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Incisive report by Deutsche Welle. Excerpts below with link to the Complete article

Our thanks to Deutsche Welle for bringing this report to our attention.

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A short video doing the rounds on the internet shows a screen in what is presumably a Ukrainian military vehicle crossing a village in the area of Mariupol. On a side street, there are armored vehicles, on which a white letter “Z” is visible, the sign of Russian troops in Ukraine. Shots are heard and what is apparently a Russian vehicle opens fire.

The notorious Azov Battalion, also known as the Azov Regiment, posted this video earlier this week on its Telegram channel. It announced that it had destroyed three Russian armored vehicles and four infantry fighting vehicles, and killed “many infantry.” Then it released a picture of a dead man in uniform, purported to be a Russian general whom it had killed. It is difficult to verify these claims.

….

Mariupol: Azov’s headquarters

Mariupol is also where the Azov Battalion, which is part of the Ukrainian National Guard and thus subordinate to the Interior Ministry, has set up its headquarters. Its fighters are well trained, but the unit is composed of nationalists and far-right radicals. Its very existence is one of the pretexts Russia has used for its war against Ukraine.

…

Far-right connotations

Umland said Azov had drawn early attention by using the the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol as its emblem. “The Wolfsangel has far-right connotations, it is a pagan symbol that the SS also used,” said Umland. “But it is not considered a fascist symbol by the population in Ukraine.”

The Azov Regiment wants the symbol from the Nazi era to be understood as stylized versions of the letters N and I, standing for “national idea.”

Incorporated into the National Guard

Andriy Biletsky, the 42-year-old founder of Azov, is a history graduate of the National University of Kharkiv. He was active in Ukraine’s far-right scene for years. In the summer of 2014, the modest forces of Azov participated in the recapture of Mariupol from pro-Russian separatists. It has operated as a regiment since fall 2014 and according to media reports, it had around 1,000 fighters before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as artillery and tanks.

The Ukrainian government decided to incorporate the ultra-nationalists into state structures in 2014.

…

Contacts with far-right movements

In 2019, there was an attempt by US Congress to designate the regiment as a “terrorist organization” but this did not happen.

Click here to read the full article.

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***

This, of course, follows the largest single-day nationwide protests in Pakistan last Sunday.

I hope our friends in Western alternative media will be so gracious (and self-correcting) to permit us all to put to rest now, the idea that these demonstrators are limited to the ‘educated’ and ‘urban middle class’, disconnected from the rest of Pakistan. And just by the way, I’m not sure why these labels are deployed so disapprovingly – especially by progressive Pakistani pundits who inhabit that same social class.

Almost half of Pakistanis are ‘urban’ by this point, which would obviously make them an important support base. And it’s quite bizarre why the term ‘educated’ is used either pejoratively or to associate it exclusively with the ‘middle class.’ A majority of Pakistanis from the lower classes are educated (but don’t necessarily have the ‘cultural capital’ or patronage networks of those above them to get good jobs), and a significant chunk of our upper classes have never felt the need for formal education.

We’ve also been given the impression that only dominant class and ethnic groups are the ones coming out in support of Khan. The Pashtuns, who Pakistani progressives have correctly considered to have been brutalized and marginalized by the ‘War on Terror,’ seem to be blinded by some ‘false consciousness’ (ostensibly, just like all of the non-‘urban middle class’ demonstrators) since they have come out on the streets in the hundreds of thousands on Wednesday evening.

I hope and pray that the Pakistani liberal-left and their very friendly hosts in Western alternative media carry on with caricatures of Khan till their hearts’ content, but go easy on the millions of demonstrators who don’t deserve the disparaging mischaracterizations to which they’ve been subjected.

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Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Religion, Law, and Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decoloniality. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

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***

With a population of nearly 20 million people, the Republic of Mali is a landlocked country located on rivers of Senegal and Niger in West Africa. Since its independence from the French colony, it has had not only persistent political and governance problems, but also difficulties in tapping its existing resources and poor economic policies resulting in largely under-development in the country.

As well-known facts, two military coups have taken place in Mali since August 2020. The first one, which occurred on August 18, 2020, ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Interim President Bah Ndaw was removed from power by the military on May 26, 2021, while Deputy President Assimi Goita became Mali’s Transition President based on the Constitutional Court’s order.

Col. Assimi Goita and his government have halted relations with France, moved closer to Russia.

Mali is a shady remote country and Moscow is highly interested in exploring natural resources, has mining concession agreements in exchange with military weapons and equipment. The military is keen on fighting what it termed “active terrorist groups” in the country. On the other hand, Moscow is aggressively moving its military-technical cooperation, shows the desire to ensure the country’s defense capabilities, especially in the face of the persisting terrorist threat in the region.

According to several reports especially from Associated Press, AFP, Reuters and DW as well as BBC, Mali’s authorities have an agreement with the Russian private military company Wagner Group that replaced the French military. Reuters reported that the contract could be worth $10.8 million a month. Mali has taken delivery of military equipment and a few hundreds of military experts and instructors are operating in the country.

As has been in the past, under the new military leadership harrowing accounts of human rights abuses have emerged. In addition to the previous abuses, the late March massacre of about 300 people in the village Malian village of Moura became very questionable, called for international condemnation. Most importantly, it must be thorough systematic investigations to ascertain the primary causes, the implications and possibly to take punitive actions.

For the African Union and ECOWAS, the scale and gravity of Mali’s military leadership violating human rights, of course, is a strong signal to hold them for responsible for this crimes which many have described reports and images of civilian killings as disturbing.

Joseph Siegle, Director of Research and Daniel Eizenga, Research Fellow at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, co-authored an article headlined “Russia’s Wagner Play Undermines the Transition in Mali” in which they highlighted Wagner’s potential entry into Mali, and it reminds how the group started operating, and later grossly involved in human rights abuses in the Central African Republic.

The two researchers have several times suggested to the Security Council of the African Union and ECOWAS to invoke the African Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism, which went into effect in 1985, prohibiting states from allowing mercenaries into their territories. Declaring Wagner a mercenary force identifies them, appropriately, as an illegal entity, one that should be categorically prohibited from operating in Mali (and other parts of Africa).

Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted that Malian forces and foreign fighters killed 300 civilians in Moura, late March. The report described as “the worst single atrocity reported in Mali’s decade-long armed conflict.” Several witnesses and other sources identified the foreign soldiers as Russians to HRW.

According to the report, the massacre took place over four days, with the vast majority of the victims being ethnic Fulanis group. Moura is small provincial town, which has a population of around 10,000, has been the epicenter of conflict-related violence. “The soldiers patrolled through town, executing several men as they tried to flee, and detaining hundreds of unarmed men from the market and their homes. The incident is the worst single atrocity reported in Mali’s decade-long armed conflict,” the HRW report said.

“Abuses by armed Islamist groups is no justification at all for the military’s deliberate slaughter of people in custody. The Malian government is responsible for this atrocity — the worst in Mali in a decade — whether carried out by Malian forces or associated foreign soldiers,” the report said.

Russia has assigned, what officially described as military instructors to Mali. There are no doubts that neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger are also looking for such deals with Moscow. The United States, France and European Union say the instructors are operatives from the Russian private security firm Wagner.

Russia has blocked a request put forward by France at the UN Security Council for “independent investigations” into the alleged massacre of several hundred civilians in Mali by the Malian army and Russian paramilitaries, diplomatic sources said. That was followed widely shared social media reports of a civilian massacre in the country.

On April 8, Moscow congratulated Mali on an “important victory” against “terrorism” and it described as “disinformation” allegations about the massacre, as well as claims about the involvement of Russian mercenaries. The statement posted to the official website noted that “such a large-scale liquidation of terrorists became possible as a result of carefully conducted reconnaissance and coordinated actions of the units of the Malian army.”

According to the report, Mali have made significant progress in the liberation of a number of settlements in the central regions of the country, where civilian rule has been restored for the first time in a long time. For obvious reasons, such a development of the situation could not suit individual Western countries and the media controlled by them.

There were wave of disinformation picked up by the official authorities of Western states, as well as NGOs sponsored by them, including Human Rights Watch, who demanded an urgent independent investigation and punishment of the Malian military and the Russian instructors.

Several times, Bamako denies the presence of mercenaries from the Russian group Wagner in Mali, acknowledging only the presence of Russian “instructors” and “trainers” under a bilateral cooperation agreement with Moscow dating from the 1960s.

Richard Mills, the US Deputy Ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council of the United Nations it was “exactly why the United States continues to warn countries against partnering with the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group.”

Britain and France pointed out that Russian mercenaries allegedly involved. Several witnesses and other sources identified the foreign soldiers as Russians. France’s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere cited reports of human rights violations in Moura by elements of the Malian armed forces “accompanied by Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group” that could constitute war crimes.

He called for national and international investigations open quickly and for U.N. peacekeeping mission known as MINUSMA to conduct its own unhindered investigation to establish the facts and report to the Security Council.

Deputy U.N. Ambassador James Kariuki said that “the United Kingdom is horrified by a surge of human rights abuses since the deployment of the Wagner group to Mali,” and by the killings during the army’s counterterrorism operations in Moura “with the alleged involvement of the Wagner Group.”

He said the latest reports from Moura “underline the extent of Russia’s malign activity which is damaging efforts to address peace and security beyond Ukraine,” and demanded that MINUSMA carry out its human rights mandate and investigate all allegations.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, while stressing the importance of “transparency and accountability” in security operations, has also called on the Malian army and its “bilateral partners” — widely interpreted as an implicit reference to Russian mercenaries — to respect their international obligations amid growing concerns over human rights violations.

That however, the Republic of Mali, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia were among a number of African countries to vote against the resolution to expel Russia from the Human Rights Council during a special session April 7. The UN documents showed total of 93 votes cast in favor of the resolution, with 24 against, while 58 delegations abstained from the vote.

Many regional and foreign organizations have repeatedly urged further urged the military leaders to take efforts towards resolving outstanding political issues especially those relating transition to constitutional elected government and observe strictly the laid down principles of democracy.

As a developing country, it ranks at the bottom of the United Nations Development Index (2020 report). The Republic of Mali, the former french colony, is under ECOWAS sanctions and has been stripped off the membership of the African Union (AU) and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

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

Featured image: 2022 John Emerson for Human Rights Watch

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***

US-led sanctions, which are unauthorized by the United Nations, have become the most favoured way for Washington to challenge Russia without going directly to war against the country. Since Crimea’s reunification with Russia in 2014, the US has rallied its allies to impose 8 068 sanctions against Russia, with another 5 314 new sanctions designated after the Ukrainian crisis began.

These sanctions do not only affect Russia, but is also having an effect on the European and American economies. According to former UK Treasury official Andrew Milligan, sanctions may lead to slightly lower corporate profits in the US, with an expected growth of only 0.25% to 0.5%, lower than it would have been if sanctions were not imposed.

However, European companies are also unwilling to jeopardize their existence by not trading with Russia and are finding alternative methods to circumvent sanctions.

One Athens-based maritime industry expert, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Greek-owned ships could start disabling their on-board automated identification systems (AIS) to ensure that authorities do not know about their whereabouts while at sea.

It is recalled that in 2020, Washington forced Greece-based shipowners to surrender their cargo of Iranian fuel to the US government or face sanctions. According to media reports at time, ship owners “grew frightened” by the threat of US sanctions as they would potentially deprive them from access to US banks and dollar depositions.

For this reason, the maritime industry expert said that so-called dark activity, which is when a vessel operates while blocking or disabling its AIS transmissions from being received by other vessels or maritime authorities, “is being considered by some Greek shipowners.” Dark activity is often used for smuggling, criminal business, facilitation of terrorist activities, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but also by the private sector to evade sanctions. This is why international maritime law stipulates that all mercantile vessels must activate AIS when at sea.

Maria Angelicoussis, CEO of Athens-based Angelicoussis Group, said the conflict “was having a big effect” on the tanker market, adding: “There is a big hesitancy among ship owners to ship any Russian oil or products. There is self-sanctioning.”

Angelicoussis Group is one of the largest private vessel owning groups in the world and its fleet includes oil tankers. For this reason, there is much more scrutiny and oversight on Angelicoussis Group. None-the-less, the Athens-based maritime industry expert stressed that “it is impossible to have oversight on every single ship at sea, especially those of much smaller firms who are desperately willing to engage in so-called dark activity so that their business with Russia is not impeded and thus not put their companies at risk.”

“The AIS is not fool proof and has many vulnerabilities, including the loss of AIS ship position data,” the expert said. “Having transparency regarding a ship’s location requires optimal performance and persistent tracking, and with about 50,000 known ships at sea, there are probably thousands more engaging in dark activity.”

Shipping is not the only industry in Greece that had to consider methods of circumventing sanctions though. Greek businesspeople that are involved in fertilizer imports from Russia are scrambling for sanction-busting methods to buy the product with rubles. Although this may prove seemingly difficult, an importer said, again on the condition of anonymity because of fears of potential repercussions, that because they risk US sanctions, they have to trade through third parties.

“With Greek-Indian relations reaching all-time modern heights and in view of rubles and rupees in trade finance transactions, India will likely become a third party or intermediatory between Greek and Russian companies still wanting to conduct business despite the sanctions,” the importer said.

He explained: “As the Greek economy is becoming increasingly volatile despite growth last year and predictions that 2022 would be a good year, this has been reversed and revised since the imposition of sanctions against Russia. Although this impacts the Greek economy, it could see some Greek agriculture companies look towards not only India, but perhaps even China, which has very good economic relations with Greece. Indian and Chinese companies could buy Russian fertilizer for rubles and sell them onwards to Greece for Euros. This is something we will explore.”

Although sanctions have certainly made Russia a difficult country to do business in the short and medium term, the long-term repercussions will see an overhauled global economic system that sees a weaker and less respected dollar, and an increase in cross-currency trade. For now, though, Western traders, importers and exporters will need to find alternative methods to circumvent sanctions, such as using intermediaries or engage in risky behaviour at sea.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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***

The so-called health professionals pushing for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine programs around the globe have repeatedly said the vaccines are safe and effective. But hundreds of young and healthy athletes are dying because of them.

The Liberty Daily reported:

“Just as we’ve noted for several months, most major sports have been hit with ‘inexplicable’ medical conditions popping up in young and otherwise healthy athletes, including our report that three cyclists fell in March alone.”

As of the end of March, the Good Sciencing website has recorded 833 athletes worldwide who had cardiac arrests or other serious issues – with 540 confirmed deaths post-COVID vaccination. (Related: Why are covid outbreaks still happening in professional sports if the athletes are all vaccinated?)

Post-vaccination injuries in athletes include cardiac arrest, blood clots or thrombosis, stroke, irregular heartbeat, arrhythmia and neuropathy.

Good Sciencing is made up of a small team of investigators, news editors, journalists and truth-seekers who are collecting pieces of information that they can investigate.

“It doesn’t really matter who we are. What really matters is that we care carrying on an investigation and we’re presenting the evidence we’ve found, almost all of it documented in mainstream media publications. We’re doing this anonymously because we’ve seen people viciously attacked and threatened for doing things like this, so we’re not going to open ourselves or any of our contacts to that,” Good Sciencing said on its website.

In addition to receiving new cases and updates from alert readers, Good Sciencing reported that they are also receiving hate mails and death threats.

Young athletes having major medical issues

Good Sciencing has provided a non-exhaustive and continuously growing list of mainly young athletes who had major medical issues in 2021 and 2022 after receiving one or more COVID shots.

“Initially, many of these were not reported. We know that many people were told not to tell anyone about their adverse reactions and the media was not reporting them. They started happening and ramping up after the first COVID vaccinations. The mainstream media still are not reporting most, but sports news cannot ignore the fact that soccer players and other stars collapse in the middle of a game due to a sudden cardiac arrest. Many of those die – more than 50 percent,” Good Sciencing revealed.

“Most, if not all of these athletes have suffered heart problems after COVID vaccines. At the time of initial writing, 28 died. That was not normal, but then, 10 days later, 56 deaths were listed, and the numbers are climbing. Any other real vaccine would have been pulled off the market long before now. The media would be asking questions. They would be pressuring governments. But they are not. And governments continue running TV and radio and newspaper ads encouraging people to get their first, second, third, fourth shot.”

Good Sciencing added that many posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, forums and news stories are being removed.

“So now we are receiving some messages saying there is no proof of the event or of vaccination status. That is partly because this information is being hidden,” Good Sciencing said.

“More people are writing to tell us that in many cases, we didn’t mention a person’s vaccination status. There is a good reason for that. None of the clubs want to reveal this information. None of their sponsors want to reveal it. The players have been told not to reveal it. Most of their relatives will not mention it. None of the media are asking this question.”

The Daily Mail reported on January 28  that Sunderland FC manager Lee Johnson implied the COVID injection could be behind his goalkeeper Lee Burge being ruled out of playing with an “inflamed heart” and said “it happens a lot after these injections.” Two days later the club confirmed that Johnson had been sacked.

The 29-year-old Burge will be out of action for the League One side for up to five weeks because of his condition.

“Form your own conclusions as to why the club would sack the manager who cares about his players,” Good Sciencing said.

“We know there is a concerted worldwide effort to make this information go away, so that fact alone tells us it must be collected, investigated and saved so other researchers can look at it to see if there are any useful patterns. We really appreciate the athletes named in this list who have confirmed what happened to them so the truth can be known. They care about their fellow athletes, even if the clubs, their sponsors, media and politicians care more about money.”

Watch the video below about athletes collapsing after receiving COVID-19 injections.

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***

I remember when we first came to this small Mexican island in the Caribbean.  The pace of life was very slow and time seemed to spiral, not chug straight ahead.  It seemed as if local people far outnumbered visitors, most of whom came for the off-beat rhythm of life.  The days floated by as did the people along the narrow streets, in and out of the little cafes and aqua water as if everyone were a sea bird soaring on the up notes and dancing down with the swaying palms.  Celestial music filled the air.

Now that we have returned to the place where destiny conceived me and I sit on the sandy shore looking out to sea, cut off for a few days from the news of another war and the endless staged propaganda pouring from the Western media about Ukraine – being out of touch, so to speak – I contemplate the sea’s musical cadence as it breaks on the shore under the rising sun.  The beach is deserted except for some singing birds and me.  I am for the birds, heart and soul.  They are beautiful spirits.

Then he appears from the rear out of the coconut palm trees and dense flowering gardens.  A man armed with a drone and his Barbie Doll.  He launches his mechanical bird over the water while his lady friend prances and poses for its camera.  He shoots her again and again, as if once were not enough to still her mechanical gestures.

I need no entrails to read this early sign.  Yet the Sphinx asks me its riddle anyway:  What at first can’t grasp its own image, then learns to see it, and finally can see nothing else?

I get up and walk away down the beach.  When I look back, the drone man and his doll have disappeared.  The rosy-fingered dawn, like a radiant monstrance on the altar of the world, returns me to reality and I plunge into Aphrodite’s warm waters.  I float in her arms.  I swim and forget.  With each stroke of my pen the waters of forgetfulness grow stronger, and I turn on my back and spout winged words of joy and adoration.

Many people have heard of Friedrich Nietzsche, and even many more, whose numbers are growing, have not.  Quite a few, who have, probably think he is a dead rapper and others, just some crazy artist like Van Gogh.  His general reputation is that of a dark and depressing thinker who went mad.  This negative reputation even holds for many somewhat familiar with his writing, the so-called educated classes who readily believe the media’s lies and erroneously associate him with supporting Nazis while they embrace the Nazis in Ukraine.

I have little doubt that this rejection of Nietzsche, based on their groundless “knowledge,” is because he told his truths that few want to hear, because he long ago grasped what people would become.  And it’s not a pretty picture, which all the self-images they take and worship reveal.

Nietzsche was obsessed with the theater and the theatrical nature of life.  Not in its aesthetic sense or theater on a literal stage, but life itself.  At the core of this was the actor, what was an actor, who was an actor, and what did it mean to act or to be “a genuine actor,” if possible.  This was because he saw acting as imitation at the core of epistemology, the fundamental issue of knowledge and reality.

In his own way, he was true to ancient Greek philosophy whose core theme was the relationship between Being and Seeming.  “To stamp on Becoming the nature of Being” was his goal, which flipped the terms in a way that offers little solace to those who act as if their knowingness is not groundless and imitative, and their acting not a feigned relationship with reality.  Unable to play the music of forgetting, he knew they would turn on their false selves with every weapon at their disposal.

Ah reality, here, with the sun risen, she comes down the beach with exposed buttocks quavering and cell phone and tripod in hand.  She sets her camera up and smiles at the machine in pose after pose.  She is so beautiful she tells herself and sees nothing else but her grotesque smiling image.  And she comes every morning to this stage of sand to play her part for an audience of one.

Later, with the sun at its zenith, hordes of actors arrive with their image-making machines.  They primp and pose on the sand and in the sea, holding their little mechanical gods high above the water as they walk out up to their necks in the water, grinning and clicking their visages.  The sea bobs with hundreds of unreflective skulls, a watery cemetery for modern times.

They are students in what Eduardo Galeano calls “the looking-glass school” where ignorance is the rule:

There are no admission exams, no registration fees, and courses are offered free to everyone everywhere on earth as well as in heaven. It’s not for nothing that this school is the child of the first system in history to rule the world.

In the looking-glass school, lead learns to float and cork to sink. Snakes learn to fly and clouds drag themselves along the ground.

This is the world of nihilists that Nietzsche knew would come to dominate, the self-regarding ones for whom the world does not exist beyond the masks they wear to face the faces that they face.

“Are you genuine?” he asked.  “Or merely an actor?  A representative?  Or that which is represented?  In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor?”

Yes, I think, copies of copies of copies without end.  Nothing original, for that would suggest the groundless freedom of becoming when you forget yourself and move only to the music.

It is sardonically comical to observe these actors playing the part of Dionysian people – those who once in their forgetfulness could live out life’s tragedy but who are now nearly extinct – parasitically imitating that which they cannot be or comprehend.  They cannot forget or open their eyes to reality because they must remember how to act, to imitate all the images, and perform their lives in front of their mirrors.  Do they think their machines can stop time for them, freeze their becoming, or “make memories” that prevent them from dying?

I remember coming here when it wasn’t so, or at least when the performances were not so blatant.  The cell phone has unlocked the largely unconscious secret of the masses: That feigning is all we can do, but since we are doing it blatantly, it is real.  We are real fakes.

The world has been turned inside out and upside down.  Some know it, most don’t, and then there are those who play the music of forgetting where each note, each word is forever new, a gift out of the blue.

As for me, my name is Diego Sandoval, but my name it means nothing.  I come from this island, at least my parents told me I was conceived here when they were traveling to Cuba from Mexico City.  My father fought with Fidel, but Fidel knocked him out.  They had met in Los Angeles when Fidel was in Hollywood to make his movie debut and my father, who was a psychiatrist, was hired by the production company to analyze the acting because the film took place in a mental hospital where even the staff was crazy.  It was an unusual movie for its time.  It wasn’t a comedy, but my father laughed at one scene where Fidel, who was playing a young staff psychiatrist, flubbed his lines.  I never knew what my father found so funny, but Fidel was incensed and punched my father.  When my father woke up, he thought he was a patient in the hospital and Fidel was his doctor.  So many role reversals.  Fidel also woke up soon thereafter, abandoned Hollywood for a better role.  He became a genuine actor in a different world.

Anyway, that’s the story my father told me, but being a psychiatrist, he often made stuff up.  He often wove tall tales to entertain me.  He loved magic and considered himself quite an amateur magician. I guess my interest in acting started then.

Nietzsche?  Maybe that began when I was fourteen-years-old in a bi-lingual school in Mexico City and first saw his photo in a book with his Emiliano Zapata mustache. I had found a discarded Spanish copy of his book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and read it, although I must say I didn’t understand much, yet something in it struck a deep chord in me.  I only had some wispy hairs then but by seventeen you should have seen me; I was ferocious looking.  Still am, some say.  When I became a poet and singer, I took the stage name Mr. Z  to honor my heroes.  Perhaps you’ve heard of me.  Few who come to hear me perform know my name’s origins and I never explain.

As my popularity grew and fame pursued me, I grew many disguises.  I answered questions with questions and gave answers so enigmatic that no one understood me.  I didn’t understand myself much of the time since more and more I said whatever popped out of my mouth, but this delighted me.  I laughed a lot and stopped taking myself seriously.  I kept forgetting more and more and my poetry and music seemed to come from some unbidden place.  I guess you could call it intuition.  But I’d often forget the lyrics and have to improvise.  That became so enjoyable that even when I remembered the lyrics I would change them just for fun.  The audience hated this, but I didn’t care.  Forgetting became my musical forte and over time I realized that it must permeate my life and so I became a genius at active, conscious forgetting.

I even forget why I am writing this.  Perhaps it is to remind myself to forget what I have seen on my return to the island.  To write about it as a form of exorcism.  It is all so utterly changed.  To see all these poor players on the stage of self, so serious and self-absorbed makes me want to never return, to fly away. I ask myself how can I ever forget the images of all those shaking, flabby buttocks  staring me in the face.  Maybe if their cameras captured their asses, they would reconsider showing them.  As for me, to paraphrase a wise man, if you gaze too long into an ass, the ass gazes also into you.

I should work on my music, so I can simply soar like a sea bird on the up notes and dance down with the swaying palms, and in the playing I will forget everything and be lost in the celestial music.

“I do not know of any more profound orientation of an artist than this, whether he looks at his work in progress (at himself) from the point of view of the witness, or whether he has forgotten the world, which is the essential feature of all monological art: it is based on forgetting, it is the music of forgetting.”

Nietzsche, The Gay Science. 

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Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, warned of foreign intervention by the US to oust him from office, and now Khan has been replaced by Shahbaz Sharif, who enters office having involved in a major corruption scandal involving sugar.

In December 2021, Adviser to PM Khan on Accountability and Interior Barrister Mirza Shahzad Akbar gave a trail of “billions of rupees laundered through the Ramzan Sugar Mills”.

“Shehbaz Sharif is the ringleader of a money laundering gang. He and his son Hamza have been found involved in corruption and money laundering worth Rs16 billion in the Ramzan Sugar Mills case,” Akbar said in Lahore. “The National Accountability Bureau also found Shehbaz’s involvement in money laundering and according to the Federal Investigation Agency charge-sheet, he is the mastermind of the group,” he added.

Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Sabtain Ahmed Dar to understand the backstory to the recent political upheaval in Pakistan.

Sabtain Ahmed Dar, is a Pakistani geopolitical analyst, and expert on the Middle East. He is an author of two theses; “The Clash of Islam and Zionism” and “Pakistan and Global Game for a New World Order”. He teaches History and International Relations at the School of Integrated Social Sciences, University of Lahore. He is currently a senior fellow at the Center for Security, Strategy and Policy Research (CSSPR) and contributes at the National Security Division think tank of Pakistan.

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Steven Sahiounie (SS): Prime Minister Imran Khan showed, and referred to, a diplomatic cable sent from the US, in which the US expressed the wish that Khan be ousted, or else there would be consequences. In your opinion, was that a direct foreign interference in Pakistan, and a type of ‘regime change’ plan?

Sabtain Ahmed Dar (SAD): It was a direct foreign intervention and it has been successfully executed by the United States and its pro-US elements in Pakistan’s establishment. On 27th March PM Imran Khan showed the letter in a public rally declaring that he has been threatened by a foreign country (US). PM Imran Khan said in a public statement that letter explicitly says that ‘Imran Khan has to go otherwise things will become tough for Pakistan’. PM Imran Khan reacted to this and asked for public support declaring that they will not bow down in front of the US imperialism. PM Imran Khan went to all public institutions such as Supreme Court, Bureaucracy and Military establishment to ask that letter must be probed, but to no avail. In the end a National Security Committee (NSC) was set up by the government in which it was declared that evidence is inevitable concerning an international conspiracy to oust Khan. After PM Imran Khan came to know about horse trading, his decision to not allow the opposition to hold voting against him in the parliament was pragmatic because he knew that most members have been bought. But that too came to no avail when top judges of the Supreme Court too declared verdict against Khan and allowed the opposition to hold vote. PM Imran Khan was ousted on 10th April, 2022 though a no-confidence movement.

SS: Prime Minister Khan previously had the support of the Pakistan military. However, there were reports that the support was no longer there. And this led to the no-confidence vote in the National Assembly. In your opinion, what caused the military to lose confidence in Khan, and could this have been influenced by the US?

SAD: There are two methods to analyze this, one is domestic and one is international. In relation to the domestic one, there is news in circulation that this tussle between PM Imran Khan and COAS Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa started when Khan wanted to give an extension to DG ISI Gen. Faiz Hameed, Pakistan’s intelligence chief. This intention on the part of Khan was not welcomed by the Army Chief concerning the rules of procedure and discipline in the military. On the other hand, the US influence on Pakistan’s Army is too high, once former DG ISI Gen. Hameed Gul said Pakistanis cannot have their Army Chief without the will of the United States. Therefore, Khan’s bold policies against the US interests clearly show that Khan was a great threat for the US. For example;

1. Khan’s Islamic Fundamentalism
2. The concept of Khilafa state embedded in ‘Riyasat e Medina’.
3. The idea of a Muslim bloc
4. Independent foreign policy
5. Recent tilt towards RussiaThese all factors are enough to destroy the US and her pivots’ policies (India) in South and Central Asia. Therefore, it is not surprising that Imran Khan is no longer the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

SS: Prime Minister Khan held office for four years. In your opinion, what were his greatest achievements, and policy failures, if any?

SAD: Following are some his major achievements during his four years’ tenure:- Ensured no Drone attack in his tenure takes place from Afghanistan. – Raised Exports to 38 Billion US Dollars in 3 years which were stuck to 21 Billion USD in last 10 years of PPP and PMLNs governments. – Fought Islamophobia (hate speeches against the Prophet and targeting Muslims for Hijab and beard) at UN and every forum and got it recognized by UN through a resolution. – Got Rikodiq 11 Billion USD penalty removed and turned into 9 Billion USD investment by same company – Got PIA operational from loss – Huge turnout in Construction industry with more than 6000 big projects started providing 8 Lac new jobs, even when Corona was at peak.- Textile sector matches exports (20 Billion USD) from 9-11 Billion USD – Billion Trees Tsunami (2 billion trees already planted) to fight climate change- Compelled Banks to provide lowest mortgage for house (billions already given to poor)- 150x Shelter and food facilities to poor (Panahgah) when he saw a photo of poor family sleeping in winter on footpath- Ended US war in Afghanistan and throwing all anti-Pakistan elements out of Afghanistan – Got 3 Billion USD through Roshan Digital accounts from overseas Pakistan – Increased foreign remittances to 31 Billion US Dollars from 19 Billion US Dollars – Controlled Corona and evaded lockdown despite all pressure compelled WHO / UN to say “Learn from Pakistan”- Tackled stunted growth of Pakistani children- Started multiple tourism projects /jobs and Discover Pakistan Channel and Skardu International Airport – Pakistan unemployment level went lowest in entire Asia region- IT (computers software) sector at its peak with over 2 Billion USD exports (100 % Jump) & over 500,000 new jobs and free lancers were made. – Over 150,000 new companies registered (10x times than previous Governments). – Established multiple new Universities and Rehmat Ul Almeen Authority to bring awareness about the life of Prohet Muhammad (S.A.W) – All major cases against Women solved & criminals arrested and given death sentence (Sialkot Motorway, Islamabad Noor Muqadam, Usman Mirza E-11 videos). – Relations with Iran, China, Russia, KSA all equal unlike previous grouping – Merged poor FATA with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, so that no one dares to attack a region known as lawless tribal area on Pakistan-Afghan border – Made the first National Security Policy of Pakistan – There is no corruption case against him. Tax collection during his era reached at its peak (Rs 6000 Billion). – Gave Ehsas programme (over 100 programmes) to eliminate poverty that is declared as 4th best programme in world by World Bank – Loan of over Rs 30-50 Billion given to youth (Kamyab Jawan). 50. First time mobile phones production in Pakistan, now over 70% mobiles produced in Pakistan. Electric bikes factories and computer processors also started – Severe action against smuggling, controlling now 50 % smuggling by fencing of borders. His failure was to understand the true nature politics in Pakistan, and he was betrayed by his own people.

SS: The National Assembly has voted for a new Prime Minister. What is your opinion of the new leader?

SAD: On 11th April, PM Imran Khan had submitted his resignation as the member of national assembly. Under a new speaker of the national assembly voting held and opposition leader Mr. Shahbaz Sharif has been elected as the 23rd Prime Minister of Pakistan. He is the younger brother of the former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. He is from Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN), a party that has been disintegrated since Nawaz Sharif was ousted as a Prime Minister in a Supreme Court verdict. The current PM Shahbaz Sharif is convicted of 17 billion rupees corruption in sugar scandal. It is expected that he is going to end all the corruption charges against him by putting his own stooges as heads of major public institutions in Pakistan. Moreover, the story of Imran Khan has not ended. He had called the public on Sunday for a peaceful protest, but it was not expected that the entire Pakistan would come out. The establishment, the opposition and the US has felt this popular power for Khan. Now he has announced a series of public protest all across Pakistan to pressurize the government to hold early elections.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

All images in this article are from MD

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Mike Whitney: The war in Ukraine appears to be shifting eastward to an area in the Donbass around the city of Krematorsk. This is where upwards of 60,000 Ukrainian combat troops are “dug-in” and prepared to take on the advancing Russian army. In one of your posts, you suggested that the “real war” is about to begin. Most of the military analysts I have read, seem to agree with you on that point. Some analysts, however, think that it could take up to three weeks for Russia to assemble the troops and material needed to launch a full-blown offensive. Others say the artillery phase of the battle has begun already. In your opinion, will the upcoming battle determine the outcome of the war? Also, what will it take for Russia to prevail in this extremely challenging fight against an entrenched and capable army?

Marko Marjanovic: I have no idea how long it takes to get the forces that were in the Kiev operation ready for a coherent, ambitious and well-supported effort in the southeast. We would need a staff officer to tell us that. Somebody who knows trains.

Generally speaking, better-prepared offensives work better. The element of surprise now being out the window, you want to err on the side of too late rather than too soon. Taking a few extra days for buildup that you didn’t really need, is far better than starting a few days too soon.

Throwing forces into attack before you are able to properly back them — with opposite arm forces for support, supplies to sustain their success, and follow-on forces to exploit it — is the surest way to have wasted effort, and casualties with little to show for them.

The battle of Donbass started a couple of days after the start of the war itself.

If you look at the map you will see that Ukrainians have already been dislodged from two-thirds of the old contact line. Only one-third of the contact line remains.

In the south the Russians took Volnovakha which opened a direct rail link to their forces in the south (making Ukrainian control of Mariupol a moot point), and in the north the Russians continue to make slow but steady progress past Izyum carving out a salient that threatens to envelop the Ukrainians to the east of it.

This is a battle that is already 6-weeks old, it is just that until now the Russians didn’t have forces in the theater sufficient for truly spectacular success — because they were not focusing on this theater. Now they are getting massive reinforcements and if they stay true to the best Russian military traditions they will use them all at once and in a way that aims for something big, rather than squander them piecemeal.

How the battle is resolved won’t determine the outcome of the war, but it will determine whether there is a future for the Ukrainian military on the left bank outside cities.

If the Ukrainian army in the Donbass is encircled and marched into captivity then it would demonstrate the folly of trying to hold solid lines against the Russians out in the open.

You will note that in the north the Ukrainians did not even attempt to create and hold a solid line against the Russians but were quick to pull back into cities like Chernigov, Kiev and Sumy.

This is somewhat understandable because of the Russian strength in numbers in the north and the fact they had achieved a measure of operational surprise (Zelensky didn’t order reserves to start standing up until Feb 23).

If offering battle out in the open ends in disaster even for the strong and entrenched Ukrainian Donbass army it will show the unworkability of such an approach.

The Ukrainians might still form some sort of a frontline against the Russians but these wouldn’t be more than skirmishing lines to harass the enemy when standing still and offer token resistance to slightly delay and disorganize it when it advances.

This would still leave open the problem of the right bank and the problem of sieging left-bank cities, but in a certain sense it would leave the Russians the masters of the left-bank and Ukraine a rump state.

Russia can not “not prevail” in Donbass. The fighting so far proves this. Russia has already dislodged Ukraine from two-thirds of the old contact line. If it is contended to slowly push back Ukraine from the rest it can do so. The question is can it do something more? Something with a big big-picture payoff?

For example — surrounding numerous Ukrainian troops and forcing them to lay down their arms because they ran out of ammunition, rather than having to continuously push back the same units bit by bit, over and over again in a protracted grind?

Even wrestling control of Donbass quickly only to encounter the expelled JFO army again in the built-up environments of Dnipro, Zaporozhye, Poltava and Kharkov isn’t ideal.

Arguably a spectacular, decisive victory wouldn’t take more than what Russia has already demonstrated. The way in which the Russian drive on Kiev was conducted especially early on was very perplexing. Also, the drive stalled outbefore it could encircle the Ukrainian capital from either the east or the west. However, that does not mean that on a certain level it wasn’t very, very impressive.

In not much more than 10 days, the Central Military District covered more than 200 miles past Sumy to the outskirts of Kiev. The push may have finally run out of steam just before the strategic payoff, but that kind of advance is nonetheless hugely impressive in any book. Arguably had the Central Military District and the 1st Guards Tank Army from the Western one been set to advance 200 miles past Kharkov to Pavlograd and Dnieper instead, the Russians could have had their Donbass cauldron formed a month ago.

MW: As you know, your views on the war are quite a bit different than other analysts like Scott Ritter, Larry Johnson, the Saker and Colonel Doug MacGregor. All three of these men have considerable experience and all three seem to think the Russians are achieving their strategic objectives. Your analysis seems much tentative and, perhaps, even pessimistic which indicates that the eventual outcome is far from certain. Can you imagine a scenario in which the Russian army wins its battle in the Donbass but at a cost that undermines its overall goals?

MM: It isn’t the case that the Russian military can win in Donbass in a way that is actually a defeat for it. It’s just a matter of a possible missed opportunity.

At the moment when the war kicked off one-third of the Ukrainian standing army was in the extreme east of the country, its escape routes limited by a giant river and pressed against Russian-controlled territory from two sides (now from three sides). Arguably the Russians should have kicked off a focused operation to cut off its retreat and disarm it right there and then.

The reason they didn’t is because they went for something even more ambitious — a knockout blow against the enemy capital. Something that offered the prospect (no matter how distant) of decapitating not just the Ukrainian standing army but the entire state.

When that failed they again reacted in a very aggressive manner — by suddenly and rapidly abandoning their entire Kiev operation wholesale. In a generally well-planned withdrawal they evacuated 50 percent of their forces in Ukraine in a matter of days.

In the meantime they compressed the Ukrainian “Joint Forces Operation” army into a third of its former frontage, bombed the railway junctions to its back, and taken places like Izyum and Huliaipole from which they threaten its rear.

The Ukrainian JFO army seems as ripe for an encirclement as it will ever be. If the Russians don’t go for it then I don’t know how to interpret that. It would mean that they went from extreme ambition (one could say overambition) to extreme conservatism. I don’t expect that.

If that happens then the only possible explanation that comes to mind would be that their maneuver elements haven’t suffered the 8-10% losses (mainly wounded) that you can extrapolate from official figures (5000 casualties 18 days ago sustained overwhelmingly by the 80K men in BTGs), but more like the 20-40% losses put forward by some Western commentators. In short, the only explanation would be that the army withdrawn from Kiev is a spent force, which I don’t buy.

Pessimism is relative. Vladimir Putin has explained that Ukrainians and Russians are one people. Ukrainians are the historic Malorusi or Little Russians. So what would it say of the Russians’ little brothers if they were defeated by a three-day simulation of a war as were the wildest hopes initially?

Putin has signaled that the war is being fought to in some way (re-)assimilate the Ukrainians to a joint all-Russian (Rus’) destiny and identity. Russian troubles in conquering Ukrainians show that they are indeed worth assimilating.

And if 145-million Russia ultimately fails to subdue 40-million Ukraine, well then, maybe it is better that these Little Russians remain as Ukrainians?

It is good to remain tentative. The less attached one is to expectations the more likely one is to be seeing rather than projecting. Feeding the brain from eyes and not eyes from the brain.

The men who in June 1941 insisted the war against Russia would be over in 11 weeks were very experienced. They filled Hitler’s high command and had just conquered 9 nations.

Experience is nice but reading a map is a rudimentary skill. Broad-stroke strategy is far more straightforward and common sense than even just high-school math. Acquiring the basics of it is far less of a challenge than resisting biases even just a tiny bit.

MW: How does this end? Even if Russia wins every battle from this point on without losing another Russian serviceman, NATO and the US will continue to pump more lethal weapons into western Ukraine fueling an insurgency that could last for decades. In your opinion, is there any way out of this vicious circle of relentless violence and death?

MM: I don’t know what the end point of this is. It is fundamentally unknowable plus there is the big unknown of how determined Putin is to see this through to a favorable outcome.

On the one hand he has so far always escalated to the next order of business. On the other hand official signaling remains mixed, and Putin is keeping his cards so close to the chest that it’s actually undermining the effort to an extent.For example pro-Russian Ukrainians don’t know if it’s safe to work with Moscow, and Russian soldiers don’t know if they aren’t fighting for cities Russia won’t later give back.

Logically if the Russians don’t occupy every last bit of Ukraine then it ends in a frozen conflict. I think Russia could have a frozen conflict even now, but a frozen conflict with a 35-million state that will henceforth be as militarized as Israel is a terrible security situation to be in. Now, if that power can be cut down to say 20-million that becomes a lot more tolerable. Then again, by that point the hardest part of the job is already done so might as well go for the whole thing…

I am not so sure there is an armed insurgency in the cards in Russian-controlled Ukraine. I am not sure it is necessary, or the most effective way for Ukrainians to resist.

A double-track strategy of high-profile terrorism inside Russia (to keep foreign attention) and unarmed civil disobedience inside Russian Ukraine might be more effective and less bloody for Ukrainians.

I would also caution against the very modern notion that insurgencies always win. Historically insurgencies almost always lose. It is not at all similar to be occupying a piece of land because you want to bring it representative democracy and female education, or occupying it because you want to attach it to your homeland and keep it forever.

The fate of Ukraine is out of the hands of Ukrainians. It is now exclusively in the hands of Russia. The only thing up to Ukraine (and the US) is to determine how high a price Russia would have to pay to get Ukraine in whole or in part. Then it is up to Putin and the Russians to determine whether they want to pay that price or not. (And if they don’t then there will be a different price to be paid.)

Is Moscow willing to see its enterprise through to its logical conclusions and not “cut and run”? I don’t know. I have no idea if Moscow is ready for the decades-long re-assimilation project because I don’t even know if it is willing to do what might be required to win the conventional war.

There are a number of signs that the Russian war effort is crying out for manpower. Firstly we see that Chechen and non-Chechen Rosgvardia are being used as urban shock infantry which is definitely not in the job description of paramilitary police. Secondly, we see that the military superpower of Southern Ossetia with its total population of 50,000 has been invited to join the war. Thirdly and most importantly we see deep and wide conscription in Donetsk and Lugansk including through roundups in the streets.

This is something that the hugely popular (30 million monthly views) and hugely patriotic Russian military-oriented site Voennoe Obozrenie (Military Review) has written about. They wrote about it, were told to dial down their criticism because it would be addressed shortly. They did, but it wasn’t. So they’re at it again:

…in the LPR they are massively conscripting and sending to the front line school teachers and university professors. And there they are captured, causing outright laughter from Ukrainian soldiers.

We were told: “There is no need to publish this, we will figure it out.” A month has passed, everything has remained as before. Teachers on the front line, killed, injured, captured. Because from a teacher to a good soldier is only in the movies.

But in the LPR, this suits everyone. For some reason, in Russia too.

At the same time as untrained Donbass civilians are sent to active duty with little to no training, Russia is releasing fully-trained soldiers — conscripts whose 12 months are up.

Starting with April 1st the batch from last spring is being released on schedule. Up to 135 thousand trained soldiers. (More qualified to fight in a war than either Russian police or Lugansk teachers.)

It’s quite bizarre. Friend has deemed it “Operation ABC” or “Anyone But Conscripts”. On the one hand the frenzied and desperate effort to secure non-conscript manpower from every possible corner. On the other, the stubborn refusal to do the one thing that has the power to decisively address the problem and mobilize at home.

The Russians were never asked if they wanted this war, but understanding intuitively that Rubicon has been crossed they support the war effort. Russia’s bridges have been burned and their fate for decades to come has been decided. They will live the rest of their lives under a Western economic siege. The only thing that is up to them is whether Malorussia will be on the side of the besiegers or besieged together with them. They would much prefer the latter and very much want to win this war.

Does Putin? Moscow has billed this a war to make the world safe for Donbass. To save Donbass from nothing less than genocide. You would think a lofty goal like that might justify using a Russian conscript or two?

Not only has Putin declined to extend conscripts, but he has categorically stated on multiple occasions that conscripts are not, and will not be sent to Ukraine.

This is worse than it sounds. Conscripts aren’t evenly distributed among roles so that a unit void of conscripts would be just a downscaled version of itself. They overwhelmingly fill support roles so that a unit without its conscripts might still have 90% of its combat soldiers and the same ammunition needs, but is maybe missing 80% of its truck drivers supposed to be ferrying the ammo. (The only reason this doesn’t kneecap the army outright is that each brigade only sends out 1 or 2 reinforced battalions as BTGs so support personnel from the entire brigade can be consolidated into just these 1 or 2 battalions. But it does prevent using the whole 3-battalion brigade.)

I wouldn’t over-romanticize Putin’s non-use of conscripts as humanism or mercy. It’s a good deal for the conscripts and their mothers, not so great a deal for the contract soldiers, Rosgvards, and Lugansk bakers supposed to fight an ever-mobilizing Ukraine on their own.

There is an element to it where Putin has burned the bridges for Russia but hasn’t yet clearly articulated that his own bridges were burned with Russia’s. If he thinks that because he isn’t calling it a war and isn’t using conscripts that he can deliver something short of a clear and major victory and survive as a leader in good standing and a positive legacy he is probably miscalculating.

To be fair, the Russian pattern so far has been to move up the escalation ladder only once the lesser option has been driven to utter exhaustion and proved unworkable beyond all possible doubt.

They started with only scarce and indirect support for Donbass while championing special status for it that would effectively serve to give Ukraine’s pro-Russians some say in Kiev on Ukraine’s foreign orientation. Then moved on to greater and more direct support in August 2014 that got them Minsk I that would accomplish some of the same. Doubled down at Debaltsevo in 2015 that got them a much clearer Minsk II. Waited out Poroshenko and gave the successor a year to do Minsk II or anything at all to represent also the pro-Russian tendencies in Ukraine.

Only when all that failed did they launch the February 24-27 psychological phony-war operation to try to bluff Ukraine into unraveling. After the 27th they were already ramping up how the regime-change was prosecuted into full warfare, but for the moment doubled down on the Kiev goal with the reinforcement wave of the second week that got them to the Kiev-Zhitomir highway in the west and to eastern Kiev outskirts in Bogdanovka and Brovary (they had already been in western outskirts since day 1). But when that effort conclusively stalled out and it was painfully clear that the Ukrainian state had survived and would continue to fight even if Kiev was cut off or even taken, they packed up and moved on to the next order of business — textbook war that we’re now going to see in Donbass and then beyond.

This is what I keep talking about. A Kiev withdrawal only seems like Russia downgrading its ambitions. But what it actually means is Russia moving up the escalatory ladder because the previous, cheaper and lesser-force approach had conclusively exhausted itself.

So perhaps when war-without-conscripts hits a wall Moscow will again escalate to war-with-conscripts. So far it always has.

Probably the Russian military can wrap up the Donbass battle as it is now. But especially if they win big Russian manpower needs will likely only grow. Owing to their greater firepower the Russians are actually able to keep Ukrainian formations bottled up inside cities even when the latter enjoy numerical superiority. However there sure are a lot of cities to cordon off…

And taking the cities, well that will be an extra special headache. In the best case scenario all the Syria experience will come in handy, from “humanitarian corridors” to “green buses” to “reconciliation”…

And in the worst-case scenario for Moscow…well, history abounds with greater powers who tired of sieging lesser powers because it was costing too much treasure. It’s just that this time the Empire’s counter-war has cut Moscow’s avenues of retreat. There is no putting the genie back in the bottle.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Marko Marjanović is the editor of Anti-Empire.com.

Mike Whitney, renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace. He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from TUR

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While staff members of The Kyiv Independent grandstand about how “independent journalism is the cornerstone of democracy,” they are quietly being funded by Western governments – a fact that should ring alarm bells with critical media consumers. 

As the Russian attack on Ukraine has come to dominate global news feeds, so has a previously little-known outlet called The Kyiv Independent. Since its inception in November of last year, the Independent’s profile has risen rapidly and has been promoted and endorsed by both social media giants and the corporate press.

The Kyiv Independent has become the toast of the town. It seems virtually impossible to turn on cable news without seeing its reporters on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, or other networks. Its staff has been given the opportunity to write multiple op-eds in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, something considered the ultimate seal of approval by many journalists. NPR listeners might also have heard interviews with reporters from the Independent.

But, while almost universally presented as a collective of unbiased journalists producing credible content, the Independent’s history, funding sources, and the proximity of many of its key staff to Western governments suggest that the news organization is not nearly as independent as its name implies.

Since November, the outlet has amassed over two million Twitter followers, up from around just 20,000 one week before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Twitter also constantly promotes its content on its homepage, encouraging hundreds of millions of people to read and follow them.

The Independent has also managed to raise more than $3.2 million from two separate crowdfunding campaigns on GoFundMe and rakes in more than $72,000 per month from supporters on Patreon. This is partially down to ringing endorsements from the likes of The Washington Post, CBS News and PBS, who endorsed their funding drives as the perfect way to do something to help Ukrainians.

“Journalists with The Kyiv Independent have done tremendous work covering the war, offering the world constant updates as they fear for themselves, their families, and their homes,” the Post wrote. Meanwhile, the Times has regularly signal-boosted its coverage as well, recommending it to readers as a way to “avoid drowning in an ocean of information.”  Another article instructing teachers on how to discuss the war states that “Ukrainian sources like The Kyiv Independent” are a “good starting point” as “reliable news sources.”

In short, there has been nothing short of a ringing, wall-to-wall endorsement of the startup news organization. However, few, if any, of these reports and appearances hint at how close The Kyiv Independent and many of its staff members are to Western governmental power.

A newborn raised on the milk of regime change

The Kyiv Independent was born in November when dozens of staff members from The Kyiv Postclashed with ownership on that paper’s political coverage. New Post owner Adnan Kivan reportedly wished his employees to be more deferential to the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky, leading to an acrimonious split whereby dozens of Post employees were fired and began their own outlet. While some have pointed to this as an example of the Independent’s credibility and unwillingness to be controlled, others are not so sure.

Commenting on the split, journalist Mark Ames remarked that, “​​Ukraine’s western-backed civil society (along with the hardline Ukrainian diaspora) loathed Zelensky right up to the invasion, suspecting him of being insufficiently nationalist.” Ames’ Moscow-based newspaper, The eXile, was closed down by Vladimir Putin in 2008. His analysis seems to have been proven correct by the Independent’s editor-in-chief, Olga Rudenko, who wrote in the pages of The New York Times that, “Mr. Zelensky, the showman and performer, has been unmasked by reality. And it has revealed him to be dispiritingly mediocre.”

The 30 Kyiv Post staff members were immediately able to fund their new venture, thanks to more than CA$200,000 in cash from the Canadian government, which made the donation through the European Endowment for Democracy. Outside of Russia, Canada has the largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world and has taken an active role in trying to shape the country’s political trajectory.

Established in 2013 and directly modeled after the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the European Endowment for Democracy is an EU organization that functions in much the same way as the NED does. Although it couches its actions in the language of “democracy promotion,” it exists to hand out large sums of money, support, and training to political groups, journalists, and NGOs in enemy countries with the goal of promoting EU interests, including the overthrow of hostile governments. It does not “promote democracy” inside the EU; its operations are limited to Eastern Europe and the Middle East-North Africa region. In recent years, it has backed anti-government movements in Belarus, Russia, Syria, and Lebanon.

None of this information, including any connection to Canada or the European Endowment for Democracy, is on The Kyiv Independent’s website. Indeed, the outlet presents itself as totally independent and supported by readers. In its “About” section, it proclaims that “The Kyiv Independent won’t be dependent on a rich owner or an oligarch. The publication will depend on fundraising from readers and donors and later on, commercial activities.” It does not expand on who these donors are. However, its staff presents its funding as above board: “We’re not taking dirty money,” said one reporter. MintPress asked both The Kyiv Independent and the Canadian Embassy in Ukraine for comment about their funding arrangement but has not received a response.

Troubling CVs

The troubling connections undermining The Kyiv Independent’s credibility do not end there, however. For example, its contributing editor, Liliane Bivings, used to work and write for the NATO think tank The Atlantic Council, specifically covering Ukraine. Producer ​​Elina-Alem Kent worked for the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv in 2017; not exactly the background one would associate with grassroots, independent media. Chief financial officer Jakub Parusinski was previously employed by the International Center for Policy Studies, a Ukraine-focused think tank sponsored by numerous Western governments. In 2020, culture reporter Artur Korniienko was awarded a fellowship to work for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an organization that The New York Times once described as a “worldwide propaganda network built by the CIA.” Meanwhile, contributor to The Kyiv Independent Lucy Minicozzi-Wheeland previously worked for the Council on Foreign Relations, was given a scholarship by the State Department to study Ukraine, and also worked at the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, an organization directly funded by the U.S. government.

The unquestioned star of The Kyiv Independent, however, is defense reporter Illia Ponomarenko, who, in a short time, has built up a following of over 1.1 million people on Twitter. From the front lines, his tweets and videos go viral daily and provide the basis for much of the Western media’s reporting on the conflict. Yet Ponomarenko is far from a neutral actor, and spends an inordinate amount of his time embedded with the Azov Battalion, the Neo-Nazi group whom he describes as his “good friend[s]” and his “brothers in arms.”

The Azov Battalion is a Neo-Nazi paramilitary group that has been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces. Their units wear the mark of the wolfsangel on their sleeves, the symbol that the notorious Nazi 2nd SS Panzer Division – a unit infamous for overseeing the systematic extermination of Jews and Slavs in Eastern Europe – wore during the Second World War.

Azov’s first leader, parliamentarian Andriy Biletsky, said that his mission was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen,” the word Hitler used to describe Jews and other “subhumans,” including Ukrainians.

Ponomarenko has, on at least two separate occasions, declared himself to be “consecrated” by the Azov Battalion and has previously used language potentially hinting at his political leanings. For instance, in 2019, he tweeted that he was “absolutely devastated to learn that my good friend, Sn. Lt. Igor Prozapas, the former chief artillery officer with the Azov Battalion, has passed away. Valhalla today meets a dedicated gunman and true patriot. He was a Kyiv Postcontributor too.” Modern Nazis regularly appropriate Viking concepts such as the Valhalla afterlife for warriors killed in combat.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their contributors, neither The Kyiv Post nor The Kyiv Independent seems particularly interested in scrutinizing the Azov Battalion or the insurgent Neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine. Indeed, the latter calls Azov the “defenders of Mariupol”.

Independent journalism™: brought to you by the CIA

As noted previously, virtually all of The Kyiv Independent’s essential staff came from The Kyiv Post exodus. Yet the Post’s sources of income are, if possible, even more eyebrow-raising than the Independent’s, coming as they do from the CIA cutout organization National Endowment for Democracy.

At the time of the Russian invasion, the NED pulled from its website all records of its widespread project of funding a broad range of Ukrainian political parties, NGOs, media outlets, and civil-society groups. From the few, unofficial and incomplete archived records of NED grants that still exist, however, MintPress has ascertained that, through its affiliated foundations, The Kyiv Post has sought and received at least $459,000 in NED cash. A minimum of $394,000 went through the Media Development Foundation (MDF), a fundraising vehicle The Post launched in 2013 and one of its primary sources of income, according to former Editor-in-Chief Brian Bonner.

A further $65,000 went to another Post project, the Free Press Foundation (FPF), including one $35,000 grant to “support the editorial team of a leading independent newspaper to produce investigative reporting on corruption and violations of media freedoms.” That this “leading independent newspaper” was The Kyiv Post is barely in question, given that the FPF’s founder and executive director was the Post’s commercial director, and therefore responsible for fundraising. Furthermore, The Kyiv Post shares the same address as the FPF, whose websitemakes it clear that the two organizations are essentially one and the same.

A second, $30,000, NED project, the FPF boasts, paid for over 100 Kyiv Post articles, podcasts, and videos covering the 2019 elections, plus the establishment of a fact-checking team. In Ukraine, the U.S. Dollar evidently goes a very long way.

A now-deleted 2018 NED document shows a sizable donation to The Kyiv Post’s primary funding vehicle, the “Media Development Foundation.”

A further example of just how far the NED’s money goes is a $15,000 grant to the MDF entitled “promoting reforms in key sectors.” In return for the cash, the agreement states that the Post would “publish at least 100 articles and analyses on the progress of reforms” in sectors such as defense, the judiciary and healthcare, suggesting that they were directly paying for content to be produced. On its website, however, The Kyiv Post insists that “the donor doesn’t influence the content.”

A 2019 Kyiv Post article acknowledges the papers NED funding

What “reform” could allude to here is the massive course of economic “shock therapy” in which the government conducted a firesale of state-owned businesses and assets, in the process dismantling its welfare state and removing barriers to Western corporations’ operations in the country. This process has helped to keep Ukraine the poorest country in Europe, although both the domestic and international billionaire classes have benefited enormously.

The Kyiv Post was already strongly supportive of many of these reforms. Indeed, the outlet has an entire “Reform Watch” vertical, replete with more than 2,600 articles dedicated to assessing and promoting them, more than 1,500 of which have been published since 2017. It has also published glossy infomercials aimed at foreign investors, describing in glowing detail how the “profound reforms” have reshaped Ukraine into a promising space for international business.

Reading the language of these grants, it is clear that “increasing the capacity” of outlets like The Kyiv Post was of primary importance to the U.S.. This led Washington to pay for the training of huge numbers of interns in writing, video editing, camera usage and other journalism skills at “leading Kyiv media outlets” – principal among them, the Post. The level of funding also rapidly increased through the years, starting with relatively modest sums in 2014 but rising to over $200,000 by 2018, no doubt building considerable capacity indeed.

“Without the NED, there would be nothing”

The NED was set up by the Reagan administration in the 1980s explicitly as a front for the CIA, whose public image had been seriously tarnished by a series of scandals. Technically a private organization, and therefore not subject to the same public scrutiny or legal regulations, the NED carried out the CIA’s dirtiest operations abroad, specifically those of regime change and foreign interference. In this, they are relatively open, although they are careful to couch their activities in the language of “democracy promotion.”

“It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” NED President Carl Gershman said, explaining its creation. NED co-founder Allen Weinstein agreed: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” he told The Washington Post.

The NED has played a key role in recent U.S. regime-change attempts. In Hong Kong, it funneled money to the leaders of the domestic protest movement, in order to sustain it. In Venezuela, it has organized music concerts to undermine the Maduro administration. Last summer, it fomented a nationwide campaign of demonstrations in Cuba. And it currently has 40 active projects in Belarus, all with the goal of removing President Alexander Lukashenko from office. Ukraine, however, is the NED’s “top priority” according to its 2019 annual report.

The Kyiv Post also sought out and received other highly questionable sources of funding, including, by its own admission, the Danish government and NATO itself.

During the NATO-backed 2014 Euromaidan insurrection, in which the democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown and replaced by a successor handpicked by the United States government, the European Endowment for Democracy also rushed through what it described as “emergency support” to The Kyiv Post. What exactly this support entailed is not disclosed in much detail, leaving cynics wondering whether the European Union was channeling cash to pliant local media in order to push through a coup.

The Post’s post-split staff might also raise a skeptic’s eyebrow. Among them is the new chief editor, Bohdan Nahaylo, who spent two decades working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, rising to become its director of Ukrainian services between 1989 and 1991. Nahaylo’s boss, Richard Carlson (Tucker Carlson’s father) stated that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty played a “very critical role” in the dissolution of the USSR and the transition to a hyper-capitalist model, adding:

International broadcasters were equally important in laying the groundwork for the democratic revolutions that we have seen. Isn’t it incredible how Western all those Eastern Europeans sound in talking about freedom, democracy, free enterprise, environmental concerns. And they didn’t get those ideas from their own media or from textbooks in their own countries; they got them mainly from international broadcasters like Voice of America, the BBC, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe.”

These sources of income mean that almost everybody at The Kyiv Post or The Kyiv Independent was, for quite some time, in the pay of NATO and/or the U.S. national security state. Indeed, in 2015, Daryna Shevchenko, current CEO of The Kyiv Independent and then a staff writer for The Kyiv Post, openly acknowledged how much the CIA cutout organization had done for her and her colleagues. “To our partners, the National Endowment for Democracy, without them there would be nothing,” she wrote. Shevchenko made the comments after a Media Development Foundation training event attended by a host of Kyiv Post/Kyiv Independent journalists. Also attending was Aric Toler of Bellingcat, another NED-sponsored outlet which masquerades as independent journalism. Toler went on to work for The Atlantic Council.

While these journalists often speak in the language of objectivity and neutrality, they are, at the same time, crystal clear that the purpose of The Kyiv Independent is to “counter the Russian narrative,” in the words of Editor-in-Chief Rudenko. Thus, they see themselves as fighters in an information war. And as the battle for public opinion rages, they are among the West’s most potent weapons.

A necessary skepticism

While experts disagree on how well or poorly the military invasion is going, it seems clear that Russia is losing the information war. President Putin has been widely condemned, has breathed new life into NATO, and has united European countries in resistance. Russian media and pro-Russian sources have been wiped from the Internet. And while Putin declared that the point of his “special military operation” was to “denazify” his neighbor, few have accepted that premise, despite the well-documented far-right insurgence in Ukraine. Further undermining this claim was a video released this week of the head of the Russia-backed Donetsk People’s Republic awarding a medal to a soldier sporting two separate fascist symbols on his jacket.

Despite Russia being the chief belligerent in this war and some Russian sources spreading false information, we must still be skeptical of claims made by the other side. In war, the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus noted, truth is always the first casualty.

As ferocious as the fighting has been, the propaganda war has been, if anything, more intense. And supposedly “independent” Ukrainian media have been a key part of it. There is already a serious problem in modern discourse with the term “independent media,” a phrase commonly used to refer to any media outlet, no matter how big an empire it is, that is not owned or funded by the state (as if that is the only form of dependence or control to which media is subject).

But even at this extremely low hurdle, The Kyiv Post and The Kyiv Independent fall. While key staff members grandstand about how “independent journalism is the cornerstone of democracy,” they are quietly being funded by Western governments – a fact that should ring alarm bells with critical media consumers. Again, this does not mean that what they publish is false or that there is no worthwhile reporting being done. But it does undermine their claims of independence or impartiality. That The Kyiv Independent does not even acknowledge its foreign funding and presents itself as reader-supported is especially troubling.

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

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***

There are only a handful of Western journalists on the ground in Donbass, while the Western mainstream press is rubber-stamping fake news about the Ukrainian crisis using the same templates it previously exploited in Iraq, Libya and Syria, says Dutch independent journalist Sonja van den Ende.

Sonja van den Ende, an independent journalist from Rotterdam, Netherlands, went to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as an embedded reporter with the Russian army to see how the special operation is unfolding with her own eyes.

The sound of shelling and explosion does not frighten her: she’s gotten used to it. Seven years ago, van den Ende worked in Syria, months before the Russians stepped in at the request of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and changed the tide. The parallels between the Western mainstream press’ coverage of the Syrian and the Ukrainian conflicts are striking, according to her.

“They lie continuously about everything just to implement their own agenda,” van den Ende. “Like in Syria, President Assad was ‘the murderer’ and now President Putin is ‘the butcher.’ They had used this script for many years in Iraq, Venezuela and [other] countries which don’t comply with their agenda; they need a bad “guy”. But they (media) are not even there on the ground, they can’t judge. Only a handful of journalists from the West are here: Graham Philips, Patrick Lancaster, Anne-Laure Bonnel and me.”

However, this is not the only parallel, according to the Dutch journalist. She has drawn attention to Kiev’s fake reports and “false flag” operations including the Snake Island hoax, hype over Russia’s alleged “attack” on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), the now-debunked story of Russia’s “strike” on a Mariupol hospital, and the most recent Bucha provocation, to name but a few. Van den Ende says that it resembles nothing so much as jihadists’ false flags and the White Helmet’s staged “gas attacks”. She specifically recalls the 4 April 2017 chemical provocation in Khan Sheikhun, Idlib, which was debunked by investigative reporters including Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh.

“The same happened in Bucha,” says the Dutch journalist. “Many witnesses are saying that the Russian army left on 30 March. Even the Ukrainian military who came in on 1 April didn’t report about corpses on the streets. This happened on 3 April, according to the Western media. Also, evidence is saying that the bodies had white armbands, the sign of the Russian army, the soldiers wear them. So the soldiers are killing the Russian Ukrainians? No way.”

Ukrainian Neo-Nazism is No Myth

Van den Ende talked to many Ukrainian civilians while travelling across Donbass. According to her, nearly everyone condemned the Kiev government for prohibiting the Russian language and depriving them of many cultural and domestic human rights.

“The majority of the people whom I spoke with were very happy that the [Russian special] operation has started,” the Dutch journalist says. “Of course, nobody wants violence and war, but they have been suffering already eight years from the war, carnage and destruction by the Ukrainian forces. The worst were the Nazi battalions, who were fighting along with the regular army.”

Ukrainian neo-Nazism is not a myth, emphasises van den Ende. When she visited the Ukrainian port city of Odessa in 2016 and 2017 she noticed the fascist sentiment which has been spreading across the nation for quite a while. Actually, Ukrainian Nazism has been there since the Second World War, says the Dutch journalist.

The ideological successors of Stepan Bandera, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the 14th SS-Volunteer Division “Galicia,” and the Nachtigall Battalion went underground during the Soviet period. However, after many years these forces are alive again with the US, the UK and EU using them to destabilise Ukraine, she says. Previously, these Western geopolitical actors much in the same vein used Islamists to unseat Assad, adds the journalist.

According to van den Ende, after carrying out a 2014 coup d’etat in Ukraine, the minority of neo-Nazis grabbed power and have been terrorising mainly the eastern part of the country using very vicious and cruel Nazi-style methods for eight years.

Feeling Protected at Long Last

The West is continuously trying to blame Russia for all the damage inflicted on Ukrainian villages and towns. However, Eastern Ukrainian eye-witnesses say that most of destruction in the civilian areas was caused by the retreating Ukrainian army and neo-Nazi formations, including the notorious Azov Battalions, according to the Dutch journalist. In addition to using civilian facilities as shields, the Ukrainian military are reported to have indiscriminately shelled the positions they left and cede to the Russian forces.

To illustrate her point, van den Ende describes the shelling of a hospital in Volnovakha, in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The building was not bombed from the air, but attacked with grenades and rockets, she says, citing a Volnovakha resident.

“The West claims it was bombed by the Russians, but as a lady told me, that she worked there all her life, and that the Ukrainian [military] – who were quartered in the hospital – shelled and destroyed the facility and her house, which was next to the hospital.”
According to the Dutch journalist, Eastern Ukrainians are treated very well by the Russian army and regularly receive humanitarian aid in most locations. What’s more, the locals say that at long last they feel protected, she adds.

Fierce fight between the Ukrainian armed forces and neo-Nazi battalions on the one side and the Russia-backed DPR and LPR militias on the other side left many houses ruined. However, the people of Donbass have not given up, highlights the journalist.

“As a woman said: ‘We are strong, we can rebuild it, for our children and grandchildren, to have peace,’” notes van den Ende.

Is Russia Losing an Information War?

Some observers suggest that Russia is losing the information war with the West. The Western Big Media machine is working day and night with the backing of Big Tech, while most Russian news outlets have been either censored or completely silenced in the Western countries.

“No, Russia is not losing the information war completely,” argues van den Ende. “I think it’s up to us, the handful of Westerners, to awaken the majority of Westerners who are still asleep and getting bombarded with fake news and made-up stories day by day.”

One should bear in mind that this conflict is being fanned by the Western politicians in the first place, says the Dutch journalist. According to her, the West did completely the same in Syria but has largely lost that war.

The world is changing and the Western establishment has yet to reconcile itself with the emerging multipolar world order, according to van den Ende. She notes that Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined the beginning of this change in his 2007 Munich speech.

Although they opted to neglect his words at that time, it is becoming obvious that a unipolar world is gone for good, the journalist concludes.

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***

“Yeah, I think we have to recognize – I’ve always said that I think the Covid pandemic was a wakeup call. I don’t believe it’s the great pandemic.”

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

— Robert Redfield—Former CDC Director, March 30^th, 2022 interview with Doug McKelway on “Center Point”

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Yes, the writing is on the wall, and in the U.S. testing ground that is U.S. created China, cases of ‘avian bird flu’ are already being reported by ‘news’ outlets. So far, as of a few days ago, 19 cases of H5N6 bird flu among Chinese citizens have been reported as confirmed this year.

‘Coincidentally,’ two new cases were conveniently reported just as Redfield’s statements were released. Supposed ‘fears’ of a major outbreak are said to be advancing as the propaganda continues. As this long-plotted forewarning is being broadcast to the masses, the U.S. has been slaughtering chickens, turkeys, and other birds meant for food by the millions in Iowa and elsewhere; in addition to hundreds of millions being slaughtered worldwide, and this is no coincidence. These are planned tactics of fear-mongering and brainwashing the public, destroying the food supply, and eliminating meat in human diets.

Every announcement and every warning by the state is by design, as nothing is what it seems, and all is based on the indoctrination and psychological manipulation of the public in advance, so as to lessen the risk of exposure to the state once any real weaponized ‘virus’ is released, or any fake pandemic scenario is announced.

Keep in mind that the comments made by Redfield, a lifelong ‘medical’ and political insider, are to be expected. Both his parents were scientists with the National Institutes of Health, (NIH) where he was a member of the President’s Advisory Council on ‘HIV/AIDS.’ Not surprisingly, he is a ‘virologist,’ acted as advisor to the NIH for years, and also advised the Food and Drug Administration. He was appointed by the initiator of the ‘covid’ fraud in America, Donald Trump, to be the director of the abhorrent CDC, and was and is very close to the evil Fauci, and was fully on board with the deadly ‘covid’ response protocols. None of this should be surprising, because his “political club” ties to the ‘covid’ fraud and fake pandemic are extreme and telling, and Redfield is smack in the middle of this deceit.

What is going on here is not just about another pandemic conspiracy, it is also part of the plot to vastly curtail the food supply, all in the guise of animal transmission of a human lab manufactured bioweapon called ‘avian bird flu.’ By targeting animals as a risk to spread flu to humans, the slaughter of domesticated and wild animals will gain more support from this ignorant population. The elimination of meat as a food source in favor of lab grown GMO poison is now being pursued actively, as the regulation, control, and eradication of private farms and ranches is now underway. This can eventually lead only to corporate farms in strict adherence to government and pharmaceutical guidelines meant to destroy the quality and quantity of our food supply.

Consider Redfield’s warning (threat) that 10% to 50% of humanity will die during the next government manufactured ‘pandemic.’ This number fits in exactly with Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation’s estimates due to his funding of the earlier gain of function research concerning the same bird flu now being forecast to kill possibly billions. In fact, Redfield is stating emphatically that 800 million to 4 billion will die in the next fraudulent ‘pandemic; the “real” pandemic as he calls it. Any that do not grasp or understand the depopulation and eugenics agendas, should take notice of what is being openly projected and predicted in advance by the very purveyors of this scam.

It should be brutally obvious at this point that this is the beginning of the set-up of the American public to be prepared for and to expect a bird flu ‘pandemic.’ The real set up of course, is to condition the public to expect and accept tyranny and mass death. The fact that these evil monsters are saying that this is going to happen, and not that there may be a possibility of new ‘viruses,’ is telling to say the very least. Even the framing of this so-called warning leaves only the indication that this is the definite next ‘threat’ to mankind, even though nothing of the sort has happened. How can they predict the exact future? It is because they are perpetrating and purposely creating that future. This is what should be called the plan to commit criminal mass genocide.

Expect more lockdowns, expect more surveillance, expect more distancing, expect more masks, expect more economic devastation, expect more atrocities, expect more sickness, expect more rioting, expect more restrictions, expect more brutal enforcement, and expect more death.

Don’t turn your back, as the next emergency, the next ‘pandemic,’ the next war, the next bio-weapon release, the next deadly poisonous experimental injection; in other words, any one of the next many false flags sitting in wait could appear overnight. There is no end to this until a majority of individuals decide to stop it.

“So we, we will have to prepare for the next one, (pandemic) that, you know, I would say, will get attention this time.” (Said with evil smiles and pride)

Bill and Melinda Gates interviewed by U.S. Chamber of Commerce, June 23, 2020 (Quoted comment at 6:43)

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Gary D. Barnett [send him mail] is a retired investment professional that has been writing about freedom and liberty matters, politics, and history for two decades. He is against all war and aggression, and against the state. He recently finished a collaboration with former U.S. Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney, and was a contributor to her new book, “When China Sneezes” From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Political-Economic Crisis.” Currently, he lives in Montana with his wife and son. Visit his website.

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***

April 1, 2022, another batch of 11,000 Pfizer documents were released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Pfizer trial data reveal natural immunity was as effective as the jab, and that shot side effects were more severe in those under 55. Since the risk of severe COVID is dramatically lower in younger people, an elevated risk of side effects unacceptable, and the shot should have been restricted to those at high risk of severe COVID

The adverse event rate per dose for Pfizer’s mRNA jab, based on their own studies, is nearly 1 in 800, and the myocarditis rate is 10 in 100,000 — far greater than the 2 in 100,000 rate previously reported

Pfizer’s consent form specifies that the effect on sperm, fetuses and nursing children are unknown. Yet health authorities and media have espoused as “fact” that the shot does not affect reproductive health or fertility and is perfectly safe for pregnant and nursing mothers

Pfizer’s documents show they’ve not ruled out the risk of antibody-dependent enhancement. Vaccine-associated enhanced disease (VAED) is listed as an “Important Potential Risk.” As of February 28, 2021, Pfizer had 138 cases of suspected VAED, 75 of which were severe, resulting in hospitalization, disability, life-threatening consequences or death; a total of 38 cases were lethal and 65 remained unresolved

Pfizer and FDA also knew that people of all ages experienced transient suppression of immune function for one week after the first dose

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With another batch of 11,000 Pfizer documents, released April 1, 2022, old suspicions have gained fresh support. As reported by “Rising” cohost Kim Iversen (video above), the first bombshell revelation is that natural immunity works, and Pfizer has known it all along.

The clinical trial data showed there was no difference in outcomes between those with previous COVID infection and those who got the shot. Neither group experienced severe infection. Natural immunity was also statistically identical to the shot in terms of the risk of infection.

Younger Adults More Likely to Experience Side Effects

The second revelation is that side effects from the shots were more severe in younger people, aged 18 to 55, than those aged 55 and older. (The risk of side effects also increased with additional doses, so the risk was higher after the second dose than the first.)

As many of us have said all along, the risk of severe COVID is dramatically lower in younger people than those over 60, which makes an elevated risk of side effects unacceptable.

As noted by The Naked Emperor on Substack,¹ “with a vaccine that is producing more frequent and more severe reactions and adverse events in younger individuals, the vaccine should have been restricted to those who were actually at risk of severe COVID-19.”

Pfizer Documents Show High Rate of Myocarditis

Interestingly, Pfizer’s documentation also includes medical information that mainstream media and fact checkers have labeled as misinformation or disinformation. A pediatric consent form lists several possible side effects, including a myocarditis rate of 10 in 100,000 — far greater than the 1 in 50,000 (i.e., 2 in 100,000) rate previously reported.

We also know that myocarditis is far more frequent in young males, so for them, the risk is significantly higher than 10 in 100,000, as they make up the bulk of these injuries.

Effects on Reproductive Health Are Unknown

The consent form also specifies that the effect on sperm, fetuses and nursing children are unknown. Yet health authorities and media have espoused as “fact” that the shot does not affect reproductive health or fertility and is perfectly safe for pregnant and nursing mothers.

If an effect is unknown, by definition you cannot claim it to be harmless. If you do, you are lying, plain and simple, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is but one in a long list who is guilty of this. She has repeatedly assured the public that the jab poses no health risks to pregnant women or their babies. Here’s Walensky in May 2021:

And here she is, in October 2021, still claiming there are no risks.

Similarly, in August 2021, when Comirnaty was licensed, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, claimed the COVID jab was safe during pregnancy:

Watch the video here

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) also make definitive statements about safety, claiming “Vaccination may occur in any trimester, and emphasis should be on vaccine receipt as soon as possible to maximize maternal and fetal health.”² Yet even the Comirnaty label^3,4states that “available data on Comirnaty administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine associated risks in pregnancy.”

Antibody-Dependent Enhancement Has Not Been Ruled Out

Many who have warned about the possibility of mRNA shots causing antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) — a situation in which you end up being more susceptible to serious infection than you would have been otherwise — have been smeared and demonized by media and labeled as disinformation spreaders.

Yet Pfizer’s own consent form clearly states: “Although not seen to date, it cannot yet be ruled out that the studied vaccine can make a later COVID-19 illness more severe.” As noted by Iversen, if ADE truly was of no concern at all, the consent form would not include it. Yet there it is.

Vaccine-associated enhanced disease (VAED) is also listed as an “Important Potential Risk” in Table 5 on page 11 of a document called “5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports.”⁵

As of February 28, 2021, Pfizer had 138 cases of suspected VAED, 75 of which were severe, resulting in hospitalization, disability, life-threatening consequences or death; a total of 38 cases turned out to be lethal and 65 remained unresolved.^6,7

Moreover, as noted by the Daily Expose,⁸ “Phase 3 clinical trials are designed to uncover frequent or severe side effects before a vaccine is approved for use, including ADE. But herein lies the problem, [because] none of the COVID-19 vaccines have completed Phase 3 trials.”

Pfizer’s Phase 3 trial is due to be completed February 8, 2024⁹ — nearly two years from now! Despite that, Pfizer concluded in its FDA submission that “None of the 75 cases could be definitively considered as VAED.”

“[H]ow on earth could they not definitively conclude that VAED was to blame when 75% of the confirmed ‘break-through’ cases reported to them were severe disease resulting in hospitalization, disability, life-threatening consequences of death?” The Daily Expose asks.¹⁰

Pfizer Knew About Immunosuppression

Another revealing statement found in the documents is this:

“Clinical laboratory evaluation showed a transient decrease in lymphocytes that was observed in all age and dose groups after Dose 1, which resolved within approximately one week …”

In other words, Pfizer knew that, in the first week after the shot, people of all ages experienced transient immunosuppression, or put another way, a temporary weakening of the immune system, after the first dose.

As noted by Iversen, this may have skewed infection rates, as people were not considered partially vaccinated until 14 days after their first shot,¹¹ and officially fully vaccinated two weeks after the second dose.

If people are susceptible to infection during that first week, yet are counted as unvaccinated during that time, this makes it appear as though the unvaccinated are more prone to infection when that’s simply not true. Pfizer’s own trial showed infection was significantly more common in the vaccine group than the placebo group — 409 versus 287 — within the first seven days of the jab.¹²

Fully Vaxxed Are More Likely to Die From COVID

The fact that Pfizer and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration were aware the shot caused immunosuppression is incriminating, now that U.K. government data show that, compared to the unvaccinated, those who have received two doses are:¹³

• Up to three times more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19
• Twice more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19
• Three times more likely to die of COVID-19

The Pfizer documents admit there was a temporary drop in immune function after the first dose, but the real-world data showing an increased risk of severe infection and death due to COVID among the double jabbed suggest ADE may indeed be at play later on as well.

The chart below, created by the Daily Expose,¹⁴ using data from the UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance Report for week 13, 2022¹⁵ (pages 40 and 45), reveals who’s more likely to get COVID. And the infection rate for triple-vaxxed is even higher than the double vaxxed.

The next chart was created by the Daily Expose¹⁶ using data from pages 41 and 45, comparing COVID hospitalization rates.

And, finally, there is a comparison of the death rates, based on pages 44 and 45 of the UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance Report for week 13, 2022.¹⁷ Anyone over the age of 40 who has been double jabbed is now more likely to die of COVID than an unvaccinated person of the same age.

Negative Vaccine Effectiveness in the Real World

The Daily Expose goes on to calculate and graph the real-world effectiveness rate of the COVID jab, and it’s dire news:¹⁸

“If the rates per 100,000 are higher among the vaccinated, which they are, then this means the COVID-19 injections are proving to have a negative effectiveness in the real-world. And by using Pfizer’s vaccine effectiveness formula we can accurately decipher what the real-world effectiveness among each age group actually is.

Pfizer’s vaccine formula: Unvaccinated Rate per 100k – Vaccinated Rate per 100k / Unvaccinated Rate per 100k x 100 = Vaccine Effectiveness …

This data shows that all double vaccinated people over age 18 are between 2 and 3 times more likely to be infected, with a minus-87% vaccine effectiveness among 18 to 29 year olds, and a minus-178% vaccine effectiveness among the over 80’s.

[A]ll double vaccinated people over age 30 are between 0.2 and 2 times more likely to be hospitalized, with a minus-1% vaccine effectiveness among 30 to 39 year olds, and a minus-76% vaccine effectiveness among the over 80’s.

The following chart shows the real world COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against death among the double vaccinated population in England, based on the death rates provided above …

[A]ll double vaccinated people over age 40 are between 2 and 3 times more likely to die of COVID-19, with a minus-90% vaccine effectiveness among 30 to 39 year olds, and a minus-156% vaccine effectiveness among the over 80’s.”

Pfizer Hired 600 to Process Unprecedented Report Load

For the last two years, we’ve been keeping an eye on the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), shaking our heads in disbelief as the numbers shot up by the hundreds every single week, rapidly outpacing injuries for every other vaccine combined over the past 32 years.¹⁹

As of March 25, 2022, there were 1,205,753 COVID jab-related reports, including 145,781 hospitalizations and 26,396 deaths.²⁰ There has never been a medical product in modern history that can compare. Nothing has been as injurious and lethal as these experimental injections.

In an earlier batch of documents, we learned Pfizer received 42,086 case reports containing a total of 158,893 events in the first three months of the rollout. In that release, the number of doses shipped was redacted, but in the April 1, 2022, release, it was left unredacted, which means we can now calculate the rate of adverse events reported to Pfizer in those first three months.

Between December 2020 and the end of February 2021, Pfizer shipped out 126,212,580 doses of its mRNA jab worldwide. Divided by 158,000 side effects, we get an adverse event rate per dose of nearly 1 in 800,²¹ which is just crazy irresponsible.

We now also have documentation showing Pfizer, by the end of February 2021, had hired 600 additional full-time employees to process the unprecedented influx of adverse event reports, and they predicted that by the end of June 2021, they’d end up hiring more than 1,800.²²

In the end, the COVID jab will go down in history as the biggest medical malfeasance ever to occur with the willing participation of both drug companies and regulatory agencies. And there’s no end in sight.

In March 2022, the FDA went ahead and authorized doses 4 and 5, based on a preprint study^23,24that found a fourth Moderna shot was 11% effective and caused side effects in 40% of recipients, and a fourth Pfizer shot was 30% effective and caused side effects in 80% of people.

I’m not sure what it’ll take for this public health nightmare to end and for the responsible parties to be held to account for their criminal negligence, but apparently, we’ve not hit critical mass outrage yet.

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Notes

^1, 12 The Naked Emperor Substack March 29, 2022

^2, 3 The Defender March 15, 2022

⁴ Meryl Nass Substack March 14, 2022

^5, 6 5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports, Page 11, Table 5

^{7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16, 18} Daily Expose April 3, 2022

⁹ Clinical Trials NCT04368728

¹¹ MMWR March 19, 2021; 70(11): 396-401

^15, 17 UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance Report for week 13, 2022

^19, 21, 22 The Defender April 5, 2022

²⁰ OpenVAERS As of March 25, 2022

²³ MedRxiv February 15, 2022, DOI: 10.1101/2022.02.15.22270948

²⁴ NEJM Correspondence March 16, 2022 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2202542

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Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, will enable the government to further control what media Canadians see on social media.

According to the Bill, search engines, like Google, will be required to boost news organizations that promote “racialized communities, cultural and linguistic minorities, LGBTQ2+ communities, and persons with disabilities.” Consequently, non-compliant news publishers not focusing on such progressive topics will be punished by receiving lower rankings in searches.

Trusted organizations like The Counter Signal, True North, Rebel News, and The Post Millennial will be shuffled to the last page of search results.

In addition to Bill C-11, Trudeau has now issued a notice that he will also be tabling a new act to regulate the online news industry in the country.

As Law professor Michael Geist points out, “In my post today, I make the case that the government’s defence of Bill C-11 has been “cartoonishly misleading.” Assurances that only companies are regulated or that platforms will choose how to contribute mislead on the bill’s implications.”

“Yesterday, Liberal MPs:

1. Assured the House that digital-first creators were outside Bill C-11
2. Effectively admitted they were in but claimed would be excluded by a still-secret policy direction
3. Dismissed creator concerns as “YouTube talking points.”

Yesterday, Liberal MPs:
1️⃣assured the House that digital first creators were outside Bill C-11
2️⃣effectively admitted they were in but claimed would be excluded by a still-secret policy direction
3️⃣dismissed creator concerns as “Youtube talking points” 2/2https://t.co/StGI476Ceb

— Michael Geist (@mgeist) March 30, 2022

Of course, the Trudeau government is trying fruitlessly to spin this as a positive action, one that will help “oppressed communities,” and “strengthen trusted news sources in Canada.”

In reality, this is more tyrannical action to boost ideologically friendly content and punish critical news organizations.

In a somewhat goofy video, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez tells Canadians what Bill C-11 is supposedly intended to do:

1. Make it easier to find Canadian stories and music.
2. Support Canadian artists and create jobs.
3. Support racialized and Indigenous creators.
4. Make more accessible content.
5. Make sure streaming services contribute to Canadian culture.

.@OurCommons is debating the Online Streaming Act today. What does it do? 5 things!👇🏼 #cdnpoli #C11 pic.twitter.com/6OwH6GQjPN

— Pablo Rodriguez (@pablorodriguez) March 29, 2022

According to Rodriguez, all this will do is make Facebook and Google promote more Canadian news organizations and content creators. Obviously, that is not the whole truth.

The question is which Canadian news organizations will be promoted? And the answer is, of course, government-approved news organizations.

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Anyone concerned about the WHO Pandemic Treaty, now inviting submissions from the general public. There is a short submission period, so this is urgent.

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.

It is very easy to fill out the WHO submissions form here.

Public hearings regarding a new international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response: written component

As a professional career librarian, I have just published my own 250-word-limit submission, which I invite anyone to copy and use.

After careful thought, I don’t believe that each submission needs to be original.  The main thing is that you will have expressed an educated voice. (My submission was approved by an epidemiologist.)

This can be done in 10 minutes.  It’s easy.

***

WHO Public hearings regarding a new international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response: written component

By Elizabeth Woodworth

A new international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response should include the following substantive elements:

1. The word “pandemic” should be understood to mean its classic 2003 WHO definition:  “An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” https://web.archive.org/web/20030202200410/http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/pandemic/en/index.html

2. “No immunity” means NO IMMUNITY.  Many people were immune to SARS-2; particularly people who had SARS-1 eighteen years earlier, and also many who had had coronavirus infections during their lives did well with it.

3. “Enormous numbers of deaths and illnesses” does not apply to figures such as those given by Dr. John Ioannidis re SARS-2, in “The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 i data,” published in Bull. World Health Organ, Oct. 14, 2020. The infection survival rates given were:

Age 0-19,  99.973%

Age 20-29, 99.986%

Age 30-39, 99.969%

Age 40-49, 99.918%

Age 50-59, 99.73%

Age 60-69, 99.41%

Age 70+, 97.6% (non inst.)

Age 70+,  94.5% (Inst.)  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33716331/

4. Preparedness and response elements developed in an instrument to address future pandemics, as described in #1 above, should be limited to ADVISORY GUIDELINES ONLY.

5. Such guidelines should be developed democratically through consultation with the national governments of the world

6. It MUST be stated in the instrument that all countries will be free to voluntarily accept or reject the guidelines instrument at any given future time.

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Independent data from the UK and New Zealand show the same thing: the more you vaccinate, the greater your chance of getting infected. It was supposed to be the other way around, wasn’t it? 

It doesn’t get any more insane than this: the more you vaccinate, the greater your chance of getting COVID. Vaccinate 3 times and your risk of getting COVID is 3 times worse than an unvaccinated person.

Government data from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, shows that the more you vaccinate, the more likely you are to being infected:

1. The Covid-19 Scam & Vaccines (see section entitled “Fully-vaccinated infected at twice the rate of the un-vaccinated” for the UK data)
2. NZ Ministry of Health data shows Triple Vaccinated are now more Vulnerable to Covid Infection and Hospitalisation than the Unvaccinated
3. Record breaking wave of Covid-19 across Australia sees deaths 1700% higher than the start of the Pandemic; & the Fully Vaccinated account for 4 in every 5 of them
4. UK Government COVID-19 vaccine surveillance reports: Look for Table 13 or 14 entitled: ”Unadjusted rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalisation and death in vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.” For Weeks 4 and beyond, look at the first two columns. You’ll see that the numbers get worse and worse and worse over time. There is no way to explain this effect other than the vaccine is making people more and more susceptible to infection over time, likely by destroying our natural immunity. Here is the most recent table (from Week 13):

So the vaccine is working exactly the OPPOSITE of what it is supposed to do. It is helping you to get the virus!!!

In any rational world, we would stop the vaccines immediately.

But, hey, this isn’t a rational world.

Instead of stopping the vaccines, the UK government stopped the data

I’m serious. You can’t make this up. Check this out:

Summary

When the numbers show the vaccine not only don’t work and are harming people, they fix that by stopping the collection and release of the data.

This is how science now works. It’s about belief in authority, not data transparency and evidence. The latter is “old school” thinking.

Your government wants you to know that they can always be trusted to do what is good for people and you shouldn’t ask questions, but just blindly follow what you are told to do.

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The Russian bombardment and siege of Ukraine has captured the attention of the world and the Western powers are arming, funding and providing political and humanitarian support for the Ukrainians. Meanwhile, Palestine has slipped off the global agenda and besieged, blockaded and bombed Gaza has become invisible.

Among the masses of foreign correspondents currently in Ukraine are a few who have reported on damage to Ukraine’s cultural heritage. UNESCO has revealed that at least 35 sites have been damaged, although none of those on the organisation’s World Heritage list have been affected, thus far.

On February 23, the day before Russia invaded Ukraine, Al Haq, the Palestinian human rights organisation, released a report entitled, “Cultural Apartheid, Israel’s Erasure of Palestinian Heritage in Gaza”. The report is based on an investigation by Forensic-Architecture, a research organisation based in London, which managed to virtually reconstruct key ancient sites in the Israeli-occupied and bombarded Gaza strip.

Al Haq and Forensic-Architecture accuse Israel of using strategic strikes to erase Gaza’s rich cultural heritage, thereby denying Palestinians, as Al Haq put it, their “right to self-determination over their cultural resources, and by extension threatens their existence as a people”.

Around 12,000 archaeological sites have been surveyed in the Palestinian territories since the 1967 Israeli occupation. Three West Bank Palestinian sites have been chosen for UNESCO’s World Heritage List: the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, the Old City of Al Khalil (Hebron) , and the cultural landscape of southern Jerusalem around the village of Batir. UNESCO dubbed the latter: “Palestine, Land of Olives and Vines”, as the hills around Batir is terraced for olive orchards and vegetable gardens which are watered by traditional underground networks.

Since Jerusalem’s Old City and its walls are disputed, UNESCO has not assigned them to either Palestine or Israel.

The State of Palestine has submitted three sites in Gaza to UNESCO for consideration.

Situated near Al Shati refugee camp, Anthedon Harbour is the oldest known port on the Gaza Mediterranean coast. Anthedon Harbour, which was seriously damaged during Israel’s 2021 bombing of Gaza, was inhabited between 800 BC to 1100 AD and  served as a major trading hub on the commercial route between Europe and the Levant.

The ancient Roman settlement of Tel Umm Amer, the birthplace of St.Hilarion, near Al Nusairat village on the Gaza coast. The settlement was located on the road connecting Mesopotamia to Egypt.

One of the most important coastal wetlands on the eastern Mediterranean is Wadi Gaza which stretches 105 kilometres from the Negev hills and the southern Hebron heights to the East Gaza truce line and follows a circuitous route for seven kilometres through Gaza. The wetlands is not only rich in diversity of flora and fauna, but also a staging area for migratory birds.

These sites delve deep into Gaza’s history as a land bridge between between Egypt and Mesopotamia/Iraq and the Levant and, on the continental scale, between Africa and West Asia. Gaza was a crossroads of multiple civilisations: Egyptian, Greek, Mesopotamian, Persian and Arab, to name the key empires which impacted on this narrow coastal strip until Israel was established, imprisoned Palestine in an alien occupation and halted traffic along the Palestinian coast.

During its 1948-49 war, Israel drove the inhabitants from cities, towns and villages into Gaza where refugees now count for 70 per cent of the strip’s 2.1 million people. The destructive impact of this influx and long-term presence on Gaza’s rich cultural heritage cannot be calculated. Contractors building housing, infrastructure, and manufacturing plants have both destroyed heritage sites and made extensive collections of ancient Greek pottery, coins, and Islamic relics while fishermen and swimmers continue to discover and sell antiquities washed onto beaches or dredged up from the sea.

In 2008, builder Jawdat Khoudary opened a one-room museum, called Al Madhaf, to display some of his treasures. Located off the coast near the Shati refugee camp, l-Madhaf welcomes bus loads of school children who have little knowledge of the long history of their beleaguered and impoverished. I visited Al Madhaf in January 2009 after it was struck by shrapnel and pottery smashed when Israel bombed a nearby sports field during its 2008-2009 attack on Gaza.

A second museum has been opened at Al Qarara, an ancient site south of Gaza city, by Muhammad and Najla Abu Lahia.  The collection features artifacts from 4,000 BC through the Roman, Byzantine, early Islamic and Ottoman empires and includes wooden ploughs, horse saddles, baskets and items used half a century ago.

During Israel’s 2014 offensive, Al Haq reported the destruction of 61 and damage to 120 mosques and partial damage to  a church.  During the May 2021 Israeli onslaught both ancient and modern and heritage sites were targeted or indirectly damaged due to bombing of nearby areas as well as 124 places of worship. Among the sites struck were the Great Omari Mosque, the second oldest in Palestine; the Kitib Al Walaya Mosque, the historic Church of Saint Porphyrius, and Tal Umm Amer and the ruins of Saint Hilarion monastary.

Al Haq has called on the International Criminal Court to initiate prosecutions of Israel for targeting cultural property as this “fundamentally affects the core of [Palestinians’] identity and [their] existence as a people” and constitutes a crime against humanity”. Furthermore, destruction of cultural heritage which takes place under an illegal apartheid regime is also a crime against humanity.

By destroying Palestinian connections to their land, the civilisations which have ruled Gaza, and its distinctive culture, Israel seeks to set Gazans adrift from their national identity and nullify their claim to Palestine. This is what Daesh tried to do by devastating the heritage of Syria and Iraq with the aim of destroying the millennial identities of Syrians and Iraqis so they would submit to the cult’s harsh, uncivilised regime.

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Transcending COVID-19 and the Climate Crisis Deceptions

By Mark Keenan, April 13, 2022

Manmade climate change is nothing more than UN, WEF and EU promoted non-evidence-based propaganda. I am a signatory of the Climate Intelligence Group European Climate Declaration, a declaration that has been signed by 1,000 scientists in climate and related fields, that asserts “the proclaimed climate crisis exists in computer models only”.

The “China Threat” and the Solomon Islands

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, April 14, 2022

In a quick visit to Honiara to have discussions with Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, Seselja stated that Australia remained dedicated to supporting the security needs of the Solomon Islands, and would do so “swiftly, transparently and with full respect for its sovereignty”.  The Pacific country remained a friend, part of the “Pacific family”.

Video: Canada PM Justin Trudeau Seeking to Forcibly Silence News Outlet

By Tucker Carlson and Ezra Levant, April 14, 2022

Rebel News founder Ezra Levant speaks out to Tucker after government denies newly-created journalism ‘license’.

How the U.S. Regime Lies About Its Lying

By Eric Zuesse, April 13, 2022

The U.S. regime (including its ‘news’-media) don’t lie only about what is happening, but also about their lies about what their lying; and, in this, they might exceed even what Hitler’s propaganda-chief Joseph Goebbels managed to achieve during the 1930s and 40s.

Bang, Bang, Bang—Terrifying Here; Heroic Over There. More Weapons for Ukraine vs. Mass Shootings in NYC

By Barbara Nimri Aziz, April 13, 2022

New Yorkers and many Americans across the country are staggered by today’s subway shootings. It’s like a film, or a news item from the new European ‘theater of war’. Am I alone in seeing the connection between the urging of Americans for more weapons for fighters in Ukraine, an unprecedented budget for the Pentagon and gun violence in U.S. neighborhoods?

Ukraine: Bucha “False Flag” Falling Apart: “International Community” Calling ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan … No Response

By Stephen Karganovic, April 13, 2022

The Bucha false flag scenario is inexorably falling apart just days after it was noisily launched. Not tarrying far behind the “international community” political clowns, whose boiler plate “assessments” of what supposedly happened hit the airwaves within an hour of the alleged occurrence, the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague also made it known that it was interested in the case.

The Collapse of America: Distant Early Warning Signs of Uncle Sam’s Demise. Andrei Martyanov.

By Michael Welch, April 13, 2022

In the previous instalment of this two part series, we painted a portrait of an American Empire that was constantly failing in its military engagements in, really, all of its pursuits, from Afghanistan and Iraq, to Libya and Syria, to Venezuela, Bolivia and even the crucial flash-point now in Ukraine. In a nutshell, the U.S. has lost ground in every military venture it pursued since the turn of the century.

Video: New Documentary: Watch the Water

By Stew Peters, Nicholas Stumphauzer, and Lauren Witzke, April 13, 2022

How did the world get sick, how did Covid really spread, and did the Satanic elite tell the world about this bioweapon ahead of time? Dr. Bryan Ardis has unveiled a shocking connection between this pandemic and the eternal battle of good and evil which began in the Garden of Eden.

The Pimps of War: Chris Hedges

By Chris Hedges, April 13, 2022

The unaccountable coterie of neocons and liberal interventionists who orchestrated two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East are now stoking a suicidal war with Russia. The same cabal of warmongering pundits, foreign policy specialists and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate.

Epidemic: German and Austrian Mayors Under 60 Are ‘Suddenly and Unexpectedly’ Dropping Dead

By Amy Mek, April 13, 2022

Since December 2020, many sudden and unexpected deaths of mayors under 60 years old have occurred in Germany and Austria. Questions are swirling about whether these elected officials were overwhelmed by job stress, or could there be another reason for so many “fit and healthy” politicians dying?

NATO Admits It Wants ‘Ukrainians to Keep Dying’ to Bleed Russia, Not Peace

By Ben Norton, April 13, 2022

In a shockingly blunt admission, The Washington Post acknowledged that some NATO member states want “Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying” in order to prevent Russia from making political gains. In an April 5 report on peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, the major US newspaper disclosed that NATO is afraid that Kiev may give in to some of Moscow’s demands.

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Rebel News founder Ezra Levant speaks out to Tucker after government denies newly-created journalism ‘license’.

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While Russian forces appear on the verge of liberating the port city Mariupol, the second-largest city in the Donetsk Oblast in east Ukraine, thus claiming a major strategic victory in the Russo-Ukraine War, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss resorted to the oldest trick in the NATO’s psyops’ playbook of accusing adversaries of staging chemical weapons attacks and tweeted Monday:

“Reports that Russian forces may have used chemical agents in an attack on the people of Mariupol. We are working urgently with partners to verify details. Any use of such weapons would be a callous escalation in this conflict and we will hold Putin and his regime to account.”

Reports that Russian forces may have used chemical agents in an attack on the people of Mariupol. We are working urgently with partners to verify details.

Any use of such weapons would be a callous escalation in this conflict and we will hold Putin and his regime to account.

— Liz Truss (@trussliz) April 11, 2022

Inanely parroting the unsubstantiated claim by the NATO patrons, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky alleged Monday night that Russia could resort to chemical weapons as it massed troops in the eastern Donbas region for an assault on Mariupol.

Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said the government was checking “unverified information” that Russia might have used chemical weapons while besieging Mariupol. “There is a theory that these could be phosphorous munitions,” Malyar said in televised comments.

The self-styled governor of the eastern Donetsk region appointed by Kyiv, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said he had seen incident reports on possible chemical weapons use in Mariupol but could not confirm them.

“We know that last night around midnight a drone dropped some so-far unknown explosive device, and the people that were in and around the Mariupol metal plant, there were three people, they began to feel unwell,” he told reporters. They were taken to hospital and their lives were not in danger, he added.

Although Russia unequivocally denied using chemical weapons in Mariupol, in any case the use of white phosphorous is not banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). In fact, the United States itself used plenty of white phosphorus munitions in its campaign against the Islamic State in Syria’s Raqqa in 2017. White phosphorus is mainly used for lighting up the night sky in conflict zones to prevent hit-and-run tactics adopted by insurgent groups in the dark of the night against regular military forces.

But the real reason the dubious allegation of use of chemical weapons by Russian forces has been leveled by Ukraine’s security forces and their international backers is that the battle for Mariupol has reached a decisive phase, with Ukraine’s CIA-trained neo-Nazi militias holed up in the Azovstal industrial district and considering laying down their heavy weapons in exchange for getting a safe corridor for evacuation from the battle zone.

Should the Russian forces seize Azovstal, they would be in full control of Mariupol, the lynchpin between Russian-held areas to the west and east, and would proclaim a major strategic victory against Ukraine’s security forces and allied ultra-nationalist militias.

It’s obvious much like her suave American counterpart, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who has made more asinine gaffes in his yearlong diplomatic career than “Sleepy Joe” made in over forty-year political career, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss isn’t much of a news junkie, either.

Otherwise, before resorting to the absurd allegation that Russian forces might have used chemical agents in Mariupol, she would certainly have recalled that in a bombshell NBC scoop published April 7, the authors of the report alleged that US spy agencies used deliberate and selective intelligence leaks to mainstream news outlets to mount a disinformation campaign against Russia during the latter’s month-long military offensive in Ukraine, despite being aware the intelligence wasn’t credible.

The US intelligence assessment that Russia was preparing to use chemical weapons in the Ukraine War, that was widely reported in the corporate media previously and once again being resorted to by Ukraine’s politicians and their NATO patrons, was an unsubstantiated claim leaked to the press as a tit-for-tat response to the damning Russian allegation that Ukraine was pursuing an active biological weapons program, in collaboration with Washington, in scores of bio-labs discovered by Russian forces in Ukraine in the early days of the military campaign.

The NBC report notes:

“It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: US officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine. President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three US officials told NBC News this week there was no evidence Russia had brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the US released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.

“Multiple US officials acknowledged that the US had used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it had used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect, as with chemical agents, and other times, as an official put it, the US was just ‘trying to get inside Putin’s head.’”

Among other revealing facts, the NBC report noted a charge that Russia had turned to China for potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official and two US officials told the news outlet’s correspondents.

“The US officials said there were no indications China was considering providing weapons to Russia. The Biden administration put that out as a warning to China not to do so, they said. The European official described the disclosure as ‘a public game to prevent any military support from China.’”

Thus, niftily forestalling the likelihood of strengthening of mutually beneficial bonds between China and Russia when the latter is badly in need for economic relief, the United States pre-emptively accused China of pledging to sell military hardware to Russia, when the latter, itself one of the world’s leading arms exporters, didn’t even make any such request to China.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan held an intense seven-hour meeting in Rome with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on March 15, and warned China of “grave consequences” of evading Western sanctions on Russia. Besides wielding the stick of economic sanctions, he must also have dangled the carrot of ending trade war against China, initiated by the Trump administration and continued by the Biden administration, until Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.

As far as military power is concerned, Russia with its enormous arsenal of conventional as well as nuclear weapons more or less equals the military power of the United States. But it’s the much more subtle and insidious tactic of economic warfare for which Russia seems to have no answer following the break-up of the Soviet Union in the nineties and consequent dismantling of the once-thriving communist bloc, spanning Eastern Europe, Latin America and many socialist states in Asia and Africa in the sixties.

The current global neocolonial order is being led by the United States and its West European clients since the signing of the Bretton Woods Accord in 1945 following the Second World War. Historically, any state, particularly those inclined to pursue socialist policies, that dared to challenge the Western monopoly over global trade and economic policies was internationally isolated and its national economy went bankrupt over a period of time.

But for once, it appears quite plausible that in its relentless efforts to internationally isolate Russia, the Biden administration is likely to unravel the whole neocolonial economic order imposed on the world after the signing of the Bretton Woods Accord in 1945 after European powers devastated by the war reluctantly accepted Washington’s diktat of pegging their currencies to the US dollar, backed by gold reserves, a practice that has since been abandoned in the seventies, thus conceding the dollar hegemony in the global financial system.

Ukraine’s infamous Azov Battalion, widely acknowledged as a neo-Nazi volunteer 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 of nurturing ultra-nationalist militias in east Ukraine in order to mount a war of attrition against Russia.

Speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash on April 3, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “NATO allies have supported Ukraine for many, many years,” adding that military aid has been “stepped up over the last weeks since the invasion.” The official clarified that “NATO allies like the United States, but also the United Kingdom and Canada and some others, have trained Ukrainian troops for years.”

According to Stoltenberg’s estimates, “tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops” had received such training, and were now “at the front fighting against invading Russian forces.” The secretary general went on to credit the Brussels-based alliance with the fact that the “Ukrainian armed forces are much bigger, much better equipped, much better trained and much better led now than ever before.”

In addition to a longstanding CIA program aimed at cultivating an anti-Russian insurgency in Ukraine, Canada’s Department of National Defense revealed on January 26, two days following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that the Canadian Armed Forces trained “nearly 33,000 Ukrainian military and security personnel in a range of tactical and advanced military skills.” While The United Kingdom, via Operation Orbital, trained 22,000 Ukrainian fighters, as noted by NATO’s informed secretary general.

In an explosive scoop, Zach Dorfman reported for the Yahoo News on March 16:

“As part of the Ukraine-based training program, CIA paramilitaries taught their Ukrainian counterparts sniper techniques; how to operate U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles and other equipment; how to evade digital tracking the Russians used to pinpoint the location of Ukrainian troops, which had left them vulnerable to attacks by artillery; how to use covert communications tools; and how to remain undetected in the war zone while also drawing out Russian and insurgent forces from their positions, among other skills, according to former officials.

“When CIA paramilitaries first traveled to eastern Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s initial 2014 incursion, their brief was twofold. First, they were ordered to determine how the agency could best help train Ukrainian special operations personnel fight the Russian military forces, and their separatist allies, waging a grinding war against Ukrainian troops in the Donbas region. But the second part of the mission was to test the mettle of the Ukrainians themselves, according to former officials.”

Besides the CIA’s clandestine program for training Ukraine’s largely conscript military and allied neo-Nazi militias in east 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 cruise missiles killing at least 35 militants on March 13, Dorfman claims in a separate January report that the CIA also ran a covert program for training Ukraine’s special forces at an undisclosed facility in the southern United States.

“The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials.

“While the covert program, run by paramilitaries working for the CIA’s Ground Branch — now officially known as Ground Department — was established by the Obama administration after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and expanded under the Trump administration, the Biden administration has further augmented it.”

By 2015, as part of this expanded anti-Russia effort, CIA Ground Branch paramilitaries also “started traveling to the front in eastern Ukraine” to advise and assist Ukraine’s security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias there. The multiweek, US-based CIA program included “training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like cover and move, intelligence and other areas.”

One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. “The United States is training an insurgency,” said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how “to kill Russians.”

Going back decades, the CIA had provided limited training to Ukrainian intelligence units to try and shore up a US-allied Kyiv and undermine Russian influence, but cooperation ramped up after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 following the Maidan coup toppling pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a former CIA executive confided to Dorfman.

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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 Af-Pak and Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to Global Research.

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***

When sixteen African states abstained and one (Eritrea) voted against the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia over the war in Ukraine – the Western World pretended to ignore it.  “So what, they abstained because probably do not even know where Ukraine is” – disparaging remarks appeared.  But the position of South Africa, Congo, Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Mozambique, Namibia, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Senegal, Madagascar, Mali, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi and Algeria was by no means accidental.  On the contrary, it is an evident geostrategic calculation, significantly influencing the global balance of power and related to Russia’s growing economic and political presence in Africa.

Against Neo-colonialism

The return of Russians to Africa is easier because of the still alive and positive memory of the Soviet help for decolonisation processes and building the foundations for economic independence there.  Today, the Russians also offer their mutually beneficial support, primarily within the range of the energy transformation, the most important issue of our times.  After decades of Western neo-imperialism and the disastrous experiences of e.g. cooperation with Americans in the oil sector (especially in Nigeria), African states are now turning primarily towards Beijing.  China acts as a less strict lender, offering loans without condition to adopt its own political system, but also as a flexible investor and a huge market, especially for energy.  Between 2000 and 2014 Angola, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya and DRC received $49.2 billion of Chinese loans.  At the same time, Russia proposes a technological alternative to Western expansion, whether it is aimed at deposits of rare earth elements (CAR, Congo, Mozambique), or at the cos(t)mical projects of transforming the entire Sahara into one big photovoltaic farm (southern Algeria, northern Mali, Sudan).  The Moscow offer is simpler and briefly called: ROSATOM.

The Race of Technology and Politics

Yes, Russian energy policy is not only about gas and oil, although ROSNEFT is also successfully dealing with African markets (Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan, Mozambique, Nigeria and Libya).  The $76 billion contract with South Africa, emblematic for Russian nuclear expansion, was blocked in 2017 in effect of the Western competitors’ hysterical attacks, launching all their South African political assets. But there is a chance for it at least partly revival, what was not excluded by the President Cyril Ramaphosa.

During these few years, ROSATOM has learned a lot and today the Russians do not operate in Africa without an active soft power.  Significant example was the Russia-Africa Summit, organised in Sochi in 2019, which was the unquestionable success of Vladimir Putin, but also pure facts speak, as the cancellation of $20 billion African countries debts from the Soviet era.  In effect ROSATOM builds i.a. a power plant in Egypt for $29 billion, the investment in Zambia is worth $10 billion and Russians are present in Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Nigeria etc.  The Russian offer is perfectly formatted for the needs of smaller (albeit a relative) African states and the local dispersed energy market, an excellent example of which is the 1,000 MW nuclear power plant for Ghana worth $4.2 billion.

Nuclear Energy

Paradoxically, Western countries, as UK loudly announced cutting themselves off from Russian gas thanks to nuclear technology, especially SMR (small modular reactors), which are still mostly a promise costing taxpayers hundreds of million grants for private investors and their research programs, with another £120 million for Rolls-Royce in the UK as an infamous example.  Meanwhile, the Russians already have such technology (small RITM-200 reactors), adapting it from their nuclear icebreakers for the electrification of Africa.  Let’s be serious: how would the West cope in the nuclear race with a country that accounts for 8% of global uranium production, 20% of its coversion and 43% of enrichment?

Is Socialism Still Alive in Russia-Africa-China Relations?

And yet nuclear and oil are not everything, there are also Russian investments in diamond mining (ALROSA in Angola and Zimbabwe).  There is a Russian arms trade with Nigeria, Egypt and 28 other African countries worth at least $12 billion.

It is also the presence of Russian private military agencies in 19 African countries.  Just before the pandemic, 2018-2019, trade between Russia and Africa increased by 17% to $20 billion and is now rising rapidly to jump this threshold.

Meanwhile, subordinated to the US Western Europe dreams about the assumed energy goals, i.e. deepening dependence on American LNG.  And all of it is supposed to be achieved thanks to the further neo-colonial energy exploitation of Africa!  When thousands of African students attend again Russian universities… Do we need better proof of the blindness and arrogance of the colonisers’ descendants?

Because although tactically Moscow announced “the decline of Leninism” in her policy for the close neighbourhood –  the World struggle against Western imperialism nonetheless prevails.  Moreover, on the continent, where only 43% residents have constant access to energy other than biomass burning – the words about changing the (geo)political system with electrification are not just a forgotten slogan.

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

Featured image: Central African Republic solidarity demonstration with Russia

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***

The U.S. regime (including its ‘news’-media) don’t lie only about what is happening, but also about their lies about what their lying; and, in this, they might exceed even what Hitler’s propaganda-chief Joseph Goebbels managed to achieve during the 1930s and 40s.

For example: on April 6th, NBC ‘News’ bannered “In a break with the past, U.S. is using intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn’t rock solid”, and sub-headed: “‘It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence,’ one U.S. official said. ‘It’s more important to get out ahead of them [the Russians], Putin specifically, before they do something.’”

But isn’t that exactly what they, themselves, had done during 2002 and 2003, about “Saddam’s WMD”? So, that headline’s first five words, “In a break with the past,” are clearly a lie, a lie about PRIOR lies about that headline’s closing seven words, “even when the intel isn’t rock solid.”

After all: They lied through their teeth in 2002 and 2003 about, as George W. Bush put it in a joint press conference with his poodle dog Tony Blair on 7 September 2002,

“We just heard the Prime Minister talk about the new report. I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied — finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need [in order for Congress to authorize an invasion of Iraq].”

And, even though the IAEA promptly and repeatedly said that that “new report” by them was entirely fictitious and never existed (and all of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media ignored what the IAEA were repeatedly saying about that matter), the U.S. regime simply continued stating and expanding upon its lie, right up until their 20 March 2003 entirely unprovoked invasion and destruction of that Russia-friendly regime in Iraq and replacement of it by the U.S.-and-allied stooge regimes ever since.

As regards specifically U.S. ‘intelligence’-involvement in that lying-for-the-regime in order to get the U.S.-and-allied invasion-destruction of Iraq, the lying CNN emblazoned the lying Washington Post’s lying Bob Woodward’s lying George Tenet’s (Director of the CIA, no less) lying to allege that the CIA’s ‘intelligence’ is what “was very important in his [Bush’s] decision making” about whether or not to attack Iraq.

CNN’s headline on 19 April 2004 was “Woodward: Tenet told Bush WMD case a ‘slam dunk’.” But, then, after three more years had passed, the lying Reuters news agency headlined “Ex-CIA chief says ‘slam dunk’ Iraq quote misused” and opened:

“A former U.S. spy chief accused President George W. Bush’s administration of ruining his reputation by misusing a ‘slam dunk’ comment he made during a White House meeting ahead of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.”

They continued:

“Former CIA director George Tenet told CBS Television’s ‘60 Minutes’ that the administration leaked his comment as opposition to the war grew when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.”

In other words: Tenet was NOT saying that he had not used that phrase ( “slam-dunk”) in order for his boss, the U.S. President, “to make a public case for the war” (Tenet admitted there that he HAD done exactly that), but, INSTEAD, Tenet was alleging that (as the lying Reuters phrased on the basis of the lying CBS ‘News’) “‘You don’t do this. You don’t throw somebody overboard just because it’s a deflection. Is that honorable? It’s not honorable to me’, Tenet said in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday.”

In its turn, the lying CBS ‘News’ had reported this entire matter by BURYING (not even so much as MENTIONING) the fact that never in that interview did Tenet DENY that he had used the phrase “slam-dunk” in order to assure the President that Bush would have the CIA’s full support backing him up if and when the President would decide to invade Iraq. That entire issue — of whether the CIA Director served the public, or instead served only the President — was, in fact, buried right near the end of the interview, almost as an afterthought, when the CBS ‘News’ correspondent followed Tenet’s statement on the matter by:

Is that honorable? It’s not honorable to me. You know, at the end of the day, the only thing you have is trust and honor in this world. It’s all you have. All you have is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor. And when you don’t have that anymore, well, there you go. Trust was broken,” Tenet says.

“Between you and the White House?” Pelley asks,

“You bet. You bet,” Tenet says.

Still, the president awarded Tenet the nation’s highest honor for a civilian, the Medal of Freedom.

Asked if he was conflicted about accepting the medal, Tenet says, “Well, there was conflict.”

In other words: the CBS ‘News’ audience were, themselves, being “deflected” from recognizing (NOT assisted to recognize) that the Director of the U.S. CIA serves the interests of the U.S. President, NOT of the U.S. — NOT of the American people. The CIA’s Director is paid by the American people, but he serves the U.S. regime, which serves its masters — the billionaires who fund all of the successful U.S. politicians.

Similarly, in more recent times, there was the February 2014 U.S. coup in Ukraine that has been consistently lied-about to have been instead a ‘democratic revolution’ there. That’s like the lying about Iraq has been, but it’s even worse (because this mega-lie might bring on WW III).

Today’s U.S. regime would have been able to have taught even the Nazi spinmeister Joseph Goebbels a thing or two about “spinning” “the news.”

Anybody who still doubts this should read John Helmer’s definitive book about the incessant prosecutorial (against Russia) lying in the Dutch trial of the MH17 affair, The Lie that Shot Down MH17, proving, in 2020, that though the U.S-and-allied regimes (including the Dutch U.S.-stooge-government) allege that Russia — or at least its supporters in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region — had shot down the MH17 Malaysian airliner on 14 July 2014 over Ukraine’s war-zone and thus killed 298 people, this shoot-down had actually been done neither by those supporters, nor by Russians, but instead by the Ukrainian vassal-regime as demanded by U.S. President Barack Obama in order to be able to win the EU’s backing to increase yet more their sanctions against Russia.

My own 2019 article, “Update on the MH17 Case”, and my subsequent 2020 “Netherlands ‘Justice’ Is Totally Corrupt: MH17 Case as Example”, placed the MH17 trial into a broader context, which includes the key evidence (such as Russia’s satellite-photos, the pilot’s corpse, the black boxes, and witnesses who lived in the area where the shoot-down had occurred), which evidences the Dutch trial-judge had ruled-out, prohibited to be considered, because Ukraine refused to allow it to be entered into evidence. There was no “Buk” missile involved in that shoot-down.

The evidence is overwhelming and clear: Ukraine’s government had guided MH17 to go over the war-zone; a Ukrainian war-plane there shot into the airliner’s cabin; the pilot’s corpse was actually filled with some of those bullets; and this fusillade of bullets into the pilot simultaneously produced a huge hole in the cabin immediately to the pilot’s left, and thereby suddenly depressurized the air inside the plane, and the plane promptly plunged down from 33,000 feet. None of this evidence was brought up at ‘trial’.

The latest ‘news’ on that ‘trial’ was on 21 December 2021, and was headlined by America’s AP “Dutch prosecutors demand life sentences for downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH17”. Reuters headlined it “Suspects in Dutch trial ‘fully responsible’ for MH17 downing, prosecution says”.

Both ‘news’-reports presented only the Dutch Government’s lie-based argument, that four Russians had “recklessly used a Russian missile to bring down the passenger jet, killing all 298 passengers and crew.” The ‘trial’ ended there. It had all been a PR stunt, for the U.S.-and-allied regimes.

That’s how bad the U.S.-and-allied lying is, about their own lies. Barack Obama, who had produced the Ukraine crisis and then essentially demanded those 298 murders to be done in order to be able to get the international sanctions that he wanted against Russia, to be approved in Europe, got off scot-free for his Ukrainian mega-crimes. And, to this day, no one has actually been convicted for any of those 298 murders.

That’s how bad the U.S.-and-allied lying is. The lies are reported to the public as if they were truths, while the evidence is instead simply hidden from the public.

And so the public don’t know that they were deceived.

But if the public are voting on the basis of beliefs that were created by lies, then the public are being treated as dupes, not as citizens — they are actually “subjects,” instead of “citizens.”

What results from this is inevitably a dictatorship — the U.S. empire.

Though there are elections, they are only s‘elections’ from among the regime’s approved candidates, each one of whom is backed by some of the nation’s wealthiest .001%. So, it’s really just a contest between the billionaires, who are the regime. It’s definitely not a democracy — not at all. The regime’s claim that it is ‘a democracy’ is therefore yet another mega-lie from them.

(This article is being submitted by email simultaneously to all English-language newsmedia, to publish free-of-charge. Let’s see which ones of them make it public — publish it — and which ones instead hide it from their public.)

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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.

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***

New Yorkers and many Americans across the country are staggered by today’s subway shootings. It’s like a film, or a news item from the new European ‘theater of war’.

Am I alone in seeing the connection between the urging of Americans for more weapons for fighters in Ukraine, an unprecedented budget for the Pentagon and gun violence in U.S. neighborhoods?

Daily, the U.S. president is promising more killing devices for Ukraine to meet (our) Russian attackers. There seems to be no limit. And no interest in a diplomatic solution either. Foreign fighters are encouraged to join the Ukraine side, doubtless to train under ‘advisors’ sent by NATO, the Pentagon and related U.S. agencies.

We hear daily calls from the Ukraine leader/media spokesperson/statesman all rolled into one, for more and more—more fighters, more weapons, more surveillance equipment –to counter the Russian foe. I’ve read of extremists sequestered in Syria being let loose in Ukraine to partner with U.S.-supported local neo-Nazi extreme-right fighters.

Ukraine is welcoming hardened kill-for-the-sake-of-killing men who’ve known nothing but that most of their lives. Guns for hire, they’ll relish up-to-date rifles, grenade launchers, and shiny smart missiles to fight anywhere, no questions asked. Whatever its failures in arming extremists in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, the U.S. policy of supporting extremist militants continues.

The promise that there’ll be no U.S. troops on Ukraine soil may mollify the public, but it’s America’s war without a doubt, played to its height by the cunning Ukraine president.

Pictures emerge throughout the day of hapless Ukrainian victims. They look so much like American and European kids, grandmothers, teens; ‘we feel we are in their midst’, ‘it’s we who are under attack’. The overwhelming sympathy is matched by an underlying pleasure—‘At last; we’ve caught the Russians’. ‘At last; we will get rid of Putin and Russian dictatorship’ is embedded within every cry of sympathy for Ukrainians’ suffering.

Quietly but without a doubt U.S. and European arms manufacturers are gloating as they step up production to answer orders from the U.S. Pentagon and State Department. No Congressional votes are needed. Yes, there’s some dismay over increasing oil and gas prices. But Americans will bear it; the price is worth that sacrifice.

Then there’s the rising public support for the U.S. president who until Feb 24^th had been looking rather ineffectual. Today he’s a hero. He seems to be enjoying a war status that coincides neatly with euphoric reports by U.S. and European media who do best in war reporting.

The media are energized and busy, silently gratified that they need not worry about any alternative interpretation of the war’s progress from Russian sources. We heard not a peep of opposition to the U.S. government and the media moguls’ complete blackout of Russian and other outlets that might offer level-headed or alternative accounts of the war. It’s hard to find an honest review of the last decade of Ukrainian political history, or an account of the Minsk Agreements, for example.

Now, in the midst of this war hysteria, comes a mass shooting in New York City. What an affront! How could it disturb the innocent routine of children and their families setting out for school and work?

We forget about how much we enjoy the daily streaming of violent films into our sitting rooms, about the millions who subscribe to porno entertainment, about the video games, most of which involve violence, we buy for our children. War is deeply embedded in our culture.

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Barbara Nimri Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon. 

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Ukraine far-right groups with UK-made rocket launchers (Design: DCUK)

“Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”

By Barbara Nimri Aziz

A century ago Yogmaya and Durga Devi, two women champions of justice, emerged from a remote corner of rural Nepal to offer solutions to their nation’s social and political ills. Then they were forgotten.

Years after their demise, in 1980 veteran anthropologist Barbara Nimri Aziz first uncovered their suppressed histories in her comprehensive and accessible biographies. Revelations from her decade of research led to the resurrection of these women and their entry into contemporary Nepali consciousness.

This book captures the daring political campaigns of these rebel women; at the same time it asks us to acknowledge their impact on contemporary feminist thinking. Like many revolutionaries who were vilified in their lifetimes, we learn about the true nature of these leaders’ intelligence, sacrifices, and vision during an era of social and economic oppression in this part of Asia.

After Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a fledgling democracy and history re-evaluated these pioneers, Dr. Aziz explores their legacies in this book.

Psychologically provocative and astonishingly moving, “Yogmaya and Durga Devi” is a seminal contribution to women’s history.

Click here to order.

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***

The Bucha false flag scenario is inexorably falling apart just days after it was noisily launched. Not tarrying far behind the “international community” political clowns, whose boiler plate “assessments” of what supposedly happened hit the airwaves within an hour of the alleged occurrence, the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague also made it known that it was interested in the case. And that is where the above referenced Karim Khan comes into the picture.

For those not versed in the matter, ICC is the creature of the Rome Statute, designed to raise the odious practices of its precursors, ICTY and the Rwanda Tribunal, to a new level of infamy. It was set up in 2002 as a permanent institution with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals suspected of the most serious international offences, including genocide, aggression (since 2018), and crimes against humanity. Karim Khan is currently the ICC’s chief prosecutor. On 28 February 2022, just days after the Ukrainian conflict began, Khan sought authorisation to open a formal inquiry into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine. On 3 March Khan announced that an advanced team of ICC investigators had left for Ukraine to start investigating possible war crimes.

Two important facts should be noted from the start. First, Khan’s inquiry, although fully commenced in February 2022, is conceived to encompass offences within the court’s jurisdiction going back to information previously collected in the course of ICC Prosecutor’s preliminary inquiry that was opened in April 2014.

Second, fortuitously, at the time of the Bucha operation in early April 2022, Khan happened to already have had an investigative team in place in the Ukraine, which presumably should have been capable of visiting Bucha within hours of the alleged occurrence to attempt to clarify what may have occurred there.

The existence of an ICC “preliminary inquiry” into offences committed in Ukraine going back to 2014, was officially acknowledged just recently and rather timidly, but it is significant. The scope and results of that inquiry still remain publicly undisclosed, but its likely limitations may be inferred from then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s frank acknowledgment of close and one-sided coordination with the Ukrainian authorities throughout that period. When and if the data collected in the course of that preliminary inquiry are made known, it will be interesting to see whether evidence of massive shelling and huge loss of life among civilians in the Donbass at the hands of Ukrainian military forces, the only massive crimes against humanity during that long period, will have been recorded and properly reviewed.

That such evidence ought to be reviewed is suggested by Khan’s own admission that “the focal issues are whether inhumane weapons were used and whether civilians were targeted intentionally.” Fair enough. In light of Khan’s piously proclaimed doctrine of “’zero Tolerance’ on crimes against Ukrainian children,” it is reasonable to raise the following question. During his recent visit to Kiev, where he met with regime officials and tweeted that “Engagement with all actors [is] critical for effective, independent investigations,” what prevented him from undertaking a side-trip to  Donetsk, to meet with the parents of over 500 children who perished in Ukrainian bombardments since 2014 and if not to lay a wreath at least to visit the monument erected in their memory?

Khan’s visiting schedule can fairly be compared to an international delegation arriving in Germany during World War II to investigate atrocity allegations, but confining its activities to Berlin in order to hear the views of German government officials, while scrupulously avoiding a trip to Auschwitz.

The second and even more critical point is that notwithstanding Karim Khan’s insistence on going by the book, over a week has passed since Bucha accusations have been raised (or three weeks, if we go by New York Times’ allegations, corroborated by dubious Western intelligence photos, alleging a different date when the massacre should have have occurred) yet he has neither done his duty nor exercised his prerogative to send the investigative team already on the ground in the Ukraine, reinforced if necessary, to secure the alleged crime scene in Bucha (and why not also the site of the latest false flag in Kramatorsk?), initiating all the required forensic and related activities in order to sort out what happened and to respond factually to the grave allegations that have been levelled.

To do that, assuming that Khan and ICC are acting in good faith, should have been elementary. For an experienced prosecutor not to have hastened to do that is an incomprehensible and unpardonable lapse. Failure to act according to protocol in such situations has made possible the proliferation of propagandistic assertions, assumptions and wild rumours, all without any authoritative challenge whatsoever. Perhaps that was precisely the intention. But more importantly, while ceding to the Kiev regime and its sponsors an immense propaganda advantage, Prosecutor Karim Khan’s inaction in the critical time frame immediately after allegations of a major crime against humanity had been made has given Kiev ample time to destroy evidence of its culpability and to doctor the remaining evidence to appear to support its claims.

Under the circumstances, dereliction of duty would in fact be the most benign explanation for Khan’s and ICC’s negligent conduct. The reality may be far worse. There is substantial evidence of ICC’s systematic investigative bias and selective focus over a period of many years, in the Ukrainian situation at least, that practically rules out oversight as a viable explanation and suggests deliberate adherence to political directives. The brutal  dismissal of former prosecutor Bensouda leaves little doubt that Khan’s refusal to follow marching orders would have led to his professional demise also, as it did to his predecessor’s. That is why the sordid Bensouda affair bears careful re-reading to better understand not just Karim Khan’s otherwise professionally inexplicable conduct but also the embarrassingly narrow limits of International Criminal Court’s actual “independence” from politics.

But where Khan and his ICC investigators, who had a duty to get there without delay, refused to tread, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was only too happy to travel to Bucha for a Photo-Op. Surrounded there by her Ukrainian minders, she virtue signalled that in Bucha “our humanity was shattered.” Really? We thought it had been shattered some time ago when the other big false flag operation was staged in Srebrenica. But be that as it may, Ursula played her part well for the cameras, visibly feigning great shock when brought to a field where presumed Bucha corpses had been laid out, covered discretely with tarpaulin to spare the visiting foreign lady’s tender sensibilities.

Ursula von der Leyen reacting theatrically to the Bucha massacre theme park (Source: Stephen Karganovic)

It is incomprehensible that the Bucha “massacre” directors should have allowed a huge Hollywood blooper and overlooked the obvious. Forensic science has established a Body Decomposition Timeline and according to it we should not be seeing what these photos show.

Forensic protocols are quite explicit about what happens to bodies after the onset of death:

• 24-72 hours after death — the internal organs decompose.
• 3-5 days after death — the body starts to bloat and blood-containing foam leaks from the mouth and nose.
• 8-10 days after death — the body turns from green to red as the blood decomposes and the organs in the abdomen accumulate gas.
• Several weeks after death — nails and teeth fall out.
• 1 month after death — the body starts to liquefy.

Have any of these decomposition stages occurred in Bucha? We shall never know for certain because Karim Khan and his team of experts failed to show up to conduct autopsies and tells us. But whether we are in the “8-10 day” post-mortem stage, assuming the deaths date back to the departure of Russian forces on 30 March, or the “several weeks after death” stage if we choose to believe the “intelligence information” and dodgy photos published by the New York Times, suggesting that the Russians executed the victims and left them to rot on the streets of Bucha a week before departure, we come to essentially the same conclusion. Either way, at the time of Ursula’s visit the bodies (or whatever was under the tarpaulins) should have been in an advanced stage of malodorous decomposition.

It is an established forensic fact that, allowing for the influence of environmental factors, corpses begin putrefying within 24 to 36 hours of death and start to emit the highly unpleasant odour associated with decomposition. At least ten days after death, the stench of dozens of corpses should have been unbearable. Yet video evidence of the visit clearly demonstrates that neither Ursula nor the officials accompanying her were in the slightest affected by noxious smells and that none wore any mouth and nose coverings, which for hygienic reasons would have been obligatory under the circumstances. A dead giveaway that is, no pun intended.

And so was the displacement of presumed human remains from the never secured putative crime scene in the streets of Bucha to the open field, for the convenience of Ursula von der Leyen’s photo opportunity. Will that upset the consummate professional, Imran Khan?

Not likely. He knows which side his bread is buttered on.

*

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Stephen Karganovic

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***

Repeat broadcast originally airing November 26, 2021. – [MAW]

“It took Russia twenty years to return to being a normal state with a vibrant economy, powerful armed forces and self-respect, but Russians still had a nation, even in those horrifying times of the 1990s so-called “liberal” experiment.

“The United States doesn’t have a nation anymore. Not even close, and if the magnificence and power, through visual representation, of the nation’s cathedrals are any indication, the United States has become as a tasteless boxy post-modernist mega-church preaching prosperity gospel. It is fake, it always was, and it cannot stop disintegration.”

– Andrei Martyanov, from Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse   [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW


Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

In the previous instalment of this two part series, we painted a portrait of an American Empire that was constantly failing in its military engagements in, really, all of its pursuits, from Afghanistan and Iraq, to Libya and Syria, to Venezuela, Bolivia and even the crucial flash-point now in Ukraine. In a nutshell, the U.S. has lost ground in every military venture it pursued since the turn of the century.

But a closer look inside the Union itself reveals multiple difficulties plaguing the world’s one remaining Superpower on several fronts.

According to the Survey of Mothers with Young Children, 40.1% of the mothers with children 12 and younger reported household food insecurity since the on-set of COVID-19. That’s up 170 percent over food insecurity numbers in 2018! [2]

In the 1960s, manufacturing made up 25% of the U.S. gross domestic product. That number shrunk to 11% today. Five million American manufacturing jobs have left the country since the turn of the century. [3]

In oil and natural gas production, the U.S. is at the equivalent of 2,303 million tonnes of oil equivalent versus 2,684 million tonnes for China. And in terms of the production of electricity from oil, hydro, nuclear and all other sources, the U.S. is producing 4,385 TWh versus 7,482 TWh for China! [4][5]

In 2019, the U.S. produced 10.8 million vehicles. Compare that to the 25.7 million produced by China! And in 2015, the U.S. was 90% dependent on China for its laptops and videogames with TV. [6][7]

Plus the United States has run up a debt just shy of 29 trillion dollars – WAY higher than its regular production in the manufacturing sector (2.158 trillion) and its provision in services (13.1 trillion)![8][9]

These daunting statistics are mentioned in the book Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse written by military analyst Andrei Martyanov. It has been described as part 3 of a trilogy of books on the fading dominance of the mighty turned frail American eagle. As Pepe Escobar put it in a recent book review:

“Martyanov, in meticulous detail, analyzes the imperial decline thematically – with chapters on Consumption, Geoeconomics, Energy, Losing the Arms Race, among others, composing a devastating indictment especially of toxic D.C. lobbies and the prevailing political mediocrity across the Beltway. What is laid bare for the reader is the complex interplay of forces that are driving the political, ideological, economic, cultural and military American chaos.” [10]

This simple nearly 240 page read lays out how the U.S. got where it is today, and also lays out why it is so fundamentally incapable of recovering given the current state of education, media, and the band of incompetents prevailing within its elites. We got in touch with Martyanov this week and benefited from his unique understanding in this special edition of the Global Research News Hour!

Andrei Martyavnov served as an officer on the ships and staff position of Soviet Coast Guard through 1990. In mid-1990s he moved to the United States where he currently works as Laboratory Director in a commercial aerospace group. He is a blogger on the US Naval Institute Blog and at Reminiscence of the Future. He is author of Losing Military Supremacy, The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, and earlier this year, Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse. He is based near Seattle Washington.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 334)

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Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

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CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

1. Andrei Martyanov (2021), P. 235, “Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse”‘, Clarity Press Inc.
2. Lauren Bauer, “The COVID-19 crisis has already left too many children hungry in America,” Brookings Institution, Up Front, May 6, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/05/06/the- covid-19-crisis-has-already-left-too-many-children-hungry-in-america/
3. Pat Buchanan, “Stress Test of a Failing Superpower,” UNZ Review, July 24, 2020, https://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/stress-test-of-a-failing-superpower/
4. Total energy production, 2019, Global Energy Statistical Yearbook 2020, https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-energy-production.html
5. “Electricity production, 2019,” Global Energy Statistical Yearbook 2020, https://yearbook.enerdata.net/electricity/world-energy-production-statistics.html
6. OICA, 2019 Production Statistics, https://www.oica.net/category/production-statistics/2019-statistics/
7. Caroline Freund, “How Dependent Are US Consumers on Imports from China?” Peterson Institute for International Economics, June 7, 2016, https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-investment-policy-watch/how-depenent-are-us-consumers-imports-china
8. “United States GDP From Manufacturing, 2005-2020 Data,” Trading Economics, https://tradingeconomics.com//united-states//gdp-from-manufacturing
9. “United States GDP From Private Services Producing Industries,” Trading Economics, https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-from-services
10. https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/05/22/the-disintegrated-states-of-america/#more-239977  

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***

In the Western media it is said that the sanctions applied against Russia will be enough to pressure the government to change its attitudes in Ukraine. It is believed that the economic blockade will force Moscow to surrender to the West as all foreign trade involving Russia is supposedly close to “disappearing” in the face of the coercive measures that the US and its allies are implementing. However, not only geopolitical analysts and economists consider this hypothesis baseless, but also corporate professionals, with official representatives of companies that import Russian products showing interest in continuing their transactions, despite pressure from some countries.

Brazil and Russia are major trading partners and make up one of the central strategic points in economic cooperation between the BRICS. As is well known, agribusiness is the main sector of the Brazilian economy, with Brazil being extremely dependent on the export of agricultural commodities such as soybeans and meat. The Russian-Brazilian partnership is essential for the South American country’s agribusiness, as Russia exports fertilizers that Brazil uses to produce soybeans, which are the main product of Brazilian exports.

Russia, in turn, is one of the major buyers of Brazilian beef, being a key partner for the country’s livestock. In addition, the biggest consumer of Brazilian soy is China, which depends on the product to keep its pork production chain active. In other words, there is a direct line of interdependence between three of the main emerging powers of the BRICS, with Russian fertilizers being the basis of Brazilian soy, which is the feed for pork produced in China.

Since the beginning of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, Brazilian businessmen have been fearing losses in the bilateral trade. Despite remaining neutral, Brazil on two occasions voted in favor of anti-Russian resolutions at the UN, which raised fears of possible reprisals in fertilizers supply, generating a drastic impact both on the profits of the rural elite and on the Brazilian GDP. A senior representative from a Brazilian company that produces soy in the states of São Paulo and Paraná agreed to speak with our team this week to discuss the matter. Asked about Brazil’s position, our source replied:

“We consider it strategic for Brazil to remain neutral on this conflict. It is the best thing to do for our business, because in this way we do not lose our fertilizer suppliers. We are afraid of a change in Brazilian position because that would be terrible for the crops (…) Of course, we work in long term, so we currently have fertilizer stock for the coming season, but soon we will need to order new shipments and there is no better option than Russian in global market”.

Commenting on the possible partnership between Brazil and Canada to replace the Russian supply – something that some Brazilian businessmen have requested in order to avoid losses – our interviewee replied:

“It is a possible, but complicated path. Canada is a major producer of gas [which is the main raw material of fertilizers], but they [Canadians] don’t have the same capacity as Russia, which makes the product more expensive and they tend to raise prices even more now as more buyers will seek supply with them (…) Undoubtably, the Russians are better partners for us, as the price and quality make their product an unbeatable option today. That’s why, no matter what happens, we will continue to buy Russian fertilizers – we just need to know how to do it.”

On this point of “how” to buy Russian fertilizers, our team asked him what to do now that Russia’s partners are under pressure from US sanctions. About the possibility of negotiating with Moscow in rubles and the need for intermediaries in the purchase, the spokesperson stated:

“Unfortunately, everything will be more complicated, but maintaining negotiations with Russia is still more profitable than joining other partnerships. We are willing to use the ruble in negotiations, despite the huge changes this will entail (…) About intermediaries, I don’t think it will be a big problem. The Chinese, for example, are the biggest buyers of our company’s soybeans, so I suppose our partners there will strive to have some interesting alternative to help us, as they are the most interested in the success of our production”.

He added:

“As a professional in the agrarian market, I have seen several cases of international transactions intermediated by third parties. There’s nothing surprising about that. Many countries only trade this way. This is what happens in many cases with communist countries that buy food abroad, for example. It’s relatively normal.”

Our interviewee preferred not to identify himself or his company, as he fears that their image will be exposed both abroad and in Brazil. Later in 2022 there will be presidential elections and, excluding current President, most candidates – including Lula himself – present a strongly anti-Russian view. The spokesperson says that he fears external and internal sanctions and that he hopes that Brazil’s current neutrality will not be modified in an eventual change of government.

“It is possible that a change of government will harm our relations with Russia, but I hope that our authorities will take into account the importance of agribusiness and not take impulsive procedures on wars that do not concern us.”

Ending our conversation, our source stated that Brazil and Russia are already cooperating to solve the problem of payment methods and that he hopes that everything will be resolved as soon as possible:

“The Russian ambassador suggested that Brazilians use PIX [a Brazilian system of rapid bank transfers] to trade with Russians, replacing SWIFT. It’s a possibility, but I imagine that this will lead to changes in the current structure of the PIX system […] There may be also a lot of other possibilities, I guess. I don’t know how all this will be operated, but what I can say is that the Brazilian farmers are really willing to continue buying Russian fertilizers, regardless of the methods used”.

The words of our interviewee reflect the current reality of Russia’s biggest trading partners: for them, what is happening in Ukraine does not matter. They are not interested in being “inspectors” of international law or “supporters” of the West. What they want is to keep their profits and are willing to invest in methods to continue their partnerships with Russia if that is necessary to avoid losses.

Despite Western media alarmism, there is no guarantee that Russia will actually be “strangled” economically with current sanctions. The market is volatile and adaptable to changes. Most likely, new transaction methods will be developed to circumvent sanctions and keep trade relations with Russia intact. There is indeed little chance of success for Western plans.

*

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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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***

The war in Ukraine has focussed attention on Russia’s global exports as sanctions on the country have led to sharp rises in various commodity prices. As Russia is a key supplier of not just oil and gas, but also wheat, metals and fertilizers, the problem is further aggravated due to Russia’s exclusion from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) mechanism, which means that payments for trade with Russia are not permissible in dollars.

Indian exporters have payments of around $400-500 million pending in Russia due to the war in Ukraine and the subsequent economic ban on the country and its exclusion from the SWIFT mechanism by the western powers. In 10 months of FY22, India’s exports to Russia totalled $2.85 billion against $7.90 billion of imports, according to Bank of Baroda Economic Research data.

Discussions on a Rupee-Ruble trade mechanism is an inevitability after Russia’s exclusion from SWIFT. As economic sanctions against Russia are used as a weapon of war by the western powers, the countries trading with the Eurasian Giant need to have an alternative mechanism for payments. Some experts have suggested to identify an Indian bank in which Russia would deposit rubles, while India will deposit rupees. Russia would use all the rupees it gets from Indian importers to buy goods; Indian exporters would use the rubles to pay for imports from Russia.

This is especially crucial for India as sanctions on Russia have adverse effects on Indo-Russian trade. Amidst the uncertainties, there has been a substantial depreciation in the Rupee (Rs. 77/Dollar), making Indian imports more expensive. However, India’s non-weapon non-oil trade with Russia is miniscule, and so the effect would be minimal.

None-the-less, the exclusion of Russia from SWIFT as part of sanctions meant that millions of dollars in payments for Indian tea, steel, chemicals and pharmaceuticals have been held up. Tea exporters say that the necessity of rupee payment has come if the dollar payment has become impossible. This is significant when considering that India is the largest exporter of tea to Russia, amounting to 43-45 million kilograms.

The rupee-ruble trade mechanism will likely open an alternative channel for the Global South to continue trading with Russia. This would be possible because many Russian banks are already present in India. Large Russian banks with a presence in India include VTB, Sberbank and Gazprombank. Russia’s state-owned development bank VEB is also engaged in such trade.

VEB and the Reserve Bank of India are in the process of finalising an alternative transaction platform to facilitate bilateral trade. Apart from facilitating India-Russia bilateral trade, the Rupee-Ruble platform might facilitate the Global South’s alternative financial transactions with Russia.

Increasing economic sanctions have created problems in other currency zones as well, particularly Iran, demonstrating why many countries are entering into currency swap deals to continue trading without depending on the dollar.

The post-World War western dominated financial architecture is a skewed global financial system. In view of this, the Rupee-Ruble mechanism may open an era of trade without dollars. The global financial system should not be leveraged as a weapon of war by any group of countries, otherwise it would lose trust.

The biggest problem for developing countries arises from the fact that Russia exports significant quantities of grains and has imposed a halt on grain shipments to its neighbours in the Eurasian Economic Union until the end of August. This is to “maintain stability on the Russian market”. The two largest buyers of wheat from Russia, Egypt and Turkey, have seen disruptions in supply due to closure of Black Sea ports as the war in Ukraine wages on. As Russia and Ukraine both supply one-third of the total global supplies of wheat, the disruption in supply has pushed prices up.

What the West has not considered though is that the problem might be complicated further due to Russia’s exclusion from the SWIFT mechanism. In such cases, Rupee-Ruble trade will be another step towards the de-dollarization of the global economy as countries seek safety from potential sanctions and economic attacks from the West. As the Global South suffers from a war being waged in far off eastern Europe, it is inevitable that they will explore an alternative payment system as they do not want to lose their economic relations with Russia and will use the Indian model as a guiding principle.

*

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from business-standard.com/

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***

Today is another landmark in one of the worst miscarriages of justice ever perpetrated by our so-called democracies in the West: Julian Assange has now been in a jail cell at Belmarsh prison in London for three years.

The UK and US governments rightly express outrage over reports of war crimes in Ukraine. Yet while doing so, they make an example of Assange for revealing, with definitive proof, their own war crimes. While the media decries the spread of disinformation and attacks against journalists, most stay silent as an actual journalist slowly dying in prison for doing his duty of informing the public.

Assange faces up to 175 years in an American prison. So unless UK Home Secretary Priti Patel stops his extradition to the US by May 18, we’ll likely be marking this date for decades to come. If you value democracy and freedom of speech, we urge you once again to pressure the UK government to stop this travesty of justice and save Julian’s life. Never has our voice been more needed than now.

*

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Featured image: Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison in 2019 (Source: WSWS)

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***

The unaccountable coterie of neocons and liberal interventionists who orchestrated two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East are now stoking a suicidal war with Russia.

The same cabal of warmongering pundits, foreign policy specialists and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate.

They are protean, shifting adroitly with the political winds, moving from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party and then back again, mutating from cold warriors to neocons to liberal interventionists. Pseudo intellectuals, they exude a cloying Ivy League snobbery as they sell perpetual fear, perpetual war and a racist worldview, where the lesser breeds of the earth only understand violence.

They are pimps of war, puppets of the Pentagon, a state within a state, and the defense contractors who lavishly fund their think tanks — Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, Atlantic Council and Brookings Institute.

Like some mutant strain of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, they cannot be vanquished. It does not matter how wrong they are, how absurd their theories, how many times they lie or denigrate other cultures and societies as uncivilized or how many murderous military interventions go bad.

They are immovable props, the parasitic mandarins of power that are vomited up in the dying days of any empire, including that of the U.S., leaping from one self-defeating catastrophe to the next.

I spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent reporting on the suffering, misery, and murderous rampages these shills for war engineered and funded. My first encounter with them was in Central America. Elliot Abrams — convicted of providing misleading testimony to Congress on the Iran-Contra Affair and later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush so he could return to government to sell us the Iraq War — and Robert Kagan, director of the State Department’s public diplomacy office for Latin America — were propagandists for the brutal military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as the rapists and homicidal thugs that made up the rogue Contra forces fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which they illegally funded.

Their job was to discredit our reporting.

“Like some mutant strain of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, they cannot be vanquished.”

They, and their coterie of fellow war lovers, went on to push for the expansion of NATO in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, violating an agreement not to extend NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany and recklessly antagonizing Russia.

They were and are cheerleaders for the apartheid state of Israel, justifying its war crimes against Palestinians and myopically conflating Israel’s interests with those of the U.S. They advocated for air strikes in Serbia, calling for the U.S. to “take out” Slobodan Milosevic.

They were the authors of the policy to invade Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya. Robert Kagan and William Kristol, with their typical cluelessness, wrote in April 2002 that “the road that leads to real security and peace” is “the road that runs through Baghdad.”

We saw how that worked out. That road led to the dissolution of Iraq, the destruction of its civilian infrastructure, including the obliteration of 18 of 20 electricity-generating plants and nearly all the water-pumping and sanitation systems during a 43-day period when 90,000 tons of bombs were rained down on the country, the rise of radical jihadist groups throughout the region, and failed states.

The war in Iraq, along with the humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, shredded the illusion of U.S. military and global hegemony. It also inflicted on Iraqis, who had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11, the widespread killing of civilians, the torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners, and the ascendancy of Iran as the preeminent power in the region.

Push for War & Overthrows

They continue to call for a war with Iran, with Fred Kagan stating that “there is nothing we can do short of attacking to force Iran to give up its nuclear weapons.” They pushed for the overthrow of President Nicolas Maduro, after trying to do the same to Hugo Chavez, in Venezuela. They have targeted Daniel Ortega, their old nemesis in Nicaragua.

They embrace a purblind nationalism that prohibits them from seeing the world from any perspective other than their own. They know nothing about the machinery of war, its consequences, or its inevitable blowback. They know nothing about the peoples and cultures they target for violent regeneration. They believe in their divine right to impose their “values” on others by force. Fiasco after fiasco. Now they are stoking a war with Russia.

“The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus,” Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš observed.

“Nationalism is the line of least resistance, the easy way. The nationalist is untroubled, he knows or thinks he knows what his values are, his, that’s to say national, that’s to say the values of the nation he belongs to, ethical and political; he is not interested in others, they are no concern of his, hell — it’s other people (other nations, another tribe). They don’t even need investigating. The nationalist sees other people in his own images — as nationalists.”

The Biden administration is filled with these ignoramuses, including Joe Biden. Victoria Nuland, the wife of Robert Kagan, serves as Biden’s undersecretary of state for political affairs. Antony Blinken is secretary of state. Jake Sullivan is national security adviser.

Oct. 8, 2014: U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland at a Ukrainian State Border Guard Service Base in Kiev. (U.S. Embassy Kyiv, Flickr)

They come from this cabal of moral and intellectual trolls that includes Kimberly Kagan, the wife of Fred Kagan, who founded The Institute for the Study of War, William Kristol, Max Boot, John Podhoretz, Gary Schmitt, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Frum and others. Many were once staunch Republicans or, like Nuland, served in Republican and Democratic administrations. Nuland was the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

They are united by the demand for larger and larger defense budgets and an ever-expanding military. Julian Benda called these courtiers to power “the self-made barbarians of the intelligentsia.”

They once railed against liberal weakness and appeasement. But they swiftly migrated to the Democratic Party rather than support Donald Trump, who showed no desire to start a conflict with Russia and who called the invasion of Iraq a “big, fat mistake.” Besides, as they correctly pointed out, Hillary Clinton was a fellow neocon. And liberals wonder why nearly half the electorate, who revile these arrogant unelected power brokers, as they should, voted for Trump.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during presidential election 2016. (Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)

These ideologues did not see the corpses of their victims. I did. Including children. Every dead body I stood over in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Gaza, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen or Kosovo, month after month, year after year, exposed their moral bankruptcy, their intellectual dishonesty and their sick bloodlust.

They did not serve in the military. Their children do not serve in the military. But they eagerly ship young American men and women off to fight and die for their self-delusional dreams of empire and American hegemony. Or, as in Ukraine, they provide hundreds of millions of dollars in weaponry and logistical support to sustain long and bloody proxy wars.

Historical time stopped for them with the end of World War II. The overthrow of democratically elected governments by the U.S. during the Cold War in Indonesia, Guatemala, the Congo, Iran and Chile (where the C.I.A. oversaw the assassination of the commander-in-chief of the army, General René Schneider, and President Salvador Allende); the Bay of Pigs; the atrocities and war crimes that defined the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; even the disasters they manufactured in the Middle East, have disappeared into the black hole of their collective historical amnesia.

“Julian Benda called these courtiers to power ‘the self-made barbarians of the intelligentsia.’ ” 

American global domination, they claim, is benign, a force for good, “benevolent hegemony.” The world, Charles Krauthammer insisted, welcomes “our power.” All enemies, from Saddam Hussein to Vladimir Putin, are the new Hitler. All U.S. interventions are a fight for freedom that make the world a safer place. All refusals to bomb and occupy another country are a 1938 Munich moment, a pathetic retreat from confronting evil by the new Neville Chamberlain. We do have enemies abroad. But our most dangerous enemy is within.

The warmongers build a campaign against a country such as Iraq or Russia and then wait for a crisis — they call it the next Pearl Harbor — to justify the unjustifiable.

In 1998, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, along with a dozen other prominent neoconservatives, wrote an open letter to President Bill Clinton denouncing his policy of containment of Iraq as a failure and demanding that he go to war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. To continue the “course of weakness and drift,” they warned, was to “put our interests and our future at risk.”

Neera Tanden and William Kristol in a dialog on Sept. 30, 2018. (Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan)

Huge majorities in Congress, Republican and Democrat, rushed to pass the Iraq Liberation Act. Few Democrats or Republicans dared be seen as soft on national security. The act stated that the United States government would work to “remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein” and authorized $99 million towards that goal, some of it being used to fund Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress that would become instrumental in disseminating the fabrications and lies used to justify the Iraq war during the administration of George W. Bush.

The attacks of 9/11 gave the war party its opening, first with Afghanistan, then Iraq. Krauthammer, who knew nothing about the Muslim world, wrote that:

“the way to tame the Arab street is not with appeasement and sweet sensitivity but with raw power and victory…The elementary truth that seems to elude the experts again and again…is that power is its own reward. Victory changes everything, psychologically above all. The psychology in the [Middle East] is now one of fear and deep respect for American power. Now is the time to use it.”

Removing Saddam Hussein from power, Kristol crowed, would “transform the political landscape of the Middle East.”

It did, of course, but not in ways that benefited the U.S.

They lust for apocalyptic global war. Fred Kagan, the brother of Robert, a military historian, wrote in 1999 that “America must be able to fight Iraq and North Korea, and also be able to fight genocide in the Balkans and elsewhere without compromising its ability to fight two major regional conflicts. And it must be able to contemplate war with China or Russia some considerable (but not infinite) time from now [author’s emphasis].”

They believe violence magically solves all disputes, even the Israeli-Palestinian morass. In a bizarre interview immediately after 9/11, Donald Kagan, the Yale classicist and rightwing ideologue who was the father of Robert and Fred, called, along with his son Fred, for the deployment of U.S. troops in Gaza so we could “take the war to these people.”

They have long demanded the stationing of NATO troops in Ukraine, with Robert Kagan saying that “we need to not worry that the problem is our encirclement rather than Russian ambitions.”  His wife, Victoria Nuland, was outed in a leaked phone conversation in 2014 with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, disparaging the EU and plotting to remove the lawfully elected President Viktor Yanukovych and install compliant Ukrainian politicians in power, most of whom did eventually take power.

They lobbied for U.S. troops to be sent to Syria to assist “moderate” rebels seeking to overthrow Basha al-Assad. Instead, the intervention spawned the Caliphate. The U.S. ended up bombing the very forces they had armed, becoming Assad’s de facto air force.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, like the attacks of 9/11, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Putin, like everyone else they target, only understands force. We can, they assure us, militarily bend Russia to our will.

“Toward a Europe Whole and Free,” April 29-30, 2014. From left: Moderator David Ensor, Voice of America director; Robert Kagan, senior fellow, Brookings; Frederick Kempe, president and CEO, Atlantic Council; Alexandr Vondra, former minister of defense of the Czech Republic. (Atlantic Council, Flickr)

“It is true that acting firmly in 2008 or 2014 would have meant risking conflict,” Robert Kagan wrote in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, lamenting our refusal to militarily confront Russia earlier. He wrote:

“But Washington is risking conflict now; Russia’s ambitions have created an inherently dangerous situation. It is better for the United States to risk confrontation with belligerent powers when they are in the early stages of ambition and expansion, not after they have already consolidated substantial gains. Russia may possess a fearful nuclear arsenal, but the risk of Moscow using it is not higher now than it would have been in 2008 or 2014, if the West had intervened then. And it has always been extraordinarily small: Putin was never going to obtain his objectives by destroying himself and his country, along with much of the rest of the world.”

In short, don’t worry about going to war with Russia, Putin won’t use the bomb.

I do not know if these people are stupid or cynical or both. They are lavishly funded by the war industry. They are never dropped from the networks for their repeated idiocy. They rotate in and out of power, parked in places like The Council on Foreign Relations or The Brookings Institute, before being called back into government. They are as welcome in the Obama or Biden White House as the Bush White House.

The Cold War, for them, never ended. The world remains binary, us and them, good and evil. They are never held accountable. When one military intervention goes up in flames, they are ready to promote the next. These Dr. Strangeloves, if we don’t stop them, will terminate life as we know it on the planet.

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR.  He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

Featured image: “Whores of War,” original illustration by Mr. Fish.

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***

Last month, neo-Nazis stood in formation along the route of Boston’s St Patrick’s Day Parade. The overt display of white supremacy was yet another horrifying reminder of the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany and of the growing antisemitism in the United States today. It demands that we remain steadfast in dismantling antisemitism and fighting racism in all its forms. We find it both painful and ironic that major Jewish organisations are labelling us, daughters of Holocaust survivors and refugees, as antisemites.

They call us antisemitic because we are outspoken in our demand that Palestinians be entitled to the same rights we possess, which Israel has long denied them. Organisations such as Human Rights Watch, Al Haq, B’Tselem, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic and Amnesty International have rigorously documented and analysed Israeli practices according to the frameworks of international law, and concluded that Israel is commiting crimes of apartheid against the Palestinian people. Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories since 1967, has affirmed this in his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council.

But rather than condemning violations of international law and human rights, the leaders of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), AIPAC and the Jewish Federations of North America claim that reports about Israeli apartheid will fuel antisemitism. Zionist organisations argue that Jews need a safe haven; as such, Israel must be a Jewish state – a state that enshrines in law the rights of one group of people at the expense of another. As Benjamin Netanyahu said when he was prime minister, ‘Israel is not a state of all its citizens … Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people and only it.’

This overt supremacy is a form of racism that is incompatible with democracy, and to justify it in the name of Judaism is itself antisemitic. It is both an ethical violation of Jewish humanism – any humanism – and a practical danger to Jews everywhere. It is precisely because we are Jews and the children of victims of Nazism that we feel it is our responsibility to challenge the harm being done to Palestinians in our names and in the names of our parents.

If Zionists and their supporters always respond by ignoring the contents of reports and attacking the messenger, it is surely because the contents are indisputable. Having done decades of research in Israel and Palestine, we know all too well that the conditions on the ground documented by Amnesty and others are painfully accurate: segregation, military rule, restrictions on Palestinians’ right to political participation, dispossession of Palestinian land and property, demolition of homes, uprooting of orchards, restrictions on movement, and the denial of economic and social rights, among other abuses. Amnesty’s report last February confirms that this system of Israeli domination exists in Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Palestinians, of course, have been saying this for decades.

Russia’s devastation of Ukraine has been rightly condemned for its violations of international law. But if international law must apply in Ukraine, why not Palestine? If it is moral and legal to protest against Russian assault, why is it considered antisemitic to protest against Israeli assault? If Ukrainians who resist and defend themselves are called heroes, why are Palestinians who resist and defend themselves against occupation and land seizures called terrorists? The point, as Peter Beinart and others have argued, is not to diminish solidarity with Ukrainians, but to extend that solidarity to Palestinians, whose oppression the West subsidises.

What is the way forward? As stated in the 2021 Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, we reject the notion of Jewish exceptionalism which argues that antisemitism is a unique and incomparable form of hatred. Rather, the fight against antisemitism is ‘inseparable from the overall fight against all forms of racial, ethnic, cultural, religious and gender discrimination’. As such, we must name racism wherever it appears, including inside Israel. The danger to Jews lies not in documenting Israeli transgressions, as the ADL and others would have us believe, but in supporting them. As Brian Klug has put it,

the situation now of Jews in much of the world is dominated … not by policies and actions that are directed against Jewish interests but in the name of those interests; and not by a hostile power (Germany) that occupies the lands where Jews live but by a friendly power (Israel) that occupies territory where others live.

It is incumbent on us to resist any initiative that drives a wedge between Jews and other oppressed groups. We must oppose all attempts to justify Israel’s abusive and discriminatory treatment of Palestinians. We must assert unapologetically that opposing Israeli apartheid is not antisemitic; it is antiracist. It is part of a larger struggle that values inclusion over exclusion, and rejects oppression in all its forms, both domestically and globally. In this way the struggle against antisemitism and other forms of racism is expressed not as the politics of identity but as the politics of identification. Such an expanded embrace of the other is not only essential to combatting antisemitism, it is also essential to the survival of Judaism as a system of ethics and morality. Our safety comes from securing the safety of others, and fighting injustice wherever it occurs.

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***

Leo Tolstoi, eigentlich Lew Nikolajewitsch Graf Tolstoi (1828-1910), gilt bis heute unbestritten als einer der bedeutendsten Literaten und Intellektuellen der Literaturgeschichte. Seine Hauptwerke sind die realistischen Romane „Anna Karenina“ und „Krieg und Frieden“. Mit ihnen wurde er auf der ganzen Welt bekannt. Tolstoi verfasste auch Bücher, die das zaristische Russland kritisierten sowie Lesebücher für die Schulkinder.

Da er sich für die Reformpädagogik engagierte, war es sein Anliegen, den russischen Bauernkindern Werte zu vermitteln. Sie sollten wissen, wie sie sich sozial und moralisch richtig zu verhalten hatten. Mit diesen Ideen war er in Russland ein Vorreiter, erhielt für seine Bemühungen aber vor allem im Ausland viel Anerkennung.

Tolstoi war kein Verfechter der Diktatur des Proletariats, er hatte andere Ideen. Deshalb war die Oktoberrevolution 1917, die nach seinem Tod stattfand, wohl nicht in seinem Sinne. Er war der Meinung, dass die etablierten zaristischen Funktionäre nicht durch sozialistische ersetzt werden dürften, da sonst alles beim Alten bliebe.

Viele Sprüche Tolstois sind legendär. Zu seinen besten gehören sicherlich seine Aussagen über den Menschen, Gott, das Leben, die Vernunft und die Liebe. So soll er gesagt haben:

„Das wichtigste Ziel ist das Jetzt, der wichtigste Mensch ist der Nächste, mit dem ich jetzt spreche; die wichtigste Tat ist, dem Nächsten Gutes zu tun.“ (1)

Hier schließt sich auch seine „Rede gegen den Krieg“ von 1909 an, in der er schrieb:

„Geliebte Brüder! Wir haben uns hier versammelt, um gegen den Krieg zu kämpfen. (…) Deshalb möchte ich unserer Versammlung den Vorschlag machen, einen Aufruf an die Menschen sämtlicher Völker und besonders der christlichen Völker zu verfassen und zu veröffentlichen, worin wir klar und geradeheraus sagen, was zwar alle wissen, was aber niemand oder so gut wie niemand sagt: nämlich, dass der Krieg nicht, wie das jetzt die Menschen vorgeben, irgendeine besonders wackere und lobenswerte Sache sei, sondern dass er, wie jeder Mord, eine abscheuliche und frevelhafte Handlung ist, und zwar nicht nur für die, welche die militärische Laufbahn aus freien Stücke wählen, sondern auch für die alle, die sich ihr aus Furcht vor Strafe oder um eigennütziger Interessen willen widmen.“ (2)

Etwas später fährt er mit folgenden Worten fort:

„Wir müssen sagen, was alle wissen und nur nicht zu sagen wagen, wir müssen sagen, dass, wenn die Menschen dem Mord einen noch so veränderten Namen geben, der Mord immer nur Mord bleibt – eine frevelhafte, schmachvolle Tat. Und man braucht nur klar, bestimmt und laut, wie wir das hier zu tun vermögen, dies zu sagen, und die Menschen werden aufhören zu sehen, was sie zu sehen vermeinten und werden erblicken, was sie in Wirklichkeit sehen. Sie werden aufhören, im Krieg den Vaterlandsdienst, den Heldenmut, den Kriegsruhm, den Patriotismus zu sehen, und werden sehen, was da ist: die nackte, frevelhafte Mordtat. Und wie die Menschen das sehen, wird dasselbe geschehen, was in dem Märchen geschah: diejenigen, die die Freveltaten üben, werden sich schämen, diejenigen aber, die sich eingeredet haben, dass sie im Mord keine Frevelhaftigkeit sehen, werden sie jetzt gewahr werden, und werden aufhören, Mörder zu sein. (…)“  (3)

Tolstoi schließt seine Rede, indem er begründet, warum er so gesprochen hat:

„Das ist alles, was ich sagen wollte. Es wäre mir sehr leid, wenn ich jemanden beleidigt, gekränkt oder böse Gefühle in ihm erweckt hätte. Doch wäre es für mich, einem 80jährigen Greis, der jeden Augenblick des Todes gewärtig ist, eine Schande, nicht ganz offen die Wahrheit zu sagen, wie ich sie verstehe, die Wahrheit, die nach meiner festen Überzeugung allein die Menschen von den unseligen Drangsalen zu erretten vermag, die der Krieg hervorbringt und unter denen sie leiden.“ (4)

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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.leotolstoi.de/

[2] Tolstoj, Leo N. (1983). Rede gegen den Krieg. Politische Flugschriften. Herausgegeben von Peter Urban. Insel Verlag. Frankfurt am Main, S. 163 und 167

[3] a. O., S. 169f.

[4] a. O., S. 170

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***

Since December 2020, many sudden and unexpected deaths of mayors under 60 years old have occurred in Germany and Austria. Questions are swirling about whether these elected officials were overwhelmed by job stress, or could there be another reason for so many “fit and healthy” politicians dying?

On December 12, 2020, 41-year-old CSU Mayor Dirk Rosenbauer collapsed during a municipal council meeting and later died in a hospital in Coburg. The headline read, “At only 41 years old  – mayor from Bavaria collapses during council meeting – dead”.

We are all completely shocked and it is incomprehensible. He was fit and healthy, always walked his dog and played handball

Sadly, the headlines have been filled with similar cases for about two years. The names of Mayors being added to the list of unexpected and sudden deaths seems to be growing steadily.

The “Freie Bremer” channel on Telegram compiled a list of several such incidents, at least 15 known deaths in Germany and Austria in the period mentioned. However, the number of unreported cases could be higher.

December. 12. 2020 41-year-old CSU Mayor Dirk Rosenbauer in Michelau, Germany. He leaves behind a wife and two children.

In September 2020, German Mayor Heinrich Suess died unexpectedly at the age of only 56

In June 2020, the 50-year-old German Mayor of Lenggries, Markus Landthaler, died unexpectedly.

On September 15, 2021, the 47-year-old German Mayor of Limbach-Oberfrohna Jesko Vogel died. He leaves behind a wife and two daughters. From 1991 to 2014, he was a player and captain of the first handball team at BSV Limbach.

October 18, 2021, 57-year-old Deputy Mayor of Kindberg, Peter Sattler, diedsuddenly on a hike.

On October 21, 2021, the 60-year-old Mayor Christian Ruh of Bodolz on Lake Constance died unexpectedly.

On Saturday, October 24, 2021, Burscheid’s Mayor Stefan Caplan died unexpectedly. He was only 56 years old.

October 28, 2021, 59-year-old German Mayor Wolfgang Eckl “unexpectedly” died.

November 27, 2021, Mayor Jochim Ruppert died unexpectedly on Friday evening at the age of 59.

December 23, 2021, 54-year-old Schiltberg Mayor Fabian Streit died unexpectedly.

March 5, 2022 Mauerkirchen Mayor Horst Gerner died unexpectedly at the age of 57

On March 23, 2022, Mayor Kristian W. Tangermann died unexpectedly. The Mayorof the municipality of Lilienthal (Osterholz district) was only 45 years old.

On March 26, 2022, Christian Maurer, a 38-year-old mayor in Upper Austria, died. He collapsed on March 21 during a municipal council meeting and died days later in the hospital. Doctors could not repair Maurer’s cerebral hemorrhage. The local politician leaves behind his wife and their six-week-old son.

On March 29, 2022, The incumbent Mayor of Waldshut-Tiengen, Joachim Baumert, died unexpectedly over the weekend at the age of 57. 

On March 31, The third mayor of Coburg, Thomas Nowak, died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 53.

On April 1, 2022, the First Mayor of Pfaffenhausen and trained police officer Franz Renftle died at the age of 54.

When will authorities investigate these cases more closely? Of course, not all of these Mayors have necessarily died from the exact cause. However, when did so many young and healthy middle-aged people, described as healthy and sporty, drop dead before 2020?

Are the numbers of the Mayor’s unexpectedly dying the same as in the past? Perhaps it could be? But shouldn’t the authorities compare previous statistics and share them with the public? Looking the other way or downplaying the number of unexpected deaths of younger and seemingly healthy Mayors only adds to people’s fears. Furthermore, it is creating even more rumors and “conspiracies.” If there is, in fact, a problem, it should be of concern to the government. After all, it’s government officials who are dropping dead in numbers.

RIP to all of the Mayors who have passed.

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***

After graduating from Columbia University with a chemical engineering degree, my grandfather went on to work for Pfizer for almost two decades, culminating his career as the company’s Global Director of New Products.

I was rather proud of this fact growing up — it felt as if this father figure, who raised me for several years during my childhood, had somehow played a role in saving lives. But in recent years, my perspective on Pfizer — and other companies in its class — has shifted. Blame it on the insidious big pharma corruption laid bare by whistleblowers in recent years. Blame it on the endless string of big pharma lawsuits revealing fraud, deception, and cover-ups. Blame it on the fact that I witnessed some of their most profitable drugs ruin the lives of those I love most. All I know is, that pride I once felt has been overshadowed by a sticky skepticism I just can’t seem to shake.

In 1973, my grandpa and his colleagues celebrated as Pfizer crossed a milestone: the one-billion-dollar sales mark. These days, Pfizer rakes in $81 billion a year, making it the 28th most valuable company in the world. Johnson & Johnson ranks 15th, with $93.77 billion. To put things into perspective, that makes said companies wealthier than most countries in the world. And thanks to those astronomical profit margins, the Pharmaceuticals and Health Products industry is able to spend more on lobbying than any other industry in America.

While big pharma lobbying can take several different forms, these companies tend to target their contributions to senior legislators in Congress — you know, the ones they need to keep in their corner, because they have the power to draft healthcare laws. Pfizer has outspent its peers in six of the last eight election cycles, coughing up almost $9.7 million. During the 2016 election, pharmaceutical companies gave more than $7 million to 97 senators at an average of $75,000 per member. They also contributed $6.3 million to president Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. The question is: what did big pharma get in return?

ALEC’s Off-the-Record Sway

To truly grasp big pharma’s power, you need to understand how The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) works. ALEC, which was founded in 1973 by conservative activists working on Ronald Reagan’s campaign, is a super secretive pay-to-play operation where corporate lobbyists — including in the pharma sector — hold confidential meetings about “model” bills. A large portionof these bills is eventually approved and become law.

A rundown of ALEC’s greatest hits will tell you everything you need to know about the council’s motives and priorities. In 1995, ALEC promoted a bill that restricts consumers’ rights to sue for damages resulting from taking a particular medication. They also endorsed the Statute of Limitation Reduction Act, which put a time limit on when someone could sue after a medication-induced injury or death. Over the years, ALEC has promoted many other pharma-friendly bills that would: weaken FDA oversight of new drugs and therapies, limit FDA authority over drug advertising, and oppose regulations on financial incentives for doctors to prescribe specific drugs. But what makes these ALEC collaborations feel particularly problematic is that there’s little transparency — all of this happens behind closed doors. Congressional leaders and other committee members involved in ALEC aren’t required to publish any records of their meetings and other communications with pharma lobbyists, and the roster of ALEC members is completely confidential. All we know is that in 2020, more than two-thirds of Congress — 72 senators and 302 House of Representatives members — cashed a campaign check from a pharma company.

Big Pharma Funding Research

The public typically relies on an endorsement from government agencies to help them decide whether or not a new drug, vaccine, or medical device is safe and effective. And those agencies, like the FDA, count on clinical research. As already established, big pharma is notorious for getting its hooks into influential government officials. Here’s another sobering truth: The majority of scientific research is paid for by the pharmaceutical companies.

When the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published 73 studies of new drugs over the course of a single year, they found that a staggering 82% of them had been funded by the pharmaceutical company selling the product, 68% had authors who were employees of that company, and 50% had lead researchers who accepted money from a drug company. According to 2013 research conducted at the University of Arizona College of Law, even when pharma companies aren’t directly funding the research, company stockholders, consultants, directors, and officers are almost always involved in conducting them. A 2017 report by the peer-reviewed journal The BMJ also showed that about half of medical journal editors receive payments from drug companies, with the average payment per editor hovering around $28,000. But these statistics are only accurate if researchers and editors are transparent about payments from pharma. And a 2022 investigative analysis of two of the most influential medical journals found that 81% of study authors failed to disclose millions in payments from drug companies, as they’re required to do.

Unfortunately, this trend shows no sign of slowing down. The number of clinical trials funded by the pharmaceutical industry has been climbing every year since 2006, according to a John Hopkins University report, while independent studies have been harder to find. And there are some serious consequences to these conflicts of interest. Take Avandia, for instance, a diabetes drug produced by GlaxoSmithCline (GSK). Avandia was eventually linked to a dramatically increased risk of heart attacks and heart failure. And a BMJ report revealed that almost 90% of scientists who initially wrote glowing articles about Avandia had financial ties to GSK.

But here’s the unnerving part: if the pharmaceutical industry is successfully biasing the science, then that means the physicians who rely on the science are biased in their prescribing decisions.

Where the lines get really blurry is with “ghostwriting.” Big pharma execs know citizens are way more likely to trust a report written by a board-certified doctor than one of their representatives. That’s why they pay physicians to list their names as authors — even though the MDs had little to no involvement in the research, and the report was actually written by the drug company. This practice started in the ’50s and ’60s when tobacco execs were clamoring to prove that cigarettes didn’t cause cancer (spoiler alert: they do!), so they commissioned doctors to slap their name on papers undermining the risks of smoking.

It’s still a pretty common tactic today: more than one in 10 articles published in the NEJM was co-written by a ghostwriter. While a very small percentage of medical journals have clear policies against ghostwriting, it’s still technically legal —despite the fact that the consequences can be deadly.

Case in point: in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Merck paid for 73 ghostwritten articles to play up the benefits of its arthritis drug Vioxx. It was later revealed that Merck failed to report all of the heart attacks experienced by trial participants. In fact, a study published in the NEJM revealed that an estimated 160,000 Americans experienced heart attacks or strokes from taking Vioxx. That research was conducted by Dr. David Graham, Associate Director of the FDA’s Office of Drug Safety, who understandably concluded the drug was not safe. But the FDA’s Office of New Drugs, which not only was responsible for initially approving Vioxx but also regulating it, tried to sweep his findings under the rug.

“I was pressured to change my conclusions and recommendations, and basically threatened that if I did not change them, I would not be permitted to present the paper at the conference,” he wrote in his 2004 U.S. Senate testimony on Vioxx. “One Drug Safety manager recommended that I should be barred from presenting the poster at the meeting.”

Eventually, the FDA issued a public health advisory about Vioxx and Merck withdrew this product. But it was a little late for repercussions — 38,000 of those Vioxx-takers who suffered heart attacks had already died. Graham called this a “profound regulatory failure,” adding that scientific standards the FDA apply to drug safety “guarantee that unsafe and deadly drugs will remain on the U.S. market.”

This should come as no surprise, but research has also repeatedly shown that a paper written by a pharmaceutical company is more likely to emphasize the benefits of a drug, vaccine, or device while downplaying the dangers. (If you want to understand more about this practice, a former ghostwriter outlines all the ethical reasons why she quit this job in a PLOS Medicine report.) While adverse drug effects appear in 95% of clinical research, only 46% of published reports disclose them. Of course, all of this often ends up misleading doctors into thinking a drug is safer than it actually is.

Big Pharma Influence On Doctors

Pharmaceutical companies aren’t just paying medical journal editors and authors to make their products look good, either. There’s a long, sordid history of pharmaceutical companies incentivizing doctors to prescribe their products through financial rewards. For instance, Pfizer and AstraZeneca doled out a combined $100 million to doctors in 2018, with some earning anywhere from $6 million to $29 million in a year. And research has shown this strategy works: when doctors accept these gifts and payments, they’re significantly more likely to prescribe those companies’ drugs. Novartis comes to mind — the company famously spent over $100 million paying for doctors’ extravagant meals, golf outings, and more, all while also providing a generous kickback program that made them richer every time they prescribed certain blood pressure and diabetes meds.

Side note: the Open Payments portal contains a nifty little database where you can find out if any of your own doctors received money from drug companies. Knowing that my mother was put on a laundry list of meds after a near-fatal car accident, I was curious — so I did a quick search for her providers. While her PCP only banked a modest amount from Pfizer and AstraZeneca, her previous psychiatrist — who prescribed a cocktail of contraindicated medications without treating her in person — collected quadruple-digit payments from pharmaceutical companies. And her pain care specialist, who prescribed her jaw-dropping doses of opioid pain medication for more than 20 years (far longer than the 5-day safety guideline), was raking in thousands from Purdue Pharma, AKA the opioid crisis’ kingpin.

Purdue is now infamous for its wildly aggressive OxyContin campaign in the ’90s. At the time, the company billed it as a non-addictive wonder drug for pain sufferers. Internal emails show Pursue sales representatives were instructed to “sell, sell, sell” OxyContin, and the more they were able to push, the more they were rewarded with promotions and bonuses. With the stakes so high, these reps stopped at nothing to get doctors on board — even going so far as to send boxes of doughnuts spelling out “OxyContin” to unconvinced physicians. Purdue had stumbled upon the perfect system for generating tons of profit — off of other people’s pain.

Documentation later proved that not only was Purdue aware it was highly addictive and that many people were abusing it, but that they also encouraged doctors to continue prescribing increasingly higher doses of it (and sent them on lavish luxury vacations for some motivation). In testimony to Congress, Purdue exec Paul Goldenheim played dumb about OxyContin addiction and overdose rates, but emails that were later exposed showed that he requested his colleagues remove all mentions of addiction from their correspondence about the drug. Even after it was proven in court that Purdue fraudulently marketed OxyContin while concealing its addictive nature, no one from the company spent a single day behind bars. Instead, the company got a slap on the wrist and a $600 million fine for a misdemeanor, the equivalent of a speeding ticket compared to the $9 billion they made off OxyContin up until 2006. Meanwhile, thanks to Purdue’s recklessness, more than 247,000 people died from prescription opioid overdosesbetween 1999 and 2009. And that’s not even factoring in all the people who died of heroin overdoses once OxyContin was no longer attainable to them. The NIHreports that 80% of people who use heroin started by misusing prescription opioids.

Former sales rep Carol Panara told me in an interview that when she looks back on her time at Purdue, it all feels like a “bad dream.” Panara started working for Purdue in 2008, one year after the company pled guilty to “misbranding” chargesfor OxyContin. At this point, Purdue was “regrouping and expanding,” says Panara, and to that end, had developed a clever new approach for making money off OxyContin: sales reps were now targeting general practitioners and family doctors, rather than just pain management specialists. On top of that, Purdue soon introduced three new strengths for OxyContin: 15, 30, and 60 milligrams, creating smaller increments Panara believes were aimed at making doctors feel more comfortable increasing their patients’ dosages. According to Panara, there were internal company rankings for sales reps based on the number of prescriptions for each OxyContin dosing strength in their territory.

“They were sneaky about it,” she said. “Their plan was to go in and sell these doctors on the idea of starting with 10 milligrams, which is very low, knowing full well that once they get started down that path — that’s all they need. Because eventually, they’re going to build a tolerance and need a higher dose.”

Occasionally, doctors expressed concerns about a patient becoming addicted, but Purdue had already developed a way around that. Sales reps like Panara were taught to reassure those doctors that someone in pain might experience addiction-like symptoms called “pseudoaddiction,” but that didn’t mean they were truly addicted. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever to support that this concept is legit, of course. But the most disturbing part? Reps were trained to tell doctors that “pseudoaddiction” signaled the patient’s pain wasn’t being managed well enough, and the solution was simply to prescribe a higher dose of OxyContin.

Panara finally quit Purdue in 2013. One of the breaking points was when two pharmacies in her territory were robbed at gunpoint specifically for OxyContin. In 2020, Purdue pled guilty to three criminal charges in an $8.3 billion deal, but the company is now under court protection after filing for bankruptcy. Despite all the damage that’s been done, the FDA’s policies for approving opioids remain essentially unchanged.

Photo credit: Jennifer Durban

Purdue probably wouldn’t have been able to pull this off if it weren’t for an FDA examiner named Curtis Wright, and his assistant Douglas Kramer. While Purdue was pursuing Wright’s stamp of approval on OxyContin, Wright took an outright sketchy approach to their application, instructing the company to mail documents to his home office rather than the FDA, and enlisting Purdue employees to help him review trials about the safety of the drug. The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requires that the FDA have access to at least two randomized controlled trials before deeming a drug as safe and effective, but in the case of OxyContin, it got approved with data from just one measly two-week study — in osteoarthritis patients, no less.

When both Wright and Kramer left the FDA, they went on to work for none other than (drumroll, please) Purdue, with Wright earning three times his FDA salary. By the way — this is just one example of the FDA’s notoriously incestuous relationship with big pharma, often referred to as “the revolving door”. In fact, a 2018 Science report revealed that 11 out of 16 FDA reviewers ended up at the same companies they had been regulating products for.

While doing an independent investigation, “Empire of Pain” author and New Yorker columnist Patrick Radden Keefe tried to gain access to documentation of Wright’s communications with Purdue during the OxyContin approval process.

“The FDA came back and said, ‘Oh, it’s the weirdest thing, but we don’t have anything. It’s all either been lost or destroyed,’” Keefe told Fortune in an interview. “But it’s not just the FDA. It’s Congress, it’s the Department of Justice, it’s big parts of the medical establishment … the sheer amount of money involved, I think, has meant that a lot of the checks that should be in place in society to not just achieve justice, but also to protect us as consumers, were not there because they had been co-opted.”

Big pharma may be to blame for creating the opioids that caused this public health catastrophe, but the FDA deserves just as much scrutiny — because its countless failures also played a part in enabling it. And many of those more recent fails happened under the supervision of Dr. Janet Woodcock. Woodcock was named FDA’s acting commissioner mere hours after Joe Biden was inaugurated as president. She would have been a logical choice, being an FDA vet of 35 years, but then again it’s impossible to forget that she played a starring role in the FDA’s perpetuating the opioid epidemic. She’s also known for overruling her own scientific advisors when they vote against approving a drug.

Not only did Woodcock approve OxyContin for children as young as 11 years old, but she also gave the green light to several other highly controversial extended-release opioid pain drugs without sufficient evidence of safety or efficacy. One of those was Zohydro: in 2011, the FDA’s advisory committee voted 11:2 against approving it due to safety concerns about inappropriate use, but Woodcock went ahead and pushed it through, anyway. Under Woodcock’s supervision, the FDA also approved Opana, which is twice as powerful as OxyContin — only to then beg the drug maker to take it off the market 10 years later due to “abuse and manipulation.” And then there was Dsuvia, a potent painkiller 1,000 times stronger than morphine and 10 times more powerful than fentanyl. According to a head of one of the FDA’s advisory committees, the U.S. military had helped to develop this particular drug, and Woodcock said there was “pressure from the Pentagon” to push it through approvals. The FBI, members of congress, public health advocates, and patient safety experts alike called this decision into question, pointing out that with hundreds of opioids already on the market there’s no need for another — particularly one that comes with such high risks.

Most recently, Woodcock served as the therapeutics lead for Operation Warp Speed, overseeing COVID-19 vaccine development.

Big Pharma Lawsuits, Scandals, and Cover-Ups

While the OxyContin craze is undoubtedly one of the highest-profile examples of big pharma’s deception, there are dozens of other stories like this. Here are a few standouts:

In the 1980s, Bayer continued selling blood clotting products to third-world countries even though they were fully aware those products had been contaminated with HIV. The reason? The “financial investment in the product was considered too high to destroy the inventory.” Predictably, about 20,000 of the hemophiliacs who were infused with these tainted products then tested positive for HIV and eventually developed AIDS, and many later died of it.

In 2004, Johnson & Johnson was slapped with a series of lawsuits for illegally promoting off-label use of their heartburn drug Propulsid for children despite internal company emails confirming major safety concerns (as in, deaths during the drug trials). Documentation from the lawsuits showed that dozens of studies sponsored by Johnson & Johnson highlighting the risks of this drug were never published.

The FDA estimates that GSK’s Avandia caused 83,000 heart attacks between 1999 and 2007. Internal documents from GSK prove that when they began studying the effects of the drug as early as 1999, they discovered it caused a higher risk of heart attacks than a similar drug it was meant to replace. Rather than publish these findings, they spent a decade illegally concealing them (and meanwhile, banking $3.2 billion annually for this drug by 2006). Finally, a 2007 New England Journal of Medicinestudy linked Avandia to a 43% increased risk of heart attacks, and a 64% increased risk of death from heart disease. Avandia is still FDA approved and available in the U.S.

In 2009, Pfizer was forced to pay $2.3 billion, the largest healthcare fraud settlement in history at that time, for paying illegal kickbacks to doctors and promoting off-label uses of its drugs. Specifically, a former employee revealed that Pfizer reps were encouraged and incentivized to sell Bextra and 12 other drugs for conditions they were never FDA approved for, and at doses up to eight times what’s recommended. “I was expected to increase profits at all costs, even when sales meant endangering lives,” the whistleblower said.

When it was discovered that AstraZeneca was promoting the antipsychotic medication Seroquel for uses that were not approved by the FDA as safe and effective, the company was hit with a $520 million fine in 2010. For years, AstraZeneca had been encouraging psychiatrists and other physicians to prescribe Seroquel for a vast range of seemingly unrelated off-label conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, anger management, ADHD, dementia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and sleeplessness. AstraZeneca also violated the federal Anti-Kickback Statute by paying doctors to spread the word about these unapproved uses of Seroquel via promotional lectures and while traveling to resort locations.

In 2012, GSK paid a $3 billion fine for bribing doctors by flying them and their spouses to five-star resorts, and for illegally promoting drugs for off-label uses. What’s worse — GSK withheld clinical trial results that showed its antidepressant Paxil not only doesn’t work for adolescents and children but more alarmingly, that it can increase the likelihood of suicidal thoughts in this group. A 1998 GSK internal memo revealed that the company intentionally concealed this data to minimize any “potential negative commercial impact.”

In 2021, an ex-AstraZeneca sales rep sued her former employer, claiming they fired her for refusing to promote drugs for uses that weren’t FDA-approved. The employee alleges that on multiple occasions, she expressed concerns to her boss about “misleading” information that didn’t have enough support from medical research, and off-label promotions of certain drugs. Her supervisor reportedly not only ignored these concerns but pressured her to approve statements she didn’t agree with and threatened to remove her from regional and national positions if she didn’t comply. According to the plaintiff, she missed out on a raise and a bonus because she refused to break the law.

At the top of 2022, a panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit against Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, and GE Healthcare, which claims they helped finance terrorist attacks against U.S. service members and other Americans in Iraq. The suit alleges that from 2005–2011, these companies regularly offered bribes (including free drugs and medical devices) totaling millions of dollars annually to Iraq’s Ministry of Health in order to secure drug contracts. These corrupt payments then allegedly funded weapons and training for the Mahdi Army, which until 2008, was largely considered one of the most dangerous groups in Iraq.

Another especially worrisome factor is that pharmaceutical companies are conducting an ever-increasing number of clinical trials in third-world countries, where people may be less educated, and there are also far fewer safety regulations. Pfizer’s 1996 experimental trials with Trovan on Nigerian childrenwith meningitis — without informed consent — is just one nauseating example. When a former medical director in Pfizer’s central research division warned the company both before and after the study that their methods in this trial were “improper and unsafe,” he was promptly fired. Families of the Nigerian children who died or were left blind, brain damaged, or paralyzed after the study sued Pfizer, and the company ultimately settled out of court. In 1998, the FDA approved Trovan only for adults. The drug was later banned from European markets due to reports of fatal liver disease and restricted to strictly emergency care in the U.S. Pfizer still denies any wrongdoing.

“Nurse prepares to vaccinate children” by World Bank Photo Collection is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

But all that is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’d like to dive a little further down the rabbit hole — and I’ll warn you, it’s a deep one — a quick Google search for “big pharma lawsuits” will reveal the industry’s dark track record of bribery, dishonesty, and fraud.

In fact, big pharma happens to be the biggest defrauder of the federal government when it comes to the False Claims Act, otherwise known as the “Lincoln Law.” During our interview, Panara told me she has friends still working for big pharma who would be willing to speak out about crooked activity they’ve observed, but are too afraid of being blacklisted by the industry. A newly proposed update to the False Claims Act would help to protect and support whistleblowers in their efforts to hold pharmaceutical companies liable, by helping to prevent that kind of retaliation and making it harder for the companies charged to dismiss these cases. It should come as no surprise that Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, and a flock of other big pharma firms are currently lobbying to block the update. Naturally, they wouldn’t want to make it any easier for ex-employees to expose their wrongdoings, potentially costing them billions more in fines.

Something to keep in mind: these are the same people who produced, marketed, and are profiting from the COVID-19 vaccines. The same people who manipulate research, pay off decision-makers to push their drugs, cover up negative research results to avoid financial losses, and knowingly put innocent citizens in harm’s way. The same people who told America: “Take as much OxyContin as you want around the clock! It’s very safe and not addictive!” (while laughing all the way to the bank).

So, ask yourself this: if a partner, friend, or family member repeatedly lied to you — and not just little white lies, but big ones that put your health and safety at risk — would you continue to trust them?

Backing the Big Four: Big Pharma and the FDA, WHO, NIH, CDC

I know what you’re thinking. Big pharma is amoral and the FDA’s devastating slips are a dime a dozen — old news. But what about agencies and organizations like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), World Health Organization (WHO), and Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC)? Don’t they have an obligation to provide unbiased guidance to protect citizens? Don’t worry, I’m getting there.

The WHO’s guidance is undeniably influential across the globe. For most of this organization’s history, dating back to 1948, it could not receive donations from pharmaceutical companies — only member states. But that changed in 2005when the WHO updated its financial policy to permit private money into its system. Since then, the WHO has accepted many financial contributions from big pharma. In fact, it’s only 20% financed by member states today, with a whopping 80% of financing coming from private donors. For instance, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is now one of its main contributors, providing up to 13% of its funds — about $250–300 million a year. Nowadays, the BMGF provides more donations to the WHO than the entire United States.

Dr. Arata Kochi, former head of WHO’s malaria program, expressed concerns to director-general Dr. Margaret Chan in 2007 that taking the BMGF’s money could have “far-reaching, largely unintended consequences” including “stifling a diversity of views among scientists.”

“The big concerns are that the Gates Foundation isn’t fully transparent and accountable,” Lawrence Gostin, director of WHO’s Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, told Devex in an interview. “By wielding such influence, it could steer WHO priorities … It would enable a single rich philanthropist to set the global health agenda.”

Photo credit: National Institutes of Health

Take a peek at the WHO’s list of donors and you’ll find a few other familiar names like AstraZeneca, Bayer, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck.

The NIH has the same problem, it seems. Science journalist Paul Thacker, who previously examined financial links between physicians and pharma companies as a lead investigator of the United States Senate Committee, wrote in The Washington Post that this agency “often ignored” very “obvious” conflicts of interest. He also claimed that “its industry ties go back decades.” In 2018, it was discovered that a $100 million alcohol consumption study run by NIH scientists was funded mostly by beer and liquor companies. Emails proved that NIH researchers were in frequent contact with those companies while designing the study — which, here’s a shocker — were aimed at highlighting the benefits and not the risks of moderate drinking. So, the NIH ultimately had to squash the trial.

And then there’s the CDC. It used to be that this agency couldn’t take contributions from pharmaceutical companies, but in 1992 they found a loophole: new legislation passed by Congress allowed them to accept private funding through a nonprofit called the CDC Foundation. From 2014 through 2018 alone, the CDC Foundation received $79.6 million from corporations like Pfizer, Biogen, and Merck.

Of course, if a pharmaceutical company wants to get a drug, vaccine, or other product approved, they really need to cozy up to the FDA. That explains why in 2017, pharma companies paid for a whopping 75% of the FDA’s scientific review budgets, up from 27% in 1993. It wasn’t always like this. But in 1992, an act of Congress changed the FDA’s funding stream, enlisting pharma companies to pay “user fees,” which help the FDA speed up the approval process for their drugs.

A 2018 Science investigation found that 40 out of 107 physician advisors on the FDA’s committees received more than $10,000 from big pharma companies trying to get their drugs approved, with some banking up to $1 million or more. The FDA claims it has a well-functioning system to identify and prevent these possible conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, their system only works for spotting payments before advisory panels meet, and the Science investigation showed many FDA panel members get their payments after the fact. It’s a little like “you scratch my back now, and I’ll scratch your back once I get what I want” — drug companies promise FDA employees a future bonus contingent on whether things go their way.

Here’s why this dynamic proves problematic: a 2000 investigation revealed that when the FDA approved the rotavirus vaccine in 1998, it didn’t exactly do its due diligence. That probably had something to do with the fact that committee members had financial ties to the manufacturer, Merck — many owned tens of thousands of dollars of stock in the company, or even held patents on the vaccine itself. Later, the Adverse Event Reporting System revealed that the vaccine was causing serious bowel obstructions in some children, and it was finally pulled from the U.S. market in October 1999.

Then, in June of 2021, the FDA overruled concerns raised by its very own scientific advisory committee to approve Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm — a move widely criticized by physicians. The drug not only showed very little efficacy but also potentially serious side effects like brain bleeding and swelling, in clinical trials. Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a Harvard Medical School professor who was on the FDA’s scientific advisory committee, called it the “worst drug approval” in recent history, and noted that meetings between the FDA and Biogen had a “strange dynamic” suggesting an unusually close relationship. Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, told CNNthat he believes the FDA started working in “inappropriately close collaboration with Biogen” back in 2019. “They were not objective, unbiased regulators,” he added in the CNN interview. “It seems as if the decision was preordained.”

That brings me to perhaps the biggest conflict of interest yet: Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID is just one of many institutes that comprises the NIH — and the NIH owns half the patent for the Moderna vaccine — as well as thousands more pharma patents to boot. The NIAID is poised to earn millions of dollars from Moderna’s vaccine revenue, with individual officials also receiving up to $150,000 annually.

Operation Warp Speed

In December of 2020, Pfizer became the first company to receive an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the FDA for a COVID-19 vaccine. EUAs — which allow the distribution of an unapproved drug or other product during a declared public health emergency — are actually a pretty new thing: the first one was issued in 2005 so military personnel could get an anthrax vaccine. To get a full FDA approval, there needs to be substantial evidence that the product is safe and effective. But for an EUA, the FDA just needs to determine that it may be effective. Since EUAs are granted so quickly, the FDA doesn’t have enough time to gather all the information they’d usually need to approve a drug or vaccine.

“Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Event” by The White House is licensed under CC PDM 1.0

Pfizer CEO and chairman Albert Bourla has said his company was “operating at the speed of science” to bring a vaccine to market. However, a 2021 report in The BMJ revealed that this speed might have come at the expense of “data integrity and patient safety.” Brook Jackson, regional director for the Ventavia Research Group, which carried out these trials, told The BMJ that her former company “falsified data, unblinded patients, and employed inadequately trained vaccinators” in Pfizer’s pivotal phase 3 trial. Just some of the other concerning events witnessed included: adverse events not being reported correctly or at all, lack of reporting on protocol deviations, informed consent errors, and mislabeling of lab specimens. An audio recording of Ventavia employees from September 2020 revealed that they were so overwhelmed by issues arising during the study that they became unable to “quantify the types and number of errors” when assessing quality control. One Ventavia employee told The BMJ she’d never once seen a research environment as disorderly as Ventavia’s Pfizer vaccine trial, while another called it a “crazy mess.”

Over the course of her two-decades-long career, Jackson has worked on hundreds of clinical trials, and two of her areas of expertise happen to be immunology and infectious diseases. She told me that from her first day on the Pfizer trial in September of 2020, she discovered “such egregious misconduct” that she recommended they stop enrolling participants into the study to do an internal audit.

“To my complete shock and horror, Ventavia agreed to pause enrollment but then devised a plan to conceal what I found and to keep ICON and Pfizer in the dark,” Jackson said during our interview. “The site was in full clean-up mode. When missing data points were discovered the information was fabricated, including forged signatures on the informed consent forms.”

A screenshot Jackson shared with me shows she was invited to a meeting titled “COVID 1001 Clean up Call” on Sept. 21, 2020. She refused to participate in the call.

Jackson repeatedly warned her superiors about patient safety concerns and data integrity issues.

“I knew that the entire world was counting on clinical researchers to develop a safe and effective vaccine and I did not want to be a part of that failure by not reporting what I saw,” she told me.

When her employer failed to act, Jackson filed a complaint with the FDA on Sept. 25, and Ventavia fired her hours later that same day under the pretense that she was “not a good fit.” After reviewing her concerns over the phone, she claims the FDA never followed up or inspected the Ventavia site. Ten weeks later, the FDA authorized the EUA for the vaccine. Meanwhile, Pfizer hired Ventavia to handle the research for four more vaccine clinical trials, including one involving children and young adults, one for pregnant women, and another for the booster. Not only that, but Ventavia handled the clinical trials for Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax. Jackson is currently pursuing a False Claims Act lawsuit against Pfizer and Ventavia Research Group.

Last year, Pfizer banked nearly $37 billion from its COVID vaccine, making it one of the most lucrative products in global history. Its overall revenues doubled in 2021 to reach $81.3 billion, and it’s slated to reach a record-breaking $98-$102 billion this year.

“Corporations like Pfizer should never have been put in charge of a global vaccination rollout, because it was inevitable they would make life-and-death decisions based on what’s in the short-term interest of their shareholders,” writes Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now.

As previously mentioned, it’s super common for pharmaceutical companies to fund the research on their own products. Here’s why that’s scary. One 1999 meta-analysis showed that industry-funded research is eight times less likely to achieve unfavorable results compared to independent trials. In other words, if a pharmaceutical company wants to prove that a medication, supplement, vaccine, or device is safe and effective, they’ll find a way.

With that in mind, I recently examined the 2020 study on Pfizer’s COVID vaccine to see if there were any conflicts of interest. Lo and behold, the lengthy attached disclosure form shows that of the 29 authors, 18 are employees of Pfizer and hold stock in the company, one received a research grant from Pfizer during the study, and two reported being paid “personal fees” by Pfizer. In another 2021 study on the Pfizer vaccine, seven of the 15 authors are employees of and hold stock in Pfizer. The other eight authors received financial support from Pfizer during the study.

As of the day I’m writing this, about 64% of Americans are fully vaccinated, and 76% have gotten at least one dose. The FDA has repeatedly promised “full transparency” when it comes to these vaccines. Yet in December of 2021, the FDA asked for permission to wait 75 years before releasing information pertaining to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, including safety data, effectiveness data, and adverse reaction reports. That means no one would see this information until the year 2096 — conveniently, after many of us have departed this crazy world. To recap: the FDA only needed 10 weeks to review the 329,000 pages worth of data before approving the EUA for the vaccine — but apparently, they need three-quarters of a century to publicize it.

In response to the FDA’s ludicrous request, PHMPT — a group of over 200 medical and public health experts from Harvard, Yale, Brown, UCLA, and other institutions — filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act demanding that the FDA produce this data sooner. And their efforts paid off: U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman issued an order for the FDA to produce 12,000 pages by Jan. 31, and then at least 55,000 pages per month thereafter. In his statement to the FDA, Pittman quoted the late John F. Kennedy: “A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

As for why the FDA wanted to keep this data hidden, the first batch of documentation revealed that there were more than 1,200 vaccine-related deaths in just the first 90 days after the Pfizer vaccine was introduced. Of 32 pregnancies with a known outcome, 28 resulted in fetal death. The CDC also recently unveiled data showing a total of 1,088,560 reports of adverse events from COVID vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Jan. 28, 2022. That data included 23,149 reports of deaths and 183,311 reports of serious injuries. There were 4,993 reported adverse events in pregnant women after getting vaccinated, including 1,597 reports of miscarriage or premature birth. A 2022 study published in JAMA, meanwhile, revealed that there have been more than 1,900 reported cases of myocarditis — or inflammation of the heart muscle — mostly in people 30 and under, within 7 days of getting the vaccine. In those cases, 96% of people were hospitalized.

“It is understandable that the FDA does not want independent scientists to review the documents it relied upon to license Pfizer’s vaccine given that it is not as effective as the FDA originally claimed, does not prevent transmission, does not prevent against certain emerging variants, can cause serious heart inflammation in younger individuals, and has numerous other undisputed safety issues,” writes Aaron Siri, the attorney representing PHMPT in its lawsuit against the FDA.

Siri told me in an email that his office phone has been ringing off the hook in recent months.

“We are overwhelmed by inquiries from individuals calling about an injury from a COVID-19 vaccine,” he said.

By the way — it’s worth noting that adverse effects caused by COVID-19 vaccinations are still not covered by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are protected under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which grants them total immunity from liability with their vaccines. And no matter what happens to you, you can’t sue the FDA for authorizing the EUA, or your employer for requiring you to get it, either. Billions of taxpayer dollars went to fund the research and development of these vaccines, and in Moderna’s case, licensing its vaccine was made possible entirely by public funds. But apparently, that still warrants citizens no insurance. Should something go wrong, you’re basically on your own.

The Hypocrisy of “Misinformation”

Photo credit: @upgradeur_life, www.instagram.com/upgradeur_life

I find it interesting that “misinformation” has become such a pervasive term lately, but more alarmingly, that it’s become an excuse for blatant censorship on social media and in journalism. It’s impossible not to wonder what’s driving this movement to control the narrative. In a world where we still very clearly don’t have all the answers, why shouldn’t we be open to exploring all the possibilities? And while we’re on the subject, what about all of the COVID-related untruths that have been spread by our leaders and officials? Why should they get a free pass?

Fauci, President Biden, and the CDC’s Rochelle Walensky all promised us with total confidence the vaccine would prevent us from getting or spreading COVID, something we now know is a myth. (In fact, the CDC recently had to change its very definition of “vaccine ” to promise “protection” from a disease rather than “immunity”— an important distinction). At one point, the New York State Department of Health (NYS DOH) and former Governor Andrew Cuomo prepared a social media campaign with misleading messaging that the vaccine was “approved by the FDA” and “went through the same rigorous approval process that all vaccines go through,” when in reality the FDA only authorized the vaccines under an EUA, and the vaccines were still undergoing clinical trials. While the NYS DOH eventually responded to pressures to remove these false claims, a few weeks later the Department posted on Facebook that “no serious side effects related to the vaccines have been reported,” when in actuality, roughly 16,000 reports of adverse events and over 3,000 reports of serious adverse events related to a COVID-19 vaccination had been reported in the first two months of use.

One would think we’d hold the people in power to the same level of accountability — if not more — than an average citizen. So, in the interest of avoiding hypocrisy, should we “cancel” all these experts and leaders for their “misinformation,” too?

Vaccine-hesitant people have been fired from their jobs, refused from restaurants, denied the right to travel and see their families, banned from social media channels, and blatantly shamed and villainized in the media. Some have even lost custody of their children. These people are frequently labeled “anti-vax,” which is misleading given that many (like the NBA’s Jonathan Isaac) have made it repeatedly clear they are not against all vaccines, but simply making a personal choice not to get this one. (As such, I’ll suggest switching to a more accurate label: “pro-choice.”) Fauci has repeatedly said federally mandating the vaccine would not be “appropriate” or “enforceable” and doing so would be “encroaching upon a person’s freedom to make their own choice.” So it’s remarkable that still, some individual employers and U.S. states, like my beloved Massachusetts, have taken it upon themselves to enforce some of these mandates, anyway. Meanwhile, a Feb. 7 bulletin posted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security indicates that if you spread information that undermines public trust in a government institution (like the CDC or FDA), you could be considered a terrorist. In case you were wondering about the current state of free speech.

The definition of institutional oppression is “the systematic mistreatment of people within a social identity group, supported and enforced by the society and its institutions, solely based on the person’s membership in the social identity group.” It is defined as occurring when established laws and practices “systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups.” Sound familiar?

As you continue to watch the persecution of the unvaccinated unfold, remember this. Historically, when society has oppressed a particular group of people whether due to their gender, race, social class, religious beliefs, or sexuality, it’s always been because they pose some kind of threat to the status quo. The same is true for today’s unvaccinated. Since we know the vaccine doesn’t prevent the spread of COVID, however, this much is clear: the unvaccinated don’t pose a threat to the health and safety of their fellow citizens — but rather, to the bottom line of powerful pharmaceutical giants and the many global organizations they finance. And with more than $100 billion on the line in 2021 alone, I can understand the motivation to silence them.

The unvaccinated have been called selfish. Stupid. Fauci has said it’s “almost inexplicable” that they are still resisting. But is it? What if these people aren’t crazy or uncaring, but rather have — unsurprisingly so — lost their faith in the agencies that are supposed to protect them? Can you blame them?

Citizens are being bullied into getting a vaccine that was created, evaluated, and authorized in under a year, with no access to the bulk of the safety data for said vaccine, and no rights whatsoever to pursue legal action if they experience adverse effects from it. What these people need right now is to know they can depend on their fellow citizens to respect their choices, not fuel the segregation by launching a full-fledged witch hunt. Instead, for some inexplicable reason I imagine stems from fear, many continue rallying around big pharma rather than each other. A 2022 Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports survey of Democratic voters found that 59% of respondents support a government policy requiring unvaccinated individuals to remain confined in their home at all times, 55% support handing a fine to anyone who won’t get the vaccine, and 48% think the government should flat out imprison people who publicly question the efficacy of the vaccines on social media, TV, or online in digital publications. Even Orwell couldn’t make this stuff up.

Photo credit: DJ Paine on Unsplash

Let me be very clear. While there are a lot of bad actors out there — there are also a lot of well-meaning people in the science and medical industries, too. I’m lucky enough to know some of them. There are doctors who fend off pharma reps’ influence and take an extremely cautious approach to prescribing. Medical journal authors who fiercely pursue transparency and truth — as is evident in “The Influence of Money on Medical Science,” a report by the first female editor of JAMA. Pharmacists, like Dan Schneider, who refuse to fill prescriptions they deem risky or irresponsible. Whistleblowers, like Graham and Jackson, who tenaciously call attention to safety issues for pharma products in the approval pipeline. And I’m certain there are many people in the pharmaceutical industry, like Panara and my grandfather, who pursued this field with the goal of helping others, not just earning a six- or seven-figure salary. We need more of these people. Sadly, it seems they are outliers who exist in a corrupt, deep-rooted system of quid-pro-quo relationships. They can only do so much.

I’m not here to tell you whether or not you should get the vaccine or booster doses. What you put in your body is not for me — or anyone else — to decide. It’s not a simple choice, but rather one that may depend on your physical condition, medical history, age, religious beliefs, and level of risk tolerance. My grandfather passed away in 2008, and lately, I find myself missing him more than ever, wishing I could talk to him about the pandemic and hear what he makes of all this madness. I don’t really know how he’d feel about the COVID vaccine, or whether he would have gotten it or encouraged me to. What I do know is that he’d listen to my concerns, and he’d carefully consider them. He would remind me my feelings are valid. His eyes would light up and he’d grin with amusement as I fervidly expressed my frustration. He’d tell me to keep pushing forward, digging deeper, asking questions. In his endearing Bronx accent, he used to always say: “go get ‘em, kid.” If I stop typing for a moment and listen hard enough, I can almost hear him saying it now.

People keep saying “trust the science.” But when trust is broken, it must be earned back. And as long as our legislative system, public health agencies, physicians, and research journals keep accepting pharmaceutical money (with strings attached) — and our justice system keeps letting these companies off the hook when their negligence causes harm, there’s no reason for big pharma to change. They’re holding the bag, and money is power.

I have a dream that one day, we’ll live in a world where we are armed with all the thorough, unbiased data necessary to make informed decisions about our health. Alas, we’re not even close. What that means is that it’s up to you to educate yourself as much as possible, and remain ever-vigilant in evaluating information before forming an opinion. You can start by reading clinical trials yourself, rather than relying on the media to translate them for you. Scroll to the bottom of every single study to the “conflicts of interest” section and find out who funded it. Look at how many subjects were involved. Confirm whether or not blinding was used to eliminate bias. You may also choose to follow Public Citizen’s Health Research Group’s rule whenever possible: that means avoiding a new drug until five years after an FDA approval (not an EUA, an actual approval) — when there’s enough data on the long-term safety and effectiveness to establish that the benefits outweigh the risks. When it comes to the news, you can seek out independent, nonprofit outlets, which are less likely to be biased due to pharma funding. And most importantly, when it appears an organization is making concerted efforts to conceal information from you — like the FDA recently did with the COVID vaccine — it’s time to ask yourself: why? What are they trying to hide?

In the 2019 film “Dark Waters” — which is based on the true story of one of the greatest corporate cover-ups in American history — Mark Ruffalo as attorney Rob Bilott says: “The system is rigged. They want us to think it’ll protect us, but that’s a lie. We protect us. We do. Nobody else. Not the companies. Not the scientists. Not the government. Us.”

Words to live by.

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Rebecca Strong is a freelance health, wellness, and lifestyle writer based in Boston.

Featured image is from Massimo Giachetti

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***

Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab’s case took a dramatic turn as his legal defense team denounced the US government’s flagrant failure to respect long-standing diplomatic immunity conventions. Saab’s lawyer, David Rivkin, called the US government’s arguments before the 11^th Circuit Court in Miami “utterly dangerous.” “The implication,” he added is that “because you are a disfavored regime, because you’re Venezuela under Maduro…we’re going to treat you as somehow you lost the Westphalian entitlement to sovereignty.” And with that, Rivkin pretty much summed up the US imperial view of the world.

At issue at the April 6 hearing was Saab’s claim to diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention on Diplomat Relations. This international law, to which the US is a signatory, affords accredited diplomats absolute protection from arrest and prosecution even in time of war. Referring to the war in Ukraine, Saab’s attorney reminded the court that the principle at stake is “vital to the effective functioning of diplomacy for all states…[which] is all the more imperative these days.”

Charges against Alex Saab

Alex Saab, who was appointed as a special envoy by Venezuela in 2018, was initially detained on orders of the US on June 12, 2020. He was enroute from Caracas to Tehran when his plane made a fueling stop in Cabo Verde. Saab had in his possession his diplomatic passport and other documents (see them on online) commensurate with his diplomatic mission.

Saab had been on a mission to procure humanitarian supplies of basic food, fuel, and medicine for Venezuela from Iran in legal international trade but in circumvention of the illegal US sanctions and blockade of Venezuela. The US had identified Saab as a key player in the resistance to the US’s economic war against Venezuela.

After being held in tortuous conditions in Cabo Verde for nearly 500 days, the US kidnapped Saab a second time and has imprisoned him in Miami since October 16, 2021. Washington did not have an extradition treaty with Cabo Verde and did not inform Saab’s lawyers or family before flying him to the US.

The US government dropped its initial seven counts of money laundering and retained only one count of “conspiracy” to money launder, to which Saab pleaded not guilty in US District Court last November. That charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment. In this instance of extraterritorial judicial overreach by Washington, the defense has noted that Saab is neither a US citizen nor was the alleged crime committed in the US.

Functional denial of immunity

A half a year from now, Saab is scheduled to go on trial in the 8^th District Court on the single conspiracy charge. His appearance this April 6 at the 11^th Circuit Court was on appeal on the grounds that, like any other diplomat, he is protected by the Vienna Convention, which affords him absolute immunity from prosecution.

Saab’s attorney, Rivkin, argued before the appellate court that “every day Mr. Saab is in prison is a grave breach. It’s almost a First Amendment type situation. It’s irreparable harm to him. It’s irreparable harm to the sovereign state whose diplomatic agent he is.”

The US government attorney on April 6 maintained in court that Saab’s “claim of special envoy status is simply a ruse made up by a rogue nation to allow a defendant to escape criminal charges in the US.” On this basis, US prosecutor Jeremy Sanders argued that Saab should just wait however many more years behind bars it takes until after the conspiracy charge is adjudicated in the lower court. Then, if found guilty, he could try to contest his denial of diplomatic immunity.

Even Circuit Court Judge Jordan challenged the US government attorney, using the hypothetical example of a state court criminally charging a US president. The judge quipped that rather than wait for the lower count trial to proceed, “you’d be up at the appellate court in a heartbeat, arguing that that issue had to be resolved immediately. Right?”

Judge Luck, also on the three-judge panel, added that “the failure to rule on it [diplomatic immunity] is itself a decision to bring someone in, to haul someone into court when they are not otherwise required or entitled to be in court;” that is, a “functional denial of immunity” in Judge Jordan’s words.

The court “will take the matter under advisement,” which is legalese to say they will mull it over as Saab continues to languish in prison.

International support for Alex Saab

Meanwhile, outside the courthouse, William Camacaro, head of the US #FreeAlexSaab Campaign, along with its honorary chair, Puerto Rican liberation hero, Oscar López Rivera, led a demonstration in support of Saab. Similar support rallies were held elsewhere in North America and internationally.

The Venezuelan National Assembly unanimously passed a resolution condemning what its president, Jorge Rodríguez, called an “act of immeasurable hypocrisy” by the US.

The National Lawyers Guild called for Saab’s immediate release, commenting that the case reflects on “the extent to which the US government will go in order to enforce its unilateral coercive measures and economic sanctions against Venezuela, Iran and other targeted nations.”

This is a politically motivated case, not a legal one, and is “really about the international order and viability of diplomacy,” according to counsel Femi Falana. Falana was Saab’s lead attorney before the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice, which twice ordered Saab to be liberated when he was held in Cabo Verde.

Venezuela’s successful resistance to US economic warfare

The Biden administration, which had continued Trump’s “maximum pressure” blockade of Venezuela, is showing signs of needing to make amends with its Latin American neighbor. An already inflationary US economy has been rendered yet more volatile with Washington’s sanctions on Moscow causing increased prices at the gas pump. This led to a visit that would have been unthinkable for Washington a few months earlier.

A high-level US delegation visited Caracas in early March to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, presumably to negotiate an oil trade deal. While there has been no official confirmation of such a deal, the visit implicitly recognized the legitimacy of the elected president of Venezuela, handing Maduro a major victory. Meanwhile, the hapless Juan Guaidó, recognized as the “interim president” of Venezuela only by the US and a few of its most sycophantic allies, may soon be history.

According to the UN, the US sanctions initially reduced Venezuelan government revenues by an extraordinary 99% and fueled astronomic hyperinflation. Venezuela’s successful resistance, aided by Saab and many others, has foiled the US attempt to foment regime change through imposition of what the UN calls “unilateral coercive measures,” a form of collective punishment and economic warfare. Rather, Venezuela’s once devastated economy is rejuvenating.

In the last month, Venezuela’s inflation slowed down to 1.4%, which is lower than before Obama first imposed sanctions in 2015. The national consumer price index has been below 10% for the last seven months. The investment bank Credit Suisse projects a remarkable 20% GDP growth in 2022 and 8% more in 2023 for Venezuela. According to political analyst Ben Norton, “the worst of this US-fueled economic crisis has passed.”

Alex Saab was instrumental in the economic turnaround. Venezuelan National Assembly President Rodríguez credited Saab with helping to “overcome the most brutal attack the country suffered,” which is precisely why the US has persecuted him. And the Venezuelan government has made clear that they will not abandon, in the words of President Maduro, their “kidnapped” diplomat.

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Roger D. Harris is with the human rights organization Task Force on the Americas, founded in 1985.

Featured image is from Twitter via pressenza

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***

The Israeli government has been trying to keep as low a profile as possible over the war in Ukraine, but Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, seems determined to drag Israel on to centre stage.

Zelensky made a direct appeal to the Israeli parliament last month, ostensibly asking for weapons, especially the Iron Dome interception system Israel uses to stop short-range rockets fired out of Gaza by Palestinians trying to draw attention to Israel’s 15-year siege of the enclave.

But rather than being flattered by the attention, many Israeli politicians objected to Zelensky’s speech. In it, he compared Russia’s treatment of Ukraine to the Nazis’ “Final Solution” for European Jews.

Zelensky, who is Jewish, hoped the parallel would strike home. To most Israeli ears, it sounded offensive. So far Israel has refused to supply Ukraine with weapons or join the West in waging economic warfare on Russia.

It does not help that major Israeli political parties and religious communities have strong geographical and emotional ties to Russia. Or that Moscow is a major actor in the Middle East, not least in neighbouring Syria. Israel coordinates closely with Russia over regular air strikes in Syria – themselves in violation of international law.

Israel has been trying its best to tread a difficult diplomatic path over Ukraine. On the one hand, Israel is a regional client state of the United States, under Washington’s protection, and wishes to keep its patron happy. And on the other, Israel’s military interests are to maintain good relations with Moscow.

Furthermore, Israeli leaders are worried about reinforcing the consensus that what the Russian army is doing in Ukraine amounts to war crimes, thereby creating a very public precedent that could be turned against Israel over its own abuses in the occupied territories.

Adopting an early role as mediator, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett even urged Zelensky to accept a Russian ceasefire proposal.

Mass corpses

Nonetheless, Zelensky is intent on tipping the scales in Ukraine’s favour with Israel. He understands that his country’s plight has captured the western media and western public sympathy. He has every incentive to weaponise that sentiment to press-gang Israel into more openly supporting Ukraine.

In his speech to the parliament, he appropriated a quote from a former Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, who claimed that “our enemies want us to cease to exist”. Russia planned to do the same to Ukraine, Zelensky warned.

Last week, after the first images emerged of mass corpses in Bucha, near Kyiv, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid changed tune. He commented on Twitter: “Intentionally harming a civilian population is a war crime and I strongly condemn it.”

It is impossible to remain indifferent in the face of the horrific images from the city of Bucha near Kiev, from after the Russian army left.

Intentionally harming a civilian population is a war crime and I strongly condemn it.

— יאיר לפיד – Yair Lapid🟠 (@yairlapid) April 3, 2022

Presumably, Israel hopes it can evade such criticism itself by claiming it has no “intention” to harm Palestinian civilians, despite so often harming civilians.

And then, last Thursday, Israel conceded further ground by joining the US and Europe in voting to suspend Russia from the United Nations human rights council. Moscow had warned countries that it would treat the move as an “unfriendly gesture”, with repercussions for diplomatic relations.

A ‘big Israel’

The Israeli vote at the UN followed hot on the heels of Zelensky making a statement promoting Israel as a model for post-war Ukraine. He said his country would become a “big Israel“, with the armed forces having a strong presence in every aspect of Ukrainian society.

He observed that in “all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas, there will be people with weapons”. For the foreseeable future, Ukraine would develop as a highly militarised society like Israel rather than being “absolutely liberal, European”. Almost as an afterthought, he added that Ukraine would avoid becoming “authoritarian”.

The cosying up to Israel began some time ago under Zelensky. In 2020, he delighted Israel by pulling Ukraine out of a UN committee established in 1975 “to enable Palestinian people to exercise … the right to self-determination … the right to national independence and sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced”.

But the significance of modelling a future Ukraine on Israel is being largely ignored.

Israel is highly militarised because, as a settler-colonial state trying to dispossess and replace the native population, it must treat the Palestinians as an enemy that needs either to be beaten into submission or expelled.

For decades, the Israeli army and settler militias have worked hand in hand to drive Palestinians off their land (ethnic cleansing) and keep them ghettoised and away from the exclusively Jewish communities built in their place (apartheid). Is this what Zelensky intends for Ukraine: a deeply segregated society where the Ukrainian army and militias drive out those seen as not truly Ukrainian?

Donbas region

Paradoxically, that approximates the accusation Vladimir Putin levelled against the Ukrainian government as he justified Russia’s invasion in late February. He claimed Ukraine needed to be “denazified” – an allegation met with revulsion in western capitals.

But Zelensky’s vow to create a Ukraine modelled on Israel, it could be argued, validates the Russian leader’s argument.

Kyiv will have no need to station soldiers and militias in every cinema and supermarket if Zelensky makes good on his vow to drive the Russian army out of Ukraine. It will need a large, well-equipped military to defend its northern and eastern borders. But the Ukrainian president, it seems, does not see Russia as Ukraine’s only enemy.

So who else is he worried about? To understand that, we need to parse Putin’s hyperbolic speeches.

The Russian president’s “denazification” allegation, justifying the invasion of Ukraine, was premised on the idea that fascist elements in the Ukrainian army have been carrying out pogroms and ethnic cleansing against a large population of ethnic Russians inside Ukraine, in the Donbas region bordering Russia.

Russia has claimed that, in part, troops are there to prevent Ukraine from carrying out such pogroms – often described as “de-Russification”- in the country’s east. Putin has even used the term “genocide“.

Parties banned

One can dispute Putin’s claim, while also recognising it has not been invented out of thin air – though you might imagine that by listening to the western media. Ukraine has been plunged into what amounts to a civil war in its east since large-scale protests in Kyiv in 2014 removed a government sympathetic to Russia and replaced it with one keen to integrate into Nato.

To some observers, what happened eight years ago looked suspiciously like a US-backed “soft coup“, with one senior White House official who had been dispatched to Kyiv at the time, Victoria Nuland, caught on tape discussing who should be installed as the new president.

Subsequent moves by the new nationalist government included not just antagonising Russia by lobbying for greater integration into Nato and the European Union. Kyiv also passed legislation severely downgrading the status of the Russian language, spoken by large swaths of the population, and merging neo-Nazi, openly anti-Russia militias like the Azov Battalion into the Ukrainian military.

Since the invasion, Zelensky has also banned 11 opposition parties because they are considered supportive of Russia or Ukraine’s Russian communities.

Putin’s “denazification” claim has been exploited by the western media to characterise as “Russian disinformation” any mention of a long-standing neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine – even though all of these outlets reported extensively on that very problem a few years ago.

But the point – at least from Moscow’s perspective – about the Azov Battalion and groups like it is that they represent a powerful strain of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism that not only celebrates historic Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany but sees ethnic Russians in Ukraine as a threat.

In a rare example of Zelensky being challenged about this recently by the western media, he admitted that there were neo-Nazi militias that were “defending our country”. He seemed to imagine that western audiences would be reassured by the fact that these far-right groups had been integrated into the Ukrainian military and operated under the national flag.

Fifth column

Since the change of government in 2014, groups like Azov have been at the forefront of a civil war in the Donbas region, where ethnic Russians are concentrated. Fighting has claimed at least 14,000 lives and driven many hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians from their homes.

That may explain why on a visit to one of those eastern towns, even the BBC’s defence correspondent had to concede – however reluctantly – that some Ukrainians he interviewed appeared to view their own government, under Zelensky, as more of a problem than Putin or the Kremlin.

This returns us to the question of why Zelensky might be so keen to model Ukraine on Israel – and why such a development would make Moscow nervous.

Israel regards all Palestinians under its rule – whether citizens inside Israel or subjects under military occupation – as a potential fifth column, working to destroy Greater Israel from within on behalf of millions more Palestinians in the diaspora and the wider Arab world.

This ultra-nationalist narrative has underpinned Israel’s development as a highly militarised ethnic fortress committed to oppressing any Palestinians left within its walls, with the ultimate aim of driving them out.

For anyone not in thrall to Zionism’s clash of civilisations, war-without-end narrative, what Israel has done to the Palestinians looks a lot like apartheid – the reason why so many human rights and legal groups have recently started saying this out loud.

But while much of the world increasingly deplores Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, the Ukrainian leadership gives every impression of believing this extreme, ethno-nationalist, apartheid model is an ideal one for Ukraine.

Which, if right, would breathe credibility into – though not justify – some of Putin’s reasoning for launching an invasion: to pre-empt the expulsion of Ukraine’s historic ethnic Russian communities and their replacement on Russia’s doorstep of those sympathetic to the neo-Nazi ideology of the Azov Battalion.

Rising tide of blood

Western pundits have made much of Zelensky being Jewish to swipe away claims of a neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine. But it is not clear how much control the Ukrainian president exercises over these militias, or the degree to which an ultra-nationalism expressed chiefly in terms of vehement hatred of all things Russian is spreading among Ukrainians as the war takes a heavier toll.

The corpses littering streets in places like Bucha, and the videos apparently showing Ukrainians executing Russian prisoners of war, are signs of how rapidly these divisions are becoming even more poisonous, deepening the existing trauma of eight years of civil war.

In such circumstances, the West ought to be doing its level best to impose a ceasefire on both sides as quickly as possible. Instead western states are fanning the flames by flooding Ukraine with weapons to intensify the fighting and raise the death toll.

Even if Ukraine eventually manages to drive out the Russian army, western weapons will remain in the hands of Ukrainians, including militias like the Azov Battalion.

If Zelensky’s dream of Ukraine becoming a “big Israel” is realised with the exit of Russian soldiers, that most likely will mark not an end to the blood-spilling but simply a new chapter in Ukraine’s trauma.

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Jonathan Cook is the the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at: www.jonathan-cook.net

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

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***

The US-led NATO military alliance has made it clear that it is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian in order to bleed Russia and advance Western geopolitical interests.

In a shockingly blunt admission, The Washington Post acknowledged that some NATO member states want “Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying” in order to prevent Russia from making political gains.

In an April 5 report on peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, the major US newspaper disclosed that NATO is afraid that Kiev may give in to some of Moscow’s demands.

The Washington Post wrote explicitly: “For some in NATO, 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.”

Anonymous Western diplomats emphasized that “there are limits to how many compromises some in NATO will support to win the peace,” and that they would rather prolong the war in Ukraine if they can prevent Russia from having its security concerns met.

The newspaper said that NATO members are desperate not to give “Russian President Vladimir Putin any semblance of victory,” and are more than willing to force Ukrainians into the meat grinder to do so.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan noted that the administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is closely coordinating with Washington, and is in “near-daily contact” with the White House. It is evident who is really in charge.

The newspaper likewise revealed that the US military has more than 100,000 troops deployed in Europe.

The Washington Post has a close relationship with the US government. The newspaper is owned by $200-billionaire Jeff Bezos, one of the richest human beings in history.

Bezos is also the founder and executive chairman of mega-corporation Amazon, which has tens of billions of dollars worth of contracts with the CIA, Pentagon, NSA, FBI, ICE, and other US government agencies.

If The Washington Post is disclosing this information about NATO, with quotes from senior White House officials, it clearly got the green light from its handlers in Washington.

This report is a semi-official confirmation that NATO sees Ukrainians as mere cannon fodder in its imperial proxy war on Russia.

In fact, some Western officials have stated this openly.

A former senior State Department official, hard-line right-wing war hawk Eliot A. Cohen, boasted in an article in The Atlantic magazine that the “United States and its NATO allies are engaged in a proxy war with Russia.”

He effused proudly, “They are supplying thousands of munitions and hopefully doing much else—sharing intelligence, for example—with the intent of killing Russian soldiers,” adding, “the more and faster the better.”

The State Department veteran declared that the “stream of arms going into Ukraine needs to be a flood.”

This is exactly what NATO member states are doing: flooding Russia’s neighbor with weapons.

Instead of supporting peace talks with Russia, the United States and European Union have been actively escalating the war, sending Ukraine billions of dollars worth of weapons, including tens of thousands of anti-tank missiles, thousands of anti-aircraft missiles, and hundreds of kamikaze drones, as well as tanks and armored vehicles.

What goes unmentioned is how US and European arms corporations have heavily profited from the war. The stocks of private military contractors skyrocketed after Russia sent its troops into Ukraine on February 24, as Western governments pledged to substantially increase their military expenditure.

The Joe Biden administration immediately delivered $350 million in weapons in late February, before pledging an additional $13.6 billion in aid for Ukraine in March, of which $6.5 billion in military support.

The foreign ministers of NATO met at the military alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on April 6 and 7 and pledged to escalate the war in Ukraine even further.

The Western politicians were joined by representatives of several non-NATO members, including Japan, South Korea, Georgia, Finland, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba traveled to Brussels for the meeting, where he dispelled any doubt that NATO wants more war instead of peace.

“I came here today to discuss three most important things: weapons, weapons, and weapons,” Kuleba summarized.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg similarly declared, “After the invasion, allies stepped up with additional military support, with more military equipment, and it was a clear message from the meeting today that allies should do more and are ready to do more to provide more equipment, and they realize and recognize the urgency.”

Stoltenberg boasted that direct NATO military support for Ukraine goes back to 2014 and that tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were trained by NATO in the past eight years, long before Russia invaded.

NATO transparently prefers that Ukrainians keep sacrificing their lives in hopes of weakening and destabilizing Russia.

Meanwhile, Ukrainians who think peace should be the solution, not more war, face dire consequences.

A Ukrainian negotiator who had participated in peace talks with Russia, Denys Kyreyev, was murdered, reportedly by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which is notorious for being influenced by neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists.

All of this extreme violence and warmongering flies directly in the face of NATO’s claim to be a supposed “defensive” alliance.

The reality is NATO has never been devoted to defense, let alone democracy. Among the military alliance’s founding members in 1949 was the fascist dictatorship of Portugal.

During the first cold war, NATO supported former Nazi collaborators and fascists in its infamous Operation Gladio. With NATO support, far-right extremists carried out terrorist attacks in Europe to try to repress the left-wing, especially during Italy’s notorious Years of Lead.

When the first cold war ended, NATO continued to expand onto Russia’s borders, repeatedly violating promises made by the United States, Britain, and France that the military alliance would not move “one inch eastward” after the reunification of Germany in 1990.

In bombing campaigns in the 1990s, NATO destroyed and carved up the former Yugoslavia, which no longer exists as a country.

Then NATO helped the United States launch its war in Afghanistan in 2001, and maintained a joint military occupation until 2021.

In 2011, NATO waged war on Libya, the most prosperous country in Africa. The Western military campaign shattered Libya’s state. Foreign fossil fuel corporations soon pillaged the North African nation’s massive oil reserves.

Still today, in 2022, Libya has no unified central government. It does, however, have open-air slave markets for Sub-Saharan African refugees.

The ruins of Libya, Afghanistan, and former Yugoslavia show what NATO truly offers the world.

And the US-led military alliance is now prepared to sacrifice Ukraine to advance the interests of Washington and Wall Street.

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Ben Norton is an independent journalist focused on geopolitics and US foreign policy.

Featured image is from Al Mayadeen English

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***

Today I interrupted Deputy Prime Minister Christya Freeland at a press conference to ask if she’s a warmonger. I criticized her for devoting half a billion dollars in last week’s budget for new weapons to fight Russia. I also questioned her support of NATO expansion and failure to support the Minsk accords for a negotiated solution to the monstrous war.

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Costa Rica’s new president may abandon the nation’s policy of not producing oil and gas, undermining efforts by the previous administration to lead a global movement.

Conservative economist Rodrigo Chaves Robles was elected president of the central American nation on Sunday night, defeating José María Figueres.

Asked about oil and gas production during the campaign, Chaves told La Republica he was against oil exploration but “regarding gas, it is a technical question”.

He continued:

“I do not see a contradiction between the environment and the rational management of natural resources. Norway has done it and has done it super well.”

Norway is Europe’s largest producer of gas while also leading on electric vehicle adoption and on contributing money to combat climate change internationally.

Under the outgoing president Carlos Alvarado Quesada and environment minister Andrea Meza, Costa Rica co-founded the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance with Denmark.

This alliance promised to set an end date for oil and gas extraction and end new concessions, licensing or leasing rounds.

At Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK last November, Costa Rica and Denmark signed up countries including France, Portugal and Sweden representing 0.2% of global oil production.

Ana María Durán-Quesada, a physicist and member of Costa Rica’s Scientific Climate Change Committee, said that there were “concerns” about potential gas exploration but “that’s something in which we do not really have a certainty what the direction would be”.

There’s no data on how much oil and gas, if any, Costa Rica has. There were attempts decades ago to explore offshore but Costa Rica’s stringent conservation rules stopped them.

Sam Goodman is a Costa Rica-based campaigner for La Ruta Del Clima. He said that while the direct impact of gas exploration would be limited, it would have a broader reputational impact.

“We’ll have Costa Rica, one of the co-chairs of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and they start the exploratory process for natural gas. How will that look? Because the world looks to Costa Rica as the international leader. A lot of that may be in jeopardy,” Goodman said.

He told Climate Home

“we’re definitely going to see some backsliding but it’s unclear how significant the backslide will be”.

In Denmark, campaigners are also concerned. Danish Church Aid adviser Mattias Sodeberg told Climate Home “it is worrying if Costa Rica will change its approach to gas”.

“Their leadership is essential to push the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance campaign forward. I do hope that they will reconsider carefully before changing their positions, or else they risk losing their leadership position in the climate debate,” he added.

Chaves’ choice for environment minister is likely to be made in the next few weeks. This will give a good indication of his environmental policy, Goodman and Durán-Quesada said.

Costa Rica has consistently punched above its weight in climate diplomacy and is known for getting nearly all its electricity from renewable sources – mostly hydropower. The architect of the Paris Agreement, Cristiana Figueres, is a Costa Rican former diplomat and the sister of defeated presidential candidate Figueres.

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Featured image: Monkeys in Quepos, Costa Rica (Photo: M M/Flickr)

NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster

By F. William Engdahl, April 12, 2022

Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February.  The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine.

Western Sanctions Against Russia Create Food Deficits Globally

By Abayomi Azikiwe, April 13, 2022

In the U.S. the prices of fuel, food, transportation, housing and utilities are rising rapidly. These price increases are in part due to the mismanagement of the economy stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the instigation of a war between Russia and Ukraine has worsened the economic situation of workers and oppressed peoples in the U.S. and around the world.

US Deploys Aircraft Carrier Strike Group Off Korean Coast

By Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter, April 12, 2022

The US has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group near the Korean Peninsula. The ships are expected to enter the East Sea later this week as a show of force in response to recent North Korean missile tests.

LancetGate: “Scientific Corona Lies” and Big Pharma Corruption. Hydroxychloroquine versus Gilead’s Remdesivir

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 12, 2022

While The Lancet report (May 22, 2020) coordinated by Dr. Mandeep Mehra was intended “to kill” the legitimacy of HCQ as a cure of Covid-19, another important (related) study was being carried out (concurrently) at BWH pertaining to Remdesivir on behalf of Gilead Sciences Inc. Dr. Francisco Marty, a specialist in Infectious Disease and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School was entrusted with coordination of the clinical trial tests of the antiviral medication Remdesivir under Brigham’s contract with Gilead Sciences Inc.

CIA Discussed Assassination of Fidel Castro with UK Officials

By John McEvoy, April 12, 2022

Fidel Castro’s secret service chief once estimated that 634 attempts were made against the Cuban leader’s life. From exploding cigars to poisoned pills, Washington’s campaign to assassinate Castro remains an infamous case of Cold War covert action. The presence of a revolutionary government in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, was intolerable for the US government.

833 Athlete Cardiac Arrests and Serious Issues, 540 Dead, Following COVID Injection

By Rhoda Wilson, April 12, 2022

A total of 15 players were unable to finish the Miami Open 2022 tennis tournament, including the male and female favourites.  All of the players must be “fully vaccinated” to compete, the Liberty Daily wrote, “just as we’ve noted for several months, most major sports have been hit with ‘inexplicable’ medical conditions popping up in young and otherwise healthy athletes, including our report that three cyclists fell in March alone.”

Searching for War Criminals

By Philip Giraldi, April 12, 2022

The United States is now insisting that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be put on trial for “war crimes” committed in Ukraine. As Putin is still insisting that he will attend the upcoming G20 summit in November on the island of Bali, Indonesia, it will be a great opportunity to have US Marshalls snatch him from the stage and whisk him off to a federal courthouse in Virginia for justice to be served.

Evidence that the Missile that Caused the Massacre in Kramatorsk Is Not Russian but Ukrainian

By Manlio Dinucci, April 12, 2022

The serial number of the Tochka-U missile that hit the Kramatorsk railway station on 8 April 2022 is Ш91579 (in Russian) or Sh91579 (in English). This serial number marks the stock of Tochka-U missiles in the possession of the Ukrainian Army. Only the Ukrainian Armed Forces have Tochka-U missiles. Russia has not had them since 2019: they have all been deactivated.

The World Order Is Being Remade Around Ukraine and Will Have Long Term Consequences

By Lindsey German, April 12, 2022

NATO maintains the fiction that it is not involved in this war by claiming that it is supplying nothing – this is being done by sovereign states who just happen to be part of the military alliance. Yet this whole process is facilitated by NATO – and the meeting in Brussels will be only the latest opportunity to discuss which of the sovereign states will be the latest to line up with more weaponry.

‘Why don’t we just kill them?’: New Book Details CIA Rendition and Torture Programme

By Umar A Farooq, April 12, 2022

In the early years of America’s war on terror, during an undisclosed meeting of the top brass of the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), senior intelligence officials gathered to discuss what to do with the individuals subjected to rendition and “enhanced interrogation techniques”. After looking at a number of options, including keeping them in detention, sending them to another country, and prosecuting them, one senior official asked, “Why don’t we just kill them?”

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***

Leading up to and after the Russian special military operation in Ukraine beginning on February 24, the United States and its allies within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) have imposed unprecedented sanctions against the Russian Federation.

Relations between Washington and Moscow have been strained for many years since the Russian Federation emerged from a period of serious decline in the wake of the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991.

From the period of the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 to the advent of the U.S. intervention in the European Theater of Operations during World War II, the character of relations between the capitalist states, including the U.S., and the Soviet Union were viewed as a struggle between two differing and opposing social systems. Even in the post-Soviet era of the last decade-and-a-half, there are conflicting interests that have driven both world powers to the current conflict in Ukraine.

The rise of the Cold War in the late 1940s, aggravated the tensions which were somewhat submerged in the years of 1941-1945. Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and later that same year declared war on the U.S. as a response to the December 7 Japanese military attacks on Pearl Harbor in occupied-Hawaii.

On an international geostrategic level, the Soviet Union and the U.S. found themselves on the opposite sides of the political spectrum. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, the Soviet Union supported the national liberation movements and those independent governments seeking to build an anti-imperialist and socialist orientation. While the Pentagon supplied weapons to the colonial-fascist forces in Portugal, Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa to suppress the mass-guerrilla revolutionary organizations, the Soviet Union and other socialist states such as China, Cuba, North Vietnam and North Korea, provided political and material assistance to the movements seeking to overturn the legacy of colonialism.

In today’s global situation absent the Soviet Union and its allied states in Eastern Europe, the U.S. is attempting to expand the presence of NATO. This is taking place in Europe as well as other geopolitical regions. Throughout Africa, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and Operation Barkhane coordinated by France, has initiated military campaigns under the guise of fighting jihadist terrorism. Nonetheless, in several West African states, governments are turning to President Vladimir Putin and the Russian military apparatus to approach the security crisis from another perspective. (See this)

As it relates to the sanctions imposed by Washington, Wall Street and their allies in Europe, the impact is being felt internationally. In the U.S. the prices of fuel, food, transportation, housing and utilities are rising rapidly. These price increases are in part due to the mismanagement of the economy stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the instigation of a war between Russia and Ukraine has worsened the economic situation of workers and oppressed peoples in the U.S. and around the world.

With specific reference to the African continent, countries such as Somalia, Benin, Egypt, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Senegal and Tanzania are being adversely affected by the market disruptions caused by sanctions and the war in Ukraine. In fact, the level of Russian and Ukrainian wheat imports to Africa far exceeds those of the U.S. by nearly 500%. (See this)

Africa imports more than five times wheat from Russia than US (Source: Statista)

Consequently, the sanctions against Russia and the constant shipping of weapons to the pro-NATO regime in Kiev is serving as a mechanism to intensify the economic war aimed at the destabilization Moscow. Yet this renewed Cold War policy is effectively creating the conditions for the starvation of hundreds of millions of Africans and others throughout the globe.

Statistics Reveal Worsening Problems in Agricultural Sectors

According to a report published by Al Jazeera on the burgeoning food supply crisis:

“The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said its Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices for a basket of commodities, averaged 159.3 points last month, up 12.6 percent from February. As it is, the February index was the highest level since its inception in 1990. FAO said the war in Ukraine was largely responsible for the 17.1 percent rise in the price of grains, including wheat and others like oats, barley and corn. Together, Russia and Ukraine account for approximately 30 percent and 20 percent of global wheat and corn exports, respectively.”

Although the Western corporate media outlets make it appear as if the new sanctions being imposed on Russia almost on a daily basis have no effect on people living in the U.S. and the NATO countries, this could not be further from the truth. Even in the U.S., working people, youth, seniors, people living with disabilities and marginalized oppressed communities are suffering immensely from the rise in prices for essential commodities and services. As far as the administration of President Joe Biden is concerned, there has been no systematic policy initiatives to address the rapidly rising inflation. A plan to release oil supplies from the strategic petroleum reserve in the U.S. has not had any significant impact on easing the financial stress facing consumers. (See this)

NATO war impacts on African states (Source: Statista)

In addition, European countries are facing a monumental energy crisis with the restrictions being placed on the importation of Russian produced oil and natural gas. Food products are scarce and expensive while real income due to the rise in inflation is in significant decline.

Ukraine conflict threatens global food security (Source: Statista)

There is a direct link between the costs associated with energy, transportation and food supplies. In underdeveloped regions of the world the problems stemming from the Ukraine war and the sanctions imposed by imperialist states take on acute proportions. The rise in prices for imports of refined energy resources and food will only drain national treasuries and household incomes of the workers and farmers.

One tracking news agency Axios emphasizes:

“In poorer countries where folks spend upward of 50% or more of their income on food, these numbers are devastating…. The tools that central banks are using to fight inflation — rate hikes, quantitative tightening — are meant to curtail demand, but can do little to address global supply problems. ‘Raising rates will not resolve the war or address the supply chain,’ said Jean Boivin, head of the BlackRock Investment Institute. The index tracks a basket of commodities including cereals, vegetable oils, dairy, meat and sugar. The prices of wheat and sunflower oil, in particular, are rising because of the war. Some Ukrainian ports are closed and others face disruptions. Issues will certainly drag into next year as some farmers in Ukraine — the leading sunflower-oil exporter and a top grains supplier — are unable to plant crops. The U.S. is also struggling with rising food prices. Expect to hear more about that Tuesday morning, when the March Consumer Price Index is released.”

The War Could Have Been Avoided

Media reports in the corporate and capitalist-government controlled agencies suggest that the intervention by Russia into Ukraine was unprovoked. Yet the Russian government for years has warned about the military actions of NATO in Eastern Europe. Successive administrations both Democratic and Republican have identified Russia along with China as principal enemies of the U.S. and its people.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in his travels to Europe only serves to further extend the war in Ukraine. The United Nations as an ostensible multilateral institution has failed miserably reflecting the destructive role that the White House plays in undermining its effectiveness in preventing international conflicts that have the potential to result in the use of nuclear weapons.

The economic insecurities experienced by millions within the U.S. are a direct result of the failed policies of the capitalist system. Working people and the oppressed are forced into ever declining standards of living while corporate profits soar alongside the growing military-industrial-complex which annually expropriates larger amounts of the surplus value generated by labor.

Anti-imperialist and antiwar forces in the U.S. and the NATO countries must reject the militarist policies that only benefit defense manufacturers and Wall Street. The wealth siphoned off through endless wars of aggression and international conquest could be utilized to rebuild a world system based upon mutual interests and sustainable security.

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

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***

The US has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group near the Korean Peninsula. The ships are expected to enter the East Sea later this week as a show of force in response to recent North Korean missile tests. 

The provocative maneuvers were first reported by South Korean outlet Yonhap news on Monday. Though a US defense official declined to confirm the deployment on record, citing “operational security,” another unnamed official told Reuters that joint drills are set to take place in the East Sea alongside Japanese forces to “reassure allies and partners in the region.”

The move marks the first time a carrier was sent to the area since 2017, when three such vessels were deployed amid soaring tensions with Pyongyang following a series of weapon tests.

South Korean president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol recently requested an increased American military presence near his country, including nuclear bombers and submarines. Following a round of talks in Washington last week, one of Yoon’s top advisers, Park Jin, said that such deployments are “an important element of reinforcing the extended deterrence, and the issue naturally came up during the discussions.”

There is increasing concern among the US and regional partners that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will test a nuclear weapon, with the unnamed official telling Reuters an underground test could be carried out “in the coming days.” Pyongyang has not tested the weapon in several years, though it has launched a series of advanced munitions in recent weeks, including an intercontinental ballistic missile.

While Washington is likely to bill the deployment as a way to deter further weapons tests, it could have the opposite effect. North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un has repeatedly portrayed his country’s nuclear program as a check on American aggression, and the presence of a US aircraft carrier, destroyers and other naval power near the DPRK may only reaffirm that stance.

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

Will Porter is the assistant news editor of the Libertarian Insitute and a staff writer at RT. Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter host Conflicts of Interest along with Connor Freeman.

Featured image is from TLI

The authors did an autopsy in 15 patients who died (from 7 days to 6 months) after receiving the COVID vaccine. These were all cases where the coroner ruled as NOT being caused by the vaccine.They discovered that in 14 of the 15 patients there was widespread evidence of the body attacking itself, something that is never seen before. The heart was attacked in all 14 cases.

A number of salient aspects dominated in all affected tissues of all cases:

inflammatory events in small blood vessels (endotheliitis), characterized by an abundance of T-lymphocytes and sequestered, dead endothelial cells within the vessel lumen;

the extensive perivascular accumulation of T-lymphocytes;

a massive lymphocytic infiltration of surrounding non-lymphatic organs or tissue with T-lymphocytes.

Lymphocytic infiltration occasionally occurred in combination with intense lymphocytic activation and follicle formation. Where these were present, they were usually accompanied by tissue destruction.

Here’s the video presentation of the results.

VAERS as well as other independent studies (e.g., see this vaccine injury paper) shows the vaccines are killing people and that cardiac events were highly elevated. This study is consistent with those results.

This work independently validates the analysis of Peter Schimacher who showed a minimum of 30% to 40% of the deaths after vaccine were caused by the vaccine.

Reactions from a level-headed scientist (name withheld to protect him from attack)

If the autopsy findings are confirmed by other pathologists with additional samples, and if they are combined with the findings of Dr. Hoffe (>60% inoculant recipients have elevated D-dimer tests and evidence of clotting) and Dr. Cole (increase in cancers after inoculation, including twenty-fold increase in uterine cancer), we are seeing a disaster of unimaginable proportions.  The conclusion (if supported by further data) is that essentially EVERY inoculant recipient suffers damage, with more damage after each shot.  Given the seriousness of the types of damage (autoimmune diseases, cancer, re-emergent dormant infections, clotting/strokes, cardiac damage, etc.), these effects will translate into lifespan reduction, which should be counted as deaths from the inoculations.  So, in the USA, where ~200M people have been fully inoculated, the number of deaths will not be the 10,000 or so reported in VAERS, or the 150,000+ scaled-up deaths from VAERS, but could be closer to tens of millions when the inoculation effects play out!

What the above three findings (Burkhart, Hoffe, Cole, and I suspect many others who have not yet come forward) show is that the post-inoculation effects are not rare events (as reported by the media-gov’t), but are in actuality frequent events.  They may be, in fact, universal, with the severity and damage different for each recipient.

The question in my mind is whether it is possible to reverse these inoculation-based adverse events.  Can the innate immune system be fully restored?  Can the micro clotting be reversed?  Can the autoimmunity be reversed?  I have seen a wide spectrum of opinions on whether this is possible, none of which is overly convincing.

Are we headed for the situation where the ~30% unvaxxed will be devoting their lives to operating whatever is left of the economic infrastructure and serving as caretakers for the vaxxed?

I realize the above sounds extreme, and maybe when more data are gathered from myriad credible sources the results and conclusions may change, but right now the above data seem to synchronize with the demonstrated underlying mechanisms of damage.  Additionally, we seem to be doubling down on inoculations, with fourth booster being proposed for Israel, and UK suggesting quarterly boosters.

Dr. Ryan Cole’s reaction

Background of two of the scientists behind the study

Dr. Suchrit Bhakdi has spent his life practicing, teaching and researching medical microbiology and infectious diseases. He chaired the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, from 1990 until his retirement in 2012. He has published over 300 research articles in the fields of immunology, bacteriology, virology and parasitology, and served from 1990 to 2012 as Editor-in-Chief of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, one of the first scientific journals of this field that was founded by Robert Koch in 1887.

Dr. Arne Burkhardt is a pathologist who has taught at the Universities of Hamburg, Berne and Tübingen. He was invited for visiting professorships/study visits in Japan (Nihon University), the United States (Brookhaven National Institute), Korea, Sweden, Malaysia and Turkey. He headed the Institute of Pathology in Reutlingen for 18 years. Subsequently, he worked as an independent practicing pathologist with consulting contracts with laboratories in the US. Burkhardt has published more than 150 scientific articles in German and international scientific journals as well as contributions to handbooks in German, English and Japanese. Over many years he has audited and certified institutes of pathology in Germany.

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***

Americans have been shocked by the death and destruction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, filling our screens with bombed buildings and dead bodies lying in the street. But the United States and its allies have waged war in country after country for decades, carving swathes of destruction through cities, towns and villages on a far greater scale than has so far disfigured Ukraine.

As we recently reported, the U.S. and its allies have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles, or 46 per day, on nine countries since 2001 alone. Senior U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officers told Newsweek that the first 24 days of Russia’s bombing of Ukraine was less destructive than the first day of U.S. bombing in Iraq in 2003.

The U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria bombarded those countries with over 120,000 bombs and missiles, the heaviest bombing anywhere in decades. U.S. military officers told Amnesty International that the U.S. assault on Raqqa in Syria was also the heaviest artillery bombardment since the Vietnam War.

Mosul in Iraq was the largest city that the United States and its allies reduced to rubble in that campaign, with a pre-assault population of 1.5 million. About 138,000 houses were damaged or destroyed by bombing and artillery, and an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report counted at least 40,000 civilians killed.

Raqqa, which had a population of 300,000, was gutted even more. A UN assessment mission reported that 70-80% of buildings were destroyed or damaged. Syrian and Kurdish forces in Raqqa reported counting 4,118 civilian bodies. Many more deaths remain uncounted in the rubble of Mosul and Raqqa. Without comprehensive mortality surveys, we may never know what fraction of the actual death toll these numbers represent.

The Pentagon promised to review its policies on civilian casualties in the wake of these massacres, and commissioned the Rand Corporation to conduct a study titled, “Understanding Civilian Harm in Raqqa and Its Implications For Future Conflicts,” which has now been made public.

Even as the world recoils from the shocking violence in Ukraine, the premise of the Rand Corp study is that U.S. forces will continue to wage wars that involve devastating bombardments of cities and populated areas, and that they must therefore try to understand how they can do so without killing quite so many civilians.

The study runs over 100 pages, but it never comes to grips with the central problem, which is the inevitably devastating and deadly impacts of firing explosive weapons into inhabited urban areas like Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa in Syria, Mariupol in Ukraine, Sanaa in Yemen or Gaza in Palestine.

The development of “precision weapons” has demonstrably failed to prevent these massacres. The United States unveiled its new “smart bombs” during the First Gulf War in 1990-1991. But they in fact comprised only 7% of the 88,000 tons of bombs it dropped on Iraq, reducing “a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society” to “a pre-industrial age nation” according to a UN survey.

Instead of publishing actual data on the accuracy of these weapons, the Pentagon has maintained a sophisticated propaganda campaign to convey the impression that they are 100% accurate and can strike a target like a house or apartment building without harming civilians in the surrounding area.

However, during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Rob Hewson, the editor of an arms trade journal that reviews the performance of air-launched weapons, estimated that 20 to 25% of U.S. “precision” weapons missed their targets.

Even when they do hit their target, these weapons do not perform like space weapons in a video game. The most commonly used bombs in the U.S. arsenal are 500 lb bombs, with an explosive charge of 89 kilos of Tritonal. According to UN safety data, the blast alone from that explosive charge is 100% lethal up to a radius of 10 meters, and will break every window within 100 meters.

That is just the blast effect. Deaths and horrific injuries are also caused by collapsing buildings and flying shrapnel and debris – concrete, metal, glass, wood etc.

A strike is considered accurate if it lands within a “circular error probable,” usually 10 meters around the object being targeted. So in an urban area, if you take into account the “circular error probable,” the blast radius, flying debris and collapsing buildings, even a strike assessed as “accurate” is very likely to kill and injure civilians.

U.S. officials draw a moral distinction between this “unintentional” killing and the “deliberate” killing of civilians by terrorists. But the late historian Howard Zinn challenged this distinction in a letter to the New York Times in 2007. He wrote,

“These words are misleading because they assume an action is either ‘deliberate’ or ‘unintentional.’ There is something in between, for which the word is ‘inevitable.’ If you engage in an action, like aerial bombing, in which you cannot possibly distinguish between combatants and civilians (as a former Air Force bombardier, I will attest to that), the deaths of civilians are inevitable, even if not ‘intentional.’

Does that difference exonerate you morally? The terrorism of the suicide bomber and the terrorism of aerial bombardment are indeed morally equivalent. To say otherwise (as either side might) is to give one moral superiority over the other, and thus serve to perpetuate the horrors of our time.”

Americans are rightfully horrified when they see civilians killed by Russian bombardment in Ukraine, but they are generally not quite so horrified, and more likely to accept official justifications, when they hear that civilians are killed by U.S. forces or American weapons in Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Gaza. The Western corporate media play a key role in this, by showing us corpses in Ukraine and the wails of their loved ones, but shielding us from equally disturbing images of people killed by U.S. or allied forces.

While Western leaders are demanding that Russia be held accountable for war crimes, they have raised no such clamor to prosecute U.S. officials. Yet during the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, both the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) documented persistent and systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions by U.S. forces, including of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention that protects civilians from the impacts of war and military occupation.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and human rights groups documented systematic abuse and torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, including cases in which U.S. troops tortured prisoners to death.

Although torture was approved by U.S. officials all the way up to the White House, no officer above the rank of major was ever held accountable for a torture death in Afghanistan or Iraq. The harshest punishment handed down for torturing a prisoner to death was a five-month jail sentence, although that is a capital offense under the U.S. War Crimes Act.

In a 2007 human rights report that described widespread killing of civilians by U.S. occupation forces, UNAMI wrote, “Customary international humanitarian law demands that, as much as possible, military objectives must not be located within areas densely populated by civilians. The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian character of an area.”

The report demanded “that all credible allegations of unlawful killings be thoroughly, promptly and impartially investigated, and appropriate action taken against military personnel found to have used excessive or indiscriminate force.”

Instead of investigating, the U.S. has actively covered up its war crimes. A tragic example is the 2019 massacre in the Syrian town of Baghuz, where a special U.S. military operations unit dropped massive bombs on a group of mainly women and children, killing about 70. The military not only failed to acknowledge the botched attack but even bulldozed the blast site to cover it up. Only after a New York Times exposé years later did the military even admit that the strike took place.

So it is ironic to hear President Biden call for President Putin to face a war crimes trial, when the United States covers up its own crimes, fails to hold its own senior officials accountable for war crimes and still rejects the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In 2020, Donald Trump went so far as to impose U.S. sanctions on the most senior ICC prosecutors for investigating U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan.

The Rand study repeatedly claims that U.S. forces have “a deeply ingrained commitment to the law of war.” But the destruction of Mosul, Raqqa and other cities and the history of U.S. disdain for the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and international courts tell a very different story.

We agree with the Rand report’s conclusion that, “DoD’s weak institutional learning for civilian harm issues meant that past lessons went unheeded, increasing the risks to civilians in Raqqa.” However, we take issue with the study’s failure to recognize that many of the glaring contradictions it documents are consequences of the fundamentally criminal nature of this entire operation, under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the existing laws of war.

We reject the whole premise of this study, that U.S. forces should continue to conduct urban bombardments that inevitably kill thousands of civilians, and must therefore learn from this experience so that they will kill and maim fewer civilians the next time they destroy a city like Raqqa or Mosul.

The ugly truth behind these U.S. massacres is that the impunity senior U.S. military and civilian officials have enjoyed for past war crimes encouraged them to believe they could get away with bombing cities in Iraq and Syria to rubble, inevitably killing tens of thousands of civilians.

They have so far been proven right, but U.S. contempt for international law and the failure of the global community to hold the United States to account are destroying the very “rules-based order” of international law that U.S. and Western leaders claim to cherish.

As we call urgently for a ceasefire, for peace and for accountability for war crimes in Ukraine, we should say “Never Again!” to the bombardment of cities and civilian areas, whether they are in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Iran or anywhere else, and whether the aggressor is Russia, the United States, Israel or Saudi Arabia.

And we should never forget that the supreme war crime is war itself, the crime of aggression, because, as the judges declared at Nuremberg, it “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” It is easy to point fingers at others, but we will not stop war until we force our own leaders to live up to the principle spelled out by Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson:

“If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: House bombed by coalition forces in East Mosul, Northern Iraq, 15 March, 2017. (Source: Amnesty International)

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***

Updated on April 12, 2022

It appears there was a false flag attack by Ukrainian forces on their own people at the railway station in Kramatorsk. While a BBC report shows quite clearly that the missile was a Tochka used only by the Ukrainian side a BBC television report said the missile used “was of a type used by the Russians” – the exact opposite of the truth, as their own image showed.

Even President Zelensky confirmed it was a Tochka missile which hit the Kramatorsk railway station killing some 50 people waiting to be evacuated. This BBC report confirms with this image in their report that this was the missile:

It is quite clear that it is NOT a Russian used Iskander missile – pictured below. Note the Russian used missile has no fins on the bottom end.

The Russian military said that it had pinpointed the location from which the missile had allegedly been launched.

According to defence officials, it came from the town of Dobropole, which is located southwest of Kramatorsk and has been under the control of Ukrainian forces. The Russian forces have almost total control of the airspace and have tracked missiles and ground forces during this war so this tracking report is credible.

The attack on Kramatorsk also closely resembles another missile strike that killed 17 people in the city of Donetsk in mid-March. (see Freenations post about that missile attack)

The Russian Ministry of Defence said that the Tochka U missile, is a weapon system that “only Ukrainian forces use.”

The local Donetsk militia, which consider Kramatorsk as part of the Donetsk People’s Republic, claimed the missile was a Tochka U of the Ukrainian forces. Its leadership said Ukraine has a long record of deploying the weapon system that neither Russia nor the DPR forces use.

The following numbered Tochka missiles were used on Donetsk and Luhansk by Ukrainian forces in February and now again in April:

• SH91565 strike on Alchevsk LNR, 2^nd Feb. 2015
• SH91566 -ii- Logvinovo DNR 13th Feb 2015
• SH91579 -ii- Kramatorsk railway station 8^th April 2022

Below are the images of the three missiles:

Never has there been a more blatant “virtual” war for propaganda purposes. 7 examples of fake news are given in this link including the use of images from video games and a Star Wars film!

Recently we have had American Governmental and press admitting using totally unverified incidents as propaganda. They refer to them as “narratives”.

According to an NBC News article, “multiple US officials acknowledged that the US has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect…”. No wonder only 7% of Americans have a high degree of confidence in their mass media: see this.

As Harley Schlanger quotes in this video the “Russia going to use chemical weapons” “China weapons to Russia”, and “Russia lied to by advisers to cover up losses” claims were all totally without foundation but were deliberately used as propaganda weapons to win “the media war”.

There have been no wars from which either side has escaped accusations of “war crimes”. The Allies fought a just war against Nazi Germany and fascist Europe between 1939 and 1945 but many accused them of war crimes for disproportionately bombing cities. All soldiers are in danger of vicious responses in the heat of battle but there is a difference between that and conscious cruelty, targeting civilians, torturing or killing prisoners, using civilians as human shields and of course setting up false flag attacks on your own side to pretend the enemy was responsible. All these seem to be features of at least the Ukrainian side of this conflict.

The trouble with efficient lies and propaganda is that they whip up fanatical hatred and cause war crimes. They also give the Ukrainians in this case the false belief that they are “winning the war” and instead of coming to terms at the peace conferences, commit themselves to more bloodshed. There is no more sickening sight as the slaughter continues than Boris Johnson telling President Zelensky not to compromise with Russia. There is nothing more dangerous than believing your own propaganda and applying to the real war the dangerous myths of the virtual propaganda war.

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All images in this article are from Freenations

And Into The Fire

Fascist elements in post war Europe and the development of the European Union

By Rodney Atkinson

With contributions from William Dorich and Edward Spalton

Publisher: ‎ GM Books; 1st edition (July 25, 2013)
Publication date: ‎ July 25, 2013
Print length: ‎ 164 pages

Click here to view this and other titles by Rodney Atkinson.

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***

Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February.  The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine.

What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.

While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.”

At the end of the first week of Russia’s military action in Ukraine, with no sanctions yet specific to Russia’s diesel fuel exports, the European diesel price was already at athirty-year high. It had nothing to do with war. It had to do with the draconian global covid lockdowns since March 2020 and the simultaneous dis-investment by Wall Street and global financial firms in oil and gas companies, so-called Green Agenda or ESG. Almost on day one of Russian troop actions in Ukraine, two of the world’s  largest oil companies, BP and Shell, both British, stopped deliveries of diesel fuel to Germany claiming fear of supply shortages. Russia supplied some 60 to 70% of all EU diesel before the Ukraine war.

In 2020 Russia was the world’s second largest exporter of diesel fuel behind USA, shipping more than 1 million barrels daily. Most of it, some 70%, went to the EU and Turkey. France was the largest importer, followed by Germany and UK. In France some 76% of all road vehicles—cars, trucks—use diesel.The EU diesel demand is far higher than in the US as most cars also use the more economical and efficient diesel fuel. In the first week of April the EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proudly announced new sanctions against Russian energy that would begin with a ban on coal. The EU is the largest importer of Russian coal. Oil and gas she said would follow at a later date. That foolish move will merely boost costs of energy, already at record high, for most of the EU, as it will force oil and gas prices far higher.

At the beginning of the Ukraine crisis global stocks of diesel fuel were already the lowest since 2008 as the covid lockdowns had done major damage to the demand-supply situation of oil and gas production. Now the stage is set for an unprecedented crisis in diesel. The consequences will be staggering for the world economy.

Diesel Moves World Trade

Diesel engines have the highest engine efficiency of conventional motors. They are based on the principle of compression developed in 1897 by Rudolf Diesel. Because of their greater efficiency and greater mileage per gallon, diesel fuels almost all freight truck motors. It fuels most all farm equipment from tractors to harvesting machines. It is widely used in the EU, almost 50% for auto fuel as it is far more fuel efficient than gasoline engines. It is used in most all heavy mining machines such as Caterpillar earth movers. It is used in construction equipment. Diesel engines have replaced steam engines on all non-electrified railroads in the world, especially freight trains. Diesel is used in some electric power generation and in most all heavy military vehicles.

A global shortage in diesel fuel, temporary or longer-term, is therefore a catastrophic event. Goods cannot be moved from container ports to inland destinations.  Without diesel fuel trucks cannot deliver food to the supermarket, or anything else for that matter. The entire supply chain is frozen. And there is no possibility to substitute gasoline in a diesel engine without ruining the engine.

Until the ill-conceived global covid lockdowns of industry and transportation that began in March 2020, the demand and supply of diesel fuel was well balanced. The sudden lockdowns however collapsed diesel demand for truck transport, autos, construction, even farming. Unprofitable refineries were closed. Capacity declined. Now as world production returns to a semblance of pre-covid normal, diesel reserve stocks worldwide are dangerously low, especially in the EU which is the world’s largest diesel consumer, but also the USA.

Rationing?

At the start of this year world diesel stocks were already dangerously low and that drove prices sky-high. As of February, 2022 before impact of the Ukraine war, diesel and related stocks in the US were 21% below the pre-covid seasonal average. In the EU stocks were 8% or 35 million barrels below the pre-covid average level. In Singapore, the Asian hub stocks were 32% below normal. Combined all three regions’ diesel stocks were alarmingly low, some 110 million barrels below the same point last year.

Between January 2021 and January 2022 EU diesel fuel prices had almost doubled, and that, before the Ukraine sanctions. There were several reasons, but primary was the soaring price of crude oil and supply disruptions owing to global covid lockdowns and the subsequent resumption of world trade flows. To add to the problem, in early March the Chinese central government imposed a ban on its exports of diesel fuel, to “ensure energy security” amid Western sanctions on Russia. Add to that the recent Biden administration ban on imports of all Russian oil and gas, which in 2021 included an estimated 20% of all Russian heavy oil exports. At the same time the EU in its ever-ideological wisdom, is finalizing a ban on imports of Russian coal with bans on Russian crude oil, diesel fuel and gas reportedly  to follow.

On April 4 average price per liter of diesel in Germany was €2.10. On December 27, 2021 it was €1.50, a rise of 40% in weeks. Following the unprecedented USA and EU sanctions against Russia following the Ukraine military campaign after February 24, more and more Western oil companies and oil traders are refusing to handle Russian crude oil or diesel fuel for fear of reprisals. This is certain to escalate so long as fighting in Ukraine continues.

The CEO of the Rotterdam-based Vitol, the world’s largest independent energy trading company , warned on March 27 that rationing of diesel fuel in the coming months globally was increasingly likely. He noted, “Europe imports about half of its diesel from Russia and about half of its diesel from the Middle East. That systemic shortfall of diesel is there.”

On April 7, David McWilliams, a leading Irish economist formerly with the Irish national bank, sounded an alarming note. “Not only is oil going up, diesel is going up and there’s a real threat diesel will run out in Western Europe over the course of the next two or three weeks, or maybe before that…We import a significant amount of our diesel, it comes from two refineries in the UK where it’s first processed. Those refineries do not have any crude at the moment. So we are basically running the economy on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis.” He added: ‘We have not just an oil crisis, we have an energy crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen in 50 years.” According to him the reason diesel stocks are so low is that the EU countries found it far cheaper to outsource oil and diesel to Russia with its huge supply.

The situation in the USA is not better. For political reasons the true state of the diesel fuel crisis is reportedly being downplayed by the Biden administration and the EU. Inflation is already at 40 year highs in the US. What the unfolding global diesel fuel crisis will mean, barring a major turnaround, is a dramatic impact on all forms of truck and auto transportation, farming, mining and the like. It will spell catastrophe for an already failing world economy. Yet governments like the German “Ampel” (traffic light) coalition, with their insane Zero Carbon agenda, and their plans to phase out oil, coal and gas, or the Biden cabal, privately see the exploding energy prices as further argument to abandon hydrocarbons like oil for unreliable, costly wind and solar.  The real industrial interconnected global economy is not like a game of lego toys. It is highly complex and finely tuned.That fine tuning is being systematically destroyed, and all evidence is that it is deliberate. Welcome to the Davos Great Reset eugenics agenda.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-2-3

Year: 2007

Product Type: PDF File

Price: $9.50

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

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

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

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***

The West insists on giving Kiev weapons, even though it knows this measure will not help bring peace back to Ukraine. Increasingly, Western leaders contribute to the destabilization of Eastern Europe by promoting the continuation of the conflict through supplying weapons to the Ukrainian armed forces and pro-Maidan neo-Nazi militias. Considering the impossibility of Kiev defeating Russian troops, the end of the conflict depends exclusively on Zelensky’s surrender and his acceptance of Moscow’s demands. Without it, Russian special military operation will continue. And, of course, the more Zelensky receives weapons from the West, the more he will continue to try to push the conflict forward, leading to the suffering of millions of Ukrainian citizens who look forward to peace.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell travelled to Ukraine on Friday, April 8, to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian authorities. Some important topics related to the conflict were raised during the conversations, such as the issue of the fifth package of sanctions against Russia prepared by the European bloc, which, according to the European Commission’s proposal, includes an embargo on Russian coal, in addition to the possible Ukrainian accession to the EU.

“Russia will descend into economic, financial and technological decay, while Ukraine is marching towards the European future, this is what I see”, von der Leyen stated during an interview. Also, specifically about Ukrainian possible EU’s membership, she said: “It will not as usual be a matter of years (…) but I think a matter of weeks”.

On this trip, both von der Leyen and Borrell greatly praised the military aspect of the “search for resolution” of the conflict, asserting on several occasions that Ukraine must “defeat” Russia. Apparently, Europeans are abdicating any diplomatic or pro-peace stance and adopting a stance that is absolutely in favor of victory by arms – which, according to most experts, is virtually impossible for Ukraine.

Borrell promised that he would immediately send an additional aid of 500 million euros for Kiev to buy weapons. Previously, the EU had already sent another one billion euros. The diplomat also made statements implying that he considers the current European support budget for Ukraine to be low, comparing it with EU spending on imports from Russia: “This may seem like a lot, but one billion euros is what we pay Putin every day for the energy he provides us”.

On another occasion, Borrell made clear his anti-Russian radicalism and his pro-war stance, stating categorically that “this war must be won on the battlefield”. Considering Borrell’s high position in the EU and his direct influence on the conflict, the statement sounds really dangerous, as Europe appears willing to finance a major escalation of the conflict.

The main problem, however, is that the EU is not the only side interested in financing such an escalation. The UK has shown several times that it aims to take the conflict forward until an eventual “Ukrainian victory” happens. Recently, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also visited Kiev and met with Zelensky and other Ukrainian authorities. The stance of the British leader was very similar to that of the Europeans, with Johnson also committing to send packages of military aid to Kiev.

Before traveling to Ukraine, the prime minister had already announced that he would send aid worth 130 million dollars in weapons to Kiev. Among the weapons in the package will be anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, precision ammunition, night vision equipment. On Saturday, April 10, however, already in Ukraine, Johnson pledged another 500 million dollars in aid, which shows that he is really increasing his support for Zelensky’s war plans.

It is also important to remember that before the first round of negotiations between the Russian and Ukrainian diplomatic delegations in Ankara, Johnson had called Zelensky and instructed the Ukrainian president not to admit that his diplomats “gave too much” during the talks. Johnson seems very determined to assert that the victory can only come through arms, instructing the Ukrainian authorities to avoid effective diplomatic dialogue.

It is curious to see how Westerners want to carry this conflict forward, with their troops not being directly involved in the fighting. The position of European and British leaders is very comfortable: sending money and weapons to Ukrainians to fight a war they cannot win, only to continue destabilizing the Russian strategic environment and delaying the inevitable victory of the Moscow’s special operation. For the West, Ukraine is a hopeless case and the longer the conflict lasts the better. This is a way to gain time in the face of a deferred defeat scenario. Ukrainians are just serving as instruments in a game that is already not theirs.

Also, it should be mentioned that if Kiev continues to receive heavy weapons and launch increasingly aggressive offensives, the Kremlin will be compelled to change its strategy, possibly using more of its military capacity, whose potential has been very controlled during the operation in order to avoid large-scale damage to the Ukrainian people. In this sense, Western military and financial “aid” directly threatens the peace of the entire world, which is suffering the consequences of the conflict.

The longer Zelensky “resists”, the more sufferings the Ukrainian people will have to endure to carry on a conflict where Kiev has already been partially defeated.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

Der deutsch-französische Friedensnobelpreisträger, Pazifist und „Urwaldarzt“ Albert Schweitzer war einer der bedeutendsten Denker des 20. Jahrhunderts. Sein philosophisches Denken ging davon aus, dass sich Menschen beim Nachdenken über sich selbst und ihre Grenzen wechselseitig als Brüder erkennen, die über sich selbst und ihre Grenzen nachdenken. Im Zuge des Zivilisationsprozesses würde die Solidarität, die ursprünglich nur auf den eigenen Stamm bezogen war, nach und nach auf alle, auch unbekannte Menschen übertragen. In den 1950er-Jahren war Schweitzers Lehre der „Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben“ eine moralische Instanz, ein Leitbild im Kampf gegen die atomare Bewaffnung der Völker.

Image on the right: Albert Schweitzer (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de)

Doch das allgemeine Bewusstsein des einzelnen und der Völker fand bis heute keine Antwort auf die „Kain-Frage“ aus der biblischen Urgeschichte: „Bin ich der Hüter meines Bruders? Wieder bedroht uns die Katastrophe eines Atomkriegs wie zu Albert Schweitzers Zeiten vor nahezu 70 Jahren. Deshalb hat sein „Appell an die Menschheit“ – nachzulesen in der Schriftensammlung „Friede oder Atomkrieg“ (1) – nichts von seiner Aktualität eingebüßt.

Bertha von Suttner: „Die Waffen nieder!“ 

Noch nie konnten Probleme der Völker durch die Methode der Gewalt, den Krieg gelöst werden. Das ist heute nicht anders als in der bisherigen Menschheitsgeschichte. Der Rückfall in den Krieg ist ein Rückfall in die Barbarei, der sich auf allen Gebieten des gesellschaftlichen Lebens bemerkbar macht: er verursacht im Leben des Einzelnen wie der Völker unsägliches Leiden. Die täglichen TV-Bilder über den Krieg in der Ukraine gewähren uns einen nachhaltigen Eindruck dieses Leidens.

Die heutigen Kriege sind nicht mehr verantwortbar, sie sind obsolet geworden. Schon der Erste Weltkrieg war kein konventioneller Krieg mehr, er war Genozid, Völkermord, Volksmord. Uns seither sind die illegalen Angriffskriege noch mörderischer, hinterhältiger, flächendeckender, genozidaler geworden.

Für den österreichischen Kultur-Historiker Friedrich Heer sind diese Kriege Vorbereitungen zur „Endlösung der Menschheitsfrage“ oder wie Bertha von Suttner in ihrem Roman „Die Waffen nieder!“ prophezeit: „Der Untergang für alle“ (2). Dies trifft für einen allseits befürchteten Krieg mit Atomwaffen ganz sicher zu.

Mahatma Gandhi schrieb nach dem Erscheinen des Romans in einem Brief an Bertha von Suttner:

„Gott möge es so fügen, dass die Abschaffung des Krieges Ihrem Werke folge.“ (3)

Alfred Nobel ließ sich durch Bertha von Suttner in seinem Testament zur Stiftung des Friedensnobelpreises anregen (4).

Die Geschichte – ein Werk des Menschen 

Wir wissen heute, dass der Krieg ein Verhängnis ist. Auch wissen wir, dass seine Ursache nicht in der „menschlichen Natur“, sondern in der Ungerechtigkeit und Unmenschlichkeit unserer Sozialordnung begründet ist. Dieser Umstand darf uns nicht vergessen lassen, dass die Geschichte ein Werk des Menschen ist und dass man den Menschen ändern muss, wenn man die Welt ändern will. Demgemäß sind Aufklärung und Erziehung die wichtigsten Maßnahmen, die gegen den Krieg ergriffen werden können.

Noch können wir nicht sagen, wann sich das Menschheitsgewissen, dessen Mahnruf durch die Jahrhunderte geht, endgültig Gehör verschaffen wird. Aber wir zweifeln nicht daran, dass an der Frage, ob sich die Menschen in weit höherem Maße als bis heute zur allmenschlichen Solidarität bekennen werden, der Bestand des Menschengeschlechtes hängt.

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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] Schweitzer, A. (1984). Friede oder Atomkrieg. München

[2] Heer, F. In: Von Suttner, B. (1977). Die Waffen nieder! Einführung, S. VII

[3] a.O., S. XIV

[4] a. O.

Featured image is licensed under CC BY SA 2.0

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***

A total of 15 players were unable to finish the Miami Open 2022 tennis tournament, including the male and female favourites.  All of the players must be “fully vaccinated” to compete, the Liberty Daily wrote, “just as we’ve noted for several months, most major sports have been hit with ‘inexplicable’ medical conditions popping up in young and otherwise healthy athletes, including our report that three cyclists fell in March alone.”

The so-called health professionals running the Covid “vaccine” programs around the world keep repeating that “the Covid vaccine is a normal vaccine and it is safe and effective.”  But as of the end of last month, Good Sciencing has recorded 833 athletes, worldwide, who have had cardiac arrests or other serious issues, with 540 dead, post-Covid injection.

Post-vaccination injuries in athletes include cardiac arrest; blood clots or thrombosis; stroke; irregular heartbeat; arrhythmia; neuropathy; and, death.  With most of the post-injection injuries being cardiac arrests.

Good Sciencing is a small team of investigators, news editors, journalists, and truth seekers. They state on their website:

“It doesn’t really matter who we are. What really matters is that we care carrying on an investigation and we’re presenting the evidence we’ve found, almost all of it documented in mainstream media publications. We’re doing this anonymously because we’ve seen people viciously attacked and threatened for doing things like this, so we’re not going to open ourselves or any of our contacts to that.”

As well as receiving new cases and updates from alert readers, they note that they are also receiving hate mail and death threats.

Good Sciencing has a non-exhaustive and continuously growing list of mainly young athletes who had major medical issues in 2021/2022 after receiving one or more Covid injections. You can view the list HERE.

“Initially, many of these were not reported. We know that many people were told not to tell anyone about their adverse reactions and the media was not reporting them. They started happening and ramping up after the first Covid vaccinations. The mainstream media still are not reporting most, but sports news cannot ignore the fact that soccer players and other stars collapse in the middle of a game due to a sudden cardiac arrest. Many of those die – more than 50%.

“Most, if not all of these athletes have suffered heart problems after Covid vaccines. At the time of initial writing, 28 died. That was not normal, but then, 10 days later, 56 deaths were listed, and the numbers are climbing. Any other real vaccine would have been pulled off the market long before now. The media would be asking questions. They would be pressuring governments. But they are not. And governments continue running TV and radio and newspaper ads encouraging people to get their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th shot.”

Many posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, forums and news stories are being removed. “So now we are receiving some messages saying there is no proof of the event or of vaccination status. That is partly because this information is being hidden,” Good Sciencing notes, “more people are writing to tell us that in many cases, we didn’t mention a person’s vaccination status. There is a good reason for that. None of the clubs want to reveal this information. None of their sponsors want to reveal it. The players have been told not to reveal it. Most of their relatives will not mention it. None of the media are asking this question.”

Daily Mail reported on 28 January that Sunderland FC manager Lee Johnson suggested the Covid injection could be behind his goalkeeper Lee Burge being ruled out of playing with an ‘inflamed heart’ and said ‘it happens a lot after these injections’. Two days later the club confirmed Johnson had been sacked. “Form your own conclusions as to why the club would sack the manager who cares about his players,” Good Sciencing wrote.

“We know there is a concerted worldwide effort to make this information go away, so that fact alone tells us it must be collected, investigated and saved so other researchers can look at it to see if there are any useful patterns … We really appreciate the athletes named in this list who have confirmed what happened to them so the truth can be known. They care about their fellow athletes, even if the clubs, their sponsors, media and politicians care more about money.”

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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.

“[A paper] concluded that the upper bound of a confidence interval for death could be as high as 187,000 Americans losing their life after vaccination. It could be that bad,” McCullough said.

Citing the VAERS data, McCullough explained how severe adverse reactions originated in many parts and organs of the human body where the COVID vaccine particles were found.

“I can tell you looking at this VAERS report with 12,000 Americans who have died, voluntarily after taking an injection the COVID-19 vaccine is worse than a war. It’s worse than most wars,” he said, adding that “86% of the time the report is made by a doctor, a nurse, or a healthcare professional who thinks the vaccine caused the problem.”

The OPTIMIST group, comprised of doctors, lawyers, and other medical professionals, explains that it is not an “anti-vax” group, but that it seeks to educate the public about alternative COVID mitigation strategies besides the “vaccine only” strategy:

OPTIMIST is a committed group of doctors, medical professionals, pastors, lawyers and concerned citizens banded together to promote an expanded protocol in the COVID-19 fight, which includes the use of Ivermectin and other therapeutics to save more lives.

The group exists to educate the public about the preventative measures and treatment strategies which will help fight against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and optimize the recovery of those afflicted with the COVID-19 disease. Strategically targeting each phase of the COVID-19 disease (contraction, incubation, acute illness and recovery) is vital.

The group has no intention of being political or labelled as “anti-vax”, but as concerned doctors and citizens who believe greater measures are being called for than the limited “vaccine only“ strategy.

Watch the full event:

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The headline — “Bride and Boom!” — was spectacular, if you think killing people in distant lands is a blast and a half.  Of course, you have to imagine that smirk line in giant black letters with a monstrous exclamation point covering most of the bottom third of the front page of the Murdoch-owned New York Post.  The reference was to a caravan of vehicles on its way to or from a wedding in Yemen that was eviscerated, evidently by a U.S. drone via one of those “surgical” strikes of which Washington is so proud.  As one report put it, “Scorched vehicles and body parts were left scattered on the road.”

It goes without saying that such a headline could only be applied to assumedly dangerous foreigners — “terror” or “al-Qaeda suspects” — in distant lands whose deaths carry a certain quotient of weirdness and even amusement with them.  Try to imagine the equivalent for the Newtown massacre the day after Adam Lanza broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School and began killing children and teachers.  Since even the New York Post wouldn’t do such a thing, let’s posit that the Yemen Post did, that playing off the phrase “head of the class,” their headline was: “Dead of the Class!” (with that same giant exclamation point). It would be sacrilege.  The media would descend.  The tastelessness of Arabs would be denounced all the way up to the White House.  You’d hear about the callousness of foreigners for days.

And were a wedding party to be obliterated on a highway anywhere in America on the way to, say, a rehearsal dinner, whatever the cause, it would be a 24/7 tragedy. Our lives would be filled with news of it. Count on that.

But a bunch of Arabs in a country few in the U.S. had ever heard of before we started sending in the drones?  No such luck, so if you’re a Murdoch tabloid, it’s open season, no consequences guaranteed.  As it happens, “Bride and Boom!” isn’t even an original.  It turns out to be a stock Post headline.  Google it and you’ll find that, since 9/11, the paper has used it at least twice before last week, and never for the good guys: once in 2005, for “the first bomb-making husband and wife,” two Palestinian newlyweds arrested by the Israelis; and once in 2007, for a story about a “bride,” decked out in a “princess-style wedding gown,” with her “groom.” Their car was stopped at a checkpoint in Iraq by our Iraqis, and both of them turned out to be male “terrorists” in a “nutty nuptial party.”  Ba-boom!

As it happened, the article by Andy Soltis accompanying the Post headline last week began quite inaccurately.  “A U.S. drone strike targeting al-Qaeda militants in Yemen,” went the first line, “took out an unlikely target on Thursday — a wedding party heading to the festivities.”

Soltis can, however, be forgiven his ignorance.  In this country, no one bothers to count up wedding parties wiped out by U.S. air power.  If they did, Soltis would have known that the accurate line, given the history of U.S. war-making since December 2001 when the first party of Afghan wedding revelers was wiped out (only two women surviving), would have been: “A U.S. drone… took out a likely target.”

After all, by the count of TomDispatch, this is at least the eighth wedding party reported wiped out, totally or in part, since the Afghan War began and it extends the extermination of wedding celebrants from the air to a third country — six destroyed in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, and now the first in Yemen.  And in all those years, reporters covering these “incidents” never seem to notice that similar events had occurred previously.  Sometimes whole wedding parties were slaughtered, sometimes just the bride or groom’s parties were hit. Estimated total dead from the eight incidents: almost 300 Afghans, Iraqis, and Yemenis.  And keep in mind that, in these years, weddings haven’t been the only rites hit.  U.S. air power has struck gatherings ranging from funerals to a baby-naming ceremony.

The only thing that made the Yemeni incident unique was the drone.  The previous strikes were reportedly by piloted aircraft.

Non-tabloid papers were far more polite in their headlines and accounts, though they did reflect utter confusion about what had happened in a distant part of distant Yemen.  The wedding caravan of vehicles was going to a wedding — or coming back.  Fifteen were definitively dead.  Or 11.  Or 13.  Or 14.  Or 17.  The attacking plane had aimed for al-Qaeda targets and hit the wedding party “by mistake.”  Or al-Qaeda “suspects” had been among the wedding party, though all reports agree that innocent wedding goers died.  Accounts of what happened from Yemeni officials differed, even as that country’s parliamentarians demanded an end to the U.S. drone campaign in their country.  The Obama administration refused to comment.  It was generally reported that this strike, like others before it, had — strangely enough — upset Yemenis and made them more amenable to the propaganda of al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula.

In the end, reports on a wedding slaughter in a distant land are generally relegated to the inside pages of the paper and passing notice on the TV news, an event instantly trumped by almost anything whatsoever — a shooting in a school anywhere in the U.S., snow storms across the Northeast, you name it — and promptly buried and forgotten.

And yet, in a country that tends to value records, this represents record-making material.  After all, what are the odds of knocking off all or parts of eight wedding parties in the space of a little more than a decade (assuming, of course, that the destruction of other wedding parties or the killing of other wedding goers in America’s distant war zones hasn’t gone unreported).  If the Taliban or the Iranians or the North Koreans had piled up such figures — and indeed the Taliban has done wedding damage via roadside bombs and suicide bombers — we would know just what to think of them.  We would classify them as barbarians, savages, evildoers.

You might imagine that such a traffic jam of death and destruction would at least merit some longer-term attention, thought, analysis, or discussion here.  But with the rarest of exceptions, it’s nowhere to be found, right, left, or center, in Washington or Topeka, in everyday conversation or think-tank speak.  And keep in mind that we’re talking about a country where the slaughter of innocents — in elementary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities, workplaces and movie theaters, parking lots and naval shipyards — is given endless attention, carefully toted up, discussed and debated until “closure” is reached.

And yet no one here even thinks to ask how so many wedding parties in foreign lands could be so repeatedly taken out.  Is the U.S. simply targeting weddings purposely?  Not likely.  Could it reflect the fact that, despite all the discussion of the “surgical precision” of American air power, pilots have remarkably little idea what’s really going on below them or who exactly, in lands where American intelligence must be half-blind, they are aiming at?  That, at least, seems likely.

Or if “they” gather in certain regions, does American intelligence just assume that the crowd must be “enemy” in nature?  (As an American general said about a wedding party attacked in Western Iraq, “How many people go to the middle of the desert… to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?”) Or is it possible that, in our global war zones, a hint that enemy “suspects” might be among a party of celebrants means that the party itself is fair game, that it’s open season no matter who might be in the crowd?

In this same spirit, the U.S. drone campaigns are said to launch what in drone-speak are called “signature strikes” — that is, strikes not against identified individuals, but against “a pre-identified ‘signature’ of behavior that the U.S. links to militant activity.”  In other words, the U.S. launches drone strikes against groups or individuals whose behavior simply fits a “suspect” category: young men of military age carrying weapons, for instance (in areas where carrying a weapon may be the norm no matter who you are).  In a more general sense, however, the obliterated wedding party may be the true signature strike of the post 9/11 era of American war-making, the strike that should, but never will, remind Americans that the war on terror was and remains, for others in distant lands, a war of terror, a fearsome creation to which we are conveniently blind.

Consider it a record.  For the period since September 11, 2001, we’re number one… in obliterating wedding parties!  In those years, whether we care to know it or not, “till death do us part” has gained a far grimmer meaning.

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Tom Engelhardt created and runs the website TomDispatch.com. He is also a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture.  A fellow of the Type Media Center, his sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War.

Featured image: Controlled detonation by the U.S. Army, licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Flickr

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The United States is now insisting that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be put on trial for “war crimes” committed in Ukraine. As Putin is still insisting that he will attend the upcoming G20 summit in November on the island of Bali, Indonesia, it will be a great opportunity to have US Marshalls snatch him from the stage and whisk him off to a federal courthouse in Virginia for justice to be served. Or a form of justice anyway, since the United States has no actual jurisdiction over where Putin’s alleged crimes might have taken place and it will be impossible to prove that he actually ordered anyone to carry out so-called “crimes against humanity.” We’ll see how it all works out.

Indeed, there is no other phrase that has been more misunderstood and generally abused of late than “war crimes” or “war criminals.” It belongs with several other labels, including “weapons of mass destruction” and “crimes against humanity” that are used to indicate an adversary has crossed a red line and is so deplorable that anything that is done to him either during actual fighting or in the aftermath is completely acceptable. Going back to Greek and Roman times it has always been understood that even in wartime there are certain activities that are unacceptable, but the attempted definition and codification of “war crimes” as a concept is largely a twentieth century creation used to inflict additional punishment on the losers after the fighting is over. The Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War punished Germany far beyond what most would consider reasonable, largely because the victorious powers were able to do so without any consequences until the next war began. Likewise, the linked concepts of war crimes and crimes against humanity came largely out of the post-Second World War Nuremberg Trials, which shaped the legal arguments around alleged German behavior, not that of the allies.

The Second World War certainly included atrocities of various kinds on both sides, but the Anglo-American deliberate bombing of German cities has to stand out as particularly disproportionate. Forty-two thousand mostly civilians died in Hamburg in the 1943 firebombing and the bombing of Dresden in 1945, at a point when Germany was on the verge of defeat, was remarkable in that the city was not a military target and was full of refugees from the east. At least 200,000 civilians died. Judge Andrew Napolitano has suggested that the greatest war crime in history, if one makes a case based on unnecessary human suffering, was President Harry Truman’s nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which almost certainly killed more than 200,000 mostly civilians, when Japan was preparing to surrender. As Truman was on the side that won the war and controlled the prosecution process, there were no legal consequences or punishment relating to his decision, though critics since 1945 have sometimes decried the first use of nuclear weapons.

If killing civilians unnecessarily is the standard definition of a war crime, then America’s most recent five presidents have been war criminals. In other words, historically speaking, accusations of war crimes, which have no real meaning in law and are both infinitely elastic and subject to interpretation, have often depended on which side of the fence one is standing on when the war ends. And it gets more complicated than that, given the politics of what is sometimes referred to as the rules based international order, which in theory arose from the ashes of World War Two. The new world order was US-centric from the start, with the United Nations (UN) situated in New York City, the World Bank in Washington, and the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. At the UN, American primacy was reinforced through the creation of a Security Council, which alone has the power to authorize military action against a rogue state. The Security Council had five permanent members, each of whom was armed with a veto, meaning that no effective action against them could ever take place no matter what they had done. And so it has played out, with the US plus China, Russia, Britain and France being effectively immune from censure authorizing military action by the United Nations.

It is of particular interest to observe that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague was set up to deal with “war crimes and crimes against humanity” that were otherwise ignored. Neither the US, nor the Russians nor the Israelis recognize the authority of the court and the US has stated that no ICC investigator will be allowed entry into the United States. Given that, it becomes possible to witness how the whole farce of war crimes and other violations of the new world order have played out in practice.

Currently the US and its allies are waging economic warfare on Russia without an actual declaration of war, to include an avalanche of sanctions plus completely illegal confiscations of the property of Russian citizens. It is also blocking Moscow from the use of the international monetary conventions and systems that it has had access to. The clearly stated intention is to destroy the Russian economy due to Russia having been charged by the US government with the commission of what it is calling war crimes in its invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin argues in turn that Ukraine’s apparent intention to join NATO, which is a hostile military alliance directed against Russia, is a direct threat to his country and is already manifesting itself in military action undertaken against breakaway parts of Ukraine which are largely inhabited by Russian speakers and ethnics.

There are other issues, but those are the most important. It should also be noted that the issues themselves were at least somewhat negotiable prior to the outbreak of fighting, which Putin sought to do but Joe Biden and NATO were not interested. So ultimately the war, from a third-party point of view, is pitting a Russian vital interest against what really amounts to no genuine interest at all for NATO and the US, apart from goading the Russian bear and removing its government as a way to prevent against any change in the international order.

Since objective reality has no place in United States foreign policy, it is interesting to look at how the US sees itself and how it regards other countries that are doing what Russia is doing or worse. When it comes to its own self-perception, America’s so-called leaders believe that their global leadership role is one by right and they can do no wrong by virtue of a quality referred to as “American exceptionalism.” That is of course a mythical attribute created to permit the United States to get away with mass murder and regime change without any consequences.

A principal beneficiary of American financial and political largesse is, of course, Israel, which consists not only of people “chosen” by Yahweh but also by the media, the United States Senate, House of Representatives and the White House. A comparison of what Russia is doing that is being condemned by Washington versus what both what the US and Israel have been able to get away with might be considered to be in order.

Russia has invaded Ukraine after months of warnings that the status quo was untenable in national security terms, largely due to intentionally fruitless negotiations with stonewalling United States representatives and NATO. Israel, widely acknowledged to be an apartheid state, is currently bombing Syria on an almost daily basis, unnoticed by the US media and the Biden Administration. It in the past has attacked all its neighbors, including the renowned Seven Days War in June 1967 which was a surprise attack staged against Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Subsequent to that war, Israel occupied nearly all of what had been Palestine. It also seized the Golan Heights belonging to Syria and has recently received consent from Washington to illegally annex Arab East Jerusalem as a part of Israel, making the whole of the city Israel’s capital. The Golan Heights have also recently been annexed with Washington’s approval and there are 700,000 heavily armed and violent Jewish settlers now sitting in 261 settlements on stolen Palestinian land on the West Bank.

Image below: Israeli soldier kneeling on the neck of a Palestinian child (Source: Silent Crow News)

And what has the United States and its allies done to dissuade Israel? Well, nothing. One rule for Israel and the US and another quite different Washington dictated “rules based” system for everyone else, most particularly if one is Russian. In fact, the more belligerently Israel behaves, the more it gets in terms of US taxpayer money and made-in-USA weapons. Israel has also been the favored destination for traveling congress-critters of late because it is an election year and Jewish donors are being hotly pursued. Recently, a large group of Democrats was departing just before former Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Tel Aviv on Miriam Adelson’s private jet so he could kiss Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s ring and also spend some quality time with Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ironically, while Joe Biden was turning the screws on Russia, the Congress was showering gifts on Israel above and beyond the billions of dollars in “aid” that the wealthy Jewish state already receives. Alison Weir of IfAmericansKnew has examined the recently signed pork laden 2022 federal government spending bill and has identified numerous line-item instances of money going directly to Israel or in support of causes that benefit Israel in some fashion. She estimates that Israel’s economy, which is able to support both free medical care and higher education, now benefits to the tune of $22 million per day from the United States taxpayer, for a total of $8 billion per year, and the number might actually be much higher. And there are other sources of income indirectly funded by the US Treasury, most notably the ability of Israel-focused charities to contribute tax exempt money to Israeli foundations and groups. Many of the “charities” are essentially fraudulent, funding the illegal settlements, domestic terrorism and other anti-Palestinian activities. Every artifice is used by some Jewish groups and billionaire donors to keep the US dollars flowing to Israel while no one of any significance in the federal government complains about the double standard when one compares Israel to Russia. And the Zionist controlled media are completely silent.

The hypocrisy that pervades United States foreign policy is difficult to ignore, but Washington has successfully manipulated its financial instruments to keep its remaining friends and allies in line. Whether that will survive the inevitable pushback coming from Russia, China and a number of non-aligned nations remains to be seen. At a minimum, the Cold War alignment that was broken in 1991 and which seems to again be taking shape around the Ukraine issue appears to have exceeded its expiry date. Ukraine might indeed wind up doing severe damage to the Russian economy, but it seems plausible that it will also bring with it the long overdue demise of American hegemonistic fantasies and NATO.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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In the early years of America’s war on terror, during an undisclosed meeting of the top brass of the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), senior intelligence officials gathered to discuss what to do with the individuals subjected to rendition and “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

After looking at a number of options, including keeping them in detention, sending them to another country, and prosecuting them, one senior official asked, “Why don’t we just kill them?”

The details of that meeting were revealed on Monday, in a virtual panel with author and journalist Cathy Scott Clark, whose book The Forever Prisoner offers an in-depth look into the CIA’s controversial torture programme.

“You hear revelations like that, which I found a bit alarming,” she said during the event, hosted by the New America think tank.

The book, which will be released later this week, focuses on the case of Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah, who was interrogated using techniques that amounted to torture – including being waterboarded 83 times in one month, hung naked from a ceiling, and deprived of sleep for 11 straight days.

It covers a number of aspects in the CIA’s rendition programme, including interviews Clark had with several top military and intelligence officials.

In the process of working on the book, Clark interviewed James Mitchell, one of the architects of the torture programme. Clark also interviewed another person, identified as “Gus” in the book, who orchestrated the entire rendition operation.

“Having met and interviewed so many people in the programme, my overall feeling is that it sort of became like a pack mentality – that everybody was in it together,” Clark said.

“And if someone were to say who’s responsible should someone be prosecuted, I don’t think you can point to any one person.”

From CIA torture to Abu Ghraib

Following the 9/11 attacks, the US launched a far-reaching campaign to root out “terrorists” that had planned the attacks and who could coordinate further attacks on US soil.

However, civil society groups have said that many of Washington’s practices, including rendition and “enhanced interrogation techniques” – which the Senate concluded in a landmark report amounted to torture – are illegal according to international law.

Last month, newly declassified documents detailed how Ammar al-Baluchi, a detainee at a CIA black site in Afghanistan, was used as a living prop for interrogators-in-training to receive certification in interrogations. The torture he received led to brain damage.

During the event on Monday, Clark also revealed that despite denial from US officials, there is a link between the creators – such as Mitchell – of the CIA’s torture programme and the gross abuses that took place at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison where detainees endured physical, psychological and sexual abuse, including the use of electric shock and mock executions at the hands of US forces.

“The other thing that I put together in great detail in the book is how the CIA’s enhanced interrogation programme absolutely, definitely led to abuses in the US military as well,” Clark said.

“The same people… were involved in putting together training programmes, training materials, training the CIA, training interrogators to go to Guantanamo, training interrogators at Bagram, and then interrogators who went to Abu Ghraib.

“Jim [Mitchell] can rightly say ‘I didn’t design what went wrong at Abu Ghraib’, but he has to accept responsibility that he created something that got out of control.”

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It’s in Pakistan’s objective national interests to dispel doubts about the rule of law but this is extremely difficult for all responsible stakeholders in The Establishment to do considering what just took place and how immensely polarizing it’s been. Regardless of whichever side one might be on, it’s indisputable that these contrasting perceptions about the rule of law create a socio-political environment that can be easily exploited to harm Pakistan’s objective national interests, which is why it must be resolved as soon as possible even if it’s unrealistic to expect it to be anytime soon.

The ouster of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan following the opposition’s successful no-confidence motion on Saturday immediately resulted in contrasting perceptions about the rule of law in that country. It’s always been a sensitive and much-discussed issue, but never on the scale that it presently is.

Supporters of his removal insist that it was completely in line with the constitution, totally unrelated to any American regime change plot, and allege that the former leader was the one who ridiculously cast doubt on the legality of this process by groundlessly accusing the US of trying to unseat him as punishment for his independent foreign policy. Opponents, meanwhile, insist with equal passion that his removal amounted to the external exploitation of political processes in order to overthrow the former Prime Minister and thus regard it as immoral at best and illegal at worst.

The core of these contrasting perceptions comes down to the relationship between the rule of law and national security. Those who supported the former Prime Minister’s ouster believe that he exploited patriotic Pakistanis’ sincere concerns about national security by supposedly concocting what they describe as a completely false regime change conspiracy theory while their opponents have no doubt about the veracity of his claims and consider his removal to represent a very serious national security threat irrespective of its formal legality. National security is also the domain of the Pakistani Establishment, which refers to its influential military-intelligence structures that can speculatively be described as having two primary schools of thought right now: pro-US and multipolar. That in turn leads to questions about the role that it played (or should have played according to some) in recent events.

These contrasting perceptions are sincerely believed by those who hold them yet they regrettably appear to be irreconcilable, at least for the time being so shortly after former Prime Minister Khan’s ouster. It’s in Pakistan’s objective national interests to dispel doubts about the rule of law but this is extremely difficult for all responsible stakeholders in The Establishment to do considering what just took place and how immensely polarizing it’s been. It also doesn’t help any that opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif, who many expect to become the next Prime Minister, is accused of money laundering. Opponents of the former Prime Minister’s removal claim that this shows what a joke the rule of law has become that a suspected criminal from what they describe as a notoriously corrupt family (his brother Nawaz was the Prime Minister before Imran and sentenced in absentiafor corruption) will replace him.

An added wrinkle to all of this is that Shehbaz Sharif publicly accused former Prime Minister Khan of “high treason” so some suspect that he might try to arrest him on that pretext upon taking power in a move that his opponents decry as a political witch hunt and potential revenge for the investigation into his alleged money laundering. The opposition leader is in a dilemma though since not carrying through with that implied threat will suggest that he himself just violated the same rule of law principle that he claims to hold so dear yet trying to get Imran Khan arrested will feed into accusations that he’s also violating the rule of law as explained. The end result is that neither choice will help resolve the seemingly irreconcilable differences that Pakistanis nowadays have over the rule of law in their country but will only widen this divide.

The entire problem that Pakistan is now forced confront can be traced back to prior governments’ failure to resolve their country’s corruption issues, with some of them even engaging in corruption themselves like former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was found guilty of doing in absentia.

It’s for this reason why Pakistanis are so passionate about the rule of law in their country, but the national security dimension connected with the latest developments concerns them even more than usual since each side’s interpretation of events is mutually exclusive: either Prime Minister Khan exploited national security concerns to violate the rule of law in order to cling to power or the opposition exploited the rule of law to endanger their country’s national security by playing into the hands of a foreign regime change plot (if not openly conspiring with it).

The Establishment probably wishes that everything didn’t get to this point, yet there’s still plenty of speculation swirling about its role in recent events. Even presuming the existence of two primary schools of thought within it, this institution as a whole cannot allow these contrasting perceptions to deepen to the point where it risks endangering national security, yet it must also be careful with its actions and statements in order to avoid inadvertently fueling concerns that its representatives are also violating the rule of law by doing or saying whatever it may be. Regardless of whichever side one might be on, it’s indisputable that these contrasting perceptions about the rule of law create a socio-political environment that can be easily exploited to harm Pakistan’s objective national interests, which is why it must be resolved as soon as possible even if it’s unrealistic to expect it to be anytime soon.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The serial number of the Tochka-U missile that hit the Kramatorsk railway station on 8 April 2022 is Ш91579 (in Russian) or Sh91579 (in English). This serial number marks the stock of Tochka-U missiles in the possession of the Ukrainian Army. Only the Ukrainian Armed Forces have Tochka-U missiles. Russia has not had them since 2019: they have all been deactivated. The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics do not have and have never had Tochka-U.

The direction of the cone and the tail section of the missile that landed on the ground near the Kramatorsk train station clearly shows that it was fired from the 19th Ukrainian Missile Brigade, deployed near Dobropolie 45 km from Kramatorsk.

Previously the Ukrainian Armed Forces have used Tochka-U missiles of the same series as Ш915611 fired at Berdyansk and Ш915516 fired at Melitopol. The same missiles were used against Donetsk and Lugansk.

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This article was originally published in Italian on byoblu.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from Freenations

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Economic coercive measures, commonly known as economic sanctions, are a means of coercive pressure through disruption of trade relations and economic isolation. The use of sanctions under international law is governed chiefly by Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, providing that the Security Council may decide to enact a “complete or partial interruption of economic relations” in order to restore international peace and security.

Measures not authorized by the Security Council, or “unilateral coercive measures” (UCM), have become an increasingly common coercive tactic of the United States, which presently imposes sanctions on approximately one-third of the global population.

Since 2010, the United States has also been enforcing select secondary sanctions against international actors that maintain economic relations with sanctioned states. The adverse effects of these measures on civilian populations of targeted countries—“especially severe for vulnerable groups,” including “women and children”—have been repeatedly and unequivocally documented.

Issues surrounding the legality of UCM have largely centered around the question of compatibility with the United Nations Charter. One primary concern has been the claimed illegitimacy of sanction measures not authorized in multilateral fashion by the Security Council. Others allude to the problems raised by UCM in both the context of state sovereignty (principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states) and international humanitarian law (right to life, health and medical care set forth in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights).

The United Nations General Assembly has also voiced regular concerns about UCM. A resolution overwhelmingly passed 29 years in a row calling for the cessation of the United States’s “economic blockade” on Cuba is illustrative.

UN General Assembly votes on resolution (June 23, 2021) demanding an end to the U.S. economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba. [Source: news.un.org]

On February 13, 2020, the government of Venezuela submitted a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) requesting an investigation into another possible legal frailty of the United States UCM—namely, whether such measures can constitute crimes against humanity pursuant to Article 7 of the Rome Statute. As recourse to economic warfare ramps up further amidst an intensifying new Cold War, pressure mounts surrounding the Court’s eventual decision.

Case Background

Venezuela has a population of more than 28 million. Since the 1930s, it has been a significant oil-producing state and is considered to preside over the world’s largest oil reserves.

Under President Hugo Chávez (1998-2013), a new national constitution was adopted which provided for the use of national oil revenues to improve social conditions. The United States responded to this shift in policy with an attempted, but ultimately foiled, coup d’état in 2002. Despite hostile relations with the United States and a series of anti-terrorism and anti-drug trafficking-related sanctions, the Chávez social programs achieved impressive results in improving the standard of living for the Venezuelan population. Poverty and unemployment rates dropped markedly and education standards and literacy rates steadily increased.

Following the death of President Chávez and the election of Nicolás Maduro, the United States intensified its economic coercion. In March 2015, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13692, declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and providing for the blocking of Venezuelan assets.

Source: latuffcartoons.wordpress.com

The Trump administration ramped up the financial pressure with Executive Order 13808 in August 2017, denying the Venezuelan government, including the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, access to United States financial markets. Executive Orders 13827 and 13835 followed in spring 2018, prohibiting transactions involving the Venezuelan government’s issuance of digital currency and transactions related to the purchase of Venezuelan debt, respectively.

President Trump issued Executive Order 13850 in November 2018 setting forth a framework to block the assets of, and restrict certain transactions with, any person deemed by the Treasury Department to be engaging in transactions with the Venezuelan government that advance its “corrupt purposes.” In January 2019, the United States, in a display of open contempt for democracy, ceased to recognize the government of President Maduro, instead acknowledging Juan Guaidó as interim President.

Strangulation of the Venezuelan economy escalated further in August 2019 with Executive Order 13884, freezing property interests of the Venezuelan government in the United States, prohibiting U.S. citizens from engaging in transactions with the Venezuelan government and authorizing financial sanctions and visa restrictions on non-U.S. citizens who assist or support the Venezuelan government.

Effect of United States UCM

All of the above-enumerated measures were enacted unilaterally by the United States government and have had a catastrophic impact on the Venezuelan economy, which has in turn precipitated a humanitarian crisis for the Venezuelan population.

In February 2021, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Negative Impact of Unilateral Coercive Measures, Elena Douhan, released preliminary findings on the impact of United States UCM on the enjoyment of basic human rights in Venezuela. Ms. Douhan notes that, before the imposition of UCM, Venezuela was committing 76% of its national oil revenues to the advancement of social programs. As a result of the monumental UCM-related drop in oil revenue (e.g., from $42 billion in 2013 to just $4 billion in 2018), the government is now unable to commit even one percent to the social programs.

The loss of these resources has led to a “devastating impact on the whole population of Venezuela” with basic human rights directly affected. These include the:

• Right to food—more than 50% of food consumption has been impacted by United States UCM, which led to one-third of the Venezuelan population becoming acutely food insecure;
• Right to water—water-related services have been significantly disrupted by United States UCM such that the average Venezuelan household has access to running water for only a couple of hours sporadically throughout a given week;
• Right to health—access to quality healthcare has been significantly disrupted by United States UCM, resulting in extreme shortages of medical staff and equipment; maternal and infant mortality rates have increased, as well as mortality rates from various diseases; and
• Right to education—United States UCM have resulted in a massive decrease in government funding for education, frustrating the ability of schools to procure staff and basic necessities, including meals for students; the situation has been further exacerbated by regular electrical and internet outages.

The severely beleaguered financial condition of the Venezuelan government has also inhibited its ability to provide basic health services amid the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to its unwillingness to unfreeze Venezuelan assets to enable the purchase of Covid vaccines, the United States has also declined to donate vaccinations to Venezuela, citing concerns over a lack of Venezuelan “transparency.”

Claim

The Venezuelan referral claims that United States UCM constitute crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute. Specifically, the claim asserts that the United States UCM represent a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population of Venezuela; that this effect is known to the United States; and that these UCM manifest themselves in punishable acts enumerated in Article 7—in particular, murder (Art. 7(1)(a)), extermination (Art. 7(1)(b)), deportation (Art. 7(1)(d)), persecution (Art. 7(1)(h)), and other inhumane acts (Art. 7(1)(k)).

The referral is novel in multiple respects. First, UCM have not previously been challenged on grounds that they violate international criminal law. Claims abound that UCM are inconsistent with the United Nations Charter, with principles of state sovereignty and with international humanitarian law, but their possible criminality has not been investigated.

Second, the ICC has not previously investigated a case alleging crimes against humanity emanating from policies enacted in one state, but executed on the territory of another. The referral advances the argument that it is accepted in ICC case law that “non-state actors” can commit crimes against humanity even where they do not control the territory in which they are operating. As such, there is no principled reason why “states” cannot commit crimes against humanity in territory which they do not control—i.e., the United States can commit crimes against humanity on the territory of Venezuela.

Third, the referral also raises a jurisdictional oddity. While Article 12 of the Rome Statute clearly provides jurisdiction over qualifying crimes committed on the territory of a member state party, the question arises where precisely the alleged crimes against humanity flowing from United States UCM occur. The referral acknowledges that the actual decisions to impose the UCM in question occurred outside the territory of Venezuela, but argues that the clear intent of the decisions was to have effects within its territory. Thus, the question of whether the ICC can exercise territorial jurisdiction over actions by a non-Rome Statute member state directed against the territory of a Rome Statute member state must be addressed by the Court and further raises the stakes in connection with potential implications of the referral.

Assessment of Venezuela’s Challenge

In addition to raising serious international legal concerns under, inter alia, the United Nations Charter and international humanitarian law, UCM cause significant and well-documented suffering among innocent civilian populations and are ripe for investigation under international criminal law.

The Venezuelan referral advances sound arguments that United States UCM can constitute crimes against humanity. It appears unequivocal that the United States imposes these measures, which appear to satisfy the criteria set forth in Article 7 of the Rome Statute, knowing full well their effects on the Venezuelan population.

Anti-sanctions protest in Caracas. [Source: venezuelaanalysis.com]

Despite calls for the investigation of others when politically expedient, the United States has hidden itself behind its non-party status to the Rome Statute to avoid investigation of its own actions and has a history of unprecedented hostility toward the ICC.

In 2002, the United States enacted the American Service-Members Protection Act “to protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials…against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not part.” The Act authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate”—including conceivably force—to bring about the release of United States personnel detained by the ICC.

In June 2020, President Trump issued Executive Order 13928, taking the extraordinary step of declaring the Court’s pending investigation into United States crimes in Afghanistan an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and authorizing the freezing of assets of ICC personnel and placement of restrictions on their ability to travel to the United States.

The ICC has displayed a distinct wariness of confrontation with the United States, giving rise to credible concerns surrounding its impartiality. Upon taking office in 2021, the new Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, immediately brought controversy and renewed doubts of credibility on the Court with his arbitrary decision to “deprioritize” inquiry into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by United States military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan under the Bush administration and to, instead, focus selectively on infractions of the Taliban.

The Court may well be tempted to skirt Venezuela’s requested investigation of the United States on technical jurisdictional grounds, but yet another dismissal of a sound case against the United States, all the while vigorously launching a new probe into Russian crimes in Ukraine, could further tarnish the ICC’s already suspect reputation.

Though the referral has unsurprisingly received little coverage in the United States, the stakes are indeed high. A decision to exercise jurisdiction and to proceed with investigation would set an unwelcome precedent for the United States—even if the chances of U.S. leaders actually standing trial is all but non-existent.

An investigation, and ultimate finding, by the ICC would cast concrete doubt on already dubious United States UCM and could possibly prompt a United Nations General Assembly request for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the broader legality of UCM. At a time when its economic coercive tactics are coming to seriously jeopardize the global economy—and, accordingly, raise critical eyebrows around the world—the United States can ill afford an adverse ICC ruling. For the ICC, on the other hand, the referral presents an opportunity to show its courage and prove its impartial commitment to global justice.

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Ryan Swan is a doctoral researcher at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies in Germany. He holds a J.D. from the UCLA School of Law and a Master’s in international relations and politics from Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Ryan can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from venezuelaanalysis.com

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In March 1962, after eight years of armed, diplomatic and mass struggles, the National Liberation Front (FLN) compelled the colonial leadership in Paris to commit to relinquishing its control to an Algerian Provisional Government (GPRA), overturning 132 years of French imperialist domination.

The FLN and its allies were able to defeat the colonial regime in France setting an example for other states throughout the African continent who were then waging a revolutionary guerrilla war against settler-colonial and imperialist-backed European regimes.

This victory against French imperialism was a Pan-African project bringing in newly independent governments such as Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana and Mali. Dr. Frantz Fanon, a Martinique-born French-trained psychiatric physician went to Algeria to work on behalf of the colonial regime when he shifted his allegiance to the FLN becoming an ambassador and contributing editor to a leading journal (El Moudjahid) allied with the national liberation movement.

An ideological orientation which grew out of the independence movements in Africa emerged during the 20th century with worldwide influence. France along with other European imperialist states such as Spain, Portugal, Britain, Italy, Germany, Belgium and the United States had met in Berlin in 1884-1885 where they carved up the African continent into spheres of interests based upon their overall strengths economically and militarily.

These agreements of course, would eventually break down in the lead up to the first and second world wars. The outcomes of World War II created an atmosphere for U.S. imperialist domination. However, the weakening of France, Britain, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Portugal during WWII, emboldened the oppressed colonized masses of workers and farmers leading to the advent of national liberation revolutions throughout Africa and Asia from the 1940s through the latter decades of the 20th century.

France fought bitterly to maintain control of Algeria arguing that it was an overseas territory of Paris. Beginning with a blockade in 1827, the French military forces attacked Algiers in 1830 with no intention of leaving the country.

One historical account of the growth of French colonial rule and the resistance to imperialism in Algeria says:

“Settler domination of Algeria was not secured, however, until the fall of Napoleon III in 1870 and the rise of the Third Republic in France. Until then Algeria remained largely under military administration, and the governor-general of Algeria was almost invariably a military officer until the 1880s. Most Algerians—excluding the colons (settler population known as pieds noirs—were subject to rule by military officers organized into Arab Bureaus, whose members were officers with an intimate knowledge of local affairs and of the language of the people but with no direct financial interest in the colony.” See this.

Prior to this period of the 1880s, between 1830-1847, resistance to French control began in Algeria. As a result of the defeat of another series of rebellions occurring in the 1860s and 1870s marked the French consolidation of their control over the country. French settlers were able to secure the most arable lands forcing the Algerian people into a marginalized existence. Despite the political turmoil in France during the 1830s and 1840s, the military forces supported by the ruling class continued their colonial project in Algeria.

The rise of fascism in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s provided impetus for Italy and Germany to seize larger swaths of territory in Europe and North Africa. The German military seizure of France in 1940 resulted in the installation of a government beholden to Hitler and his regime. However, Britain and the U.S. challenged German and Italian efforts in North Africa through a series of battles in Egypt, Libya and Algeria during 1940-1943.

In Algeria, a U.S. military occupation began in late 1942 under the banner of “Operation Torch” and continued throughout the war. At the conclusion of WWII, Algerians embarked upon a mass campaign to win independence from France.

A massacre of thousands of Algerians took place starting May 8, 1945, the same day as the defeat of the Nazis in Germany. Known as the Setif and Guelma massacres, these attacks lead to the deaths of up to 30,000 Algerians after the killing of over 100 French colons. Rebellions erupted throughout sections of the country in response to the repression. Nonetheless, the French were able to contain the rebellion through brutal military actions, closing the avenues for nonviolent struggle in the North African state.

Algerian Armed Struggle Set a Precedent for Anti-Colonial Struggles

Despite the French crushing of the May 1945 rebellion, nine years later the movement would reconsolidate and launch an armed revolutionary struggle for national independence beginning in 1954. The Battle of Algiers and the intense guerrilla activity in the rural areas weakened the French resolve to remain as a colonial power.

The defeat of the French in North Vietnam during the same year at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu portended much for the future of military actions to preserve colonialism. The armed struggle continued until March 1962 when both the French governmental security forces and colons had exhausted all options aimed at remaining in power in Algiers.

After the independence of Algeria, the country under the FLN served as a base for national liberation struggles throughout the African continent. Nelson Mandela, the co-founder and initial commander of the African National Congress (ANC) military wing, Umkhonto We Sizwe, received training in a FLN camp in Morocco.

Fanon, who was deployed as a diplomat for the FLN in Ghana under the government of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, served to bring greater awareness of the political significance of the liberation movement in Algeria. Although Fanon died of Leukemia in December 1961 while receiving medical care in the U.S., his writings compiled under the title of “The Wretched of the Earth” were widely read in Africa and the world.

In the U.S., revolutionary youth-led organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) studied Fanon’s writing extensively utilizing them as a guide to the Black Revolution which was sweeping the world during the 1960s and 1970s. James Forman, the former executive secretary and international affairs director for SNCC, said in an address delivered at a regional Black youth conference in Los Angeles on November 23, 1967 that:

“Racism and U.S. imperialism, inextricably entwined, are being assaulted by liberation fighters all over the world. In this worldwide struggle between revolution and counterrevolution, there can be no ‘innocent bystanders.’ As Frantz Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, ‘Yes; everybody will have to be compromised in the fight for the common good. No one has clean hands; there are no innocents and no onlookers. We all have dirty hands….Every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor.’ The fight against racism is not the struggle of Black people, it is ours. And the battle has been joined.”

By August 1969, Algeria was the host of the First Pan-African Cultural Festival which brought together people of African descent from throughout the continent and the globe. The Black Panther Party was invited as a delegation representing the African American people. Later the BPP was given an official embassy in Algiers which served as the International Section of the BPP from 1969-1972.

Algeria in the Modern Era

The former French colony became a large producer and exporter of oil and natural gas, placing the independent nation as an important player in international relations. In addition to the Pan-African Cultural Festival of 1969 and the housing of the BPP, then the subjects of extreme repression by the U.S. government, the country captured the seccessionist counter-revolutionary Moise Tshombe of the former Belgian Congo, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Tshombe, who had been an agent of the former Belgian colonial authorities in southern DRC and was involved in the assassination of the first Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in January 1961, died in Algerian custody in 1969. The U.S. National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) wanted Lumumba killed, being ordered to do so by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960-1961.

Algeria war of independence against France (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Disagreements over a national election in 1992 when the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was denied the ability to create a government in Algeria, led to a civil war that lasted for the remaining years of the 1990s. The civil war resulted in the deaths of many Algerians on both sides of the conflict. After the government prevailed by the beginning of the 21st century, the country continued to serve as a bastion of support for the Polisario Front, the liberation movement fighting for the liberation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) of the Western Sahara, which remains under the domination of the Kingdom of Morocco.

In recent years, the Hirak opposition movement has organized large demonstrations demanding reforms in Algeria. The protest action created an atmosphere for the resignation of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019.

By early 2020, a new leader, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, was elected. The current administration opposed the secret granting of Israeli observer status within the African Union during 2021-2022. Working in conjunction with the governments of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the decision by the AU Commission Chair, Moussa Faki Mahamat, was reversed at a summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in early February of 2022. (See this)

In addition, the Algerian government recalled its ambassador from Spain after the government in Madrid recognized the control of the Kingdom of Morocco over the Western Sahara. The SADR has been given membership status within the AU and maintains a mission at the United Nations.

Relations with France have also been strained in recent months leading up to the 60th anniversary of independence. French President Emmanuel Macron has made comments indicating that the Algerian independence struggle was somehow illegitimate. These ridiculous claims by Paris are taking place amid rising anti-French sentiments across the continent, particularly in the Sahel region of West Africa where Macron has maintained troops under the guise of anti-terrorism. The fact of the matter is the security situation in North and West Africa has worsened due to the presence of French and U.S. troops known as the Africa Command (AFRICOM) and Operation Barkhane.

These military and diplomatic struggles unfolding in North and West Africa will determine the status of France and the U.S. within these regions of the continent. The role of imperialist militarism in Africa will continue to be a source of conflict until the foreign intervention is ended and unity is achieved.

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

Featured image: Frantz Fanon at the All-African People’s Conference in Ghana, Dec. 1958 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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