices for consumer goods and energy. Fuel prices in the state of California in the U.S. have gone up to as high as $6 per gallon. In other regions of the country, prices are coming down slightly, perhaps due to the release by the Biden administration of millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), a tactic which has been used by other presidents in the past.

The U.S. has witnessed the highest inflation rate in over 40 years. The 7-8% rate noted by the federal government does not tell the complete story. Costs related to living expenses such as rents, taxes, car prices, food and other commodities have increased substantially. Since there has not been a raise in the minimum wage means that working people are losing income every single quarter of the year.

On an international scale, food supplies to various geo-political regions have been seriously curtailed because Russia and Ukraine are considered two of the largest agricultural producers in the world. In various African and Middle Eastern states, the potential for enormous food deficits is more than apparent. These countries are attempting to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic since early 2020 which caused serious disruptions in industrial and agricultural production. Lockdowns and the rapid spread of the coronavirus has caused millions of deaths and many more severe illnesses which often have long term public health, economic and social consequences.

One report on the escalating crisis in food supplies published by the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington pointed out that:

“Russia and Ukraine are considered the breadbaskets of the world. In 2021, the two countries exported more than one-quarter of the world’s wheat. They are both major suppliers of corn, sunflower seed oil, and barley; Russia is also a major supplier of fertilizer, which is critical for agricultural production. Food prices are soaring, exacerbating inflation rates and reducing the purchasing power of populations across the Middle East and Africa, where 70% of Russian wheat exports went in 2021. These escalating costs, fed by actual and anticipated scarcity, are exacerbating economic crises for Egypt and Lebanon, with a heavy reliance on Russian and Ukrainian wheat imports, and imperiling vulnerable populations in conflict zones, including Yemen, Syria, and Somalia, which heavily rely on emergency food aid.”

NATO war impacts African states (Source: Statista)

In the energy sector the banning of Russian oil and natural gas in Western Europe are inevitably causing disruptions in supply. Opportunistically the U.S. has proposed a plan to redirect its energy supplies to NATO countries in Eastern and Western Europe. However, this process. which is highly unfeasible, will take time to develop the necessary supplies of oil and natural gas to those states which have adopted Washington’s foreign policy.

Sanctions above all else are acts of war. The attempted strangulation of countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Russia and China, etc. are designed to destabilize these states and to make them susceptible to regime change in favor of the U.S. and other NATO governments. Russia, China and a host of other states have vowed to resist these efforts to isolate them from world trade and international relations.

The New York-based think tank, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), acknowledged the strategic role of Russia in providing energy resources to European states. An article on the CFR website reveals:

“Overall, Russia supplies about one-third of European natural gas consumption, used for winter heating as well as electricity generation and industrial production. The European Union (EU) also turns to Russia for more than one-quarter of its crude oil imports, the bloc’s largest single energy source. Some EU states are far more dependent than others. Portugal and Spain use little Russian energy, while Germany, the largest European economy, gets more than half of its natural gas and more than 30 percent of its crude oil supplies from Russia. France gets most of its electricity from nuclear power but still relies on Russian imports to meet its fossil fuel needs. Analysts say plans in Germany and other countries to phase out nuclear and coal power could increase this dependence.”

These factors portend much for the economic and consequent political future of the capitalist and imperialist governments in Europe. The disruptions in food and energy supplies perpetuated by the foreign policy imperatives of Washington and Wall Street will have ramifications far beyond the theater of war in Ukraine and Russia.

The Need for a New Security System in Europe

Undoubtedly, the Biden administration is failing again in its efforts to enhance the electoral prospects for the upcoming midterm elections. Can the war propaganda against Russia and China be enough to ensure the maintenance of a majority for the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives and the Senate which will be seated in January 2023?

EU countries would be in a much better position if they rebuffed the pressures exerted by the White House and State Department by initiating its own diplomatic overtures towards Russia and China aimed at developing a more reasonable approach to regional security on that continent. European historians should be fully aware of the dangers of another imperialist war.

The uncertainty generated by the war in Ukraine on an international scale could very well result in a similar and perhaps more costly defeat for U.S. foreign policy. This coupled with the lack of a social spending strategy absent legislative action by Congress could doom the second half of the Biden administration to a paralyzing gridlock positioning the Republican Right for a resurgence of dominance along with the potential for a second Trump presidency.

Working and oppressed people in the U.S. are compelled to unite on an independent basis to end the war drive of the ruling class and its surrogates in the political superstructure. The actual impediments to the realization of a just and equitable society in the U.S. are not to be found in Moscow, Beijing and Tehran. These U.S.-based class enemies of the majority domestically and globally have a vested interest in maintaining the Pentagon-NATO budget to facilitate the continuing exploitation of the peoples of the world.

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Author’s Note:

This paper was prepared and delivered in part to a webinar entitled: “The Case Against NATO” which featured presentations from various scholars and activists around the world. The speakers, in addition to Abayomi Azikiwe, were Carlos Run, the Venezuelan Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America and the President of the Simon Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity Among Peoples; Kate Hudson, the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; Jenny Clegg, former lecturer in International Studies and long-time China specialist; Chris Matlhako, the 2nd Deputy General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the General Secretary of the Friends of Cuba Society and member of the South African Peace Initiative; Prof. Qingsi of the Renmin University in China; and moderator Prof. Radhika Desai of the Department of Political Studies and the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. The entire webinar can be viewed at this website.

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

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“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.” —Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (paperback, hardcover, Kindle, audiobook)

I am writing to urge No votes on AB2098, SB1390, AB1797, SB1464, SB871, SB866, and SB1479, and part of a decalogue of medical tyranny bills (down to seven now that SB1184 passed on April 5 while AB 1993 and the HIPAA-violating SB 920 were pulled).

AB2098 threatens to strip physicians and surgeons of their licenses for “unprofessional conduct,” which it defines as:

“disseminat[ing] or promot[ing] misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.”

Similarly, SB1390 criminalizes the “amplification of harmful content” on social media platforms.

Who is to decide what is “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “false,” “misleading,” or “harmful”? To claim the State has the right to override medically trained physicians is to subject medical science to political science, consequently putting not only individual patients but all of humanity at grave risk.

You would be fulfilling Carl Sagan’s darkest fears, which have already become manifest over the past two years of politically-formulated COVID absolutism:

“We’ve arranged the society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is gonna blow up in our faces.…

“Science is more than a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan—political or religious—who comes ambling along.”

Passing AB2098 and SB1390 would establish a totalitarian Ministry of Truth, and none but the bravest would dare speak against the authoritarian edicts of political forces, themselves lavishly funded by corporations whose bottom line takes precedent over human rights and patients’ health.

Orwell describes this totalistic hubris as follows:

“At all times the Party is in possession of absolute truth, and clearly the absolute can never have been different from what it is now.”

Over the past two years, every single COVID policy championed by tyrants, “experts,” colluders, and Covidians yielded grotesque profits for megacorporations; dictatorial powers for governments; and enormous losses of life, health, and rights for individuals.

The more research and data that has accumulated, the more evident it has become that the physicians who courageously challenged the propaganda machine were correct, while the policymakers were deadly wrong.

Let’s look at a few examples:

1. Masks: FAIL
2. Lockdowns: FAIL
3. Experimental injectable products (“vaccines”): FAIL
4. Anti–early treatment protocols: FAIL
5. Anti–natural immunity: FAIL
6. Discrimination against the unvaccinated: FAIL
7. Censoring information that contradicts the narrative: FAIL
8. Abrogating human rights in the name of the public good: FAIL
9. Incentivizing lethal CDC hospitalization protocols: FAIL
10. Turning the world into an open-air prison: FAIL

Indeed, the chiseled commandments issued from on high by the WHO, NIH, CDC, and FDA were so catastrophic, it’s like they were designed to fail.

Even Anthony “The Science” Fauci agreed with the traditional health recommendations these truth-telling doctors advocated before he contorted his decrees to fit political and profiteering aims:

If the doctors you want to strip of their licenses had formulated public health policies, there would have been little to no loss of life due to COVID or any of the additional interventions that have caused what has been described as the “worst-ever excess mortality … in history.”

Life insurance and health insurance companies have seen spiraling fatalities and injuries, including a 40-percent increase in mortality in the 18–64 group—a 12-sigma event—and an 84-percent increase in Millennial deaths (25–44) according to a former Blackrock portfolio manager. The funeral industry, on the other hand, is booming. Embalmers are also finding never-before-seen “white worm-like elastic clots in cadavers.”

When world-renowned pathologists conducted autopsies on several of the innumerable people who have died suddenly, 93 percent of those deaths were found to have been caused by the injectable product sold as our salvation.

The CDC’s adverse events reporting system supports this conclusion, having received 1,216,787 reports (including 26,693 deaths and 46,317 reports for kids) associated with these products through April 1, 2022.

The injuries millions of victims are experiencing are excruciatingly real, not rare. Athletes have been hit particularly hard, witnessing record-high numbers of deaths, injuries, and dropouts due to health issues such as myocarditis.

California’s excess mortality is especially shameful at 13.5 percent in 2020 with 38,799 excess deaths. The year the injectable products were introduced, 2021, saw an even greater increase in excess mortality at 18.7 percent or 52,278 deaths beyond the expected number.

Even though we’re only a few months into 2022, California’s excess mortality has already reached 19.9 percent—that’s 12,947 unexpected deaths in the first quarter alone.

Children are especially at risk; British children, for example, were found to be 54 timesmore likely to die if injected. For these and the reasons outlined in Letter to a Governing Body and Letter to a Tyrant, you must vote No on SB871, SB866, and SB1479, all of which put children’s lives and long-term health at risk.

And there are the Pfizer clinical trial documents gradually being released due to an FOIA request by attorney Aaron Siri’s team. Initially, the FDA (which, incidentally, received $2,875,842 from Pfizer for their application) wanted 55 years to release the data, and then they had the gall to ask for 75 years.

Fortunately, the judge rejected this request and ordered the FDA to release the documents at a rate of 55,000 pages per month. The pages that have been released to date reveal the FDA knew over a year ago that Pfizer/BioNTech’s product was associated with 1,223 deaths in the first 90 days, 158,000 adverse events, and 1,291 side effects, many of which are not only debilitating but life-threatening. They also show both Pfizer and the FDA were aware their experimental gene therapy product was associated with menstrual cycle disruption and miscarriages.

Here is a three-minute video of a nurse reacting to the nine pages’ worth of side effects released in the data dump. Long-time vaccine proponent and nurse educator Dr. John Campbell was appalled by the Pfizer documents and has subsequently realized he and others have been egregiously deceived. Dr. Chris Martenson also provides an accessible walk-through of the pages that had been released at the time of filming.

This Canadian COVID Care Alliance presentation uses Pfizer’s own data to prove their product is both unsafe and ineffective.

Additionally, life-saving early treatment protocols were libeled because their long-term safety records and demonstrable efficacy threatened pharmaceutical corporations’ ability to secure the emergency use authorizations (EUAs) that guaranteed them immunity from liability for any harm caused by their experimental products. Simultaneously, necrotic medications like remdesivir and noxious protocols like intubation/ventilation were financially incentivized, and deaths “with” (not “from”) COVID were tallied to inflate the COVID death count and buttress the fear-whipping propaganda being used to justify the worldwide push to authoritarianism.

COVID policies such as lockdowns resulted in small businesses being macerated by big-box and online stores. They also caused profound psychological harm and skyrocketing suicides, deaths of despair, and drug overdoses. More than 100 millionadditional people were plunged into famine and poverty—all while billionaires funneled trillions into their bank accounts during “the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the elites in history.”

The average citizen doesn’t hear anything about these pernicious repercussions because the billion-dollar-bribed legacy media, Big Tech, and governments connived with BigPharma to conceal the sky-falling evidence about the lethality and inefficacyof these injections, aided by corrupt regulatory-captured agencies like the FDA, CDC, and NIH.

History has repeatedly shown that when policy is guided by political science instead of medical science, people die. Lots of people.

As Groucho Marx said:

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.”

If you care about saving lives and protecting the health of California citizens, you must begin listening to the physicians who have been censored and silenced—not blacklisting them like AB2098 proposes.

AB1797’s proposal to develop an immunization tracking system would grant all government agencies access to citizens’ vaccination records. If you want a glimpse of the dystopian surveillance state this bill would contribute to the creation of, watch this video of a drone telling the Shanghai COVID prisoners:

“Residents of Jiuting. During the pandemic, we request that you strictly abide by COVID-19 restrictions and related guidelines. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing. This increases the risk of COVID-19 transmission.”

As seen on Weibo: Shanghai residents go to their balconies to sing & protest lack of supplies. A drone appears: “Please comply w covid restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.” https://t.co/0ZTc8fznaV pic.twitter.com/pAnEGOlBIh

— Alice Su (@aliceysu) April 6, 2022

SB1464 threatens to withhold state funding from law enforcement agencies and reallocate those funds to the county public health department if the agency “publicly announces that they will oppose, or adopts a policy to oppose, a public health order.”

This is the most Gestapo proposal of all these fascistic bills and would coerce sheriffs and law officers to potentially violate their conscience in the name of what have already been demonstrated to be calamitous public health policies.

Martin Luther King Jr. had something to say about such unconscionable behavior:

“There are just laws and there are unjust laws. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

So why is it that Assembly Member Evan Low, Senator Richard Pan, Assembly Member Akilah Weber, Senator Scott Wiener, and Senator Dave Cortese have introduced such a treacherous set of bills?

Could it have something to do with being beholden to their pharmaceutical donors and corporate paymasters?

We know, for example, that the pharmaceutical industry has a record of committing fraud, knowingly keeping asbestos in its baby powder for decades, and peddling heart-stopping drugs like Vioxx, whose manufacturer even drew up a hit list for doctors who heroically attempted to expose the carnage wreaked by this drug:

“During a class-action case in Australia over Merck’s heart-attack and stroke-inducing drug, Vioxx, it was revealed that a ‘doctor hit list’ circulated within the ranks of the hierarchy. This list contained names the doctors who spoke out against the drug using labels such as ‘neutralize,’ ’neutralized,’ and ‘discredit.’ During the testimony, Julian Burnside, QC, acting for the plaintiff, read one email from a Merck employee that said, ‘We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live.’

“Also reported in the Australian were documents that surfaced in the Federal Court in the Melbourne hearing regarding the criminal intent of Merck staffers who admitted they intended to ‘stop funding to institutions’ and ‘interfere with academic appointments.’”

—Milanda Rout, “Vioxx Maker Merck and Co Drew Up Doctor Hit List,” April 1, 2009, The Australian, cited in Dissolving Illusions (paperback, Kindle, audiobook)

But these pharmaceutical corporations with an uninterrupted history of murderous coverups, fraud, bribery, corruption, extortion, and exploitation are all miraculously on the side of good instead of being profit-drunk psychopaths now, right … right? Yeah, right.

Perusing Open Secrets, we learn Assembly Member Low has garnered funding from pharmaceutical-industry–serving EcoLab, Inc., which has its own WEF pagedescribing it as “a trusted partner at nearly 3 million customer locations,” as well as KPMG LLP, which also has a WEF page and appeared at Davos 2019 and Davos 2020.

Amazon, FedEx, and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings have all donated to one or more of these politicians (e.g., Hastings to Low, Pan, and Wiener).

What do these multinational corporations have in common? Let’s just say they all profited magnificently from pandemic protocols—Netflix making record profits in 2020, FedEx nearly tripling its income, and Amazon tripling its profits in the first quarter of 2021 alone.

Weber collected nearly a million dollars in donations and PAC money, including:

“a $200,000 check from the California Medical Association, $100,000 each from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America IEC and the California Dental Association Independent Expenditure PAC …”

Those organizations also benefit from continuing and escalating the unsafe and ineffective COVID protocols and despotic measures these proposed bills seek to deliver.

Frédéric Bastiat writes:

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

If you are one of the rare uncorrupted politicians in possession of moral character, independent thought, compassion, wisdom, sanity, reason, respect for science, and a backbone, you will vote No on each of these venal, tyrannical bills.

Otherwise, be prepared to say goodbye to the few remaining Californians—including your most skilled, knowledgeable, and ethical physicians and surgeons—as they hightail it to a free state that respects their rights and protects their health like Florida.

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The United States’ and NATO’s so-called “lethal aid” to the post-Maidan regime in Kiev is in no way breaking news. It has been going on for nearly a decade now and has directly contributed to the mass murder of around 15,000 people in Donbass. In addition to weapons, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have received top-level training by the US, UK and other NATO militaries. In recent months, these arms deliveries have skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. In addition to thousands, even tens of thousands of antitank guided missiles (ATGMs) and man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), the “Javelin” and “Stinger” missiles being the most prominent examples, Ukraine also received thousands of drones and loitering munitions.

Apart from weapons, the North Atlantic Alliance has also mobilized its vast ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities and is relaying battlefield information to the Kiev regime. It remains to be seen how effective this is, given the collapse of Kiev’s joint military command and control structure, but it definitely shows the West’s commitment to their favorite regime. In other words, the US has been involved in every conceivable way, except for a direct shooting war with Russia. However, even that may change in the coming days and weeks.

The Kiev regime recently passed a law officially allowing foreign citizens to serve in its intelligence and higher echelons of military hierarchy. Of course, this doesn’t seem like news flash to most people, especially given that US intelligence has been heavily involved in Ukraine for decades. However, coupled with the recent Kiev’s request for the MQ-9 “Reaper” unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), this may be much bigger news than what the mainstream media is reporting. These US MQ-9 “Reaper” drones are infamous for sowing death and destruction across the world, with former US President Obama authorizing at least 6,000 documented drone strikes around the world (the actual number may be orders of magnitude greater), which would make it approximately 2 drone strikes per day during Obama’s 8 years of presidency.

And this is when we get to the connection between Kiev’s new law and the drones. The transfer of the MQ-9 “Reaper” is useless without the necessary training for the drone operators. This alone takes over two months, which is the time the Kiev regime simply doesn’t have. In order to make any possible difference, these drones would need to be used as soon as humanly possible. So, which other options does this leave for the regime? Well, it’s rather simple, but also very dangerous. Here’s why.

With the transfer of US combat drones, we may see American operators directly involved in their usage in combat. And the dangerous part is that these operators don’t even need to be stationed in Ukraine. The “Reaper” drones can be controlled via satellite links. The operator may be located somewhere in Germany, Italy or even the US mainland. And the legally gray area comes with the possible transfer of jurisdiction over these operators to the official Ukrainian military command. Strictly speaking, even though this would still mean that the US and NATO wouldn’t be directly involved, in case that the Kremlin finds about it (which it most certainly would), they would hardly see it as non-involvement. And if Moscow is to see it that way, we are talking about what would basically be direct US intervention. And we all know what kind of danger that poses to the world.

The obvious question arises – what should Russia do in that case? Decades of diplomatic efforts by the Kremlin have fallen on deaf ears. Why would the ever increasingly belligerent West listen to reason now, after doing everything in their power to push Ukraine into this bloodbath and after investing trillions to encircle Russia and weaken its position in Europe and the post-Soviet near abroad? Russia’s massive advantage, both qualitative and quantitative, in developing and deploying hypersonic weapons doesn’t seem to deter the US. Not even the recent combat usage of the “Kinzhal”, a highly maneuverable air-launched hypersonic weapon, in service with the Russian Aerospace Forces since 2017, doesn’t seem to deter the US. One way or the other, Russia will simply not allow the US to kill Russian soldiers with impunity. Is Washington DC so out of touch with reality, that they’re ready to raise the stakes so high?

And if anyone is to think this is plain paranoia and that it is based on circumstantial evidence, Russia’s reaction in recent days most certainly isn’t. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recently “strongly advised” against sending additional US weapons to Ukraine. While Russia has protested NATO arming of the Kiev regime for years, this is the first time it has issued a stark warning to the United States. Now, Russia may not need to strike targets in the US mainland, but since these combat drones need to fly from somewhere, this may well be NATO airports in Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania or any other NATO member state, all of which are in the striking distance of Russian ballistic, cruise or hypersonic missiles. The question remains, what’s next?

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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“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.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute  

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***

Once-overlooked prescient warnings, conveyed through black-and-white grainy footage, reach through history like that dead girl in Carrie. They haunt all the more forcefully given the foresight it took to make them.

We’ve all heard of the military-industrial complex (MIC) – the escalating intertwining of the national security apparatus and the private weapons industry. It produces an irresistible economic/political incentive for reckless, endless war.

Its characteristics are unique in many ways, but in others, the MIC is merely another iteration of the essential problem of intersecting corporate and state interests — their chief mutual interest being the accumulation of greater and greater concentrations of power for themselves.

Mussolini described the phenomenon like this in the early 20^th century:

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
-Benito Mussolini

The gears of private industry are lavishly oiled with public money. In turn, the public decision-makers (bureaucrats), who are theoretically tasked with acting in the public’s interests, receive innumerable benefits — both while in office and especially after leaving, including appointments to lucrative board positions, gifted stock options, etc.

Interests across the two domains (state and private sector) – which theoretically remain separate in liberal ideology — become so intertwined that distinguishing one from the other is impossible.

To set the context of the MIC’s inaugural insertion into public consciousness, in 1961, the United States had just recently risen over the ashes of war-ravaged Europe to claim the throne as the global hegemon.

The industrial-scale arms industry remained a relatively new advent, and so the MIC was largely a new phenomenon in human history. If all of its elements weren’t entirely new, the MIC was at least a new incarnation of the inherent and ancient issue of state usurpation of power by private interests for personal and in-group gain.

Eisenhower introduced the MIC into the American psyche, coining the term in his farewell address from the Oval Office:

Via the president’s January 17, 1961 farewell speech:

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

We’ve previously covered the most recent glaring example of the MIC in action – US generals dutifully crying on television about the Afghanistan pullout. Their defense industry sponsors/owners directed them to fear-monger about ending a 20-year losing war – to keep the gravy train rolling, for at least another year – and they complied.

The Afghanistan war, incidentally, produced no tangible outcome of value for any American except the defense contractors who paid Jack Keane to promote it on cable news. Defense contractors, in addition to buying spokesmen like Keane, also purchase advertising on said corporate media channel in exchange for war propaganda that favors healthy stock prices.

It’s all very incestuous, and, at the core, it’s all funded at the public’s expense via the US treasury.

As we will see — as Eisenhower explains himself in the portion of the speech that often goes overlooked in favor of the famous line about the MIC — the same types of public-private mechanisms are currently playing out in the biomedical context:

“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present–and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

If you’ve been paying attention to the last two years’ events, that excerpt should send shivers down your spine.

The MIC and the biomedical state – administered by the “scientific-technological elite” — are a single entity. They’re one and the same, different feathers of the same bird. They each conduct the business of technocratic social management in their own way. One produces kinetic and chemical weaponry; the other, biological weaponry.

Their methods differ, but their interests are the same.

Here’s a case study:

EcoHealth Alliance tried to entice DARPA – the scientific arm of the Pentagon — to join in on the same Wuhan coronavirus gain-of-function that the organization illicitly conducted in China in partnership with the CCP. (EcoHealth Alliance being the organization Fauci funneled government money to for gain-of-function research in that same Chinese WIV government-run lab.)

Via DRASTIC Research:

“EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) in concert with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) attempted to carry out advanced and dangerous human pathogenicity Bat Coronavirus research that would clearly qualify as Gain of Function (GoF), in a grant proposal submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2018.”

What we’re looking at is a transnational, public-private grant proposal involving multiple state and private actors collaborating to engineer deadly new viruses.

The application actually proposed spraying aerosolized viruses into wild bat caves – just to see what happened:

“The grant proposal includes some elements of research that are already public via scientific papers, as well as other elements that have never been made public, including vaccinating wild bats using aerosolized viruses and further work on published and unpublished strains that could have directly produced SARS-CoV-2.”

The Pentagon apparently, according to the leaked documents, shot down the proposal – not on the grounds that this was a ludicrous and dangerous project, and, in practice, would constitute an act of war against China, but on a technicality.

Two years later, by mere coincidence, if you believe the official narrative, a deadly bat coronavirus naturally emerged from a Wuhan wet market – the exact type of virus that EcoHealth Alliance proposed spraying into the wild in the exact geographical area.

Whether DARPA was involved or not in the eventual release of SARS-CoV-2 into the wild is largely irrelevant for this point. The mere fact that Peter Daszak, Fauci and Co. knew this kind of activity to be in DARPA’s wheelhouse demonstrates the deep ties between the various arms of the now-transnational biomedical technocratic complex.

Eisenhower’s warning from six decades ago begs the question: what are the prescient warnings offered today that coming generations will look back on in awe?

*

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This article was originally published on The Daily Bell.

Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose, Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter. Please support his independent operations however you can.

Featured image: President Dwight D. Eisenhower (National Archives)

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***

From the beginning, the official COVID-19 narrative has been inconsistent, hypocritical and/or contradictory because medical authorities used double standards to create the illusion their narrative was logical and sensible.

We are not only in an epidemiological crisis, we also are in an epistemological crisis. How do we know what we know? What differentiates opinion from a justified belief?

For nearly two years, the public has been inundated by a sophisticated messaging campaign that urges us to “trust the science.”

But how can a non-scientist know what the science is really saying?

Legacy media sources offer us an easy solution: “Trust us.”

Legions of so-called “independent” fact-checking sites that serve to eliminate any wayward thinking keep those with a modicum of skepticism in line.

“Research” has been redefined to mean browsing Wikipedia citations.

Rather than being considered for their merit, dissenting opinions are more easily dismissed as misinformation by labeling their source as untrustworthy.

How do we know these sources are untrustworthy? They must be if they offer a dissenting opinion!

This form of circular reasoning is the central axiom of all dogmatic systems of thought. Breaking the spell of dogmatic thinking is not easy, but it is possible.

In this article I describe six examples of double standards medical authorities have used to create the illusion their COVID-19 narrative is logical and sensible.

This illusion has been used with devastating effect to raise vaccine compliance.

Rather than citing scientific publications or expert opinions that conflict with our medical authorities’ narrative — information that will be categorically dismissed because it appears on The Defender — I will instead demonstrate how, from the beginning, the official narrative has been inconsistent, hypocritical and/or contradictory.

1. COVID deaths are ‘presumed,’ but vaccine deaths must be ‘proven’

As of April 8, VAERS included 26,699 reports of deaths following COVID vaccines.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially acknowledges only nine of these.

In order to establish causality, the CDC requires autopsies to rule out any possible etiology of death before the agency will place culpability on the vaccine.

But the CDC uses a very different standard when it comes to identifying people who died from COVID.

The 986,000 COVID deaths reported by the CDC here are, as footnote [1] indicates, “Deaths with confirmed or presumed [emphasis added] COVID-19.”

If a person dies with a positive PCR test or is presumed to have COVID, the CDC will count that as COVID-19 death.

Note that in the CDC’s definition, a COVID fatality does not mean the person died from the disease, only with the disease.

Why is an autopsy required to establish a COVID vaccine death but not to establish a COVID death?

Conversely, why is recent exposure to SARS-CoV-2 prior to a death sufficient to establish causality — but recent exposure to a vaccine considered coincidental?

2. CDC uses VAERS data to investigate myocarditis yet claims VAERS data on vaccine deaths is unreliable

On June 23, 2021, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met to assess the risk of peri/myocarditis following COVID vaccination, especially in young males.

This was the key slide in this presentation:

The observed risk of myocarditis is 219 in about 4.3 million second doses of COVID vaccine in males 18 to 24 years old.

The CDC is fine with using VAERS data to assess risk of myocarditis following vaccination — yet the agency rejects all but nine of the 26,699 reports of deaths following the vaccines.

Why does the CDC trust the peri/myocarditis data in VAERS but not the data on deaths?

One reason may be because the onset of myocarditis symptoms is closely tied to the time of vaccination.

In other words, because this condition closely follows inoculation the two events are highly correlated and suggestive of causation.

For example, here is another slide from the same presentation:

The majority of cases of vaccine-induced peri/myocarditis suffered symptoms within the first few days after injection. As explained above, this is highly suggestive of a causative effect of the vaccine.

A recent study in The Lancet included a similar graph, taken directly from VAERS, on deaths following vaccination:

Once again, the event (death) closely follows vaccination in the majority of cases.

As we regard the two graphs above we should acknowledge that the temporal relationship between the injection and the adverse event is suggestive of causation but does not stand as proof of such.

However, it is also important to note that if the vaccination caused the deaths, that is exactly what the plot would look like.

It should be clear that the CDC has no justification for dismissing VAERS deaths if the agency is willing to accept reports of myo/pericarditis from the very same reporting system.

3. CDC pushes ‘relative risk’ for determining vaccine efficacy, but uses ‘absolute risk’ to downplay risk of adverse events

In Pfizer’s Phase 3 trial, nine times more placebo recipients developed severe COVID than those vaccinated during the short period of observation. This constitutes a relative risk reduction of 90%.

This seemed an encouraging finding and was used as a major talking point to compel the public to accept this experimental therapy despite the absence of any long-term data.

However, the risk of a trial participant contracting severe COVID (Table S5) was 1 in 21,314 (0.0047%) if they were vaccinated.

If they received the placebo, the risk was still only 9 in 21,259 (0.0423%).

The vaccine reduced the absolute risk of contracting severe disease by 0.038%.

Mainstream media and the CDC never mentioned the minuscule reduction in absolute risk of contracting severe COVID by getting inoculated.

Moreover, with 0.6% of vaccine recipients in the trial suffering a serious vaccine injury (one that results in death, medical or surgical intervention, hospitalization or an impending threat to life), approximately 16 serious adverse events will result for every serious case of COVID prevented by vaccination.

However, when it comes to risk of myo/pericarditis, the CDC states, “Myocarditis and pericarditis have rarely been reported, especially in adolescents and young adult males within several days after COVID-19 vaccination.”

The CDC further states, “While absolute risk remains small, the risk for myocarditis is higher for males ages 12 to 39 years…”

In other words, the risk of adverse events is being considered in absolute terms, not relative.

The CDC presentation slide above (Table 1) indicates the relative risk of contracting myo/pericarditis in males 18 to 24 is 27 to more than 200 times higher than expected in (unvaccinated) young men that age.

When assuaging the public’s fear around vaccine-induced myocarditis, the CDC finds it useful to cite absolute risk — yet when promoting the efficacy of the vaccine, the CDC emphasizes relative risks.

This double standard has been quietly and masterfully employed to reduce vaccine hesitancy and encourage compliance.

4. FDA requires randomized control studies for early treatment medications — but not for boosters

The CDC reports that as of April 8, 98.3 million Americans had received a COVID booster.

On March 29, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized a second booster for the immunocompromised and adults over age 50.

These authorizations were made not because of solid evidence the boosters are effective but rather to remedy the fact that the primary vaccine series has been widely shown to have waning efficacy within a few months.

As reported by The Defender, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s vaccine division, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, admitted the fourth booster dose approved last week was a “stopgap measure” — in other words, a temporary measure to be implemented until a proper solution may be found in the future.

Despite the lack of solid evidence, the FDA continues to recommend and authorize boosters.

Yet when it comes to early treatment options, the agency holds medicines — including those the agency has already licensed and approved for other uses — to a different standard.

In this CNN interview from August 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warns people not to take ivermectin for COVID because “there is no clinical evidence that this works.”

With regard to hydroxychloroquine, Fauci said, “We know that every single good study —  and by good study, I mean randomized control study in which the data are firm and believable — has s shown that hydroxychloroquine is not effective in the treatment of Covid-19”, as reported by the BBC on July 29, 2020.

Where, then, are the randomized control studies in which the data are firm and believable that show boosters are effective at preventing COVID?

There aren’t any. None have been done.

As of today, the FDA still refuses to authorize the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID despite hundreds of studies that demonstrate significant benefits (ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine) in prevention as well as early and late treatment.

The double standard here is blatant. There are no randomized control studies that show boosters are effective in preventing COVID.

Nevertheless, these experimental therapies have the FDA’s blessing while inexpensive, highly effective safe and proven medicines are ignored despite the enormous evidence that supports their use.

5. FDA uses immunobridging to justify Pfizer shots for young kids, but rejects antibodies as indicative of immune protection from COVID

Immunobridging is a method of inferring a vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing disease by assessing its ability to elicit an immune response through the measurement of biochemical markers, typically antibody levels.

The FDA asserts the presence of SARS-COV-2 antibodies is not necessarily indicative of immune protection from COVID.

Moreover, the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biologics Product Advisory Committee reached a consensus last week that antibody levels cannot be used as a correlate for vaccine effectiveness.

Their decision is consistent with the CDC’s executive summary of a science brief released on October 29, 2021:

“Data are presently insufficient to determine an antibody titer threshold that indicates when an individual is protected from infection.”

Nevertheless, the FDA used immunobridging as a means to justify authorization of the Pfizervaccine to children ages 5 to 11, as explained in The Defender here and here.

Because there were no deaths or serious cases of COVID in the pediatric trial, the FDA chose to reject its own position (and that of its advisory committee) regarding antibody titers as a correlate for vaccine efficacy.

6. Causation must be proven for vaccine injuries, but correlation suffices for proving vaccine efficacy

When it comes to vaccine injuries the public is often reminded that correlation does not equal causation.

In other words, just because an injury was preceded by inoculation doesn’t mean the vaccine caused the injury.

But what constitutes causation in medicine? A mechanism of action needs to be identified and pathological studies must confirm this mechanism while eliminating other potential causative factors. Causation can be proven only on a case-by-case basis.

Proving causation requires an enormous burden of proof in medicine.

For example, does smoking cause lung cancer? The answer is yes, it can. That doesn’t mean that it will.

However, when it comes to the benefit of medical intervention, such as a vaccine, causation does not have to be established. Correlation suffices.

In the COVID vaccine trials, fewer vaccinated people contracted COVID than unvaccinated ones. Yet there were those who received the vaccine who contracted the disease anyway.

To be fair, this is how all new medical interventions are evaluated. The benefit doesn’t have to be caused by the vaccine in the strictest sense, there just has to be a correlation between vaccination and a relative protective effect.

The more often this happens, the more confident we can be that the outcome wasn’t simply a coincidence.

Likewise, when it comes to assessing the harm of medical intervention, the most sensible outcome to consider is mortality. After all, what would be the point of introducing a vaccine that prevented some deaths while causing more?

Nevertheless, this is, in fact, what we have done with the Pfizer product. The interim results from the Phase 3 trial demonstrated that all-cause mortality in the vaccinated cohort was higher than in the placebo.

This glaring problem gets brushed aside because there were two deaths from COVID in the placebo arm versus just one in the vaccinated cohort, allowing the vaccine manufacturer to claim a 50% efficacy in preventing this outcome.

However, if we attribute a protective benefit to the vaccine in preventing this one fatality, we must also conclude that the vaccine was responsible for the extra death when considering mortality from all causes.

Doing otherwise would be applying yet another double standard.

How the pandemic could have played out differently

To summarize how devastating the use of these double standards in crafting the “safe and effective” narrative was, let’s look at how different the situation would be if we had adopted the opposite standard:

1. There would have been an extremely low number of deaths from COVID. Very few, if any, autopsies have definitively confirmed that a fatality was caused by SARS-CoV-2. If confirmation by autopsy is the standard, there have been essentially zero deaths from COVID during the pandemic.
   On the other hand, if we presume the deaths registered in VAERS are in fact vaccine-induced fatalities — similar to how the CDC presumed many deaths from COVID — we can affirm there have been more than 26,000 vaccine deaths.
2. Using absolute risk reduction as a measure of efficacy, vaccines would have been widely rejected as ineffective, providing only a 0.038% risk reduction for contracting severe COVID.
3. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine would have been readily available for people who got COVID. And for those who got the vaccine but got COVID anyway, these medicines would have been a great alternative to boosters, which wouldn’t have been approved due to the lack of a single randomized control study proving they work.
4. No children between the ages of 5 and 11 would have received this risky, experimental vaccine as it wouldn’t have been authorized for this age group — because Pfizer’s pediatric trials did not demonstrate any meaningful outcomes in children ages 5 to 11.
5. The Pfizer vaccine would no longer be in use because interim data demonstrated that all-cause mortality is higher in the vaccinated.

*

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Madhava Setty, M.D. is senior science editor for The Defender.

Featured image is from CHD

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***

Imperial proprietorship over the small Caribbean Island of Cuba, from the United States’ perspective, has been from its earliest founding understood as a foredrawn conclusion, a predetermined inexorable; a geographical inevitable.

Heads of State, from Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe to John Quincy Adams et al. shared a similar conviction, “[that Cuba’s] proximity did indeed seem to suggest destiny, a destiny unanimously assumed to be manifest.”ⁱ Through the mid 19th century, US opinion toward Cuba was made jingoistically evident by Secretary of State John Clayton, “This Government,” he advised, “is resolutely determined that the island of Cuba, shall never be ceded by Spain to any other power than the United States.”ⁱⁱ

The Secretary went on to define his nation’s hardened and inalterable commitment to the possession of the island, “The news of the cession of Cuba to any foreign power would, in the United States, be the instant signal for war.”ⁱⁱⁱ

These assertions were now foundational, as reiterated by Indiana Senator (and historian) Albert J. Beveridge in 1901,

“Cuba ‘[is] an object of transcendent importance to the political and commercial interests of our Union’ and ‘[is] indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself,’”^ivsentiments that were (later) codified into the Cuban Constitution by the US (after the Spanish/American war of 1898) in the form of the Platt Amendment^v ratified in 1903.

Which Louis A. Perez soberly describes as, “[An] Amendment [that] deprived the [Cuban] republic of the essential properties of sovereignty while preserving its appearance, permitting self-government but precluding self-determination,”^vi in contradiction to (Cuba’s heroic bard of national emancipation) José Martí’s 19^th century grand-vision of a truly liberated and self-governing island nation.

In fact, this historic outlook permeates US strategy toward Cuba for the next century; merged in a complex web of amicable approbation combined with antagonistic condemnation, defiance, resentment, and ruin – all converging at a flashpoint called the Cuban Revolution of 1959, which not only shocked and bewildered US policymakers, but, for the first time, challenged their historic preconceptions of US hegemonic (i.e., imperial hemispheric) dominance. One man stood at the center of their bewilderment, criticism, disdain, and resentment: Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz. Thus, US policy then directed at Cuba, by the early 1960s, was designed to punish this man, the small island nation, and its people, for his disobedience and defiance; and, as such, was intentionally aimed at destabilizing all efforts of rapprochement, as long as he (Castro) remained alive.

Although US intelligence (throughout the 1950s) provided the Eisenhower administration with a thorough history delineating the dangers of instability looming throughout the island, commanded by then military despot and “strong-man” Fulgencio Batista (who seized his return to power in an army-coup in 1952), the US foolishly continued to provide economic, logistical and materiel support to the unpopular and graft-driven dictatorship.^vii

US intelligence understood the potential danger posed by “[this] young reformist leader”^viii Fidel Castro and his band of revolutionaries. Castro and the 26th of July movement were a defiant response to what they considered a foreign controlled reactionary government.^ix

This response stood as a direct threat to the natural order of things, i.e., the US’s historic prohibition (beyond legalistic euphemisms and platitudes)^x of any genuine vestige of national sovereignty and self-determination by the Cuban people – which undergirded a belief that, like most Latin American states, the Cuban people were innately “child-like,” incapable of true self-governance.^xi Beyond that, after the ousting of Batista, and “flush with victory,” a young Fidel Castro, on January 2, 1959 (in Santiago de Cuba), assertively threw down the gauntlet, “this time, fortunately for Cuba, the revolution will not be thwarted. It won’t be as in 1895, when the Americans came in at the last hour ‘and made themselves masters of the country.’”^xii

Hence, as Jeffery J. Safford makes evident, this existential risk, in the minds of US policymakers, would have to be dealt with, embraced, evaluated, and analyzed (at least initially)^xiii in order to maintain the desired outcome – i.e., evading Communist influence and maintaining economic “stability” through the protection of US interests on the island of Cuba no matter the cost.

In March of 1960, while naively underestimating Castro’s success and support on the island, “the Eisenhower administration secretly made a formal decision to re-conquer Cuba … with a proviso: it had to be done in such a way that the US hand would not be evident.”^xiv

Ultimately, US policymakers wanted to avoid a broader “backlash of instability” throughout the hemisphere by overtly invading the small island nation. That said, Castro and his revolutionaries understood the stark realities and nefarious possibilities cast over them, given the US’s history of flagrant regime change throughout the region. Castro’s accusations as presented at the United Nations, on 26 September 1960, which declared that US leaders were (intending if not) preparing to invade Cuba, were dismissed by the New York Times as “shrill with … anti-American propaganda.”^xv

Furthermore, Castro was ridiculed, by US representative James J. Wadsworth, as having “Alice in Wonderland fantasies”^xvi of an invasion. But Castro’s committed revolutionary coterie knew better, “In Guatemala in 1954 [Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara witnessed] the first U.S. Cold War intervention [in the region] as U.S.-trained and backed counter-revolutionary forces overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz…”^xvii

In fact, similarly, the imminent Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) orchestrated assault, known as the Bay of Pigs (BOPs) invasion, under the Kennedy administration in April 1961, was heavily reliant upon anti-revolutionary factions, the Cuban people, and the military, rising up to join the invaders^xviii – which as history proves, and journalist/author David Talbot underscores, did not come to pass:

To avoid Arbenz’s fate, Castro and Guevara would do everything he had not: put the hard-cored thugs of the old regime up against a wall, run the CIA’s agents out of the country, purge the armed forces, and mobilize the Cuban people … Fidel and Che became an audacious threat to the American empire. They represented the most dangerous revolutionary idea of all – the one that refused to be crushed.^xix

This became an epic ideological battle in the myopic mind of US officials: the possible proliferation of an assortment of “despotic” Communist controlled fiefdoms vs. the-free-world! Indeed, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., special aide and historian to President John F. Kennedy in 1961-63, ominously warned the Executive, that “the spread of the Castro idea of taking matters into one’s own hands,”^xx had great appeal in Cuba (and throughout Latin America), i.e., everywhere that, “distribution of land and other forms of national wealth greatly favor[ed] the propertied classes … [thus] the poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution, [were] now demanding opportunities for a decent living.”^xxi This was the urgent and fundamental threat (or challenge) Fidel Castro and his movement posed to US hemispheric rule.

US media focused heavily on the plight of the “majority middleclass” Cuban exiles, that chose to leave the island as a result of the revolution’s redistributive polices.^xxii

Cubans, particularly the initial waves, were dispossessed of substantial wealth and position and often arrived Stateside in chiefly worse conditions.^xxiii But the essential question as to, “why the [majority of] Cuban people [stood] by the Castro ‘dictatorship’?,”^xxiv as Michael Parenti contends, was ignored by public officials and the press alike:

Not a word appeared in the U.S. press about the advances made by ordinary Cubans under the Revolution, the millions who for the first time had access to education, literacy, medical care, decent housing [and] jobs … offering a better life than the free-market misery endured under the U.S.-Batista ancient régime.^xxv

Castro’s revolutionary ideals based on José Martí’s patriotic theme of national sovereignty and self-determination, effectively armed the Cuban people through a stratagem of socialist ideology and wealth redistribution meshed in a formula of land reform and social services (i.e., education, healthcare, jobs and housing) which included the nationalization of foreign owned businesses; as such, US policymakers believed, “His continued presence within the hemispheric community as a dangerously effective exponent of ‘Communism’ and Anti-Americanism constitutes a real menace capable of eventually overthrowing the elected governments in any one or more ‘weak’ Latin American republics.”^xxvi Fidel Castro was thus wantonly placed within the crosshairs of US covert-action.

American officials assumed that the elimination of Castro was central to the suppression of his socialist principles, as Alan McPherson demonstrates, “In fall 1961, after the [BOPs] disaster, [JFK] gave the order to resume covert plans to get rid of Castro, if not explicitly to assassinate him.”^xxvii

Earlier in 1960, then CIA director, Allen Dulles’ hardline that Castro was a devoted Communist and threat to US security “mirrored [those] of the business world such as, William Pawley, the globetrotting millionaire entrepreneur whose major investments in Cuban sugar plantations and Havana’s municipal transportation system were wiped out by Castro’s revolution.”^xxviii

Thus, US officials, the Security State and US business-interests were unified, “After Fidel rode into Havana on a tank in January 1959, Pawley [a capitalist scion] who was gripped by what Eisenhower called a ‘pathological hatred for Castro,’ even volunteered to pay for his assassination.”^xxix

Countless attempts followed, thus, killing Castro became vital to the idea of US hemispheric “stability,” i.e., capitalist economic and ideological control; and as such, Intelligence Services believed, “[The] political vulnerability of the regime lies in the person of Castro himself…”^xxx

Hence, the purging of Fidel Castro and the cessation of his ideas, through the punishment of the Cuban people, became not only the strategy of choice for the US, but its incessant authoritative doctrine. Accordingly, as longtime US diplomat to Cuba, Wayne Smith verifies, the US’s two overarching obsessive qualms which it believed required the eradication of Fidel Castro were: the long-term influence of his revolutionary socialist ideals in Latin America and beyond; and, the possible establishment of a successful Communist state on the island which would diminish US security, stature, image, influence and prestige in the hemisphere; and, in the eyes of the world.^xxxi

Through 1960-64, Castro had good reason to be on guard, “…the fact that the Kennedy administration was acutely embarrassed by the unmitigated defeat [at the BOPs] -indeed because of it- a campaign of smaller-scale attacks upon Cuba was initiated almost immediately.”^xxxii

Then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy stated unequivocally, as Schlesinger reveals, that his goal, “was to bring the terrors of the Earth to Cuba.”^xxxiii

RFK went on to emphasize the point that the eradication of the Castro “regime” was the US’s central policy concern,

“He informed the CIA that the Cuban problem carries, ‘…top priority in the United States Government -all else is secondary- no time, no effort, or manpower is to be spared.’”^xxxiv

Beyond the multifaceted covert actions directed at Cuba under Operation Mongoose, RFK and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, aided by the CIA et al., implemented a long-term multi-pronged plan of punishment, focused on Cuba through Latin America, which included disinformation campaigns, subversion and sabotage (they called hemispheric-defense-policies) that comprised a Military Assistance Program (MAP), which included economic support, subversive tactical training and materiel, devised to terminate “the threat” (i.e., Castro and his ideas) by establishing an Inter-American-Security-Force (of obedient states) under US control.^xxxv

With Cuba now in the crosshairs, in the early 1960s, “the CIA … played savior to the [anti-Castro] émigrés, building a massive training station in Miami, known as JMWave, that became the agency’s second largest after Langley, Virginia. In fact, it coordinated the training of what became known as the disastrous landing … in 1961.”^xxxvi

Conversely, historian Daniel A. Sjursen focuses more on JFK (than the CIA) as the culprit behind the heightened tensions amongst the three principal players. By 1962, with Cuba in the middle, both superpowers (the US and the USSR) stood at a standstill amid the very real possibility of a global conflagration which, Sjursen states, was primarily due to US bravado on behalf of a “military obsessed” young President, “In preparing for a May 1961 summit meeting with Khrushchev [Kennedy stated] ‘I’ll have to show him that we can be as though as he is….’”^xxxvii

Sjursen argues,

“This flawed and simplistic thinking grounded just about every Kennedy decision in world affairs from 1961 to 1963 … and would eventually bring the world to the brink of destruction with the Cuban Missile Crisis; and, suck the US military into a disastrous unwinnable war in Vietnam.”^xxxviii

And yet, as Smith contends, Kennedy was certainly not without bravado, but ultimately, did make attempts to “defuse” the situation. Kennedy, Smith discloses, ruffled-feathers within the Security State by,

1) his desire to end the Cold War,

2) his starting of a rapprochement with Castro (who was desirous of such — even if indirectly) and, 3) his goal to pull-out of Vietnam.^xxxix

In fact, with the Kennedy-Khrushchev negotiations finalized by JFK’s promise not to invade Cuba if Soviet warheads were removed from the island – Khrushchev acquiesced, to Castro’s dismay, but tensions did diminish.^xl

Be that as it may, Philip Brenner maintains, the crisis did not go-away on 28 October 1962 for either the US or the USSR. The Kennedy-Khrushchev arrangements had to be implemented. On 20 November, the US Strategic Air Command was still on high alert: full readiness for war – with the naval quarantine (i.e., blockade) firmly in place.^xli

As a result, Castro stayed open to negotiations with the US, but at the same time purposefully cautious.

“At this point Castro, like Kennedy and Khrushchev, was circumventing his own more bellicose government in order to dialog with the enemy. Castro, too, was struggling, [but willing,] to transcend his Cold War ideology for the sake of peace. Like Kennedy and Khrushchev both, [he knew,] he had to walk softly.”^xlii

Nevertheless, Castro stressed the fact that the Soviet Union had no right to negotiate with the US per inspections or the return of the bombers, “Instead, he announced, Cuba would be willing to comply based on [specific] demands: that the United States end the economic embargo; stop subversive activities … cease violations of Cuban airspace; and, return Guantanamo Naval Base.”^xliii Of course, the United States security apparatus was arrogantly steadfast in its refusal to agree or even negotiate the matter.^xliv

In spite of that, a reproachment (devised by Kennedy diplomat, William Attwood, and, Castro representative to the UN Carlos Lechuga) was surreptitiously endeavored through a liaison, journalist Jean Daniel of the New Republic, who stated that, Kennedy, retrospectively, criticized the pro-Batista policies of the fifties for “economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation” of the island and added that, “we shall have to pay for those sins….”^xlv Which may be considered one of the most brazenly honest statements, regarding the island, on behalf of an American President, in the long and complex history of US/Cuban relations.

Daniel then wrote, “I could see plainly that John Kennedy had doubts [about the government’s policies toward Cuba] and was seeking a way out.”^xlvi

In spite of JFK’s pugnacious rhetoric directed at Cuba, during his 1960 Presidential campaign, Castro remained open and accommodating, he understood the forces arrayed upon the President, in fact, he saw Kennedy’s position as an unenviable one:

I don’t think a President of the United States is ever really free … and I also believe he now understands the extent to which he has been misled.^xlvii …I know that for Khrushchev, Kennedy is a man you can talk with….^xlviii

While in the middle of (an Attwood arranged and Kennedy sanctioned) clandestine meeting with Castro, Daniel reported, that (at 2pm Cuban-time) the news arrived that JFK was dead (shot in Dallas, Texas, on that very same day, 22 November 1963, at 12:30pm), “Castro stood-up , looked at me [dismayed], and said ‘Everything is going to change,…’”^xlix and he was spot-on. Consequently, with (newly sworn-in) President Lyndon Baines Johnson mindful of the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was “proclaimed” a Castro devotee, accommodations with the Cuban government would be much more difficult. As such, the Attwood-Lechuga connection was terminated.^l Julian Borger, journalist for the Guardian, maintains that “Castro saw Kennedy’s killing as a setback, [he] tried to restart a dialogue with the next administration, but LBJ was … too concerned [with] appearing soft on communism,”^li meaning opinion polls, and their consequences, trumped keeping channels of communication open with the Cuban government. Which obliquely implies the notion that relations with Cuba might have been different if JFK had not been murdered.

With the Johnson administration bogged down in an “unwinnable war” in Southeast Asia and Civil Rights battles occurring on the streets of the US, Cuba and its revolution began to fall off the radar. By 1964, the Johnson administration, concerned with public opinion, as mentioned, took swift and immediate action to stop the deliberate terror perpetrated on the Cuban people. LBJ, in April of that year, called for a cessation of sabotage attacks. Johnson openly admitted, “we had been operating a damned Murder, Inc., in the Caribbean.’”^lii

Nonetheless, the national security apparatus (i.e., the CIA, the Joint-Chiefs and military intelligence) along with US policymakers (and US based exile groups), remained obstinate, steadfast and consistent in their goal – to punish (if not kill) Fidel Castro and his revolution, by maintaining a punitive program of economic strangulation with the hopes that Castro would be, not only isolated on the world stage, but condemned by his own people who would rise up and eradicate the man and his socialist regime – which did not occur. Of course, the termination of hostilities directive ordered by Johnson did not include economic enmity – which persisted throughout the 1960s and beyond. In fact, a CIA field-agent appointed to anti-Castro operations detailed the agency’s sadistic objectives as expressed through author John Marks, by explaining:

Agency officials reasoned, … that it would be easier to overthrow Castro if Cubans could be made unhappy with their standard of living. ‘We wanted to keep bread out of the stores so people were hungry … We wanted to keep rationing in effect….’”^liii

The purpose of the economic blockade remained fixed from the early 60s onward: to contain, defame, discredit and destroy Castro and his experimentation with, what the US considered, subversive Communist ideals.

Finally, the US’s belligerent, if not insidious, hardline-stance toward this small island nation reignited at the end of the 1960s, which included not only an economic strangle-hold, but full-blown underground sabotage operations. The 37th president of the United States, Richard M. “Nixon’s first acts in office in 1969 was to direct the CIA to intensify its covert [Hybrid War] operations against Cuba.”^liv Nixon and his then National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, still believed, callously, that military aggression, violence, brutality and intimidation (coalesced by vicious economic sanctions) were the answers to America’s woes abroad.

US policy toward Cuba for more than sixty-years is reminiscent of a famous quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result.” Hence, Castro’s Cuba (not only America’s nemesis, but also the model of an uncompromising US global order) was the consequence of an even longer and persistent imperial US foreign policy: If the United States had not impeded Cuba’s push for national sovereignty and self-determination in the initial part of the 20th century; if it had not sustained a sequence of tyrannical despots on the island; and, if it had not been complicit in the termination and manipulation of the 1952 election, an ineradicable character such as the young reformist, and socialist,

Fidel Castro may never have materialized.^lvUltimately, the headstrong US stratagem of assassination and suffocation of Castro and his socialist revolution failed, not only by bolstering his image on the island, but abroad as well. Ironically, the US helped to create its own oppositional exemplar of resistance, in the image of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the Cuban people, i.e., the revolution – two men and a small island nation that stood up defiantly to the US led global-capitalist-order and would not relent. The US feared the Revolution of 1959’s challenge to class-power, colonialization; and, its popularity with the multitudes – thus, it had to be forcefully restricted through malicious policies of trade-embargoes, threats of violence and ideological-isolation.

In fact, the Cuban rebellion courageously and tenaciously stood up to, and resisted, specific contrivances (or designs) by which the US had customarily, boastfully and self-admiringly delineated its dominant status through the forceful protection of its exploitative-business-practices (aka, the “Yankee boot”) on the backs of the Cuban people, for which, Fidel Castro and his bottom-up-populist-crusade were held ominously, insidiously and interminably responsible….

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Stephen Joseph Scott is an essayist associated with The University of Edinburgh, School of History; a singer/songwriter, humanist/activist – a self-taught musician, and performer. As a musician, he uses American Roots Music to illustrate the current American social and political landscape.

Notes

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Facebook briefly suspended the page of a Palestinian news site following its rolling coverage of the violent Israeli raid on al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday.

The Al-Qastal news site said on Saturday that Facebook had deleted its page without warning or explanation, causing it to lose thousands of followers. Hours later, however, the page announced it has been reinstated.

“Al-Qastal page is finally back after great efforts from its friends and lovers of al-Aqsa and al-Quds, who did not abandon it,” it said in a statement to Twitter.

Earlier, the news site said that its Facebook page had been deleted “without any introductions or advance warning… due to its extensive coverage of events of Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque, despite the strict adherence to Facebook publishing standards”.

It remains unclear why Facebook had suspended Al-Qastal’s Arabic news page. The bilingual Jerusalem-based outlet accused the social media platform of yielding to pressure from Israeli authorities who aim to “silence the voices of Jerusalemites,” according to its intitial statement.

Earlier on Friday, Al-Qastal confirmed that Israeli forces had targeted two of its reporters during the unrest in East Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque.

More than 150 people were wounded and at least 400 arrested by Israeli forces who attacked worshippers inside the mosque in a four-hour raid.

Al-Qastal confirmed that Israeli forces had shot a stun grenade at the head of one of its reporters, Nesreen Salem, during her coverage of the assaults. Reporter Mohammed Samreen was also wounded, with a rubber-coated steel bullet in the leg. He was later detained in the mosque’s courtyard then taken to the Al Mascobiya interrogation centre, al-Qastal said.

It added that Facebook had previously imposed restrictions on its page without any explanation.

Censorship of Palestinians 

Meta, the California-based multinational conglomerate that owns Facebook and Instagram, has often been accused of censoring the experiences of Palestinians and their narrative on its platforms.

Hours after the Israeli raid on Friday, Dutch-Palestinian supermodel Bella Hadid claimed she was “shadow banned” by Instagram for posting about Palestine. Omar Suleiman, a prominent American-Muslim preacher, also claimed on Friday that his account was restricted.

Earlier this year, a Palestinian news page with over a million-and-a-half followers on Facebook was forced to shut down its operations in Jerusalem after the social media giant banned its account.

The Maydan al-Quds news network covered stories from Jerusalem for more than 18 months.

According to its director, Bilal Nour, Facebook closed the page in 2021, the same day as the killing of Palestinian man Fadi Abu Shkheidem by Israeli forces after he carried out a stabbing attack near the Chain Gate – one of the gates to al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Nour said his network was “totally impartial” in its reporting on the incident.

In November, Palestinian activists and journalists launched a campaign called “Facebook Censors Jerusalem” to raise awareness about Meta’s alleged efforts to censor Palestinian content on its flagship social media platform.

The bulk of what they say were incidents of censorship are said to have occurred in May 2021, during protests in solidarity with Palestinians who were facing the threat of expulsions in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, the storming by Israeli forces of al-Aqsa Mosque, the 11-day offensive in Gaza, and intercommunal violence in Palestinian-majority cities in Israel.

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Featured image is from Liberation News

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The Israeli Jewish colonial fundamentalist group “The Returning to the Mount,” which advocates the construction of a “Third Jewish temple” in al-Haram al-Sharif, the third holiest place in Islam, and is associated with the racist Kach group, announced this week that it plans to sacrifice animals as part of the Jewish Passover rituals on Friday in al-Haram.

In response, Hamas declared that it will not allow such rituals to take place and will prevent them “at any cost”. The Palestinian Authority and the Jordanian government also condemned the plans. Last February, the group, pretending to be Muslims, entered al-Haram al-Sharif and prayed there.

In view of the announcement of the animal sacrifices, the Jordanian-appointed director of the mosque issued a decision banning Muslim worshippers from remaining in isolation in the mosque, a common devotional practice for Muslim worshippers during Ramadan, until the last 10 days of Ramadan, that is, after the end of the passover.

Still, Palestinian worshippers insisted on remaining in the mosque last night to prevent the extremist group from entering al-Haram and were attacked this morning by Israeli security who injured more than one hundred worshippers.

A religious prohibition

After the 1967 conquest of East Jerusalem by the Israelis, Israel‘s then defence minister, Moshe Dayan, decided to allow the Palestinian-turned-Jordanian Waqf (religious endowment), which always administered al-Haram al-Sharif, or what Jews call “The Temple Mount,” to continue to administer it.

Israel’s Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis, along with hundreds of other rabbis, issued a Halachic ruling that it was forbidden for Jews to enter the area, let alone pray there, as that would be in violation of Jewish religious law, or Halacha, on account of the “impurity” of all Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple.

Even the fundamentalist rabbis, disciples of the zealot Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, many of whose followers became religious settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem after 1967, agreed with the religious prohibition.

Nonetheless, some of the extreme non-religious Zionist groups, especially those associated with the pre-state terrorist group Lehi, argued that the rabbis were wrong and that Jews should build a synagogue there. In 1969, an Australian Christian fundamentalist set fire to al-Aqsa Mosque and was arrested by the Israelis, alleged to be mentally ill, and deported years later.

It would be Shlomo Goren, the rabbi of the Israeli army, however, who in 1973 would become Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi and who would weigh in more heavily on the matter. Goren argued that Jews could visit and pray in the areas of the ancient temple that had been expanded at the end of the Second Temple period, and that this would not be in violation of Halacha.

He argued that there was evidence that Jews had built a permanent prayer site on the “Mount” until the 16thcentury, a claim that historians contest.

In his zeal to allow Jews access to the Muslim shrines, Goren correctly claimed that the Western Wall had not been a Jewish prayer site until the 17th century and even then on account of Ottoman restrictions on Jewish worship elsewhere in al-Haram al-Sharif area.

Accessing Muslim shrines

In 1994, Goren wrote to prime minister Yitzhak Rabin that “we cannot claim rights at the Western Wall,” and that Jews should be allowed to pray all over the “Temple Mount” area.

Israel’s chief rabbis in the 1980s began to find the idea partially acceptable, and both its Sephardi and Ashkenazi chief rabbis proposed building a synagogue in the southeastern corner of the area, behind al-Aqsa Mosque, meaning outside al-Haram area, though the Sephardi rabbi insisted that the synagogue should be higher than the mosque.

Indeed, the Buraq Wall itself, or what is known in English as “the Western Wall,” let alone al-Haram al-Sharif, had never had a central religious importance as a prayer site for the Jews before the advent of Zionism.

While Palestinian Jews were allowed to pray there during Ottoman times, it was Zionist colonists and zealots who began to lay claim to the Wall, which instigated a number of violent confrontations with Palestinian Muslims in the 1920s, culminating in the 1929 violence that engulfed the country, which Palestinians refer to as “the Buraq Revolt,” and in which more than 200 Jews and Palestinians were killed.

In 1986, 70 rabbis convened by Goren issued a new injunction that permitted Jews to “enter and pray on the Temple Mount in most of its area,” and that a synagogue could indeed be built there.

By 1990, the Lubavitcher rabbi Menachem Schneersohn instructed his followers to hold celebrations in  al-Haram, while in the meantime, the “Temple Mount Faithful,” established in 1967 and led by one Gershon Salomon, were planning to lay the cornerstone for building the “Third Temple” on the grounds of al-Haram al-Sharif.

Salomon is an Israeli nationalist and was not religious at the time, although he seems to have become so by the mid 1990s, as reflected by his movement’s increasing religious-nationalist literature and its connections and financial ties to Christian fundamentalist groups.

Palestinians demonstrated against the plans of the Temple Mount Faithful. On 8 October, Israeli forces killed more than 20 Palestinian protesters and injured more than 150, which led to two UN resolutions that condemned the Israeli government’s use of force and its refusal to allow the UN secretary-general to visit al-Haram al-Sharif.

Suffice it to say that the massacre and the ensuing international uproar aborted Rabbi Schneersohn’s plans.

The Oslo factor

An even more radical Zionist group laying claim to an alleged Jewish “right” to occupy and pray in al-Haram al-Sharif is the Hai Ve-Kayam movement led by Yehuda Etzion, whose father was a member of the Terrorist Lehi group. Etzion spent seven years in Israeli jails for his membership of a Jewish terror group in the 1980s that sought to blow up the Dome of the Rock.

Eztion and his group would insist on praying in al-Haram, which forced the Israeli police to remove them, images of which galvanized more support for the movement in Israel’s colonial Jewish society whether religious or secular.

Other groups making similar claims include “Yemin Israel,” “Kach” and “Kahane Hai,” the “Temple Institute,” the “Movement to Establish the Temple,” and “Ateret Kohanim” among others.

Many of these groups were mobilised after the Oslo Accords for fear that the Palestinian Authority might be granted authority over al-Haram, and especially after the Israel-Jordan Peace Accords in 1994 in which Israel “respects” Jordan’s “special role… in the Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem”.

In February 1997, the Committee of Yesha Rabbis, a central component within the Zionist religious-nationalist colonial-settler movement, issued a ruling permitting rabbis who believe that Jews should pray in the Haram to do so.

In the meantime, many Israeli Supreme Court judges and politicians began to call on the government and the chief rabbinate to lift the prohibition on Jewish prayer in al-Haram. These efforts culminated in the visit staged by the leader of the Likud Party, Ariel Sharon, to al-Haram al-Sharif in September 2000 accompanied by Israel’s riot police.

Palestinian protests ensued, and four Palestinians were killed and dozens shot and injured. Sharon’s visit triggered the second Palestinian uprising, or Intifada. In the following week, Israel killed 70 Palestinians. Sharon was elected as Israel’s prime minister five months later.

Resistance goes on

Before 2003, the Israeli government began to allow no more than three religious Jews to visit al-Haram at a time, but since then has steadily increased that number to more than 50, and does so without the approval of the Islamic Waqf authorities.

By 2009, after making racist remarks about Palestinians, Israel’s Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonvitch of the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party paid yet another visit to al-Haram. More Zionist provocations and desecrations continued. In September 2015, the Israeli government prevented Palestinians from entering  al-Haram to make way for Jews to go and pray there.

A Palestinian uprising ensued in which Israeli police shot scores of Palestinians. Whereas the Israeli government banned members of the Knesset from visiting al-Haram following the uprising, Benjamin Netanyahu lifted the ban in 2018.

In fact, the issue of whether Jews are Halachically allowed to enter let alone pray at al-Haram al-Sharif remains a major point of contention in Jewish religious circles in Israel, so much so that last year Netanyahu was rumoured to have concluded a deal with a conservative rabbi and head of a political party to temporarily bar Jews from entering al-Haram in exchange for joining his coalition government.

The ongoing Palestinian resistance against Israeli colonialism of the past few weeks, whether in Israel or in the West Bank and Gaza, has reached a fever pitch, with Israeli killings of Palestinians across the West Bank, especially in Jenin.

While Palestinians realise that settler-colonialism has targeted and continues to target the entire land of the Palestinians, the ongoing attempts to take over Palestinian Muslim holy places, whether in Jerusalem, Hebron, or in Nablus’ Maqam Yusuf al-Dwayk, a local saint, or what Zionist zealots allege is the biblical “Joseph’s Tomb,” continue apace, as does valiant Palestinian resistance to them.

While the Israelis had been corralling their supporters among Arab leaders in the last month, whether the Jordanian government to pressure the Palestinian Authority to repress any possible uprising during the current Holy month of Ramadan, or the Egyptian government to warn Hamas not to engage Israel as it represses West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinians, the next couple of weeks may see such schemes falter.

Palestinian resistance and uprisings against the settler-colony have not ceased since the first arrival of Jewish colonists in the 1880s. Israel can call upon whatever Arab leaders it wants to help it quell Palestinian protest, but there is no reason to believe that the Palestinians will ever stop resisting as long as Zionist settler-colonialism remains.

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Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan; Desiring Arabs; The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated into a dozen languages.

Featured image is from Andrew Shiva / Wikimedia Commons

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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***

Former Monsanto Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant is currently in the news. He is trying to avoid appearing in court to be questioned by lawyers on behalf of a cancer patient in the case of Allan Shelton v Monsanto.

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

According to investigative journalist Carey Gillam, Shelton’s lawyers have argued that Grant was an active participant and decision maker in the company’s Roundup business and should be made to testify at the trial.

But Grant says in the court filings that the effort to put him on the stand in front of a jury is “wholly unnecessary and serves only to harass and burden” him.

His lawyers state that Grant does not have “any expertise in the studies and tests that have been done related to Roundup generally, including those related to Roundup safety”.

Gillam notes that the court filings state that Grant’s testimony “would be of little value” because he is not a toxicologist, an epidemiologist, or a regulatory expert and “did not work in the areas of toxicology or epidemiology while employed by Monsanto”.

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

Even by 2009, Roundup-related products, which include genetically modified seeds developed to withstand glyphosate-based applications, represented about half of Monsanto’s gross margin. It is reasonable to say that Roundup was integral to Monsanto’s business model and Grant’s enormous income and final payoff.

But the cancer lawsuits in the US are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the damage done by glyphosate-based products and many other biocides.

Silent killer    

June 2022 marks 60 years since the publication of Rachel Carson’s iconic book Silent Spring. It was published just two years before her death at age 56.

Carson documented the adverse impacts on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides, which she said were ‘biocides’, killing much more than the pests that were targeted. Silent Spring also described some of the deleterious effects of these chemicals on human health.

She accused the agrochemical industry of spreading disinformation and public officials of accepting the industry’s marketing claims without question. An accusation that is still very much relevant today.

Silent Spring was a landmark book, inspiring many scientists and campaigners over the years to carry on the work of Carson, flagging up the effects of agrochemicals and the role of the industry in distorting the narrative surrounding its proprietary chemicals and its influence on policy making.

In 2012, the American Chemical Society designated Silent Spring a National Historic Chemical Landmark because of its importance for the modern environmental movement.

For her efforts, Carson had to endure vicious, baseless smears and attacks on her personal life, integrity, scientific credentials and political affiliations. Tactics that the agrochemicals sector and its supporters have used ever since to try to shut down prominent scientists and campaigners who challenge industry claims, practices and products.

Although Carson was not calling for a ban on all pesticides, at the time Monsanto hit back by publishing 5,000 copies of ‘The Desolate Year’ which projected a world of famine and disease if pesticides were to be banned.

A message the sector continues to churn out even as evidence stacks up against the deleterious impacts of its practices and products and the increasing body of research which indicates the world could feed itself by shifting to agroecological/organic practices (see the online article Living in Epoch-Defining Times: Food, Agriculture and the New World Order, January 2022).

The title of Carson’s book was a metaphor, warning of a bleak future for the natural environment. So all these years later, what has become of humanity’s ‘silent spring’?

In 2017, research conducted in Germany showed the abundance of flying insects had plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years. The research data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany and has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture as it seems likely that the widespread use of pesticides is an important factor.

Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University in the UK was part of the team behind the study and said that vast tracts of land are becoming inhospitable to most forms of life: if we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.

Flying insects are vital because they pollinate flowers and many, not least bees, are important for pollinating key food crops. Most fruit crops are insect-pollinated and insects also provide food for lots of animals, including birds, bats, some mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians.

Flies, beetles and wasps are also predators and important decomposers, breaking down dead plants and animals. And insects form the base of thousands of food chains; their disappearance is a principal reason Britain’s farmland birds have more than halved in number since 1970.

Is this one aspect of the silence Carson warned of – that joyous season of renewal and awakening void of birdsong (and much else)? Truly a silent spring.

The 2016 State of Nature Report found that one in 10 UK wildlife species is threatened with extinction, with numbers of certain creatures having plummeted by two thirds since 1970. The study showed the abundance of flying insects had plunged by three-quarters over a 25-year period.

Campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason has written to public officials on numerous occasions noting that agrochemicals, especially Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup, have devastated the natural environment and have also led to spiralling rates of illness and disease.

She indicates how the widespread use on agricultural crops of neonicotinoid insecticides and the herbicide glyphosate, both of which cause immune suppression, make species vulnerable to emerging infectious pathogens, driving large-scale wildlife extinctions, including essential pollinators.

Providing evidence to show how human disease patterns correlate remarkably well with the rate of glyphosate usage on corn, soy and wheat crops, which has increased due to ‘Roundup Ready’ seeds, Mason argues that over-reliance on chemicals in agriculture is causing irreparable harm to all beings on the planet.

In 2015, writer Carol Van Strum said the US Environmental Protection Agency has been routinely lying about the safety of pesticides since it took over pesticide registrations in 1970.

She has described how faked data and fraudulent tests led to many highly toxic agrochemicals reaching the market and they still remain in use, regardless of the devastating impacts on wildlife and human health.

The research from Germany mentioned above followed a warning by a chief scientific adviser to the UK government, Prof Ian Boyd, who claimed that regulators around the world have falsely assumed that it is safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes and the “effects of dosing whole landscapes with chemicals have been largely ignored.”

Prior to that particular warning, there was a report delivered to the UN Human Rights Council saying that pesticides have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole.

Authored by Hilal Elver, the then special rapporteur on the right to food, and Baskut Tuncak, who was at the time special rapporteur on toxics, the report states:

“Chronic exposure to pesticides has been linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and sterility.”

Elver says that the power of the corporations over governments and the scientific community is extremely important: if you want to deal with pesticides, you have to deal with the companies which deny the damage inflicted by their chemicals as they continue to aggressively market their products

While these corporations falsely claim their products are essential for feeding a burgeoning global population, they also mouth platitudes about choice and democracy, while curtailing both as they infiltrate and subvert regulatory agencies and government machinery.

Whether it is the well-documented harm to the environment or tales of illness and disease in Latin America and elsewhere, the devastating impacts of chemical-intensive agriculture which the agribusiness-agritech corporations rollout is clear to see.

Corporate criminals   

Post-1945 the nutritional value of what we eat has been depleted due to reliance on a narrower range of crops, the side-lining of traditional seeds which produced nutrient-dense plants and modern ‘cost-effective’ food-processing methods that strip out vital micronutrients and insert a cocktail of chemical additives.

Fuelling these trends has been a network of interests, including the Rockefeller Foundation and its acolytes in the US government, giant agribusiness conglomerates like Cargill, the financial-industrial complex and its globalisation agenda (which effectively further undermined localised, indigenous food systems) and the giant food corporations and the influential groups they fund, such as the International Life Sciences Institute.

Included here in this network is the agrochemical-agritech sector which promotes its proprietary chemicals and (genetically-engineered) seeds through a well-developed complex of scientists, politicians, journalists, lobbyists, PR companies and front groups.

Consider what Carey Gillam says:

“US Roundup litigation began in 2015 after the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Internal Monsanto documents dating back decades show that the company was aware of scientific research linking its weed killer to cancer but instead of warning consumers, the company worked to suppress the information and manipulate scientific literature.”

Over the years, Monsanto mounted a deceitful defence of its health- and environment-damaging Roundup and its genetically engineered crops and orchestrated toxic smear campaigns against anyone – scientist or campaigner – who threatened its interests.

In 2016, Rosemary Mason wrote an open letter to European Chemicals Agency Executive Director Geert Dancet: Open Letter to the ECHA about Scientific Fraud and Ecocide. More of an in-depth report than a letter, it can be accessed on the academia.edu site.

In it, she explained how current EU legislation was originally set up to protect the pesticides industry and Monsanto and other agrochemical corporations helped the EU design the regulatory systems for their own products.

She also drew Dancet’s attention to the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology and how, in 2016 Volume 46, Monsanto commissioned five reviews published in a supplement to the journal.  Monsanto also funded them. Mason argues the aim was to cast serious doubts about the adverse effects of glyphosate by using junk science. Straight out of the Big Tobacco playbook.

Mason told Dancet:

“CEO Hugh Grant and the US EPA knew that glyphosate caused all of these problems. The corporation concealed the carcinogenic effects of PCBs on humans and animals for seven years. They have no plans to protect you and your families from the tsunami of sickness that is affecting us all in the UK and the US.”

Meanwhile, on the US Right to Know site, the article Roundup Cancer Cases – Key Documents and Analysis sets out just why more than 100,000 cancer sufferers are attempting to hold Monsanto to account in US courts.

In a just (and sane) world, CEOs would be held personally responsible for the products they peddle and earn millions from. But no doubt they would do their utmost to dodge culpability.

After all, they were ‘just doing their job’ – and they would not want to feel harassed or burdened, would they?

*

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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 organisation for his writing and relies on the generosity of readers. If you appreciated this article, please consider sending a few coins his way: [email protected]

Featured image is from Shutterstock

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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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***

Meine Frage ist ernst gemeint. Die Worte Tolstois in seiner Rede gegen den Krieg (1) haben mich sehr angesprochen und dazu verleitet, ebenfalls die Wahrheit zu sagen, wie ich sie verstehe – auch im Sinne der christlichen Osterbotschaft: Es sind nicht alleine die anderen, die Kriegsführer, die Politiker, die Pfarrer, die die Waffen des Krieges segnen, die die anderen jenseits der Grenze erschlagen, die auch Christen sind und Menschen wie wir und es sind auch nicht alleine die jungen Burschen, die marschieren, wenn sie gerufen werden, die den Krieg führen.

Was machen wir anderen Menschen, die den Krieg nicht anzetteln beziehungsweise herbeiführen und die nicht irgendwann den Roten Atomknopf drücken, um einen Teil der Menschheit auszulöschen und die Erde zu verwüsten? Sind wir nicht auch schuldig? Die Welt ist doch so, wie wir sie eingerichtet oder – in Bezug auf bereits bestehende Verhältnisse – geduldet haben. Können wir anderen uns denn der Verantwortung entziehen? Sind wir mitschuldig, selbst dann, wenn wir Opfer sind?

Die Wissenschaft ist auf dem Kriegspfad, da sie nicht dem Schutz, sondern der Vernichtung des Lebens dient: Immer mehr Wissenschaftler verhökern ihr Wissen, ihr Können – und oft auch ihre Seele – dem militärisch-industriellen Komplex. Sie entfernen sich sogar so weit von ihrem Menschsein, dass sie die Mittel für die allgemeine Vernichtung der Menschheit zu vervollkommnen helfen. Die Dezimierung der Weltbevölkerung ist die Folge – oder sogar das Ziel. Die tödliche „Impfung“ eines Großteils der Weltbevölkerung gegen COVID-19 oder die militärbiologischen Aktivitäten verantwortungsloser Staaten in der Ukraine (2) sowie die Bedrohung durch ein nukleares Armageddon sind nur einige Beispiele aus jüngster Zeit.

Wir Bürger werden darüber im Unklaren gelassen oder belogen, indem die militärischen Forschungsprojekte geheim gehalten oder humanitär bemäntelt werden. Unfehlbarkeit und Allgemeinverbindlichkeit von Wissenschaftlern und ihren Erkenntnissen müssen deshalb zurückgewiesen werden. Wenn die Not der Menschheit nicht an ihr Herz rührt, wird all ihre Weisheit und Wissenschaft degradiert zu einem selbstgefälligen Spiel des Verstandes, das keine Verbindlichkeit kennt.

Und wir anderen Menschen? Wir verlieren viele hehre Worte, lassen aber keine Taten folgen. Wir haben in unserer Gesellschaftsordnung, die Herrschende und Beherrschte kennt, eine Mentalität, eine Ideologie des Knechts entwickelt. Denn auch der Knecht bedarf wie der Herrscher „von Gottes Gnaden“ einer Ideologie, um in der Knechtschaft zu verharren. Er soll sich mit seinem Schicksal abfinden und die Leiden dieser Welt nicht allzu ernst nehmen. Die Religion tröstet ihn über das Unrecht hinweg, indem sie ihm verheißt, dass er im Jenseits für alle Mühsal und erlittenes Unrecht Vergeltung findet.

Deshalb ist auch der Knecht immer Opfer und Mitschuldiger der Tyrannei. Sein Traum ist nicht, „Herren“ und „Knechte“ aus der Welt zu schaffen, sondern er wünscht, selber Herr zu werden. Die Gewalt hat ihn vergiftet und er besitzt nicht mehr die Kraft, den Traum der allgemeinen Freiheit zu träumen.

Da das Geschenk der Evolution im sittlichen Bewusstsein jedes Einzelnen besteht, in der Einsicht in die Verantwortung aller gegenüber allen durch die gegenseitige Hilfe, deshalb müssen wir zusammenhalten und uns einander die Hände reichen, um so dem Macht- und Herrschaftsstreben kranker Individuen entschieden Einhalt zu gebieten.

Ich hoffe sehr, wir haben uns verstanden. Der Bestand des Menschengeschlechts wird davon abhängen, ob wir uns in weit höherem Maße als bisher zur allmenschlichen Solidarität bekennen.

*

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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] https://www.globalresearch.ca/leo-n-tolstoy-speech-against-war-call-people-you-shall-not-kill/5777398

[2] https://de.rt.com/international/136334-sacharowa-berlin-lenkt-mit-biowaffen/

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

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

Reviews

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

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

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute  

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.

***

My question is a serious one. Tolstoy’s words in his speech against war (1) spoke to me very much and prompted me to also speak the truth as I understand it – also in the sense of the Christian Easter message: it is not only the others, the war leaders, the politicians, the priests who bless the weapons of war, who slay the others on the other side of the border, who are also Christians and human beings like us, and it is also not only the young boys who march when they are called, who wage war.

What do we other human beings do who do not instigate or bring about war and who do not at some point press the red nuclear button to wipe out part of humanity and devastate the earth? Are we not also guilty? After all, the world is the way we have set it up or – in relation to already existing conditions – tolerated it. Can the rest of us escape responsibility? Are we complicit, even if we are victims?

Science is on the warpath because it does not serve for the protection but for the destruction of life: more and more scientists are hawking their knowledge, their skills – and often their souls – to the military-industrial complex. They are even moving so far away from their humanity that they are helping to perfect the means for the general destruction of humanity. The decimation of the world’s population is the result – or even the goal. The lethal “vaccination” of a large part of the world’s population against COVID-19 or the military-biological activities of irresponsible states in Ukraine (2) and the threat of a nuclear Armageddon are just a few recent examples.

We citizens are kept in the dark about this or lied to, in that the military research projects are kept secret or glossed over in humanitarian terms. Infallibility and generality of scientists and their findings must therefore be rejected. If the needs of humanity do not touch their hearts, all their wisdom and science will be degraded to a complacent game of wits that knows no binding force.

And the other human beings? We speak many noble words, but do not follow them up with action. In our social order, which knows rulers and ruled, we have developed a mentality, an ideology of the servant. For the servant, like the ruler “by the grace of God”, also needs an ideology to remain in servitude. He should resign himself to his fate and not take the sufferings of this world too seriously. Religion consoles him over the injustice by promising him that he will find retribution in the hereafter for all the hardship and injustice he has suffered.

Therefore, the servant is also always a victim and accomplice of tyranny. His dream is not to eliminate “masters” and “servants” from the world, but he wishes to become master himself. Violence has poisoned him and he no longer has the strength to dream the dream of universal freedom.

Since the gift of evolution consists in the moral consciousness of each individual, in the insight into the responsibility of all towards all through mutual help, that is why we must stick together and join hands with each other, in order to put a firm stop to the striving for power and domination of sick individuals.

I very much hope we have understood each other. The existence of the human race will depend on whether we profess all-human solidarity to a far greater extent than we have done so far.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a teacher (retired headmaster), doctor of education (Dr. paed.) and graduate psychologist (specialising in clinical, educational and media psychology). As a retiree, he worked for many years as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and educational-psychological articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education in values and an education for public spirit and peace.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) https://www.globalresearch.ca/leo-n-tolstoy-speech-against-war-call-people-you-shall-not-kill/5777398

(2) https://de.rt.com/international/136334-sacharowa-berlin-lenkt-mit-biowaffen/

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

---

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

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

Reviews

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

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

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute  

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.

***

Among the Second World War’s real tragedies, and which has often been overlooked in Western historiography, is the damage inflicted by the German armed forces on the Soviet Union and its people, the worst of it in 1941 and 1942.

Nazi Germany ultimately lost the war but, such was the force of blows the Germans had landed on the Soviet Union, that their invasion would be a principal factor behind the communist state’s eventual collapse in 1991.

Geoffrey Roberts, an Irish-based historian of Soviet history, wrote that the German-Axis assault “was no ordinary military conflict. Rather it was an ideological and racist war, a war of destruction and extermination that aimed to kill Jews, enslave the Slavic peoples and destroy communism. This resulted in the death of 25 million Soviet citizens, including a million Jews as the first victims of the Holocaust”.

Around 70,000 Soviet cities, towns and villages were destroyed in the Nazi-led invasion. Also wiped out by the invaders were 98,000 Soviet collective farms, tens of thousands of factories, and thousands of miles of roads and rail lines. Partly as a result of this destruction and the effort expended to overcome it, Soviet Russia would not fully recover and became “a long-term casualty of the Great Patriotic War” with the USSR’s demise in 1991, according to military scholar Chris Bellamy. (Bellamy, Absolute War, p. 6)

A substantial proportion of the Nazi-Soviet War was not fought out on Russian soil. Extensive fighting occurred across Soviet republics such as the Ukraine, Europe’s biggest country today outside of Russia. Of all the states that the Third Reich conquered in World War II, the Ukraine proved by far the most difficult for the Wehrmacht to capture.

After German Army Group South had breached into western Ukraine in late June 1941, the capital Kiev, 300 miles further east, would not be taken and subdued until 3 months later, on 26 September 1941. Even then Kiev was only captured by the Germans, after Adolf Hitler on 21 August had ordered significant additional forces southward, to bolster German divisions in the Ukraine. Three battles alone were fought for the eastern Ukrainian metropolis of Kharkov, the USSR’s 4th largest city, between the autumn of 1941 and the spring of 1943. All three battles were won by the Germans; the devastation was immense and Kharkov was virtually destroyed.

The shell of Kharkov was liberated by the Red Army on 23 August 1943, in spite of Hitler repeatedly demanding that the city be held “under all circumstances”. The outnumbered Germans were compelled to leave Kharkov on 22 August, so as to prevent “another Stalingrad”, Wehrmacht generals assessed on the ground; but not before the Germans had blown up a few more buildings in the city as they departed.

Hitler was determined to retake Kharkov, however. In late August 1943, he quickly prepared a counterattack in the hope of re-establishing German supremacy over the city. To be closer to the front, on 27 August 1943 Hitler arrived at his Vinnitsa Werwolf compound, located deep in a pine forest not far from central Ukraine. It was the first time Hitler had visited the Werwolf complex in more than 5 months.

As summer turned to autumn in 1943 and the evenings were closing in, Hitler’s effort to recapture Kharkov failed when the German assault was repulsed by the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army, but the fighting was again vicious. Hitler remained at the Werwolf headquarters for nearly 3 weeks, until 15 September 1943, when he left it for the final occasion.

Of the approximately 25 million Soviet citizens who would die in the conflict, up to 10 million of those who perished were of Ukrainian birth, soldiers and civilians (Bellamy, p. 11). In 1977 Stephan G. Prociuk, a Ukrainian-born analyst, calculated the Ukraine’s death toll during the war at 11 million, but the number should be treated with caution. In 1986, when the Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences estimated that its population had been reduced by 13.6 million during the war; but the figure seems much too excessive.

The unprecedented level of destruction, which the Soviet Union suffered during the war, need not have been so severe; that is had the country been led by a reasoned and level-headed figure. Brazilian political scientist Moniz Bandeira wrote of “the degeneration of the revolution of 1917 under the totalitarian regime of Joseph Stalin” (Bandeira, the World Disorder, p. 82). Stalin had by 1941 been in supreme control of the Soviet Union for over a decade.

Stalin’s predecessor as Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin, was an astute, perceptive politician. Lenin wrote not long before his death in January 1924, “Stalin is excessively brutal, and this fault, which can be tolerated in private and among communists, becomes an intolerable defect in the person who occupies the position of secretary general” (Trepper, The Great Game, p. 43). Stalin’s brutality was on show from 1936 to 1938, when his regime liquidated hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens during the Great Purge.

More seriously through the viewpoint of the approaching war, from May 1937 Stalin began to purge the Red Army’s high command too. With no concrete evidence, he suspected or believed that a coup was being prepared against him, which was mistaken, as Marshal Georgy Zhukov stated. The timing of the Red Army purges could scarcely have been worse, and they continued right up to the start of hostilities with Germany on 22 June 1941.

Soviet career agent and resistance fighter Leopold Trepper wrote, “The blood of Red Army soldiers flowed: 13 out of 19 commanders of army corps, 110 out of 135 commanders of divisions and brigades, half the commanders of regiments, and most of the political commissars were executed”. (Trepper, p. 67)

Altogether, out of 142,000 Soviet military commanders and commissars employed in 1937, about 20,000 of them were permanently dismissed from the Red Army. Out of these 20,000 the vast majority of them would be killed (Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, pp. 20-21). Stalin intended that the purges especially target the Soviet military’s top ranks. This had a devastating impact on the ability, quality, and training of the Red Army, and the effects would last for years.

Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, the Red Army’s pre-war commander, lamented in early October 1941 that “our organisation is weaker than theirs. Our commanding officers are less well trained. The Germans succeed usually because of their better organisation and clever tricks”.

The Red Army would not completely recover from the purges until 1944, with the launching of its great offensive that summer, Operation Bagration. After the war, Marshal Zhukov said of the Soviet military personnel eliminated in the purges, “Of course, I regard them as innocent victims”. (Gromyko, Memories, p. 216)

Another calamity lay in store. Stalin gave no credence to the intelligence reports, piling up on his desk from late 1940, which outlined that Hitler was preparing an attack on the USSR in 1941. Stalin personally received 80 intelligence accounts, from November 1940 to June 1941, warning him of Nazi intentions. (Roberts, the Storm of War, p. 155)

These reports sent to the Kremlin came from a variety of sources: British, Chinese, American, Czech intelligence, etc. As early as 29 December 1940, Soviet intelligence agencies possessed the basic outline of Operation Barbarossa, its scope and intended execution time (Salisbury, The 900 Days, p. 58). Lenin, had he still been in charge, would have drawn the obvious conclusion. The most reliable intelligence material of all was forthcoming from first-rate communist agents like Trepper, Richard Sorge, Anatoly Gurevich and Rudolf Roessler. They all informed Stalin that the German invasion was coming.

The decorated Russian admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov, a Hero of the Soviet Union, said of Stalin’s associates in the Kremlin, “they could not take in their hands the levers of direction. They were not accustomed to independent action, and were able only to fulfill the will of Stalin standing over them. This was the tragedy of those hours”. Admiral Kuznetsov described Stalin’s refusal to believe the intelligence reports as “sick suspiciousness”. (Salisbury, p. 78)

The German attack began at 3:15 am on 22 June; just over an hour before this, as part of Stalin’s continued commitment to the Nazi-Soviet Pact, a Russian train laden with commodities entered the Third Reich, at 2 am on 22 June, through the central portion of the front at Brest-Litovsk (Bellamy, p. 164). The Russian locomotive steamed past thousands of onlooking German soldiers, who were about to advance into the Soviet Union; the Germans were much amused at the sight of the train dispatching raw materials to the country about to attack it.

When the German-Axis divisions swarmed over the Soviet frontiers, many Russian troops were either on leave, separated from their artillery, or taken prisoner before they could institute an effective defence. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers were unnecessarily lost, in the opening days and weeks, across the front, along with thousands of tanks and airplanes which could have been saved.

By the first week of July 1941, almost 4,000 Soviet planes had been lost, most of them destroyed on the ground or fallen undamaged into enemy hands. German aircraft losses up to the first week of July amounted to 550 (Mawdsley, p. 59). On the Ukrainian sector of the frontier alone, by 6 July 1941 the Soviet divisions had suffered 173,323 killed, captured or missing. Also by 6 July along the Ukrainian border, the Germans had destroyed 4,381 Soviet tanks and 1,218 combat aircraft. (Bellamy, p. 205)

Two and a half weeks into the German invasion, by 9 July 1941 the Wehrmacht had inflicted on the Red Army a total of 589,537 irrecoverable losses (Bellamy, p. 206), which translates to deaths, those taken prisoner by the Nazis, and others permanently missing. Casualties, on the other hand, does not always mean irrecoverable losses.

In the first weeks of Hitler’s attack, the Red Army was losing on average each day more than 44,000 soldiers. Trepper wrote, “By this time, the armoured divisions of the Wehrmacht had already penetrated several hundred kilometres into Soviet territory. It would take the sacrifices of a whole nation, rising up against its invader, to reverse the military situation”.

On 13 July 1941, with the invasion 3 weeks old, the Germans had suffered by then 92,120 killed, wounded or missing and these were not all irrecoverable losses. Bellamy wrote that by 9 July 1941, “An attacking force [Wehrmacht], with only a modest superiority in numbers of men, and inferior in numbers of tanks, guns and aircraft, had been able to drive the defending Russians back between 300 and 600 kilometres”. By the end of July 1941, now almost 6 weeks into the invasion, the Germans had suffered 25,000 deaths on the Eastern front. (Bellamy, p. 206)

To properly understand the Nazi-Soviet War, it can be highlighted that in military circles it is conventionally believed, for an invasion to succeed decisively, that the attacking forces should outnumber the defenders by 3 to 1. On 22 June 1941 the German-Axis armies assailed the USSR with 3,767,000 men, which were immediately in opposition to 3,000,000 Soviet troops (Mawdsley, p. 19). Yet in the whole of the USSR, there were 5,373,000 Red Army soldiers in June 1941. Most of the remaining 2.37 million Soviet troops were swiftly relocated westwards.

At the war’s outset, the Soviets had almost 3 times as many tanks in the western USSR than the German-Axis divisions, 11,000 versus 4,000. In the entire Soviet Union the Russians had 23,100 tanks in June 1941, almost 6 times greater than the enemy. The Kremlin had 9,100 aircraft in the western USSR as opposed to 4,400 German-Axis aircraft; but in all of the Soviet Union the Russians had 20,000 planes, nearly 5 times as much as the enemy. (Mawdsley, p. 42)

Reflecting on the above figures, the Soviets should have held the advantage from early on. It places in sharp perspective how the war actually unfolded, with the Germans reaching the outskirts of Moscow at the start of December 1941. Military historian Donald J. Goodspeed noted “the Russians should have been able to put up a much stronger initial defense than they did. They were, in fact, taken by surprise and for this there was no excuse at all. Stalin had been given repeated, detailed warnings of Hitler’s intention; he was even told the correct date of Barbarossa”. (Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 391)

The Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, later recalled accurately, “The growth of our military industry in the years before the war could not possibly have been greater!” Stalin must be given credit in this regard, for the Soviet armament drive was his inspiration from the early 1930s.

It is a shame therefore, from the beginning of the war against fascism, that Stalin could not have put to full use the remarkable gains Russia had made in the military realm. By the end of 1941, the Soviets had lost 20,000 tanks (Mawdsley, p. 46) and 17,900 aircraft (Mawdsley, p. 59). The Germans for example would lose 2,510 aircraft in the USSR in 1941, not insignificant by itself, for that figure was almost double what the Luftwaffe had lost in the 1940 Battle of Britain.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Sources

Chris Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (Pan; Main Market edition, 21 Aug. 2009)

Geoffrey Roberts, “Russia’s military have learned lessons from failures to become a proven power”, The Irish Examiner, 11 June 2016

Leopold Trepper, The Great Game: Memoirs of a Master Spy (Michael Joseph Ltd; First Edition, 1 May 1977)

Andrei Gromyko, Memories: From Stalin to Gorbachev (Arrow Books Limited, 1 Jan. 1989)

Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 (Hodder Arnold, 23 Feb. 2007)

Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st ed. 2019 edition, 4 Feb. 2019)

Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 Apr. 1985)

Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (Da Capo Press, 30 Sep. 1985)

Robert M. Citino, “Kharkov 1943: The Wehrmacht’s Last Victory”, 8 May 2013, Historynet.com

Andrew Roberts, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Harper, 17 May 2011)

More Than 1 Million COVID Vaccine Injuries, Nearly 27,000 Deaths Reported to VAERS, CDC Data Show

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Japan’s Nuclear Regulator to Okay Release of Treated Water from Fukushima Plant

By NHK World, April 18, 2022

The Japanese government plans to dilute treated water that continues to accumulate at the plant to levels below national regulations and start releasing it from around spring 2023.

Ukraine: The Moment of Truth

By Prof. Ivaylo Grouev, April 17, 2022

The war in Ukraine will shape the global order of the 21^st century. Even for those without a basic understanding of geopolitics, the war is in Ukraine, but not between Russia and Ukraine. The war, or military operation, as the Kremlin framed it, is between Russia and the so-called “Collective West”.

Is the US Dispatching ISIS Forces From Syria to Ukraine?

By Al Mayadeen, April 17, 2022

In the wake of reactionary forces (including a neo-Nazi battalion and possible Israeli mercenaries) fighting Russia in Ukraine, Syrian deputy foreign minister, Bashar Al-Jaafari, told Sputnik that there may be a possibility that US special services could be sending ISIS members and Jabhat Al-Nusra (Al-Nusra Front) soldiers to Ukraine.

Whose Security? Sweden, Finland, NATO’s Expansion Towards Russia

By Kim Petersen, April 17, 2022

Two neutral countries, Finland and Sweden, are seriously contemplating NATO membership, as did Ukraine. Will this increase security for these two countries? There has been no warring between Russia and Finland since 1941-1944 when the Finns decided to ally with Nazi Germany during World War II and fight the Soviet Union.

A Scarred Childhood: Israeli Attacks Against Palestinian Children in the Occupied West Bank in 2022

By Palestinian Negotiatons Affairs Department, April 17, 2022

For over five decades, Palestinian children and their families have experienced the injustices of the Israeli occupation. To our children, this occupation has served as a school of daily experiential learning.

Video: The Vaccine is More Dangerous than COVID-19: Dr. Peter McCullough

By Dr. Peter McCullough and Michael Welch, April 17, 2022

They produce a lethal spike protein in insensitive organs like the brain or the heart or elsewhere. The spike protein damages blood vessels, damages organs, causes blood clots. So it’s well within the mechanism of action that the vaccine could be fatal. Someone could have a fatal blood clot.

NATO-Exit under Art. 13: Dismantle NATO, Close Down 800 US Military Bases, Prosecute the War Criminals

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 17, 2022

There is a (somewhat contradictory) clause within the Treaty of the Atlantic Alliance (Article 13) which enables withdrawal from NATO. This clause has to be examined and a strategy must be envisaged. The request of a NATO Member State to withdraw from the Treaty rests with the Government of the United States of America. What are the legal implications of this clause?

How the West Was Won: Counterinsurgency. “When Domestic Populations Become the Battlefield”

By Dustin Broadbery, April 16, 2022

Thanks to Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013, we now know that the NSA were collecting 200 billion pieces of data every month, including the cell phone records, emails, web searches and live chats of more than 200 million ordinary Americans. This was extracted from the world’s largest internet companies via a lesser-known, data mining program called Prism.

Western Dissent from US/NATO Policy on Ukraine Is Small, Yet the Censorship Campaign Is Extreme

By Glenn Greenwald, April 15, 2022

On a virtually daily basis, any off-key news agency, independent platform or individual citizen is liable to be banished from the internet. In early March, barely a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the twenty-seven nation European Union — citing “disinformation” and “public order and security” — officially banned the Russian state-news outlets RT and Sputnik from being heard anywhere in Europe.

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Japan’s nuclear regulator has largely approved a plan to release treated water from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean.

The plant suffered triple meltdowns in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster. Water is used to cool molten nuclear fuel. It mixes with rain and groundwater that flows into damaged reactor buildings.

The water is treated to remove most of the radioactive materials, but still contains radioactive tritium.

The Japanese government plans to dilute treated water that continues to accumulate at the plant to levels below national regulations and start releasing it from around spring 2023.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority has been inspecting the plan drawn up by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company.

In 13 meetings since December, the NRA discussed the safety of the new facility to be built for the water release and the maximum concentration of radioactive tritium when it is released. It also considered how to respond in natural disasters and other emergencies, and the effect of radiation exposure on the surrounding environment and people.

At Friday’s meeting, an official of the NRA secretariat said there are no issues left that have not been discussed enough.

The NRA plans to put together a draft inspection document as early as next month that effectively indicates the plan’s approval.

TEPCO plans to start construction on a facility for diluting treated water and an undersea tunnel once the NRA approves the plan and the utility obtains consent from Fukushima Prefecture and local communities. TEPCO aims to complete the construction work by mid-April next year.

TEPCO has yet to convince and gain understanding from local fishers who are concerned about reputational damage from the release of treated water into the sea.

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We have less than 24 hours to stop the World Health Organization’s proposed “global accord on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response,” a plan that would strip nations of the right to determine their own health policies in the event of a pandemic.

We only have until Wednesday at 11 a.m. ET to let the World Health Organization (WHO) know what we think about its proposed “global accord on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”

Take action! Go to the World Council for Health website and use its platform to weigh in on the WHO’s global accord on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

Submissions must be in response to the provided guiding question: What substantive elements do you think should be included in a new international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response?

Plan would strip nations of the right to set their own health policy

In a special session, only the second-ever such session since the agency’s founding in 1948, the WHO’s Health Assembly met in December 2021 to adopt an agreement titled: “The World Together.”

The decision by the Health Assembly established an intergovernmental negotiating body to draft and negotiate the WHO Pandemic Preparedness Agreement.

Health Policy Watch reported the agreement will focus on “incoherent policymaking by member states and lack of international cooperation.”

What this means precisely is anyone’s guess, but it suggests a new global health governance that will strip nations of the right to determine their own health policy in the event of a pandemic.

However, the agreement doesn’t stop with pandemics.

The intergovernmental negotiating body also is instructed to address “the unsustainable food production and livestock breeding, wildlife trading, resource-intensive lifestyles and consumption, destruction of ecosystems, antimicrobial resistance and soaring figures of cancer” along with a range of other issues.

Such a binding agreement would stop countries like Sweden from preventing lockdowns and mandates within their borders as they did during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It could also prevent states such as Texas, Florida or Tennessee from defying federal and global mandates.

The underlying agenda envisions a world where WHO supersedes the authority of every signatory nation’s individual constitution.

The Biden administration announced it wants issues of “health equity” included in the Pandemic Preparedness Agreement, according to Politico.

Aside from the Politico report on Biden’s equality agenda, the media have reported very few details about the WHO’s sweeping treaty — which effectively is being negotiated in secret.

Buzzwords like “equity” can easily be used to conceal a hidden agenda to centralize global control of public health to benefit Big Pharma, major corporations and global financial capital.

You can help, but you must act today

Let the WHO know public health is not a one-size-fits-all program. We need people and communities in control of their own health.

Submit your comment today.

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***

Even without Ukraine being a NATO member-country, that land has already become America’s initial battlefield against Ukraine’s next-door-neighbor, Russia, thus effectively starting World War III against Russia? and, so, Ukraine is boosting the profits of U.S.-and-allied ‘defense’ contractors, such as Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world’s largest weapons-seller.

Though Ukraine is the land, and though Ukrainians are the U.S. regime’s proxy-soldiers in this initial stage of World War III, it is mainly American armaments-firms that are enormously benefitting from the resultant global surge in weapons-purchases.

It’s Ukrainians’ and Russians’ blood, and U.S.-and-allied billionaires’ profits, that are now being promoted in their U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media, as being the heroic war for ‘democracy’ and ’to defend freedom’, though, during the many decades before, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, and in Syria, and in Libya, and in Yemen, and in so many other lands which have been cursed by America’s violent presence, the U.S. regime’s promised ‘championship of democracy and of the rules-based international order’, turned into the reality of U.S.-and-allied ‘rules’, and of rampant violations of international laws, as being the delivered U.S.-and-allied ’order’ there.

Russia and China are being demonized, by the U.S. regime, as ‘authoritarian states’, and as violators of human rights, while America’s billionaires, who control the U.S. regime and its ‘news’-media and its armaments-manufacturers, reap the rewards of this — the most massive of all global con-games against the entire global public.

Here are some recent developments, in America’s actual (though not yet formally announced) war against Russia:

On April 12th, Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post bannered “Pentagon looks to vastly expand weapons for Ukraine”, and reported that, “The Biden administration is poised to dramatically expand the scope of weapons it’s providing Ukraine.”

On April 13th, Russia’s RT News headlined “US issues Russia sanctions warning”, and reported that,

During an event at NATO’s Atlantic Council adjunct, [U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen plans to insist that Washington remains fully committed to pushing Russia “further towards economic, financial, and strategic isolation,” according to an excerpt quoted by the media.

“And let’s be clear, the unified coalition of sanctioning countries will not be indifferent to actions that undermine the sanctions we’ve put in place,” Yellen will say.

In her opinion, the measures being imposed on Russia by the US and its allies are necessary because the future of the international order, “both for peaceful security and economic prosperity,” is now at stake.

Also on the 13th, the New York Times bannered “The U.S. has expanded intelligence sharing with Ukraine”, and reported that “The United States has increased the flow of intelligence to Ukraine about Russian forces in the Donbas and Crimea,” so as to increase the likelihood that Ukrainian forces will retake Crimea, which the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, had arbitrarily transferred to Ukraine in 1954, and which had been a part of Russia ever since 1783.

Because there was such intense opposition by the Crimean population to this transfer, the Ukrainian government was obliged to grant to Crimea a special status as being a self-administered region, not controlled by the Ukrainian government in Kiev. But, now, the U.S. regime demands instead that Crimea become an integral part of the Ukrainian regime, especially because Crimeans are passionately opposed to doing that, just as they had been back in 1954, when Khrushchev (a less barbaric dictator than today’s U.S. regime is) transferred it to Ukraine.

The U.S. is also opposed to the residents in the breakaway Donbass portion of that pre-U.S.-2014-coup Ukrainian region, where over 90% of the residents had voted for the democratically elected Ukrainian President whom U.S. President Barack Obama had overthrown in a bloody U.S. coup (‘democratic revolution’) in February 2014.

So, the U.S. Biden Administration, set upon bringing about World War III, is likewise assisting its Ukrainian stooge-regime to grab back that former region of Ukraine, against which that U.S.-stooge-regime had been trying to eliminate as many of the residents there as it could.

The idea behind America’s “intelligence-sharing” with their stooge-regime is to provide U.S. satellite and other secret intelligence information to America’s stooge-regime there, in order to assist them to conquer not only the residents in both Donbass and Crimea, but also to conquer the Russian military forces in Crimea, which region of the former Ukraine had voted over 95% in March 2014 to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia, and which region has had, ever since 1783, Russia’s largest naval base (which naval base Obama had been intending to become instead yet another U.S. naval base).

Also on the 13th of April, Defense News bannered “NATO planners put the F-35 front and center in European nuclear deterrence” and reported, regarding that Lockheed Martin fighter-plane:

Following Germany’s decision to buy a fleet of F-35s, NATO planners have begun updating the alliance’s nuclear sharing mechanics to account for the jet’s next-gen capabilities, a key NATO official said this week.

“We’re moving fast and furiously towards F-35 modernization and incorporating those into our planning and into our exercising and things like that as those capabilities come online,” said Jessica Cox, director of the NATO nuclear policy directorate in Brussels.

“By the end of the decade, most if not all of our allies will have transitioned,” she added, speaking during an online discussion of the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center, a Washington-based think tank. …

The United States military stores around 150 B-61 gravity bombs in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey for that mission, according to a recent accounting in an article by the British-based Chatham House think tank. …

Most recently, the new German government picked the F-35 specifically for the nuclear sharing mission, committing to up to 35 copies. The decision followed a lengthy discussion in Germany about Berlin’s continued participation in the nuclear sharing responsibility in the first place, a debate that appears to have abated following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Cox said the aircraft’s advanced features also will boost the capabilities of alliance members and F-35 customers like Poland, Denmark or Norway who might be tasked with supporting actual nuclear sharing missions.

The U.S. Congress hasn’t yet declared war against Russia, but over 97% of the members in the U.S. Senate and House have voted for the sanctions, and the military appropriations bills, and the other anti-Russian legislation, to assist the U.S. regime to conquer Russia. So, pulling the plug to start the official war seems now to be almost a mere formality, so late in ‘the game’.

The U.S. regime’s intentions toward Russia have been conquest ever since U.S. President Harry S. Truman made that decision on 25 July 1945, and it stayed that way even after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.

America’s anti-Russia alliance, NATO, has always been committed to conquering Russia, and remains so today. For example, NATO’s chief Jens Stoltenberg has always said, and repeated it recently, that “NATO is not a threat to Russia.”

How much contempt, against the public, must such a person, who says such a thing, in such circumstances, and with such a long history behind it — all of which has been to the exact contrary of that person’s statement — have?

However much it is, that’s how much contempt of the public he has. The blatancy of his lying is shocking. But it’s normal for NATO, which also makes this type of blatantly false allegation an intrinsic part of their commitment to being Russia’s enemies, such as their official statement on 26 February 2022:

“NATO has tried to build a partnership with Russia, developing dialogue and practical cooperation in areas of common interest. Practical cooperation has been suspended since 2014 in response to Russia’s illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea, Ukraine, which NATO will never recognise.”

(It wasn’t ‘illegal’; Obama’s coup in Ukraine was.) But that ‘partnership with Russia’ didn’t exist even when Boris Yeltsin was Russia’s President and, as the New York Times headlined on 21 December 1991, “Yeltsin Says Russia Seeks to Join NATO”, yet NATO never gave more than perfunctory consideration to his repeated proposal. And as U.S. President G.H.W. Bush secretly started informing U.S. allies on 24 February 1990, the Cold War was to continue on the U.S.-and-allied side until Russia itself becomes conquered, no matter how friendly toward them Russia might be or become.

Russia never invaded America and has never even threatened to do so except as being what they would do if America pushes them too far into a corner — comes at all close to trapping them (such as the present Biden regime is trying to do).

The aggressor has always, ever since 25 July 1945, been the U.S. regime, which has perpetrated most of the world’s coups, sanctions, and invasions, after WW II.

This has always been done by the U.S. regime in the name of advancing ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘human rights’.

It has always been done by the very same regime that today is the world’s biggest violator of each of those alleged values, and that is also the world’s #1 police state, having a higher percentage of its residents living in prisons than does any other nation on the entire planet.

Any nation which is allied to it shares its immense guilt and hypocrisy, and will, no doubt, likewise be targeted by Russian, and maybe also Chinese, missiles, when America and its NATO finally do unleash their World War III against their ‘enemies’ if the intended victims become totally cornered, trapped.

But this will surely be a loser’s game on both sides (victimizers, the U.S. and its vassal-nations or ‘allies’; versus victims, such as Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and Libya). However, for the weapons-profiteers and extraction corporations that (mainly) the U.S. aristocracy control, and that are making money hand-over-fist this way, it will be a ‘winning’ game, if nuclear debris can ever be called a “win,” by anyone who is sane (which billionaires, as individuals with insatiable demands for their own supremacy, strongly tend not to be).

Can anyone more evil and deceitful, and hypocritical, than the U.S. regime and its NATO be imagined? If so, then whom might such a person even possibly be?

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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.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

“The war in Ukraine is the most dangerous international conflict since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The West, and especially America, is principally responsible for the crisis which began in February 2014. It has now turned into a war that not only threatens to destroy Ukraine, but also has the potential to escalate into a nuclear war between Russia and NATO.” — Prof. John Mearsheimer

***

The war in Ukraine will shape the global order of the 21^st century. Even for those without a basic understanding of geopolitics, the war is in Ukraine, but not between Russia and Ukraine. The war, or military operation, as the Kremlin framed it, is between Russia and the so-called “Collective West”. 

The end of this war will re-configure the post-1945 security architecture and most likely will end the experiment of globalisation (global village, global citizen) as we know it, an euphemism for movement of a) capital (one direction) and b) resources and labour (opposite direction). There will be a multipolarity with quasi continental axis of political power based on economic, trade, financial  and ultimately even security arrangements.

Welcome to the newly emerging regionalization aka autarky, a truly fascinating period to remember the famous Chinese proverb: “we are living in interesting times” which times, according to the ancient tradition is the absolute worst Chinese curse.

In many aspects (to use the Marxist lexicon of “superstructure”) we are living in a gravitational field of autarky, due to old cleavages resulting from Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946.

In this context, I would like to share a personal introduction to this article.

In the last 20 years since I started teaching I always asked on May 9 what was the most important event that happened on that day?

Answers varied: typhoon in Indonesia, hijacking plane in Sri Lanka, elections in South Korea. In the last two decades, the only time I received the right answer i.e. capitulation of Germany came from a student born in the same city as Mikhail Gorbachev, Stavropol.

The vast majority of my students most in their 3 and 4 years as Political Science majors had not heard about the Red Army (with a very few exceptions).

World War II was taught in the following way:

Hitler invaded Europe, then there was the D-Day (the Battle of Normandy, D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed in Normandy) followed shortly by V-Day (Victory Day).

The main narrative was that the American army destroyed the German Wehrmacht. My students, were surprised to learn that in fact the Red Army defeated Germany and that USSR lost 24,000,000 people, compared to 418 000 Americans, 45 000 Canadians.

This so-called “alternative view” was not about some marginal regional skirmish but the most devasting conflict human civilization had ever seen, which shaped the politics of the 20^th century.

Why I am referring to this?

It is abundantly clear that today, the war in Ukraine plays the role of  a catalyst increasing the interpretative cleavages, where the nexus of facts, documents, official statements and front-line reportages represent narratives where the only common and mutually agreed denominator is the geography – Ukraine.

The current media coverage no longer represents a new and deeply fragmented world. In Ukraine radically opposed “truths”, views, basic data  belong to what theoretical mathematicians and astrophysicists call parallel galaxies.

The old Machiavellian dilemma of political survival based on “duality of truth” public (plebs) versus inner circle of government (elite) is now achievable with an impenetrable layer of censorship matching the specification of concrete grade for nuclear bunkers.

How is this possible in the era of non-stop 24/7 cycle of competing communication/propaganda narratives?

The answer is obvious.

This is not a new phenomena. In a meticulously documented book, Jeffrey Herf depicts the mechanics and efficacy of the Third Reich propaganda machine where there is one very revealing factoid.

In the very last days of WWII, while Russian forces were approaching Berlin, Goebbel’s propaganda explained the non-stop cannonade with the following hard to believe justification – shooting of an epic war film, “Live goes on” so to settle German citizens from worrying about the relentless cannonade. Berliners believed that Germany was winning the war and when they saw with their own eyes the first Russian tanks, they believed that they were part of the film crew….

This happened more than 70 years ago using mass produced cheap radio… try to  compare to today’s state of the art mass media with its endless capacity producing fake news, which deep fake and visual effects could rightfully be envied by Hollywood.

To go back to todays military conflict in Ukraine.

As a long-term supporter of a non-killing society, I unequivocally condemn any act of aggression, including the war in Ukraine. It is, simply put, a tragedy. At the same time, legitimate questions remain unanswered. Did we really have an honest public discourse about the causes for the Russian military operation, aka war in Ukraine? Listening to what once used to be mass media or now represents the “Ministry of Truth” – this is a “Putin War”.

This explanation is quite simple. There is only one problem in the equation – Putin. Therefore, the moment we get rid of Putin there will be no war, ergo regime change in Moscow. However according to the latest polls after the beginning of the military operation in Ukraine, Putin’s popularity jumped to 83%, now with vast public support.

This is a Russian, not a Putin war.  How to explain this? The mainstream media knows the answer but prefers to be silent.

Furthermore, from the media coverage “conveniently” were omitted Russian (Putin’s?) proposals published on December 17 2021  which in my view, were the very last diplomatic demarch aiming to avoid this conflict.

Russian security concerns were not openly discussed.In a snapshot, they are

• no further expansion of NATO (Ukraine, Georgia),
• removal of missiles sites in Poland and Romania.

The response was a flat rejection by USA and NATO. (Europe did not count – for Moscow, EU is not an independent geopolitical player). These were quintessential proposals regarding European as well as world security. They were promptly rejected.  The explanation from US and NATO was simple: Russia can not have any legitimate security concerns.

Really…?

Imagine the following hypothetical scenario, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) with members: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan)  as a defense military organisation continues to expand not only in Central Asia but also in Latin America.

First  way of expansion are the old Russian satellites: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala. The next round is Brazil, Venezuela, Chile and Argentina. There are massive Russian military bases including Russian missile sites.  The door is finally open to Mexico and …Canada. In Canada there is a pro-Russian coup d’état. The regime in Ottawa becomes the most anti-American regime not only in the Western hemisphere but in the world, surpassing even Teheran’s anti-American fever. Russian military hardware is flooding in all Canadian provinces. In addition, along the 4,000 km US- Canada border, Russia installs 30 bio-lab (research centers) under the supervision of Russian bioweapon specialists.

Most importantly due to geographic proximity Russian missiles could now hit Washington DC and New York in under 5 minutes, which makes them, de facto defenceless…

Washington is desperate to de-escalate the standoff and launches a diplomatic demarch by proposing the removal of Russian missiles sites, and written guarantees for the neutrality status to its neighbours, namely Canada and Mexico. Moscow and CTSO flatly reject these proposals.

Then…

For those who believe this is a cheap Kremlin propaganda, I suggest revisit 1962  Cuban missile crisis.  Back then, both Kennedy and Khrushchev managed to avoid MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) because they realised that the best course of action was de-escalation.

Unfortunately, 2022 is not 1962.

Instead of de-escalation there are clear indications suggesting the opposite coming from Russia on one side and USA and NATO on the other. The explanation from Jens Stoltenberg (Secretary General of NATO) rejecting the Russian peace proposals is that NATO is purely defense organisation and as such does not represent security concerns even less existential ones to whomever.

For starters such an argument is a hard sell.…

Was in reality Serbia representing such “a clear and present danger” to the security of NATO countries forcing the military alliance to amass 1000 combat planes?

Or ask Libyans. Was Gadhafi about to invade Europe in 2011? Or …Iraq in 2003?

The official NATO explanation stated that it was not about self-defence, but a policy with the enigmatic title “humanitarian intervention”.

In this way the first “NATO War” coined by the BBC as “Moral Combat” – Kosovo was presented not as an act of aggression, but as an act of “humanitarian intervention” where the blue helmets (the traditional peacekeeping operations) were asked to intervene lethally. As we all know the legality of this military operation or war or humanitarian intervention against Serbia happened without the approval of a UN Security Council resolution. Therefore, it was a violation of Article 51 of the United Nations – i.e. an act of aggression.

So much about the defense argument…

To remind our readers the “excuse” presented by NATO was found in the language of the legal definition of HI (Humanitarian Intervention).  

“Humanitarian intervention is armed intervention in another country without that country’s consent to deal with or the threat of humanitarian disasters caused by serious and far-reaching violations of fundamental human rights.”

Therefore in 1999 NATO crossed the Rubicon obtaining carte blanche to intervene military anywhere, anytime on the planet, where according to Political Council in Brussels headquarters has decided that human rights might have been threatened.

To put the Ukraine conflict in this context.

It was already established that NATO forces can intervene any moment when there is a violation of human’s rights, just like in 1999 where there were 45 ethnic Albanians killed in the village of Racak in Kosovo which triggered humanitarian intervention and NATO planes bombed Serbia for 78 days consecutively.

Back to Ukraine. After 2014 coup (Maidan), the Kiev regime ordered the Ukrainian army to launch a military operation in the eastern republics of Lugansk and Donetsk using its full arsenal: air force, including tanks and heavy artillery. This resulted in 14,000 (Ukrainian) citizen casualties (not 45 as was the case in Kosovo)

14,000 dead most of them civilians including children is it a marginal element…?

To conclude with another “marginal element” in the chronology of Ukraine saga.

The NATO’s Bucharest summit in April 2008 pushed the alliance to announce that Ukraine and Georgia “membership in the Alliance is a question of when, not whether”…

This “red line” was interpreted as an existential threat for Russia and… USA decided to ignore it.

The results of the rejection of Moscow peace proposals were summarised by the. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko who used a biblical reference, “The moment of truth has come“.

We are living in this moment.

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Prof. Ivalyo Grouev is a prominent author and geopolitical analyst, teaches political science at the University of Ottawa. 

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***

Last week, CNN brought on former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for his fourth recent appearance to talk, once again, about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deadly invasion of Ukraine.

“I think we need to understand that there is only one thing that Putin understands, and that’s force,” said Panetta on Newsroom.

The former CIA director added:

“I think the United States has to provide whatever weapons are necessary to the Ukrainians, so that they can hit back, and hit back now.”

At no time did Panetta nor CNN mention that he’s a senior counselor at Beacon Global Strategies, a defense industry consulting firm that has reportedly represented weapons manufacturer Raytheon. The firm doesn’t disclose its clients, but Raytheon and the defense industry generally stand to benefit from the conflict in Ukraine.

The episode is part of a broader pattern and practice: Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, cable news networks have routinely called on defense officials-turned-consultants to offer analysis and help the American public make sense of the crisis. Often, these analysts have used their TV time to call for greater U.S. involvement and bolder moves that could ratchet up tensions between two nuclear-armed superpowers.

The networks have consistently failed to disclose these analysts’ day jobs, describing them instead by only their former high-ranking military or government roles — leaving viewers in the dark about the analysts’ financial ties to defense contractors that stand to profit from increased or prolonged conflict.

During its Ukraine coverage, MSNBC even failed to include disclosures when the network invited on former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who serves on the board of directors at Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest defense contractor.

When asked about this matter, Johnson told The Lever, “I have no comment.”

Corporate media’s lack of transparency about these consultants is deeply troubling, said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen.

“This type of revolving-door behavior should be prohibited for military officials to serve in a private capacity representing military contractors,” Holman told The Lever. “If not prohibited, it should be disclosed to everyone so when they’re going on television trying to affect Biden’s policy on whatever war they have in mind, they ought to be straightforward.”

The phenomenon is not new. In an analysis of three weeks of news coverage following last year’s U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) found that 20 of the 22 featured guests from the U.S. on the networks’ Sunday shows had ties to the military-industrial-complex. At that point, too, the TV networks regularly neglected to disclose their guests’ ties to the defense industry. But the stakes are now much higher: Military conflict between the U.S. and Russia could make for a world-ending disaster, which is why the Biden administration has been reluctant to take major actions that could be perceived as escalatory.

But the Ukraine crisis and the potential for greater conflict have been a goldmine for defense contractors, sending stocks skyrocketing and prompting sharp increases in defense spending.

“The people who have the most interest in influencing the direction of the coverage are weapons makers,” Jim Naureckas, editor at FAIR, told The Lever. “They have the most direct financial stake in the way we cover issues of war and peace. Unfortunately, they are interested in more war and less peace.”

Since the start of the Ukraine crisis, U.S. defense stocks in leading companies like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin have surged, and they are expected to continue rising in the coming months. And in the wake of Russia’s invasion, President Biden signed into law a spending package that directs a record-breaking $782 billion towards defense — almost $30 billion above his initial request.

According to The Hill, “The additional Ukraine aid comes on top of more than $1 billion the U.S. has already spent in the past year to arm Ukrainian soldiers with modern weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, and Raytheon’s anti-aircraft Stinger missiles.”

Cashing In On Military Experience

With stories about Russia’s invasion dominating the news, networks have had tons of pundit slots to fill. Those spots have largely gone to high-ranking ex-military officials, who often find lucrative careers in the influence industry working on behalf of defense contractors — and who tend to spout hawkish rhetoric that aligns with how corporate media generally covers conflict. Most of the time, however, the networks have failed to divulge how such martial bombast could aid these former officials’ private-sector employers.

For instance, Jeremy Bash, who served as chief of staff at the Pentagon and the CIA under President Barack Obama, has been a recurring guest on MSNBC and NBC during their coverage of the crisis in Ukraine.

Bash, who was named a national security analyst for NBC and MSNBC in 2017, is also a founder and managing director at Beacon Global Strategies, which describes itself as “a strategic advisory firm specializing in international policy, defense, cyber, intelligence, and homeland security.” While Beacon Global Strategies does not disclose its clients, the firm has worked for defense giant Raytheon, according to the New York Times.

Days after Putin first launched the invasion of Ukraine, Bash went on NBC’s Meet the Press, eager to weigh in on the whole affair — presenting it as “an opportunity for the United States and the west to actually deliver a very fatal blow to Russia’s ambitions on the global stage.”

“I think swallowing Ukraine, a country the size of Texas, with 40 million people, is unprecedented since World War II,” he said. “And if the United States can train and equip the Ukrainians and, I think, engage in a second Charlie Wilson’s War, basically the sequel to the movie and the book, which is arming and training a determined force that will shoot Russian aircraft out of the sky, open up those tanks with can-openers, like the Javelins, and kill Russians, which is what our equipment is doing, I think this is a huge opportunity to hit Putin very hard.”

Javelin anti-tank missiles are manufactured jointly by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. At no point did anyone involved in the broadcast mention that Bash’s consulting firm has worked for Raytheon.

Admiral James Stavridis, an advisory board member at Beacon Global Strategies, has also made frequent recent appearances on MSNBC. Stavridis is also the vice chair of global affairs and managing director at private equity giant Carlyle Group, which has a history of investing in the defense and national security markets.

Stavridis pushed a war-hungry stance on MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber shortly after the Russian invasion began.

“In NATO, where I was supreme allied commander, you flood the zone in Eastern Europe,” said Stavridis. “You bring in troops, tanks, missile systems, warships, all the above, in order to send a signal to Vladimir Putin.”

On Meet The Press a couple weeks later, Stavridis recommended that the U.S. send more anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine to allow the country to create its own no-fly zone:

“What we ought to do is give the Ukrainians the ability to create a no-fly zone,” he said. “More Stingers, more missiles that can go higher than Stingers.”

Stinger missiles are manufactured by Raytheon, Beacon Global Strategies’ reported client. Again, MSNBC failed to disclose information about Stavridis’ firm or its work for Raytheon.

Stavridis also called on the United States to approve an arms transfer proposed by Poland, which offered to send Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine — via an American air force base in Germany, with the expectation that the U.S. would then supply Poland with replacement planes. “Get those MiG-29s in their hands,” said Stavridis.

The Biden administration shot down that plan on the basis that it could significantly escalate tensions between the U.S. and Russia. A Pentagon spokesperson said that “we do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one.”

Beacon Global Strategies did not respond to a request for comment.

“I’d Love To See NATO Move In There”

Bash and Stavridis aren’t the only high-ranking national security officials-turned-pundits working as consultants who have lately been beating the drums of war.

Retired U.S. combat general Barry McCaffrey, for example, has been a mainstay on MSNBC. During an appearance on The Beat with Ari Melber, he lauded NATO and the European Union’s early decision to bring more than 7,000 U.S. troops and armored vehicles from Fort Stewart, Georgia, into Germany.

McCaffrey — who made the controversial Gulf War decision for his infantry division to fire on Iraqi soldiers, civilians, and children after a ceasefire was already underway — runs a consulting firm called BR McCaffrey Associates LLC. According to the business’ website, McCaffrey’s firm promises to help clients “build linkages between government and private sector clients; design public relations, media, advertising and legislative strategies; and provide client specific analysis of U.S. and international political and economic issues.”

In the years following 9/11, McCaffrey pushed for an endless Iraq War, including on NBC, without disclosing his financial interests: McCaffrey’s consulting firm was working behind the scenes to help at least one defense company secure a contract supplying Iraq with armored vehicles.

Former CIA Director and retired army general David Petraeus, meanwhile, has made multiple appearances on CNN recently, during which he talked about the need to get MiGs “into Ukrainian skies.” Petraeus is a partner at private equity giant KKR, a firm with significant defense business. He also serves on the board of directors at Optiv, which provides cybersecurity technology and services across the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense.

Retired army general Wesley Clark has also made a handful of appearances on CNN, voicing his opinion that this “battle is a long way from over, provided we can continue to provide replenishment to the weapons to the Ukrainians.”

Clark has long enjoyed a lucrative career working with defense companies. He runs a strategic consulting firm, Wesley K. Clark & Associates, which says it “uses his expertise, relationships, and extensive international reputation and experience in the fields of energy, alternative energy, corporate and national security, logistics, aerospace and defense, and investment banking.”

Last week on CNN, Clark was asked about the idea of sending a NATO task force to patrol waters off the coast of the Ukrainian city of Odessa.

“I’d love to see NATO move in there with a task force,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to happen in the near term because of NATO’s reluctance to come into direct conflict with Russian forces… But I do think it’s important.”

“You Can’t Give Away The Game”

Michèle Flournoy, a former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense under Obama, has appeared on CNN at least twice in recent weeks to advocate for greater direct military support to Ukraine. Flournoy is now co-founder and managing partner at WestExec Advisors, whose clients include aerospace and defense companies like Boeing. She also serves on the board of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.

Flournoy didn’t disclose any of that when she went on State of the Union in early March to push for increasing military aid to Ukraine. “We need to be supplying Ukrainians with as much as we possibly can, munitions like anti-tank Javelin missiles, anti-air Stinger missiles,” she said. “And I think we should also be trying to get them some more of the planes that they know how to fly, MiGs from Eastern Europe, that could enable them to be much more effective in protecting the skies.”

On Amanpour a few days later, Flournoy doubled down on the idea of providing more weapons to Ukraine.

“I think we need to bend over backwards to help the Ukrainians as much as possible,” she said. “This is not going to be over anytime soon.”

Flournoy’s appearance on Amanpour was one of the rare instances where CNN actually disclosed her work at WestExec Advisors — but the network didn’t mention the firm’s defense-industry clients. Naureckas, of FAIR, doesn’t simply blame pro-war talking heads for failing to disclose their defense-industry ties. He says it’s also up to the journalists running these cable news shows to help the public understand that these “military experts” have a stake in pushing for war.

“Everyone involved is aware of the transaction that is going on,” said Naureckas. “Journalists know this as well, but you can’t admit it because that would spoil the grift if you said, ‘Here’s a person who’s funded by the weapons industry to tell you about this crisis.’ It should be the reporter’s instinct to explain the agenda of the people they are quoting, but because this is such an integral part of what is done in the journalism system, you can’t give away the game.”

CNN and NBC did not respond to requests for comment.

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In the wake of reactionary forces (including a neo-Nazi battalion and possible Israeli mercenaries) fighting Russia in Ukraine, Syrian deputy foreign minister, Bashar Al-Jaafari, told Sputnik that there may be a possibility that US special services could be sending ISIS members and Jabhat Al-Nusra (Al-Nusra Front) soldiers to Ukraine.

On Sunday, Syria’s Foreign Ministry strongly condemned Sunday “The hysterical escalation campaigns of the US and the West” against Russia, a ministry source told Syrian news agency SANA.

The source pointed out that “The Syrian Arab Republic affirms that Russia has the full right to defend itself and keep imminent danger away from its people in the face of attempts by the West and the United States to threaten its national security and target its stability.”

“Based on the analysis, we can say that this is quite possibly true. We, as a state, have evidence that the US military in Syria is transferring terrorists from one place to another, especially members of the IS and Jabhat al-Nusra [terrorist group banned in Russia],” Jaafari said.

The Syrian official said that previously, the US had deployed terrorists from Syria to Afghanistan and Burkina-Faso, and that Washington’s use of mercenaries is a well-established practice – according to Al-Jaafari, no one should be surprised.

“So one should not be surprised, and we do not exclude, that tomorrow IS terrorists will be sent to Ukraine,” Jaafari said.

Western states, for a long time, have been supporting far-right groups in Ukraine, according to Al-Jaafari, and that they only received support because they are against Russia.

“Many years later [after WWII] people appeared tho [sic] declared their readiness to support the neo-Nazis in Ukraine. But they received the support of these countries and the support of the special services only because they are against Russia. The West will not hesitate to arm the devil against Russia if it is in their interests,” Al-Jaafari told Sputnik.

Zelensky is being used as a pawn of the West

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to Al-Jaafari, is not a politician: the West created this political figure and uses him as a pawn in its strategic interests:

“My personal opinion is that Zelensky does not come from a traditional political institution … His political career is the result of a coup against [former Ukrainian] President [Petro] Poroshenko … Zelensky is being used as a pawn of the West in strategic interests, and [the West] is now undermining his reputation by drawing him into a conflict with Russia. In this vein, we heard his call to exclude Russia from the UN Security Council, as if we were in an animated film,” Al-Jaafari said.

The diplomat recalled that the United Nations Security Council was created on values of international understanding after WWII, and it was created by countries that defeated fascism, including Russia. The Soviet army seized Berlin, which was in the chokehold of Nazis.

“No one has the right to belittle Russia’s role in international balance and maintaining peace and stability. Imagine if there were no Russia and China in the UN Security Council, how many wars and interventions there would be,” Al-Jaafari added.

Syria will counteract the sanctions with Russia

“The UN Security Council was originally created to prevent wars in the world. If a country like Russia is excluded, what role will this organization have? The exclusion of Russia from the Security Council will prevent the council itself from [playing] any role in the world,” said Luna Al-Shibl, top Syrian diplomat on Monday.

The official recalled that the US invaded Iraq completely bypassing the UN Security Council and that it is attempting to weaken the role of the UN Security Council in any way it can.

“And the exclusion of Russia comes in the context of the weakening of this council,” she said.

The top Syrian diplomat added that Syria intends to work with Russia to deal with the repercussions of the sanctions imposed by the US and its allies.

When asked whether Syria will counteract the sanctions jointly with Russia and Belarus, she responded by saying: “of course, Russia has backed us, and we will undoubtedly back it.”

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In a significantly escalatory move, Ukraine’s Operational Command South announced Thursday that it hit a Russian warship with a “Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile” that was operating roughly 60 miles south off the coast of Odesa in southeast Ukraine and that it had started to sink.

“In the Black Sea operational zone, Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles hit the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet—it received significant damage,” the Ukrainian statement said. “A fire broke out. Other units of the ship’s group tried to help, but a storm and a powerful explosion of ammunition overturned the cruiser and it began to sink.”

Russia’s defense ministry claimed the “accidental fire” on the Soviet-era guided-missile cruiser Moskva had been contained, but left the ship badly damaged. Though the Russian statement initially claimed the cruiser “remained afloat” and measures were being taken to tow it to port, it later admitted the warship had sunk as four Russian ships that had gone to the Moskva’s rescue were hampered by bad weather and by ammunition exploding on board.

Late on Thursday, the Russian ministry said in a statement:

“The cruiser ship Moskva lost its stability when it was towed to the port because of the damage to the ship’s hull that it received during the fire from the detonation of ammunition. In stormy sea conditions, the ship sank.”

The statement added the crew had been safely evacuated to other Black Sea Fleet ships in the area.

Russian news agencies said the 611-foot-long (186 meters) Moskva, with a crew of almost 500, was commissioned in 1983 and refurbished in 1998. It was one of the three cruisers in Russia’s formidable Black Sea Fleet. The Moskva was armed with a range of anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles as well as torpedoes and naval guns and close-in missile defense systems, including 16 anti-ship Vulkan cruise missiles with a range of at least 700 km (440 miles).

Reportedly, the warship was also carrying S-300 anti-air missiles, captured by Russian troops in early days of the military campaign. It is the first time Moscow has lost a cruiser since German planes sank the Chervona Ukraina (Red Ukraine) in 1941 at Sevastopol – the Crimean naval base to which the Moskva was being towed when it sank.

Maksym Marchenko, the Ukrainian governor of the region around Odessa, said the Moskva had been hit by two cruise missiles. “Neptune missiles guarding the Black Sea caused very serious damage,” he said. The Neptune missile that is claimed to have punched a hole in the Moskva’s hull was developed and upgraded by Ukraine from a Soviet missile design. It is fired from a mobile launcher with a range of 100 km.

Western officials reportedly described the Ukrainian claims to have hit the Moskva with anti-ship missiles as “credible”. A senior US defense official noted that five other Russian vessels that had been as close as or closer to the Ukrainian coast than the Moskva had moved at least another 20 nautical miles offshore after the explosion, suggesting an effort to get out of range of Ukrainian missiles.

“In the wake of the damage that the Moskva experienced, all of the northern Black Sea ships have now moved out, away from the northern areas they were operating in,” the defense official told Guardian.

In retaliation for sinking the warship, Russian forces for the first time, since scaling back Russia’s offensive north of the capital announced at the Istanbul peace initiative on March 29, struck military targets in Kyiv, Kherson in the south, the eastern city of Kharkiv and the town of Ivano-Frankivsk in the west, though there were no immediate reports of casualties.

Although Ukraine claimed the Russian warship was struck by a “Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile,” developed domestically based on the Soviet KH-35 cruise missile that became operational in the Ukrainian naval forces just last year, Politico reported on March 16 that Kyiv had specifically demanded “long-range anti-ship missiles” from Washington.

“A Western diplomat familiar with Ukraine’s requests said Kyiv specifically has asked the US and allies for more Stingers and Starstreak man-portable air-defense systems, Javelins and other anti-tank weapons, ground-based mobile air-defense systems, armed drones, long-range anti-ship missiles, off-the-shelf electronic warfare capabilities, and satellite navigation and communications jamming equipment.”

Lending credence to the reports the United States has already delivered Harpoon anti-ship missiles to Ukraine, the Washington Post reported on March 5:

“During an official visit, a Ukrainian special operations commander told Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and other lawmakers that they were shifting training and planning to focus on maintaining an armed opposition, relying on insurgent-like tactics.

“Ukrainian officials told the lawmakers that they were frustrated that the United States had not sent Harpoon missiles to target Russian ships and Stinger missiles to attack Russian aircraft, Moulton and Waltz said in separate interviews.”

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 7, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley revealed that US and NATO countries have collectively provided roughly 60,000 anti-tank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons during NATO’s “weapons for peace” program to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.

Although Milley did not specifically mention providing Harpoons to Ukrainian forces, according to informed sources, caches of anti-ship missiles had also been provided to Ukraine’s naval forces deployed in Odessa in southeast Ukraine.

In addition to the CIA’s clandestine program for training Ukraine’s largely conscript military and allied neo-Nazi militias in Donbas in east Ukraine aimed at cultivating an anti-Russian insurgency in Ukraine, and the US Special Forces program for training Ukraine’s security forces at Yavoriv Combat Training Center in the western part of the country bordering Poland that was hit by a barrage of 30 Russian cruise missiles killing at least 35 militants on March 13, the Pentagon revealed last week that it had also been training Ukrainian troops that were inside the US before Russia launched its invasion.

The Ukrainian soldiers were participating in a pre-scheduled professional military education program at the Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School in Biloxi, Mississippi, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, according to Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby.

That school is a security cooperation school, operating under the US Special Operations Command in support of “foreign security assistance and geographic combatant commanders’ theater security cooperation priorities.” The Ukrainian forces received “training on patrol craft operations, communications and maintenance,” Kirby said.

Since the conclusion of the course in early March, the Department of Defense provided the group “additional advanced tactical training” on the systems the United States has provided to Ukraine, including on “the Switchblade unmanned aerial vehicle,” Kirby said.

Several batches of Ukrainian naval cadets trained at the Naval Training School in Biloxi, Mississippi, have already returned home to Ukraine and were deployed in Odesa and the rest are now headed back to Ukraine.

Besides receiving advanced tactical training on operating the Switchblade kamikaze drones and unmanned coastal defense boats, included in the additional $800 million in military assistance to Ukraine announced by the Biden administration on Wednesday, the Ukrainian naval cadets also received training on operating long-range anti-ship missiles in the United States.

Reportedly, the US-trained Ukrainian naval forces deployed in Odessa in the southeast scored two hits of Harpoon anti-ship missiles on the Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva operating 60 miles south off the coast of Odesa that punched a hole in the warship’s hull and ignited a blaze that, in turn, caused the massive amount of ammunition loaded on the cruiser to explode, and the battleship subsequently sank to the bottom of the Black Sea.

To return the favor of halting Russian military campaign north of the capital and focusing on liberating Russian-majority Donbas in east Ukraine, practically spelling an end to Russia’s month-long offensive in the embattled country, NATO powers have announced transferring heavy weapons, including combat tanks, armored personnel carriers, long-range artillery and even helicopters and Soviet MiG aircraft, to Ukraine to escalate the conflict.

The latest $800 million military assistance package to Ukraine announced by the Biden administration on Wednesday includes 11 Mi-17 helicopters that had been earmarked for Afghanistan before the US-backed government collapsed last year. It also includes 18 155mm howitzers, along with 40,000 artillery rounds, 10 counter-artillery radars, 200 armored personnel carriers, 500 Javelin anti-tank missiles, and 300 additional Switchblade drones.

Besides direct military assistance from the United States, the rest of NATO member states are also pouring in significant amount of heavy weapons in Ukraine. Czechoslovakia used to have the most advanced military-industrial complex in Central Europe during the Soviet era. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and subsequent separation of the “conjoined twins” in 1993, the Czech Republic has inherited the Soviet weaponry. Famous of its arms black market, Czech weapons have been found in war theaters as far away as Syria, Libya and South Sudan.

The Czech Republic had delivered tanks, multiple rocket launchers, howitzers and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine among military shipments that had reached hundreds of millions of dollars and would continue, two Czech defense sources confided to Reuters.

Defense sources confirmed a shipment of five T-72 tanks and five BVP-1, or BMP-1, infantry fighting vehicles seen on rail cars in photographs on Twitter and video footage last week. “For several weeks, we have been supplying heavy ground equipment – I am saying it generally but by definition it is clear that this includes tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, howitzers and multiple rocket launchers,” a senior defense official said.

“What has gone from the Czech Republic is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.” The senior defense official said the Czechs were also supplying a range of anti-aircraft weaponry. Independent defense analyst Lukas Visingr said short-range air-defense systems Strela-10, or SA-13 Gopher in NATO terminology, had been spotted on a train apparently bound for Ukraine.

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.

After the scuttled aircraft-transfer deal that would’ve seen Poland handing over its entire 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, now 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.

Considering that the Biden administration has already announced delivering 11 Mi-17 helicopters in its latest $800 million military assistance package to Ukraine, therefore in all likelihood the Slovak aircraft-transfer deal is also going to go through. The Slovak prime minister did not put a number on how many MiG-29 aircraft Slovakia would provide to Ukraine, but the country is reported to have around a dozen.

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 soon as it transfers the MiG fleet to Ukraine.

Asking for permanent US military presence in Central Europe to deter Russia, though making an artificial distinction between “permanent deployment” vs. “rotational deployment at permanent bases” in order to sound like a peacenik, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley proposed before the House Armed Services Committee:

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

“I believe that a lot of our European allies, especially those such as the Baltics or Poland and Romania, and elsewhere — they’re very, very willing to establish permanent bases. They’ll build them, they’ll pay for them.”

“I do think this is a very protracted conflict and I think it’s at least measured in years. I don’t know about decades, but at least years for sure,” said Milley. “I think that NATO, the United States, Ukraine and all of the allies and partners that are supporting Ukraine are going to be involved in this for quite some time.”

“We are now facing two global powers: China and Russia, each with significant military capabilities both who intend to fundamentally change the rules based current global order. We are entering a world that is becoming more unstable and the potential for significant international conflict is increasing, not decreasing,” (Gen. Milley said. emphasis added).

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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.

Featured image: Russian cruiser Moskva (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

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Insanity has often been defined as trying the same thing over and over and getting the same result.

Case in point, Ukraine was seeking NATO membership to bolster its security. This membership would have come at the expense of Russian security, as Russian president Vladimir Putin made clear. To thwart NATO’s (i.e. the US’s) hegemonic ambitions and preserve its own security, Russia felt compelled to address its security concerns. When these Russian security concerns were treated with contempt by the US and Ukraine, Russia took action to protect itself.

Two neutral countries, Finland and Sweden, are seriously contemplating NATO membership, as did Ukraine. Will this increase security for these two countries? There has been no warring between Russia and Finland since 1941-1944 when the Finns decided to ally with Nazi Germany during World War II and fight the Soviet Union. The last Russia-Sweden war was the Finnish War that was fought over two centuries ago (1808-1809).

On its face, one lesson to be drawn from the war between Russia and Ukraine is that Russia sees NATO membership on its border as a threat to its security, and it will act to protect its security.

Why then would any country that has been in relatively peaceful co-existence with Russians since the end of WWII seek a change in that status quo that may very well diminish or destroy that peaceful coexistence?

Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson was circumspect about NATO membership noting that Sweden has to “think about the consequences…. We have to see what is best for Sweden’s security.”

Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin admitted, “Of course, there are many kinds of risks involved…. We have to be prepared for all kinds of actions from Russia…” Surely, Marin is aware of the risks that were posed by the stand off between John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev over Soviet stationing of nukes in Cuba (and American nukes in Turkey).

News of further NATO expansion toward Russia has triggered a response from the Kremlin. Spokesperson Dimitry Peskov said Russia was considering militarily bolstering its western flank.

Across the pond, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price was welcoming of an enlarged NATO membership. He repeated, “… we believe NATO’s open door is an open door.”

However, it is quite obvious that the NATO open door has been more a closed door to Russia, as Russia has never been made a full member. It does not take a deep analysis to understand why this is so. NATO proclaims its, “purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.” However, the raison d’être for such a military alliance disappears when there is no enemy on the horizon. Thus, Russia is reified as the NATO boogeyman. The existence of NATO serves well the aims of the governmental-military-industrial complex of the US.

Sweden and Finland are considering whether to formalize NATO membership — a key trigger in Russia’s military response to Ukraine. Some questions that arise:

Do Finland and Sweden not consider Russia’s security concerns valid? While the circumstances differ, why would these two Nordic countries try what failed for Ukraine and expect a benign response?

Would the presence of Russian nukes and hypersonic weapons targeting their countries make the Swedes and Finns feel more secure?

Instead of being regularly badgered to increase military expenditures as a NATO member, wouldn’t it be better to nix the insanity of spending the hard-earned cash of the Nordic workers on guns, tanks, planes, and missiles and becoming less secure as a result? Wouldn’t the money of the Nordic citizenry be put to better use for housing, road repair, poverty reduction, hospitals, recreation centers, and schools at home?

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

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This article was originally published in November 2021 under the title: Putin Says West Taking Russia’s ‘Red Lines’ Too Lightly is of significance to an understanding of unfolding events in Ukraine and Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022

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President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday (18 November 2021) that the West was taking Russia’s warnings not to cross its “red lines” too lightly and that Moscow needed serious security guarantees from the West.

In a wide-ranging foreign policy speech, the Kremlin leader also described relations with the United States as “unsatisfactory” but said Russia remained open to dialogue with Washington.

The Kremlin said in September that NATO would overstep a Russian red line if it expanded its military infrastructure in Ukraine, and Moscow has since accused Ukraine and NATO of destabilising behaviour, including in the Black Sea.

In the televised speech, Putin complained that Western strategic bombers carrying “very serious weapons” were flying within 20 km (12.5 miles) of Russia’s borders.

“We’re constantly voicing our concerns about this, talking about red lines, but we understand our partners – how shall I put it mildly – have a very superficial attitude to all our warnings and talk of red lines,” Putin said.

NATO – with which Moscow severed ties last month – had destroyed all mechanisms for dialogue, Putin said.

He told foreign ministry officials that Russia needed to seek long-term guarantees of its security from the West, though he said this would be difficult and did not spell out what form the assurances should take.

Russia-West ties have been at post-Cold War lows for years, but the tone has sharpened in recent weeks as Ukraine and NATO countries have raised fears over Russian troop movements near Ukraine’s borders and tried to guess Moscow’s real intentions.

But despite a growing list of disputes, the Kremlin has maintained high-level contacts with Washington and spoken repeatedly of a possible summit between Putin and US President Joe Biden to follow up their initial meeting in Geneva in June, which Putin said had opened up room for an improvement in ties.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan discussed cybersecurity, Ukraine and the migrant crisis on the Belarus border in a phone call on Wednesday, the Kremlin said.

“This was all in the framework of preparation for … high-level contact,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

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Conservation groups filed a formal notice today of their intent to sue an international mining company to protect critical desert streams and washes in southern Arizona’s Santa Rita Mountains.

Today’s notice says Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals is violating the Clean Water Act by dumping dirt and rocks into a wash at the company’s proposed Rosemont Copper World Expansion, on private land on the western slope of the Santa Rita Mountains. Federal laws require a permit before discharging anything into U.S. waterways.

“It’s appalling to see Rosemont running roughshod over the feet of these beautiful mountains,” said Allison Melton, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This may be private property, but the company doesn’t have the right to pollute waters our communities and wildlife need to survive. We’re putting Rosemont on notice that it needs to stop operations now and go through the Clean Water Act permit process.”

Rosemont, a Hudbay subsidiary, intends to ramp up grading and clearing the 3,500-acre site southeast of Sahuarita this month, but it has not applied for a Clean Water Act permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Aerial photos taken earlier in April show soil and rocks spilling into and filling portions of a wash, part of a network of ephemeral streams that flow across the proposed mine site and downstream to the Santa Cruz River.

“After years of declaring little or no interest in the western slopes of the Santa Rita Mountains, Rosemont is now showing their true hand,” said Gayle Hartmann, board president of Save the Scenic Santa Ritas. “They want to pursue complete and utter destruction of the ridgeline and slopes of the northern Santa Ritas. An almost certain outcome would be serious impacts to our already fragile watershed, in particular washes that support the Santa Cruz River. We’re not going to stand by and let the company ignore federal law as they significantly deface a beloved, local sky island.”

Rosemont’s original copper mine plans, on the east side of the Santa Rita Mountains, have been stymied by multiple losses in court. The westside expansion proposal calls for two new open pits and three tailings waste piles, where it would dump at least 64 million tons of waste. It intends to fill the washes and streams throughout the mine site and connect to its proposed Rosemont Copper mine.

“This wanton destruction of desert washes is unconscionable and inconsistent with the mandates of the Clean Water Act,” said Sandy Bahr, director for Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter. “We simply cannot stand by and allow this multinational mining company to harm our precious Arizona waters.”

Washes and other ephemeral streams like those on the mine expansion site play a vital role in maintaining the chemical, physical and biological health of waters downstream. In addition to the buried wash, the Center’s aerial photos showed a vast network of roads, grading and hillside excavation.

“Once again Hudbay feels it’s above the law in its quest to mine the Santa Rita Mountains,” said Roger Featherstone, director of the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition. “As U.S. courts have found, Hudbay’s plans to mine at Rosemont are illegal. Now, instead of revising their Rosemont plan to obey the law, the Canadian mining company has come up with a bizarre plan to cobble together a project that would destroy the west side of the Santa Rita Mountains. This plan clearly violates the Clean Water Act and we have no choice but to go to court to stop this blatant violation of federal law.”

Last week EarthJustice, representing three Arizona Tribes, sent Hudbay a similar notice of intent to sue over violations of the Clean Water Act at the expansion site.

The 60-day notices are required before filing a lawsuit to compel the company to comply with the Clean Water Act. Rosemont can avoid the violations by suspending work at the site.

On the other side of the mountain range, Rosemont still wants to blast a mile-wide, half-mile-deep pit, as well as pile toxic mine tailings and waste rock hundreds of feet high across nearly 2,500 acres in the headwaters of Davidson Canyon, a tributary to Cienega Creek, which replenishes Tucson’s groundwater basin. The mine would also destroy prime jaguar habitat — land that’s critical to the survival and recovery of jaguars in the United States and has been home to a jaguar known as El Jefe.

The Rosemont Mine has faced numerous legal challenges.

In 2017 the conservation groups filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of the mine, and in 2019 a judge overturned the agency’s approval and the underlying environmental analysis for the mine project, sending both back to the Forest Service. Hudbay and the U.S. Justice Department appealed, and that appeal is pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In September 2017 the Center sued to challenge a biological opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that determined the mine would not jeopardize threatened and endangered species in the area. In 2020 a district court struck down the biological opinion, and that ruling was not appealed.

Aerial photo of Rosemont Copper World expansion, Santa Rita Mountains, Arizona. Photo credit: Center for Biological Diversity Images are available for media use.

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For over five decades, Palestinian children and their families have experienced the injustices of the Israeli occupation. To our children, this occupation has served as a school of daily experiential learning. This happens at Israeli-monitored checkpoints that fragment our towns and restrict our movement; during clashes where Israeli occupation forces shoot and sometimes kill, unarmed Palestinians; during repressive curfews, closures, home raids and demolitions; through settler violence, and the day-to-day humiliations faced by a people under occupation.

Undoubtedly, the occupying Power has constituted an informal curriculum, whose master teachers have instilled and cultivated existential fear, a profound sense of insecurity, loss, bitterness and anger in the hearts and minds of our children. The impact of Israel’s oppressive policies against our children, in violation of international law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is tremendous and far-reaching since they touch not only the five senses but leave deep physical, mental, psychological, emotional, and spiritual scars that are hard to heal given the continued occupation.

In over twenty years, and based on documentation by Defense for Children International- Palestine (DCIP), more than 2,200 Palestinian children were killed by the Israeli occupying forces and settlers in the occupied Palestinian territory. At the end of 2021, the same organization conducted an investigation and concluded that last year was the “deadliest year for Palestinian children since 2014.”

Since the beginning of the year, Israel, the occupying Power, has continued to terrorize the Palestinian people, including women, children, and the elderly. As a result, many Palestinians have been killed, hundreds injured, and more than a thousand detained. This is in addition to over 1,400 military raids into Palestinian villages and cities in the occupied West Bank, and 85 demolition operations documented by UNOCHA, which displaced almost 230 people, half of them were children, and otherwise affected nearly 1,140 Palestinians, nearly half of them are children.

On the occasion of Palestinian Child Day on 5 April and the Palestinian Prisoner Day on 17 April, this report provides an overview of the various Israeli violations committed by Israel’s occupying forces and settlers during the first three months of 2022^[1] in the occupied West Bank against our children, who represent nearly  44% of the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

I. Killings

The Israeli occupying forces (IOF) killed 24 Palestinians, five of which are under the age of 18: Mohammad Abu Salah (17) from Al-Yamoun town in Jenin, Mohammad Salah (14) from Al- Khadder town in Bethlehem, Shadi Najem (18) from Jenin refugee camp, Nader Rayan (17) from Balata refugee camp in Nablus, and Sanad Abu Attiya (17) from Jenin refugee camp.

The bodies of the following Palestinian children martyrs remain withheld in Israeli custody^[2]:

1. Mohammad Nasser Trereh (17) from Hebron since 30 June 2016
2. Khaled Abdel A’al (17) from Gaza since 2 July 2018
3. Mohammad Dar Yousef (17) from Ramallah since 26 July 2018
4. Mohammad Abu Mandil (17) from Gaza since 22 January 2020
5. Mahmoud Kamil (17) from Jenin since 21 December 2020
6. Atallah Rayyan (17) from Salfit since 26 January 2021
7. Zuhdi Al-Tawil (17) from Jerusalem since 24 May 2021
8. Yousef Subuh (16) from Jenin since 26 September 2021
9. Mohammad Younes (16) from Nablus since 6 December 2021

II. Injuries

Nearly 1,600 Palestinians were injured^[3], including nearly 40 children that were hospitalized according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, as well as others who suffocated from tear gas inhalation. Many of these injuries happened during protests (in Hebron, Budrus village, Qalendia refugee camp, Jerusalem, Beita village, Kufr Qaddoum village, and other places throughout the occupied West Bank) against the IOF, who often responded with rubber-coated metal bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas canisters. Among the young wounded Palestinians was Ahmad Thawabteh (13), who was briefly arrested and later released after being severely beaten and breaking his leg. Among the injured were 11-year-old children, including Munawar Burqan (details about the incident later in the report) with special needs from occupied Jerusalem, who was seriously injured after a stun grenade was fired at her face by the IOF. The youngest among the wounded was a 6 months-old baby.

Below are some examples of Palestinian children injured by the IOF and later abused in prison^[4]:

• Ahmad Flanna, from Safa town in Ramallah, turned 17 on 4 April. Ahmad was shot five times and abused by the IOF before being arrested on 26 February 2021. While incarcerated, Ahmad had several surgeries at an Israeli hospital without informing his family. The occupation authorities had also interrogated him while in the hospital without regard to his health condition. Ahmed, a student in the first year of secondary school, is currently detained in “Megiddo” prison. A hearing at an Israeli court is scheduled for today, 12 April.
• Issa Al-Titi (17) from Al-Aroub Refugee Camp was shot by the IOF in September 2020, leaving him with disfiguring injuries to his face, a fractured skull, and severe head injuries. He stayed in an Israeli hospital for eight days before being transferred to the “Megiddo” prison and then to the “Ofer” prison. Today, a permanent headache plagues him due to the Israeli prison administration’s indifference to providing him with necessary medical treatment. They also keep him from meeting his brothers, Jihad and Mohammad, who are also detained in Israeli jails. Issa was sentenced to 13 months in prison and was released in January 2022.
• Mohammad Al-Sheikh (17) from Al-Ezzariya was arrested in August 2019 after shooting him with several bullets in the body. Naseem Abu Rumi, his friend, was killed by the IOF in occupied Jerusalem the same day. Mohammed underwent several surgeries in an Israeli hospital after his arrest. He stayed there for ten days before being transferred to the “Ramle” prison clinic, where he remained for four months. Despite suffering from a bullet near his heart, and shrapnel in his body, Mohammed is currently being held under harsh detention conditions in “Ofer” prison. His health is deteriorating due to Israel’s inhumane policy of medical negligence.

III. Arrests^[5]

The IOF arrested over 1,300 Palestinian children in 2021, more than 9,000 Palestinian children between 2015 and the end of March 2022, and more than 19,000 Palestinian children since the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.

Until the end of March 2022, the number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons reached over 4,400 prisoners, including 160 children who continue to suffer additional abuse during their arrest. Currently, three children are being held under administrative detention: Amal Nakhleh (18), arrested on 21 January 2021, who suffers from myasthenia gravis disease and needs regular and careful medical treatment, Mohammad Mansour (18), who was arrested on 9 April 2021, and  Sami Al-Harimi who was arrested on 20 September 2021.

There are various examples of Palestinian children who spent their childhood in Israeli prisons, including Nurhan Awwad, who was 16 years old when arrested in 2015, and Malak Suleiman, who was 16 years old in 2016: each girl was sentenced to ten years in prison. Also, Muhannad Jwehan, who was 16 years old when arrested in 2002, and Amjad Abu Rmeileh, who was 15 years old when arrested in 2002: each received a sentence of 25 years in prison.

Noting that not all incidents were documented: during the reporting period, the IOF arrested and briefly detained at least 100 Palestinian children during Israeli military raids into Palestinian cities, towns, and villages, including Ragheb Samhan (10) in Ras Karkar village (Ramallah), Qasim Al-Hamuz (13) in Al-Fawwar refugee camp (Hebron), Mohammad Haddad (10) in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood (occupied Jerusalem), Ahmad Thawabteh (13) near the entrance of Beit Fajjar town (Bethlehem) after severely beating him and breaking his leg, and Ahmed Al-Eis (9) near Al-Jalazon refugee camp (Ramallah).

IV. Israeli Settlers’ Terrorism/ Violence

During the reporting period, three incidents of settlers’ attacks were documented, per the following:

• On  9 January: a group of settlers attacked the family of Adel Al-Salameen in southeast Tammun town in northern Jordan Valley. They beat his wife and children, stole one of his sheep, and stole a mobile phone.
• On 24 January: As settlers marched from Za’tara junction to Hawara checkpoint, passing through the town of Huwara, they attacked several Palestinian homes and shops; damaging 51 vehicles, destroying the fronts of four shops, and severely beating Al-Muntasir Damidi (17) who sustained bruises and was admitted to Nablus government hospital for treatment.
• On 18 February: while driving a vehicle, a settler ran over Othman Sabra (7), a resident of Jinsafut village in Qalqilya governorate. Othman sustained bruises and was admitted to the hospital.

V. In Focus: Israeli Attacks against Palestinian Children in occupied Jerusalem

During the reporting period, the IOF arrested at least 140 children in the city^[6], in addition to issuing several house arrests orders against many of them, including Omar Abu Mayyaleh (13) and  Mohammad Zaytoun (13).

The harshest detention was carried out against Daoud Hijazi (12) and Mohammad Sunnukrot (9), both residents of Issawiya town on 6 March 2022. B’Tselem, an Israeli organization, published a video showing Israeli soldiers holding the children by the hand while they cried and pleaded in vain for their release. The children and their mothers were later taken to the police station. The interrogation lasted half an hour and Daoud was forced to enter the interrogation room alone without his mother. Three hours after his mother signed bail, he was released and put under house arrest for five days. In the case of Mohammad, he was not interrogated but his mother was threatened that if her son was detained again, the police would contact welfare services, who would transfer him to a care centre. In his testimony to B’Tselem, Daoud said: “I was on the way home with a friend and neighbour of mine, Mohammad Sinuqrut. Suddenly, I saw Border Police officers running towards us. I didn’t know where they’d come from. One of them grabbed me by the hand and pressed it. My hand was broken once and has platinum implants in it. I shouted in pain and ask him to let go, and then he grabbed my other hand. They sat me down on a boulder and made Mohammad sit on it, too.”

The case of Ahmad Manasra from occupied Jerusalem represents another stark example of the severity of Palestinian children’s suffering in Israeli prisons. Ahmad was 13 years and 9 months old when arrested in 2015. Ahmad was shot and left to bleed on the ground while watching his cousin die in front of his eyes in a horrific scene watched by many throughout the world. He was denied urgent medical help and was later subjected to psychological torture during interrogation. He initially received a 12-year-sentence for allegedly taking part in a “knife attack,” which was reduced to nine and a half years. Ahmed suffers from a severe head injury and, according to a recent medical report, needs psychological and personal care. In prison, he was kept in solitary confinement for long periods which further deteriorated his psychological well-being. Ahmad is now 20 years old and is scheduled to appear in front of an Israeli District Court in Bir Saba’ for an appeal hearing tomorrow, 13 April, amidst a major international campaign calling for his immediate release. Manasra is expected to be released in June 2024.

Nufuz Hammad (15) is the youngest Palestinian female prisoner, a resident of Sheikh Jarrah whose family is facing the threat of home eviction. Together with her friend Isra’, Nufuz was arrested on 8 December 2021; they were both subjected to 10 days of consecutive interrogation in the Israeli police interrogation centre. Two weeks after interrogation, Isra’ was released while Nufuz is still detained in “A-Damun” prison without sentence.  It wasn’t Hammad’s first arrest: back in June 2021, she was arrested for painting the Palestinian flag on the faces of her colleagues during an entertainment event for children in the neighbourhood. Hammad was then taken to an Israeli police station for questioning.

Other selected examples of Israeli violations against Palestinian children in occupied Jerusalem^[7]:

• Ali Quneibi (13), a resident of the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied Jerusalem, is one of the victims of Israel’s house arrest policy. Ali was arrested more than five months ago on charges of “assaulting a settler’s car.” For days, his detention was extended before his release to house arrest. As Ahmad was unable even to join his friends in playing, the house window was his only escape. Also, he wasn’t allowed to go outside to the yard or to his school without an official permit from the occupation. After four months of his imprisonment, he could go to school accompanied by a family member.
• Munawar Burqan (11)  with hearing disability (and uses two cochlear implants) from the Shufat neighbourhood. Munawar was hit by a stun grenade fired by the occupation police in the vicinity of Damascus Gate (Bab Al-Amoud), resulting in severe facial injuries and a broken jaw. Having eaten sweets with her sisters in the Old City, Munawar was on her way back to her home through Damascus gate. Together with her sister, Munawar was among the tens of thousands of Palestinians who were heading to the Al-Aqsa Mosque to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Isra and Mi’raj.
• On 27 Feb, the IOF arrested two children Oday Al- Haddad (10) and Mohammad Al- Haddad (12) from their house in the old city on charges of raising the Palestine flag in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Washington’s European allies that the US believes the war in Ukraine could last through the end of 2022, CNN reported Friday, citing two European officials.

The report said that many Western officials have assessed there’s no short-term end in sight for the war, and public comments from US officials have reflected this. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has warned of a “protracted conflict” that he said could go on “for months or even longer.”

Last week, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has said he believes the war will continue for years.

“I do think this is a very protracted conflict, and I think it’s measured in years. I don’t know about decade, but at least years for sure,” he told the House Armed Services Committee.

A senior State Department official told CNN that Blinken has “has discussed with his counterparts our concern that the conflict could be protracted, but all of his engagements have revolved around how best to bring it to a halt as quickly as possible.”

But Blinken hasn’t explored diplomacy with Russia as a potential avenue to bring about an end to the war. Blinken hasn’t spoken with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, since February 15, and President Biden doesn’t appear to have plans to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Instead of diplomacy with Moscow, the US is significantly increasing its military aid to Ukraine. On Wednesday, Biden authorized a new $800 million weapons package for Ukraine, bringing the total military aid pledged since Russia invaded on February 24 to about $2.6 billion.

A second senior State Department official told CNN that the US has “done a lot and so we do have faith and we always had faith in our Ukrainian partners. But as the fight doubles down, so does our commitment to give them weapons and equipment that they can use.”

Russia formally warned the US this week to stop arming Ukraine in a diplomatic note sent to the State Department by the Russian Embassy in Washington. The Russians said that the Western campaign to arm Ukraine was “adding fuel” to the conflict and could lead to “unpredictable consequences.”

Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in negotiations, but the US and its allies have signaled they don’t want Kyiv to grant any concessions to Moscow. The Washington Post reported last week that for some NATO members “it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe.”

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

Featured image is from Al Mayadeen

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A Swedish folk band was banned from performing at a benefit concert to support Ukraine because they play a Russian musical instrument, with outraged critics claiming the balalaika was as bad as displaying a Nazi swastika.

No, this isn’t the Babylon Bee.

Södra Bergens Balalaikor, a band first formed in 1969, had been scheduled to play a charity concert to support Ukraine in the Swedish city of Uppsala.

However, their appearance was cancelled after bedwetting morons complained that the balalaika, a three-string musical instrument with a characteristic triangular wooden body, was a “national symbol of Russia.”

“People wrote that the balalaika is a symbol for Russia and to play for Ukraine on a balalaika is a sacrilege. They compared it to a swastika,” Jonas Nyberg, one of the members of the orchestra, told Swedish broadcaster SVT.

“You can have some sympathy in this situation because people are upset and angry. But the argument gets a little weird. We are not Russians, we just happen to play Russian instruments, as we have done all these years. Our Ukrainian musician friends don’t understand it as well,” Nyberg added.

This is just the latest example of how anything remotely Russian, despite it having no connection whatsoever to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, is being culturally cleansed.

As we highlighted earlier this month, the British National Gallery changed the name of a 19th century painting by French impressionist Edgar Degas from ‘Russian Dancers’ to ‘Ukrainian Dancers’ due to the “current situation.”

The University of Milano-Bicocca also attempted to cancel a teaching course about the 19th century writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Russian prodigy pianist Alexander Malofee was also dropped from performing for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra after complaints by Ukrainians, while chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Valery Gergiev faced similar cancellation after failing to pass an ideological purity test.

Siberian cats were also banned from appearing in international cat competitions, while a prize-winning Russian tree was also stripped of its title.

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Featured image: Balalaika (Licensed under CC BY 3.0)

First published on September 30, 2021

Since the beginning of the health crisis, the French government has claimed that early treatment was ineffective. It has  imposed major restrictions on our freedoms, in particular on doctors’ prescriptions,[1]

It has also promised that vaccination would achieve collective immunity, the end of the crisis and a return to normal life.

But the failure for 18 months of this so-called “health strategy” based on false simulations, innumerable lies, promises never kept, as well as the propaganda and fear campaign has become unbearable.

In turn this has been followed by the extortion of consent to be vaccinated, by outright blackmail, while curtailing our freedoms to move and socialize, our right to work and engage in leisure activities. 

Are the current vaccines that they want to impose on us effective?

Can they lead to a collective immunity or is it only a myth? To answer this question, we will make the current sanitary assessment of the most vaccinated countries according to the figures provided by the World Health Organization and the curves of OurWorldinData. (From Vaccine outset in December 2020 to September 15, 2021)

Record mortality in Gibraltar, champion of Astra Zeneca injections

Gibraltar (34,000 inhabitants) started vaccination in December 2020 when the health agency counted only 1040 confirmed cases and 5 deaths attributed to covid19 in this country. After a very comprehensive vaccination blitz, achieving 115% coverage (vaccination was extended to many Spanish visitors), the number of new infections increased fivefold (to 5314) and the number of deaths increased 19fold. The number of deaths increased 19-fold, reaching 97, i.e. 2853 deaths per million inhabitants, which is one of the European mortality records. But those responsible for the vaccination deny any causal link without proposing any other plausible etiology. And after a few months of calm, the epidemic resumed, confirming that 115% vaccination coverage does not protect against the disease.

Malta: 84% vaccine coverage, but just as ineffective

Malta is one of the European champions of pseudo-vaccines: on this island of 500,000 inhabitants, nearly 800,000 doses have been administered, ensuring a vaccine coverage of nearly 84% with a delay of about 6 months.

But since the beginning of July 2021, the epidemic has started again and the serious (fatal) forms are increasing, forcing the authorities to recognize that vaccination does not protect the population and to impose restrictions.

Here again, the recurrence of the epidemic in terms of cases and mortality proves that a high rate of vaccination does not protect the population.

In Iceland, people no longer believe in herd immunity

In this small country of 360,000 inhabitants, more than 80% are primo-vaccinated and 75% have a complete vaccination cycle. But by mid-July 2021, new daily infections had risen from about 10 to about 120, before stabilizing at a rate higher than the pre-vaccination period. This sudden recurrence convinced the chief epidemiologist of the impossibility of obtaining collective immunity through vaccination. “It’s a myth,” he publicly declared.

Belgium: recurrence of the disease despite vaccination

In Belgium, nearly 75% of the population is primo-vaccinated. And 65% of the population has a complete vaccination cycle. However, since the end of June 2021, the number of new daily infections has risen from less than 500 to nearly 2000. As RTBF acknowledges, in the face of the Delta variant, current vaccination is far from sufficient to protect the population.

Singapore abandons the hope of “Zero Covid” through vaccines

This small country is also highly vaccinated and nearly 80% of the population has received at least one dose. But since August 20, 2021, it has had to face an exponential resumption of the epidemic with an increase in cases from about ten in June to more than 150 at the end of July and 1246 cases on September 24.

This uncontrolled recurrence of the disease despite vaccination has led to the abandonment of the strategy of eradicating the virus for a model of “living with the virus” by trying to treat the disease “like the flu“.

In the UK: a worrying rise in infections

The United Kingdom is the European champion of Astra Zeneca vaccination, with more than 70% of the population vaccinated for the first time, and 59% with a complete vaccination schedule. This high “vaccination” rate did not prevent an explosion of cases at the beginning of the summer, with up to 60,000 new cases per day by mid-July.

Faced with this significant resumption of the epidemic despite vaccination, Andrew Pollard, representative of the Oxford Vaccine Group, acknowledged before Parliament: “collective immunity through vaccination is a myth“.

This resumption of infections has been accompanied by a resumption of hospitalizations, severe cases and deaths. According to the official report of August,[2] deaths were more frequent among fully vaccinated patients (679) than among non-vaccinated patients (390), thus cruelly denying the hopes of a protective effect of the vaccine on mortality.

After the last sanitary restrictions were lifted, the epidemic decreased to a level of less than 30,000 cases per day, whereas at the beginning of July, simulations by covid specialists were predicting up to 100,000 new cases per day if the sanitary measures were removed.

Israel: obvious post-vaccination disaster denied by officials

Israel, champion of the Pfizer injection, once everywhere cited as an example of effectiveness, is now being harshly reminded of reality and is now the model of vaccine failure.

70% of the population is primo-vaccinated, and nearly 90% of those at risk have a complete vaccination cycle. But the epidemic has rebounded stronger than ever since the end of June, and more than 11,000 new cases were recorded in 1 day (September 14, 2021) surpassing the peaks seen in January 2021 during the outbreak following the first Pfizer injections by nearly 50%.

This resumption of the epidemic, despite the Pfizer injections, is accompanied by an increase in hospitalizations where the vaccinated represent the majority of those hospitalized.

Vaccination does not protect against severe forms of the disease or against death.

End of July: 71% of the 118 seriously ill Israelis (serious, critical) were fully vaccinated!

This proportion of seriously ill people vaccinated is much higher than the proportion of fully vaccinated people: 61%. To claim that the vaccine protects against serious forms of the disease, as the Israeli Minister of Health imprudently declared, is a mistake (or disinformation?).

In order not to acknowledge its mistakes, the Israeli government remains in denial of this obvious failure and continues to propose only vaccination as a solution. How many more deaths will it take before it follows the example of India or Japan and finally adopts early treatment?

Conclusions

The current pseudo vaccines are not effective enough. They do not prevent the recurrence of the epidemic, nor hospitalizations, nor severe forms, nor death. In Israel and Great Britain, which specify the vaccination status of the victims, the vaccinated suffer from an increased risk of mortality compared to the non-vaccinated.

The pursuit of a vaccine-only policy leads to a deadly impasse, whereas countries that officially advise early treatment (India) or allow their doctors to prescribe it (Japan, Korea) fare much better.

What are our health authorities waiting for to stop believing in false simulations carried out by epidemiologists who are too closely linked to vaccine companies, to look at the proven facts and to interrupt their deceptive and deleterious pro-vaccination campaign and recommend early treatment?

The continuation of the ban on early treatment by treating physicians leads to a loss of chances for many patients and directly engages the responsibility of the government and particularly the Minister of Health.

Dr Gérard Delépine is an oncologist and statistician

Translated from French by Global Research.

Notes

[1] For the first time in 2500 years…

[2] SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England Technical briefing 21
Published August 2021 Public Health England Gateway number : GOV 9374 20 August 2021

The original source of this article is nouveau-monde.ca, published on our French language web site mondialisation.ca
Copyright © Dr. Gérard Delépine, nouveau-monde.ca, 2021

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First published on April 7, 2022

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While much of the “mainstream” world has spent the last few days obsessing over and debating the celebrity spectacle surrounding American actor Will Smith slapping American comedian Chris Rock, the international elitists were meeting in Dubai for the 2022 World Government Summit.

From March 28th to the 30th, corporate media journalists, heads of state, and CEOs of some of the most profitable companies in the world met for discussions on shaping the direction of the next decade and beyond. Anyone with a functioning brain should ignore the tabloids and instead pay attention to this little known gathering of globalist Technocrats.

Let’s take a look at the speakers and the panels, starting with Mr. Great Reset himself, Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum.

Schwab gave a talk entitled, Our World Today… Why Government Must Act Now?.  “Thank you, to his excellency for enabling this initiative to define a longer-term narrative to make the world more resilient more inclusive and more sustainable,” Schwab stated during his address. The use of the term narrative is important because in January 2021, Klaus and the World Economic Forum announced the next phase of The Great Reset, The Great Narrative.

As with The Great Narrative event, the World Government Summit was also held in Dubai. As I wrote during the Great Narrative meeting:

“While the political leaders of the UAE and Klaus Schwab may promote themselves as the heroes of our times, we should judge them according to their actions and the company they keep, not the flowery language they use to distract us. The simple fact is the UAE has a horrible record on human rights. The nation is known for deporting those who renounce Islam, limited press freedoms, and enforcing elements of Sharia law.”

During Schwab’s short talk he also mentioned his pet project “the 4th Industrial Revolution“, which is essentially the digital panopticon of the future, where digital surveillance is omnipresent and humanity uses digital technology to alter our lives. Often associated with terms like the Internet of Things, the Internet of Bodies, the Internet of Humans, and the Internet of Senses, this world will be powered by 5G and 6G technology. Of course, for Schwab and other globalists, the 4IR also lends itself towards more central planning and top-down control. The goal is a track and trace society where all transactions are logged, every person has a digital ID that can be tracked, and social malcontents are locked out of society via social credit scores.

Immediately following Schwab was a panel which made no attempt to hide the goals of the globalists.

The panel, Are We Ready for A New World Order?, featured Fred Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council since 2007, as well as an anchor for CNN and a former advisor to former US president George W. Bush. Before joining the Council, Kempe was a prize-winning editor and reporter at the Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years.

In fact, the Atlantic Council had a fairly large presence at the World Government Summit, including appearances by Defne Arslan, senior director of the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY program, and Olga Khakova, Deputy Director of Global Energy Center of Atlantic Council.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Atlantic Council, I first reported in May 2018 that Facebook had partnered with the thinktank connected to NATO. I wrote:

“The Atlantic Council of the United States was established in 1961 to bolster support for international relations. Although not officially connected to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Atlantic Council has spent decades promoting causes and issues which are beneficial to NATO member states. In addition, The Atlantic Council is a member of the Atlantic Treaty Organization, an umbrella organization which “acts as a network facilitator in the Euro-Atlantic and beyond.” The ATO works similarly to the Atlantic Council, bringing together political leaders, academics, military officials, journalists and diplomats to promote values that are favorable to the NATO member states. Officially, ATO is independent of NATO, but the line between the two is razor thin.

Essentially, the Atlantic Council is a think tank which can offer companies or nation states access to military officials, politicians, journalists, diplomats, etc. to help them develop a plan to implement their strategy or vision. These strategies often involve getting NATO governments or industry insiders to make decisions they might not have made without a visit from the Atlantic Council team. This allows individuals or nations to push forth their ideas under the cover of hiring what appears to be a public relations agency but is actually selling access to high-profile individuals with power to affect public policy. Indeed, everyone from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton to the family of international agent of disorder Zbigniew Brzezinski have spoken at or attended council events.”

Less than 6 months after Facebook and The Atlantic Council announced their partnership, more than 500 FB pages were accused of being “Russian disinformation” and deleted. The pages largely consisted of anti-war, police accountability, and independent journalism outlets. These pages and journalists directly challenged the narratives spun by the Atlantic Council stooges.

Dissecting the World Government Summit: Ukraine, SDGs, ESG, Blockchain, and AI

While many of the names in attendance might be unfamiliar to a western audience, the speakers are men and women who absolutely play a vital role in international geopolitics.

Some of the featured speakers include:

• António Guterres, Secretary General of United Nations, giving a talk tiled Is Our World Today… Our World of Tomorrow?
• Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director General of World Health Organization
• David Pekoske, Administrator of USA Transportation Security Administration
• Dr. Kaitlyn Sadtler, an American immunologist and bioengineer and Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, part of the US NIH. She gave a presentation about Re-engineering Immunity with Next Generation Technologies
• H.H. Sheikh Sabah AlSabah, Prime Minister of Government of the State of Kuwait
• Jeon Hae cheol, Minister of the Interior and Safety of Government of the Republic of Korea
• Supattanapong Punmeechaow, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy of Secretariat of the Prime Minister of Thailand
• Mrs. Belinda Balluku is the Minister of Infrastructure and Energy of the Republic of Albania
• Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo Secretary General of OPEC, speaking about “Oil and Gas in a Net-Zero World“

The Russia-Ukraine conflict ​​​​​​​was also part of the discussions. Notably, Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, made an appearance. His bio states, “under his leadership, DTEK has evolved from a regional conventional energy company into Ukraine’s largest private investor as well as leading energy company.”

The appearance of Mr. Timchenko should not be overlooked, especially because he appears in a discussion called Post-Crisis Ukraine: New Energy for a New Europe, featuring Olga Khakova of the Atlantic Council, and Paula Dobriansk, Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School of Government of Atlantic Council. Again, the presence of the Atlantic Council should not be taken lightly. They are the representatives of the Western Bloc of the New World Order.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict also factors into another panel title, Getting Off Russian Gas: Practical Steps for Europe, featuring more of the Atlantic Council goons, including Richard Morningstar, Founding Chairman of Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council, and Phillip Cornell, Senior Fellow of Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council.

The World Government Summit also spent considerable time discussing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which form the core of the Agenda 2030, itself part of The Great Reset agenda. Some speakers discussing the SDGs include:

• Dr. Mahmoud Safwat Mohieldi, the United Nations Special Envoy for the 2030 Finance Agenda, who is speaking on a panel about Arab Nations and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• María Sandoval, First Lady of Colombia of Government of Republic of Colombia, discussed “The Role of Women in Achieving the SDGs“. The first day of the summit was actually dedicated to the role women will play in rolling out the so-called New World Order and global governance schemes. Sandoval celebrated the fact that Colombian President Ivan Duque launched “the first national development plan that was directly aligned with the SDGs, and this of course was something that provided a wider spectrum for women to act react and participate in these achievements of the SDGs.”
• Catherine Russell, Executive Director of United Nations Children Fund, participated in a panel titled SDGs for Every Child

The Summit also addressed the Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria (ESG) promoted by the UN in a panel entitled, Where does ESG Go From Here?. ESG investing is also sometimes referred to as sustainable investing, responsible investing, or socially responsible investing (SRI). The practice has become an increasingly popular way to promote the SDGs. The panel featured Neil R. Brown, Managing Director, KKR Global Institute and KKR Infrastructure. KKR Global Institute is the same organization that former US Army General and former CIA Director David Petraeus joined in 2013.

Additionally, a panel entitled, Is the World Ready for A Future Beyond Oil?, featured

H.E. Suhail bin Mohamed AlMazrouei, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure of Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure;

H.R.H Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud, Minister of Energy of Ministry of Energy – Kingdom of Saudi Arabia;

and H.E. Masrour Barzani, Prime Minister of Kurdistan Regional Government.

Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence are a major piece of the Technocratic vision for 2030, so naturally there were several discussions on the use of blockchain, AI, and even 6G (the eventual successor to 5G technology).

There was a discussion on blockchain technology in a panel entitled, The Future of Blockchain… A Perspective from Industry Pioneer, featuring Changpeng Zhao, Chief Executive Officer of Binance, among others. Other panels focused on De-Fi (decentralized finance) featured Jamie Crawley, Editor in Chief of Coin Desk, and Charles Hoskinson, Co-Founder of Ethereum. I have recently reported on Hoskinson’s statements regarding using blockchain to implement ESG and SDG programs and the danger they pose to privacy and liberty.

There was also a panel focused on the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies entitled, CBDCs and Stablecoins: Can They Co-Exist?. The CBDCs schemes being rolled out in nations around the world are a crucial component of The Great Reset.

One panel focuses on a concept called Human Meta-Cities, which sound like a rebranding or updating of the so-called Smart Cities. The panel description states,

“in a world of change and rapid technological development, we shed light on a new vision for planning future cities centered around human needs and aspirations. This new framework will help governments refine their role in planning the new world taking advantage of the digital transformation opportunities that are taking place.”

Another panel which makes clear the Technocratic dream was entitled, The Invisible Government: Eliminating Bureaucracy Through Technology. The description of the panel states:

“Technology is creating new possibilities as it simplifies processes, enables instant feedback, and ultimately improves customer experience. In the public sector, digitalization and artificial intelligence are creating a new model of governance – “invisible” governments that are more agile, responsive, human-centric, and data-driven. In this session, global policymakers and experts will share their bold vision and experience in utilizing technology to eliminate bureaucracy and innovate government services for the future.”

What goes unsaid in the panel description is that making the government “invisible” will actually lead to a world of no accountability for government and politicians.

In reality, the Technocrats imagine a world where the tyrannical technological systems are invisible and the average person has zero recourse for preventing exclusion or punishment based on their social credit score.

This is the world these technocrats — many of whom are unelected — envision. The only way this vision will not come to pass is if the people of the world throw their televisions away, ignore the celebrity drama, and start exiting from these slavery systems. 

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First published on March 21, 2022

 

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During 2011, NATO bombed a path to Tripoli to help its proxy forces on the ground oust Gaddafi. Tens of thousands lost their lives and much of Libya’s social fabric and infrastructure lay in ruins.   

The 2016 article appearing in Foreign Policy Journal ‘Hillary Emails Reveal True Motive for Libyan Intervention’ exposed why Libya was targeted. Gaddafi was murdered and his plans to assert African independence and undermine Western hegemony on that continent were rendered obsolete.

A March 2013 Daily Telegraph article ‘US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’’ reported that 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia had been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to rebels.

In the same month of that year, The New York Times ran the article ‘Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands with CIA Aid’, stating that Arab governments and Turkey had sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters. This aid included more than 160 military cargo flights.

In his book ‘The Dirty War on Syria’, Tim Anderson describes how the West and its allies were instrumental in organising and then fuelling that conflict.

Over the last two decades, politicians and the media have been manipulating popular sentiment to get an increasingly war-fatigued Western public to support ongoing conflicts under the notion of ‘protecting civilians’ or a ‘war on terror’.

A yarn is spun about securing women’s rights or fighting terrorists, removing despots (possessing non-existent WMDs) from power or protecting human life to justify military attacks, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives and the displacement of many more.

Emotive language designed to instil fear about terror threats or ‘humanitarian intervention’ is used as a pretext to wage imperialist wars in mineral-rich countries and geo-strategically important regions.

Although it has been referred to in many articles over the years, it is worth mentioning again retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark and a memo from the Office of the US Secretary of Defense that he was told about just a few weeks after 9/11. It revealed plans to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years,” starting with Iraq and moving on to “Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran”. Clark argued this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region’s vast oil and gas resources.

Part of the battle for the public’s hearts and minds is to convince people to regard these wars and conflicts as a disconnected array of events, not the planned machinations of empire. For the last decade, the ongoing narrative about Russian aggression has been part of the strategy.

Anglo-American financial-corporate interests have long been seeking to drive a wedge between Europe and Russia to prevent closer economic alignment. Aside from the expansion of NATO and installation of missile systems in Eastern Europe targeting Russia, there has also been the ever-tightening economic sanctions which the EU has largely been compelled to go along with.

Back in 2014, the proposed (but never implemented) Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) was part of the broader geopolitical game plan to weaken Western Europe by making it even more dependent on the US and to divide the European continent by side-lining Russia. While the TTIP may appear to have had nothing to do with what was happening in Ukraine in 2014 (the coup) or Syria, it was a cog in the machine to cement US hegemony.

Much more can be (and has been) written about US strategies to undermine Russia’s fossil-fuel based economy, but the point is that US actions have for some time been aimed at weakening Russia.

The financial-industrial-military complex is setting this agenda, hammered out behind closed doors in its various forums. Those who sit at the top of this complex fine-tune their plans within powerful think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institute (documented in Brian Berletic’s 2012 article ‘Naming Names: Your Real Government’) as well as at the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg and NATO, as described in the 2008 book by David Rothkopf, ‘Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making’.

It is worthwhile noting the 2019 report ‘Overextending and Unbalancing Russia’ by the influential US policy think tank the Rand Corporation. The document sets out various scenarios for destabilising and weakening Russia, including “imposing deeper trade and financial sanctions” and “providing lethal aid to Ukraine” but without provoking “a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages”.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia did not happen out of the blue. It is not the result of the machinations of a power-hungry madman hellbent on taking over Europe, a notion that mainstream commentators have for a number of years tried to embed in the psyche of the Western public.

A recent analysis appearing on the India-based news channel WION, ‘Did NATO push Ukraine into war?’, provides the type of insightful analysis of events absent from the Western media. It succinctly outlines Russia’s valid concerns about NATO’s expansionist thrust into Eastern Europe and how successive US administrations ignored these concerns for many years, including those from top officials in Washington itself.

That such an analysis remains off the Western media agenda is of no surprise. Prominent journalists in key media outlets are essential foot soldiers whose role is to support power. They are groomed for their positions by various means (the British-American Project being a case in point) as they climb the well-paid career ladder.

Notwithstanding the countless civilian casualties and the suffering currently in Ukraine, a country being used as a pawn in a geopolitical war, there are also the effects of disrupted energy supplies and fertilizer and food exports from Ukraine and Russia which will impact possibly hundreds of millions across the world.

For instance, the war could unleash a “hurricane of hunger” and poverty with the World Bank estimating that the average person in Sub-Saharan Africa will be spending about 35% of their income on food in 2023 if the war in Ukraine drags on. It was a little more than 20% in 2017. Elsewhere, in places like South Asia and the Middle East, the increase could be worse.

But this is merely ‘collateral damage’ worth imposing on others in the calculations of those who determine what the ‘price worth paying’ is and who will pay it.

Nevertheless, the public has been encouraged to support a strategy of increasing tension towards Russia, culminating in the situation we now see in Ukraine, by a media which plays its part well. The media serves as a key cheerleader for US-led wars and ensures the civilian wounded and dead of those conflicts are kept out of the headlines and off the screens, unlike the current situation in Ukraine whose victims receive 24/7 coverage across the major media outlets.

But this comes as little surprise. Former CIA boss General Petraeus stated in 2006 that his strategy was to wage a war of perceptions conducted continuously through the news media.

Many readers will be aware of the revelation back in 2015 about the former editor of a major German newspaper who said he planted stories for the CIA. Udo Ulfkotte claimed he accepted news items written and given to him by the agency and published them under his own name in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

While this came as a shock to many, it was noted decades ago by former senior British intelligence officer Peter Wright (author of the 1987 autobiographical book ‘Spycatcher’) that many top journalists in the UK were associated with MI5.

It was another former CIA boss, William Casey, who in the 1980s said:

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

Civilian suffering is given full media coverage when it can be used to tug at the emotional heartstrings in order to sway public opinion. Made-for-media outpourings of morality about good and evil are designed to create outrage and support for more ‘interventions’.

The shaping of public opinion is not a haphazard affair. It is now sophisticated and well established.

Take, for instance, the harvesting of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica to shape the outcomes of the US election a few years back and the Brexit campaign. According to journalist Liam O’Hare writing in 2018, its now defunct parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) conducted ‘behavioural change’ programmes in more than 60 countries. Its clients included the British Ministry of Defence, the US State Department and NATO.

According to O’Hare, among SCL’s activities in Europe were campaigns targeting Russia. The company had “sweeping links” with Anglo-American political and military interests. In the UK, the interests of the governing Conservative Party and military-intelligence players were brought together via SCL: board members included “an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defence contractors”.

For O’Hare, all SCL’s activities were inextricably linked to its Cambridge Analytica arm.

He states:

“We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these operators aren’t operating from Moscow… they are British, Eton educated, headquartered in the City of London and have close ties to Her Majesty’s government.”

Welcome to the world of mass deception à la Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels.

With talk of a ‘no-fly zone’ over Ukraine, sanctions on Russia which Putin says are “akin to a declaration of war” and Biden calling Putin a “war criminal”, the world now finds itself in a ‘thinking the unthinkable’ scenario that was totally avoidable.

The day before the invasion of Ukraine, Putin stated on Russian TV:

“Whoever tries to get in our way and create further threats to our country and our people must know that Russia’s response will come immediately and will lead to consequences without precedent in history. All the necessary decisions have been taken.”

President of the German Council on Foreign Relations Thomas Enders has since responded by calling for a no-fly zone in western Ukraine, which would most likely lead to direct military involvement by NATO:

“It is time for the West to expose Putin’s nuclear threats for what they really are – a bluff to deter Western governments from military intervention.”

Speaking on TV in 2021, prominent US politician and Iraq war veteran Tulsi Gabbard spelt out the consequences of a war with Russia over Ukraine. With thousands of nuclear weapons that the US and Russia have aimed at each other, she said that a nuclear exchange would “exact a cost on every one of us that would result in excruciating death and suffering beyond comprehension”.

And yet, despite what Gabbard warns of, the arrogance and recklessness of power brokers is displayed each day for all to see.

Although it may be regarded as political posturing – in a centuries-old ‘great game’ played out by the ruling elites that boils down to oil, gas, minerals, power, wealth, ego and strategic and military dominance – talk of direct NATO intervention or Putin’s implied threat about the use of nuclear weapons ultimately amounts to those at the pinnacle of power risking gambling away your life and the lives of every living creature on the planet.

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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.

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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.

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). 

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

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The following is a timely and critical interview with Dr. Peter McCullough

First published by Global Research on October 25, 2021

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Selected Excerpts

“From an epidemiology perspective for causality, we apply what’s called “The Bradford Hill” criteria. And they go as follows…

“The first question we’d ask is “does the vaccine have a mechanism of action, a biological mechanism of action, that can actually kill a human being?”

And the answer is yes!  

“Because the vaccines all use genetic mechanisms to trick the body into making the lethal spike protein of the virus. It is very conceivable that some people take up too much messenger RNA.

They produce a lethal spike protein in insensitive organs like the brain or the heart or elsewhere. The spike protein damages blood vessels, damages organs, causes blood clots. So it’s well within the mechanism of action that the vaccine could be fatal. Someone could have a fatal blood clot.

They could have fatal myocarditis. The FDA has official warnings of myocarditis. They have warnings on blood clots. They have warnings on a fatal neurologic condition in some cases …. So the FDA warnings, the mechanism of action, clearly say it’s possible. That’s one of the first criteria.

“The second criteria is, “is it a large effect?” And the answer is yes!

This is not a subtle thing. It’s not 151 vs 149 deaths. This is 15,000 deaths. So it’s a very large what’s considered “effect size” or a large effect.

“The third one is “is it internally consistent?” Are you seeing other things that could potentially be fatal in VAERS? Yes! We’re seeing heart attacks.

We’re seeing strokes. We’re seeing myocarditis. We’re seeing blood clots, and what have you. So, it’s internally consistent.

“Is it externally consistent? That’s the next criteria. Well, if you look in the MHRA, the yellow card system in England, the exact same thing has been found! In the Uterus system in the UK the exact same thing’s been found.

“So we have actually fulfilled all of the Bradford Hill criteria! I’ll tell you right now that COVID-19 vaccine is from an epidemiological perspective are causing these deaths in a large fraction!” Dr. Peter McCullough

 

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Dr. McCullough was interviewed by Michael Welch.

Video

 

Selected Excerpts from Transcript of Interview

“There is zero tolerance for electively taking a drug or a new vaccine and then dying!

There’s zero tolerance for that. People don’t weigh it out and say, “Oh well, I’ll take my chances and die!”

“And I can tell you, the word got out about vaccines causing death in early April, and by mid-April the vaccine rates in the United States plummeted! They absolutely plummeted!

“We hadn’t gotten anywhere near our goals. Remember, President Biden set a goal by July 1. We never got there, because Americans were frightened of their relatives, people in their churches, and their schools dying after the vaccine.

They had heard about it, they saw it. There was an informal internet survey done where, several months ago, there was 12 percent of Americans knew somebody, who knew somebody in their circle who had died after the vaccine.

“I’m a doctor. I’m an internist and cardiologist. I just came from the hospital. In my practice, where I see patients a few days a week in the office, and I’m in the hospital and I do academic work.

I’ve had a woman die of the COVID-19 vaccine! And it was explosive!

She had shot number one. She had shot number two. After shot number two, she developed blood clots throughout her body. She required hospitalization.  She required intravenous blood thinners. She was ravaged. She had neurologic damage.

She finished after that hospitalization in a walker. She came to my office. I checked for more blood clots. I found more blood clots. I put her back on blood thinners. I saw her back about a month later. She seemed like she was a little better. Family was really concerned.

“The next month I get called by the Dallas Coroner office saying she’s found dead at home.”

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“The CDC and FDA are running the program. They are NOT the people who typically run vaccine programs! The drug companies run vaccine programs. So when Pfizer, Moderna, J&J ran their randomized trials, we didn’t have any problems! They had good safety oversight! They had data safety monitoring boards. The did okay! I mean I have to give the drug companies an okay.

“But the drug companies are now just the suppliers of the vaccine! Our government agencies are now just running the program. There’s no external advisory committee! There’s no data safety monitoring board! There’s no human ethics committee! NO ONE IS WATCHING OUT FOR THIS!

“And so, the CDC and FDA pretty clearly have their marching orders. Execute this program. That the vaccine is safe and effective. They’re giving NO REPORTS to Americans. No safety reports. We needed those once a month. They haven’t told doctors which is the best vaccine. Which is the safest vaccine. They haven’t told us what groups are to watch out for. How to we mitigate risks. Maybe there’s drug interactions. Maybe it’s people with prior blood clotting problems or diabetes.

“They’re not telling us anything! They literally are blindsiding us, and with no transparency, and now Americans are scared to death! You can feel the tension in America. People are walking off the job! They don’t want to lose their jobs! But they don’t want to die of the vaccine!

“It’s very clear! They say, “listen, I don’t want to die! That’s the reason I’m not taking the vaccine!” It’s just that clear!”

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“Most of us don’t have any problem with vaccines! Ninety eight percent of Americans take all the vaccines. I just took a vaccine two weeks ago for the flu. I know I’m not going to die of the flu vaccine. I take it. It’s partially effective. I think that most people who are still susceptible take a COVID vaccine if they knew they weren’t going to die of it or be injured. And because of these giant safety concerns, and the lack of transparency, we’re at an impasse.

“We’ve got a very labour constrained market. We’ve got people walking off the job. We’ve got planes that aren’t going to fly. And it’s all because our agencies are not being transparent and honest with America about vaccine safety.”

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“No doctor should be considered a renegade when they order a FDA EU-Approved monoclonal antibody! The monoclonal antibodies are just as approved as the vaccines!

“I just had a patient over the weekend, fully vaccinated, took the booster.

A month after the booster she went on a trip to Dubai, she just came back, she got COVID-19! And she’s had prior bypass surgery. That was yesterday, on a Sunday, she notified me. I got a monoclonal antibody infusion that day. And then today she started the sequence of drugs. Well, they call sequence multi-drug therapy for COVID-19. I am telling you, she is going to get through this illness in a few days. She will not be hospitalized. She will not die!

“You know a podcaster, Joe Rogan, just went through this. Governor Abbott was also a vaccine failure. He went through it. Former President Trump went through it. Americans should see the use of monoclonal antibodies in high risk patients, followed by drugs in an oral sequenced approach, this is standard of care. It is supported by the Association of physicians and Surgeons, The Truth for Health Foundation, the American Front Line Doctors, and the Front Line Critical Care Consortium. This is not renegade medicine! This is what patients should have! This is the correct thing!

“To this day, the patients who get hospitalized, are largely those who receive no early care at home. They’re either denied care or they don’t know about it, and they end up dying.. The vast majority of people who die, die in the hospital, they don’t die at home. And the reason they end up in the hospital, it’s typically two weeks of lack of treatment, and you can’t let a fatal illness brew for two weeks at home with no treatment, and then start treatment very late in the hospital. It’s not going to work.

“I’m telling you, there’s been a very good set of analyses , one in the Journal of Clinical Infectious Disease, that’s the journal for the international infectious disease site of American site of infectious disease, and that showed day by day one loses the opportunity of reducing the hospitalization when the amount of monoclonal antibodies are delayed.

“So, I can tell you my patient this week is going to have a perfect outcome. On the way home from the hospital, I got notified by two more patients -one is six days into it, the woman’s eleven days into it – now they’re younger, but you know she’s still got a fever, of 102F on day 11. I can tell you, the virus is ripping her body right now! And that’s where the monoclonal

antibodies come in. If we can’t get the monoclonal antibodies, we certainly use Hydroxchloroquine, supported by over 250 studies, ivermectin, supported by over 60 studies, combine it with azithromycin or doxycyclene. …

“I’m telling you, doctors should be taking this illness very seriously. We’ve had over 700,000 Americans die with inadequate treatment, and fortunately we have enough doctors now and enough patient awareness, particular patients who listen to your podcasts and your videos to understand that early treatment is viable, it’s necessary, and it should be executed!”

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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Americans have been inundated by a massive propaganda campaign since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, prompting 74% of Americans to support a no-fly zone that could ignite World War III.

On March 10, Congress passed a $13.6 billion aid package to Ukraine, half of which is being directed by the Pentagon.

Ukraine is presented as some great moral beacon when its government has been acquiescent to the rise of neo-Nazism since a February 2014 coup backed by the Obama/Biden administration.^[1] As the battle of Mariupol comes to an end with Russian forces securing the city, reports are coming out of wide-scale atrocities carried out by the neo-Nazi Azov battalion, including firing on civilians. Residents said that members of the battalion were real Nazis who walked around with swastikas and other Nazi symbols clearly visible on them.

Many of the grandparents of the Azov battalion members and participants in the 2014 Maidan coup had colluded with the German Nazis that wiped out my grandfather’s Jewish town of Trochenbrod.

Holocaust memorial to Trochenbrod and Lozisht Jewry at the Holon Cemetery in Israel. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Given this history and the dirty war that western Ukraine’s coup regime has waged on its eastern regions for eight years now, Americans should ask their government to cease supporting Ukraine’s western government.

Oligarchs, CIA, Pentagon and Missile Makers’ Control over the Media

One way the media prejudice ordinary Americans is by using fake source photos and videos. The British Off-Guardian journal presented seven instances in the invasion’s first week. For example, the London Times showed Russian planes allegedly flying over a Ukrainian apartment house and an explosion. Off-Guardian showed that the source video was a Moscow location from 2020.^[2] A video also showed a dead body move.^[3]

Source: off-guardian.org

The United States is especially well set up for such bias. Media insider Dan Rather worked for the Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI) and as anchorman on the CBS Evening News for 24 years until 2005. Regarding U.S. suppression of dissent, in 2002 Rather told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), he and others self-censor out of fear they “will be ‘necklaced’ [symbolic burning tire around his neck]” for dissenting from the government.^[4]

What was Dan Rather’s basis for his critique? First, Ben Bagdikian, a Pulitzer Prize winner and Dean of the University of California-Berkeley School of Journalism, explained that most major media outlets have directors on their company boards who also sit on the boards of multinational corporations, including defense contractors. He explained that, under law, “the director of a company is obliged to act in the interests of his or her own company.”^[5]

By the new millennium, Bagdikian also found that media consolidation led to six multinational corporations controlling more than 90% of our information. Senators Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) discussed the importance of this finding at a press conference.^[6]

Of equal import, Watergate muckraker Carl Bernstein wrote that a Senate Intelligence Committee found virtually all of the leading media companies had top executives, editors and journalists on the CIA payroll willing to reprint CIA-written articles verbatim under their names.^[7]

Source: youtube.com

Furthermore, the Pentagon published more than 1,200 different periodicals by 1982.^[8] And finally, Professor Michael Parenti and Washington Post reporter Morton Mintz stated that the Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that the CIA owned outright “more than 200 wire services, newspapers… and book publishing complexes.”^[9]

America and Czarist Russia’s Murderous Anti-Semitism: Russian Pogroms and Trochenbrod

The film Everything Is Illuminated, an adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s New York Times-bestselling book of the same name first made our grandfathers’ same hometown of Trochenbrod, Ukraine more well-known.^[10]

In 1821, anti-Jewish rioting and the mass murder of Jews occurred in the Russian empire area of Odessa, Ukraine. Six years later, Russian Czar Nicholas I tried to decrease the “Jewish problem” by conscripting all Jewish boys into the military until the age of 45 with an exemption for those who farmed unused land.^[11]

Many Jewish families moved to the marshland of Trochenbrod, Ukraine, in the following years. They dug ditches to drain the marsh water, farm their plots, and enjoy a distance from the Czar’s operatives and “pogrom” mass murder of Jews in the 1800s.^[12] It varied between Polish and Ukrainian control in the early 1900s.^[13]

Victims of Kyiv pogrom in 1918. [Source: wikipedia.org]

More pogrom-like violence by “Ukrainian Nationalists, Polish officials, and Red Army soldiers…” killed tens of thousands of Jews between 1918-1920.^[14] This contributed to my grandfather moving to Maryland by the end of the 1920s.^[15]

He arrived to America where he found himself fortunate not to be in one of the 31 states with eugenics laws. Eugenics targeted Jews, people of color and other ethnic citizens with “sterilization or elimination.”^[16]

Russian Revolution, Counter-Revolutionary “White” Army, and Anarchist Makhno

During World War I the Russian socialist peasant and worker revolutionaries overthrew the monarchy—Czar Nicholas II’s leadership—eventually forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

The revolutionary army of the new Soviet Union, called The Red Army, remained in constant war with supporters of Czar Nicholas II. With European capitalist governments and the U.S. concerned about a workers’ revolution spreading, they invaded Russia in an attempt to overthrow the Bolshevik government, supporting the White Army in the Russian civil war. The White Army was predominantly led by former czarist officers, such as Admiral Alexander Kolchak who sought to re-establish a dictatorship headquartered in Omsk, Siberia.^[17]

The Russian revolution had its dark side like all revolutions but is celebrated in Russia today because it resulted in a huge growth in GDP and living standards, free housing, health care and catapulted Russia to the status of a global power.^[18] The White Army battled the Soviet Red Army during the Russian civil war, with support from the Woodrow Wilson administration which sent U.S. troops along with five other allied nations to try and stamp out the Bolshevik regime.

In 1911, the Russian monarchy had arrested and hung all but Nestor Makhno, the youngest member of a Robin Hood-like anarchist group that robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.

The Russian Revolution’s leadership freed Makhno in 1917. Makhno then fought beside the Red Army, under his own anarchist black flag, helping kick out Austrian White Army occupiers of Ukraine. When tens of thousands joined Makhno, the Red Army then disavowed his anarchism and he was chased out of the country by the later 1920s.^[19]

Famine, Eugenics and Bandera Aid Nazi Massacre in Trochenbrod, As Soviets Defeat Nazis

In 1929, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin decided on a collectivization strategy for farming throughout the Soviet Union, including its republic of Ukraine. Stalin forced wealthier farmers to give up their land, personal property, and sometimes housing, to collective farms. The collectivization policy was blamed for decreased agricultural productivity and a famine in Ukraine, though new evidence suggests the famine resulted from environmental factors which Stalin tried to mitigate. Another interpretation holds that the famine resulted from the failure of untested U.S. machines that had been purchased by the Soviet government.

American oligarchs who funded eugenics, such as John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, had helped fund the German eugenics-minded Nazis’ rise to power in the 1930s. Many American companies aided the Nazis, including Ford, General Motors, General Electric, IBM, and Brown Brothers Harriman, whose president was Prescott Bush (father of President George H.W. Bush).^[20]

The famine (called “Holodomor”), whatever its origins, fueled hatred for Stalin and helped ultra-nationalist Stepan Bandera found the militant Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). When Adolf Hitler’s Nazis took over Poland, Bandera’s OUN helped the Nazis invade Ukraine and the OUN reportedly killed thousands of Lvov, Ukraine, Jews in several days.^[21]

In Trochenbrod (94 miles from Lvov), my grandfather’s cousin, 11-year-old Betty Potash, was with her grandmother when Nazis and OUN rounded up the whole town in the central square. Potash then snuck out in time to join other family members who had made it to a secret hiding place behind the false wall of a shed her dad had built.^[22]

She and her family heard hours of machine gun shots, when the Nazi soldiers and Bandera’s OUN massacred all but a couple of escaping families of the 5,000-member town. They then hid for more than a year in a hole her dad had dug in the ground when the Soviets eventually came in and gave them refuge, but the town had been wiped out and razed to the ground.^[23]

The Nazi Waffen SS was the Party’s armed wing and they made the OUN part of the western Ukrainian National Army, which they also made a division of the Waffen SS. Together they exterminated 800,000 Ukrainian Jews, among others they considered subhuman.^[24]

The Soviet Army arrived to fight the Banderites in Ukraine and was the main reason the “allies” defeated the Nazis. No less a figure than General Douglas MacArthur considered the Soviet efforts to be the “greatest achievement in modern military history.” The number of lives lost supports this: The Soviet Union lost 24 million people during World War II. By contrast, the U.S. and United Kingdom lost fewer than a million people combined.^[25]

After Fall of Soviet Union, NATO’s Encirclement of Russia Peaks with 2014 Coup in Ukraine

When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, NATO countries influenced “color revolutions” in post-Soviet States.^[26] These states then experienced a severe drop in economic and social conditions. These included increased poverty, crime, corruption, unemployment, homelessness, rates of disease, infant mortality, income inequality, and domestic violence.^[27]

Stephen F. Cohen, a professor emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics at NYU and Princeton, stated that President George W. Bush’s administration began the resurrection of Nazi collaborators’ fascism in Ukraine with President Viktor Yushchenko’s “Orange Revolution.” Yushchenko, of the ultranationalist Svoboda Party, celebrated former Nazi-collaborator Stepan Bandera as a “Hero of Ukraine” in January 2010.^[28]

Professor Cohen said that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were also “deeply complicit in the Maidan coup” of 2014.^[29] This coup overthrew the democratically elected Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych had decided to repeal Bandera’s “Hero of Ukraine” award, and decided to work with both the European Union and Russia, but not to join NATO.^[30]

The wide extent of U.S. manipulation in Ukrainian political affairs came out in February 2014 when then-Assistant Secretary of State (now Undersecretary of State) Victoria Nuland’s phone conversation with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was bugged, recorded and appeared on YouTube. The BBC published a transcript and analysis.^[31]

Regarding the orchestration of opposition leaders into a post-coup government, Nuland stated, “I’m glad you sort of put him [Yatseniuk] on the spot on where he fits in this scenario.” And “I don’t think Klitsch [Vitaly Klitschko] should go into government.” The U.S. could only have imposed on these opposition leaders and decided their positions if they aided their coup.^[32]

Professor Cohen further said the Maidan Square protesters were part of the neofascist organization Right Sector in Kiev and set up the “sniper” reason for their violent overthrow of Yanukovych’s government. They then conducted “pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians” at that time.^[33] It is further confirmed that the U.S. funded bioweapons labs there.^[34]

U.S. Supports and Arms Neo-Nazi Coup Government and Soldiers Amidst Racist Attacks

After the coup, Crimea voted to re-join Russia, which it had been part of in 1954.^[35] Eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region has fought off the western Ukrainian battalions and maintained their independence for the past eight years since the coup. The U.S. and UK have sent thousands of tons of armaments to the western Ukraine government to continue this civil war, which has included bombings and other armed attacks off and on.^[36]

Professor Cohen documented the post-coup atrocities of the neo-Nazi coup group, including that the “[‘partially pro-Nazi’] Azov Battalion of some 3,000 well-armed fighters played a major role in the Ukrainian civil war and now is an official component of Kiev’s armed forces… which is well documented… by several international monitoring organizations.” And Cohen detailed “stormtroop-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians, and other ‘impure’ citizens are widespread throughout Kiev-ruled Ukraine.”^[37]

Alternative and international news is forcing Western news into some admissions. NBC printed an opinion article first saying the Ukrainian president being Jewish, dispels cries of Nazism (despite that he is acting as a puppet for Western powers). NBC did admit neo-Nazi battalions are filling the Ukrainian National Guard and attacked Ukraine’s Roma in 2018.^[38]

After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine started, Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley pointed to Ukraine’s deputy chief prosecutor David Sakvarelidze stating in a BBC interview, “It is very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed.”^[39]

Kimberley also discussed “Ukraine officials forcing a group of African students being barred from a bus to exit the country.”^[40] The BBC had reported the racism coming from Ukrainian officials, and showed video testimony from a pregnant student quoting an official saying to her, “The bus is only for Ukrainians. You’re black so you should walk!”^[41]

After activist media worldwide reported on the Ukrainian deputy chief prosecutor’s racist comment, even CNN reported on it. In that op-ed article, CNN also interviewed a group of Black men in Ukraine who were barred from a train because of their race and made to walk eight miles to the border.^[42]

Do Americans really want to support this neo-Nazi filled western Ukrainian government?

*

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John Potash is the author of two books: The FBI War on Tupac Shakur (2nd ed), and Drugs as Weapons Against Us: The CIA War on Musicians and Activists.  Both books have been made into films. John’s work can be found at johnpotash.com and he can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

1. https://www.timesofisrael.com/staircase-in-ukraine-mall-decorated-with-giant-swastika/and https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/ and https://www.opindia.com/2022/02/ukraine-dalliance-with-nazi-forces-problem-that-nato-and-usa-do-not-talk-about/ and https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-many-neo-nazis-is-the-us-backing-in-ukraine?ref=scroll 

2. https://off-guardian.org/2022/02/27/7-fake-news-stories-coming-out-of-ukraine/?fbclid=IwAR22lfOgMu2P3gv9ZYTTiYXdNOtxy773S2RLTK4ztb6BeGEbgBV48dxmTi0 
3. https://www.bitchute.com/video/6VbinZLkstG2/?fbclid=IwAR1XSMs3fsc8LYoOO_AJpmen1wgq8l53-RBmz-mknd7-Mb9hmLVw1MIv5M0 
4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/05_may/16/dan_rather.shtml A clip of Rather castigating American media was included in the film Why We Fight (2005) Sony, dir. Eugene Jarecki. This film won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.
5. “Ben Bagdikian…company.’” Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992) pp. ix, 24-5. On Bagdikian’s bio, see https://billmoyers.com/story/ben-bagdikian-knew-that-journalism-must-serve-the-people-not-the-powerful/ 
6. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-SztlLxgAE 
7. Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977. On more than 400, see p. 55; on virtually all leading media companies, p. 56; on Senate Intelligence Committee forcing the dislcosure, p. 65; on “far” more than 400 see CIA “officials most knowledgable about the subject say that figure of 400 American journalists is on the low side,” p. 66; on “living double lives,” see one-time CIA Deputy Director William Bader and others saying “reporters had been involved in almost every conceivable operation,” p. 66; on reprinting CIA-written story under their name, see example of Cy Sulzberger, p. 59; on some first worked for media, some CIA, p. 63; on work as “covert operations” vs. “foreign intelligence,” p. 66; on CIA spy work on Americans locally, see Seymour Hersh, “Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years,” The New York Times, December 22, 1974, p. A1; on Blacks, Seymour Hersh, “CIA Reportedly Recruited Blacks for Surveillance of Panther Party,” The New York Times, March 17, 1978, pp. A1, A16, quoted in Huey P. Newton, War Against the Panthers (New York: Harlem River Press/Writers and Readers Publishing, 1996), p. 90. https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977 
8. “For example…by 1982.” “DOD Kills 205 Periodicals; Still Publishes 1,203 Others,” Armed Forces Journal International (August 1982), p. 16. in Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 1988), p. 20. https://chomsky.info/consent01/ 
9. On first Senate intelligence report quote, Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media (New York: St. Martins Press, 1986), p. 233. This information is also referenced in Morton Mintz and Jerry Cohen, Power Inc. (New York: Bantam Books, 1976), p. 364. On The Times expose, Joseph Crewden, “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the CIA,” The New York Times, December 25, 26, 27, 1977. On CIA agents in The New York Times reviewing CIA books, see Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, Final Report, April 1976, cited in Mintz and Cohen, Power, Inc., p. 364. 
10. Everything Is Illuminated, Director Liev Schreiber (Warner, 2005) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0404030/ . Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated (New York: Penguin 2002). https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Illuminated-Jonathan-Safran-Foer/dp/0141008253 
11. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms and Avrom Bendavid-Val, The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod (New York: Pegasus, 2010), pp. 6-7. https://www.amazon.com/Heavens-Are-Empty-Discovering-Trochenbrod/dp/B006CDDQI2 
12. Bendavid-Val, The Heavens Are Empty, pp. 6-7. Also, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms Personal Interview, Mike Potash, 2010. 
13. Bendavid-Val, The Heavens Are Empty, pp. 8-36. 
14. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms 
15. Personal Interview, Mike Potash, 2010. 
16. Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York: Basic Books, 2003). Also see NBC News segment, Rock Center with Brian Williams news clip in the trailer, Shots: Eugenics to Pandemics (2022), https://www.bitchute.com/video/yxeQddIvl1pS/ 
17. Peter Kenez, “The Ideology of the White Movement,” Soviet Studies, vol. 32, no.1 (January 1980), pp. 58-83. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668138008411280 
18. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/11/radio.htm 
19. https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2014/the-last-time-ukraine-was-truly-free/?fbclid=IwAR0s3GTajip82HhH2KiJGD4rq3mdlbSWd4bOwQSVEiOxkr2LJSoPak_fxi8 
20. Black, War Against the Weak. Also see NBC News segment, Rock Center with Brian Williams, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nshj9rCTPdE Further, see Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germancy and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (New York: Crown Books, 2001), and Edwin Black, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust (Dialog Press, 2017). [NOTE: I couldn’t find the location for this publisher.] 
21. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/122778 
22. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn78739 
23. Betty Potash Gold became the only survivor of the massacre to emigrate to America. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn78739 Also see this website for historical accounts. https://www.bet-tal.com/objDoc.asp?PID=517822&OID=544151&DivID=1 
24. Conn Hallinan, “The Dark Side of the Ukraine Revolt: Ukraine’s ultra-right-wing Svoboda party is no fringe organization” [jointly published by] Foreign Policy in Focus and The Nation, March 4, 2014. https://fpif.org/dark-side-ukraine-revolt/ 
25. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war 
26. https://sites.tufts.edu/css/where-us-sees-democracy-promotion-russia-sees-regime-change/ 
27. “Child poverty soars in eastern Europe,” BBC News, October 11, 2000; Alastair McAuley, Russia and the Baltics: Poverty and Poverty Research in a Changing World; Theodore P. Gerber and Michael Hout, “More Shock Than Therapy: Market Transition, Employment, and Income in Russia, 1991–1995,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 104, No. 1 (July 1998): 1–50; “Cops for hire.” The Economist. 2010. December 8, 2015; John Hardt, Russia’s Uncertain Economic Future: With a Comprehensive Subject Index(Armonk, NY: M. E Sharpe, 2003). p. 481; Catharine Alexander, Victor Buchli, Caroline Humphrey, Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia. (London: UCL Press, 2012); Artur Galazka, “Implications of the Diphtheria Epidemic in the Former Soviet Union for Immunization Programs,” Journal of Infectious Diseases. 181: 244–248; Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997), pp. 107, 115. [NOTE: The Economist citation (“Cops for hire”) does not make sense.] 
28. https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/yanukovych-signs-law-declaring-ukraines-non-aligne-73680.html and https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/americas-collusion-with-neo-nazis/ 
29. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/americas-collusion-with-neo-nazis/ 
30. https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/yanukovych-to-strip-nationalists-of-hero-status-61110.html and https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/yanukovych-signs-law-declaring-ukraines-non-aligne-73680.html 
31. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSxaa-67yGM#t=89 
32. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 Note that Nuland famously also said, “Fuck the EU,” and that “We’ll get Biden to get in there [to Ukraine] and give it an ‘atta boy.’” 
33. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/americas-collusion-with-neo-nazis/ 
34. See Mint Press News video within this article, starting at 6:00 until 7:00, in which Dan Cohen shows the documents on Pentagon funding of Ukraine bioweapons labs, from the U.S. Ukraine embassy website. https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-admits-funding-biological-laboratories-ukraine-dilyana-gaytandzhieva/279904/ 
35. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2014/03/16/ccec2132-acd4-11e3-a06a-e3230a43d6cb_story.html 
36. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/9/what-is-the-minsk-agreement-and-why-is-it-relevant-now and https://www.globalresearch.ca/western-arm-shipment-ukraine-aimed-perpetuating-violence-donbass/5770756 
37. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/americas-collusion-with-neo-nazis/ 
38. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ukraine-has-nazi-problem-vladimir-putin-s-denazification-claim-war-ncna1290946 and https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/auschwitz-s-75th-liberation-anniversary-warning-not-all-nazi-victims-ncna1123411 
39. https://www.blackagendareport.com/ukraine-exposes-white-supremacist-foreign-policyfor video of BBC interview of the deputy chief prosecutor: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/twitter-erupts-over-racist-coverage-of-ukraine-war-2794234 
40. https://www.blackagendareport.com/ukraine-exposes-white-supremacist-foreign-policy
41. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-60573719 Thanks to Solomon Comissiong of Your World News for sending me these videos. 

42. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/03/opinions/racist-media-coverage-ukraine-africa-makura-lgs-intl/index.html 

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History does not bring confidence that peace and genuine human equality will prevail on Planet Earth anytime soon.

Nevertheless, a new China century would likely be an improvement over the American, British and Spanish empires

In early February, just before the start of the Ukraine War, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping had a historic meeting in which they vowed to increase trading ties and to help one another to stand up to the U.S..

At a forum in Sochi a few months earlier, Putin said that the U.S. was accelerating the process of its decline with a string of mistakes “typical of an empire.” These mistakes included the implementation of ‘…sanctions against Russia and other nations which undermined trust in the dollar as the world’s universal currency.’

According to Putin, “an empire always thinks that it can allow itself to make some little mistakes, take some extra costs, because its power is such that they don’t mean anything. But [with] the quantity of those costs, those mistakes inevitably grow.”

The U.S. Empire had been riding high in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union but then spectacularly overreached following the 9/11 attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The total cost for the Afghan war alone reached $2.2 trillion.

Jeffrey Eggers, a White House staffer and Navy SEAL veteran, asked a government investigation in 2015:

“What did we get for this effort? After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan.”

Source: laprogressive.com

Putin may soon be laughing too if the U.S. continues to escalate its “foreign entanglement” in Ukraine wasting lives and vast sums of money promoting another losing cause.

A Promise Unfulfilled

Alfred W. McCoy’s new book To Govern the Globe: World Orders & Catastrophic Change (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021), seeks to place the rise and fall of the American Empire in world-historical context.

Like other empires throughout history, the American one showed great “promise” at the beginning. With the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, it seemed that the age of competing empires, closed imperial trade blocs and secret alliances would soon give way to an international community of emancipated colonies, sovereign nations, free trade and peace through law.

Washington’s new visionary world order took form at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944 where 44 Allied nations forged a new financial system led by the World Bank that would secure so-called “global prosperity,” and at San Francisco in June 1945, where the UN Charter was drafted.

President Harry S. Truman and the entire American delegation look on as Senator Tom Connally (D-Tex.) signs the United Nations Charter in San Francisco, June 26, 1945. [Source: ge.usembassy.gov]

Three years later, former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt promoted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the UN General Assembly, which proclaimed that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Eleanor Roosevelt with Human Rights declaration. [Source: history.com]

The idea for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN Charter derived from Elihu Root, the U.S. Secretary of State from 1905 to 1909, who championed an international court as an alternative to armed conflict.

Yet, Root was a former corporate lawyer who oversaw the bloody suppression of an anti-colonial revolt in the Philippines and championed military interventions in Cuba, and Nicaragua. In World War I, Root led a group of financiers, industrialists, and corporate lawyers who established the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City—the premier forum for the promotion of an imperialist foreign policy.

Founding Fathers of the Council on Foreign Relations. Elihu Root is second from the left. [Source: researchgate.net]

Unfortunately, the U.S. repeatedly violated the ideals of its own foreign policy rhetoric—a narrative that nonetheless serves its purpose: to distract and mislead the public. The drive to acquire overseas military bases and access raw materials led to the waging of aggressive wars that yielded a devastating impact. None more so than in the Pacific theater of World War II where the U.S. Air Force under General Curtis LeMay razed almost every Japanese city and dropped two atomic bombs that killed at least 250,000 people.

McCoy writes that,

“at the core of U.S. power was an unmatched military with hundreds of overseas bases that circles the globe, a formidable nuclear arsenal, massive air and naval forces and many client armies.”

The Central intelligence Agency (CIA), according to McCoy, served as the critical mechanism for the resolution of a contradiction that lay at the heart of Washington’s world system: How could the U.S. intervene in the international affairs of independent nations in the exercise of its global hegemony without being seen to violate their inviolable sovereignty under the UN Charter?

The answer was to do it covertly, using the agency’s (at least theoretically) traceless tools to invisibly compromise the sovereignty of countless nations.

These tools included election manipulation, psychological warfare, organization of coup d’états and many other forms of subversion. During the first decades of the Cold War, a national leader critical of the U.S. Empire could face a CIA-sponsored coup that left him locked up for life (Iran), forced into exile (Guatemala), tortured to death (Congo), or left murdered on the capital streets (South Vietnam).

Secret interventions ultimately fractured delicate political balances and plunged developing world nations into protracted instability marked by endemic violence.

As the heavy costs of the agency’s covert capacity accumulated, George Kennan of the State Department, the father of the Cold War containment strategy, called the CIA’s creation “the greatest mistake he ever made.”

“They Make a Desolation and Call It Peace”

The CIA’s dark side was evident in Iran where the training of secret police officers in torture techniques bore the marks of the agency’s program of secret research into psychological torture that it would, in defiance of international conventions, disseminate among allies worldwide.

Museum displaying torture by SAVAK under the reign of the Shah, a U.S. client installed in the CIA’s 1953 coup. [Source: threadreaderapp.com]

According to McCoy, the CIA’s recurring complicity in torture and backing of coups—all banned under Article 5 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights—highlighted “the stark duality between Washington’s principles and its exercise of power.”

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Washington deployed the CIA to terrorize South Vietnamese villages through the Phoenix Program, which was responsible for 40,994 extrajudicial executions.

A Pentagon study found that only three percent of suspects killed, captured, or rallied were Communist Party members above the district level, with the program having been infiltrated by the enemy’s counterintelligence service.

U.S. GIs with Vietnamese prisoners captured under the Phoenix Program. [Source: uncensoredhistory.blogspot.com]

CIA interventions led to further bloodbaths in Indonesia in 1965, when a CIA-driven coup culminated in the deaths of more than a million people, and in Laos and Cambodia, where massive U.S. bombing followed deadly clandestine warfare.

U.S. troops amidst devastation in Cambodia after illegal invasion by Nixon administration in 1970. [Source: history.com]

Yet more atrocities were committed in South America’s Southern Cone, where Operation Condor was modeled on the Phoenix Program, and in Afghanistan, where the CIA provoked a Soviet invasion by arming Islamic jihadists under the $500 million Operation Cyclone.

McCoy writes that “a survey of the wastelands left by this [Afghanistan] and other CIA secret wars brings to mind what the ancient Scots chieftain Calgacus once said of the Roman Empire: “They make a desolation and call it peace.”

“Arms of Science over Barbarians”: The British Empire

The destructiveness of the American Empire was preceded by other empires which also claimed a mantle of moral leadership while sowing suffering, death and destruction for plunder.

Inspired by the Enlightenment’s ideals of liberty and Protestant principles of humanity’s equality before God, Great Britain in its heyday was committed to extirpating the slave trade—banning human trafficking by an act of Parliament in 1807, abolishing slavery in its own Caribbean colonies in 1833, and deploying the Royal Navy for nearly 80 years to suppress the slave trade.

Source: historyhit.com

McCoy writes that the ambitious anti-slavery campaign “became a defining aspect of the British world order.”

However, by imposing direct colonial rule that was justified under the guise of white racial superiority, the British created new forms of human bondage, depriving their subjects of due process under the law, freedom of expression, and the fundamental right to choose their own government.

On colonial plantations in northern India, armed musketeers recruited thousands of workers who were paid about half of free market wages and suffered a mortality rate of 25 percent. Scholars branded this indentured labor a “new system of slavery.”

The British empire’s advance man, Cecil Rhodes, created a model for South Africa’s apartheid system after forming DeBeers Mining Company to monopolize the diamond mines at Kimberley, where he constructed closed compounds with circumscribed civil liberties for Black workers.

To break the powerful Matabele kingdom to extend his diamond charter, Rhodes dispatched mercenaries armed with Maxim machine guns which cut down 1,500 African fighters.

The slaughter in Matabeleland was replicated in the Sudan, where British troops under the command of General Herbert Kitchener killed 10,800 Wahabist Islamic fighters while losing only 49 of their own men.

A young war correspondent named Winston Churchill surveyed a battlefield littered with body parts and called it, with unintended irony, “the most significant triumph ever gained by the arms of science over barbarians.”

These latter comments epitomize the moral righteousness guiding British imperialism—which was similar to its American counterpart.

Iberian Age

Another parallel was with Spain in the 15^th and 16^th centuries which, according to McCoy, “created the first world order worthy of the name, one comingling commerce, conquest, and religious conversion.”

The gap between rhetoric and reality was detailed in Bartolomé de las Casas’ Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, which depicted Spanish soldiers unleashing attack dogs to feed on Amerindians, chopping off their arms and hanging dozens on racks over roaring flames.

With growing suspicion of unrest at home, 20,000 spies burned 2,000 suspected heretics during the reign of King Philip II (1556-1598), banned books and stifled scientific inquiry.

Suspected Protestants being tortured as heretics during the Spanish Inquisition. [Source: Britannica.com]

Corruption of Democratic Values

The latter repression was mirrored in the U.S. by the growth of repressive policing techniques honed on colonial frontiers, growing militarization of public life, and the growth of an unprecedented penal apparatus that treated minority groups like colonial subjects—with no rights.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary is a maximum-security prison farm in Louisiana. It is named “Angola” after the former plantation that occupied this territory; The plantation was named after the origin country from which many were kidnapped and forcibly transported. Despite the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits involuntary servitude, this right does not apply to convicted inmates. [Source: fristartmuseum.org]

While the pursuit of empire abroad reflects plutocratic interests, it also corrupts democratic values at home and fuels greater state repression that is usually self-defeating.

The Dawn of the Chinese Age

McCoy predicts the dawn of a new multipolar era in which the Chinese supplant U.S. global imperial power by the year 2030 in a transformation exacerbated by the ravaging impact of climate change.

With the American dollar no longer serving as the world’s currency reserve, the U.S. Empire will likely remain only as a hemispheric military power, forced to shut down many of its overseas military bases.

Over the past two decades, while Americans were mired in their endless wars, Beijing was using its growing capital reserves to build a tricontinental infrastructure under the One-Belt-One Road initiative that will incorporate great swaths of Africa and Asia into its version of the world economy, lifting many millions out of poverty.

Source: ejinsight.com

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s economy grew at an average of 10% per year over a 40-year period—the fastest sustained rate ever recorded by any country. Its military capabilities grew considerably in this period, with China now poised to challenge the U.S. Navy’s 70-year dominion over the Pacific Basin.

Given China’s Tienanmen Square massacre and harsh treatment of Tibetan and Uighur minorities, lack of press freedom and defiance of the doctrine of the open seas sanctioned by a UN convention, McCoy does not expect China to be a benign imperial power.

Nevertheless, China, so far, seems less prone to incite spectacular violence and military adventurism, less prone to start foolish wars and more unlikely to destabilize countries to the extent that U.S. rulers have done with the CIA and the Pentagon.

*

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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].

Featured image is by Mr. Fish from cuencahighlife.com

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-0-9

Year: 2015

Product Type: PDF File

Price: $9.40 (sent directly to your email)

Click here to order.

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Click below to read Part I:

How the West Was Won: Counterinsurgency, PSYOPS and the Military Origins of the Internet

By Dustin Broadbery, April 10, 2022

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If insurgency is defined as an organised political struggle by a hostile minority, attempting to seize power through revolutionary means, then counterinsurgency is the military doctrine historically used against non-state actors, that sets out to infiltrate and eradicate those movements.

Unlike conventional soldiers, insurgents are considered dangerous, not because of their physical presence on the battlefield, but because of their ideology.

As David Galula, a French commander who was an expert in counterinsurgency warfare during the Algerian War, emphasised:

“In any situation, whatever the cause, there will be an active minority for the cause, a neutral majority, and an active minority against the cause. The technique of power consists in relying on the favourable minority in order to rally the neutral majority and to neutralise or eliminate the hostile minority.”

Overtime, however, the intelligence state lost touch with reality, as the focus of its counterinsurgency programs shifted from foreign to domestic populations, from national security risks to ordinary citizens. Particularly in the wake of 9/11, when the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, began mapping out the Internet.

Thanks to Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013, we now know that the NSA were collecting 200 billion pieces of data every month, including the cell phone records, emails, web searches and live chats of more than 200 million ordinary Americans. This was extracted from the world’s largest internet companies via a lesser-known, data mining program called Prism.

There’s another name for this, and its total information awareness. The highest attainment of a paranoid state seeking absolute control over its population. What ceases to be worth the candle is that peoples right to privacy is enshrined under the US Constitution’s fourth amendment.

Few understand how lockdowns are ripples on these troubled waters. Decades of counterinsurgency waged against one subset of society, branded insurgents for their Marxist ideals has, overtime, shifted to anyone holding anti-establishment views. The predictive policing of track and trace and the theory of asymptomatic transmission are the unwelcome repercussions of the intelligence state seeking total information awareness over its citizens.

Throughout COVID-19 anyone audacious enough to want to think for themselves or do their own research has had a target painted on their back. But according to the EU, one third of Europe is unvaccinated. This correlates precisely with David Galula’s theory of counterinsurgency, that suggests one third of society is the active minority ‘against the cause,’ who must be neutralised or eliminated.

And for good reason. People are within sniffing distance of mobilising popular support from the neutral majority and toppling the house of cards. What follows is a protracted campaign by the establishment to neutralise the opposition.

It was not so long ago that journalists were called muckrakers, for digging up dirt on the Robber Barrons who, overtime, learned how to sling muck back, using smear and innuendo, such as ‘conspiracy theorists’, ‘anti-vaxxer’ and ‘right-wing extremist.’

When Domestic Populations Become the Battlefield

The use of counterinsurgency in the UK goes back to colonial India in the 1800s. According to historians, this is the first time the British government used methods of repression and social control against indigenous communities who were audacious enough to want to liberate their homeland from Imperialist rule.

Counterinsurgency was used extensively during The Troubles in Northern Ireland against another anti-imperialist faction, also looking to liberate their homeland from The Crown. Much of the lessons learned in Northern Ireland were later transferred into the everyday policing and criminal justice policies of mainland Britain. And it wasn’t just dissenters who were targeted by these operations, it was anyone with left wing ideals, particularly trade unionists who, it could be argued, were conspiring with the Kremlin to overthrow parliamentary democracy.

I draw your attention to the spying and dirty tricks operations against the 1980s miners’ strike. This continued right up until 2012, when the police and intelligence communities were implicated in a plot to blacklist construction industry workers deemed troublesome for their union views. The existence of a secret blacklist was first exposed in 2009, when investigators from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) raided an unassuming office in Droitwich, Worcestershire, and discovered an extensive database used by construction firms to vet and ultimately blacklist workers belonging to trade unions. More than 40 construction firms, including Balfour Beatty and Sir Robert McAlpine, had been funding the confidential database and keeping people out of work for many years.

If you want to know what happened to the left, look no further than Project Camelot’s early warning radar system for left wing revolutionaries. Decades of infiltration has recalibrated the left into genuflections of establishment interests. It was the unions who scuppered the easing of lockdowns in the UK and consistently called on the Department of Education to postpone the reopening of schools. This is despite the impact which school closures had on marginalised families, who were statistically more at risk from the fallout of lockdowns, and supposedly represented by union interests.

From the infiltration of unions to the co-option of activism, a judge-led public enquiry in 2016 revealed 144 undercover police operations had infiltrated and spied on more than 1,000 political groups in long term deployments since 1968. With covert spymasters rising in the ranks to hold influential leadership positions, guiding policy and strategy, and in some cases, radicalising those movements from within to damage their reputation and weaken public support.

We also need to talk about big philanthropy. George Soros’ Open Foundation is the largest global donor to the twenty-first century’s equivalent of activist groups. The agitprop used in the former Soviet Union evolved, overtime, into the masthead of Extinction Rebellion. A motley crew of eco-warriors courted by high profile financial donors and aligned ideologically with the very multinational energy corporations they are supposedly at odds with. The theory of climate change came out of the UN, organiser of COP20, for what reason ER had to protest the event is anyone’s guess.

ER doner, George Soros, is also a seed investor in Avaaz, often cited as the world’s largest and most powerful online activist network. When the US was on the brink of insurrection, following the first lockdown, Black Lives Matter entered the fray, not so much a grassroots movement, but a proxy for the Democrats to essentially redirect the public’s outrage against lockdowns into the wrong, established-endorsed cause.

Counterinsurgency in the US

In the US, COINTELPRO was a series of illegal operations conducted by the FBI between 1956-1971, to disrupt, discredit and neutralise anyone considered a threat to national security. In the loosest possible definition, this included members of the Women’s Liberation Movement and even the Boy Scouts of America.

Image on the right: Body of Fred Hampton, national spokesman for the Black Panther Party, who was assassinated by members of the Chicago Police Department, with the raid itself being a COINTELPRO operation, although there is not proof the assassination itself was. (Licensed under Fair Use)

And it wasn’t just the customary wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation, the FBI committed blackmail and murder.

Take for example the infamous forced suicide letter addressed to Martin Luther King that threatened to release a sex tape of the civil rights leaders’ extramarital activities, unless he took his own life. Consider also the FBI’s assassination of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton.

In the 1960’s a Washington Post expose by army intelligence whistle-blower, Christopher Pyle, revealed a massive surveillance operation run by the Army, called CONUS Intel, involving thousands of undercover military agents infiltrating and spying on virtually everybody active on what they deemed ‘civil disturbances.’ It turns out, many of those targeted had done nothing even remotely subversive, unless you consider attending a left-wing college presentation or church meeting, revolutionary.

These programs came to a head in the 1970’s, when an investigation by the US Senate, conducted by the Church Committee, uncovered decades of serious, systemic abuse by the CIA. This included intercepting the mail and eavesdropping on the telephone calls of civil rights and anti-war leaders over two decades. As if predicting the internet as an instrument for mass surveillance, Senator Frank Church warned that the NSA’s capabilities could “at any time could be turned around on the American people.”

And turned around they were.

USAGM

Before the internet, the deployment of PSYOPS was limited to legacy media and permitted only on foreign soil. But that all changed in 2013, when the government granted themselves permission to target ordinary Americans.

Conceived at the end of the cold war as the Broadcasting Board of Governors, USAGM is a lesser-known government agency charged with broadcasting thousands of weekly hours of US propaganda to foreign audiences, that has played a major role in pushing pro-American stories to former Soviet Bloc countries ever since Perestroika.

Ostensibly concerned with maintaining US interests abroad, USAGM has also been the primary funder of the Tor Project since inception. Tor, also known as The Onion Browser, is the mainstay of encrypted, anonymous search used by activists, hackers, and the anonymous community, if you can get your head around the fact that the confidential internet activity of anarchists has been framed by a PSYOP since the get-go.

For decades an anti-propaganda law, known as the Smith-Mundt Act, made it illegal for the government to conduct PSYOPS against US citizens. But that all changed in 2013 when the National Defence Authorization Act repealed that law and granted USAGM a licence to broadcast pro-government propaganda inside the United States.

To what extent US citizens are being targeted by propaganda is anyone’s guess, since PSYOPS largely take place online, where it’s difficult to distinguish between foreign and domestic audiences.

What we do know is that in 2009 the military budget for winning hearts and minds at home and abroad had grown by 63% to $4.7 billion annually. At that time the Pentagon accounted for more than half the Federal Government’s $1 billion PR Budget.

An Associated Press (AP) investigation in 2016 revealed that the Pentagon employed a staggering 40% of the 5,000 working in the Federal Government’s PR machines, with the Department of Defence, far and wide, the largest and most expensive PR operation of the United States government, spending more money on public relations than all other departments combined.

Things are not so different in the UK.

During COVID-19 the British government became the biggest national advertiser. Even tick tock and snapchat were deployed by the Scottish government to push COVID PSYOPS to children.

Last year Boris Johnson announced record defence spending for an artificial intelligence agency and the creation of a national cyber force. That’s a group of militarised computer hackers to conduct offensive operations.

Offensive operations against who, you might ask.

Britain was not at war, but in an article for the Daily Mail last year, Britain’s top counter terrorism officer, Neil Basu confirmed that the UK was waging an ideological war against anti vaccination conspiracy theorists. Ideological wars of this nature typically take place online, where much of the government’s military budget was being spent.

Since the vaccine roll-out there has been a protracted effort to paint the 33% of British citizens who have a problem with lockdowns and vaccine mandates, as violent extremists, with one member of the commentariat drawing parallels with US style militias.

It doesn’t take a genius to see where this is heading.

The Facebook’s-Intelligence-Harvard Connection

Consistent with the opaque nature of Facebook’s origins, shortly after its launch in 2014, co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz brought Napster founder Sean Parker on board. At the age of 16, Parker hacked into the network of a Fortune 500 company and was later arrested and charged by the FBI. Around this time Parker was recruited by the CIA.

To what end, we don’t know.

Image below: This is an updated image of Sean Parker. Uploaded by author (Amager). Source is Flickr. Photo is licensed under Creative Commons.

What we do know is that Parker brought Peter Thiel to Facebook as its first outside investor. Theil, who remains on Facebook’s board, also sits on the Steering Committee of globalist think tank, the Bilderberg Group. As previously stated, Thiel is the founder of Palantir, the spooky intelligence firm pretending to be a private company.

The CIA would join the FBI, DoD and NSA in becoming a Palantir customer in 2005, later acquiring an equity stake in the firm through their venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel. At the time of his first meetings with Facebook, Theil had been working on resurrecting several controversial DARPA programs.

Which begs the question: With intelligence assets embedded in Facebook’s management structure from the get-go, is everything as it seems at 1 Hacker Way?

According to Lauren Smith, writing for Wrong Kind of Green:

“Some of Facebook’s allure to users is that Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started the company from a Harvard dorm room and that he remains the chairman and chief operating officer. If he didn’t exist, he would need to be invented by Facebook’s marketing department.”

By the same token, if Facebook didn’t exist it would need to be invented by the Pentagon.

To achieve this, you would need to embed government officials in Facebook’s leadership and governance. Cherry picking your candidates from, say, the US Department of Treasury, and launching the platform from an academic institution, Harvard University, for example.

According to the official record, Zuckerberg built the first version of Facebook at Harvard in 2004. Like J.C.R Licklider before him, he was a psychology major.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Summers’ protege, Sheryl Sandberg, is Facebook’s COO since 2008. Sandberg was at the dials during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and predictably, manages Facebook’s Washington relationships. Before Facebook, Sandberg served as Chief of Staff at the Treasury under Summers and began her career as an economist, also under Summer, at the World Bank.

Another Summers-Harvard-Treasury connection is Facebook’s Board Member, Nancy Killefer, who served under Summers as CFO at the Treasury Department.

It doesn’t end there. Facebook’s Chief Business Officer, Marne Levine also served under Summers at the Department of Treasury, National Economic Council and Harvard University.

The CIA connection is Robert M. Kimmet. According to West Point, Kimmet “has contributed significantly to our nation’s security…seamlessly blending the roles of soldier, statesman and businessman. In addition to serving on Facebook’s board of Directors, Kimmet is a National Security Adviser to the CIA, and the recipient of the CIA Director’s Award.

The icing on the cake, however, is former DAPRA Director, Regina Dugan, who joined Facebook’s hardware lab, Building 8, in 2016, to roll out a number of mysterious DARPA funded-projects that would hack people’s minds with brain-computer interfaces.

Connecting the dots: Welcome Leap was launched at the World Economic Forum, with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its founder is Jeremy Ferrar, former SAGE member, long-time collaborator of Chris Witty and Neil Ferguson and the patsy taking the wrap for the Wuhan leak cover-up story.

George Carlin wasn’t joking when he said: ‘it’s one big club, and you’re not in it.’

As luck would have it, just before Duggan’s arrival at Facebook, the social media giant orchestrated the controversial mood manipulation PSYOP, known as the Social Contagion Study. The experiment would anticipate the role social media went onto play during the pandemic.

In the study, Facebook manipulated the posts of 700,000 unsuspecting Facebook users to determine the extent to which emotional states can be transmitted across social media. To achieve this, they altered the news feed content of users to control the number of posts that contained positive or negative charged emotions. As you would expect, the findings of the study revealed that negative feeds caused users to make negative posts, whereas positive feeds resulted in users making positive posts. In other words, Facebook is not only a fertile ground for emotional manipulation, but emotions can also be contagious across its networks.

Once we understand this, it becomes clear how fear of a disease, which predominantly targeted people beyond life expectancy with multiple comorbidities who were dying anyway, spread like wildfire in the wake of the Wuhan Virus. In locking down the UK, Boris Johnson warned the British public that we would all lose family members to the disease. When nothing could be further from the truth. The pandemic largely happened in the flawed doomsday modelling of epidemiologists, it happened across the corporate media, and it happened on social media platforms like Facebook. It wasn’t so much a pandemic, but the social contagion experiment playing out in real time.

But there was more than just social media manipulating our emotional states, fear, shame, and scapegoating was fife throughout as the British government deployed behavioural economics to, essentially, nudge the public towards compliance.

But according to whose measure of appropriate behaviour, exactly?

That’s an intelligence operative ruling by psychological manipulation. Though we are led to believe that in a democracy – government is an agency of the people and parliament is given force of law by the will of the people.

But what happens when our consent is manipulated by those in power?

One consequence is that the foxes take charge of the chicken coop. Another is that we begin to see drastic changes to the constitutional landscape. Politicians acquire impunity from public scrutiny and an entire nation is kept under house arrest.

But this demonisation of the masses is also the backwash of a protracted counterinsurgency crusade waged on ordinary people. When the Berlin wall came down in the nineties and decades of counterinsurgency was rendered obsolete, the battle lines moved from East to the West, from the Soviets to the lower orders of society. The mythos of communist infiltration, that gave rise to the threat of terrorism, is the ancestor of today’s biosecurity state. A government that tightens its grip, using fear of a common enemy, will find no shortage of common enemies, to continue tightening its grip.

Conclusions

Strong-arming the world’s population under the rubric of biosecurity would not have been possible without the internet, and if the expulsion of the military and intelligence community from academic institutions in the 1960’s had not resulted in the creation of Silicon Valley, they would not have acquired total information awareness, the precursor to the Green Pass.

But this formidable goal also caused the US to morph into the opponent it had been fighting during the cold war, as predicted by public intellectuals in the 1960s.

And so, with an annual budget of $750 billion and 23,000 military and civilian personnel in their employment, the Pentagon failed to denounce what many armchair researchers called out in the early days of the pandemic. That a global coup was underway was patently obvious, as crisis actors played dead in Wuhan, China.

Instead, those charged with protecting the west from Soviet-style putsch failed to apprehend it happening right under their noses. It’s not so much that they were caught with their trousers down, it’s that they aided and abetted the coop. Years of fighting a statist, expansionist adversary, caused the intelligence state to mutate into their nemesis, namely China.

It is uncanny that the country with the worst human rights record on earth became the global pacemaker for lockdowns, as western democracies exonerated their existential threat and bowed to China’s distinct brand of tyranny.

As a result, the big tech data analytics pioneered by Silicon Valley luminaries, that was road tested in China, finally landed on the shorelines of western democracies.

Another story entirely is the infiltration of sovereign nation states by the United Nations, whose special agency, the WHO, sparked the events that would lead to the fall of the West. In keeping with tradition, the UN’s foundation at Bretton Woods was infiltrated by communist spies, driven by socialist values, and funded by powerful petroleum dollars. The same corporations looking to shore up new markets for their monopolies, who would leave their legacy to Silicon Valley.

In an ironic twist of fate, the intelligence state created at the end of world war II, under the National Security Act, conceived the very corporations that would bring about the end of constitutional democracy, that would author a new bill of rights from their own community standards de jour, and that would shift us from sovereign nation states to global governance, into the collectivist future the Pentagon had been charged with protecting us from.

Nowadays, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the dusty slew of a Calcutta slum or enjoying pristine views over Central Park, everyone is subject to the same scrutiny and surveillance, policed by the same community standards, manipulated by the same algorithms, and indexed by the same intelligence agencies. No matter where you are, Silicon Valley is limiting what information you can see, share, communicate and learn from online. They are raising your kids, shaping your worldview and in the wake of COVID-19 and climate change, they have assumed the role of science administrator.

Founded on the principles of freedom of expression and heralded as a liberating new frontier for humanity, the internet has criminalised free speech, divorced it from our nature and ensnared us under a dragnet of surveillance.

As Goethe quote goes ‘None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.’ Namely, anyone still looking through rose-tinted lenses in the digital age, oblivious to the fact they are victims of systematic addiction. The bread and circuses of the internet influences the same dopamine rewards centres and neural circuitry motivators as slot machines, cigarettes, and cocaine, as was originally intended by psychologists like JCR Licklider, at the helm of this new technology that would exploit basic vulnerabilities in the human psyche.

And as we descend further into the maelstrom of the digital age, the algorithms will get smarter, the psychological drivers will become more persuasive and digital rubric will become more real. Until eventually we will lose touch with reality altogether. But don’t worry, this war of attrition is happening in conjunction with the roll out of new software and devices, and most will be too busy building their digital avatars or dissenting on social media to know any better.

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Dustin is a writer and researcher based in London who has been writing about the New Normal these past two years, particularly the ethical and legal issues around lockdowns and mandates, the history and roadmap to today’s biosecurity state, and the key players and institutions involved in the globalised takeover of our commons.

Aside from COVID-19, Dustin writes about the intelligence state, big tech surveillance, big philanthropy, the co-option of activism and human rights.

You can find his work at https://www.thecogent.org. Or follow him on twitter @TheCogent1

Featured image is from The Cogent

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

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First published on April 9, 2022

 

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If Ennio Flaiano were to be called upon today to pronounce on the Italian mainstream on the subject of war, he would surely come out with one of his striking paradoxes:

“It is not so much what I see or read that makes an impression on me, but what I hear: that unbearable noise of nails climbing up the glass.”

On the loudspeakers of the media hegemony the defense at all costs of the words and deeds of the Ukrainian government has been broadcasted in unified networks, whatever the means used by this one, all in view of a costly militarization of the whole Europe, already in dire straits for the economic crisis.

The tasty interview with a commander of the Azov Battalion – composed of nationalists of the Ukrainian ultra-right, who confesses to “reading Kant” to their soldiers, the appearance of the band of “Kiev calling” singing with Banderas’ T-shirts, have discovered more than one nerve of the dominant narrative.

Once it emerged that the political horse on which it was counted allowed an unparalleled accessibility to organizations inspired by Nazism, ethnic nationalism, collaborators of the Third Reich worshipped as “national heroes” with monuments, it started the race to deny the evidence, to reduce a phenomenon that the Ukrainian government first refuses to reduce, or to use consolatory and justificationist narratives, disconnected from reality, such as the one that “the Nazis exist on both sides.

It should be made the usual premise, a must in these times in order not to see one’s own reasoning delegitimized to typhus: the nature of Russia governed by Putin is clearly an oligarchic regime in which the dominant historical bloc (composed of a political bloc allied to precise private economic blocs and controlled by the state) uses all the tools of propaganda, social management and repression for the perpetuation of power. There is no one who can deny that every form of political alternative is subject to strong repression, even when it is a matter of claiming simple democratic access.

However, it could be said, such an authoritarian course is not nowadays functioning only in Russia, but since a long time it characterizes almost all Western nations, which would like to censor it. Our shores are also home to a power managed in a manner increasingly independent of real democratic mechanisms, whether by strong men – or clans – as in Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, by plutocratic and oligarchic pillars as in the USA, or by technocratic elites as in Italy. If Russia shows off an unpresentable Khadirov in Chechnya, one has to wonder if the clans of Kosovo, Orban or Erdogan are not equally unpresentable. And one could go on.

However, this is not the point. Returning to Ukraine, never before in a state, in Russia or in the West, we have seen such an agility, cultural and political weight, entrusted to political organizations that blatantly draw inspiration from ideologies, characters, worldviews, explicitly fascist or Nazi. Words and works that in the German penal code would have been a pure crime of apologia for the Third Reich, or the object of a ban, at least until the half-reversal made with the judgment of the Federal Supreme Court of January 17, 2017, which rejected the request to ban the NPD (a neo-Nazi party), only because of minimal electoral importance.

Author’s Note

The Biden White House was behind Prime Minister Imran Khan‘s political demise. 

“We know which are the places from where the pressure is being exerted on us. We will not compromise on the interest of the country. I [Khan] am not levelling allegations, I have the letter which is the proof,” 

Under Imran Khan, a major geopolitical shift had occurred, which Washington is intent upon reversing, Pakistan is no longer America’s staunchest ally. 

Washington’s actions in Pakistan go far beyond the narrow objective of “regime change”.  Historically, the thrust of US foreign policy actions consisted in weakening the central government, fracturing the country as well as sabotaging Pakistan’s strategic and economic relations with China and Russia.

The current crisis is a continuation of  Washington’s resolve to retain Pakistan as a neo-colonial entity. It goes back to America’s design to trigger the collapse of Pakistan as a nation state following the assassination of  Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007.

According to a 2005 report by the US National Intelligence Council and the CIA, Pakistan was slated to become a “failed state” by 2015, “as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons”. That was Washington’s strategic objective. It didn’t happen as planned. 

The following article published on December 30th, 2007 three days after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, examines  Washington’s scenario of disintegration and civil war in Pakistan. 

 

Michel Chossudovsky, April 16, 2022

***

The Destabilization of Pakistan

The process of US sponsored “regime change”, which normally consists in the re-formation of a fresh proxy government under new leaders has been broken. Discredited in the eyes of Pakistani public opinion, General Pervez Musharaf cannot remain in the seat of political power. But at the same time, the fake elections supported by the “international community” scheduled for January 2008, even if they were to be carried out, would not be accepted as legitimate, thereby creating a political impasse.

There are indications that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was anticipated by US officials:

“It has been known for months that the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies have been maneuvering to strengthen their political control of Pakistan, paving the way for the expansion and deepening of the “war on terrorism” across the region.

Various American destabilization plans, known for months by officials and analysts, proposed the toppling of Pakistan’s military…

The assassination of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports of “chatter” among US officials about the possible assassinations of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual attempts took place. (Larry Chin, Global Research, 29 December 2007)

Political Impasse

“Regime change” with a view to ensuring continuity under military rule is no longer the main thrust of US foreign policy. The regime of Pervez Musharraf cannot prevail. Washington’s foreign policy course is to actively promote the political fragmentation and balkanization of Pakistan as a nation.

A new political leadership is anticipated but in all likelihood it will take on a very different shape, in relation to previous US sponsored regimes. One can expect that Washington will push for a compliant political leadership, with no commitment to the national interest, a leadership which will serve US imperial interests, while concurrently contributing under the disguise of “decentralization”, to the weakening of the central government and the fracture of Pakistan’s fragile federal structure.

The political impasse is deliberate. It is part of an evolving US foreign policy agenda, which favors disruption and disarray in the structures of the Pakistani State. Indirect rule by the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus is to be replaced by more direct forms of US interference, including an expanded US military presence inside Pakistan.

This expanded military presence is also dictated by the Middle East-Central Asia geopolitical situation and Washington’s ongoing plans to extend the Middle East war to a much broader area.

The US has several military bases in Pakistan. It controls the country’s air space. According to a recent report: “U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units” (William Arkin, Washington Post, December 2007).

The official justification and pretext for an increased military presence in Pakistan is to extend the “war on terrorism”. Concurrently, to justify its counterrorism program, Washington is also beefing up its covert support to the “terrorists.”

The Balkanization of Pakistan

Already in 2005, a report by the US National Intelligence Council and the CIA forecast a “Yugoslav-like fate” for Pakistan “in a decade with the country riven by civil war, bloodshed and inter-provincial rivalries, as seen recently in Balochistan.” (Energy Compass, 2 March 2005). According to the NIC-CIA,  Pakistan is slated to become a “failed state” by 2015, “as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons”. (Quoted by former Pakistan High Commissioner to UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Times of India, 13 February 2005):

“Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the Central government’s control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi,” the former diplomat quoted the NIC-CIA report as saying.

Expressing apprehension, Hasan asked, “are our military rulers working on a similar agenda or something that has been laid out for them in the various assessment reports over the years by the National Intelligence Council in joint collaboration with CIA?” (Ibid)

Continuity, characterized by the dominant role of the Pakistani military and intelligence has been scrapped in favor of political breakup and balkanization.

According to the NIC-CIA scenario, which Washington intends to carry out: “Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction,” (Ibid) .

The US course consists in  fomenting social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup of Pakistan. This course of action is also dictated by US war plans in relation to both Afghanistan and Iran.

This US agenda for Pakistan is similar to that applied throughout the broader Middle East Central Asian region. US strategy, supported by covert intelligence operations, consists in triggering ethnic and religious strife, abetting and financing secessionist movements while also weakening the institutions of the central government.

The broader objective is to fracture the Nation State and redraw the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Oil and Gas reserves

Pakistan’s extensive oil and gas reserves, largely located in Balochistan province, as well as its pipeline corridors are considered strategic by the Anglo-American alliance, requiring the concurrent militarization of Pakistani territory.

Balochistan comprises more than 40 percent of Pakistan’s land mass, possesses important reserves of oil and natural gas as well as extensive mineral resources.

The Iran-India pipeline corridor is slated to transit through Balochistan. Balochistan also possesses a deap sea port largely financed by China located at Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, not far from the Straits of Hormuz where 30 % of the world’s daily oil supply moves by ship or pipeline. (Asia News.it, 29 December 2007)

Pakistan has an estimated 25.1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves of which 19 trillion are located in Balochistan. Among foreign oil and gas contractors in Balochistan are BP, Italy’s ENI, Austria’s OMV, and Australia’s BHP. It is worth noting that Pakistan’s State oil and gas companies, including PPL which has the largest stake in the Sui oil fields of Balochistan are up for privatization under IMF-World Bank supervision.

According to the Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), Pakistan had proven oil reserves of 300 million barrels, most of which are located in Balochistan. Other estimates place Balochistan oil reserves at an estimated six trillion barrels of oil reserves both on-shore and off-shore (Environment News Service, 27 October 2006) .

Covert Support to Balochistan Separatists

Balochistan’s strategic energy reserves have a bearing on the separatist agenda. Following a familiar pattern, there are indications that the Baloch insurgency is being supported and abetted by Britain and the US.

The Baloch national resistance movement dates back to the late 1940s, when Balochistan was invaded by Pakistan. In the current geopolitical context, the separatist movement is in the process of being hijacked by foreign powers.

British intelligence is allegedly providing covert support to Balochistan separatists (which from the outset have been repressed by Pakistan’s military). In June 2006, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defence accused British intelligence of “abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran” [Balochistan]..(Press Trust of India, 9 August 2006). Ten British MPs were involved in a closed door session of the Senate Committee on  Defence regarding the alleged support of Britain’s Secret Service to Baloch separatists  (Ibid). Also of relevance are reports of  CIA and Mossad support to Baloch rebels in Iran and Southern Afghanistan.

It would appear that Britain and the US are supporting both sides. The US is providing American F-16 jets to the Pakistani military, which are being used to bomb Baloch villages in Balochistan. Meanwhile, British alleged covert support to the separatist movement (according to the Pakistani Senate Committee) contributes to weakening the central government.

The stated purpose of US counter-terrorism is to provide covert support as well as as training to “Liberation Armies” ultimately with a view to destabilizing sovereign governments. In Kosovo, the training of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the 1990s had been entrusted to a private mercenary company, Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), on contract to the Pentagon.

The BLA bears a canny resemblance to Kosovo’s KLA, which was financed by the drug trade and supported by the CIA and Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND).

The BLA emerged shortly after the 1999 military coup. It has no tangible links to the Baloch resistance movement, which developed since the late 1940s. An aura of mystery surrounds the leadership of the BLA.

Baloch population in Pink: In Iran, Pakistan and Southern Afghanistan

Washington favors the creation of a “Greater Balochistan” which would integrate the Baloch areas of Pakistan with those of Iran and possibly the Southern tip of Afghanistan (See Map above), thereby leading to a process of political fracturing in both Iran and Pakistan.

“The US is using Balochi nationalism for staging an insurgency inside Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province. The ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan gives a useful political backdrop for the ascendancy of Balochi militancy” (See Global Research, 6 March 2007).

Military scholar Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters writing in the June 2006 issue of The Armed Forces Journal, suggests, in no uncertain terms that Pakistan should be broken up, leading to the formation of  a separate country: “Greater Balochistan” or “Free Balochistan” (see Map below). The latter would incorporate the Pakistani and Iranian Baloch  provinces into a single political entity.

In turn, according to Peters, Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) should be incorporated into Afghanistan “because of its linguistic and ethnic affinity”. This proposed fragmentation, which broadly reflects US foreign policy, would reduce Pakistani territory to approximately 50 percent of its present land area. (See map). Pakistan would also loose a large part of its coastline on the Arabian Sea.

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, have  most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles. (See Mahdi D. Nazemroaya, Global Research, 18 November 2006)

“Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted, before he retired to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.” (Ibid)

Map: click to enlarge

It is worth noting that secessionist tendencies are not limited to Balochistan. There are separatist groups in Sindh province, which are largely based on opposition to the Punjabi-dominated military regime of General Pervez Musharraf (For Further details see Selig Harrisson, Le Monde diplomatique, October 2006)

“Strong Economic Medicine”: Weakening Pakistan’s Central Government

Pakistan has a federal structure based on federal provincial transfers. Under a federal fiscal structure, the central government transfers financial resources to the provinces, with a view to supporting provincial based programs. When these transfers are frozen as occurred in Yugoslavia in January 1990, on orders of the IMF, the federal fiscal structure collapses:

“State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the republics [of the Yugoslav federation] went instead to service Belgrade’s debt … . The republics were largely left to their own devices. … The budget cuts requiring the redirection of federal revenues towards debt servicing, were conducive to the suspension of transfer payments by Belgrade to the governments of the Republics and Autonomous Provinces.

In one fell swoop, the reformers had engineered the final collapse of Yugoslavia’s federal fiscal structure and mortally wounded its federal political institutions. By cutting the financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics, the reforms fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions, virtually ensuring the de facto secession of the republics. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Second Edition, Global Research, Montreal, 2003, Chapter 17.)

It is by no means accidental that the 2005 National Intelligence Council- CIA report had predicted a “Yugoslav-like fate” for Pakistan pointing to the impacts of “economic mismanagement” as one of the causes of political break-up and balkanization.

“Economic mismanagement” is a term used by the Washington based international financial institutions to describe the chaos which results from not fully abiding by the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Program. In actual fact, the “economic mismanagement” and chaos is the outcome of IMF-World Bank prescriptions, which invariably trigger hyperinflation and precipitate indebted countries into extreme poverty.

Pakistan has been subjected to the same deadly IMF “economic medicine” as Yugoslavia: In 1999, in the immediate wake of the coup d’Etat which brought General Pervez Musharaf to the helm of the military government, an IMF economic package, which included currency devaluation and drastic austerity measures, was imposed on Pakistan. Pakistan’s external debt is of the order of US$40 billion. The IMF’s  “debt reduction” under the package was conditional upon the sell-off to foreign capital of the most profitable State owned enterprises (including the oil and gas facilities in Balochistan) at rockbottom prices .

Musharaf’s Finance Minister was chosen by Wall Street, which is not an unusual practice. The military rulers appointed at Wall Street’s behest, a vice-president of Citigroup, Shaukat Aziz, who at the time was head of CitiGroup’s Global Private Banking. (See WSWS.org, 30 October 1999). CitiGroup is among the largest commercial foreign banking institutions in Pakistan.

There are obvious similarities in the nature of US covert intelligence operations applied in country after country in different parts of the so-called “developing World”.  These covert operation, including the organisation of military coups, are often synchronized with the imposition of IMF-World Bank macro-economic reforms. In this regard, Yugoslavia’s federal fiscal structure collapsed in 1990 leading to mass poverty and heightened ethnic and social divisions. The US and NATO sponsored “civil war” launched in mid-1991 consisted in coveting Islamic groups as well as channeling covert support to separatist paramilitary armies in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.

A similar “civil war” scenario has been envisaged for Pakistan by the National Intelligence Council and the CIA:  From the point of view of US intelligence, which has a longstanding experience in abetting separatist “liberation armies”, “Greater Albania” is to Kosovo what “Greater Balochistan” is to Pakistan’s Southeastern Balochistan province. Similarly, the KLA is Washington’s chosen model, to be replicated in Balochistan province.

The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi, no ordinary city. Rawalpindi is a military city host to the headquarters of the Pakistani Armed Forces and Military Intelligence (ISI). Ironically Bhutto was assassinated in an urban area tightly controlled and guarded by the military police and the country’s elite forces. Rawalpindi  is swarming with ISI intelligence officials, which invariably infiltrate political rallies. Her assassination was not a haphazard event.

Without evidence, quoting Pakistan government sources, the Western media in chorus has highlighted the role of Al-Qaeda, while also focusing on the the possible involvement of the ISI.

What these interpretations do not mention is that the ISI continues to play a key role in overseeing Al Qaeda on behalf of US intelligence. The press reports fail to mention two important and well documented facts:

1) the ISI maintains close ties to the CIA. The ISI  is virtually an appendage of the CIA.

2) Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA. The ISI provides covert support to Al Qaeda, acting on behalf of US intelligence.

The alleged involvement of either Al Qaeda and/or the ISI would suggest that US intelligence was cognizant and/or implicated in the assassination plot.

[Part Two: Pakistan and the “Global War on Terrorism”

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international bestseller America’s “War on Terrorism”  Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization.

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). 

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

First published on April 9, 2022

***

“Earlier this month I announced the United States would ban all imports of Russian energy to make it clear the American people would not be part of subsidizing Putin’s brutal unjustified war against the people of Ukraine…The United States is a net exporter of energy with a strong domestic industry, and the United States welcomed the European Union’s powerful statement earlier this month committing to rapidly reduce its dependence on Russia gas. Today we’ve agreed to a joint game plan toward that goal.” 

– President Joe Biden announcing deal to cut reliance on Russian gas (March 25, 2022) [1]

“It was a great stunt, but it’s kind of coming to an end and it’s going to start winding down now unless we do something really extreme like nationalize it and totally subsidize it. Otherwise, shale oil is going to be declining probably pretty swiftly, and it will hardly be an industry anymore in five to ten years.”

– James Howard Kunstler, from this week’s interview

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With recent news out of the town of Bucha indicating that Russia allegedly executed in the range of 300 people, existing pressure on the leaders of the “democratic” world to punish the perpetrators is mounting. Sanctions against Russian exports, are currently NATO’s Weapon of Choice. [2]

Right now, the European Union pays the equivalent of $850 million every day for natural gas and oil over to the state run by the current mastermind of the moment Vladimir Putin. Logically, it seems like banning fuel from the country would both prop up the EU’s role in solidarity with their Ukrainian friends and possibly win an award for super-duper environmental champions on the COP27 stage! [3]

Russia supplies at least a third of the Europe’s gas. It heats millions of European homes come winter. In ten of its nations it supplies 30 percent of their electricity. Even the fertilizer which helped expand the food supply comes largely from natural gas supplied from Russia. Without Russia’s supply on hand, freezing and starving in the dark could literally become a frightful scenario eight months from now!

The United States said it would supply Europe with 15 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 2022 to partially replace the absences resulting from the multi-state European spurn of Russia. They would increase to $50 billion by 2030. The fact that the U.S. would profit from the sale of their own more expensive liquified natural gas is perhaps just a coincidence. But how sustainable is this energy transition?

The guests on the Global Research News Hour this week are of the informed opinion this situation is not feasible in the long term. In spite of taking the lead in oil and gas production via fracking and horizontal mining practices, this advantage should wear off quickly, and we’ll realize that essentially Peak Oil and Gas is here!

Our first guest, J David Hughes, an earth scientist and fellow with the Post Carbon Institute takes us through his latest report: Shale Reality Check 2021: Drilling Into the U.S. Government’s Optimistic Forecasts for Shale Gas & Tight Oil Production Through 2050, which assesses the forecasts of the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s forecasts over the long term are “extremely optimistic.”

Our second guest, writer and blogger James Howard Kunstler, famous for his blog Clusterf**k nation and his 2005 book, The Long Emergency, similarly shares his observations about the Shale oil and gas future and talks about the consequences that await our economy and our lives moving forward. Mr Kunstler also shares his point of view regarding the impact of COVID-19 on this development, and the mainstream media sudden interest in Hunter Biden’s laptop, with critical information damaging the integrity of President Biden’s leadership.

J David Hughes is an Earth scientist, a fellow with the Post Carbon Institute, and the President of Global Sustainability Research. He is the author of the December 2021 report, Shale Reality Check 2021: Drilling Into the U.S. Government’s Optimistic Forecasts for Shale Gas & Tight Oil Production Through 2050.

James Howard Kunstler is an author, social critic and public speaker based in Greenwich, NY. He is best known for his Non-fiction books including Geography Of Nowhere: The Rise And Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape (1994), The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (2005), and Living in the Long Emergency : Global Crisis, The Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who are Showing Us the Way Forward. (2020). His website is Kunstler.com

(Global Research News Hour Episode 351)

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Transcript – Interview with James Howard Kunstler, April 6, 2022

Part One

Global Research: Thank you, Mr. Kunstler, for agreeing to this interview. I really appreciate it.

James Howard Kunstler: Why it’s a pleasure to be with you.

GR: Could you maybe take just a few brief minutes explaining how peak oil and gas is about a lot more than just switching to electric cars or a better insulating your home. It means dramatically changing the way we live.

JHK: Yeah, it’s the primary resource for all of our comforts and conveniences in modern life. And it is also the primary platform we’re creating the alt energy resources and technology that we are fantasizing about replacing oil with. And that makes it a big problem.

And the scene, the oil scene, has been pretty confounding for the public. I think it’s understandable that they are confounded by it because it’s pretty complicated. And the whole story has been full of strange twists and dodges.

What happened over the last ten years is, you know, we experienced this event that we called the shale oil miracle, and that followed immediately a very serious oil crisis in 2008-9, when the price of oil shot up to a really unprecedented $150 a barrel. And of course, there’s a useful equation to understand how this affects us. Oil over $70 a barrel tends to crush economies and oil under $70 a barrel tends to crush oil companies. And that was the direction that we were heading in.

We were then importing about 15 million barrels a day, and we were using 20 million barrels a day. So we were only producing something like 4.9 million barrels a day in the United States. But we started the shale oil thing in 2009. Notice it coincided with that great financial crisis, and the shale oil miracle was kind of a product of the attempt to fix that crisis using quantitative easing and zero-interest-rate financial policies.

And so you’ve got a tremendous amount of investment that went into shale oil after they demonstrated that it could be done, and they really ramped up the industry very quickly. People were investing in it because of zero rate interest policy, zero interest rate policy. They couldn’t get decent yields on traditional investments like US Treasury bonds. So they were looking towards more unorthodox targets for their investment, and shale oil was the big thing. It promised tremendous returns.

So we ramped up production, and unfortunately, the one major thing that they demonstrated over that 10-year period was that they couldn’t make a dime producing all of that shale oil. We produced a tremendous amount of shale oil, and it was a tremendous financial stunt, but it was a stunt, none the less. What we accomplished was we exceeded the 1970 previous American peak of oil production, which was around 10 million barrels a day, and we got all the way up to just under 13 million barrels a day in 2019. But then coronavirus happened, along with its many disruptions, and it also disrupted the oil market very deeply.

GR: Yes that’s true.

JHK: And by that time, ten years had gone by, and it was now evident that the oil companies could not make any money producing shale oil, and that it was basically a lousy investment for people looking to stash their money somewhere that was productive.

GR: So you just explained—

JHK: Wait a minute I’m not finished yet.

GR: Oh, sorry, go ahead.

JHK: See the catch here is that having proved that they can’t make money at it, now it’s very hard for them to get more investment to continue their operations. So despite the fact that they got very good at this trick of producing oil out of impermeable shale rock, the fact is that the amount of capital that they need to accomplish that is no longer available.

And, let me put it another way. The old conventional oil wells like you got in Texas and Oklahoma in the 1950s, those wells cost about $400,000 in today’s money to drill, and they produce thousands of barrels a day for decades. So they were like running a cash register Shale oil wells cost between 6 and 12 million dollars each to drill and to frack, and to do all the operations, and they produce about a hundred or two hundred barrels a day, not thousands, for the first year, after which they deplete by 60%, and then three years later they’re totally gone and you have to look elsewhere for a new shale well.

So that sort of explains the geophysics of it all. It was a great stunt, but it’s kind of coming to an end and it’s going to start winding down now unless we do something really extreme like nationalize it and totally subsidize it. Otherwise, shale oil is going to be declining probably pretty swiftly, and it will hardly be an industry any more in five or ten years.

GR: Yeah. Well like you say, it’s just kind of a stunt, it doesn’t really follow the normal rules of supply and demand, right?

JHK: Well it does in a way, but it’s more a matter that the business model for producing it just doesn’t pencil out. You know, it cost millions of dollars to drill and frack these wells, you’ve got to run all of these water trucks to places like West Texas where there’s very little water, and all of these trucks with the sand and the chemicals that you need for fracking, and it’s tremendously expensive. And then you have to, you know, get rid of the wastewater, and you know, when all is said and done, you’re not making money at it, and if you’re not making money at it, it’s not a good investment. And the investors are going to not put their money into it. So it’s really about a shortage of capital, a scarcity of capital that we’re facing, and that scarcity of capital is going to affect a whole lot of other things in our society.

GR: Russia has launched a military attack on Ukraine, they say to demilitarize and denazify the country. NATO countries didn’t like it and are now waging economic warfare against Russia by issuing sanctions, and one of the instruments in play is boycotting their natural gas. The thing is that the EU Imports a third of its gas from Russia. The US say they will bail them out by supplying 15 billion cubic tons of natural gas this year, exploding to 50 billion tonnes in 2030, and I think we both know that that’s not going to be sufficient, not over the long haul, and certainly not competitive price-wise. Is Europe essentially shooting its nose in order to spite its face?

JHK: It’s cutting off its nose to spite its face as the old proverb goes. You know it’s completely idiotic. The whole idea that America is going to compensate for their oil is insane for the following reasons.

The only way we could do that would be by shipping liquid, Liquified Natural Gas. Natural Gas has to be compressed at very low temperatures in order to liquefy it and get it into a tanker. Moreover, the tankers have to be specially built tankers that are basically refrigerated tankers. That adds a lot of expense to the shipping. Oil is different. Oil is shipped at room temperature, but not the case with natural gas. So it’s very expensive to ship and they do not have sufficient natural gas terminals in European ports to receive it. And they wouldn’t have the terminals for probably a couple of years because it would take that long to build them if they could come up with the capital to do it, but the whole project is insane anyway because the gas cost too much.

So Europe has really put themselves in a terrible predicament, and they very quickly ended up screwed. And one of the first manifestations of that is that, yeah it was announced in the news this week, that food prices in Germany are going up by 20 to 50 per cent virtually overnight.

So they’re in terrible condition economically all of a sudden, and they’ve moved rashly and stupidly, and you know the Russians have played it pretty cleverly.

And the Russians are now, because the United States and Europe has basically destroyed the international trade payment system, which was based on the SWIFT clearance system for clearing trades, now that we’ve succeeded in wrecking that, the Russians were already in position to work around that, and they are going to work around it with another system.

Moreover, they’re going to, when the Europeans finally get their heads screwed on straight, they’re going to force the Europeans to buy natural gas with rubles, and in order to buy, and because of the sanctions, they can’t buy rubles with Euros. So what are they going to buy them with? Well, they can buy them with gold, or they can just pay for the oil and the gas in gold. And what that means is that Russia is building a gold-backed currency system which is going to be a potent payment system, a potent currency, and whatever else it does it’s going to detract from the power of the US dollar and its position as the world’s reserve currency. Probably pretty quickly.

Russia is also in a position to sell a lot of that oil they were sending, a lot of that gas they were sending to Europe, to China and other countries. So that whole sanctions thing was about the stupidest thing you could possibly cook up. Unless you wanted to destroy the Western economies.

GR: Yeah.

JHK: Which is possible.

GR:  Well Russia also supplies the world with 10% of crude oil. If the world shuns their oil, then we will suddenly be confronting peak oil. I mean that might be a different experience than the idea of getting more and more expensive as time goes on until it starts slowly one by one affecting people. How would —

JHK: Well, we really are at peak oil in the sense that we are definitely at peak per capita oil. What’s really going on in the last couple of years has been, aside from the, from the business model of shale oil being broken, the other thing that’s going on is the distribution system has been interrupted and broken. So, right now, we’re mostly experiencing a change in distribution systems that were kind of working, they were held together with baling wire and duct tape, but they were kind of working for a while, and now they’re not going to work at all for as far ahead as we can see. And it basically means higher oil prices, higher prices for anything made out of oil like fertilizer, and probably shortages and scarcities in various places on a spot basis.

– Intermission –

Part Two

GR: In case you just joined us, I’m speaking with James Howard Kunstler. He’s the author, blogger, and social critic, and author of The Long Emergency. And we’re talking about peak oil and gas in 2022.

James, another subject I wanted to bring up with you is Covid-19. The response to this virus was to shut down economies, lock down people in their homes, and vigorously encourage taking the vaccine. There were high incidences of vaccine adverse reactions. It’s documented by the CDC as alarmingly high, although the CDC and other experts claim they cannot verify that every single reaction death is due to the vaccine and continue to insist the vaccine is safe and efficacious. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re among those who believe it that it’s an intentional killer as opposed to a—

JHK: Well, I don’t believe, necessarily, in the plandemic idea. I’m not persuaded that that happened, but it’s definitely a public health fiasco. It is a tremendous fiasco, and the public health authorities, you know the CDC, the FDA, the NIAID that is run by Anthony Fauci, and other institutions, as well as the pharma companies, have been doubling and tripling down on their errors so consistently that it’s hard to believe that they’re not deliberately trying to kill people.

For example, we know quite well that this is not a safe vaccine, that it causes a lot of injuries, many of them permanent, and it has killed a lot of people from the side effects, from vascular damage and cardiac damage, and damage to other organs and neurological brain injuries, and there’s just a huge number of injuries and deaths from this out there, and yet, the authorities, Rochelle Walensky at the FDA, is still on TV pitching boosters and vaccinations for people.

I think that that means that they’ve crossed the line into criminally negligent homicide and that they’re going to have to be held accountable for it. I don’t know how that’s going to happen because unfortunately for the last several years we’ve become a culture in which anything goes, and nothing matters. There are no consequences for any of the misconduct that has gone on by institutions and individuals.

GR: How do you say… They say that you’ve got to, they keep saying follow the science, listen to us, follow the science. Is there something other than science that’s directing them to—

JHK: The critics of the vaccines and the critics of much of the behaviour in response to the Covid-19 affair are following the science probably better than the people in public health. And it’s an insult to science, what public health has been doing is an insult to science itself.

GR: Yeah. Well, I’m just wondering, I mean, you say you don’t think that it’s necessarily something that’s conceived, but I’m just thinking in terms of the fact that there’s, we’re seeing that based on fossil fuel – the explosion of the use of fossil fuels over the course of the 20th century, that there was a similar explosion in human populations. I mean, fossil fuels fuel fertilizer for example, natural gas. As that fossil-fuel starts to diminish in supply, you will similarly see an effect on human populations. I’m thinking from the standpoint of the elites I guess, the World Economic Forum, people like that that you’re, you’re going to be looking, well what should we do, should we go out and, let’s tell people what’s going to happen or would they maybe think of putting in place some sort of a mechanism, like, I don’t know, biowarfare or death by vaccination or a combination of the two that would probably be the best choice. That’s what I would tend to think. What would, I’m just wondering—

JHK: Before I find it very hard to take the WEF and Klaus Schwab very seriously. Because Klaus Schwab is too much of a cartoon of a James Bond film. You know, he’s sitting there in his bunker with a Persian cat on his lap, you know, smearing at the world. I don’t really buy that story although I do believe that there are people, obviously Bill Gates has talked about how important it is to reduce the population, and you know, he’s enough of a you know semi-autistic Asperger personality that maybe he, you know, it’s very easy for him to act like a sociopath, or a psychopath about that.

But I think that the Covid-19 thing, it might have been a deliberate release. It might have been something that the Chinese, CCP, wanted to inflict on the west. It could have been a lot of things. I’m not persuaded necessarily that it was those things. The strange part is the precisely coordinated behaviour of so many nations in response to the pandemic. You know, the fact that Australia and New Zealand, Austria, Germany, France were all doing lockdowns. Italy all doing the same kind of lockdowns. The fact that so many of these countries instituted vaccine mandates in exactly the same way at the same time. It’s a little bit weird, and it makes you wonder how such a thing could be so coordinated. You know, one theory is that social media acted, in a way, as an infectious, viral agent itself, and spread this, these typical responses from country to country, and leadership to leadership, and population to population.

So I still tend to be a bit allergic to conspiracies. But, you know, it’s hard to look at the big picture and not get the feeling that somebody wanted to get a lot of people dead. And right now, especially, when there’s so much information coming out of the life insurance companies, about all-causes death rates, and we’ve learned recently that the millennial generation has suffered about 60,000 all-causes unusual deaths, in the last 16 months or something, and that’s almost equal to the number of people that my generation lost in the Vietnam War. And that’s an impressive number of people. So, you know, it’s a situation that could make a lot of people pretty paranoid.

GR: Yeah. I also have a question, I guess this is maybe more related to the governments in play because you have, you had Ukraine, and essentially it looks as if they’re really ferocious, the Americans and NATO about getting another Cold War started. You know, we’re going to do something to get, basically, every, even the starting of the war itself it seems, and this could lead to a third world war, but maybe it won’t, but this talking about, you know, escalation to nuclear power … But that would eliminate a lot of what Henry Kissinger described as the useless eaters, you know, timed right after COVID. But I’m just wondering if you see these two events connected in any way, not to keep you on the conspiracy theory track, but it just seems like going from one, then to the next with hardly any—

JHK: Well as they say, correlation is not causality. So you can just present some of the circumstances here. I think it’s pretty self-evident that the, that our country, are you a Canadian or American?

GR: Canadian

JHK: Ok. My country, the USA, really wanted to provoke this incident in Ukraine, this operation in Ukraine. For one thing, we managed to send a whole lot of money and a whole lot of weaponry over to Ukraine in the last eight years or so, ever since the 2014 Maidan revolution that we sponsored. That the State Department and the CIA sponsored. So we sent all this, we sent all this for material over there and trained a lot of Ukrainian army people, and they went over to the eastern boundary of the Donbas and spent eight years shelling the Russian speaking population over there. They were Ukrainians, but they were Russian speaking. And obviously, you know, Mr. Putin was pretty patient about that, but after eight years, he said enough is enough. And he went in there to stop it and to disarm Ukraine, and to make sure it that it never became a part of NATO.

And that was another thing that our, that my country and that President Joe Biden could have done at any point along the line in January or February. He could have declared that Ukraine will not be a member of NATO. And that would have been a start, at least in negotiating what was going to happen. But he didn’t do that either. So it’s clear that Joe Biden, and whoever is behind Joe Biden, because we know that he doesn’t function very well, we know that they wanted to start this war.

Now the thing that I see happening is that the war started at just the time when the news was coming out that tremendous number of people were being, were dying from reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines. And it seems possible to me that the Biden Administration wanted to distract the nation from that story because obviously it’s incriminating, and it would open up a tremendous can of worms.

Also they probably saw coming up very soon the breaking of the Hunter Biden bribery and influence peddling story which, in fact, has now broken. And in fact, is now an active case in the Department of Justice. It’s a tax case for now, but, I don’t know how they’re going to get around just prosecuting him for tax payments. You know, there’s too much other stuff there, and it’s all out in the public arena now, and I don’t think that Hunter Biden is going to get away with any of this. And I don’t think Joe Biden did either. So it seemed to me to be an opportune time for them to distract the country with this, by provoking Russia into their cleanup operation in Ukraine.

GR: I noticed that it was The New York Times that broke the story, and they’re the official orator of actual news, and it seems strange that it broke that story at this time, because normally, they can… sat on the story for quite a while.

JHK: Yeah they sat on it for two years, and then that, but, you know, let’s remember, they published the story about Hunter Biden’s tax case. The whole idea, the story had a number of purposes. One was to acknowledge the fact that there was a federal case that was opened against Hunter Biden, because they can no longer deny that. But they downplayed, they downplayed the whole Hunter Biden laptop thing by not admitting that it was a reality until like the 22nd paragraph of the story. So you know, that’s called burying the lead of the story and they did that, so a lot of people probably didn’t read down that far. And I think it was, in general it was a matter of The New York Times working to protect President Joe Biden with highly spun and somewhat gamed news.

GR: Wow. Well Mr. Kunstler, I’m afraid I’m right out of time, so I have to close. But I really enjoyed having you on and hopefully we can connect again at a later point.

JHK: Yeah anytime, and I’m sorry I was late to the recording!

GR: No worries. Thank you so much for joining us

JHK: Okay thank you very much Michael. We will ride again.

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Notes:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vnapv6O_IY
2. Akbar Shahid Ahmed and S.V. Date (April 6, 2022), “U.S. And Allies Ramp Up Sanctions On Russia Over Bucha Atrocities, Huffpost; https://www.huffpost.com/entry/russia-sanctions-bucha-atrocities_n_624b1ebce4b068157f7abd6b
3. Associated Press (April 7, 2022), “Europe set to ban Russian coal, but struggles on oil and gas”, Associated Press; https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/europe-set-to-ban-russian-coal-but-struggles-on-oil-and-gas-1.5851973

First published on January 20, 2016

***

Revelations that involve Hillary Clinton and her email scandal confirms what the real motives of the US-NATO led war on Libya to remove Muammar Gaddafi and it was not for democracy or to protect the Libyan people. It never was.

There are several reasons why Western powers want Africa under their  control besides their  appetite for natural resources and that is to keep Africa under their control. Washington and Paris want to remain a dominant power politically and economically with their currencies in place instead of Gaddafi’s idea which called for the gold dinar to replace U.S. dollars and Euros. Africa is to remain a captive market under the West because it is their corporations and special interest groups who should profit.

U.S. Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton and her email prove that the Obama and Sarkozy administrations wanted Libya’s oil, gold and silver under their  control with their puppets (or terrorists) in place after Gaddafi was removed from power. Zero Hedge linked the actual email exposing what Washington and Paris had been discussing regarding the situation in Libya:

According to sensitive information available to this these individuals, Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver. During late March, 2011 these stocks were moved to SABHA (south west in the direction of the Libyan border with Niger and Chad); taken from the vaults of the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli. This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French.franc (CFA).

(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya

Thanks to the discovery of Clinton’s emails that revealed the truth. But dob Hillary Clinton supporters care that she was involved in the overthrow of Libya’s government for its natural resources and its gold and silver holdings? Don’t count on it. What is interesting about Clinton’s emails is that it describes what Sarkozy planned in Libya’s aftermath:

According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:

• A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,

• Increase French influence in North Africa, UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05779612 Date: 12/31/2015 UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05779612 Date: 12/31/2015.

• Improve his intemai political situation in France,

• Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,

• Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa)

The revelations on Clinton’s email not only confirm what the original motives were from the start, it shows the hypocrisy behind Washington’s quest for “spreading its democratic values” across the planet. Hillary Clinton spoke about the situation in Libya as Secretary of State in Paris, France on March 19, 2011. Here is part of what she said:

The international community came together to speak with one voice and to deliver a clear and consistent message: Colonel Qadhafi’s campaign of violence against his own people must stop. The strong votes in the United Nations Security Council underscored this unity. And now the Qadhafi forces face unambiguous terms: a ceasefire must be implemented immediately – that means all attacks against civilians must stop; troops must stop advancing on Benghazi and pull back from Adjabiya, Misrata, and Zawiya; water, electricity, and gas supplies must be turned on to all areas; humanitarian assistance must be allowed to reach the people of Libya.

Yesterday, President Obama said very clearly that if Qadhafi failed to comply with these terms, there would be consequences. Since the President spoke, there has been some talk from Tripoli of a ceasefire, but the reality on the ground tells a very different story. Colonel Qadhafi continues to defy the world. His attacks on civilians go on. Today, we have been monitoring the troubling reports of fighting around and within Benghazi itself. As President Obama also said, we have every reason to fear that, left unchecked, Qadhafi will commit unspeakable atrocities

Clinton declared that Gaddafi had a “campaign of violence against his own people” and that he “Defied the world” was a call for a US-NATO intervention. However, the actual planning stages to topple Gaddafi began shortly after the September 11th terror attacks in 2001 when former U.S. General Wesley Clark told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that Washington planned to “take out 7 countries in 5 Years”, Libya was on that list.

Promoting “Democracy” with the Help of the Libyan rebels

Washington’s history of regime change follows the same pattern of its past interventions and orchestrated coups. Non-Government Organizations (NGO’s) such as The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) granted $118 million by the Department of State (DOS) for the ‘Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2010’ which covered North Africa and the Middle East. The DOS documents stated that “In authoritarian countries such as Iran, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, NED will assist activists in working in the available political space, and try to strengthen their institutional capacity”. The “political space” would allow Washington and their European allies to fill that space to gain economic and political advantages. The NED then enlisted the help of the ‘International Federation of Human Rights’ (Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’Homme) or the FIDH along with the ‘Libyan League for Human Rights’ (LLHR). The NED, the FIDH and the LLHR and other U.S. funded “democracy promotion groups” or NGO’s such as the all too familiar operations of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) launched operations in Libya to manipulate and guide social movements, labor organizations, student movements, news organizations and anti-Gaddafi activists. The role of the NGO’s in Libya was designed to change the political landscape that was more aligned with Western interests. It was planned several years before Gaddafi was toppled. But that was just one part of the destabilization process.

A report by online news source ‘France24’ reported on the complexities of the Libyan Islamist fighters who joined the anti-Gaddafi rebels. We need to look back to the early 1990’s where the Gaddafi ordered a crackdown on radical Islamists in eastern part of Libya. But according to Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam his father had made deals with his radical Islamic rebels who were originally his arch enemies. There is even speculation that infighting between the radical Islamic factions and the Libyan rebels known as the ‘National Transitional Council (NTC)’ were involved in the “killing of the top Libyan rebel commander, General Abdel Fattah Younes, in the rebel capital of Benghazi.” The France24 report quoted what Ali Tarhouni, the NTC oil minister on the situation within the ranks of the ‘Abu Obeida Ibn al-Jarah brigade’ and who was actually behind the murder of Younes which complicated matters for the opposition:

Ali Tarhouni, the NTC’s oil minister, told reporters that Younes was murdered by “renegade” members of the Abu Obeida Ibn al-Jarah brigade. Named after one of the Prophet Mohammed’s companions and most successful military commanders, the Abu Obeida Ibn al-Jarah brigade is an Islamist faction that is one of at least 30 semi-independent militias operating in rebel-held eastern Libya, according to Noman Bentoman, a senior analyst at the London-based counter-extremism think tank, the Quilliam Foundation.

“The military structure of the Libyan rebels has two elements,” Bentoman explained in a phone interview with FRANCE 24. “There are the professional soldiers under the National Liberation Army, of which General Younes was the supreme commander. The Obeida Ibn al-Jarah brigade is not part of the National Liberation Army. They’re operating as what you would call ‘independent revolutionaries”

What complicated the situation among the Libyan rebels was the number of “independent revolutionary groups” who had slightly different agendas although they had one goal in common, to remove Gaddafi from power. France24 reported the following on what Noman Bentoman had said about various groups joining the Libyan rebels:

Bentoman was a former commander in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a jihadist group that emerged in the early 1990s among Libyans who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan and then returned to Libya, where they waged a violent insurgency against Gaddafi’s regime. Once close to Osama bin Laden and senior al Qaeda leaders, Bentoman quit the LIFG shortly after the 9/11 attacks and is now a prominent critic of Islamist violence

According to Bentoman, the LIFG disbanded in August 2009, but during the current uprising it has regrouped under a new name: Al-Haraka Al-Islamiya Al Libiya Lit-Tahghir, or the Libyan Islamic Movement for Change. Many of the new group’s leaders and members, Bentoman notes, have now joined the Libyan rebels

Pepe Escobar, a journalist for the Asia Times wrote an article in 2011 titled ‘How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli’ explained how al-Qaeda became part of the anti-Gaddafi forces:

His name is Abdelhakim Belhaj. Some in the Middle East might have, but few in the West and across the world would have heard of him. Time to catch up. Because the story of how an al-Qaeda asset turned out to be the top Libyan military commander in still war-torn Tripoli is bound to shatter – once again – that wilderness of mirrors that is the “war on terror”, as well as deeply compromising the carefully constructed propaganda of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) “humanitarian” intervention in Libya.

Muammar Gaddafi’s fortress of Bab-al-Aziziyah was essentially invaded and conquered last week by Belhaj’s men – who were at the forefront of a militia of Berbers from the mountains southwest of Tripoli. The militia is the so-called Tripoli Brigade, trained in secret for two months by US Special Forces. This turned out to be the rebels’ most effective militia in six months of tribal/civil war.  Already last Tuesday, Belhaj was gloating on how the battle was won, with Gaddafi forces escaping “like rats” (note that’s the same metaphor used by Gaddafi himself to designate the rebels).

Abdelhakim Belhaj, aka Abu Abdallah al-Sadek, is a Libyan jihadi. Born in May 1966, he honed his skills with the mujahideen in the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. He’s the founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and its de facto emir – with Khaled Chrif and Sami Saadi as his deputies. After the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996, the LIFG kept two training camps in Afghanistan; one of them, 30 kilometers north of Kabul – run by Abu Yahya – was strictly for al-Qaeda-linked jihadis. After 9/11, Belhaj moved to Pakistan and also to Iraq, where he befriended none other than ultra-nasty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – all this before al-Qaeda in Iraq pledged its allegiance to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and turbo-charged its gruesome practices. In Iraq, Libyans happened to be the largest foreign Sunni jihadi contingent, only losing to the Saudis. Moreover, Libyan jihadis have always been superstars in the top echelons of “historic” al-Qaeda – from Abu Faraj al-Libi (military commander until his arrest in 2005, now lingering as one of 16 high-value detainees in the US detention center at Guantanamo) to Abu al-Laith al-Libi (another military commander, killed in Pakistan in early 2008)

Escobar’s analysis gives you an idea on how the anti-Gaddafi rebels were formed under the auspices of Washington’s control grid. Another factor was the Western media propaganda against Gaddafi, one particular article was published on March 21st, 2011 by the New York Times which claimed that the rebels were comprised of “secular-minded professionals” who wanted democracy and human rights:

The behavior of the fledgling rebel government in Benghazi so far offers few clues to the rebels’ true nature. Their governing council is composed of secular-minded professionals — lawyers, academics, businesspeople — who talk about democracy, transparency, human rights and the rule of law. But their commitment to those principles is just now being tested as they confront the specter of potential Qaddafi spies in their midst, either with rough tribal justice or a more measured legal process

And of course the people of the West believed the propaganda. They also believed that Gaddafi handed out “Viagra” to his troops to rape women according to the London-based ‘The Guardian’ newspaper on June 11th, 2011:

Luis Moreno-Ocampo told reporters at the UN in New York last night there were strong indications that hundreds of women had been raped in the Libyan government clampdown on the popular uprising and that Gaddafi had ordered the violations as a form of punishment.

The prosecutor said there was even evidence that the government had been handing out doses of Viagra to soldiers to encourage sexual attacks. Moreno-Ocampo said rape was a new tactic for the Libyan regime. “That’s why we had doubts at the beginning, but now we are more convinced. Apparently, [Gaddafi] decided to punish, using rape”

The claims of Gaddafi’s troops using Viagra to rape women because they disagreed with Gaddafi’s policies was absurd. Cherif Bassiouni, who was the lead UN human rights investigator, had told the press that claims of rape by Viagra induced Libyan soldiers was a “massive hysteria” according to Australia’s Herald Sun. The report also said that Bassiouni mentioned 70,000 questionnaires distributed by a woman to rape victims who supposedly received 60,000 responses, but Bassiouni never received the questionnaires:

The investigator also cited the case of a woman who claimed to have sent out 70,000 questionnaires and received 60,000 responses, of which 259 reported sexual abuse. However, when the investigators asked for these questionnaires, they never received them

Reuters reported in 2011 what Bassiouni’s team actually uncovered:

His team uncovered only four alleged cases — Eman Al-Obaidi who claimed she was gang-raped by pro-government militiamen and three women in Misrata who said they had been sexually abused. “Can we draw a conclusion that there is a systematic policy of rape? In my opinion we can’t,” Bassiouni said. “For the time being, the numbers are very limited”

Western propaganda was another element that instigated the removal of Gaddafi. The MSM was the cheerleader for the US-NATO intervention in Libya from the start. NGO’s, various elements of the Libyan rebels with Al-Qaeda in the mix and Western propaganda all had a hand in the death of Gaddafi. Washington and Paris were behind the civil war between the Gaddafi forces and the Libyan rebels from the start.

Chaos in Libya and “Conspiracy Theories”

Libya was Africa’s most developed country and was completely destroyed. Massive terror attacks and murders persist. Libya is a training ground for potential future terrorists. Last year, the Washington Times published an interesting story on Libya’s chaos titled ‘Hillary Clinton says Libya chaos shows consequences of U.S. withdrawal from unstable places’ which does mention Bill Roggio, editor of ‘The Long War Journal’ which is funded and published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative think tank based in Washington, DC which said that “The administration provided military assistance to overthrow the government in 2011 and has since provided nothing concrete to deal with the problems on the ground.” Roggio went on further to say that critics of the Obama administration say Libya’s intervention to overthrow Gaddafi and replace him with terrorists is of course, a “conspiracy theory”:

The worst part of the situation, Mr. Roggio said, is that Washington’s inaction in Libya has provided ammunition for some of the most radical critiques of the Obama administration’s overall policy toward the Middle East.

“We overthrow the regime, jihadists take control of various areas and the country becomes a basket case,” he said. “It’s amazing how we’re now playing into those narratives that feed conspiracy theories that the U.S. actually supports the overthrow of governments and then supplants them with jihadist groups. “They are conspiracy theories,” Mr. Roggio said. “What is truly going on is shortsightedness in U.S. policy and a failure to understand who’s who on the ground, which groups are operating, and then the lack of political heft on the ground to get involved”

Well, Hillary Clinton’s exposed emails and proof that other elements including the fieldwork of the NGO’s and US intelligence prove that Mr. Roggio is wrong. Libya’s war was basically about its natural resources (oil and gas reserves) and its gold and silver holdings with the possibility that a sovereign nation in Africa can free its people from the West and that is not what Western powers want. They want the Libyan people and all of Africa to live in debt peonage while exploiting their resources. Gaddafi was going to change that arrangement.

Historically speaking, since the West (Europe and the US) has conquered and exploited Africa, not too many nations within the continent have actually benefitted and that even holds true today. Libya had gold, silver and oil to change the dynamics that challenged the US dollar and Euro hegemony in Africa and that would have added another dilemma for the establishment.

The Libyan invasion was not to protect the people as Clinton once claimed; it was about overthrowing Gaddafi and confiscating Libya’s vast wealth.

But according to Roggio, it’s all a “conspiracy theory”. The ultra-rich will get rich even by stealing if they have to, and that is something empires past and present do well.

One thing is certain: Hillary Clinton’s emails are documents that historical revisionists will not be able to rewrite what Washington and its European allies were after all along in Libya and it was not democracy.

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***

 

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

Sometimes I hear sounds in my roof that tell me that the birds are trying to get in and make a nest in the attic. I crawl to the point where the joists meet the rafters and I can see the light coming in from the outside. It is at this point, at the extremity of the house and when I am on my belly because of the pitch of the roof, that I am reminded of the Flammarion engraving.

A traveller puts his head under the edge of the firmament in the original (1888) printing of the Flammarion wood engraving.

Flammarion engraving

The Flammarion engraving is a nineteenth century depiction of the sky as a dome where a traveller goes to the edge of the world puts his head through to see the greater universe outside. The safe, comforting world of a static blue vault of fixed stars gives way to a modern dynamic view that the earth is moving in space. It is interesting that it is a traveller that is depicted, the type of person who goes beyond local boundaries of mental and physical limitations to achieve understanding.

The concept of a dome was also used in the film The Truman Show (1998), a ‘reality’ show where Truman Burbank is followed and watched 24 hours a day without realising it. Truman’s slowly developing consciousness that all is not right in his perfect world begins when strange things start happening to him. There is a glitch in the radio and he hears his own route being discussed. He becomes suspicious and tries to catch people off guard. He runs into an office and discovers the elevator is not real but a set. He gradually becomes aware that he is surrounded by actors who even advertise the goods that he consumes in various forms of product placement. Eventually he resolves to leave and has to use deceptive means to escape the prying eyes of the cameras that watch him night and day. He overcomes his fear of water and sails away from his artificially constructed hometown of Seahaven Island.

Truman crashes into the dome

Despite an artificial storm created by Christof (his godlike father, the show’s creator and executive producer) Truman sails to the edge of the dome where he crashes into the sky and cloud painting of the wall of the dome itself. He has reached the boundary of his world and now has to decide whether or not to leave his comfortable life behind and face reality outside the dome. Christof tries to dissuade him but Truman takes his destiny into his own hands and disappears through a door in the dome.

Inside the Media Dome

Truman’s dome is symbolic of the media dome we are all encapsulated in today by the prevalence of a monopolising mass media. Like The Truman Show, everything inside the media dome appears to be perfect. The right causes are matched with the right emotions and arguments, and everybody agrees. It has the right ‘bellyfeel’, a neologism which George Orwell used in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) implying blind, enthusiastic acceptance. Outside of the comfort of the dome there lies only a fantastical, fictional world full of propaganda, hoaxes and conspiracy theories.

The idea that the media dome may be some form of sinister manipulation has been depicted in many films such as They Live (1988). A homeless drifter (another traveler), Nada, finds a pair of sunglasses which reveal the ‘true’ meanings of the advertisements which surround us. He “discovers that the sunglasses make the world appear monochrome, but also reveal subliminal messages in the media to consume, reproduce, and conform.” The manipulation is attributed to aliens who are “enslaving the population and keeping them in a dream-like state.”

They Live (1988) by John Carpenter, based on the 1963 short story ‘Eight O’Clock in the Morning’

In the real world subliminal messages in advertising have ranged from words and images briefly flashing in between frames of film (usually at one tenth of a second) to subtle uses of visual design. Thus, subliminal messages “are visual or auditory stimuli that the conscious mind cannot perceive, often inserted into other media such as TV commercials or songs. This kind of messaging can be used to strengthen or heighten the persuasiveness of advertisements, or to convey an altogether different message entirely.”

Aliens also feature in the film Men in Black (1997). The MIB is a secret organization that monitors and polices extraterrestrial lifeforms who live on Earth and hide their existence from ordinary humans. Lowell Cunningham, the writer of the original The Men in Black comic book got the idea after a friend of his introduced him to the concept of government “Men in black” riding the streets in a black van.

Cunningham’s narrative satirises State secretive organisations whose activities are kept hidden from much of the global population. Thus, the Agents of the MIB keep the people safe from ‘alien’ concepts and activities.

In the Matrix series of films the idea of a secret world of mass media manipulation is taken a step further and depicted as a simulated reality that is also protected by a team of Agents and police. A computer programmer Thomas Anderson, ‘Neo’, is taken to meet Morpheus, a ‘terrorist’, who offers him a choice between two pills: red to reveal the truth about the Matrix, and blue to forget everything and return to his former life. Neo takes the red pill and learns that humanity is enslaved by intelligent machines. In the Matrix films people have the opportunity to see beyond their simulated reality (like Nada) but choose to stick with their comfortable lives instead (unlike Truman). In fact, Morpheus warns Neo, “many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

Allegory of the Cave

Of course, the concept of people preferring a way of life that is ultimately against their own best interests is not new. Plato discussed such an idea over two thousand years ago in his Allegory of the Cave in his work The Republic. In the cave, prisoners are chained so that their legs and necks are fixed, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway with a low wall, behind which people walk carrying objects or puppets of men and other living things. The prisoners cannot see any of what is happening behind them, they are only able to see the shadows cast upon the cave wall in front of them. These shadows are reality for the prisoners because they have never seen anything else. Plato then discusses the freedom of one prisoner. He writes: “the freed prisoner would turn away and run back to what he is accustomed to (that is, the shadows of the carried objects), he would escape by turning away to the things which he was able to look at, and these he would believe to be clearer than what was being shown to him.”

Plato’s allegory of the cave by Jan Saenredam, according to Cornelis van Haarlem, 1604, Albertina, Vienna

The implications of the new reality outside the cave are so enormous and so threatening to his fixed way of life that the prisoner chooses his accustomed way of life over dramatic changes and a new consciousness. The active manipulation of his perceptions does not enter into his consciousness, afterall, somebody has to chain him, keep the fire lit and carry the “vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall.” All he thinks about is returning to the way of life he was used to, watching the show but never questioning who was producing it.

The Media Loop

The idea of media manipulation and protection from ‘alien ideas’ (read ideologies) is extended further in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) to include supporting the war agendas of the state. Support for the ‘right’ side in each war is guaranteed by provoking hate and fear in equal quantities for each new ‘enemy of the state’. Orwell writes:

“And all the while, lest one should be in any doubt as to the reality which Goldstein’s specious claptrap covered, behind his head on the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army–row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar. The dull rhythmic tramp of the soldiers’ boots formed the background to Goldstein’s bleating voice. Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides, the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other.”

In reality, the enemy of the state is also decided according to the war agenda of the state even if the war does not benefit the people themselves. Because of the whipping up of emotion and hatred, the people do not notice that they actually have no reason to be at war. Each new enemy, even ones they had good diplomatic relations with, becomes an enemy if they stand in the way of the state or threaten the power of the state by their actions to gain some autonomy from the state. Thus the media becomes an ideological loop where it is decided who is good or bad according to the views of the elites of the state and not the people, while alternative ideas or ideologies are kept out.

Thus the media dome controls every factor of the peoples lives, from what to think, what to buy, and who to go to war with.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) screenshot

Of course, in the real world there are leaks (like Truman’s radio) that provoke questioning of the whole structure of the dome, that maybe something is artificially keeping the paradise going. Some respond to glitches in the system with outright refusal to believe that everything they know may not be true and they get very angry. Others are suspicious and take a skeptical attitude, basing their thinking on contradictions they have already noticed themselves. Still others take a critical attitude and actively seek different narratives to explain the reality that surrounds them.

While all this is happening alternative forms for questioning and understanding are being shut down and censored. Aspects of the media that allowed for analysis and discussion are disappearing because they too, like the mass media in general, are owned by megacorporations.

However, like in the Flammarion engraving, the comforting world of a static blue vault of fixed stars will always be contradicted by the massive energies outside the dome, and the inquisitive traveller will return with stories that are at first ridiculed, then opposed, before eventually being perceived as obvious.

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Currently working on a book entitled Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery. It looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals.

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

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***

With the US “menacing” New Delhi with sanction threats, as Indian media described it, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar pushed back at criticism of his country’s human rights record and was unapologetic for the purchase of the Russian-made S-400 missile defense system. India bought five S-400 systems from Russia as part of a $5.5 billion deal that was signed in October 2018, but with the country establishing QUAD with the US, Australia and Japan to oppose China at sea, Washington seemingly believes that New Delhi’s foreign policy is now under its control.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a joint news conference on Monday said that the US is monitoring some recent “concerning developments in India, including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police, and prison officials.”

Although Blinken did not elaborate, the State Department released on Tuesday its annual country reports on human rights practices for 2021, and claimed that there were arbitrary arrest and detention by government authorities, torture and inhuman treatment by police and prison officials, and restrictions on internet freedom in India, among other issues. Despite the report passingly acknowledge that India has to deal with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir and its Northeastern states, as well as a Maoist insurgency, it does not do a deep dive into these issues.

According to Ommcom News, Al-Qaeda are attempting to inflame sectarianism in South Asia by circulating a video that attempts to radicalize Muslims in India. The terrorist organization released a video of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri trying to whip up a sectarian frenzy among India’s 200 million or so Muslims.

For their part, the Middle East Institute published a research paper by international terrorism analyst Asfandyar Mir in 2020 which found that “[Al-Qaeda] devote substantial energy to highlighting alleged Indian excesses in Kashmir” and that the global terror group “may consider using Afghanistan for its Kashmir plans, most likely independently, but maybe in tandem with Pakistan-aligned jihadist groups, like Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.”

In effect, due to India being its own historical civilization with its own unique religious and ethnic demography of nearly 1.4 billion people, holding India to the same standards as Western liberal civilization will be an issue that will continue dividing the two. It is for this reason that Jaishankar said in response to Blinken’s provocations:

“Look, people are entitled to have views about us. But we are also equally entitled to have views about their views and about the interests, and the lobbies and the vote banks which drive that.”

“So, we take up human rights issues when they arise in this country, especially when they pertain to our community. And in fact, we had a case yesterday that’s really where we stand on that,” he added.

Blinken’s accusations against India come as two Sikh men were attacked on April 12 in New York in what police say could be a hate crime. The attack took place at the same intersection where 70-year-old Nirmal Singh, a Sikh tourist from India, was brutally beaten only last week.

“Sikhs have repeatedly faced this kind of violence — now multiple times in this same place in this month alone,” said Nikki Singh, a senior policy and advocacy manager at the Sikh Coalition. “As an organization that works to combat and prevent hate, we continue to stand with the Sikh community in Queens, as well as all impacted New York City communities who routinely experience these hate crimes.”

Sikh-Americans say they have faced “invisible” racism for years. This is undeniably true, especially when we recall that Balbir Singh Sodhi was the first person to be murdered in the US in a supposed “revenge attack” against Muslims for the infamous 9/11 terrorist attack. According to FBI data, there was a 68% increase in anti-Sikh hate crimes from 2019 to 2020, most of them committed by White Americans.

“This targeted hate violence is not only deeply traumatizing to the individuals involved — it’s traumatizing to those entire communities,” Nikki Singh said. “We must keep fighting for justice to send the message that violent hate will not be tolerated.”

With unrelenting hate crimes aimed against Indian-Americans since the 9/11 attack, it is rather curious that Blinken is attempting to lambast India for its method of maintaining security for nearly 1.4 billion citizens despite the immense threat of terrorism. The US solemnly has to deal with direct terrorist attacks, but the single event of 9/11 was enough to enforce the highly repressive and controversial Patriot Act that allowed authorities greater rights and access to spy on their own citizens.

India on the other hand not only has a mammoth population, but the world’s third largest Muslim population, who despite being mostly integrated into the country, still has a minority of extremists that are backed by Pakistan. However, when we speak of a minority in a country like India, this still accounts for millions of individuals that are capable of causing terror across the country, as has happened far too often and much more frequently than the occasional attack that the US experiences.

It seemingly appeared that with India joining QUAD, its relations with the West would take precedence over traditional partners like Russia. However, as the war in Ukraine demonstrated, India is not only unwilling to abandon Russia for the sake of appeasing the US, but cracks in the relationship are beginning to appear as Washington is increasingly domineering and demanding, something that New Delhi will certainly not tolerate as it opposes neo-colonialism given its own experience with the British Empire. Accusing India of human rights violations is a pandora’s box that the US may not want to open given their own atrocities that they are yet to be accounted for, something that India has been mostly quiet about but may no longer want to.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image: Tony Blinken At His Confirmation Hearing, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jan. 19, 2021. Screenshot.
via Mondoweiss

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***

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

We must understand the history of the Ukraine crisis and the role of  Neo-Nazi mobs which have been supported by US-NATO.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III Scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.

Global Research does not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

***

On his first foreign visit to Belarus on Tuesday since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin explained during a joint press conference with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko that the time frame of the military offensive in Ukraine was determined by the intensity of hostilities and Russia would act according to its plan.

“I often get these questions, can’t we hurry it up?’ We can. But it depends on the intensity of hostilities and, any way you put it, the intensity of hostilities is directly related to casualties,” said the Russian president. “Our task is to achieve the set goals while minimizing these losses. We will act rhythmically, calmly, and according to the plan that was initially proposed by the General Staff.”

On the fateful day of Feb. 24, in a three-pronged blitz from the north, east and south, Russian ground forces, backed by close air support and volleys of cruise missiles launched by Russian naval forces deployed in the Black Sea, overran Ukraine and laid siege to the capital, Kyiv, whose impending fall in days was predicted even by the mainstream media.

It has become clear now the “40-mile-long Trojan Horse” of battle tanks, armored vehicles and heavy artillery that descended from Belarus in the north and reached the outskirts of Kyiv in the early days of the war without encountering much resistance en route the capital was a decoy designed as a diversionary tactic by Russia’s military strategists in order to deter Ukraine from sending reinforcements to Donbas in east Ukraine where real battles for territory were actually fought and scramble to defend the country’s capital instead.

Except in the early days of the military campaign when Russian airstrikes and long-range artillery shelling targeted military infrastructure in the outskirts of Kyiv to degrade the combat potential of Ukraine’s armed forces, the capital did not witness much action during the month-long offensive.

Despite having immense firepower at its disposal, the Russian advance in Ukraine was slower than expected according to most estimates. This is  what Putin explained at a press conference in Belarus Tuesday that “the time frame of the military offensive in Ukraine is determined by the intensity of hostilities,” but “the intensity of hostilities is directly related to the number of casualties,” and, according to Putin “Russia’s task is to achieve the set goals while minimizing the losses.”

Russia chose not capture Kyiev

The bombardment of the densely populated Ukrainian capital and the ensuing urban warfare against heavily armed Ukrainian militias supported by US-NATO would inevitably have caused thousands of needless civilian casualties. Therefore, the Russians decided to spare the rest of the embattled country and restricted the Russian military offensive on liberating the Russian-majority Donbas region in east Ukraine.

Putin reiterated that Russia’s actions in several regions of Ukraine, implying diversionary tactics deployed by Russian forces in Kyiv and Chernihiv in the north, were intended only “to tie down enemy forces” and carry out missile strikes with the purpose of “destroying the Ukrainian military’s infrastructure,” so as to “create conditions for more active operations on the territory of Donbas.”

In a momentous announcement on March 29, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin, leading the Russian peace delegation in Istanbul talks, told reporters:

“In order to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations and achieving the ultimate goal of agreeing and signing an agreement, a decision was made to radically, by a large margin, reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions.”

Russia’s strategy consisted in scaling back its blitz north of the capital, while focusing instead on liberating the Russian-majority Donbas region in east Ukraine.

Russia has already accomplished its strategic objectives in Ukraine, as the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbas region are now de facto independent territories where Russian forces have been deployed.

Since the withdrawal of Russian forces from north Ukraine, although NATO’s policymakers are predicting “a major new Russian offensive in east Ukraine” in order to hype the threat, Russia now intends only to consolidate its territorial gains achieved in the Donbas region in the month-long blitz.

On April 13, 2022, Russian forces announced the “liberation” of the strategically significant port city Mariupol, the second-largest city in the Donetsk Oblast in east Ukraine and the hub of CIA-trained neo-Nazi militias.

The Azov Batallion

Ukraine’s infamous Azov Battalion, widely acknowledged as a neo-Nazi paramilitary force connected with foreign white supremacist organizations, was initially formed as a volunteer group in May 2014 out of the ultra-nationalist Patriots of Ukraine gang, and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly (SNA) group.

As a battalion, the group fought on the frontlines against pro-Russia separatists in Donbas, the eastern region of Ukraine, and rose to prominence after recapturing the strategic port city of Mariupol from the Russia-backed separatists.

The militant outfit was officially integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine on November 12, 2014, and exacted high praise from then-President Petro Poroshenko. “These are our best warriors,” he said at an awards ceremony in 2014. “Our best volunteers.”

In June 2015, both Canada and the United States announced they would not support or train the Azov regiment, citing its neo-Nazi connections. The following year, however, the US lifted the ban under pressure from the Pentagon, and the CIA initiated the clandestine program to nurture ultra-nationalist militias in east Ukraine in order to mount a war of attrition against Russia.

Mariupol: Surrender of Ukraine’s Marine Brigade

In one of the most critical battles of the Russo-Ukraine War, Russia’s defense ministry claimed Wednesday 1,026 soldiers from Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, including 162 officers, holed up in the Azovstal industrial district, the lynchpin dividing Russian-held areas to the west and east of the city, had “voluntarily laid down their arms” and surrendered the last bastion of militancy in Mariupol to Russian forces.

Mariupol’s capture would help Russia secure a land corridor between the Donetsk and Luhansk republics in Donbas and Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, following the Maidan coup toppling pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The Guardian reported on April 13:

“Military experts say local support, logistics, the terrain in the region and the appointment by Moscow of a new senior general, Aleksandr Dvornikov [a decorated war hero and the former commander of Russian forces in Syria] as overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, could improve the performance of a force that Britain’s defense ministry said on Wednesday had so far been hampered by an inability to cohere and coordinate.”

Local support of the native population to the Russian forces in the Russian-majority region is the key element here, that even the mainstream media unwittingly acknowledged, as ethnic Russians in east Ukraine, relentlessly persecuted for eight long years by Ukraine’s security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias, have by and large welcomed Russian troops in Donbas.

The Dangers of Escalation

Whereas Russia’s military campaign north of the capital has been curtailed, NATO powers have announced transferring heavy weapons, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and even helicopters, to Ukraine to escalate the conflict.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 7, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley revealed that US and NATO countries have collectively provided roughly 60,000 anti-tank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons during NATO’s “weapons for peace” program to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.

The Biden administration announced an additional $800 million in military assistance to Ukraine on Wednesday. The package, which brings the total military aid since Russian forces invaded in February to more than $2.5 billion, includes artillery systems, artillery rounds, armored personnel carriers and unmanned coastal defense boats.

The new package includes 11 Mi-17 helicopters that had been earmarked for Afghanistan before the US-backed government collapsed last year. It also includes 18 155mm howitzers, along with 40,000 artillery rounds, 10 counter-artillery radars, 200 armored personnel carriers, 500 Javelin anti-tank missiles, and 300 additional Switchblade drones.

The new military assistance package to Ukraine will be funded using Presidential Drawdown Authority, or PDA, in which the president can authorize the transfer of articles and services from US stocks without congressional approval in response to an emergency.

As news of the latest security assistance came out, executives from the top US weapons-makers met with Pentagon officials to expedite NATO’s “weapons for peace” program in Ukraine. These included executives from BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Harris Technologies, Boeing, Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman.

But in a significantly escalatory move, virtually scuttling the Istanbul Russia-Ukraine peace initiative on March 29 and the subsequent withdrawal of Russian forces from the outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine’s Operational Command South announced Thursday that it had hit a Russian warship with a “Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile” off the coast of Odessa in southeast Ukraine and that it had started to sink.

“In the Black Sea operational zone, Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles hit the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet—it received significant damage,” the Ukrainian statement said. “A fire broke out. Other units of the ship’s group tried to help, but a storm and a powerful explosion of ammunition overturned the cruiser and it began to sink.”

Russia’s defense ministry claimed the “accidental fire” on the Soviet-era guided-missile cruiser Moskva had been contained, but left the ship badly damaged, though it “remains afloat” and measures were being taken to tow it to port. The ministry said the crew had been safely evacuated to other Black Sea Fleet ships in the area.

Russian news agencies said the 611-foot-long (186 meters) Moskva, with a crew of almost 500, was commissioned in 1983 and refurbished in 1998. The Moskva was armed with a range of anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles as well as torpedoes and naval guns and close-in missile defense systems, including 16 anti-ship Vulkan cruise missiles with a range of at least 700 km (440 miles).

Although Ukraine claimed the Russian warship was struck by a “Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile,” developed domestically based on the Soviet KH-35 cruise missile that became operational in the Ukrainian naval forces just last year, Politico reported on March 16 that Kyiv had specifically demanded “long-range anti-ship missiles” from Washington, and the Russian guided-missile cruiser was most likely destroyed by long-range anti-ship missiles provided to Ukraine by the United States.

“A Western diplomat familiar with Ukraine’s requests said Kyiv specifically has asked the US and allies for more Stingers and Starstreak man-portable air-defense systems, Javelins and other anti-tank weapons, ground-based mobile air-defense systems, armed drones, long-range anti-ship missiles, off-the-shelf electronic warfare capabilities, and satellite navigation and communications jamming equipment.”

In response to escalation of hostilities by Ukraine and its international backers, despite the Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations initiative announced at the Istanbul talks on March 29, Russian Ministry of Defense spokesperson Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov warned in a statement:

“We see attempts of sabotage and strikes by Ukrainian troops on objects on the territory of the Russian Federation. If such cases continue, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will strike at decision-making centers, including in Kyiv, from which the Russian army has thus far refrained.”

During the course of the war, Russia has struck military targets in regions as far away as cities in west Ukraine bordering Poland. On March 13, Russian forces launched a missile attack at Yavoriv Combat Training Center in the western most part of the country.

The military facility, less than 25 km from the Polish border, is one of Ukraine’s biggest and the largest in the western part of the country. Since 2015, US Green Berets and National Guard troops had been training Ukrainian forces at the Yavoriv center before they were evacuated alongside diplomatic staff in mid-February.

The training center was hit by a barrage of 30 cruise missiles, killing at least 35 people, though Russia’s defense ministry claimed up to 180 foreign mercenaries and large caches of weapons were destroyed at the training center.

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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 to Global Research.

Featured image is from Notes from the Twilight Zone

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***

Western countries do not seem to have realized the need to avoid the expansion of NATO. In a context of security crisis in Eastern Europe as a direct consequence of the alliance’s encroachment to the Russian border, the main global agenda for the near future should be to put the growth of this military bloc on hold and resume the stabilization of European security. However, Finland and Sweden are still considering breaking with their historical positions of neutrality in order to join NATO, which has been supported by countries such as Italy and the UK, creating major problems for continental security.

On April 14 the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy Luigi Di Maio commented during an interview to the Rai1 TV channel on the accession of Finland and Sweden to the Western military alliance:

“NATO is a defensive alliance, and countries that want to join feel more secure under the NATO auspices. If Sweden and Finland want to join NATO, they will be well received, because they have no problems with standards”.

Di Maio also stated that more than two-thirds of the Finnish population supports accession, which he considers to be sufficient reason to justify the measure being taken as soon as possible.

Still, in the same vein, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on the same day that her country would support any Swedish or Finnish decision on the subject of their joining the alliance. Truss guarantees that there will be no foreign interference for any specific decision to be taken, being something to be decided sovereignly by Finns and Swedes, with British support in any case: “Sweden and Finland are free to choose their future without interference – the UK will support whatever they decide”. Despite sounding like a “respect for sovereignty” speech, Truss says this because candidate countries have already shown their willingness to proceed with accession.

Previously, the Prime Minister of Finland, Sanna Marin, had already stated that her country’s decision on whether or not to join NATO would be taken during the spring. Meanwhile, Antti Kaikkonen, the Finnish defense minister, has scheduled discussions on the topic to start in parliament immediately after the Easter holidays. Similarly, the subject is also one of the most talked about in Sweden, with expectations of adhesion in the coming months.

The media also plays its role in this regard. Pro-Western newspapers inside and outside the Scandinavian world comment on the issue of membership in a very positive way, which clearly reflects an intention to foster a favorable view of the measure in public opinion. The Swedish media agency Expressen, for example, reported that Finland had formalized an invitation to Sweden for both countries to jointly submit an application for membership as soon as possible, while the British Times claimed that both states plan to formalize membership until the beginning of summer.

This “certainty” that such pro-NATO politicians and media channels try to convey to their readers and listeners is a very common tactic to promote opinions favorable to specific objectives. The goal is to make it appear that accession to NATO is already something real and imminent, about which there is nothing more to be discussed, thus creating a kind of “resignation” in public opinion: if there is no other alternative, the best to do is to support the adhesion in some way. Taking this scenario into account in parallel with the strong anti-Russia campaign of these same media agencies, it is possible to understand how and why votes in favor of NATO have increased in recent opinion polls among Finns and Swedes.

The official discourse in Europe is that Ukraine was “invaded” by Russia because it was “vulnerable” and without the “protection” guaranteed by NATO. Finnish and Swedish politicians are also deceived by this narrative and start to support their countries becoming members of the alliance due to a real “desperation” for security – in the same way as the local populations, who are constantly exposed to the media campaigns of disinformation about the conflict in Ukraine. However, the most reprehensible posture is that of the Western governments themselves, which should fight for the non-enlargement of the alliance, instead of risking the emergence of new conflicts.

Italy and the UK are acting irresponsibly when encouraging the expansion of the alliance in the midst of the current crisis. Contrary to what is said by the mainstream media, what motivated the Russian special military operation was the lack of neutrality on the part of Kiev. The Russian objective is exactly to make Kiev a neutral nation and it is correct to say that what interests Moscow the most is that there are as many neutral states as possible separating the Russian strategic environment from the NATO territory.

The biggest threat to European stability, in this sense, is that new countries enter the alliance at that moment, as this would be the high point for the increase in tensions with Russia, risking escalating and spreading the conflict that is currently restricted to Ukraine.

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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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First published on December 21, 2021

***

My name is Jeremy Brown. I am a 20-year retired U.S. Army Special Forces Combat Veteran. On January 5th and 6th, 2021 I was in our Nation’s capital as part of an all-volunteer protective detail tasked with providing security for organizers and speakers at a legally-permitted political rally.

On September 30th, 2021 I was arrested at home in Tampa, Florida by approximately 30 to 40 heavily armed Federal Agents and local law enforcement. They came in full force to serve a misdemeanor arrest warrant for being in an “unauthorized area.”

These were no ordinary agents. They were agents working as part of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). Oddly, in the nine months prior to that day, I had never been contacted or questioned by any investigators about this case. Stranger still, the arrest warrant and search warrant had only been granted one day prior. This, despite numerous members of my Protective Detail having been arrested many months prior. While this may sound unusual to you, I know exactly why it happened.

A month earlier, on December 9th, 2020, the exact same JTTF agents that arrested me attempted to recruit me as a Confidential Informant (CI). Their “pitch” was intended to gauge my willingness to infiltrate law-abiding citizen groups that had no criminal history and certainly were not designated “terrorist groups.” Having a healthy mistrust of Federal law enforcement, I recorded the entire “personal meet,” as Special Forces referred to it on a battlefield. Of course I declined to pursue any offer from the agents and went on my way. A few weeks later, while standing next to the Presidential stage awaiting President Trump’s address, I was contacted by phone from the same JTTF agent. I explained where I was and what I was doing. So, on January 6th, 2021, they were well aware of my location and reason for being there.

A photo of Jeremy Brown included in court records. (Justice Department)

On the 7th of January I texted that agent with a video of the murder of unarmed female Air Force Veteran, Ashli Babbitt, by a Capitol Police Officer and told him, “here is a contact report for you!” He acknowledged watching the video with a “Wow….” That was the last direct communication I had with that particular agent or the JTTF, even though I made multiple attempts to email them. That is, until the day they arrested me nine months later.

In the days and weeks that followed the events of January 6th, I was disgusted and appalled at the blatant lies that were coming from the media, politicians, and the Department of Justice. In particular, it was FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony on the House floor that made me realize I had to go public with what I knew. I contacted a friend of mine who had a voice in independent media and asked if he would be willing to help me go public. Brandon Gray, a true American Patriot, was ALL IN! On March 5th, 2021 he conducted a two hour interview with me exposing the recording of the JTTF’s recruitment along with my professional assessment of it. That interview can be seen in its entirety at JustAnotherChannel.com under the title, “Green Beret vs FBI.” I went public to counter the false government narrative and expose the truth to the American people. I knew I was making myself an FBI target, but I had sworn an oath to the U.S. Constitution so the choice to speak out was an easy one.

That interview was seen by millions of people. Over 30 more would follow. For weeks Americans trolled the Twitter page of the FBI Field Office in Tampa, Florida by posting the interview on their page. After people posted it the FBI would remove it, and others would repost it. This went on for some time. It became public knowledge that the FBI’s failed CI recruit had become an outspoken “whistleblower” exposing the agents’ actions prior to January 6th. However, as I suspected would happen, the public’s interest in the story waned, especially since not one major media outlet covered it. It seemed that the tried and true media tactic of “ignoring me into oblivion” was going to serve the FBI well, once again. But, NOT SO FAST!

In mid-June a major investigative article was released by Darren Beattie of Revolver.news that provided new evidence and insight, exposing the FBI’s potential involvement staging the events of January 6th. The article also uncovered FBI ties to another “plot” that had FBI fingerprints all over it. The fake Michigan Governor kidnapping plot seemed to be a dress rehearsal for January 6th. It targeted a pro-Constitutional group claiming they were crazed “Far-Right Militia.” Problem was, most of the “players” turned out to be FBI informants or actual agents. Ooopsie!

The new interest in my story lasted from late June through August. Only this time there was fresh perspective and a better understanding of the “Big Picture” thanks to seven months of additional investigations, reports, public outcry, and personal videos and accounts.

I shared my first-hand account, enhanced by professional opinion based on 20 years of Special Operations experience, some of which while working with the JTTF and other similar agencies on foreign soil. These interviews clearly got the attention of the FBI. Almost immediately a few of my friends began getting contacted by the FBI. Some of them were even questioned and threatened with being charged with crimes. Was the topic of discussion the events of Jan 6? Nope. They wanted details about Jeremy Brown.

My only sister was personally contacted on a brand new cell phone number by the very agent that was in the recorded recruitment meeting. He didn’t call to ask her questions about Jan 6, he called to tell her the FBI/DHS was “concerned” that I had been “radicalized” and may even be “suicidal.” This was tragic since our younger brother had taken his own life in late 2018. Needless to say, my sister and mother took this extremely hard. When my sister told me, I attempted to contact the agent via his official Government email multiple times in hopes of addressing his concerns, but received no response.

In mid-September my girlfriend of nearly eight years and I were on the verge of selling her home in preparation for our retirement plans to become full-time RVers. We were hitting the open roads with our two Australian Shepherds, Liberty and Ranger. We couldn’t wait to explore the beauty of America while visiting friends and family along the way. The plan kicked off with the purchase of our first RV in October, 2020, well before the FBI entered our lives. The home sale was to be finalized on October 2, 2021. The JTTF had other plans for us.

On September 30th, the day before my 47th birthday and three days prior to the close on the sale of the home, I received an early morning phone call from that same FBI agent who tried unsuccessfully to recruit me. With a fake “Hey Buddy” tone, he left a voicemail stating he had heard we were moving and just wanted to see how I was doing. Of course I didn’t return the call, but I did send the voicemail recording to numerous friends and warned them that “they” were probably coming to get me soon. Later that afternoon, at approximately 4pm, they came just before we were leaving to donate clothes and housewares to the Salvation Army.

In what my girlfriend estimated to be between 15 to 20 vehicles, a swarm of tactical vest-clad federal agents surrounded our property and arrested me. Without even reading me my rights, they handcuffed me and put me in their unmarked SUV. Along with the misdemeanor arrest warrant, the ATF was there with a search warrant for our property and RV. Evidently when one is accused of being in a “restricted area,” nearly 1,000 miles away, nine months prior, the ATF is necessary to conduct the search. Despite my repeated requests to see the warrant, they refused claiming there were just “too many pages.” After a few minutes, I was whisked away by the very same two agents that just eleven months prior had wanted me to work with them. When describing how much of a real concern I was for them, one even proclaimed on the recording that I was a “zero out of ten.”

Ultimately, the FBI and ATF spent five-and-a-half hours searching our property and RV. That’s three times longer than the 90-minutes the government claims they spent securing and clearing the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan 6th. After this exhaustive search, they only managed to find a single inventory sheet of property that they felt was worthy of seizing. Part of that list were legal weapons recently purchased by my girlfriend, legal ammo, military gear and manuals that were never even in D.C. Most disturbing of all, they seized the 5’x8’ American flag I flew regularly behind our RV. How dare a U.S. Special Forces retiree have an American flag!

As I write this account on December 30, 2021, I mark my 92nd day of being held in the maximum security section of the Pinellas County Jail as an FBI whistleblower and Political Prisoner. To date, these are the crimes the FBI and Department of Justice are guilty of committing under Title 18 U.S. Code, Section 242, Deprivation of Rights under Color of Law:

1. Violations of Article 1 of the Bill of Rights by criminalizing Free Speech and peaceful assembly for attending a permitted rally on public grounds.

2. Violations of Article 2 of the Bill of Rights by passing and enforcing unconstitutional gun laws that violate the letter and intent of the “shall not be infringed” clause.

3. Violations of Article 4 of the Bill of Rights by deceptively obtaining an unreasonable and illegal search warrant by lying to the issuing judge. When asked by me and my girlfriend to produce the warrant at the time of arrest, they refused. One agent was even recorded stating, “We don’t know what we are looking for…yet.” They should look for a copy of the Constitution and read it.

4. Violations of Article 5 of the Bill of Rights by not reading me my rights prior to arrest and questioning. They are currently still depriving me of my life, liberty and property without due process of law.

5. Violations of Article 6 of the Bill of Rights by making sure nothing is speedy, attempting to deny me access to any of the evidence against me, by denying my right to a public trial by claiming everything is “sensitive” or “highly sensitive,” yet leaking information to media outlets such as the Daily Beast who had my search warrant before I did. They are denying me the right to “face my accusers” by citing numerous “unnamed witnesses,” many likely to be FBI informants. Because I am locked away in jail, I do not have complete access to witnesses in my favor and all my contacts with legal counsel are on monitored systems. So far I have been denied access to my attorney six times due to “COVID.”

6. Most egregious are the violations of Article 8 of the Bill of Rights by denying me bond and keeping me locked in maximum security.

All illegal acts by the FBI and DOJ are meant to silence me and keep me from exposing their lies and corruption. Their fake charges and overzealous arrest were meant to intimidate not only me but also the American people. They think that this illegal imprisonment will break my will and allow them to coerce me into pleading to a crime I did not commit or that will bolster their false narrative of Jan 6. But, how did we get here?

As a nation we have taken our eyes off the prize of Liberty and lost our way. Our families, our neighborhoods, our churches, our schools, and our Nation have fallen into the evil trap of complacency. We have trusted “someone else” to solve every issue. We can deny it or even blame our neighbors, but each of us is guilty. If we hope to restore our liberty, our families and our Republic, we are going to need God’s help.

There is nothing new under the sun. We must look back on history for answers to the question, “Where does this lead?” Or, “How does this end?” What are the outcomes of unchecked, unrestrained tyranny? The poet Martin Niemöller speaks of the horror of Nazi Germany. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recounts the terror of Soviet Russia. Whether it is Mao’s China or the tribal slaughters that plague Africa, evil always finds a way to creep into power, then subject humans to bondage and death. How? Because “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

But that same history reveals to us the solutions to this human cycle of Liberty and Bondage. How far will tyranny push? “As far as you let it,” so said Thomas Jefferson. “How do we push back,” you may be asking. Mr. Jefferson had an answer for that as well: “It does not take a majority but an irate and tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of liberty in the souls of men.”

As I sit here in my jail cell being denied justice and my Constitutionally-protected, God-given rights, I wonder, “Is anyone irate or tireless enough to save our Republic? … Will our children and our children’s children wonder what it was like to be free?”

If you’re reading this, are you irate? Tireless? Are you willing to risk it all to set brushfires of Liberty in the souls of men? Are you willing to risk everything? Or, will we just wait for some other “good men” to come along and do that “something?” The time to look in the mirror and answer that question is NOW! Trust me, the time to fight is NOT after the tyrant locks you in a jail cell.

Here is the GOOD News. God promises us he will give us victory over evil whenever and wherever it raises its ugly head, but ONLY if we stand up, face it head-on, and rebuke it with faith AND action. Look at the example of young David when the evil Goliath stood daily on the battle line, threatening, taunting and mocking King Saul’s people. They all stood by in fear and did nothing, asking themselves, “How can we defeat this warrior, he is bigger, stronger and more powerful than us. Who can challenge him?” It was young David, a boy who believed in God’s promise of protection. A young boy that stepped forward to face the giant warrior. David wasn’t even big enough to wear the King’s armor, but he had courage and faith in what was right. When will we find our courage to face our Giants? When will we speak up and take action to stand p. 4 against tyranny? We can no longer stand to the side like cowards asking, “Who will stand and fight this Giant?” We must be Americans who say, “Here I am. Send me!”

My name is Jeremy Brown and I am a January 6th Political Prisoner being held in the very country I spent my entire adult life defending at the highest level I could achieve. As a Green Beret I am trained and prepared for this and as an American I was born for this. I will fight until my dying breath before I surrender one letter of my Liberty. I am only one man, but if I’m the only man, so be it! I know there are millions like me and so I ask you, are you ready to light brushfires of Liberty in the souls of men? Then don’t do nothing!

De Oppresso Liber!

Jeremy Brown
U.S. Army Special Forces Master Sergeant (Ret.)
JeremyBrownDefense.com
FBIPoliticalPrisoner.com

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Featured image: Jeremy Brown at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. (Justice Department)

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The actual history of Gaza can be readily researched – the dates, the actions, the numbers.  What is not readily available is information beyond the Israeli narrative of Gaza being populated by terrorists.  This current book, a collection of writings by Palestinians from Gaza – residents, domestic refugees, or immigrant refugees – places the narrative into a human and very humane context, the reality of a dispossessed people living under occupation, desiring the freedom to live as others do in western ‘democracies’. Light in Gaza – Writings Born of Fire reveals the dreams, fears, and aspirations of the Gaza residents and diaspora.

Thematically, the stories talk of life under occupation and violence, but only indirectly as the discussions talk of what under normal circumstances would be rather mundane ideas.  Families and travel are two main themes as the occupation does its best to restrict travel domestically and abroad (mostly for educational and medical purposes), separating families and in that aspect attempting to eliminate a part of the Palestinian culural heritage.  Life is described as a permanent temporality, not knowing when movement will be allowed or not, when the electricity will be on or not, when there will be water available (when the electricity is on), when one can communicate to one’s distant relatives (mostly when the electricity is on).

The latter comment is emphasized as it appears the title of the book comes from the chapter “People’s Light in Gaza’s Darkness” where the lack of electricity shapes much of the daily life of Palestinians – when to get water, when to do homework, when to study for exams, when to bake the bread…and in the dark of night, the sounds of drones, of jets, of soldiers and tanks running through the streets – leaving “Gazans enveloped in a debilitating state of fear, perpetual waiting, and deep-seated anxiety.”

Yet there is a resolve within their “state of being” after fifteen years of lockdown in the world’s largest prison.  Palestinians continue to rebuild with materials at hand.  They support many libraries and have an educational system producing an amazing literacy rate considering the circumstances of ongoing dislocation and disruption.  In spite of the harsh conditions – the free fire zones near the border with Israel, the repeated destruction physically and chemically – Gaza attempts to grow its own food, serving both as the obvious necessity, but also supporting the cultural heritage of traditional Palestinian meals.

The Israelis use AI to control and monitor the situation in Gaza, using the latest technology and ‘field testing’ it for others (drones, facial recognition robots, advanced sensors), creating a surveillance state that in turn limits the use of current technology in Gaza.

In contrast, with what is available Palestinians use technology to their benefit.  One of the areas identified is the availability of high resolution satellite imagery to identify agricultural land, Israeli settlements, water sources, and military movements.  It can be used to identify the many villages destroyed or occupied by Israel “which reinforces the belief that the right of return is not impossible, providing images of Palestine to the “displaced who are unable to visit their homeland.”  Other AI uses include creating a data bank to bring Israeli war crimes to justice, ‘colorizing’ old photos of historic Palestine, and providingassistance for physicians

After a chapter on travel restrictions which creates a geographical separation on families, work, education – on society as a whole – the book ends with what remains as a strength for the people of Gaza – “Let me Dream.”

The dreams fall under two interconnected ideas – the freedom to have family reunions and the freedom to travel.  The latter has many other components, as simple as being able to see the mountains of the West Bank, to come and go freely to an outside university or for medical assistance, to see other countries and encounter new ideas…and after many generations, to travel and visit where the family home originally was located.

The stories have a strong emotive content, are honest in their expressions, and above all create a strong sense of the humanity and peaceful desires for the people of Gaza.  Seventy years after the nakba and fifteen years after lockdown, Gaza is both a prison with millions facing destitution and a possible unlivable future, at the same time it carries on with its dreams and the light of hope, learning, family, and the freedom it deserves equally with other citizens of the world.

Light in Gaza is a strong honest presentation of today’s Gazans, a necessary read that provides a good understanding of the humanity of the Palestinians in Gaza. It is a very valuable addition to the library of books on Palestine and Gaza in particular.

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Appearing on MSNBC Wednesday, Anthony Fauci let the truth about lockdowns slip… that they are theatre designed to scare people into getting vaccinated.

When asked by host Andrea Mitchell about the unfolding lockdown hellscape in China, Fauci actually praised the Communist government’s actions.

Fauci stated

“China has a number of problems, two of which are that the complete lockdown, which was their approach, a strictest lockdown you’d never be able to implement in the United States. Although that prevents the spread of infection, I remember early on they were saying, and I think accurately, they were doing better than anyone else.”

Then came the kicker as Fauci declared

“You use lockdowns to get people vaccinated so that when you open up, you won’t have a surge of infections.”

Completely ignoring the concept of natural immunity, Fauci added “Because you’re dealing with an immunologically naive population of the virus because they’ve not been exposed because of the lockdown.”

He went on to state that China’s vaccines are not good enough.

“The problem is the vaccines they’ve been using are not nearly as effective as the vaccines used in the United States, UK, EU, and other places. So, they don’t have the degree of protection that’s optimal,” Fauci claimed.

He continued,

“Also, they have a lot of their older population, which are the most vulnerable among us, and so, there’s a double negative there. One, they don’t have people who are protected, and B, the people who need it most, are not getting the vaccination. That’s the source of the problem in China.”

Watch:

WATCH — Fauci PRAISES communist China’s draconian lockdowns.

“Early on, [China] was saying — and I think accurately — that they were doing better than anybody else.” pic.twitter.com/yM4WYAIw34

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 13, 2022

Isn’t the more immediate ‘source of the problem’ in China that people are being locked up in their box homes and starved to death in a maniacal quest for ‘zero COVID’?

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Preventing populations from asking who benefits from a protracted proxy war, and who pays the price, is paramount. A closed propaganda system achieves that.

If one wishes to be exposed to news, information or perspective that contravenes the prevailing US/NATO view on the war in Ukraine, a rigorous search is required. And there is no guarantee that search will succeed. That is because the state/corporate censorship regime that has been imposed in the West with regard to this war is stunningly aggressive, rapid and comprehensive.

On a virtually daily basis, any off-key news agency, independent platform or individual citizen is liable to be banished from the internet. In early March, barely a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the twenty-seven nation European Union — citing “disinformation” and “public order and security” — officially banned the Russian state-news outlets RT and Sputnik from being heard anywhere in Europe. In what Reuters called “an unprecedented move,” all television and online platforms were barred by force of law from airing content from those two outlets. Even prior to that censorship order from the state, Facebook and Google were already banning those outlets, and Twitter immediately announced they would as well, in compliance with the new EU law.

But what was “unprecedented” just six weeks ago has now become commonplace, even normalized. Any platform devoted to offering inconvenient-to-NATO news or alternative perspectives is guaranteed a very short lifespan. Less than two weeks after the EU’s decree, Google announced that it was voluntarily banning all Russian-affiliated media worldwide, meaning Americans and all other non-Europeans were now blocked from viewing those channels on YouTube if they wished to. As so often happens with Big Tech censorship, much of the pressure on Google to more aggressively censor content about the war in Ukraine came from its own workforce: “Workers across Google had been urging YouTube to take additional punitive measures against Russian channels.”

So prolific and fast-moving is this censorship regime that it is virtually impossible to count how many platforms, agencies and individuals have been banished for the crime of expressing views deemed “pro-Russian.” On Tuesday, Twitter, with no explanation as usual, suddenly banned one of the most informative, reliable and careful dissident accounts, named “Russians With Attitude.” Created in late 2020 by two English-speaking Russians, the account exploded in popularity since the start of the war, from roughly 20,000 followers before the invasion to more than 125,000 followers at the time Twitter banned it. An accompanying podcast with the same name also exploded in popularity and, at least as of now, can still be heard on Patreon.

What makes this outburst of Western censorship so notable — and what is at least partially driving it — is that there is a clear, demonstrable hunger in the West for news and information that is banished by Western news sources, ones which loyally and unquestioningly mimic claims from the U.S. government, NATO, and Ukrainian officials. As The Washington Post acknowledged when reporting Big Tech’s “unprecedented” banning of RT, Sputnik and other Russian sources of news: “In the first four days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, viewership of more than a dozen Russian state-backed propaganda channels on YouTube spiked to unusually high levels.”

Note that this censorship regime is completely one-sided and, as usual, entirely aligned with U.S. foreign policy. Western news outlets and social media platforms have been flooded with pro-Ukrainian propaganda and outright lies from the start of the war.

A New York Times article from early March put it very delicately in its headline: “Fact and Mythmaking Blend in Ukraine’s Information War.” Axios was similarly understated in recognizing this fact: “Ukraine misinformation is spreading — and not just from Russia.” Members of the U.S. Congress have gleefully spread fabrications that went viral to millions of people, with no action from censorship-happy Silicon Valley corporations. That is not a surprise: all participants in war use disinformation and propaganda to manipulate public opinion in their favor, and that certainly includes all direct and proxy-war belligerents in the war in Ukraine.

Yet there is little to no censorship — either by Western states or by Silicon Valley monopolies — of pro-Ukrainian disinformation, propaganda and lies. The censorship goes only in one direction: to silence any voices deemed “pro-Russian,” regardless of whether they spread disinformation. The “Russians With Attitude” Twitter account became popular in part because they sometimes criticized Russia, in part because they were more careful with facts and viral claims that most U.S. corporate media outlets, and in part because there is such a paucity of outlets that are willing to offer any information that undercuts what the U.S. Government and NATO want you to believe about the war.

Their crime, like the crime of so many other banished accounts, was not disinformation but skepticism about the US/NATO propaganda campaign. Put another way, it is not “disinformation” but rather viewpoint-error that is targeted for silencing. One can spread as many lies and as much disinformation as one wants provided that it is designed to advance the NATO agenda in Ukraine (just as one is free to spread disinformation provided that its purpose is to strengthen the Democratic Party, which wields its majoritarian power in Washington to demand greater censorship and commands the support of most of Silicon Valley). But what one cannot do is question the NATO/Ukrainian propaganda framework without running a very substantial risk of banishment.

It is unsurprising that Silicon Valley monopolies exercise their censorship power in full alignment with the foreign policy interests of the U.S. Government. Many of the key tech monopolies — such as Google and Amazon — routinely seek and obtain highly lucrative contracts with the U.S. security state, including both the CIA and NSA. Their top executives enjoy very close relationships with top Democratic Party officials. And Congressional Democrats have repeatedly hauled tech executives before their various Committees to explicitly threaten them with legal and regulatory reprisals if they do not censor more in accordance with the policy goals and political interests of that party.

But one question lingers: why is there so much urgency about silencing the small pockets of dissenting voices about the war in Ukraine? This war has united the establishment wings of both parties and virtually the entire corporate media with a lockstep consensus not seen since the days and weeks after the 9/11 attack.

One can count on both hands the number of prominent political and media figures who have been willing to dissent even minimally from that bipartisan Washington consensus — dissent that instantly provokes vilification in the form of attacks on one’s patriotism and loyalties. Why is there such fear of allowing these isolated and demonized voices to be heard at all?

The answer seems clear. The benefits from this war for multiple key Washington power centers cannot be overstated. The billions of dollars in aid and weapons being sent by the U.S. to Ukraine are flying so fast and with such seeming randomness that it is difficult to track. “Biden approves $350 million in military aid for Ukraine,” Reuters said on February 26; “Biden announces $800 million in military aid for Ukraine,” announced The New York Times on March 16; on March 30, NBC’s headline read: “Ukraine to receive additional $500 million in aid from U.S., Biden announces”; on Tuesday, Reuters announced: “U.S. to announce $750 million more in weapons for Ukraine, officials say.” By design, these gigantic numbers have long ago lost any meaning and provoke barely a peep of questioning let alone objection.

It is not a mystery who is benefiting from this orgy of military spending. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that

“the Pentagon will host leaders from the top eight U.S. weapons manufacturers on Wednesday to discuss the industry’s capacity to meet Ukraine’s weapons needs if the war with Russia lasts years.”

Among those participating in this meeting about the need to increase weapons manufacturing to feed the proxy war in Ukraine is Raytheon, which is fortunate to have retired General Lloyd Austin as Defense Secretary, a position to which he ascended from the Raytheon Board of Directors. It is virtually impossible to imagine an event more favorable to the weapons manufacturer industry than this war in Ukraine:

Demand for weapons has shot up after Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24 spurred U.S. and allied weapons transfers to Ukraine. Resupplying as well as planning for a longer war is expected to be discussed at the meeting, the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity. . .

Resupplying as well as planning for a longer war is expected to be discussed at the meeting. . . . The White House said last week that it has provided more than $1.7 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the invasion, including over 5,000 Javelins and more than 1,400 Stingers.

This permanent power faction is far from the only one to be reaping benefits from the war in Ukraine and to have its fortunes depend upon prolonging the war as long as possible.

The union of the U.S. security state, Democratic Party neocons, and their media allies has not been riding this high since the glory days of 2002. One of MSNBC’s most vocal DNC boosters, Chris Hayes, gushed that the war in Ukraine has revitalized faith and trust in the CIA and intelligence community more than any event in recent memory — deservedly so, he said: “The last few weeks have been like the Iraq War in reverse for US intelligence.” One can barely read a mainstream newspaper or watch a corporate news outlet without seeing the nation’s most bloodthirsty warmongering band of neocons — David Frum, Bill Kristol, Liz Cheney, Wesley Clark, Anne Applebaum, Adam Kinzinger — being celebrated as wise experts and heroic warriors for freedom.

This war has been very good indeed for the permanent Washington political and media class. And although it was taboo for weeks to say so, it is now beyond clear that the only goal that the U.S. and its allies have when it comes to the war in Ukraine is to keep it dragging on for as long as possible. Not only are there no serious American diplomatic efforts to end the war, but the goal is to ensure that does not happen. They are now saying that explicitly, and it is not hard to understand why.

The benefits from endless quagmire in Ukraine are as immense as they are obvious. The military budget skyrockets. Punishment is imposed on the arch-nemesis of the Democratic Party — Russia and Putin — while they are bogged down in a war from which Ukrainians suffer most. The citizenry unites behind their leaders and is distracted.

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Yesterday in Iowa, Joe Biden called the Russian military operation in Ukraine a “genocide,” which has a very specific set of legal definitions to it.

When asked if he had seen enough evidence to support that statement Biden responded:

“Yes, I called it genocide.  It has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being — being able to be Ukrainian.  And the amount — the evidence is mounting.  It’s different than it was last week.  The — more evidence is coming out of the — literally, the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine.  And we’re going to only learn more and more about the devastation. And we’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me.”  (link)

Several ground reports from European journalists indicate the U.S. military is running all of the combat operations inside Ukraine. A French reporter said on Euro News, “I thought I was with the international brigades, and instead I was facing the Pentagon.”  Now today, Joe Biden announces he is arbitrarily sending U.S. combat helicopters into the conflict.

 

Tweet Link

(WHITE HOUSE) – I just spoke with President Zelenskyy and shared with him that my Administration is authorizing an additional $800 million in weapons, ammunition, and other security assistance to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military has used the weapons we are providing to devastating effect. As Russia prepares to intensify its attack in the Donbas region, the United States will continue to provide Ukraine with the capabilities to defend itself.

This new package of assistance will contain many of the highly effective weapons systems we have already provided and new capabilities tailored to the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine. These new capabilities include artillery systems, artillery rounds, and armored personnel carriers. I have also approved the transfer of additional helicopters. In addition, we continue to facilitate the transfer of significant capabilities from our Allies and partners around the world.

The steady supply of weapons the United States and its Allies and partners have provided to Ukraine has been critical in sustaining its fight against the Russian invasion. It has helped ensure that Putin failed in his initial war aims to conquer and control Ukraine. We cannot rest now. As I assured President Zelenskyy, the American people will continue to stand with the brave Ukrainian people in their fight for freedom. (link)

White House spokesperson Jen Psaki was asked about this escalation earlier today:

The Biden administration is all-in for this Ukraine proxy war, taking all actions to highlight a zero-sum position.

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In his first extended remarks in nearly a month about the conflict in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that peace talks had reached a “dead end” and pledged that Russia’s “military operation will continue until its full completion.” 

Putin defined a more limited aim for the war, focusing on control of the Donbass — and not all of Ukraine. Putin reiterated that Russia’s actions so far in several regions of Ukraine were intended only to tie down enemy forces and carry out missile strikes with the purpose of destroying the Ukrainian military’s infrastructure, so as to “create conditions for more active operations on the territory of Donbass.”

In his words,

“Our goal is to provide aid to the people of Donbass, who feel an unbreakable bond with Russia and have been the subjects of genocide for eight years.”

Asked why the operation cannot be speeded up, Putin told reporters:

“I often get these questions, ‘can’t we hurry it up?’ We can. But it depends on the intensity of hostilities and, any way you put it, the intensity of hostilities is directly related to casualties.” 

He made it clear that

“our task is to achieve the set goals while minimising these losses. We will act rhythmically, calmly, and according to the plan that was initially proposed by the General Staff.” He added, “The operation is going according to plan.” 

Clearly, Mariupol port city in the south of Donbass could have been conquered with brute force. But that would have caused horrific casualties. Instead, the enemy forces — Ukrainian military, neo-Nazi Azov battalion and foreign mercenaries — have been steadily cornered and entrapped in two main locations, namely, Azovstal steel mills and the city’s main port.

The Russian forces have gained control of the port, while in Azovstal, about 3000-strong enemy forces have been surrounded, who include possibly dozens or hundreds of military officers from the NATO countries — and, surprisingly, Sweden. The experts estimate that the fall of the city into Russian hands is imminent. The Russian Ministry of Defence announced on Wednesday that over 1,000 Ukrainian troops, including 162 officers, surrendered earlier in the day in Mariupol. 

In retrospect, the main purpose behind the frantic diplomatic efforts by some of the NATO countries (France and Germany, in particular) to sponsor “humanitarian corridors” out of Mariupol had a nefarious agenda to exfiltrate the Western officers trapped in the city. The heart of the matter is, NATO forces are de facto deployed in Ukraine, as foreign volunteers or as military instructors, and, equipped with heavy military equipment, they are fighting the Russian Army. 

A French journalist who managed to sneak in with French “volunteers” has since come out with a video showing that American military personnel coordinate the foreign military in Ukraine and are directly handling the training and enrolment of the foreign “volunteers” in the Ukrainian forces. 

In such conditions, quite obviously, peace talks between Moscow and Kiev cannot progress. The big question is: Does the Biden administration want the conflict to end and a peace agreement to be negotiated? The answer seems ‘no’. In fact, the US is fuelling this conflict. 

The US Senate has approved a draft law on lend-lease, which will greatly simplify supplies to Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal reported that the US will provide Ukraine with heavy equipment, including Soviet air defence systems. The Biden administration is said to be preparing to announce more than $700 million in additional military assistance to Ukraine, which is likely to include heavy ground artillery systems, helicopters and armoured vehicles. The US had provided more than $2.4 billion in military assistance to Ukraine during Biden’s presidency, including $1.7 billion since Russia began its special operation in Ukraine in late February.

Interestingly, Putin confirmed yesterday the reports that British intelligence had stage-managed the so-called Bucha killings to pillory Russian military and create an international ruckus. Pentagon had ostentatiously distanced itself from the controversy riveted on what turned out to be fake news. Putin said:  

“There is a lot of commotion, but they (EU and US) just needed to adopt a new package of sanctions, as we know very well. Today, we discussed their special operation, the psychological operation carried out by the British. 

“If you want to know the addresses, the secret meeting places, the licence plate numbers, the brands of vehicles they used in Bucha, and how they did it, the FSB of Russia can provide this information. If not, we can help. We exposed that ugly, disgusting position of the West together with our Russian friends, in full and from the beginning to the end.” 

The Russian and Ukrainian forces have been regrouping and strengthening their positions in Eastern Ukraine through the past fortnight in preparation for a decisive battle for the Donbass. The Russian forces are preparing to encircle a huge concentration of Ukrainian troops, estimated to be in the region of 100,000 servicemen drawn from the best units of the armed forces. Kiev is also transferring all available forces to the eastern front in order to stop the Russian offensive.

Putin’s remarks yesterday suggest that Russia is not looking for a quick victory at any cost. Putin said on Tuesday that Moscow “had no other choice” and that the operation aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine and to “ensure Russia’s own security”. He vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfilment of the tasks that have been set.”

To be sure, fighting in eastern Ukraine will intensify over the next two to three weeks but the final outcome will take time. The Ukrainian forces and the foreign fighters who have flocked to the eastern region are well-equipped and will not only put up stiff resistance but may even carry the fight into Russian territory. 

This grim scenario is fraught with the real danger that NATO may increasingly be finding itself at war with Russia in Ukraine. According to Western media reports, elite British and US special forces units are deployed in Ukraine, including servicemen of the British Special Air Service (SAS) and soldiers of the First Operational Unit of Special Forces “Delta” of the US Army. 

There have been reports that the operations in Mariupol were under the command of an American general who attempted to escape by helicopter sent to rescue him a week ago, but was intercepted by the Donetsk militia involved in the operation alongside the Russian forces, and was taken into their custody. It is entirely conceivable that the Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Moscow mission on Monday and his “very direct, open and tough” talks with Putin at a one-to-one meeting at the latter’s Novo-Ogaryovo residence near Moscow was in coordination with Washington. There has been no readout of the 75-minute meeting from the Kremlin. 

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Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s refusal to allow his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier to visit Kiev is the first major embarrassment to happen to a Western Head of State since the war in Ukraine began on February 24. The question, however, is what encouraged Zelensky to show such disdain for the Germans?  [This decision was most probably taken in Washington, GR Editor]

The German President, who met with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda in Warsaw on March 12, planned to travel with him and the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania the next day in what he described as “a strong message of European solidarity with Ukraine.” His request was denied by Zelensky because of Steinmeier’s previously close ties to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his past advocacy for close economic relations between Russia and Germany.

“I was prepared to do this [go to Ukraine], but apparently, and I must take note of this, this was not wanted in Kiev,” Steinmeier told reporters.

Bild quoted an unnamed Ukrainian diplomat as saying:

“We all know of Steinmeier’s close relations with Russia here… He is not welcome in Kiev at the moment. We will see whether that changes.”

Steinmeier is seen as someone who, as Chief of Staff during Gerhard Schröder’s rule and as Foreign Minister under Angela Merkel, forged good relations with Russia and was very energetic in defending the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. Before heading to Warsaw though, the German president said that insisting on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was his biggest mistake and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of causing the war.

“I still hoped that Vladimir Putin possessed a remnant of rationality,” Steinmeier told Der Spiegel weekly in an interview. “I did not think that the Russian president would risk his country’s complete political, economic and moral ruin in the pursuit of an imperial delusion.”

However, despite Steinmeier alluding that Russia is engaged in an imperialist war (rather than perhaps an anti-imperialist operation to halt NATO expansionism to its borders), it obviously did not change the Ukrainian view of him.

It is remembered that Steinmeier was previously attacked by Ukrainian Ambassador Andrei Melnik for forming a “web of contacts with Russia for decades. For Steinmeier, the relationship with Russia was and remains something fundamental – even sacred.”

Steinmeier has now experienced what the German media calls an “embarrassment on the open stage” because he is the first Western Head of State that has been told that they are not welcome to Kiev. Cracks in Berlin-Kiev relations is not something new and has been emerging for years, especially because of Merkel’s enthusiasm for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

However, the loudest criticism is certainly coming from the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany who is constantly in the media to accuse the country of cowardice, especially at the beginning of the war when Germany refrained from sending weapons to Ukraine. Although Berlin has made a major turn and is now sending weapons to Ukraine, further anger is caused by the fact that incumbent Chancellor Olaf Scholz is not bowing to American and Ukrainian pressure to close Russian gas taps altogether.

Russian gas is a matter of existential need for Germany, which due to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, is threatened with achieving a lower than expected GDP. In fact, Germany would experience a devastating recession if it were to turn off the Russian gas taps.

Already due to the war, household products are missing from supermarket shelves and inflation, which particularly scares Germans, is recording the biggest jump in 40 years. If there is a complete shutdown of Russian gas to Germany, where American and Ukrainian media and political pressure is being put on the country to do this, the average German citizen will demand a change of government as inflation will worsen and the economy will sharply decline.

US pressure against Germany is increasing and the Ukrainians now have strong support from much of the West. It was ultimately these conditions that saw Germany decide to supply weapons to Ukraine and impose sanctions against Russia – but that is not enough for Kiev.

In this way, European citizens are also suffering from Kiev’s decision to be uncompromising in their issues with Moscow as they now suffer the economic blowback, something that the US and UK have little concern for. Since leaving the EU, the UK is attempting to revive 19th century imperial ambitions on the European and global political scene with tacit American support.

None-the-less, for Germany in the long term, regardless of the current situation, ties with Russia are important – both in terms of energy and trade. It is recalled that Scholz was entering the election campaign with a so-called new Eastern policy aimed at Russia, and even during his meeting with Putin, he declared that there was no European security without Russia.

Although it appears at the moment that reconciliation between Moscow and Europe is impossible, this is an inevitability, especially as the continent has overcome far worse wars and crises over the centuries. It is another thing how long it will take, and it depends largely on how long this war will last, but Berlin realizes that reconciliation is inevitable, and for this reason it is not willing to bend to every demand made by Kiev and Washington despite a constant campaign to shame Germany.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image attribution: Quirinale.it

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A preprint study posted April 3, 2022, reports high rates of infection with BA.1, BA.1.1 and BA.2 — variants of Omicron — among triple-jabbed health care workers. In all, the incidence rate among the triple-jabbed with one of these variants was 22%, and only 10% remained asymptomatic

March 29, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized a second booster (dose No. 4, for those taking Pfizer or Moderna) for adults over age 50, as well as a third booster (dose No. 5) for immunocompromised people aged 12 and older. The additional boosters are to be given four months after the last dose

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also recommending adults who have received two doses of Janssen’s viral vector DNA shot to get a third shot using either Pfizer or Moderna, despite there being no data on the safety or effectiveness of mixing the various shots

FDA authorized doses 4 and 5, without input from its expert voting panel, based on data showing the Moderna shot was only 11% effective, and caused side effects in 40% of recipients, and the Pfizer shot was 30% effective and caused side effects in 80% of people

The lead author of that paper, Dr. Gili Regev-Yochay, an infectious disease specialist at Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer, Israel, has publicly stated that “Not a third dose, not a fourth dose, not a fifth dose will do anything to stop infections [long-term]”

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That the mRNA-based COVID shot is not a real vaccine is evidenced by the sheer number of “boosters” required to keep COVID-19 at bay. When the injections were released at the beginning of 2021, the promises flowed.

Getting the two-dose regimen was said to be 95% effective and would keep you safe from serious infection. If everyone would just roll up their sleeves and get the jab, the pandemic would be over in no time. By mid-July 2021, just over half the adult U.S. population had received the shot. (Specifically, 56% had received one dose, and 49% were fully vaccinated with two doses.¹)

Well, before the year was over, reality started setting in, as effectiveness waned^2,3,4 far more rapidly than anyone expected. What’s worse, the shot actually increased the infectivity of the Delta variant,⁵and toward the latter part of 2021, hospitals around the world were starting to fill up with “vaccinated” COVID patients.^6,7,8

A preprint study,⁹ posted April 3, 2022, also reports high rates of infection with BA.1, BA.1.1 and BA.2 — variants of Omicron — among triple-jabbed health care workers. In all, the incidence rate among the triple-jabbed with one of these variants was 22%, and only 10% remained asymptomatic. As concluded by the authors:

“We report high incidence of omicron infections despite recent booster vaccination in triple vaccinated individuals. Vaccine-induced antibody titres seem to play a limited role in risk of omicron infection. High viral load and secretion of live virus for up to nine days may increase transmission in a triple vaccinated population.”

FDA Authorizes Fourth and Fifth Doses

In mid-August 2021 — just eight months into the COVID jab campaign — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the first booster (the third dose of mRNA), starting with the immunocompromised.¹⁰

Then, March 29, 2022, the FDA cleared a second booster (dose No. 4, for those taking Pfizer or Moderna) for adults over age 50, as well as a third booster (dose No. 5!) for the immunocompromised aged 12 and older.^11,12 The additional boosters are to be given four months after the last dose.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also recommending adults who have received two doses of Janssen’s viral vector DNA shot to get a third shot using either Pfizer or Moderna.¹³ This despite there being ZERO data on mixing the various shots.

So, in a little over one year, we’ve gone from “two mRNA jabs will ensure you won’t carry the virus or get sick or die of COVID” to “you need a booster every four months and you can still contract, transmit, get sick and die of COVID.” At this rate, we’re looking at three injections per year, and the fully-jabbed and boosted are still getting sick with COVID.

For example, we recently found out that 7 in 10 “vaccinated” CDC employees got breakthrough infections in August 2021,¹⁴ and Princess Cruises reported an outbreak onboard the Ruby Princess in March 2022, despite a 100% “vaccination” rate among both crew and passengers, plus proof of a negative COVID test prior to boarding.¹⁵ As noted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the video above, “it’s time to follow the science.”

COVID Policy Has Nothing To Do With Science

Remarkably, the FDA made the decision to approve another booster without convening its expert voting committee, as is the norm. As noted by Dr. Marty Makary in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:¹⁶

“The Food and Drug Administration last week authorized Americans 50 and over to get a fourth COVID vaccine dose. Some of the FDA’s own experts disagree with the decision, but the agency simply ignored them.

It will convene its advisory committee this Wednesday [April 6, 2022] to discuss future vaccine needs. That’s like having lawyers present arguments to a judge who’s already issued a verdict … Decisions like this only reinforce the perception that COVID policy is driven by groupthink and politics.”

Even Dr. Paul Offit, whose faith in vaccines is legendary, expressed surprise and dismay at the FDA’s decision to move forward without holding an open meeting to allow experts to comment on the data. He told CNBC:¹⁷

“It’s just sort of fait accompli. So, is this the way it works? We talk endlessly about how we follow the science — it doesn’t seem to work out that way.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, another well-known vaccine pusher, has also expressed concern about the continued booster trend. He told CNBC that vaccine policy should not merely be based on keeping people out of the hospital, but should also seek to prevent COVID infection and “long COVID.”

He pointed out that the effectiveness of the third dose against hospitalization from Omicron infection has been shown to decline from 91% to 78% in just four months. “That gives me pause for concern that the boosters are not necessarily holding up as well as we’d like,” he said. It is really hard to believe that both of these vaccine pushers are actually waking up and beginning to question the narrative.

FDA’s Decision Based on Shockingly Bad Data

The FDA reportedly based its decision to authorize doses 4 and 5 on Israeli data posted on the preprint server medRxiv, February 15, 2022.^18,19 What evidence was provided in this as yet non-peer-reviewed study that was compelling enough to circumvent the voting committee and public comment? According to the authors:

“Breakthrough infections were common, mostly very mild, yet, with high viral loads. Vaccine efficacy against infection was 30% and 11% for BNT162b2 [Pfizer] and mRNA1273 [Moderna], respectively. Local and systemic adverse reactions were reported in 80% and 40%, respectively.”

This is worth repeating. FDA authorized doses 4 and 5 based on data showing the Moderna shot was only 11% effective, and caused side effects in 40% of recipients, and the Pfizer shot was 30% effective and caused side effects in 80% of people. I know, you are probably shaking your head, saying, “What?!” That’s beyond astounding.

The FDA is charged with confirming that medical products are safe and effective. By authorizing the fourth and fifth COVID shots with abysmal effectiveness and sky-high adverse reaction rates they make it abundantly clear that that they are a completely captured agency and have completely abrogated their responsibility for public health.

The lead author of that paper, Dr. Gili Regev-Yochay, and infectious disease specialist at Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer, Israel, has even publicly stated that “Not a third dose, not a fourth dose, not a fifth dose will do anything to stop infections [long-term].”²⁰

Experts: We Cannot Boost Our Way Out of the COVID Pandemic

In an April 4, 2022, article, Forbes staff reporter Robert Hart writes:²¹

“While a fourth dose appears to be beneficial at preventing serious illness in older or high-risk people, Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Forbes that repeated boosting is not ‘a viable strategy’ and it’s not clear that younger groups without high-risk health conditions ‘benefit much from even third doses.’”

Professor Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona, agrees, saying the current strategy is “not sustainable.” Similarly, Dr. Dan Barouch, a physician and vaccine researcher at Harvard Medical School, told Hart that getting a booster shot every three to six months is impractical for wealthy countries and “simply not possible” in poorer ones.

What we really need, Barouch said, is “vaccines with better durability.” John P. Moore, professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine also weighed in, telling Hart he doesn’t think we can “simply boost our way out of the pandemic.”

Regions With Low COVID Jab Rates Have Fared Well

Adding to suspicions that the COVID jabs aren’t doing much of anything is the fact that areas with low injection rates, such as Africa, have fared no worse than those with very high rates.

As reported by The New York Times,^22,23 the Kamakwie district in Sierra Leone has registered a total of just 11 COVID cases since the beginning of the pandemic, and no deaths. Sierra Leone, in total, has had just 125 COVID deaths since the pandemic was declared. This, despite gathering for large weddings, concerts and football matches without masks.

Bill and Melinda Gates went on record early on in the pandemic stating Africa would be destroyed by COVID unless we made a concerted effort to get the COVID jab to them.

Their greed-fueled prediction turned out to be completely false, and while the African Union has been pushing to reach a 70% injection rate in West and Central Africa, the low incidence of COVID has sparked arguments against continuing the injection campaign this year, as health care funds are needed for other far more common ailments, such as malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

Importantly, Africa wasn’t spared because SARS-CoV-2 didn’t sweep through it, because it did in spades. Studies looking at blood samples reveal two-thirds of the population in sub-Saharan countries have antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 — evidence that they were exposed, recovered and developed the best protection possible — natural immunity.^24,25

Areas with more reliable death registries and other data collection, such as South Africa, do show excess deaths during 2020 and 2021, which are being attributed to COVID. But by the third quarter of 2021, only 4% of Africans had received the jab and, by and large, it seems they are far better off because of it.

As noted by Del Bigtree in the featured Highwire video, the shots have basically decimated the immune function of those who took them, and the FDA has no other plan or option now than to roll out a never-ending series of boosters to “top up” people’s immune defenses, even if it’s only to a slight degree. They have nothing else. The damage is done.

COVID Shots ‘Proven to Cause More Harm Than Good’

While the official narrative is that the COVID shots may be “less than perfect but still better than the alternative” (i.e., getting the infection when you’re unvaccinated), immunologist Dr. Bart Classen published a study²⁶ in the August 2021 issue of Trends in Internal Medicine, disputing this claim.

The study,²⁷ “U.S. COVID-19 Vaccines Proven to Cause More Harm than Good Based on Pivotal Clinical Trial Data Analyzed Using the Proper Scientific Endpoint, ‘All Cause Severe Morbidity,’” details a core problem with the Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) trials.

All three employed a surrogate primary endpoint for health, namely “severe infections with COVID-19.” This, Classen says, “has been proven dangerously misleading,” and many fields of medicine have stopped using disease-specific endpoints in clinical trials and have adopted the far superior endpoint “all-cause mortality and morbidity”.

The reason for this is because if a person dies from the treatment or is severely injured by it, even if the treatment helped block the progression of the disease they’re being treated for, the end result is still a negative one. The COVID jab would fare very poorly using this metric.

To offer an extreme example of what you can do with a disease-specific endpoint, you could make the claim that shooting people in the head is a cure for cancer, because no one who got shot in the head died from cancer. When reanalyzing the clinical trial data from these COVID shots using “all-cause severe morbidity” as the primary endpoint, the data reveal they actually cause far more harm than good.

The proper endpoint was calculated by adding together all severe events reported in the trials, not just COVID-19 but also all other serious adverse events. By doing this, severe COVID-19 infection gets the same weight as other adverse events of equivalent severity. According to Classen:²⁸

“Results prove that none of the vaccines provide a health benefit and all pivotal trials show a statistically significant increase in ‘all cause severe morbidity’ in the vaccinated group compared to the placebo group.

The Moderna immunized group suffered 3,042 more severe events than the control group. The Pfizer data was grossly incomplete but data provided showed the vaccination group suffered 90 more severe events than the control group, when only including ‘unsolicited’ adverse events.

The Janssen immunized group suffered 264 more severe events than the control group. These findings contrast the manufacturers’ inappropriate surrogate endpoints:

Janssen claims that their vaccine prevents 6 cases of severe COVID-19 requiring medical attention out of 19,630 immunized; Pfizer claims their vaccine prevents 8 cases of severe COVID-19 out of 21,720 immunized; Moderna claims its vaccine prevents 30 cases of severe COVID-19 out of 15,210 immunized.

Based on this data it is all but a certainty that mass COVID-19 immunization is hurting the health of the population in general. Scientific principles dictate that the mass immunization with COVID-19 vaccines must be halted immediately because we face a looming vaccine induced public health catastrophe.”

To make the above numbers more clear and obvious, here are the prevention stats in percentages:

• Pfizer 0.00036%
• Moderna 0.00125%
• Janssen 0.00030%

We also have a cost-benefit analysis²⁹ by Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., and researcher Kathy Dopp, published in March 2022, which shows the COVID jab increases children’s risk of dying from COVID infection. Children under 18 are also 51 times more likely to die from the jab than they are to die from COVID if not vaccinated.

Jamie Jenkins,³⁰ former head of health and labor market analysis at the British Office for National Statistics, has also revealed that 4 million doses must be administered to children, 5 to 11 years of age, to prevent a single ICU admission in this age group.³¹

Assuming two doses per child, that means 2 million children must take their chances with serious and potentially lifelong side effects to prevent a single child from requiring intensive care due to COVID-19.

But you may be relieved to know that at least the pharma companies will be earning tens of billions of dollars from this recommendation. The COVID jabs are, without a doubt, the most financially successful pharma product in the history of the world. And the icing on the cake? Everyone, from the manufacturer to the person who administers the shot, has complete immunity from any prosecution for their nefarious plan to destroy the health of children.

Menstrual Problems Among Transgendered

One side effect that has made headlines in alternative media over the past year is abnormal bleeding and menstrual irregularities. For example, vaginal bleeding has been reported both in children who aren’t old enough to begin menstruation and in post-menopausal women.

Now, an online survey by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis reveals transgendered people are also reporting breakthrough menstruation, despite being on menstruation-suppressing hormones. As reported by Newswise:³²

“The study is the first to examine vaccine-associated breakthrough bleeding in people who take testosterone or other hormones that suppress menstruation. The research focuses on individuals with a range of gender identities such as transgender, nonbinary or gender-fluid.

Previous studies of COVID-19 vaccine related menstrual symptoms have largely focused on cisgender (cis) women, those whose gender identity matches the female gender they were assigned at birth …

Out of over 160,000 survey respondents, the researchers identified 552 people who said they used testosterone or other gender-affirming hormones and did not usually menstruate. Most of these respondents (84%) selected more than one gender category, with 460 identifying as transgender, 373 specifying man or man identified, 241 identifying as non-binary and 124 indicating they were genderqueer/gender non-conforming.

One-third of these respondents reported breakthrough bleeding after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, 9% reported chest or breast soreness and 46% reported having other symptoms they would usually associate with a period, such as cramping and bloating.

Some respondents used the survey’s open-ended text boxes to report significant negative mental health impacts in response to their period symptoms, including anxiety, depression, gender dysphoria, panic attacks and suicidal ideation …

‘I hope that discussing these findings openly allows people to know that this could be a side effect so they can prepare appropriately,’ said [lead author Katharine] Lee.

‘This is especially important given the fact that some people described mental health outcomes like anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation as responses to unexpected breakthrough bleeding after vaccination.’”

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Notes

¹ USA Facts Vaccine Tracker Updated July 12, 2021

² CDC MMWR August 18, 2021; 70 New COVID Cases and Hospitalizations Among Adults by Vaccination Status

³ CDC MMWR August 18, 2021; 70 Sustained Effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines Against COVID Associated Hospitalizations Among Adults

⁴ CDC MMWR August 18, 2021; 70 Effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines Among Nursing Home Residents

⁵ MedRxiv August 25, 2021

⁶ Evening Standard August 20, 2021

⁷ Twitter Alex Berenson July 18, 2021

⁸ Science August 16, 2021

⁹ MedRxiv April 3, 2022 DOI: 10.1101/2022.04.02.22273333

¹⁰ Mundo Hispanico August 14, 2021

^11, 13, 17 CNBC March 29, 2022

¹² The Highwire, The FDA Authorizes 4th and 5th Booster Doses

¹⁴ DHHS FOIA Response March 3, 2022

¹⁵ Epoch Times March 29, 2022

¹⁶ WSJ April 3, 2022

¹⁸ MedRxiv February 15, 2022, DOI: 10.1101/2022.02.15.22270948

¹⁹ NEJM Correspondence March 16, 2022 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2202542

²⁰ NPR February 22, 2022

²¹ Forbes April 4, 2022

^22, 24 New York Times March 23, 2022

^23, 25 NYT republished by BDNews24.com March 23, 2022

^26, 27, 28 Trends in Internal Medicine August 2021; 1(1): 1-6

²⁹ COVID-19 and All-Cause Mortality Data Analysis by Kathy Dopp and Stephanie Seneff (PDF)

³⁰ Stats Jamie

³¹ Stats Jamie February 20, 2022

³² Newswise March 25, 2022

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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First published on April 4, 2022

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The conference, which also features Elon Musk and Al Gore, runs from from April 10-April 14.

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At the start of the new phase of the Ukrainian crisis, beginning with Russia’s special military operation which preempted the Kiev regime’s plan to conduct an ethnic cleansing campaign in Donbass, the Ukrainian military was one of the largest and the most well-equipped militaries in Europe. It was a stark contrast in comparison to 2014, when the Ukrainian military was in shambles, barely holding together, with virtually no command and control, no effective strategy or doctrine, and a command structure which was deeply suspicious of the then-new government, installed after a US-orchestrated coup which overthrew the democratically elected administration led by President Victor Yanukovich.

Since then, things have drastically changed. The command structure was thoroughly reformed, the old equipment underwent deep modernization efforts, which were largely successful, while the “questionable loyalty” issue of much of the old Soviet officer cadre was replaced by those who were in line with NATO and the political West in general. In terms of new equipment, there were few strategic assets added to the Ukrainian military. Apart from Turkish-built drones, such as the much-touted “Bayraktar”, the bulk of the military equipment remained Soviet, albeit significantly modernized. New fire control systems for the formerly near-obsolete Ukrainian tanks, new explosive reactive armor, compatibility with NATO-standard munitions, new communications equipment, etc. All of this changed the status of the Ukrainian military from one in disrepair to a deadly force which wouldn’t get defeated as easily as it was in Debaltsevo during 2014-2015 when NATO’s insistence on the Minsk II agreement effectively saved the Ukrainian military from an even more humiliating defeat.

Naturally, as soon as the Ukrainian military consolidated its defensive position in the line of contact, the government decided to impose a “selective compliance” with the Minsk II agreement. In other words, almost a decade of near-constant shelling of Donbass ensued, while the Ukrainian side complained every time the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republic responded to the shelling. Despite NATO providing assistance which would’ve made the Ukrainian artillery target only the military of the two Donbass republics, the Ukrainian shelling was indiscriminate and hit mostly residential areas of no military value, but which resulted in the death of around 13,000 civilians, including hundreds of children, with many more of those who were wounded or maimed for life.

When Russia’s patience finally ran out on 24 February 2022, the leadership in Kremlin decided to put a stop to this mass murder. And even though the Russian military was now facing a much stronger opponent than it would’ve been the case 8 years prior, the NATO-trained and equipped military of the Kiev regime started crumbling faster than many in the Brussels and Washington DC expected. For them, this conflict served as a litmus test of NATO capabilities in large-scale conflict, a thing which wasn’t in the focus of the North Atlantic alliance ever since it effectively became an expeditionary force engaged in regime-change wars around the world and simple bullying of sovereign nations into submission.

And despite the frenzied attempts of Western mass media to show the supposed “incompetence” of the Russian military and the allied forces of the Donbass republics, coupled with myth-building of various alleged “heroic” deeds of the Ukrainian military, the reality on the battlefield was much grimmer. Seeing this new Ukrainian military effectively melting away, the US, NATO and the EU decided to turn to what they were best at – maximizing war profit.

The so-called “lethal aid”, a typical American euphemism for weapons deliveries, was overcharged to levels never seen since the Second World War. Thousands of antitank guided missiles (ATGMs) and man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) were transferred to the Ukrainian military, mostly from US and UK stocks, but also from Germany, Poland, Czechia, former Soviet Baltic states, etc. How much of an actual difference these weapons made on the field of battle is questionable at best, but the “aid” did accomplish at least two things. One, the Ukrainian debt to the political West increased exponentially. And two, the stocks of these weapons were now getting increasingly depleted, giving the US military-industrial complex (MIC) a unique chance to profit massively by producing additional batches of these ATGMs and MANPADS weapons.

However, why stop there. The NATO planners understood full well that Russia needs to win this war and that it has staked so much on pushing back the advancing North Atlantic alliance, that it was clear that anything less than a victory was unacceptable to the Kremlin. NATO has a choice, start World War 3 or make Russia’s victory as costly as possible by fighting “to the last Ukrainian”, while making as much profit as possible. This is precisely why the US has started pushing for its Eastern European vassal states and statelets to deliver their Soviet-era weapons to the Ukrainian military, in addition to the deliveries of obsolete Western Cold War-era weapons.

Just this week, it was announced that the armies of NATO countries will continue deliveries of the following weapons:

• the Pentagon is sending 11 Mi-17 helicopters and over 200 Vietnam War-era M113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) as part of an $800 million “military aid” package (ironically, the Mi-17 is a Russian-made helicopter which was previously acquired by the US to equip the now-defunct Afghan Air Force);
• Czechia is sending an unspecified number of old T-72M tanks and BVP-2 APCs;
• Poland is sending 100 T-72M1R (budget modification of T-72) units, as well as 170 BWP-1 units (Polish modification of the Soviet BMP-1);
• Germany is sending 50 1960s era “Leopard 1” tanks and 60 BMP “Marder” units;
• Australia is sending at least 20 “Bushmaster” armored personnel carriers.

In addition to these deliveries, the US “military aid” package also includes 18 howitzers, 300 “Switchblade” kamikaze UAVs and an additional batch of 500 “Javelin” ATGMS. Needless to say, these weapons will make no strategic difference. Worse yet, even their tactical impact is questionable, given that the Ukrainian military would need months of training to learn how to properly use these weapons, the time it simply doesn’t have. Also, the Russian military has already destroyed thousands of pieces of modernized Ukrainian equipment, which the Ukrainians had years to practice on. Thus, it’s even clearer that these weapons deliveries are of doubtful military value for the desperate regime in Kiev.

However, for the vast network of military-industrial complexes of NATO and other US-aligned countries, this is the best possible opportunity ever since not just the Cold War, but quite possibly the Second World War as well. By forcing the more recent NATO and even non-NATO EU member states to renounce their Soviet-era weapons, the Washington DC doesn’t only cut their quite possibly last ties with Moscow, but it also forces them to buy new weapons to replace the ones they’ve sent to Ukraine. Needless to say, given the lack of a strong military-industrial base in these countries, it’s more than obvious who profits from this. After all, one simply needs to look at the skyrocketing stock prices of American and British military-industrial giants.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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Pfizer and BioNTech today said they plan to apply for Emergency Use Authorization of a COVID-19 booster dose for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds based on results of a small study that has not been published or analyzed by independent experts.

Pfizer and BioNTech today said they plan to apply for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of a COVID-19 booster dose for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds based on results of a small study that has not been published or analyzed by independent experts.

The companies also plan to request authorization from the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory agencies around the world as soon as possible.

Pfizer said in a press release the third dose of its vaccine produced significant protection against the Omicron variant in children 5 to 11 in a small Phase 2/3 clinical trial.

The study was based on data from only 140 children 5 through 11 years old who received a booster dose six months after the second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID vaccine as part of the primary series.

A closer look at 30 children showed a 36-fold increase in virus-fighting antibodies — levels high enough to fight the Omicron variant, ABC News reported.

Pfizer claimed the third dose was “well tolerated with no new safety signals observed.”

Although Pfizer said more than 10,000 children under the age of 12 have participated in clinical trials investigating Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, only 140 were selected for the study forming the basis for the company’s EUA request.

Commenting on the news, Dr. Brian Hooker said,

“The clinical trial used to support the notion of a COVID-19 booster for 5- to 11-year-olds is entirely inadequate to make any such recommendation.”

Hooker, chief science advisor at Children’s Health Defense (CHD), added:

“This small-scale, limited-time trial contains only 140 patients, which is not sufficiently sized to assess vaccine adverse events at all, especially rarer injuries such as the devastating medical maladies sustained by Maddie de Garay — an adolescent injured in the original Pfizer clinical trial.”

Hooker said he was also concerned there are “no data on the prevention of COVID-19 infection, only neutralizing antibody titers, which are not necessarily predictive of transmission and severity of the disease.”

Dr. Liz Mumper, a pediatrician, said, “Once again, Pfizer does science by press release.” Mumper said the rise in antibody titers is just one small piece of the story of kids and COVID.

“The more important issue is that, on the basis of careful risk-versus-benefit analysis, healthy children do not need a COVID vaccine,” Mumper said, because many kids already had COVID and developed robust and durable antibodies.

CHD President Mary Holland accused Pfizer of reaching “a new low” by seeking authorization of booster shots for children based on an “unpublished, non-peer-reviewed study of 140 children.”

Holland said:

“Following the science on COVID vaccination shows that the risks outweigh the benefits for COVID shots for kids, let alone boosters. One suspects this is simply a misguided ploy to use up Pfizer’s vaccine inventory before its expiration.”

Pfizer tested its booster dose while Omicron was the dominant variant this winter. In recent weeks, BA.2 has become the dominant COVID variant. It has not been determined whether a third dose provides any protection against the new variant.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in October 2021 authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine for children 5 through 11 and recently authorized a booster dose for teens 12 through 15 and older and also immunocompromised children 5 and older.

According to a study published late last month in The New England Journal of Medicine, Pfizer’s vaccine showed “reduced effectiveness” against the Omicron variant among children 12 and older.

According to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data by theAmerican Academy of Pediatrics, as of April 6, 2022, 9.7 million U.S. children ages 5 to 11 had received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine — representing 34% of 5- to 11-year-olds.

Approximately 7.8 million U.S. children ages 5 to 11 completed the 2-dose primary vaccination series — representing 28% of 5- to 11-year-olds.

About 18.7 million children 5 to 11 had yet to receive their first COVID vaccine dose.

Seventeen million U.S. adolescents ages 12 to 17 have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine — representing 68% of 12- to 17-year-olds.

Only 58% completed the 2-dose vaccination series and 8.1 million adolescents in this age group have yet to receive a COVID vaccine.

There are 72.8 million children under age 18 in the U.S., which is 22% of the U.S. population. Children aged 5 to 11 represent 8.6% of the U.S. population.

The FDA has not authorized any COVID vaccines for use in children under 5.

According to the latest data from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), between Oct. 1, 2021, and April 1, 2022, 10,157 adverse events, including 239 rated as serious and 5 reported deaths after COVID vaccines, were reported in the 5- to 11-year-old age group.

Although reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed, the system has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

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While the world is anxious about a possible WWIII scenario, the architects of the Great Reset are shifting their agenda into high gear as the WHO Pandemic Treaty is being set into motion. 

Let no one drop his/her guard, the COVID-19 dystopia is still in operation. 

Read our selection below and share widely.

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WHO Pandemic Treaty Submissions. Here Is My Researched Submission Which Anyone May Use

By Elizabeth Woodworth, April 14, 2022

There is an international outcry that sovereign nations will lose control of their own constitutional public health policy control, which it seems may be controlled by a global WHO/WEF pandemic policy.  We have just witnessed the extreme shortcomings in the WHO/FDA/CDC pharma-dominated SARS-2 policies.

Digital Tyranny: The EU Digital Covid Vaccine Certificate Framework

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 11, 2022

As noted in the above Summary, the intent is to extend the Regulation which expires on June 30 2022 for another twelve months until June 30th, 2023. This extension plays a key role: The EU Digital COVID Certificate Framework is slated to be tied into negotiations pertaining to a worldwide “Pandemic Treaty” which were initiated in early March 2022.

Bhakdi/Burkhardt Pathology Results Show 93% of People Who Died After Being Vaccinated Were Killed by the Vaccine

By Steve Kirsch, April 12, 2022

The vaccines are bad news. Fifteen bodies were examined (all died from 7 days to 6 months after vaccination; ages 28 to 95). The coroner or the public prosecutor didn’t associate the vaccine as the cause of death in any of the cases.

Dr. Peter McCullough: COVID Jab Death Count ‘Is Worse Than a War’

By Infowars.com, April 12, 2022

Speaking at the OPTIMIST (Offering Preventive Therapeutic Interventional Medicines Increasing Safety & Trust) Bahamas COVID-19 Town Hall last week, McCullough explained how new scientific papers are coming out showing the U.S. death count from the jabs could be much higher than the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) has documented.

The Vaccine Death Report: Evidence of Millions of Deaths and Serious Adverse Events Resulting from the Experimental COVID-19 Injections

By David John Sorensen and Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, April 11, 2022

The purpose of this report is to document how all over the world millions of people have died, and hundreds of millions of serious adverse events have occurred, after injections with the experimental mRNA gene therapy. We also reveal the real risk of an unprecedented genocide.

The 2020-22 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 12, 2022

The e-Book includes analysis of curative and preventive drugs as well as a review of Big Pharma’s COVID-19 “messenger” mRNA vaccine which is an “unapproved” and “experimental” drug affecting the human genome. (It is a dangerous drug. See Chapter VIII). Also analyzed are issues pertaining to the derogation of fundamental human rights, censorship of medical doctors, freedom of expression and the protest movement.

Video: What the Great Reset Really Has in Store for Us

By Kristina Borjesson, Matthew Ehret-Kump, Iain Davis, Tom Luongo, and Whitney Webb, April 08, 2022

The Whistleblower Newsroom presents excerpts from a riveting panel discussion among independent investigative journalists Iain Davis and Whitney Webb, Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review Matthew Ehret, political commentator and analyst Tom Luongo, and Moscow-based journalist Riley Waggaman, who talk about The Great Reset’s hallmarks, how it was kicked into high gear by a fraudulent covid pandemic, and how those fighting for the ultimate prize—total governance over all people and things–think the world and all humans in it, should be.

While You Were Distracted by Will Smith, the International Elitists Met at the 2022 World Government Summit

By Derrick Broze, April 07, 2022

During Schwab’s short talk he also mentioned his pet project “the 4th Industrial Revolution“, which is essentially the digital panopticon of the future, where digital surveillance is omnipresent and humanity uses digital technology to alter our lives.

Globalists Aim to Take Over Health Systems Worldwide

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 15, 2022

The globalist cabal is planning to monopolize health systems worldwide through the creation of an international pandemic treaty that makes the World Health Organization the sole decision maker on pandemic matters.

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

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The complete report can be downloaded here. 

 

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