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Two leaked stories from the Pentagon have exposed the lies of mainstream media about how Russia is conducting the Ukraine war in a bid to counter propaganda intended to get NATO into the conflict, writes Joe Lauria.
The Pentagon is engaged in a consequential battle with the U.S. State Department and the Congress to prevent a direct military confrontation with Russia, which could unleash the most unimaginable horror of war.
President Joe Biden is caught in the middle of the fray. So far he is siding with the Defense Department, saying there cannot be a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine fighting Russian aircraft because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.”
“President Biden’s been clear that U.S. troops won’t fight Russia in Ukraine, and if you establish a no-fly zone, certainly in order to enforce that no-fly zone, you’ll have to engage Russian aircraft. And again, that would put us at war with Russia,” said U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier this month. (The administration plan is to bring down the Russian government through a ground insurgency and economic war, not a direct military one.)
But pressure on the White House from some members of Congress and especially the press corps is unrelenting to recklessly bring NATO directly into the war. (Secretary of State Antony Blinken who initially backed a plan to send NATO planes from Poland to Ukraine has backed down and now opposes the no-fly zone.) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, hailed as a virtual superhero in Western media, has vacillated between openness to negotiating a peace settlement with Russia and calling for NATO to “close the skies” above Ukraine. To save his country he appears willing to risk endangering the entire world.
(The Pentagon’s mettle will be tested if there is a chemical weapons attack in Ukraine. Biden has said Russia would be a “severe price” but who the perpetrator would be might be murky.)
Meanwhile, Western corporate media, depending almost exclusively on Ukrainian sources, report that Russia is losing the war, with its military offensive “stalled,” and in frustration has deliberately targeted civilians and flattened cities.
Biden has bought into this part of the story, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.” He has also said that Russia is planning a “false flag” chemical attack to pin on Ukraine.
But on Tuesday, the Pentagon took the bold step of leaking two stories to reporters that contradict those tales. “Russia’s conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage—and it reveals the Russian leader’s strategic balancing act,” reported Newsweek in an article entitled, “Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He’s Holding Back. Here’s Why.”
The piece quotes an unnamed analyst at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) saying,
“The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.”
A retired U.S. Air Force officer now working as an analyst for a Pentagon contractor, added:
“We need to understand Russia’s actual conduct. If we merely convince ourselves that Russia is bombing indiscriminately, or [that] it is failing to inflict more harm because its personnel are not up to the task or because it is technically inept, then we are not seeing the real conflict.”
The article says:
“As of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast, the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war). …
A proportion of those strikes have damaged and destroyed civilian structures and killed and injured innocent civilians, but the level of death and destruction is low compared to Russia’s capacity.
‘I know it’s hard … to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is,’ says the DIA analyst. ‘But that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians, that perhaps he is mindful that he needs to limit damage in order to leave an out for negotiations.’”
A second retired U.S. Air Force officer says:
“I’m frustrated by the current narrative—that Russia is intentionally targeting civilians, that it is demolishing cities, and that Putin doesn’t care. Such a distorted view stands in the way of finding an end before true disaster hits or the war spreads to the rest of Europe. I know that the news keeps repeating that Putin is targeting civilians, but there is no evidence that Russia is intentionally doing so. In fact, I’d say that Russia could be killing thousands more civilians if it wanted to.”
These Pentagon sources confirm what Putin and the Russian Ministry of Defense have been saying all along: that instead of being “stalled,” Russia is executing a methodical war plan to encircle cities, opening humanitarian corridors for civilians, leaving civilian infrastructure like water, electricity, telephony and internet intact, and trying to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible.
Until these Pentagon leaks it was difficult to confirm that Russia was entirely telling the truth and that corporate media were publishing fables cooked up by Ukraine’s publicity machine.
No Evidence of Chemicals
The second article directly undermines Biden’s dramatic warning about a false flag chemical attack. Reuters reported:
“The United States has not yet seen any concrete indications of an imminent Russian chemical or biological weapons attack in Ukraine but is closely monitoring streams of intelligence for them, a senior U.S. defense official said.”
It quoted the Pentagon official as saying,
“There’s no indication that there’s something imminent in that regard right now.” Neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post published the Reuters article, which appeared in the more obscure U.S. News and World Report.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story — even if it could lead to the most devastating consequences in history.
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Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe
Featured image: The Pentagon. (Source: Joe Lauria)
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Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on March 23 that natural gas payments from so-called unfriendly countries will be made in rubles from now on. He stressed however that Russia will continue to supply gas to other countries according to the volume and price specified in previously signed contracts. With Western countries making it difficult for Russia to trade in dollars, euros and pounds, there was no choice left but for gas trade to be conducted in rubles – which will not only ultimately benefit Russia in the long run, but also China.
By selling gas, oil and other products in rubles, it limits, or perhaps even entirely rules out the freezing of Gazprom’s accounts, thus protecting this money from Western sanctions. But to attain rubles to make payments to begin with, so-called unfriendly countries will need to sell foreign currency on the stock exchange. In this way, Russia’s revenue will not only be directly from Gazprom, but also from the Russian foreign exchange market. It is hoped that such a measure will lead to a demand in rubles, thus supporting the Russian monetary system.
The biggest issue Russia faces is whether Europe will instead buy energy from elsewhere, even at a higher price. None-the-less, it does express Moscow’s intentions to reciprocate and respond to economic provocations made by the West, especially as it is very likely that this payment policy will lead to an increase in the price of gas in the European market.
In response to Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, Western countries have announced large-scale sanctions against the country, mainly in the banking sector and the supply of high-tech products. Moscow calls these measures an economic war and listed 48 countries including the US, Canada, EU member states, the UK, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Singapore as “unfriendly countries.”
In 2021, these hostile countries paid roughly $69 billion for gas from Gazprom, the Russian state-owned company. To make a similar scale of payments this year, countries will have to procure around 6-7 trillion rubles. As Quartz explained, as yet,
“most of these ‘hostile nations’ buying Russian energy have few options but to continue their purchases. If the demand for rubles steadily increases as a result, the drastic fall in the currency’s value will halt and even reverse. After Putin made his announcement, the ruble gained 7% against the dollar.”
The outlet also explained that
“if Western governments pursue these avenues, the Central Bank of Russia doesn’t have to spend its own dollars and euro reserves to prop up the ruble—which is just as well, since more than half of Russia’s foreign reserves have been frozen by sanctions.”
German experts have already said that technically, paying in rubles is possible but takes time to create some additional mechanisms to facilitate the attainment and payment of rubles. However, the decision of EU countries will not only depend on the technical aspects.
US President Joe Biden will most likely continue to persuade the EU to give up Russian energy sources, even though this is practically impossible despite the American assurances. However, with Europe unable to realistically cut itself from Russian energy in the short and medium term, the American suggestion will only lead to a weakened European economy as they will inevitably pay exorbitant prices for alternative energy sources.
Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius has warned, according to FT, that a European ban on Russian energy imports would cause a 2.2% hit to production and trigger a eurozone recession. In addition, UK chancellor Rishi Sunak has been telling colleagues that the hit would be larger and would quickly cause a downturn worth £70 billion, or 3%, of gross domestic product in the UK, given its still-close ties to the continental European economy.
This comes as Russia announced that it will diversify its oil and gas supplies if Western countries completely refuse to import. In preparation for this, Russian companies have been developing new logistics plans. Although Russia will undoubtedly earn less, it will be able to rebuild the oil industry and the wider economy to not be so heavily hinged on the West.
In this way, it will not only be the ruble that benefits, but also the Chinese yuan. After the West froze Russia’s gold and foreign exchange reserves, many experts saw the Chinese yuan as an alternative to the dollar. China’s currency correlates with the dollar exchange rate at 97%, meaning that if the dollar rises against the ruble, then the yuan will also rise. Effectively this means that the yuan is currently almost a full replacement for the dollar.
As Quartz explained, the US and the EU may then have to run ruble exchange payments through a third, intermediary currency such as the yuan. Effectively, the Russian demand for rubles for oil and gas will stabilize the Russian currency whilst also propping up the yuan, thus weakening sanctions.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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The director of the Institute of Oncology and Radiology of Serbia explained that chemical plants and various dangerous industries were bombed, which, as she says, created an ecological catastrophe and poisoned Europe.
According to Grujičić, the use of NATO bombs with depleted uranium and the destruction of environmentally dangerous facilities during air strikes have led to Serbia being now the leader in the number of cancer deaths in Europe, with almost 60.000 new cancer patients a year.
“The North Atlantic Alliance did not pay attention to civilian casualties. Everyone knows the famous conversation between former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari, who said that Belgrade would be levelled to the ground (if it does not accept the ultimatum),” Grujičić added.
“If we had a nuclear power plant, they would definitely hit it, because they attacked everything on the list of facilities dangerous for the environment. They knew that a local environmental catastrophe would be created in every oil refinery, chemical company. They did it on purpose”, she said.
Grujičić recalled that about 15 tons of depleted uranium were officially dumped on Serbia, but emphasized that “no one knows how much it really was, and it will never be known.”
“We have taken the initiative to determine with mathematical precision, not only medical, but also environmental consequences. The data we received show that the whole of Europe was polluted. Europeans who were looking forward to the bombs over Belgrade and Serbia are also endangered and do not know what they were breathing, eating, drinking,” she added.
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Featured image is a screenshot from TV Prva via B92.net
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The U.S. justifies wars of aggression in the name of human rights. The term has no meaning domestically either, as the people’s needs are subordinated to those of the ruling class.
Images of burnt flesh from napalm bombs, wounded and dead soldiers, scenes of U.S. soldiers burning the simple huts of Vietnamese villages, eventually turned the public against the war in Vietnam and produced the dreaded affliction, from the ruling class point of view, known as the “Vietnam syndrome.” This collective Post Traumatic Stress Disorder made it impossible for the public to support any foreign military involvement for years.
It took the rulers almost three decades to finally cure the public of this affliction. But the rulers were careful.
The brutal reality of what the U.S. was doing in Afghanistan and Iraq was whitewashed. That is why the images now being brought to the public by the corporate media are so shocking. It has been more than two generations since the U.S. public was exposed to the horrific images of war.
In the 1960s the rulers inadvertently allowed themselves to be undermined by the new television technology that brought the awful reality of imperialist war into the homes of the public. Now, the ruling class operating through its corporate media propaganda arms has been effectively using Ukraine war propaganda, not to increase Anti-war sentiment but to stimulate support for more war!
Incredibly also, the propagandists are pushing a line that essentially says that in the name of “freedom” and supporting Ukraine, the U.S. public should shoulder the sacrifice of higher fuel and food prices. This is on top of the inflation that workers and consumers were already being subjected to coming out of the capitalist covid scandal that devastated millions of workers and the lower stratums of the petit bourgeoisie.
But the war, and now the unfair shouldering of all of the costs of the capitalist crisis of 2008 – 2009, and the impact of covid by the working classes in the U.S., amounts to a capitalist tax. It is levied by the oligarchy on workers to subsidize the defense of the interests of big capital and the conditions that have produced obscene profits, even in the midst of the covid crisis and now, the Ukraine war.
These policies are criminal. While the U.S. continues to pretend that it champions human rights around the world, the failure of the state to protect the fundamental human rights of the citizens and residents in the U.S. is obvious to all, but spoken about by the few, except the Chinese government.
For those who might think that the Chinese criticism of the U.S. is only being driven by politics, and it might be, just a cursory, objective examination of the U.S. state policies over just the last few years reveals a shocking record of systematic human rights abuses that promise to become even more acute as a consequence of the manufactured U.S./NATO war in Ukraine.
The Ongoing Human Rights Crisis
The U.S. working class, and Black working class in particular, never recovered from the economic crisis of 2008 before it was once again ravaged in 2020 with the global capitalist crisis exacerbated by covid. On the heels of those two shocks, today millions of workers are experiencing a permanent state of precarity with evictions, the continued loss of medical coverage, unaffordable housing and food costs, and a capitalist-initiated inflation. The rulers are operating under the belief that with the daily bombardment of war images, U.S. workers and the poor will embrace rising costs of gas and even more increases in the cost of food.
Doesn’t the state have any responsibility to ensure that the economic human rights of the people are fulfilled? No, because liberal human rights practice separates fundamental human rights – such as the right to health, food, housing, education, a means to subsist at an acceptable level of material culture, leisure, and life-long social security – from democratic discourse on what constitutes the human rights responsibility of the state and the interests it must uphold in order to be legitimate.
The non-recognition of the indivisibility of human rights that values economic human rights to an equal level as civil and political rights, exposed the moral and political contradictions of the liberal human rights framework. The massive economic displacements with hunger, unemployment, and unnecessary deaths among the population in the United States, with a disproportionate rate of sickness and hospitalization among non-white workers and the poor in the U.S., were never condemned as violations of human rights.
War and Economic Deprivation the Systemic Contradictions of the Western colonial/capitalist Project.
The war being waged against global humanity by the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination is a hybrid war that utilizes all the tools it has at its disposal – sanctions, mass incarceration, coups, drugs, disinformation, culture, subversion, murder, and direct military engagement to further white power. The Eurocentrism and “White Lives Matters More Movement” represented by the coverage of the war in Ukraine stripped away any pretense to the supposed liberal commitment to global humanity. The white-washing of the danger of the ultra-right and neo-Nazi elements in the Ukrainian military and state and the white ethno-nationalism that the conflict generated across the Western world demonstrated, once again, how “racialism” and the commitment to the fiction of white supremacy continues to trump class and class struggle and the ability to build a multi-national, class based anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist opposition in the North.
It is primarily workers from Russia, the Donbas and Ukraine who are dying. But as in the run-up to the first imperialist war in Europe, known as World War One, workers with the encouragement of their national bourgeoisies, are lining up behind their rulers to support the capitalist redivision taking place, a redivision that can only be completed by war as long as capitalism and capitalist competition continues. Yet, instead of “progressives and radicals” joining forces to resist the mobilization to war, they are finding creative ways to align themselves with the interests of their ruling classes in support of the colonial/capitalist project.
In the meantime, the people of Afghanistan are starving, with thousands of babies now dying of malnutrition because the U.S. stole their nation’s assets. Estimates suggest that unless reversed, more people there will die from U.S./EU imposed sanctions than died during the twenty year long war. And the impact of the war in Ukraine with the loss of wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia resulting not only in rising food prices globally but in some places like East Africa, resulting in death from famine.
In the U.S. where we witness the most abysmal record of covid failure on the planet, the virus will continue to ravage the population, with a disproportionate number who get sick and die being the poorest and those furthest from whiteness.
The lackeys of capital playing the role of democratic representatives claim that there is no money to bring a modicum of relief to workers represented in the mildly reformist package known as Build Back Better. Yet, the Brown University Costs of War Project estimates that the wars waged by the United States in this century have cost $8 trillion and counting, with another $8 trillion that will be spent over the next ten years on the military budget if costs remain constant from the $778 billion just allocated.
No rational human being desires war and conflict. The horrors of war that the public are finally being exposed to because it was brought to Europe again, the most violent continent on the planet, should call into question all of the brutal and unjustified wars that the U.S. and its flunkey allies waged throughout the global South over the last seventy years. Unfortunately, because of the hierarchy of the value of human beings, the images of war in Ukraine are not translating into a rejection of war, but instead a rejection of war in Europe and on white Europeans.
This means that the wars will continue and we must fight, often alone, because as Bob Marley said in his song “War ”:
Until the philosophy
Which hold one race superior and another
Inferior
Is finally
And permanently
Discredited
And abandoned
Everywhere is war
Me say war
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Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the U.S. based United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) and the steering committee of the Black is Back Coalition.
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***
By a queer coincidence, former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright passed away while President Joe Biden was travelling in Air Force 1 en route to Europe on what is probably the most crucial diplomatic mission of his presidency.
The general expectation is that 80-year old Biden is personally undertaking a mission to persuade the US’ European allies that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) should intervene in the Ukraine crisis in some way. And, ironically, Albright was the choreographer of the idea that in the post-cold war era, the NATO should reinvent itself and transform as a global security organisation.
Albright, like most American diplomats of East European descent, was passionately devoted to the NATO. She supported the alliance’s brutal military intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999 and would have supported an intervention in Ukraine.
The White House spin is that Biden will discuss additional sanctions against Russia. But the possibility of new restrictions has waned following the EU foreign and defence ministers’ meeting on Monday where a decision was taken to put off further sanctions.
The EU meeting instead assessed that the ongoing Ukraine-Russian talks should proceed further and even if upbeat predictions may not be entirely correct, since the talks are challenging, the good part is that neither party has complained of any deadlock in the negotiations so far.
Conceivably, Biden is travelling to Europe not to discuss tougher sanctions (something which he could as well have handled in a videoconference) but to explore NATO’s potential engagement in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict for which his participation becomes absolutely essential.
As things stand, there is every possibility of a prolonged conflict in Ukraine and Russia eventually prevailing. Such a scenario is extremely damaging for Biden politically in the US. Biden is facing domestic criticism both for his failure to prevent the conflict as well as for being ineffectual in blocking the Russian advance.
While the US rhetoric pillories Russia for “war crimes” and the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, et al, the world capitals view this as a geopolitical confrontation between America and Russia. Outside of the western camp, the world community refuses to impose sanctions against Russia or even to demonise that country.
The world community steers clear of taking sides between the US and Russia. The Islamabad Declaration issued on Wednesday after the 45th meeting of the foreign ministers of the fifty-seven member Organisation of Islamic Conference refused to endorse sanctions against Russia and instead counselled cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, avoidance of loss of lives, enhancement of humanitarian assistance and a “surge in diplomacy” — almost ditto China and India’s stance.
Not a single country in the African continent and West Asian, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asian region has imposed sanctions against Russia. Following a visit to Hanoi, Malaysian PM Ismail Sabri Yaakob said, “We discussed the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and agreed that Malaysia and Vietnam will remain neutral on this issue. As for sanctions against Russia, we do not support them. The sides do not support unilateral sanctions; we recognise only restrictions that could be imposed by the UN Security Council.” This is the consensus within ASEAN too.
Interestingly, Chinese Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi was the chief guest at the OIC meeting in Islamabad. In his remarks, Wang Yi said,
“China supports Russia and Ukraine in continuing their peace talks, and hopes that the talks will lead to ceasefire, end the fighting, and bring about peace. Humanitarian disasters should be avoided, and spillover of the Ukrainian crisis should be prevented so as not to affect and harm the legitimate rights and interests of other regions and countries.”
The Chinese foreign ministry press release on Wang Yi’s meeting with the Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said, “As to the Ukraine issue, the two sides agreed that all countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity should be respected and their reasonable security concerns should be taken seriously. It is imperative to prevent any humanitarian crisis, maintain the peace talk process and resolve conflicts through dialogue and negotiation. Both sides emphasised that all countries have the right to make independent judgements, withstand external pressure, and disagree with the simple logic of “black or white” and “friend or foe”.
Again, the Chinese press release on Wang Yi’s meeting with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry said, inter alia,
“The two sides exchanged views on the Ukraine issue, and agreed to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and stay committed to a comprehensive solution to the current crisis. Shoukry said, Egypt opposes some countries exerting pressure on China and stands for strengthening cooperation rather than escalating confrontation.”
Curiously, four foreign ministers from West Asia travelled to Moscow last week to discuss the bilateral cooperation — from Qatar, Iran, Turkey and the UAE.
Nonetheless, the outcome of Biden’s visit to Europe will have significant bearing on the conflict in Ukraine. If Biden succeeds in getting European backing for his proposal for a NATO intervention in Ukraine, the conflict may escalate dramatically into a world war involving nuclear weapons.
Will Biden push the envelope? It seems he’s unwilling to risk. Biden seems to have a Plan B as well. He has scheduled a separate visit to Warsaw. Poland indeed has its fair share of Russophbes and has been straining at the leash for some form of involvement in Ukraine.
The heart of the matter is that Poland also has an axe to grind. Parts of Poland comprise today’s ethnically mixed western borderlands of Ukraine — oblasts of Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi and Lviv. If Ukraine fragments or collapses in defeat, Poland will most certainly seize the opportunity to reclaim its lost territories. Poland’s hyper-activism over Ukraine is self-evident.
Incidentally, in recent days, former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk have both accused Budapest of trying to lay its hands on Ukraine’s largely Hungarian-populated Transcarpathian region. On Tuesday, Sikorski alleged in a tweet that Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán and President Vladimir Putin reached a secret agreement on the partition of Ukraine!
On the same day, Iryna Vereshchuk complained in a Facebook post:
“The way the Hungarian leadership has been treating Ukraine lately is even worse than some of the Russian satellite states of the former Soviet Union. Hungary does not support the sanctions. They don’t provide weapons. They don’t allow transit of weapon supplies from other countries. They say ‘no’ to virtually everything.”
Biden cannot but be exploring with the Polish leadership possibilities that fall short of an outright NATO intervention in Ukraine. The spectre that haunts the Biden administration, despite the swagger of its media bluster, is that the Russian special operation may after all be inching toward successful conclusion, creating a large buffer of regions on the eastern side of the Dnieper river, and gaining control of Black Sea coastline that denies access to NATO ships.
Poland becomes a key stakeholder in such an outcome and Washington surely regards Warsaw as its number one interlocutor in the developing situation, as the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance.
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Featured image: US President Biden (L) and Polish President Andrzej Duda (R) (Source: Indian Punchline)
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Officials from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, (OPEC) have issued a stark warning to the EU, saying that if the European alliance follows through with a proposed ban of oil imports from Russia, the markets will see massive price spikes beyond the surge already seen.
Since the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine last month, oil prices surged to their highest levels since 2008, a situation that was exacerbated by harsh economic sanctions imposed on Moscow.
The warning reportedly came during a meeting on 16 March between OPEC officials, including Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo and EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson.
These are extraordinary times for the energy market & the unprecedented oil prices are a serious risk to the world economy.
Today, I met with Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo, the Secretary General of #OPEC to discuss the situation & hear more about their next steps. pic.twitter.com/DwHUSs7oCR
According to an OPEC source who spoke with Reuters, the group’s concerns were made abundantly clear to the EU. “They are very well informed,” the source said.
“OPEC presented their analysis of the oil market situation and informed us of their plans in terms of oil production,” an EU official said in response to the news.
Earlier this month, both Washington and London made attempts to pressure Saudi Arabia and the UAE into increasing their oil production levels in order to mitigate skyrocketing fuel prices.
However, both attempts failed with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi making it clear to the west that they intend to maintain the production quota agreed upon by OPEC+.
Russia is an ally of OPEC and co-chairs the OPEC+ group, which has cooperated on oil supplies to support oil markets since 2017.
In an additional show of defiance against the demands from the west, on 17 March Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan travelled to Moscow to cement Abu Dhabi’s energy cooperation ties with Moscow.
The trip came just one day after the British prime minister failed to convince OPEC members to increase production.
As for Saudi Arabia, the kingdom has previously expressed its willingness to decrease investments in the US and has even floated the idea of selling oil to China, using the Chinese yuan instead of the US dollar.
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Featured image: Fuel prices in EUR at a Shell petrol station in Berlin, Germany, 09 March 2022. (Photo credit: EPA-EFE/FILIP SINGER)
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its death tally last week and slashed over 70 thousand deaths from the provisional COVID-19 death count.
The Daily Wirereported the information through an updated analysis of what is available on the CDC website.
“The Centers for Disease and Control updated its COVID-19 death statistics last week, revealing that the agency had included an additional 72, 277 deaths that should not have been counted as COVID-19 deaths,” wrote the Daily Wire.
A total of 26 state death records were affected, and statistics from all age groups were part of the update. The CDC called it a “coding logic error.”
Almost 970 thousand deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 in the US, and the update would mean that the numbers were inflated by almost 8%.
One notable revision was the removal of 416 child deaths from the tally; this is significant because children represent such a small portion of overall COVID-attributed deaths.
Mairead Elordi told the Daily Wire, “The huge change in the pediatric death count drops the estimate of COVID deaths in children down to 1,341 nationwide.”
The update was part of an initiative to clean up how data is reported to the CDC. It is called the Data Modernization Initiative.
Other regions around the world have also started adjusting their COVID-related death statistics by significant margins.
The Canadian province of Ontario admitted in March that deaths attributed to COVID had been inflated by 30%, and the prevalence of false-positives associated with PCR testing could reduce the numbers further.
In October 2020 Scientific American published an article calling Donald Trump a “conspiracy fanatic” for suggesting that deaths related to COVID had been inflated due to dubious statistical records.
The idea that deaths attributed to COVID could be lower than the official record was called a “debunked conspiracy fantasy [from] QAnon.”
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The Canadian industrial engineer at Moderna, Dr. Daniel Nagase, reported that a Moderna COVID jab production engineer leaked crucial information about Moderna adding manually “small quantities of additions” (described by Moderna as “highly sensitive trade secret adjuvants”) to the vaxx-vails. These “adjuvants” when analyzed, revealed that they were to sterilize women, or cause miscarriages. The impact of such injections could last over one or more generations.
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On 20 March 2022, Dr. Daniel Nagase gave this speech to a Canadian crowd:
This is the summarizing transcript of the video, as published on 22 March 2022, by For Life on Earth:
“Dr Nagase amplifies the message that I have been reiterating for three years: the Creator gave you your abilities and you have a duty to do everything that you are capable of to stand up for justice, truth and love. We have all been conditioned to believe that we are not good enough, we don’t know enough, and someone else who is more expert should do something instead of us. Dr. Nagase illustrates that he was fooled by believing in an “expert”. The system wants you to be cowed by experts, and to my mind, this is exactly the mistake that we all make. We listen over and over to the same pundits, while sitting and doing nothing ourselves. We are living through unprecedented times and we are assailed by a conspiracy such as we have never seen in human history, deploying technologies that we know nothing of. There are no experts under these circumstances. All those people with their impressive qualifications are as adrift as you are. And many – if not most – of them are complete idiots and/or slaves to the system that is killing us, actively participating in our and their own demise.
Listen to your heart, listen to your intuition, be confident that you always know right from wrong and that you CAN act, you CAN speak out, you CAN succeed. Millions of people are now in action to defend humanity against this assault. Be one of them and do everything in your power, at whatever level, to stop this monstrous crime and instead create and be part of the world we want to see. By creating the world we want to live in, we stop the crime. Think about energy: it flows around obstacles. By bypassing the egregious plans of the perpetrators, by refusing to participate in them in any way, shape or form, whether that be in our everyday lives, at the post office or at the supermarket, at work or in your interactions with others, by ending our participation and refusing to compromise ourselves, and by focusing on the world we want to see, we leave them in the dust. That means abandoning the prime tool of control: that “smart” phone that you are constantly clutching. Get rid of that and get rid of wireless technology and you have crushed the conspiracy in a single act. For without wireless technology, there can be no technocracy, no inventorying of the entire world down to every last blade of grass, no manipulation of the thoughts and emotions of whole regions of people, no digital currencies, no cyborgs, and no “smart” city prisons. YOU are constructing your own prison around you and the whole human race by your refusal to give up your “smart” phone. You can still communicate – just use a cabled computer. You will be amazed at the change in yourself once that satanic scrying screen is gone from your life. You will be freeer and happier than you have been for years.
Dr Nagase explains that over a billion women of childbearing age have been deliberately targeted for sterilization by these poison injections, which change DNA for eternity, and what is worse, even if an injected woman manages to bear children, the effects may skip a generation and appear in grandchildren or great-grandchildren. He says that the human race has been changed forever by these injections. He asks if we should ban such children from being able to have children of their own.”
This is the full post anonymously published on 9 December 2020 as a 4chan post; see this. And this is the original post:
“I’m an industrial engineer at Moderna and the other one of us is a process development engineer. I’m sure the same thing is happening with Pfizer-BioNTech. It was hard to put things together based on the small quantities of additions happening in manual step (highly unorthodox for a continuous process production). The explanation we got was highly sensitive trade secret adjuvants being added. Digging in deeper showed how sensitive it actually was.
Most people’s understanding of this novel vaccine type is that it works as follows:
1. Make mRNA coding for S protein
2. Make lipid nanoparticle delivery system
3. Profit
How it actually works from what we’ve uncovered:
1. Make mRNA coding for S protein
2. Make mRNA coding for mutant versions of CYP19A1 and CDKN1B in smaller amounts
3. Make sure that while delivery system for (1) mostly ends up in liver, most of (2) ends up in the gonads
4. Make sure form and quantity of additive upregulating LINE-1 reverse transcription activity makes it hard to detect among legit adjuvants
5. Effects from (2) integrated by (4) are recessive; mildly oncogenic effects in vaccine recipients unlikely to be noticed for many years
6. (5) recessive but since most of population vaccinated, in next generation female offspring have premature ovarian failure
(6) coincides with poor people being obsoleted by AI and robotics, so we didn’t have to dig for motivation.
We’ve taken precautions but fear for our safety. So far, I don’t think we’ve raised suspicion, but can’t be sure. Not sure what to do. Avoiding taking the vaccine makes us prime suspects for this leak.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have been supportive of Moderna. Bill Gates is known for his eugenist narrative. He doesn’t make a secret of it.
In addition, and until recently he propagated and pledged openly or indirectly for a reduced world population. He is in alliance with the Rockefellers and the Rockefeller Foundation – and other of the financial elites – who fall into the same category.
Depopulation is part of the Great Reset, alias UN Agenda 2030.
We should be aware of it, and do whatever we can to resist any moves towards the Great Reset, the goals of which are numerous – all very-very human unfriendly.
Please orient ourself and stand up against any potentially coming tyranny.
Beware of Moderna jabs – and of Pfizer jabs. They almost certainly follow the same pattern.
Beware of all mRNA vaxxes – for your own safety and that of future generations.
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
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***
On Wednesday night, Dr. Scott Atlas, former member of White House Coronavirus Task Force, appeared at Michigan State University where he addressed hundreds of students about the disastrous consequences of failed COVID-19 policy.
During the presentation, Dr. Atlas went through dozens of studies showing how COVID-19 lockdowns caused cascading problems that society may never recover from. These include excess deaths, severe mental health issues, economic damage to the poor and lower class, and a permanent divide among the brainwashed and those who have maintained the ability of independent, rational thought.
Before his presentation, Dr. Atlas met privately with patriotic leaders throughout the state – including journalists, gubernatorial candidates, state representatives, student activists, civil liberties attorneys, front-line doctors and others – where he talked candidly about the dire situation facing America.
Dr. Atlas addressed top activists in the state before speaking with students at Michigan State University.
“We are in a world where we can not trust people to be filters any more. We cannot trust people anymore because they have credentials,” Dr. Atlas explained.
After writing several op/eds and researching the issue as a hobby, Dr. Atlas decided he needed to become an expert on the issue in order to push back against the mass insanity that developed in response to COVID-19. This resulted in Dr. Atlas being brought into the White House in July to meet with President Trump, which he believed was his patriotic duty.
Eventually, Trump advisor Jared Kushner asked Dr. Atlas to advise the President. Dr. Atlas said he would do so as long as he could maintain his autonomy and speak his mind, and Kushner told Dr. Atlas that this was why they were bringing him in – to provide an honest, outside perspective desperately needed within the federal bureaucracy. Kushner did warn Dr. Atlas that globalist forces would “destroy him” if he joined the White House. He decided to come on board despite the possible repercussions.
“There’s no one that has been more livid than I have with what I saw in the White House, the gross incompetence, the politicization of everything. These folks on the White House COVID-19 task force, the medical people at least, were grossly incompetent,” Dr. Atlas said.
Even though he was pilloried in the media, Dr. Atlas was motivated by words of encouragement from peers who were too scared to speak out. He claims major intellectuals, including epidemiologists at Stanford University, were cheering him on and telling him to keep speaking out against the injustices stemming from the COVID-19 regime.
Dr. Atlas explained that entrenched public health bureaucrats within the federal government, including the American Mengele himself, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have held their jobs for decades because of their ability to schmooze and curry favor with the power elite, not due to their scientific prowess.
“We have a very vitriolic, vicious millions and millions of people in this country,” Dr. Atlas said, explaining that far-left psychopaths have gone beyond cancel culture into a culture of Soviet-style terror against their political opposition.
“What we see is a very politically charged country, extremely vicious to anyone who disagrees with them, and a university system in complete disarray,” Dr. Atlas continued, adding that many university teachers and administrators need to be “fired” for unethical and immoral behavior.
Atlas said that the U.S. is falling behind other countries, particularly European countries, in terms of their COVID-19 response. There is far more resistance to COVID edicts in Europe than America, for example. He believes Americans are more rabid and propagandized than people in other countries, with only a handful of exceptions like Canada and Australia.
“We are in a world where people are not even hearing the data. They are not hearing the facts. The facts are being censored,“ he said.
Turning Point USA leaders speak to the auditorium before Dr. Atlas’ presentation.
Dr. Atlas said that the pandemic helped to see the power of totalitarian government and how so many people will respond by submitting to anything they are told, no matter how ridiculous the orders may be.
“This kind of stuff is shocking. There is going to be another pandemic. We always have another crisis on the horizon. People want to bring back lockdowns for global warming, for instance,” Dr. Atlas said.
Dr. Atlas stated that the federal bureaucracy needs to be defanged in order to stop anything like this from happening again.
“I was never for term limits, but I’m for term limits for people who have these appointed positions,” he said.
Dr. Atlas said that there is a cabal or a cartel operating at the federal level that dictates science nationwide, and it ensures that scientific research is tightly controlled and disgustingly unethical.
“The underlying problem here is the National Institutes of Health, one group of people controls science, because they control the funding of science. They control the promotion of science because everyone is reliant on their grant money. They control all the publications,” he explained.
Dr. Atlas is a founding fellow at Hillsdale College’s Academy for Science and Freedom where he is working on a way to revolutionize how science is administered in America in order to liberate science from amoral, power-mad bureaucrats in Washington D.C. However, he warns that any fix will be incredibly difficult to implement because the damage has already been done.
“The solution, first of all, there is no quick solution. The country is in a bad place. We have a severely damaged younger generation. They’re not just fearful, it’s worse. They’re unhealthy. They have psychiatric and psychological disease, and I don’t know if we have seen the tip of the iceberg on that, it’s very sad,” Dr. Atlas explained.
Atlas urged for people on campus to find their spines and be willing to speak up in order to save young people from this evil technocracy that is rapidly gaining momentum.
“I never came into this thinking I would be brave. I wasn’t brave; I was naive, but when I got there, to illustrate the media, it’s a despicable country because of the media. The media of this country is despicable,” he said.
Dr. Atlas had to spend thousands of dollars on security equipment and had police parked in his driveway for many weeks because of threats he received due to media-generated fervor against him.
“There’s been a loss of humanity. There’s been a loss of common decency in this country. It’s not about COVID anymore. We need to get past the behavior that we have now normalized,” he said.
“We have to change the mentality of people to where they have a healthy skepticism of everything, which I finally see developing now,” Dr. Atlas added.
A packed house gathered at Michigan State University to see Dr. Atlas.
Dr. Atlas took questions from activists in attendance where he dispelled mask mandates as being little more than a psychological conditioning ritual meant to compel obedience among the masses.
“The data shows that widespread population masking does not work. That is a fact,” he said, adding that “the masks are proven to not work, including specifically in schools, it is absurd.”
Dr. Atlas credited Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for being a shining example of the type of leadership the country need in order to emerge from this mass insanity.
“What they’ve done here is they have turned the public into assuming that everyone else is dangerous to them. You are hurting them by not believing in the mask,” he said.
“When they make freedom and individual liberty dirty, they are hurting lower income people. They are hurting poor people more than anyone else. And realize this: The people in charge are an elitist group. The lockdowns are a luxury of the rich.” Dr. Atlas added.
The public policy enacted during the pandemic has exacerbated income inequality more than any government-inflicted measure in the history of mankind, and Dr. Atlas believes that is no coincidence. He said that a grassroots uprising is America’s last hope with formerly-trusted institutions being so debauched to their very core.
“There is no solution if people are waiting for the CDC to say we were wrong and the pandemic is over. The solutions need to come from the bottom up. You need to get involved,” Dr. Atlas pleaded.
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All images in this article are from Big League Politics
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The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories has submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), concluding that the situation in Israel and the occupied territories amounts to apartheid.
In a 19-page report submitted to the body on Tuesday, Michael Lynk said Israeli Jews and Palestinians lived “under a single regime which differentiates its distribution of rights and benefits on the basis of national and ethnic identity, and which ensures the supremacy of one group over, and to the detriment of, the other”.
“The political system of entrenched rule in the occupied Palestinian territory which endows one racial-national-ethnic group with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group to live behind walls, checkpoints and under a permanent military rule… satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid,” he added.
Lynk said that while the situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories differed from that experienced in South Africa, it still amounted to apartheid.
Apartheid is a legal term defined by international law that refers to systematic oppression by one racial group over another.
“There are pitiless features of Israel’s ‘apartness’ rule in the occupied Palestinian territory that were not practiced in southern Africa, such as segregated highways, high walls and extensive checkpoints, a barricaded population, missile strikes and tank shelling of a civilian population, and the abandonment of the Palestinians’ social welfare to the international community.
“With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world.”
Lynk is slated to formally release his report on Thursday ahead of a debate on Agenda Item Seven, the permanent UNHRC item reserved for Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians and other Arabs.
In the report, the Canadian academic argued that Israel was pursuing a strategy of “strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian territory into separate areas of population control, with Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem physically divided from one another”.
Israel uses Gaza, Lynk said, for the “indefinite warehousing of an unwanted population of two million Palestinians”.
The issuing of thousands of work permits for Palestinian labourers in the West Bank and Gaza to work in Israel amounts to the “exploitation of labor of a racial group”, the report said.
‘We need action and accountability’
Last month, Amnesty International labelled Israel an apartheid state, becoming the latest organisation to join a cadre of human rights groups that have used the term to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
“The special rapporteur’s findings are an important and timely addition to the growing international consensus that Israeli authorities are committing apartheid against the Palestinian people,” said Saleh Higazi, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty.
“Palestinian human rights organisations have been calling the situation apartheid for years, and this report is a landmark moment of recognition of the lived reality of millions of Palestinians.
Despite the increasing number of rights groups labelling Israeli policies as amounting to apartheid, the United States and Israel’s other western allies have refrained from making any such declarations.
Beth Miller, the senior governance affairs manager at Jewish Voice for Peace-Action, said the report echoed what international human rights groups had been saying for years, that “Israel is committing the crime of apartheid”.
“For [US President Joe] Biden and Congress, the task is clear: end all US military funding to this violent apartheid regime.”
NYC Solidarity with Palestine, a group that works to open expansive spaces of resistance, told MEE: “We welcome these various international organisations finally saying and confirming publicly what the Palestinian people have been crying out with blood for years.
“And, that said, apartheid is only one mechanism and instrument of settler colonisation and illegal occupation. Palestinian’s right to self-determination dictates responsibilities that include ending the occupation by and all any means. Double standards must end.”
Ahmad Abuznaid, the executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, told MEE that “as more and more international institutions affirm what Palestinians have been saying for years, we hope to finally see what the international community is going to do about Israeli apartheid.
“We need action and accountability now.”
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Featured image: The Palestinian flag being waved at a rally in New York City on 18 September, 2021, during the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres (MEE/Zainab Iqbal)
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On March 23, PM Justin Trudeau was called a dictator in front of the entire European Union over his response to the Freedom Convoy.
Addressing both the European Parliament and Trudeau specifically, Member of the European Parliament Mislav Kolakusic proceeded to deliver Trudeau perhaps the most humiliating international thrashing of his political career.
Trudeau is going to come home from Europe VERY angry. He was just forced to sit and listen while he was labelled a "dictator," in front of the entire European Union, one who "trampled women with horses," and "blocks the bank accounts of single parents." https://t.co/GiPU69MboEpic.twitter.com/83662XKyrb
“Freedom, the right to choose, the right to life, the right to health, the right to work for many of us are fundamental human rights for which millions of citizens of Europe and the world have laid down their lives,” Kolakusic began.
“…. Canada, once a symbol of the modern world, has become a symbol of civil rights violations under your quasi-liberal boot in recent months. We watched how you trample women with horses, how you block the bank accounts of single parents so that they can’t even pay their children’s education and medicine, that they can’t pay utilities, mortgages for their homes.”
“To you,” he continues, speaking to Trudeau, “these may be liberal methods; for many citizens of the world, it is a dictatorship of the worst kind. Rest assured that the citizens of the world, united, can stop any regime that wants to destroy the freedom of citizens, either by bombs or harmful pharmaceutical products.”
The entire civilized world should condemn this unacceptable violence by the police and authorities in Canada 🇨🇦. This is not what democracy looks like, this is completely unacceptable and shocking. pic.twitter.com/1BISRvQJXF
Kolakusic, having once lived under a Communist regime in Croatia, is more than likely only too familiar with authoritarian regimes, their consequences, and the grievances of everyday citizens. And like many who have survived Communist dictatorships, it is apparent that he shares the disdain over Trudeau’s use of Emergency Powers to target peaceful protesters who only wanted their rights back.
And indeed, Kolakusic isn’t the only MEP to suggest Trudeau is acting like a dictator.
“[Trudeau’s] exactly like a tyrant, like a dictator. He’s like Ceaușescu in Romania,” said Romanian MEP Cristian Terhes last month.
In England, too, the response has been no better. During his first trip to the UK following the Freedom Convoy, Trudeau was greeted by protesters brandishing “F*** Trudeau” flags in front of PM Boris Johnson’s office, forcing him to sneak in through the back.
Protesters in London are protesting the arrival of Justin Trudeau.
While it appeared that Trudeau was headed back to the EU for more PR after his first successful glam tour, the global community is done with his façade. Trudeau is a joke on the international stage.
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Peace talks between Ukraine and Russia are well underway and there are signs of a potential breakthrough. Europe has every interest in a speedy end to this conflict, but that does not seem to be the case for the US or the UK. Will peace logic succeed?
Possible breakthrough
Amid the horrific violence of war, there are signs of a potential breakthrough in Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations. According to the Financial Times, significant progress has been made in the talks and a 15-point peace plan has been drawn up by both sides.
In exchange for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops, Ukraine would assume neutral status, renounce its ambitions to join NATO and promise not to host foreign military bases on its territory. Kyiv could keep its army, but would ban certain groups (read neo-Nazi militias). Also, the names of streets referring to Ukrainian collaborators who fought with the Nazis against the Soviet Union during WWII would have to be changed.
Russia, for its part, would water down its demand that Ukraine upgrades Russian to the country’s second official language on the condition that Kyiv rolls back laws restricting the use of the language.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made it clear that he is after peace. In a public message he indicated that he does not expect his country to join NATO soon, which is one of Moscow’s most important demands:
“For years we have been hearing about how the door is supposedly open [to NATO membership] but now we hear that we cannot enter. And it is true, and it must be acknowledged”.
There are still important bottlenecks. For example, the ongoing discussion about the status of neutrality. Ukraine rejects Sweden or Austria models and wants solid security guarantees against future threats.
Another point of contention is the recognition of the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the independence of two separatist republics in the eastern border region of Donbas. Ukraine refuses to accept this, but is willing to deal with the issues separately.
Troublemakers
“The parties are close to an agreement on fundamental issues,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. All in all, these are hopeful messages, but unfortunately not everyone is in favour of this state of affairs.
Many observers say that behind the scenes the US is playing a crucial role in these talks. And it is highly questionable whether Washington will pursue a swift negotiated solution. The same goes for the British government.
“US pours cold water on hopes of diplomatic solution in Ukraine,” The Financial Timesheadlined this weekend. And US Secretary of State Anthony Blinkensays about the peace talks:
“Diplomacy requires both sides to be in good faith to de-escalate, and I see no signs at this point that Putin is willing to stop.”
Blinken’s declaration came days after President Biden announced a new package of military aid to Ukraine, including anti-aircraft defence systems, anti-tank weapons and armed drones.
Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State, opts for a prolonged war and toys with the idea of turning Ukraine into Russia’s new Afghanistan.
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss thinks in the same direction. According to her, the conflict in Ukraine could last “a number of years” and we should be “prepared for a very long haul”.
War logic
Two logics are diametrically opposed here. You have the logic that fully prioritizes war. The enemy must be dealt with as hard as possible and weakened as much as possible. That means sending more and more powerful weapons, stationing troops and missiles in neighbouring countries, imposing tougher sanctions and razor-sharp rhetoric (“Putin is a war criminal”).
It was also following that logic that since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and despite clear promises, NATO has systematically expanded eastward, leaving Russia feeling cornered.
The implications of this logic are threefold. A prolonged and fierce conflict will be felt first and foremost in economic terms. Energy and food prices will soar. High inflation will cause interest rates to rise. This is not only detrimental to economic growth, but given the high mountain of debt as a result of the corona crisis, this could lead to a serious debt crisis.
In addition, trade flows with Russia will cease and arms expenditures will increase. A protracted war also causes uncertainty in the markets, which is detrimental to the investment climate. In any case, Europe is expected to experience a serious slowdown of growth due to the war in Ukraine.
Second, a fierce and protracted conflict will cause a large and long-lasting influx of refugees. This will put pressure on housing markets, education, social security, etc. The far right has managed to take political advantage of the refugee wave that came from Syria in 2015. If the current conflict drags on for a long time and Western Europe has to take in millions of refugees for a long time, then right-wing extremists will be able to reap even more profits this time.
The real winner
These two effects will particularly be felt in Europe and much less so in the US. The US economy has recovered faster than Europe after the corona crisis. Because of the stimuli, US economy is even struggling with overheating, which makes it welcome rising interest rates.
US economy even benefits from this war. It will be able to supply its expensive shale gas to Europe in future, in order to replace cheaper Russian gas. The tens of billions that Germany and other European countries will spend on armaments will be a boon for US war industry.
A third consequence of the war logic is that the US will get an even greater grip on Europe through NATO. After WWII, Europe was crammed into a (military) straitjacket through a NATO that is completely controlled by the US. “To remain the dominant global power, the US must use the European Union and NATO to establish its hegemony in Europe,” Christian Saint-Etienne commented.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, there have been frequent voices in Europe for a more autonomous course in geopolitical and military terms, without any results.
Through its warmongering, NATO is now more than ever setting the geopolitical course in Europe. There is no longer any question of a separate, autonomous strategy.(1) Germany, which has traditionally been a cool NATO lover, with a pacifist tradition, and which will be the biggest loser in this conflict, has now completely changed its tack.
This conflict primarily affects Europe and weakens the continent. In this war, the United States is the real winner. Biden’s presence at the European summit on March 24 should also be seen in this light. The question is whether he is after peace or whether he is going to stir up war.
Give peace a chance
Be that as it may, a different logic is necessary, a logic that puts a stop to militarist escalation, a logic that focuses on dialogue and strives for a sustainable security structure.
In the short term, active peace diplomacy is needed. The sooner the war ends, the better. To give the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia every chance, one must refrain from further inflaming the war by sending weapons or troops, by extending sanctions, or by using unnecessary war rhetoric.
Offering Putin a so-called “golden bridge” from Ukraine should also be considered. Ending the war must be made as attractive as possible. At present there are only threats of even more war violence and sanctions. The reverse is also possible and is more desirable now. For example, a ceasefire and a withdrawal from Ukraine could be linked to easing economic sanctions.
This conflict has not come out of the blue. The security structure on the European continent is unbalanced and unstable. The US still sees Eurasia as the chessboard on which the battle for world domination is waged.
Therefore, in the long run, Europe needs a new security architecture. This means taking security into its own hands and not accepting it to be dictated or imposed from outside. This must be a security architecture that focuses on the countries concerned and that is not developed for the sake of geopolitics.
Stability can only be achieved if all countries involved feel safe. If weapons agreements are made and conclusive security guarantees are given that all parties can live with.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is best placed to set up such a security architecture. The OSCE has more than proved its worth in the past.
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Translation by Dirk Nimmegeers
Marc Vandepitte is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Notes
(1) The announced new European intervention force, the so-called rapid deployment capacity, is a good illustration of this. It involves barely 5,000 soldiers and will not be fully operational until 2030.
Most Canadians are unaware of the fact that the United States of America had formulated in 1924 a carefully designed plan to invade Canada and bomb Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax and Vancouver. What has been deliberately omitted from our history books is that our American neighbour had formulated a detailed plan to invade Canada. The use “poison gas” was part of that project.
We are in a world gone mad and yet these stories are multiplying, such as this young man of 22 years who had a chronic cough leading to an X-ray discovering a mediastinal mass. The two big Paris hospitals that received him refused to start the treatment (without it being explained in detail) if the patient refused the experimental injection, of absolutely unknown effects on the development of cancers.
It is entirely reasonable and legitimate to say ‘no’ to insufficiently tested vaccines for which there is no reliable science. You have a right to assert guardianship of your body and to refuse medical treatments if you see fit. You are right to say ‘no’ to a violation of your dignity, your integrity and your bodily autonomy. It is your body, and you have the right to choose.
Yesterday I reported that Anatoly Chubais, who created the Russian oligarch system during the Yeltsin years, the system in which wealth and capital flowed out of Russia, has fled Russia.He was a member of the Gang of Three with Latvian Alexei Kudrin and central bank chief Nabiullina. They convinced Putin of an economic policy that has severely damaged Russia economically and left her unprepared for Washington’s sanctions.
Since the Russian offensive inside Ukraine commenced on February 24, the Ukrainian military has cultivated the image of a plucky little army standing up to the Russian Goliath. To bolster the perception of Ukrainian military mettle, Kiev has churned out a steady stream of sophisticated propaganda aimed at stirring public and official support from Western countries.
Afghanistan has joined the ever growing ranks of countries forcibly thrown into desperate humanitarian crises following U.S./NATO wars now relegated to the sidelines as the latest crisis instigated by the West’s imperial aggression takes the spotlight.
Derek Brouwer owns a small fleet of trucks for his business, transporting hay from Southern Ontario, down into the United States. He was interviewed on Fox news recently for the blow back that he received for having a truck in Ottawa during the Emergency Measures Act.
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Spain has announced that it has endorsed a proposal by the Kingdom of Morocco to designate the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) as an “autonomous” region within the North African state.
Former United States President Donald Trump in 2020, recognized Moroccan control over the Western Sahara in an attempt to strengthen relations between the Kingdom and the State of Israel.
Formerly known as the “Spanish Sahara”, the people of the territory have been demanding national independence for decades.
All of the former colonies of Europe within the African continent have sought independence from the former imperialist masters. Although there are 55 African countries which are members of the African Union (AU) and the United Nations, the phenomenon of neo-colonialism has hampered genuine liberation and continental unification.
This recent proclamation by Spain is clearly a manifestation of the legacy of neo-colonialism, where even independent governments are subjected to the economic domination of the imperialist states. The most progressive states within the AU have supported the SADR in their struggle to win independence from Morocco.
The territory was ceded to Morocco and Mauritania after the exit of Spain as a colonial power in 1975. Mauritania relinquished its falsely designated authority over the Western Sahara, while the Kingdom of Morocco, one of the few remaining monarchies on the continent, has refused to allow the people of the territory to even conduct an internationally supervised and monitored election on the status of their own country.
Both the United Nations and the African Union (AU) has recognized the SADR as a government in waiting with a legitimate claim to represent the people of the de facto colony. The Western Sahara is the only country which has not been declared independent within the AU, whose predecessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) after contentious debate, has advocated for the total liberation of the Western Sahara for nearly four decades.
Nonetheless, in response to the seating of the SADR by the OAU/AU, Morocco withdrew its membership from the continental organization. However, several years ago, the Kingdom petitioned for readmission which was granted despite objections from several states including Algeria and the member-states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
The Polisario Front, the armed liberation movement which has been fighting for independence since 1973, rejected the recent shift in the position of Spain. The UN has been unable to ensure that Morocco holds a national referendum within the Western Sahara over the future of the territory.
This consistent failure on the part of the UN and the intransigence on the part of the U.S., the European Union (EU) and its collaborators within the AU and West Asia, has stifled the independence and sovereignty of the continent’s last remaining colony. Obviously, the economic interests of Europe and the U.S. has guided its position towards the right of oppressed nations to self-determination.
“The surprise move came to light when King Mohammed VI (Morocco) revealed some of the contents of a private letter from Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. The letter endorses Rabat’s position on Western Sahara, describing Morocco’s 2007 proposal for Sahrawi autonomy – which would integrate the territory into Morocco – as ‘the most serious, realistic, and credible’ basis for resolving the conflict. This follows a similar move by Berlin. In a bid to mend its own relations with Rabat, the German government described Morocco’s plan as an ‘important contribution’. Spain is now the strongest European supporter of Morocco’s autonomy plan – even in comparison to France, a close ally of Morocco. So far, Paris has refrained from using superlatives when endorsing the ‘serious and credible’ nature of the plan.”
These unscrupulous diplomatic maneuvers are part and parcel of the aggressive posture being displayed by the imperialist states. It must be viewed within the context of the efforts to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) further into Eastern Europe. The Russian Federation intervention in Ukraine, which has gained significant support among the masses within the AU member-states, is taking place alongside the proliferation of Pentagon and EU troops on the African continent. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the French-coordinated Operation Barkhane have established permanent and temporary makeshift bases on AU soil.
Although France has threatened to downsize its presence in West Africa and is undergoing a diplomatic row with Algeria over the legacy of its colonial domination from 1830 to 1962, Paris does not want to relinquish its capacity to respond militarily when it believes that their economic interests in Africa are compromised. The presence of the Wagner Group, a Russian Federation military services company assisting the Central African Republic, Mali and other states on the continent, indicates the discontent with Washington and Paris. These military operations in Africa by the Pentagon and other NATO countries coincides with the worsening security situation where so-called “jihadists” are utilizing sophisticated armaments to undermine the stability of AU member-states.
The Polisario Front Has a Legitimate Struggle to Liberate the Sahrawi Nation
There has been a swift and terse response by the independence movement to the provocations of Spain related to its effort to bring political freedom to the Western Sahara. For many years the Polisario Front abided by a ceasefire in order to facilitate the long-promised UN-sponsored referendum on its status within the international community.
Polisario Front women fighters in formation
Algeria, which has been a longtime advocate for liberation movements on the continent, has continued to demand that the UN abide by its legal obligations with respect to the SADR. Algiers routinely challenges on a diplomatic level those entities which support the continued colonization of the Western Sahara.
“Algeria has recalled its ambassador from Madrid in protest at Spain’s decision to back a Moroccan autonomy plan for the disputed former Spanish colony of Western Sahara. Morocco sees Western Sahara, with rich phosphate resources and access to lucrative Atlantic fishing waters, as an integral part of its territory. A statement carried by Algeria’s official media on Saturday (March 19) condemned the ‘abrupt about-turn’ by Madrid, which had previously maintained neutrality in the decades-old conflict for the territory between Morocco and the Polisario Front independence movement.”
As far as the SADR and the Polisario Front are concerned, Spain continues to be the colonial power in the Western Sahara since they do not recognize the continued occupation by the Moroccan monarchy over their territory. Numerous international legal decisions and the authority of the UN and the AU are being violated by Rabat and its supporters among the imperialist governments of Europe and North America.
Image on the right: SADR Ambassador to United Nations Dr. Sidi Omar
SADR Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Sidi Omar, issued a public letter to Secretary General Antonio Guterres on the present situation saying:
“Regarding the status of Morocco in relation to Western Sahara, the General Assembly has deeply deplored ‘the continued occupation of Western Sahara by Morocco’ in its Resolutions 34/37 of 1979 and 35/19 of 1980, among others. It is worth noting that the condition of Western Sahara being both a Non-Self-Governing Territory on the UN agenda since 1963 and an Occupied Territory is compatible with international law and practice. In view of the above, Spain therefore still has legal, historical, and moral responsibilities towards the people of Western Sahara. As such, it is still accountable to the UN and to the Sahrawi people for the fulfilment of its responsibilities and ‘sacred trust’ obligations concerning the decolonization of the Territory in line with the provisions of Chapter XI of the UN Charter and relevant General Assembly resolutions. The Frente POLISARIO and the Government of the Sahrawi Republic (SADR) call upon Spain, as the de jure Administering Power of Western Sahara, to assume fully its legal and historical responsibility regarding the Territory and the destiny of its people.”
Therefore, according to the liberation movement and the provisional government, which is recognized by the UN and the AU, the question of the Western Sahara remains one of European domination over an oppressed people. The recent decision by Spain has no moral or legal weight and must be seen as yet another attempt to deny the right to self-determination, independence and sovereignty of the African continent.
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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: Western Sahara solidarity demonstration in 2007; All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated
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The latest on the Russian invasion of Ukraine with former CIA officer Phil Giraldi.
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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].
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OCLA researcher Dr. Denis Rancourt and several fellow Canadian academics penned an open letter to support those who have decided not to accept the COVID-19 vaccine.
The group emphasizes the voluntary nature of this medical treatment as well as the need for informed consent and individual risk-benefit assessment. They reject the pressure exerted by public health officials, the news and social media, and fellow citizens.
Control over our bodily integrity may well be the ultimate frontier of the fight to protect civil liberties. Read the letter below or as a PDF here.
Open Letter to the Unvaccinated
You are not alone! As of 28 July 2021, 29% of Canadians have not received a COVID-19 vaccine, and an additional 14% have received one shot. In the US and in the European Union, less than half the population is fully vaccinated, and even in Israel, the “world’s lab” according to Pfizer, one third of people remain completely unvaccinated. Politicians and the media have taken a uniform view, scapegoating the unvaccinated for the troubles that have ensued after eighteen months of fearmongering and lockdowns. It’s time to set the record straight.
It is entirely reasonable and legitimate to say ‘no’ to insufficiently tested vaccines for which there is no reliable science. You have a right to assert guardianship of your body and to refuse medical treatments if you see fit. You are right to say ‘no’ to a violation of your dignity, your integrity and your bodily autonomy. It is your body, and you have the right to choose. You are right to fight for your children against their mass vaccination in school.
You are right to question whether free and informed consent is at all possible under present circumstances. Long-term effects are unknown. Transgenerational effects are unknown. Vaccine-induced deregulation of natural immunity is unknown. Potential harm is unknown as the adverse event reporting is delayed, incomplete and inconsistent between jurisdictions.
You are being targeted by mainstream media, government social engineering campaigns, unjust rules and policies, collaborating employers, and the social-media mob.
You are being told that you are now the problem and that the world cannot get back to normal unless you get vaccinated.
You are being viciously scapegoated by propaganda and pressured by others around you. Remember; there is nothing wrong with you.
You are inaccurately accused of being a factory for new SARS-CoV-2 variants, when in fact, according to leading scientists, your natural immune system generates immunity to multiple components of the virus. This will promote your protection against a vast range of viral variants and abrogates further spread to anyone else.
You are justified in demanding independent peer-reviewed studies, not funded by multinational pharmaceutical companies. All the peer-reviewed studies of short-term safety and short-term efficacy have been funded, organized, coordinated, and supported by these for-profit corporations; and none of the study data have been made public or available to researchers who don’t work for these companies.
You are right to question the preliminary vaccine trial results. The claimed high values of relative efficacy rely on small numbers of tenuously determined “infections.” The studies were also not blind, where people giving the injections admittedly knew or could deduce whether they were injecting the experimental vaccine or the placebo. This is not acceptable scientific methodology for vaccine trials.
You are correct in your calls for a diversity of scientific opinions. Like in nature, we need a polyculture of information and its interpretations. And we don’t have that right now. Choosing not to take the vaccine is holding space for reason, transparency and accountability to emerge. You are right to ask, ‘What comes next when we give away authority over our own bodies?’
Do not be intimidated. You are showing resilience, integrity and grit. You are coming together in your communities, making plans to help one another and standing for scientific accountability and free speech, which are required for society to thrive. We are among many who stand with you.
Angela Durante, PhD
Denis Rancourt, PhD
Claus Rinner, PhD
Laurent Leduc, PhD
Donald Welsh, PhD
John Zwaagstra, PhD
Jan Vrbik, PhD
Valentina Capurri, PhD
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Yesterday I reported that Anatoly Chubais, who created the Russian oligarch system during the Yeltsin years, the system in which wealth and capital flowed out of Russia, has fled Russia.He was a member of the Gang of Three with Latvian Alexei Kudrin and central bank chief Nabiullina. They convinced Putin of an economic policy that has severely damaged Russia economically and left her unprepared for Washington’s sanctions.
The Chubais-Kudrin-Nabiullina policy had Russia borrowing from the West for no reason other than to have her vulnerable to sanctions.
The policy had Russia supporting the currencies of the US and EU to the detriment of the ruble, thus making the Russian currency another vulnerable point of Western attack and gave away Russian income to foreigners by privatizing Russian assets.The policy held back Russian economic development.For reasons I don’t know, Putin trusted these leaders of the pro-Western Atlanticist Integrationists who built dams against Russian economic development.
Putin’s recent announcement that henceforth “unfriendly countries” (why only unfriendly countries) will have to pay for Russian energy in rubles indicates that finally economist Sergei Glazyev, who has Russia’s interest at heart rather than Washington’s interest, is being heard in the Kremlin.
That the Russian traitors and Washington agents Kudrin and Nabiullina are still in office indicates that Putin still has much to learn.
Chubais, Kudrin, and Nabiullina are Washington’s candidates to be installed as president of Russia once Putin can be overthrown.Although Chubais has fled, Putin has taken no action against Kudrin and Nabiullina.
Nabiulina bears sole responsibility for Russia’s loss of her foreign exchange reserves. The central bank chief had most of Russia’s reserves in foreign banks where they were easily seized by the sanctions.As Glazyev has said, this is open undisguised treason, and Putin just nominated Nabiulina for reappointment!
It is the presence of Atlanticist Integrationists, who are willing to sacrifice Russian sovereignty to be part of the West, in the Russian government, and their representation in the intellectual and upper classes and billionaire oligarchs, that encourages Washington’s efforts to shame Russia with a psyops campaign and punish her with economic sanctions. The same campaign of demonization that was used against Donald Trump is being used against Putin. Washington hopes that the Atlanticist Integrationists will overthrow Putin or cause his overthrow by their economic policies that weaken the Russian economy and turn the people against Putin.
The increase in the pension age is one of their policies that they sold to Putin that weakened his support among the Russian people.
Perhaps one day Putin will wake up and have Kudrin and Nabiulina arrested for high treason.If not, their presence will continue to encourage more Washington provocations until they bring nuclear war.
Addendum:
As this article is about Russia, I did not mention the fact that China has the same Trojan Horse of pro-American elements, including oligarchs who are members of the ruling CCP.
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Reportedly, Bloomberg finances the Tsinghua University School of Journalism and Communication. The school even has a chair named after the Western globalist, Jean Monnet and indoctrinates its students into happy impressions of the Western enemy. The irrational openness of Russia and China to the West is the reason Washington believes it can bring both governments in line with Washington by using psyops against the two countries. Washington’s belief will end in war.
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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Anatoly Chubais (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)
Comments Off on “Trojan Horse” in Russia’s Central Bank: Will Putin Wake Up to the Threat of Russia’s Atlanticist Integrationists? Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
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Since the Russian offensive inside Ukraine commenced on February 24, the Ukrainian military has cultivated the image of a plucky little army standing up to the Russian Goliath. To bolster the perception of Ukrainian military mettle, Kiev has churned out a steady stream of sophisticated propaganda aimed at stirring public and official support from Western countries.
The campaign includes language guides, key messages, and hundreds of propaganda posters, some of which contain fascist imagery and even praise Neo-Nazi leaders.
Behind Ukraine’s public relations effort is an army of foreign political strategists, Washington DC lobbyists, and a network of intelligence-linked media outlets.
Ukraine’s propaganda strategy earned it praise from a NATO commander who told the Washington Post,
“They are really excellent in stratcom — media, info ops, and also psy-ops.”
The Post ultimately conceded that
“Western officials say that while they cannot independently verify much of the information that Kyiv puts out about the evolving battlefield situation, including casualty figures for both sides, it nonetheless represents highly effective stratcom.”
Key to the propaganda effort is an international legion of public relations firms working directly with Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to wage information warfare.
According to the industry news site PRWeek, the initiative was launched by an anonymous figure who allegedly founded a Ukraine-based public relations firm.
“From the first hour of war, we decided to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them distribute the official sources to show the truth,” the nameless figure told PR Week. “This is a hybrid war: the mix of bloodily struggling fight with a huge disinformation and fake campaign lead by Russia [sic].”
According to the anonymous figure, more than 150 public relations firms have joined the propaganda blitz.
The international effort is spearheaded by public relations firm PR Network co-founder Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham, a top public relations consultant with close ties to the UK’s government. Ingraham previously worked for Britain’s Conservative Party, sits on the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council, is Chief Executive of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation, and leads the membership body for UK local government communicators, LG Comms.
“We’ve been privileged to help coordinate efforts to support the Ukrainian Government in the last few days, “ Ingham toldPRovoke Media. “Agencies have offered up entire teams to support Kyiv in the communications war. Our support for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine is unwavering and will continue for as long as needed.”
With an anonymous Ukrainian figure joining two of the top public relations figures in the Kiev government’s propaganda blitz, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs distributed a dossier folder(archived) with materials instructing public relations agencies on “key messages,” approved language, content for debunked propaganda constructs, far-right and Neo-Nazi propaganda.
The folder is run by Yaroslav Turbil, described on his LinkedIn page as “Head of Ukraine.ua — Ukraine’s digital ecosystem for global communications. Strategic Communications & Country Brand Promotion.” Turbil has worked at multiple “civil society” organizations closely linked to the U.S. government and interned at Internews, a U.S. intelligence-linked organization that operates under the guise of promoting press freedom.
Among the propaganda constructs distributed in the dossier, is a video of the Snake Island incident, which was quickly proven false, in which Ukrainian border guards stationed on a small island were reported to have been killed after they told an approaching Russian warship that had urged them to surrender to “Go f*** yourself.” President Zelensky held a press conference announcing he would award the men the Hero of Ukraine medal as mainstream media spread the story widely. However, the supposedly-dead soldiers quickly turned up alive and well, proving their heroic stand to be a farce.
Despite the story being proven as fake, the dossier contains a propaganda video promoting it.
Another folder in the dossier is run by Ukrainian MFA graphic artist Dasha Podoltseva and contains hundreds of propaganda graphics submitted by artists in Europe and the United States.
Some feature generic “no war” messages, while dozens of other images celebrate “The Ghost of Kiev” – a heroic Ukrainian pilot who turns out to be non-existent – and the phony “Snake Island 13” incident.
Many use xenophobic and racist language, and some are explicit in their praise of prominent Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, including C14 leader Yevhen Karas, the Right Sector fascist paramilitary, and the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.
Multiple images call for “Banderite smoothies” – a reference to Molotov cocktails named for the late OUN-B commander Stephan Bandera, who collaborated with Nazi Germany in the mass murder of Jews and ethnic Poles during World War II. Another image depicts a book titled the: ”Encyclopedia of Incurable Diseases,” listing Russia, Belorussia, North Korea, Syria, and Eritrea.
“I love NLAW” – Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon, provided by western governments to the Ukrainian military
Graphic implying fertilizing the fields with bodies reads, “Grandma advice to Moskovites: Hide in the fields, When you die in hands of our army, Sunflowers will grow better”’
“Thank You Ukrainian Army” with an Azov Battalion Wolfsengel patch emblazoned on the sleeve”
“The Encyclopedia of Incurable Disease: Russia, Belorussia, North Korea, Syria, Eritrea”
“Against Moscovian Occupation.” Moscovian is a xenophobic term used to describe Russians
Graphic calling Czar Nicholas, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Vladimir Putin incarnations of the same “Mental Moskovian Dragon”
The dossier also contains a link to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs page called “Fight for Ukraine,” which provides instructions for foreigners who wish to join Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi-infested armed forces – termed the “International Defense Legion of Ukraine.”
Following Zelensky’s call for foreign fighters to form a brigade, fighters from all over the world, including the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, Spain, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and more have traveled to face Russian forces. Others with no combat training or experience have arrived for “war tourism” – what one British soldier called “bullet-catchers.”
Official Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs recruitment graphics from the dossier
Official Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs recruitment graphics from the dossier
While the Ukrainian government says tens of thousands have answered their call, some commentators expressed doubt at those figures, calling it a “PR exercise.”
However, the foreigners who have traveled to Ukraine have encountered a much more severe reality than they anticipated.
Russia’s air force bombed military installations adjacent to where the foreign fighters were sleeping. Having fled to neighboring Poland, a Spanish fighter described the bombing as a “message” that could have killed thousands.
Similarly, an American fighter who hid in an ambulance to escape the frontlines warned that Ukrainian authorities were killing foreigners who decided not to fight, calling it a “trap.”
Correct wording
One document inside the dossier delineates acceptable language on the conflict with Russia as determined by the Ukrainian government.
“Such Russian clichés like ‘referendum in Crimea’ or ‘will of the people of Crimea’ are absolutely unacceptable,” the document states, in reference to the 2014 overwhelmingly successful referendum to separate from Ukraine.
The document deems unacceptable the terms “Civil war in Donbass,” “Internal conflict,” “Conflict in Ukraine” and “Ukrainian crisis” to describe the Ukrainian military’s war with the breakaway republics of the Donbass region. This, despite the fact that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that 14,200 people, including 3,404 civilians, have been killed in internal fighting in Ukraine since 2014.
In place of these phrases, the document calls for the use of the terms “Armed aggression by the Russian Federation in Donbass, international armed conflict, Russian war against Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian conflict armed conflict.”
Key Messages
Another document titled “Key Messages” contains specific propaganda claims that were widely disseminated in mainstream western media, but which have since been discredited. One section claims the “entire Europe was put on the brink of nuclear disaster, when the Russian troops began shelling the largest in Europe Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant.”
However, International Atomic Energy Agency’s director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said that the building hit by a Russian “projectile” at the Zaporizhzhia plant was “not part of the reactor” but instead a training center. Russian troops also left Ukrainian workers to continue operating the plant.
“If I were a Russian worried about the potential of Nazi extremists coming up with a dirty bomb, I’d need to take control of this very facility” – @realscottritter deconstructs the Ukrainian nuclear plant takeover
Another section thanks Turkey for the decision “to block the access of Russian warships to the Black Sea.”
However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoganclosed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to all military vessels, preventing both NATO and Russian vessels from accessing the Black Sea.
Among the document’s key messages is a statement of gratitude to the “Anti-war demonstrations held by citizens of many nations throughout the world demonstrate strong support to Ukraine in defending against Russia.”
This refers to large pro-Ukraine demonstrations in Europe which have featured calls for the U.S. and NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine and shoot down Russian military aircraft, potentially transforming the conflict into a world war between nuclear-armed powers.
The NED published video of its CEO, Damon Wilson, at a rally outside the White House, declaring "Glory to Ukraine" – the salute used by Nazi collaborator Stephan Bandera's OUN-B, which carried out mass murder of Jews and Poles during World War 2. pic.twitter.com/a5hWSn9txo
“Despite Russia’s propaganda, there is no discrimination based on the race or nationality, including when it comes to the crossing of the state border by foreign citizens,” claims the Ukrainian document.
However, numerous videos and reports have documented Ukrainian authorities preventing Africans from fleeing the fighting. Even the New York Times – hardly a bastion of Kremlin propaganda – published a report documenting these racist practices.
One message says that “On 16 March, the Russian forces dropped a bomb on a drama theatre where up to 1300 civilians were being sheltered. The number of casualties is still unknown.”
However, as Max Blumenthal reported the explosion appears to be the result of a false flag operation designed by the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and aimed at triggering a NATO intervention.
NATO-backed troll farms
Another anonymously-penned investigation shows how Ukrainian public relations firms have used targeted advertisements to astroturf Russian internet and social media networks with messaging calling to economically isolate Moscow and “stop the war.” This effort is led by Bezlepkin Evgeny Vitalievich, who uses the alias Evgeny Korolev, along with Pavel Antonov of the Targetorium organization. From behind his Korolev pseudonym, the Ukrainian information warrior composed a post on his Facebook page (now private) boasting that his firm’s Facebook ads achieved 30 million hits in three days.
At the same time, Facebook has blocked Russian state-owned media outlets from running ads and monetizing content. Several fake accounts for media outlets like Russia 24 have sprung up, burying the authentic account under a series of impostors. Facebook has also marked statements from Russian officials, including the Ministry of Defense, as “false.”
This campaign has reportedly been carried out upon recommendation from StopFake, a self-described “fact checking” outlet that is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, Atlantic Council, Czech and UK foreign ministries, and the International Renaissance Foundation, which is funded by billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
StopFake was hired by Facebook in March 2020 to “curb the flow of Russian propaganda” but was found to be employing multiple figures closely tied to violent Neo-Nazis. The journalist who co-authored the exposé received death threats and ultimately fled Ukraine.
Those revelations have apparently not prevented Facebook from relying on the organization for censorship guidance.
Meanwhile, Russian hackers located a public Google document (since made private, uploaded here) detailing the propaganda operation, which has been distributed in Telegram channels of “creative farms.”
“Here you can find links to Ukrainian media that need promotion, bot accounts with logins and passwords from which anti-war messages and messages with fakes about the Ministry of Defense were sent to users, theses and specific instructions on which posts and which audiences to embroider,” the investigation reads.
Another campaign is run by Nataliya Popovych, the founder of the public relations agency, One Philosophy, in Kiev. Popovych’s LinkedIn profile shows she has worked with the U.S. State Department and advised former President Petro Poroshenko. She is also co-founder and board member of Ukraine Crisis Media Center, a propaganda arm funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. Embassy, and NATO, among many others.
A Campaign Asiaarticle profiles several public relations firms involved in the effort. Among them is Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman PR. Edelman is also a member of the Atlantic Council’s Board of Directors and the World Economic Forum.
“Geopolitics has become the new test for trust. We saw this with the allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and the war between Ukraine and Russia has only reinforced it,” he said, linking the U.S. propaganda campaign surrounding China’s deradicalization campaign for Uyghur Muslims.
PR approved media outlets
An article in PRWeek profiles several figures partaking in what they describe as a “PR army” that is “fighting on the informational frontline” against Russia’s “barbaric genocide of Ukrainians.”
“Propaganda is the same as real lethal weapons,” declares Marta Dzhumaha, PR manager at healthcare company BetterMe.
Julia Petryk, head of public relations at MacPaw, offers a list of approved media outlets, authored by her colleague Tetiana Bronistka, a former employee of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office. The list includes Russian and English language sources, as well as Telegram channels. However, these “verified sources that objectively cover what is happening in Ukraine” are anything but independent. Most of them are tied to the U.S. and European governments and billionaire foundations.
She also lists several Russian-language websites:
Novaya Gazeta – Tied to and reportedly funded by the National Endowment for Democracy
Proposed that Leningrad should have been surrendered to the Nazis in World War 2 and has complained that they are called a “fifth column” for being funded by western powers
BBC Russia – British government media
Current Time TV – Created by CIA-founded propaganda outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in collaboration with Voice of America
Censor – funded by, editor in chief Yuri Butusov, former advisor to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine
200RF – A Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website that claims to publish publishes photos and documents of the Russian soldiers captured and killed in action
Among the Telegram channels listed are:
Radio Svoboda – CIA-founded propaganda organ Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Espresso TV, largely owned by the wife of former Ukrainian member of parliament Mykola Knyazhytsky
Censor.net, formerly the largest media site in Ukraine, whose motto is “To bring down Russia”, and whose owner operates a “parade of international trolls.”
Intelligence operations
While the public relations firms distribute content, CIA cutouts and billionaire foundations run the media outlets they derive it from. At the core of this operation is a project called the Russian Language News Exchange that was the product of a network of opposition media outlets founded in 2016 that operate in post-Soviet countries, as revealed by an investigation by the Russian media agency, RIA FAN.
In July 2021, a group of journalists flew to Warsaw for media training after being exempted from coronavirus-related restrictions and quarantine orders by Poland’s top medical authorities.
Among the six journalists were Andrey Lipsky, deputy editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, and Yuliia Fediv, CEO of Hromadske TV media, one of the most-watched networks in Ukraine.
Hromadske’s financial reports show it is funded by numerous governments and foundations, including the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the European Endowment for Democracy, and Free Press Unlimited. Silicon Valley billionaire Pierre Omidary was also involved in creating the outlet.
Hromadske recently hosted a commentator demanding genocide of ethnic Russians in the Donbass, saying it is populated with 1.5 “superfluous” people that “must be exterminated.”
The training, held behind closed doors from July 19 to July 21, was titled “Media Network 2021+” and closely tied to Mediaset, also known as the Russian Language News Exchange, a network founded in 2015. Russian Language News Exchange’s website is sparse, with little available information on its activities – apparently made private since the publication of RIA FAN’s investigation.
While it claims to be independent, Russian Language News Exchange is a project of Free Press Unlimited, funded by the Dutch government and the European Commission.
Today, it includes 14 media outlets that act as “nodes,” cross-publishing each other’s articles in various countries.
The website’s introductory video is hosted by Maxim Eristavi, a former Radio Free Europe reporter and founder of Hromadske. Today, he heads the Millennium Leadership Program at the NATO and arms industry-backed think tank, the Atlantic Council.
Since its inception, Mediaset has coordinated between outlets in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine. In March 2021, Mediaset expanded with the Colab Medios Project, created through the Free Press Unlimited Viable Media for Empowered Societies (VIMES) program. This program created training for journalists and saw articles from the El Salvadoran outlet El Faro published in Euroradio (Belarus), Coda(Georgia), and Ziarul de Garda (Moldova).
On March 4, several days after Russia launched its military offensive, a new project called the Media Lifeline Ukraine was created.
The next day, Free Press Unlimited held an emergency conference for Ukraine featuring Hromadske co-founders Maxim Eristavi and Nataliya Gumenyuk. The meeting called to raise 2 million euros for the project. “Only with ongoing external support, will local media entities be able to continue to do their work,” its introductory page asks.
Days later, Free Press Unlimited announced a partnership to support a new joint project of Reporters Without Borders and its Ukrainian partner, the Institute for Mass Information, called The Lviv Press Freedom Center. The Institute for Mass Information is headed by USAID communications officer Oksana Romaniuk and funded by USAID and the UK government.
Washington DC lobbyists wag the dog
While public relations firms and intelligence-linked propaganda operations target the public, Washington DC lobbyists are agitating in Congress to extend the war in Ukraine
Daniel Vajdich, a registered foreign agent and lobbyist for the Ukrainian Federation of Employers of the Oil and Gas Industry, the largest in Ukraine, is working on behalf of Volodymyr Zelensky to lobby members of Congress to approve more weapons shipments to Ukraine. Now the head of Yorktown Solutions, he previously advised Ted Cruz and Scott Walker’s campaigns and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
“Stingers, Javelins, and let’s figure out the fighter aircraft issue,” he told Politico, claiming Russia is attempting to carry out a “genocide” and “depopulate certain areas of Ukraine.”
Vajdich also wrote Zelenskyy’s March 16 speech to U.S. Congress, in which he quoted Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech to call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
Ukrainian Permanent Representative at the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya’s February 23 speech to the United Nations General Assembly was written by DC lobbying firm SKDKnickerbocker Managing Director Stephen Krupin, a former senior speechwriter to President Barack Obama who worked extensively on Biden’s 2020 campaign.
Most prominent among the registered lobbyists promoting Ukrainian government and business interests is Andrew Mac, who also contributed to writing Zeleneksyy’s speech to Congress. Mac registered as a lobbyist for Zelensky in 2019 and runs the Washington DC office of Ukrainian law firm Asters Law.
The lobbying firm Your Global Strategy, founded by Shai Franklin, who has been affiliated with numerous Zionist organizations including the World Jewish Congress and Anti-Defamation League, is also using its influence with local officials in the U.S. Franklin has set up meetings between Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov and U.S. mayors, including Eric Adams in New York City, Michelle Wu in Boston and Lori Lightfoot in Chicago. He is also attempting to set up a meeting between U.S. officials and the mayors of Odessa and Kiev. A media outlet owned by the mayor of Kiev’s wife recently featured a presenter calling for genocide against Russians, beginning with children.
Franklin said he’s working with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration to help set up virtual meetings between mayors of Odessa and Kiev and U.S. counterparts.
Maryland-based lawyer Lukas Jan Kaczmarek is also working on behalf of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to increase U.S. weapons shipments, specifically seeking to arrange shipments of guns from Kel-Tec CNC Industries based in Cocoa, Florida, to the city of Odessa, Ukraine.
Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul described the network of public relations professionals and lobbyists surrounding Zelenskyy.
“These are people around Mr. Zelenskyy who are like the intermediaries and interlocutors. They’ve been interacting with the American elites and American media for a long time,” he said.
McFaul and John E. Herbst, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, act as informal advisors to Zelenskyy. McFaul told Politico that he speaks to Ukrainian government officials “probably everyday,” and “has helped them make connections with NBC or MSNBC producers.”
McFaul recently told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that “Hitler did not kill German-speaking people, facing accusations of Holocaust denial.
Zelenskyy also held a “strategic video call” with McFaul before he spoke to House democrats.
With a powerful Russian military fighting alongside DPR and LPR forces, the Ukrainian military’s defeat seems to be imminent unless the United States and NATO directly confront Russian forces, a scenario President Biden has already ruled out. Lobbyists nevertheless persist in their campaign to portray the Ukrainian military as underdogs scoring blow after blow against Russian hordes. In doing so, they help extend the war and continue the carnage.
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Dan Cohen is the Washington DC correspondent for Behind The Headlines. He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine. He tweets at @DanCohen3000.
All images in this article are from MPN/Dan Cohen unless otherwise stated
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Despite pressure from the Biden administration, the Palestinian Authority has firmly refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and adopted a passive neutral stand on the conflict. While the Authority is West-leaning, Palestinians have experienced nothing but abuse from all the US administrations succeeding president Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961).
He adopted a principled stand against aggression and occupation and commanded Israel to withdraw from Gaza and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula after seizing these territories during the 1956 Anglo-French-Israeli war waged to topple Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser after he nationalised the Suez Canal. Israel reluctantly obliged by withdrawing in 1957.
The US has refused to exert pressure on Israel to evacuate Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank since Israel conquered them in 1967 and has not sanctioned Israel for colonising them in flagrant violation of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention. Instead, successive administrations have subsidised Israel’s occupation by providing military and economic aid and permitting the unhindered flow of tax free funds from US donors to the illegal colonies. The US has protected Israel from UN Security Council votes condemning its constant crack-down on Palestinians living under occupation, repeated wars against Gaza and Lebanon, and, during the last decade, all too frequent attacks on Syria.
Even after the Oslo accord was signed in ceremonies on the White House lawn, the US did not press Israel to abide by the deal’s terms by pulling its troops out of the West Bank and Gaza and negotiating a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians. Determined to hang onto the land it occupies, Israel demands peace-for-peace. As a result, Israel has established an elaborate apartheid regime in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank and, since 2006-07 besieged and blockaded Gaza. Donald Trump recognised Israeli sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem, moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city, closed down the US consulate in occupied East Jerusalem and the Palestinian mission in Washington, and cancelled US contributions to UNRWA, the UN agency caring for 5 million Palestinian refugees. President Joe Biden has partially restored UNRWA’s funding but has not reversed Trump’s other anti-Palestinian actions.
Little wonder that the Palestinian Authority has refused to accept Biden’s diktat. If the Authority had, there would be furious protests in the occupied Palestinian territories against US hypocrisy in condemning Russia’s invasion of portions of Ukraine while giving full support to Israel’s occupation of all Palestine. Palestinians are branded “terrorists” if they resist Israel’s military regime, Ukraine’s national guard and citizens are deemed heroes if they fight Russia.
In contrast with the US and its European partners which have not yet recognised Palestine, Moscow recognised the virtual state three days after the Palestine National Council’s November 1988 declaration of independence in Algiers and established diplomatic relations witn Palestine in 1989. Although lacking the muscle to seriously aid the Palestinians in their struggle for liberation from Israeli domination, Russia has repeatedly proven to be an ally in UN Security Council and General Assembly votes and in international fora.
Deeply indebted to the US for decades of support, Israel has tried to sit on the fence over Russia’s war in Ukraine. While Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid condemned Russia’s military campaign, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett did not and offered to mediate between Ukraine and Russia although Israel is in illegal occupation of Palestine.
Despite US pressure, Israel has not imposed sanctions on Russia and will not prevent Israeli companies from doing business with Russia or Israeli commercial aircraft from continuing flights to and from Russia. Israel has not provided Ukraine with drones or its Iron Dome anti-missile system which was funded by billions of US dollars. Israel has sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine and prepared to admit 13,500 Ukrainian refugees, but 1,000 either were rejected or, upon arrival, refused to stay in Israel.
Treatment is different for Jews and non-Jews. Jews are airlifted to Israel and their immigration procedures are expedited. Among the Ukrainians are 3,500 Jews who are eligible for healthcare, services, long-term residence, and Israeli citizenship under the “Law of Return”, prompting critics to accuse the authorities of racism towards non-Jews. Non-Jews have to leave when the war ends. They either stay with relatives or are to be accommodated in caravans in three medium sized Israeli towns rather than Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
Ukraine’s Ambassador to Israel Yevgen Korniychuk expressed disappointment in Israel’s attitude by saying Ukrainian refugees, including Jews, who receive shelter, food, heath care and schooling for children in Europe, are not eager to travel to distant, expensive Israel.
The massive Western condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might, just might, compel the US and Europe to recognise that all other countries waging war on their populations or neighbours must also be held to account for committing aggression, violating international law and perpetrating war crimes. Russia should not be the only country to be ostracised and comprehensively sanctioned if international law is to be respected and a global rule of law is to be enforced everywhere. No one should continue to enjoy impunity. Not even Israel.
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Featured image: A sign stating ‘Danger, demolition. Entry is prohibited’ was placed by Israeli authorities on top of the rubble of the Khalialehs’ houses (MEE\Sondus Ewies)
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Afghanistan has joined the ever growing ranks of countries forcibly thrown into desperate humanitarian crises following U.S./NATO wars now relegated to the sidelines as the latest crisis instigated by the West’s imperial aggression takes the spotlight. The blatant imperial theft of Afghan wealth, like what occurred with Iraq, Libya, and others before them, is old news now. As, too, are reports of Afghans, like others before them, being driven by hunger to sell their organs and their children.
Images of Ukrainian people fleeing violence are now forefronted to manipulate the public into supporting another war, yet another massive infusion to the arms industry, a welcomed windfall for both U.S. and European corporations following the loss of their trillion-dollar Afghanistan trough.
Ukrainians are currently the West’s favorite refugees, a position Afghans held momentarily just months ago. Indeed, the underlying white supremacy enabling U.S. imperial wars has come out in the open as the “civilized” recoil in horror at the sight of the “relatively civilized”—meaning whiter—people forced from their homes by bombings. They clamor to welcome them into their homes. Yet, despite these moments in the spotlight, the reality for the majority of refugees of U.S. imperial wars is anything but welcoming. Afghans “rescued” by the United States—only just granted “protected status” by Biden—are insignificant in number, a selective emigration facilitated to siphon off those with the expertise to help rebuild Afghanistan. Most of the millions forced to flee their homes join the tens of millions of other refugees of U.S./NATO wars languishing in camps, struggling under inhumane conditions to gain asylum elsewhere, facing constant threat of deportation, and sometimes told to go back to their sweatshops and to their decimated countries.
The strategic importance of Afghanistan as a potential source of profit, as well as a base from which to destabilize its neighbors, didn’t end when U.S. forces were driven out. The United States’ tactical use of starvation has effectively disciplined the Taliban and reduced the country to depend on Western forces. Now, the United States shows signs of moving to maintain its influence within the country, as it eases sanctions to allow limited Taliban involvement in controlled financial activity.
In tandem, the UN, while continuing to call for “humanitarian hand-outs” and organizing virtual pledge drives—positioning the United States in the role of saving the very people it impoverished—is now calling for more “engagement” with the Taliban. This comes while continuing to deny UN representation to Afghanistan and extending the UN’s direct involvement in Afghan governance for another year. These UN mandates, particularly military mandates, have long been effective tools of U.S. imperialism, used most vividly and violently in Haiti.
Western intelligence claims a “renewed surge of resistance” to the Taliban as Afghans continue to suffer terror attacks, most attributed to ISIS-K, a group that has been linked to Western intelligence. Reports have emerged that former U.S.-trained Afghan intelligence and elite military forces have joined ISIS-K forces.
Terror has long been a tool the United States uses to disable countries resistant to Western hegemony, as it is presently manifesting in differentforms in Ukraine. ISIS-K may be disrupting Afghan relations with neighbors such as China, Russia andPakistan, and potentially interfering with investment and Eurasian integration.
Yet, with typical hubris, the U.S. ruling elites seem unable to differentiate between small countries weakened by their relentless aggression and large economic and military powers with the resources to fight back. Efforts to develop an alternative to the U.S. dollar-based economic system that has held much of the world hostage appear to be accelerating as the United States has stepped up its confrontation with China and Russia. More and more countries are failing to step in line, more and more looking for alternative trade relationships. The U.S. ruling class now appears to be shooting itself in the very booted foot they’ve had on the collective necks of peoples across the world, welcome news for the oppressed everywhere.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on March 21 the imposition of visa restrictions on a group of Chinese officials accused of being involved in or responsible for human rights violations against religious and ethnic minorities. The US official said he would use diplomatic and economic means to “promote accountability” for human rights abuses, such as alleged efforts by Chinese officials to “harass, intimidate, surveil and abduct” members of minority groups, including some individuals who had sought shelter in the US.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said a day later that Beijing will reciprocate a response if the sanctions against Chinese officials are not lifted. The spokesperson expressed strong opposition to sanctions that seriously violate China’s sovereignty and stressed that Washington needs to “stop slandering China for no reason,” pointing to “political prejudices and lies” in many of Washington’s statements against China.
The US is essentially outraged at China for its clear and consistent stance on the Ukraine crisis, which has not changed despite sustained pressure. In fact, it shows more desperation on the part of Washington, especially as traditional allies like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have snubbed both Blinken and US President Joe Biden whilst maintaining close ties with Moscow.
Biden wants China to abandon its balanced policy towards Kiev and Moscow, even though Washington makes no such demand on Turkey, a NATO member that has not closed its airspace or sanctioned Russia as it too opts to balance its relations. What is more absurd is the belief that Washington thinks Beijing would abandon Moscow despite maintaining pressure on the country through the AUKUS and QUAD military formations.
Essentially, due to Biden’s failure to even control traditional allies like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey, he wants to somehow save face by trying to show his country that he will punish the Chinese for their defiance of not turning against Moscow. In this way, the visa restrictions are essentially meaningless for Chinese officials who never planned to travel to the US to begin with, and therefore they just look all the more ridiculous.
Even if there was no political pretext to accuse Beijing of human rights violations, then another pretext would have been elevated as the current sanctions are motivated by nothing more than making Biden appear that he is punishing China. Beijing will undoubtedly commensurate countermeasures, but the question is whether they will be reciprocated in equal measure or escalate the situation further.
What is certain though is that China will continue to act consistently on the Ukraine issue despite US attempts to push China against Russia whilst simultaneously pressuring the Asian country through the two multilateral military blocs.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on March 21 that a “verbal condemnation” of Russia by China is “vital.”
“Our view is that verbal condemnation of the actions of President Putin and the actions of [the] Russian military is important and vital, and it’s about what side of history you want to stand on at in this point in time,” Psaki said, adding: “where [do] you want to be as the history books are written.”
However, as former US diplomat Alberto M. Fernandez wrote in his MEMRI column, “Rather than an appeal to history, or even to morality, American policymakers would have been better served by an appeal to Chinese national interests (the same applies, in different circumstances, to understanding Saudi or Indian national interests).” As he highlights, Chinese history does not write about the Americans favorably to begin with, which is why such an appeal to history is naïve.
In fact, a bigger concern for China then appealing to the US’ writing of history are the allegations of chemical weapon laboratories in Ukraine, especially after the White House accused Beijing of repeating “these conspiracy theories.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that it obtained evidence that the US spent more than $200 million on biological laboratories in Ukraine. It can be assumed that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov presented their evidence to the Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui during their meeting on March 21. China has repeatedly demanded that the US be fully transparent about the operation of biological laboratories abroad, yet the Americans continue to deny the charges.
None-the-less, the very fact that the US believes it can turn China against Russia whilst maintaining pressure via AUKUS and QUAD demonstrates a White House far removed from political realism. Despite snubbing’s from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, NATO member Turkey defying sanctions against Russia, and India open to ruble-rupee payments for oil, Washington is increasingly frustrated that it cannot completely isolate Moscow. In this way, a young country like the US appealing to the multi-millennia Chinese civilization to consider history is nothing more then a desperate, if not pathetic attempt to woo Beijing away from Moscow.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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President Joseph R. Biden caused a stir in the media last week when he called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a war criminal.” Biden’s statement was apparently made to capitalize on the government’s and the American media’s monolithic anti-Russian messaging.
Is Putin a war criminal? In a word: No.
Here is the backstory.
Criminals are persons who have been properly convicted by a court that has jurisdiction over them and the place of their alleged crime and where the crimes were written down and accepted prior to their alleged criminal behavior. Putin is not among them.
Yet Biden’s provocative statement is worth exploring from a historical and legal perspective as it has been tossed about as if it had lawful meaning. The term has been used politically to refer to unpopular government officials who directed the use of state force in what the media has portrayed as an illicit or disproportionate manner.
What is illicit and what is disproportionate are subjective and for the victor to decide. Victors are never war criminals, as by their victory, they control the apparatus of prosecution or other mechanisms that will insulate themselves from the reach of prosecutors.
If you measure human deaths of innocents per second, the greatest governmental mass killer in wartime was President Harry Truman when he ordered the use of atomic bombs on civilian targets in Japan in August 1945, after he knew from intelligence reports that the Japanese government was prepared to surrender in a matter of days. But because the U.S. won the war, Truman was never prosecuted.
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The phrase “war criminal” entered our parlance from the Nuremberg trials of surviving high-ranking Nazi officials after the conclusion of World War II. Those trials alleged that German government officials committed crimes against humanity.
The crimes alleged were invented ex post facto — a procedure expressly prohibited in the U.S. — and were accepted by the American, British and Soviet prosecutors and judges. In a bit of bitter irony, the phrase “crimes against humanity” was coined by Joseph Stalin’s hand-picked prosecutor.
Just imagine a court today where the prosecutors get to write retroactive laws to apply to the defendants they are about to try.
This is the culture out of which Nuremberg sprang and the jurisprudence it spawned. Notwithstanding the egregious unfairness of these trials, world opinion generally accepted them.
The chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, Justice Robert Jackson, a former U.S. attorney general and, at the time, a sitting justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, became a celebrity. He apparently had no hesitation about applying principles in vanquished Germany that were prohibited by the U.S. Constitution he swore to uphold.
The concept that officials of a nation could be prosecuted for violating a body of unwritten laws stirred post-war academic and judicial interest in natural law theory, which teaches that our rights and our understanding of good and evil come from within us and are understood and identified by the exercise of human reason and bind all persons.
Because the natural law prohibits aggression, no government on the planet has felt bound by it. One of the natural law principles that animated Nuremberg and continues to animate contemporary international tribunals is the concept of the just war.
But the baseline natural law principle is the non-aggression principle (NAP). It teaches that all initiated or threatened aggression — including from government — is inherently wrong as a violation of the natural rights of the victim. Thus, only defensive wars are just.
Stated differently, a country — like a person — can defend itself from an invader and use violence to do so, but no more violence than is necessary to stop the invasion, lest the defender become the aggressor.
Now, back to Putin. Biden’s “war criminal” statement ignores American use of state violence. Biden himself, while a senator, supported President George W. Bush’s immoral invasion of Iraq, which slaughtered hundreds of thousands for the purpose of regime change. If Biden means what he says, Bush as well as Truman and himself are war criminals.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands — the creature of a treaty to which the United States, Russia and Ukraine are not signatories — is picking up where Nuremberg left off. This court claims universal jurisdiction, but its claim is fanciful.
The legal fiction of universal jurisdiction was created for political reasons by the U.S. Department of Justice during the presidency of Ronald Reagan to prosecute acts of terror committed overseas where the perpetrators were not likely to be prosecuted. It holds that American courts have jurisdiction over crimes against humanity committed by foreign persons in foreign countries.
Today, the fiction of universal jurisdiction is bilateral. Thus, foreign courts — in the European Union and at The Hague — claim jurisdiction over the entire globe, including America, Russia and Ukraine.
Justice by consensus or legal fiction is never just. Jurisdiction must be by consent of a proper authority. If a court lacks jurisdiction over the place of the alleged crime and the alleged perpetrator of it, any ruling is a fiction. Can a court in the Netherlands legally condemn Putin because its justices are repulsed by what they see on cable television? Of course not.
The history of human freedom is paying careful attention to procedure and protection of rights. Don’t look at recent history for this, as every post-World War II president — including Biden — has unlawfully killed foreign innocents; and they have lived free to boast about it.
But victors’ justice presumes that an unaccountable court possesses lawful authority to choose whatever wrongs it can find wherever it can find them and then prosecute them by applying laws and rules that suit its goals, just as American prosecutors have done. This is aggression by judges, no matter the target, and it violates NAP.
Joe Biden should be careful what he asks for.
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On March 16, the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, was bombed. The building reportedly housed scores of civilians at the time. Maxar satellite images showed the word “CHILDREN” written in Russian in large letters on the pavement outside. The incident occurred within hours of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s virtual address to Congress, where he asked again for the United States to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
Western and Ukrainian observers immediately assumed the worst. “Russian forces ‘purposefully destroyed’ theatre in Mariupol where civilians were taking shelter, Ukrainian officials say,” read a notification pushed out by Twitter. “Massive Russian attack on the Drama Theater where hundreds of innocent civilians were hiding,” tweeted Ukrainian politician Dmytro Kuleba. “Russians could not have not known this was a civilian shelter.” It seemed a clear-cut case of Muscovite barbarism in a savage war.
Another horrendous war crime in Mariupol. Massive Russian attack on the Drama Theater where hundreds of innocent civilians were hiding. The building is now fully ruined. Russians could not have not known this was a civilian shelter. Save Mariupol! Stop Russian war criminals! pic.twitter.com/bIQLxe7mli
But days before the bombing, local reports warned that Ukrainian forces, specifically the Azov Battalion, were planning a false flag operation at the theater. Civilians would be endangered or even killed before the world’s watching eyes.
While it’s difficult to know what’s true in this conflict, numerous accounts paint the same picture: civilians being endangered, even killed, by Ukrainian forces, including Azov, in Mariupol who won’t allow them to move through humanitarian corridors.
The simplest explanation for the Drama Theater bombing is that Russia is at fault here. But these allegations, in the context of a war that has been distorted by misinformation, merit examination precisely because the incident had the supposedly desired effect. American pundits and politicians like Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois cited the bombing as cause for a no-fly zone.
The official narrative seems wrong on its face. So far, more than 30,000 people have been evacuated through humanitarian corridors from Mariupol, which is surrounded by Russian troops. If Moscow wanted to slaughter civilians, it could have easily targeted vehicles rolling in bumper-to-bumper traffic out of the city, heading in the direction of the pro-Russian separatist-controlled north.
Why evacuate tens of thousands of civilians and observe protocols designed to reduce non-combatant casualties if you want to butcher them? This is not to say civilians have not been killed during the conflict—they have—but Russia is not deliberately targeting them as part of a genocidal campaign. These facts, coupled with what happened in the days before the bombing, raise questions no one in the mainstream is asking.
The earliest known report of imminent danger came on March 12. A message on a Telegram channelassociated with Dmitriy Steshen, a correspondent from Mariupol for the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, warned that Zelensky’s forces were planning two false flag operations: one at the Turkish-built Sultan Suleiman Mosque, and the other at the Mariupol theater.
Both would appear as if the Russians had deliberately targeted civilians. The mosque would drag Turkey into the war, while the drama theater would supply a justification for closing the skies over Ukraine, ideally bringing a U.S.-led NATO into direct confrontation with Russia. The second half of the message about the theater reads:
Ukrainian soldiers with the drama theater’s administration rounded up women, children, and elderly from Mariupol into the theatre building so that when the “right” moment happens they could blow the theatre up with the people. This is done so that they could scream to the whole world that Russia’s aviation did this and that the Ukrainian sky needs to be closed immediately, etc. Do not be silent, we need as many people to know.
Later, investigative journalist Max Blumenthal noted that Western media repeated Ukrainian officials’ claims about the mosque in Mariupol being shelled by Russia with scores of civilians, including children, inside. “However, Turkish state media revealed that the Ukrainian government had misled Western reporters,” Blumenthal wrote. “The Kanuni Sultan Suleyman Mosque was not only fully intact, it had never been hit by Russian fire.” Zelensky and his officials had previously made similar misleading claims about the bombing of the memorial at Babi Yar, a ravine in Kiev that was also the site of massacres committed by the Nazis during World War II. But Israeli journalist Ron Ben Yisha reported after inspecting the site that the memorial had not been destroyed or damaged.
On March 13, a Twitter user named Elena Evdokimova issued another warning. “Information allegedly came from Mariupol locals (reminder – they are mostly ethnic Russian) that neo-Nazi from Azov gathered Mariupol women, children & elderly into the building of Mariupol drama theatre and are going to blow it up, blaming the victims on ‘Russian shelling,’” Evdokimova wrote. One of the final known indicators popped up early on March 16. A Telegram channel associated with Daniil Bezsonov, the DNR Deputy Minister of Information, claimed to have made contact with an Azov defector.
Information allegedly came from Mariupol locals ( reminder – they are mostly ethnic Russian) that neo-Nazi from Azov gathered Mariupol women, children & elderly into the building of Mariupol drama theatre and are going to blow it up, blaming the victims on "Russian shelling"
“The militant of the Nazi regiment ‘Azov’ has just escaped from his family and joined our side. He asked for anonymity and we guaranteed it, as his family is in Ukrainian-controlled territory and he fears that his actions will be cut to pieces by other Ukrainian Nazis,” the message began.
He told us a lot of interesting information, which is of operational importance and about the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian Nazis in Mariupol. But the most important thing is that the headquarters of the Ukrainian militants is located in the basement of the Mariupol Drama Theater, and the hall of the theater is completely filled with civilians, who are guarded by 12 militants of the Azov Regiment, so that they do not run away.
The theater was hit a little while later.
Russia’s Defense Ministry immediately denied responsibility, saying that it had not flown bombing missions at that time in that area. “During daylight on March 16, Russian aviation carried out no missions involving strikes on ground targets within Mariupol limits. According to the verified information, militants of the Azov nationalist battalion carried out another bloody provocation by blowing up the rigged theater building,” the Ministry of Defense said. It added, “refugees that escaped Mariupol, informed that Nazis from the Azov battalion could have held civilians hostage in the theater building, using the upper floors as emplacements.”
Statements from the Russian government are hardly trustworthy. However, the independent media outlet Readovka reported the same via Telegram on March 16.
According to a source familiar with the operation to liberate Mariupol, no shelling or air strikes were carried out in the area of the city where the Drama Theater is located. Heavy street fighting is taking place in its vicinity, and it is impossible to strike such blows without risking one’s own. For the same reason, artillery cannot be used in this area of the city.
The information itself was spread tonight through Ukrainian telegram channels, its provocative implication is obvious.
Considering that Russian authorities raided Readovka’s offices and added it to the register of banned websites last year after it published an investigation on political corruption, the outlet cannot be easily dismissed as state media.
By March 17, news surfaced that civilians had survived in a shelter within the theater. “More than a day after the airstrike, there were no reports of deaths,” the Associated Press noted. As of March 21, that hasn’t changed. So far, 130 survivors have been rescued from the rubble, according to Reuters and local sources. Mariupol’s city council said more than 1,000 people were sheltering under the theatre at the time of the bombing, but Reuters could not independently verify the figures.
Apart from local officials, Azov was one of the first sources to report the bombing, according to the Ukrayinska Pravda newspaper. But would they be capable of organizing something so nefarious that it would involve endangering Ukrainians? Understanding Azov, and why its elimination is a central stated aim of Russia, sheds light on that question.
In 2014, after a U.S. State Department-backed “color revolution” led to regime change in Ukraine, pro-Russian separatists declared independence from Kiev in the eastern part of the country. Mariupol, which is predominantly Russian speaking, became a hub of resistance, and it has been the scene of clashes between rebels and their allies and Ukrainian forces ever since.
Azov, which is funded by oligarchs loyal to Kiev such as Igor Kolomoisky, who is also a key supporter of Zelensky, emerged in eastern Ukraine to suppress pro-Russian sentiment there. “We are behind enemy lines here; everyone is against us: the police, the army, the people,” one Azov fighter said a May 2014 interview with the Sunday Times. By “behind enemy lines,” he meant Mariupol. The Times also noted that Azov was “deployed by Kiev because of its fears that its regular forces, heavily infiltrated by Russian sympathisers, are losing the battle with the separatists.”
The events of May 9, 2014, are illustrative. They were marked by bloodshed after pro-Russian militants took over a police station with the help of pro-Russian police officers. Azov was deployed alongside other units in response, but the rebels enjoyed support from hundreds of civilians.
Footage from one incident that day showed a crowd of Mariupolians fleeing as Ukrainian forces fired on them with automatic weapons. “They’re shooting down civilians!” one person yelled in the video. “Fascists! Killing your own people!” Bystanders ferried the wounded to safety while others shouted that ambulances were taking fire. The Ministry of Defense confirmed that “Ukrainian soldiers (an Azov fighter, or a soldier of the 20th territorial defence battalion) opened fire at the car” after civilians had loaded the ambulance with a wounded man.
Recent interviews with Mariupol evacuees have presented a similar view of Azov and other Ukrainian troops. One evacuee described through tears to the Analytical Network News Agency how Azov fights with no regard for civilians in Mariupol. Another woman gave an even grimmer account. She said Azov used them as human shields and that Ukrainian forces placed armored vehicles in the immediate vicinity of bomb shelters, virtually guaranteeing harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure. They were sent “like a herd of animals” by Ukrainian security forces into basements for days without provisions and alleged that they blew up the theater while retreating from the area.
A group of Mariupol refugees evacuating to Russia also said they had been kept in the theater by Ukrainian soldiers against their will who used them as “human shields.” Another group said Azov prevented them from evacuating through humanitarian corridors, keeping them in basements, and that they had seen them shoot civilians.
There is now ample evidence of civilians being tortured, abused, and humiliated by regular and irregular Ukrainian forces. Indeed, there appears to be a general deterioration in conduct. For example, Gennadiy Druzenko, a Ukrainian military field hospital commander, bragged that he “gave strict orders to castrate all the wounded” Russians “because they are cockroaches, not humans.” It’s not hard to see how this antipathy might turn inward on ethnic Russians, specifically in eastern Ukraine.
Western media has created an image of a city united against Russian aggression simply waiting for a U.S.-led NATO to enter the war. The reality is that Azov and its allies hate a large part of the civilian population and are not above using them as human shields. That does not absolve Russia of any civilians they kill or wound. But it should be a reminder that this conflict is more complex than the plot of a Hollywood production. The reality of this war is awful enough.
The facts around the drama theater bombing will likely remain shrouded in mystery for now. But what is certain is that Westerners should pause to consider the plight of civilians before celebrating the decision by forces within Mariupol to not effect a ceasefire and deliver the city.
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Pedro Gonzalez is associate editor of Chronicles magazine.
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***
American journalists have a long, ignoble history of being willing conduits for pro-war propaganda. Usually, that behavior is in service to a military crusade that Washington has launched or wants to initiate. At times, though, such a betrayal of journalistic integrity occurs on behalf of a foreign country that both U.S. political leaders and news media elites have adopted as a favorite cause. We are currently witnessing the latter phenomenon with respect to news coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.
The dominant media narrative is that the US government (and all Americans) must “stand with Ukraine” in the latter’s resistance to Russian aggression. The identification with Ukraine’s cause is now nearly total, and it is infused with arrogant righteousness. Noticeably missing is any sense, once so powerful in US foreign policy and general discourse, that America’s interests often are – and should be – distinct from the interests and objectives of any foreign country.
The emotionalism and shallowness is most evident with the television coverage of the conflict. American viewers are inundated with images of exploding shells from the invading Russian forces, sights of desperate, tearful refugees (mostly women and children) fleeing the invaders, and shots of other determined Ukrainian civilians arming themselves to defend their country. Television is a visual medium that always tries to evoke emotions among viewers, but that element has become truly over-the-top regarding treatment of the Ukraine war. Providing a deluge of images showing traumatized civilian refugees adds little to anyone’s understanding of the roots of the conflict, its underlying issues, or its likely outcome.
Indeed, prominent media outlets have been guilty of circulating transparently crude Ukrainian propaganda. Some of the material they’ve telecast turned out to be fake. A widely circulated image of a Ukrainian girl verbally confronting Russian troops actually was that of a Palestinian girl confronting Israeli troops. 2015’s Miss Ukraine was not taking up arms against the Russian invaders, despite a well-covered photo op. A closer examination of the image showed that she was brandishing an Airsoft gun. Some images of aerial combat footage of Ukrainian pilots battling Russian aggressors were from video games.
There also has been an array of more subtle, but decidedly deceptive, accounts that US press outlets distributed. The supposed martyrs of Snake Island, who allegedly were blown to smithereens after defying and cursing a Russian warship, turned out to be very much alive. The American news media dutifully reported a Ukrainian military account in early March that it had severely damaged, if not sunk, the Russian patrol ship Vasiliy Bykov in the Black Sea. The episode was supposedly a major victory, because the vessel was one of Russia’s newest warships. The credibility of Kyiv’s claim took a major hit on March 16, though, when the Vasily Bykov sailed, apparently unharmed, into the port of Sevastopol in Crimea.
In light of such problems with accounts regarding the war, American journalists should at least be cautious about reflexively repeating Ukrainian government allegations. For example, Kyiv has repeatedly asserted that Russian forces deliberately target residential areas in their shelling campaigns, and the US media echo those claims. Perhaps the allegations are true, but the generally accepted figures with respect to Ukrainian civilian fatalities (726, as of March 17) do not seem consistent with wholly indiscriminate assaults. Journalists should at least view Kyiv’s accusations with some skepticism, yet there is scant evidence of meaningful scrutiny.
The Ukraine war would not be the first time that portions of the American press became willing conduits for foreign disinformation. In the years before the US entry into World War I, major American newspapers and magazines credulously repeated British propaganda about German forces in Belgium committing an array of atrocities, including raping nuns and bayoneting babies. Such stories later proved to be total fabrications, but they had a marked impact on American public attitudes toward Germany.
Some 7 decades later, following Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the performance of the American press was equally dismal. Media outlets gave prominent coverage to hearings by the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in October 1990, featuring alleged eyewitnesses to Iraqi war crimes. The leading witness was a tearful 15-year-old girl that Caucus chairman Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) introduced only as “Nayirah.” A more detailed identification, Lantos cautioned, would endanger her friends and relatives in Kuwait. Nayirah described herself as a hospital volunteer who had personally witnessed Iraqi soldiers forcing maternity ward nurses to remove newborns from their incubators. That action, supposedly taking place at 3 hospitals, allegedly resulted in the deaths of 312 infants.
The account was part of a sophisticated disinformation campaign by Kuwait’s government to whip-up American public opinion into a frenzied willingness to endorse going to war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. A regime that could commit such monstrous acts had to be stopped was the clear message. Eventually, the falsity of the incubator atrocity story became indisputable, especially when information confirmed that “Nayirah” was not a hospital volunteer, but the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States. By then, however, the United States and its allies were at war with Iraq. The false propaganda story had fulfilled its purpose.
In retrospect, the wonder is how professional journalists in the United States could have circulated such an inflammatory story without making even modest efforts to corroborate it. Yet they did so. Worse, their successors who are covering the Ukraine war show no greater degree of skepticism in putting Kyiv’s accounts of the conflict to such a test. Instead, they treat statements and images being given to them by Ukrainian authorities as though their authenticity is indisputable.
Such credulity leaves the media open to cynical manipulation by yet another foreign government. And make no mistake about it: the purpose of the current propaganda offensive is to generate public support in the United States for Washington’s military intervention on Ukraine’s behalf. This time, the American people need to recognize pro-war propaganda in the news media for what it is, and not take the bait.
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Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 12 books and more than 950 articles on international affairs. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (forthcoming, July 2022).
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***
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday criticized the Israeli government for not standing unequivocally on the side of Ukraine and against the Russia invasion during a virtual address to Israeli lawmakers.
Why it matters: Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is one of the few leaders who is in contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has been passing messages between Putin and Zelensky in an attempt to reach a ceasefire.
Around 110 of the 120 members of the Knesset logged in to watch the speech. It was also broadcasted live on all Israeli TV networks and aired during a big pro-Ukraine rally in Tel Aviv.
What they are saying: “Why are you busy with calculations [regarding Russia]? Mediating without taking sides? You can mediate — but not between good and evil,” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian president compared the Russian invasion to the Holocaust and said Russia unleashed all-out war aimed at destroying the Ukrainian people like Nazi Germany wanted to destroy the Jewish people.
Zelensky criticized the Israeli government’s policy regarding the entry of Ukrainian refugees, and complained that Israel refuses to supply Ukraine with the Iron Dome anti-missile system and other defensive weapons and equipment.
The Ukrainian president also criticized the Israeli government for failing to impose sanctions on Russia like other countries in the west.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said after the speech that he condemns the attack on Ukraine and thanks Zelensky for sharing the emotions and the distress of his people with the members of the Knesset.
“We will continue to help the Ukrainian people as much as we can and never turn our back to people who suffer from war,” Lapid said.
The other side: The Israeli prime minister’s office and foreign ministry have declined to comment on Zelensky’s speech. A senior Israeli official told Axios: “We can understand what he is going through. He is under huge distress and his people are dying.”
On the other hand, several ministers and lawmakers criticized the comparison Zelensky made between the war in Ukraine and the Holocaust.
Flashback: Zelensky’s speech echoed the harsh criticism that was voiced by a senior Ukrainian official earlier in the month during an interview with Axios. “Bennett is basically telling us to surrender and we have no intention of doing that,” the senior Ukrainian official said.
Behind the scenes: Zelensky wanted to give the speech in front of the Knesset plenary but was declined. The speaker of the Knesset said it was impossible because lawmakers are on recess and the plenary is under renovations.
Israeli officials said that while this was all true, it wasn’t the only reason. The Israeli government was concerned that if Zelensky gave a speech in the Knesset, Putin would ask to do the same — something nobody in Jerusalem wanted to happen.
After facing criticism on social media, the speaker of the Knesset offered a compromise under which Zelensky would speak to members via Zoom.
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***
Dear Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,
Your recent speech before the Israeli Knesset was a disgrace when it comes to global struggles for freedom and liberation, particularly of the Palestinian people. You reversed the roles of occupier and occupied. You missed another opportunity to demonstrate the justice of your cause and the broader cause of freedom.
You said: “We are in different countries and in completely different conditions. But the threat is the same: for both us and you – the total destruction of the people, state, culture. And even of the names: Ukraine, Israel.”
I am angry and sad that Russia is seeking to occupy your country and to crush the rights of the Ukrainian people to self-determination and freedom, and I believe that every possible support must be given to Ukrainians as they resist this barbaric aggression. At the same time, I reject the policies of the US and its Nato allies around the globe.
And while I admire your success in building a large international coalition to support your struggle against Russian aggression, I wish we as Palestinians could persuade the world to mobilise in a similar fashion, and force Israel to abide by international resolutions.
I am also concerned by your apparent double standards towards the legitimate Palestinian struggle against occupation, oppression, killings, racial discrimination and displacement – crimes that Israel has practiced for more than seven decades against my people.
Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people have included the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba. Hundreds of towns and villages were ethnically cleansed and demolished, with most of their features then erased from the earth, preventing the return of their people. Some Palestinians became displaced within the newly proclaimed state of Israel, while others sought refuge in neighbouring Arab countries.
Occupation and siege
Palestinians who became Israeli citizens have endured rampant discrimination, while those living in the West Bank live under a brutal occupation, and those in Gaza a crushing siege. Israel has criminalised the Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation, denied the legitimate Palestinian leadership, confiscated Palestinian property and resources, and arrested Palestinian activists.
Racist laws, such as the 2018 nation-state law and the recently revised citizenship law, have codified Israel’s opposition to Palestinian self-determination and to a Palestinian homeland.
And yet, you have taken public positions in support of Israeli occupation. In 2020, you opted to quit the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, a body tasked with supporting Palestinian rights. You even backed Israel’s right to “self-defence” when it was practicing the most extreme forms of aggression against our people.
Since the start of Russia’s offensive against your country, you have continued to practice double standards. While Israel has hesitated to accept non-Jewish Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian bombing – a policy motivated by inhumanity and ethnic supremacism, with which Palestinians are all too familiar – you remain willing to turn to Israel’s right-wing nationalist prime minister, Naftali Bennett, as a mediator.
I know that most Palestinians are watching your stubborn struggle and wishing you victory over Russia’s brutal aggression. I also know that a Russian victory would be a great gift to Israel’s aggressive posture – a victory for its “Iron Wall” concept, which regulates its dealings with us until our complete defeat.
On the other hand, the struggle and victory of your people, even with the destruction of much of your country and the displacement of scores of Ukrainians, would give hope to other peoples struggling against oppression and erasure, rekindling our hopes for return and liberation. To this end, I urge you to stop supporting our oppressors.
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Asad Ghanem is a professor of political science at the University of Haifa. Palestinian activist and writer.
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***
Derek Brouwer owns a small fleet of trucks for his business, transporting hay from Southern Ontario, down into the United States. He was interviewed on Fox news recently for the blow back that he received for having a truck in Ottawa during the Emergency Measures Act.
I spoke to Derek over the phone to get the rest of his story.
When a neighbour asked him if he wanted to be in the convoy, Derek’s drivers got busy attaching flags to the trucks. One of his trucks was in Florida at the time. The other two drove with the convoy, starting at Drumbo, Ontario. One went to Toronto, and the other to Ottawa. In Ottawa the truck and driver were ushered, by police, to a front row parking space by the parliament buildings.
Derek said he was quite optimistic at the start, he was just waiting for the Prime Minister to come out and talk to them. Especially since Trudeau had told Prime Minister Modi, little more than a year ago to open up dialogue with the Indian farmers, who had protested for 12 months, it seemed like a reasonable request.
“At first it was like hanging out at a truck show,” he said. “Lots of people came by to say ‘hi’, and offer me or my drivers a thank you for being there. I let the young guys go on the weekends,” Derek explained. “I took my turn when it was more quiet during the week. Yeah, they took the garbage cans away, and locked the shops up, and anywhere you could go to the bathroom. We were there that first weekend of Jan 29th, and for about 23 days, I think. When the police got pushy and violence started happening on Saturday, Feb 19th, I heard that drivers were being pulled out of the trucks and beaten up pretty bad, so I told my driver to leave the truck there, unlocked, and just get himself out. With all the people and panic, the last thing I wanted was to try moving the truck and have the wheels unknowingly roll over someone in the street.”
The police were nice all the way through the protest, right up until the end, Brouwer relates. He didn’t have much contact with police himself, but did at one point have an affable conversation with an officer about the eternal (centennial) flame, and why it had been extinguished.
The only notice they got that the trucks would be have to be moved were unsigned papers left in a bunch of truck windows…for all you could tell it could have been a prank, because no jurisdiction or official authority was listed on the notice. In fact, it was a little strange, because the concrete barricades had been blocking everything for some time, and the police had just opened them and waved more trucks into Wellington Street, the ones that had been parked on side streets and such, on Feb 15th which was pretty strange. Brouwer was keeping an eye on the situation with the Emergency Act, and decided to move some money to his Florida bank account, through a signed cheque, that Tuesday.
Friday the 17th, the Police began to slowly herd the protesters on foot. Anybody who was arrested on Friday was released within the hour, and let go, without any tickets. But if Friday was a gentle walk, then Saturday was a run. It was like they were waiting for the big crowd, to make a show of force, which made no sense – had they come in at night, during the week, Brouwer figures 20 cops would have been effective at clearing out Wellington Street, had they really wanted to.
While all of this was happening on the streets of Ottawa, back at his office at home, Brouwer’s secretary had received confirmation from Florida on Thursday, that the money had been successfully moved – only to discover when trying to complete a transaction, mid-afternoon on the next day, that the Canadian account was frozen and the money they had tried to transfer was mysteriously caught between banks, showing up on both accounts, with the funds being available through neither. That was his Trucking account. His second option, to be able to pay bills, was a personal credit card, which was also frozen. His drivers had to carry the fuel bills, personally, for a few days. On Saturday 19th, his farm accounts were also immobilized, and Brouwer received notice that his CVOR, a kind license containing the credit score of his driving record as a commercial trucker, would be suspended. The Commercial Vehicle Operating Record is also a quick kind of resume for truckers to get hired on. Landing on him at the same time, was the news that the truck he had left in Ottawa that day was being impounded, and the Mayor of Ottawa was talking about selling the impounded trucks to recoup the costs of that huge police force.
Brouwer said he wasn’t worried about his truck, he was just kinda glad that it was a holiday weekend, so that his business wasn’t screwed up too badly. He called the Ottawa police, and they informed him that his truck would be released by the end of the next week. About 100 friends and neighbours showed up at the farm the next Monday as a welcoming party for the truck when it came home. The air lines to the trailer had been cut, and the safety sticker had been scratched off the trailer, otherwise it was undamaged.
As for his bank accounts – it may have been the help of all the people who pulled their money from the chartered banks that led to the Emergency Act being revoked, or it may have been a coincidence that one hour after he was interviewed on Fox news on Monday, the RCMP called him to say they were working to get his accounts unlocked. Either way, Brouwer says his relationship with his bank manager is no longer one of trust. Yes, most banks say that they would have to follow the law and do what they were told, but his sense is that it is not as cut and dried as that, and the manager worked pretty quickly with whoever was in charge of this financial seizure, to have things frozen so immediately; and then to act as if he didn’t know about it when Derek called the branch, just doesn’t sit well.
The greatest irony, of course, is that Derek Brouwer and his trucking company have no criminal charges laid against them, no ticket, no fine from Ottawa, no arrest warrant was issued.
The sanction on his CVOR, did cost him a $1,000 fine for unregistered plates, on the truck in Florida, but he figures there is nothing he can do about that, as the US are the ones who issued the fine.
So far as he is aware, none of his drivers have ever been asked for a vaccine pass by the United States Border Crossing. It is only the Canadian side that requires the ArriveCAN app. “They know everything about you as you drive up, because of your phone,” Derek said.
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Julie Fleischauer is an independent writer, and farmer, from Stratford, Ontario. She has been speaking at local freedom rallies, and working to expose the real stories of the people impacted by the pandemic, to make a difference in her community. She is also Deputy Sanity Officer of Perth Public Sanity. You can watch her JupiterJ Bitchute Channel or email her at: [email protected]
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
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***
The U.S. media have been dominated by images of Ukrainians suffering under the Russian invasion.
In order for the chosen ones to succeed in their democratic mission, Thomas L. Friedman further intoned, the official Obstructor has to be contained, put in an “isolation cell. The same for the larger Russian public.”[2]
Russia, together with “China […] as well as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba”, is conducting “a rollback” of our arduous attempts at peace and democracy, says Francis Fukuyama.[3]
And so the free press goes on, virtually without exception.
The method is to denounce the crimes of official government enemies, while staying silent about the crimes of the U.S. government or its allies.
As an example, the media have failed to report on large-scale war crimes committed by the Ukrainian Army in Eastern Ukraine. The plight of Yemenis subjected to years of international terror by some of the most powerful nations on Earth has also been ignored.
Mass graves in Luhansk where neo-Nazi militias attached to the Ukrainian army killed and buried civilians. But you won’t read about this in The New York Times or even alternative media sources except RT. [Source: covertactionmagazine.com]
Home turned to rubble by Saudi bombers in Sana’a. [Source: wsws.org]
The people of Yemen have now been given “a death sentence” since “the scale of the current gaps” of humanitarian funding “are unprecedented,” as UN official Martin Griffiths noted.[4]
The same day Russia invaded Ukraine, the UN warned for the first time that thirteen million Yemenis now face “the threat of starvation.” The World Health Organization (WHO) further warned of 20 million Yemenis running the risk of being infected with malaria.[5]
Naturally, this is more or less a completely manufactured situation largely due to the years of blockade, bombing and aggression by the Saudi coalition, including the Western states.
Since war broke out in 2015, the U.S.-Saudi coalition has claimed to be defending the legitimate government of Yemen in the face of a rebellion by the Houthi minority group backed by Iran. The Houthis, however, have had legitimate grievances against the corrupt U.S.-Saudi imposed government and have sought to restore the traditional power of the Zaydeh clan, which promotes a divergent brand of Islam from the Iranian mullahs.[6]
A UN report noted that the blockade alone prevented 350,000 tons of food from entering Yemen during the first few months of 2021 alone.[7]
Furthermore, the blockade prevented oil, worth $12 billion, from being imported during the same year; the country is practically “entirely dependent” on imports of essential goods such as food, since only 1-3% of its land is arable.[8]
Yemen’s Aviation department warned that “more than a million patients are at risk of death as a result of the lack of many medicines,” depleted due to the blockade and war.
It is in other words, as the Norwegian Refugee Council reported, “like a hostage situation.”[9] The Coalition seems to have intentionally disproportionally bombed key import ports, such as Hodeidah. A report from the summer of 2021 by the Human Rights Office in Hodeidah, documented that:
economic facilities that were […bombed by the Coalition…] amounted to more than 4,255 facilities included […] nine sea ports, 97 power plants, 41 communications networks, 637 water tanks, 211 government facilities, 749 roads and bridges, 90 factories, 57 fuel trucks, 2,226 commercial facilities, 78 chicken and livestock farms, 972 means of transportation, 392 fishing boats, 213 food stores, 53 gas stations, 49 markets and 125 food trucks.[10]
Thus, no one can be seriously surprised over the grizzly facts mentioned above.
In this discussion, one has to be clear about what the situation really is. In March 2015, an internal coup against a despised dictator took place; a dictator who had cheated in the 2012 election and who has illegitimately held the power nominally since. What followed was an attack and invasion of Yemen by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) together with virtually the entire West.
IN a standard scholarly study, Asher Orkaby writes: “At its core, the current Yemen conflict […] is nothing more than ‘a centuries-old method of regime change.’”[11] It is superfluous to point the reader to another current situation this reminds one of.
By the most elementary standards of logic, the West would be condemning these atrocities, imposing the harshest of reprisals on the Coalition, sending billions of dollars to its adversaries and so on.
There would be enormous reports about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and the free press would have produced a massively indignant commentary about the “mass humanitarian suffering, and with manifold war crimes,” as Foreign Affairs put it regarding Russia’s provoked invasion of Ukraine.[12]
Fact: We have been supporting the terror directly, throughout, and not even the most bitter condemnations by the UN have succeeded in stopping our “masterly and humbly” executed “democratic” experiments in the region—namely, to quote the UN, “providing arms and military support” and thereby “perpetuating” the slaughter.[13]
During the last couple of months alone, the U.S. has provided Saudi Arabia with more than $1 billion in missiles and service of their attack helicopters—all to keep the bombardments running at its impressive current rate, killing at least 20,000 civilians, according to an expert UN panel.[14]
Furthermore, the U.S. has participated in Saudi Arabia’s occupation of Yemen. Internal documents from the U.S. Air Force concede that a few hundred special forces are in Yemen to train Arabian pilots, meaning “yet another U.S. form of complicity in a brutal war” of aggression “that has gone on for far too long,” as William Hartung pointed out three years ago.[15]
And the intentions are perfectly clear: We want the war to continue. The U.S. covets the strategic island of Socotra off Yemen which it will stop at nothing to secure. The U.S. also needs to continue to access cheap oil from the Saudis, so will continue to support their criminal adventures. Tim Lenderking, U.S. special envoy for Yemen, complained recently in a leaked diplomatic document about Saudi Arabia wanting to end the war due to their tactical failures. Luckily, Lenderking was able to convince them of “the necessity of not leaving Yemen completely.”[16]
But the U.S. is not alone in this. The internal British documentary record notes that London has a military presence in the southern and eastern parts of Yemen. “They are a fully-fledged force. We can’t say they are minor,” as one local commentator put it.[17]
Amnesty International activists stage a protest against UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia. [Source: English.alaraby.co.uk]
More significant, perhaps, are the arms export to Saudi Arabia and the UAE worth $27 billion. The press was informed in September of last year that France was risking being brought to court for having funded Saudi Arabia with 70 attack jets used to bomb Yemenis—and much of its other weapons exports are unknown.[18]
Between 2018 and 2020, Germany sold 4.7 billion Euros worth of military equipment to Egypt, Algeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). From 2012-2017, Saudi Arabia bought $3 billion worth of weapons from Germany.
Nevertheless, Yemen’s Prime Minister, Abdel-Aziz bin Habtoor, revealed in an interview late last year what was already obvious, namely that the
British presence is concentrated […] in favor of Saudi interests in extending the oil pipeline project […The UAE is…] a very cheap tool used by the Americans and the British […] The UAE wants to secure the interests of a geographical type, and Saudi Arabia wants to secure its strategic projects with a long-term economic dimension. The conflict that is taking place by the new colonists in the south [UAE] is about their own interests.[19]
These statements are crucial, since it was reported the very same day that the invasion of Ukraine happened (February 24), that UAE-backed forces “started to build” infrastructure in Yemen, in order to “separate southern Yemen from its north, and declare a loyal state in southern Yemen by supporting and adopting separatist factions”—as bin Habtoor had already indicated.[20]
Again: The UAE has been a key perpetrator of aggression since day one. How, then, has the free world and the free press responded? They have responded with the typical response, namely, with continued support and silence.
No talk of a “rollback” of human rights when the “wrong” people are the perpetrators. In fact, not long prior to the declaration, France announced yet another weapons contract with the UAE of 80 Rafale attack jets worth $19 billion, a “historic” deal.[21]
In other words, we have a case of international violence, aggression, occupation, and terror—and with the full support of the West.
How, then, is it that the International Criminal Court has not produced a condemnatory report about all of this?
After all, the evidence for such is simply overwhelming. Well, again, there are details one could turn to on that, though do not expect to find it discussed in TheNew York Times.
Despite international “lawyers urging the International Criminal Court,” nothing is happening.[22] And the reason is simple as to why this international aggression is not being investigated, as we will learn from a long and detailed study from Mtwana—a leading human rights organization in the Middle East.
They note that “likely vetoes by United Nations Security Council members such as France, the UK and the U.S. pose political obstacles to doing so”—one of the funny features of the democratic “global coalition.”[23]
All of this leads to an obvious conclusion—almost to the point at which it becomes too obvious to enunciate. The conclusion we draw from this is that our sudden commitment to human rights and suffering, in the case of Ukraine, is not much more than shameless cynicism, since we for years have supported international terror and aggression of the most awesome proportions.
Ukraine and Yemen are in a sense a rare controlled study history has set up. The primary differences? In one case, the “right” people are carrying out the atrocities; in the other, the “wrong” people are doing so.
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Andi Olluri lives in western Sweden. He just turned 20 and is studying dietetics. Andi has been an activist since he was a young teenager. He can be reached at [email protected].
Notes
David Brooks, “The Week That Awoke the World,” New York Times, March 3, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/opinion/ukraine-russia-awoke-world.html
Thomas L. Friedman, “I See Three Scenarios for How This War Ends,” New York Times, March 1, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/opinion/ukraine-russia-putin.html
Francis Fukuyama, “Putin’s War on the Liberal Order,”: Financial Times, March 3, 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/d0331b51-5d0e-4132-9f97-c3f41c7d75b3
Voice of America, Feb. 15, 2022, https://www.voanews.com/a/6420861.html
Associated Press, Feb. 24, 2022; Middle East Eye, Sep. 22, 2021; Middle East Monitor, Oct. 20, 2021.
See Issa Blumi, Destroying Yemen: What Chaos in Arabia Tells Us About the World(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2018).
William Hartung, “Are We Pressing Saudi Arabia Enough on the Yemen Blockade?” Responsible Statecraft, April 7, 2021, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/04/07/is-biden-pressing-saudi-arabia-enough-to-lift-the-yemen-blockade/
Yemen Press Agency, Nov. 15, 2021; “Food war: How the Saudi-led coalition uses French Weapons to starve millions of civilians in Yemen,” Disclose, April, 2019.
MEMO, Aug. 11, 2021.
YPA, Jul. 30, 2021.
Asher Orkaby, Beyond the Arab Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 214.
Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage, “What if Russia Loses?” Foreign Affairs, March 4, 2022.
MEMO, September 15, 2021.
Antiwar, Nov. 4, 2021; AP, Sep. 9, 2021. For further details about U.S. weapons exports to Saudi Arabia, see William Hartung,“Arming Repression: U.S Military support for Saudi Arabia from Trump to Biden” in Center for International Policy, Dec. 2021.
Nick Turse, “Despite Denials, Documents Reveal U.S. Training UAE Forces for Combat in Yemen,” Yahoo News, January 16, 2019.
MEE, Jan. 28, 2022.
MEMO, Jul. 8, 2021.
MEMO, Jul. 16, 2021. For further detail, see MEE by Bourne (Jul. 5, 2021); MEMO, Sep. 24, 2021. For a detailed study, see footnote 10.
MEMO, Jan. 19, 2022. For a condemnation by 40 leading Human Rights organizations, see Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Nov. 16, 2021. See also YPA, Oct. 15, 2021.
YPA, Feb. 24, 2022.
MEMO, Dec. 3, 2021.
Charles Hymas, “British Lawyers Mount Bid for War Crimes Inquiry into Saudi-Led ‘Coalition” Massacres in Yemen,” The Telegraph, August 30, 2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/30/british-lawyers-mount-bid-war-crimes-inquiry-saudi-led-coalition/
“Starvation Markets: The use of starvation by warring parties in Yemen,” Mtwana, September 2021, 346.
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A study published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment warns that thawing of permafrost (a ground that remains completely frozen for two or more years) in the Arctic region can prompt the reemergence of greenhouse gases (e.g., methane and carbon dioxide), microbes, and chemicals (e.g., banned pesticides like DDT). Past research finds gases, microbes, and chemicals drift near the poles, becoming entrapped in ice under the accumulating snowfall. As the global climate continues to rise and the climate crisis worsens, studies like this show significant effects, as ice encapsulating these toxic chemicals is melting. Upon melting, some chemicals can volatilize back into the atmosphere, releasing toxicants into the air and aquatic systems, with the ensuing consequences. Microbes frozen for thousands to millions of years can also emerge from thawing permafrost, with unknown implications on human, animal, and ecosystem health. The melting permafrost is already beginning to impact infrastructure, creating sinkholes that damage roads, trees, and utility poles. Moreover, mixtures of chemicals, microbes, and greenhouse gases (GHGs) in permafrost are difficult to assess. Therefore, studies like this highlight the need to evaluate the health and ecological effects of melting arctic permafrost (and glaciers) from anthropogenic (human)-induced climate change. [For related pieces, see Silent Snow: The unimaginable impact of toxic chemical use and DDT in Glacial Melt Puts Alaskan Communities at Risk.]
Approximately 1,700 billion metric tons of carbon, including GHGs like carbon dioxide and methane, are present in permafrost, over 51 times more than the amount of carbon released from 2019 fossil fuel emissions. The remaining organic matter, frozen in permafrost, will decay after thawing, further increasing atmospheric carbon emissions. Although current models predict an increase in carbon released from permafrost in the coming decades to hundreds of years, scientists lack knowledge on how much, how long, and the specific carbon source. Therefore, researchers in this study used ground, air, and satellite data to evaluate the effects of subsequent permafrost melting.
Using ground measurements, researchers can monitor changes in specific areas, while airborne and space-based (satellite) measurements monitor changes over broader areas. Airborne and ground measurements represent time-specific monitoring data, and satellite measurements monitor data continuously. Moreover, ground measurements mainly focus on microbial communities in thawing permafrost. Airborne measurements focus on GHG emission with satellite and airborne data mapping GHG hotspots. The combination of data forms a holistic (complete) overview of changes in the arctic region.
The study determines that Earth’s polar regions are warming the fastest, approximately two to four times faster than average, and these changes can have a cascading adverse impact on lower and higher latitudes. The scientists note that the polar regions (Arctic and Antarctic) stabilize Earth’s climate and drive heat transfer, powering jet streams and other fluxes/currents. Researchers cannot identify specific microbes encased in permafrost, nor whether GHGs emissions will be gradual or rapid. Thus, polar warming has future consequences that threaten regular weather, climate, and chemical exposure patterns.
Many scientists consider Arctic environments “pristine,” void of direct chemical inputs from chemicals used in more temperate and industrial climates. However, the Arctic has become a sink for these toxic chemicals, as studies find evidence that airborne Arctic chemical concentrations are comparable to that of industrialized regions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Additional investigations find the presence of chemicals and microbes in soil and ice samples taken from Arctic regions. The Arctic is highly susceptible to global pollution, as warmer air contaminated with industrial and agricultural chemicals from manufacturing regions move poleward toward cooler air. Environmental pollutants can condense into snowflakes high in the atmosphere and deposit onto the Arctic surface. Although deposition of these chemicals via long-range atmospheric transport and condensation are significant contributors to Arctic contamination, the chemical properties allowing these substances to persist in the environment so long are concerning. Some of these long-lived chemicals include regionally banned pesticides like DDT, heptachlor, and lindane, which are highly toxic to humans and animals, causing a range of adverse effects, from respiratory issues to nervous system disorders and birth deformities to various common and uncommon cancers. Although banned chemicals remain a global issue, as much of the developing world still report usage, banned/past-use compounds are not the only contaminants in the Arctic. Current-use chemicals like chlorpyrifos, dacthal (DCPA), and trans-nonachlor (a component of the banned insecticide chlordane) readily contaminate the arctic, and continued use will result in an increased probability of atmospheric transportation and deposition of chemicals on Arctic glacier tops via precipitation. According to Brettania Walker, Ph.D., toxics officer at World Wildlife Fund’s Arctic Program, “Not only is chemical contamination increasing in the Arctic but also modern chemicals are now appearing in many Arctic species alongside older chemicals, some of them banned for over [30] years.”
The climate crisis adds another level of concern, especially regarding passive pesticide and microbial exposure from snowmelt. Pesticide contamination is already an issue in the U.S., as results of the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) and National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) show that pesticides and their breakdown products are present in all U.S. streams and widespread in groundwater throughout the country. For instance, a Chicago-based 2020 study shows black women who consume more tap water per day have higher bodily residues of the DDT metabolite (DDE). Permafrost and glacial melting will only add to water source contamination as volatile chemicals can enter waterways at the same concentration levels as before ice entrapment, even after several decades. Moreover, several banned chemicals are not soluble in water (e.g., DDT, lindane, chlordane) but bioaccumulate in the fatty tissue of many Arctic species, such as polar bears, seals, whales, and some fatty fish like salmon, herring, and catfish. The level of DDT in Arctic penguins’ blubber is similar to levels during initial banning more than 30 years ago. Unfortunately, some indigenous tribes in Arctic regions rely on these very mammals and fish for sustenance, and ingesting these pollutants is inevitable, putting their health at risk. Higher bodily concentrations of chemicals are evident in those who consume contaminated meat with associated health risks, including immune system disorder, increased susceptibility to disease, central nervous system disorders, learning disabilities among children, reproductive issues, and cancer. Studies find that adults and children who regularly consume fish from contaminated streams are at increased risk of cancer from dietary and cumulative exposure, in many cases above EPA thresholds.
This study adds to the growing body of literature demonstrating disproportionate warming in arctic regions. Arctic thawing has implications for carbon release and landscape changes that are difficult to predict, including alternations in arctic vegetation and density. The combination of data measurements (e.g., ground, airborne, satellite) can aid in monitoring the carbon system, from microbial decay of organic matter to volatilization of chemicals from permafrost and glacier ice. As global warming progresses, exposure concerns will increase significantly, especially for children who are more vulnerable to the toxic effects of chemical exposure. To mitigate the risks associated with chemical exposure from toxic pesticides, advocates say the manufacturing and use of pesticides need addressing, first and foremost. It falls to global leaders to curtail the continued manufacturing of chemical pollutants that readily contaminate polar regions. Recently, agrochemicals like pesticides and fertilizers overtook the fossil fuel industry as the leading contributor to environmental sulfur emissions. If pesticide use and manufacturing are amplifying the impacts of the climate crisis, advocates argue that it is essential to incite change by enhancing pesticide policy and regulation that eliminates use. The study concluded, “Scientific cooperation across diverse fields has already increased the modeling accuracy and data integration for carbon transport, permafrost thaw, and climate scenarios. However, further international collaboration, monitoring, and exploration is needed to determine the areas of greatest change. All efforts to quantify carbon release expand scientific understanding of complex, changing and emergent dynamics of a warming Arctic.”
Lack of adequate persistent pesticide regulations highlights the need for better policies surrounding pesticide use, especially when a toxic pesticide is banned for use in the U.S., but not for production and export to other countries. A switch from chemical-intensive agriculture to regenerative organic agriculture can significantly reduce the threat of the climate crisis by eliminating toxic, petroleum-based pesticide use, building soil health, and sequestering carbon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds that agriculture, forestry, and other land use contributes about 23% of total net anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, while organic production reduces greenhouse gas emissions and sequesters carbon in the soil. Learn more about how it is possible to sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions by switching to organic management practices by reading Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change: A Down-to-Earth Solution to Global Warming. For more information about organic food production, visit the Beyond Pesticides Keep Organic Strong webpage. Learn more about the adverse health and environmental effects chemical-intensive farming poses for various crops and how eating organic produce reduces pesticide exposure.
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The study I am about to describe was published in the March 18, 2022 issue of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Review (MMWR). Once upon a time it appeared to be a high quality publication, and also carried useful editorial comments and criticisms of the articles, which have now disappeared.
This study is based on a relatively small group of children collected in parts of 4 states, but surprisingly 76% of the children live in Arizona. 1,052 of the children are aged 5 to 11. They are swabbed weekly for COVID. Half the Omicron infections were asymptomatic. I wonder if CDC distinguished the variants by anthing but timing.
This group is not representative of the entire US, in which a bit over 30% of children in this age group are vaccinated (and by February 14 only 22% in Chicago). In CDC’s group, 65% were fully vaccinated, 7% had had one dose and 29% of the children were unvaccinated.
There were a total of 381 COVID infections in this group: 137 in the fully vaccinated and 184 infections in the unvaccinated. Which leaves, per my calculation, 60 cases in the singly vaccinated, for whom few data are presented.
Now, there is no way to check CDC’s calculations, since each child had a unique number of days in which they were “enrolled,” starting 2 weeks after their second dose.
But what CDC states is that the median duration of enrollment in the study for the vaccinated kids is 53 days, and for the unvaccinated kids 41 days. You would have thought the unvaccinated would have participated for a longer period, since they don’t have to wait two weeks until after the second shot to join the ranks of the officially vaccinated. I have no explanation for this.
So how well did the vaccine work during a bit less than 2 months after being considered fully vaccinated?
CDC says that after adjustments, the vaccine was 31% effective at preventing “symptomatic and asymptomatic” COVID in this age group. At under two months. Wonder what it is at four or six months? How long till we are in negative efficacy territory?
What are the media going to look at? The final paragraph, of course, when they are trying to get their story out fast. In fact, they probably are working off a press release. What does that final paragraph say?
This study provides evidence that receipt of 2 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is effective in preventing both asymptomatic and symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection with the Omicron variant among children and adolescents aged 5–15 years. All eligible children and adolescents should remain up to date with recommended COVID-19 vaccinations.
Now we understand why FDA had the manufacturers vaccinate the placebo group at 2 months in all the COVID vaccine trials. FDA had established a 50% efficacy standard to issue an EUA, and the longer the trials went on, the lower the efficacy would be. But now FDA and CDC can’t even get the 5-11 year old efficacy above 31% in Arizona, and in New York, at 7 weeks efficacy was 12% in this age group. This does not meet the EUA standard.
I wonder how they can possibly spin the benefits of vaccination for the 6 month through 5 year olds? But I expect our federal health authorities will find a way.
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III Scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research does not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The history of this war must be understood.
The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.
A bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
Mike Whitney: Can you explain to me why you think Russia is winning the war in Ukraine?
Larry C. Johnson: Within the first 24 hours of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, all Ukrainian Ground Radar Intercept capabilities were wiped out. Without those radars, the Ukrainian Air Force lost its ability to do air to air intercept. In the intervening three weeks, Russia has established a de facto No Fly Zone over Ukraine. While still vulnerable to shoulder fired Surface to Air Missiles supplied by the U.S. and NATO to the Ukrainians, there is no evidence that Russia has had to curtail Combat Air Operations.
Russia’s arrival in Kiev within three days of the invasion also caught my attention. I recalled thatthe Nazi’s in Operation Barbarossa took seven weeks to reach Kiev and the required 7 more weeks to subdue the city. The Nazis had the advantage of not pulling punches to avoid civilian casualties and were eager to destroy critical infrastructure. Yet many so-called American military experts claimed that Russia was bogged down. When a 24 mile (or 40 mile, depends on the news source) was positioned north of Kiev for more than a week, it was clear that Ukraine’s ability to launch significant military operations had been eliminated. If their artillery was intact, then that column was easy pickings for massive destruction. That did not happen. Alternatively, if the Ukrainian’s had a viable fixed wing or rotary wing capability they should have destroyed that column from the air. That did not happen. Or, if they had a viable cruise missile capability they should have rained down hell on the supposedly stalled Russian column. That did not happen. The Ukrainians did not even mount a significant infantry ambush of the column with their newly supplied U.S. Javelins.
The scale and scope of the Russian attack is remarkable. They captured territory in three weeks that is larger than the land mass of the United Kingdom. They then proceeded to carry out targeted attacks on key cities and military installations. We have not seen a single instance of a Ukrainian regiment or brigade size unit attacking and defeating a comparable Russian unit. Instead, the Russians have split the Ukrainian Army into fragments and cut their lines of communication. The Russians are consolidating their control of Mariupol and have secured all approaches on the Black Sea. Ukraine is now cut off in the South and the North.
I would note that the U.S. had a tougher time capturing this much territory in Iraq in 2003 while fighting against a far inferior, less capable military force. If anything, this Russian operation should scare the hell out of U.S. military and political leaders.
The really big news came this week with the Russian missile strikes on what are de facto NATO bases in Yavoriv and Zhytomyr. NATO conducted cyber security training at Zhytomyr in September 2018 and described Ukraine as a “NATO partner.” Zhytomyr was destroyed with hypersonic missiles on Saturday. Yavoriv suffered a similar fate last Sunday. It was the primary training and logistics center that NATO and EUCOM used to supply fighters and weapons to Ukraine. A large number of the military and civilian personnel at that base became casualties.
Not only is Russia striking and destroying bases used by NATO regularly since 2015, but there was no air raid warning and there was no shutdown of the attacking missiles.
MW:Why is the media trying to convince the Ukrainian people that they can prevail in their war against Russia? If what you say is correct, then all the civilians that are being sent to fight the Russian army, are dying in a war they can’t win. I don’t understand why the media would want to mislead people on something so serious. What are your thoughts on the matter?
LCJ: This is a combination of ignorance and laziness. Rather than do real reporting, the vast majority of the media (print and electronic) as well as Big Tech are supporting a massive propaganda campaign. I remember when George W. Bush was Hitler. I remember when Donald Trump was Hitler. And now we have a new Hitler, Vladimir Putin. This is a tired, failed playbook. Anyone who dares to raise legitimate questions about is immediately tarred as a Putin puppet or a Russia stooge. When you cannot argue facts the only recourse is name calling.
MW:Last week, Colonel Douglas MacGregor was a guest on the Tucker Carlson Show. His views on the war are strikingly similar to your own. Here’s what he said in the interview:
“The war is really over for the Ukrainians. They have been ground into bits, there is no question about that despite what we hear from our mainstream media. So, the real question for us at this stage is, Tucker, are we going to live with the Russian people and their government or we going to continue to pursue this sort of regime change dressed up as a Ukrainian war? Are we going to stop using Ukraine as a battering ram against Moscow, which is effectively what we’ve done.” (Tucker Carlson– MacGregor Interview)
Do you agree with MacGregor that the real purpose of goading Russia into a war in Ukraine was “regime change”?
Second, do you agree that Ukraine is being used as a staging ground for the US to carry out a proxy-war on Russia?
LCJ:Doug is great analyst but I disagree with him—I don’t think there is anyone in the Biden Administration that is smart enough to think and plan in those strategic terms. In my view the last 7 years have been the inertia of the NATO status quo. What I mean by that is that NATO and Washington, believed they could continue to creep east on Russia’s borders without provoking a reaction. NATO and EUCOM regularly carried out exercises—including providing “offensive” training—and supplied equipment. I believe reports in the United States that the CIA was providing paramilitary training to Ukrainian units operating in the Donbass are credible. But I have trouble believing that after our debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, we suddenly have Sun Tzu level strategists pulling the strings in Washington.
There is an air of desperation in Washington. Besides trying ban all things Russian, the Biden Administration is trying to bully China, India and Saudi Arabia. I do not see any of those countries falling into line. I believe the Biden crew made a fatal mistake by trying to demonize all things and all people Russian. If anything, this is uniting the Russian people behind Putin and they are ready to dig in for a long struggle.
I am shocked at the miscalculation in thinking economic sanctions on Russia would bring them to their knees. The opposite is true. Russia is self-sufficient and is not dependent on imports. Its exports are critical to the economic well-being of the West. If they withhold wheat, potash, gas, oil, palladium, finished nickel and other key minerals from the West, the European and U.S. economies will be savaged. And this attempt to coerce Russia with sanctions has now made it very likely that the U.S. dollar’s role as the international reserve currency will show up in the dustbin of history.
MW: Ever since he delivered his famous speech inMunich in 2007, Putin has been complaining about the “architecture of global security”. In Ukraine we can see how these nagging security issues can evolve into a full-blown war. As you know, in December Putin made a number of demands related to Russian security, but the Biden administration shrugged them off and never responded. Putin wanted written assurances that NATO expansion would not include Ukraine (membership) and that nuclear missile systems would not be deployed to Romania or Poland. Do you think Putin’s demands are unreasonable?
LCJ:I think Putin’s demands are quite reasonable. The problem is that 99% of Americans have no idea of the kind of military provocation that NATO and the U.S. have carried out over the last 7 years.The public was always told the military exercises were “defensive.” That simply is not true. Now we have news that DTRA was funding biolabs in Ukraine. I guess Putin could agree to allow U.S. nuclear missile systems in Poland and Romania if Biden agrees to allow comparable Russian systems to be deployed in Cuba, Venezuela and Mexico.When we look at it in those terms we can begin to understand that Putin’s demands are not crazy nor unreasonable.
MW:Russian media reports that Russian “high precision, air-launched” missiles struck a facility in west Ukraine “killing more than 100 local troops and foreign mercenaries.” Apparently, the Special Operations training center was located near the town of Ovruch which is just 15 miles from the Polish border. What can you tell us about this incident? Was Russia trying to send a message to NATO?
LCJ: Short answer—YES! Russian military strikes in Western Ukraine during the past week have shocked and alarmed NATO officials. The first blow came on Sunday, March 13 at Yavoriv, Ukraine. Russia hit the base with several missiles, some reportedly hypersonic. Over 200 personnel were killed, which included American and British military and intelligence personnel, and hundreds more wounded. Many suffered catastrophic wounds, such as amputations, and are in hospital. Yet, NATO and the western media have shown little interest in reporting on this disaster.
Yavoriv was an important forward base for NATO (see here). Until February (prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), the U.S. 7th Army Training Command was operating from Yavoriv as late as mid-February. Russia has not stopped there. ASB Military news reports Russia hit another site, Delyatyn, which is 60 miles southeast of Yavoriv (on Thursday I believe). Yesterday, Russia hit Zytomyr, another site where NATO previously had a presence. Putin has sent a very clear message—NATO forces in Ukraine will be viewed and treated as combatants. Period.
MW:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been lionized in the western media as a “wartime leader” and a modern-day “Winston Churchill”. What the media fails to tell its readers is that Zelensky has taken a number of steps to strengthen his grip on power while damaging fragile democratic institutions in Ukraine. For example, Zelensky has “banned eleven opposition-owned news organizations” and tried to bar the head of Ukraine’s largest opposition party, Viktor Medvedchuk, from running for office on a bogus “terrorist financing” charge. This is not the behavior of a leader that is seriously committed to democracy.
What’s your take on Zelensky? Is he really the “patriotic leader” the media makes him out to be?
LCJ:Zelensky is a comedian and an actor. Not a very good one at that in my view. The West is cynically using the fact he is Jewish as a diversion from the size-able contingent of Neo-Nazis (and I mean genuine Nazis who still celebrate the Ukrainian Waffen SS unit’s accomplishments while fighting with the Nazis in WW II). The facts are clear—he is banning opposition political parties and shutting down opposition media. I guess that is the new definition of “democracy.”
MW: How does this end? There’s an excellent post at the Moon of Alabama site titled “What Will Be The Geographic End State Of The War In Ukraine“. The author of the post, Bernard, seems to think that Ukraine will eventually be partitioned along the Dnieper River “and south along the coast that holds a majority ethnic Russian population.” He also says this:
“This would eliminate Ukrainian access to the Black Sea and create a land bridge towards the Moldavian breakaway Transnistria which is under Russian protection. The rest of the Ukraine would be a land confined, mostly agricultural state, disarmed and too poor to be build up to a new threat to Russia anytime soon. Politically it would be dominated by fascists from Galicia which would then become a major problem for the European Union.”
What do you think? Will Putin impose his own territorial settlement on Ukraine in order to reinforce Russian security and bring the hostilities to an end or is a different scenario more likely?
LCJ: I agree with Moon. Putin’s primary objective is to secure Russia from foreign threats and effect a divorce with the West. Russia has the physical resources to be an independent sovereign and is in the process of making that vision come true.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
\ and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. He is the founder and managing partner of BERG Associates, which was established in 1998. Larry provided training to the US Military’s Special Operations community for 24 years. He has been vilified by the right and the left, which means he must be doing something right. His analysis and commentary can be found at his blog, https://sonar21.com/
Michael Whitney is a 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 a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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Some people who have received COVID-19 shots experience a range of debilitating symptoms or death
Healthy teenagers, athletes and doctors are among those who have died within hours or days of receiving COVID-19 shots
Others have experienced stroke-like symptoms, paralysis, tics, partial blindness and seizures following the shots
Increasing numbers of people are becoming compelled to speak out and share their stories of how COVID-19 shots altered their lives
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Despite assurances of safety from health officials, it’s what the long-term effects of COVID-19 shots will be. Spike proteins from the shots can circulate in your body after injection, causing damage to cells, tissues and organs. “Spike protein is a deadly protein,” Dr. Peter McCullough, an internist, cardiologist and trained epidemiologist, said.1
Experimental and observational evidence show that the human immune response to COVID-19 shots is very different than the response induced by exposure to SARS-CoV-2, and people who’ve received COVID-19 shots may have damage to their innate immune system that’s leading to a form of vaccine acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (VAIDS), due to the impairment in interferon signaling.2
Further, likely due to monocyte activation by the spike protein from the vaccine, some people who have received COVID-19 shots experience a range of debilitating symptoms similar to those found in long haul COVID-19 syndrome, such as headaches, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, joint pain and chest pain.3
For some, however, the shot’s adverse effects occur quickly, resulting in life-changing debilitation. You can see 10 powerful examples below, ranging from deaths to lives upended due to illogical quarantine rules that illustrate the absurdity of COVID-19 tyranny.
These are real people with real stories to share, and the more people who see them, the more awareness can grow to provide those who survived with the help and medical care they deserve — while warning others of the potentially deadly consequences of COVID-19 injections.
If you find these stories helpful and motivating then I would encourage you to visit our breaking news blog on our site as this is where the stories below were initially posted. The blog posts stay up continuously and are not removed after 48 hours.
10 People Whose Lives Changed After COVID-19 Shots
Ashby was forced to get a COVID-19 shot by December 3, 2021, or his employer would consider him “voluntarily resigned.” Eight days after receiving the Pfizer jab, he had a major hemorrhagic stroke.
He’s been in rehab since October 2021, suffering from complete paralysis on the left side of his body. He still has a long way to go in recovery, and still can’t feel or use his left arm or walk without assistance. His rehab is excruciatingly painful, he says, and he spends up to six hours a day learning how to walk again.
What’s worse, his employer isn’t covering the medical bills for the costs of this stroke. “My life has been totally changed, all because of the vaccine mandate … my old life is dead,” he says, “and I have started my new life as a paraplegic.”
Healthy athletes around the world are dying of heart attacks and strokes. The numbers are exploding, with athletes suffering neurological problems, too. What’s happened in the last six months to a year that’s different? Is there anything in common that’s changed that hooks all these athletes together? They all have had COVID-19 shots. Among them:
Abou Ali, 22-year-old football (soccer) player, who suffered from cardiac arrest in Denmark on September 11, 2021
Caddy Alberto Olguin collapsed and died from a heart attack on the golf course on October 9, 2021
30-year-old Venezuelan marathon champion Alexaida Guedez, 30, died of a heart attack during a 5,000-meter race on August 22, 2021
Andrea Astolfi, 45, sports director of Calcio Orsago in Italy, died of a heart attack on September 11, 2021 after returning from training
Ava Azzopardi, 14, collapsed on a soccer field in the U.S. on October 15, 2021, suffering from cardiac arrest; she had to be put in a medically induced coma to survive
Dr. Neil Singh Dhalla fell asleep four days after he got a COVID-19 booster shot — and died from a heart attack. The autopsy stated myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle that’s a recognized adverse effect of mRNA COVID-19 shots.4 A CEO of a major health clinic, he was only 48 years old and had never had heart problems in his life.
4. Faith Ranson, 16-Year-Old Plagued by Convulsions and Tics
A happy, healthy 16-year-old girl in Australia who got the Pfizer COVID-19 shot is now crippled with convulsions, persistent nausea and visible tics. The problems began three days after her second shot and have been ongoing for months. Health officials actually admitted “there is no question Faith has had a delayed reaction to the second Pfizer vaccination” and is suffering adverse reactions from the shot. Her story even made it to mainstream news.
In this video, a “triple vaxxed” nurse from New York explains how she tested positive for COVID-19, and her employer told her to come back to work even though she hadn’t been in quarantine for five days — against CDC recommendations.
Since she was asymptomatic, she was cleared to go to back to work in a health care setting, but told she still had to quarantine in all other aspects of her life. In short, she can go to work to care for patients while actively positive for COVID-19, but she can’t go to a grocery store or a gas station. Not to mention, her kids were quarantined for 10 days, but she was expected to go back to work in less than five.
Complaints of neurological problems and stroke-like reactions continue to pile up. Immediately after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 shot, this previously healthy woman experienced headaches and dizziness and blacked out “a few times.”
Within days, she started experiencing numbness to the point that she couldn’t stand up. Eight days later, she’s in the hospital with loss of feeling in her left arm, left leg and face. She states that 19 women were brought in to her hospital ward with the same symptoms over the span of one weekend.
7. Two Teenage Boys Die From Myocarditis in Their Sleep
Epidemiologists have confirmed that two teenage boys from different U.S. states died in their sleep of myocarditis days after getting the Pfizer shot. Both had received second doses of the shot, and McCullough said that in his view, the shots led to the deaths of the teenagers. In a study that examined the autopsy findings, it’s reported that the “myocarditis” described in the boys’ deaths is “not typical myocarditis pathology”:5
“The myocardial injury seen in these post-vaccine hearts is different from typical myocarditis and has an appearance most closely resembling a catecholamine-mediated stress (toxic) cardiomyopathy. Understanding that these instances are different from typical myocarditis and that cytokine storm has a known feedback loop with catecholamines may help guide screening and therapy.”
A 59-year-old front line health care worker in the U.K. took the COVID-19 shot and died a few hours later. In the video, her acquaintance states, “Now I know it’s a given the vaccine’s going to have some casualties — but people are threatened they are going to lose their jobs if they don’t take it … You have the right to take that risk, but you should have the right to refuse it as well — without jeopardizing your job or your freedom of entry or freedom from discrimination.”
The man in this video describes himself as a believer in “science” and a “vaccine advocate,” but this didn’t spare him from the shot’s adverse effects. Five days after his first Pfizer COVID-19 shot, he started having blurry vision in his left eye. Within three days, he had lost 60% of his vision in that eye.
After several medical examinations, doctors, optometrists and retina specialists diagnosed him with central serous retinopathy (CSR), in which a small vein ruptured, leading fluid to accumulate under the retina, causing retinal detachment and partial blindness.
Other cases of CSR have also been reported following COVID-19 shots, he says, and in a case report published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology it’s stated, “Acute CSR may be temporally associated with mRNA Covid-19 immunization.”6 The man’s doctor told him that the risk of getting additional COVID-19 shots outweighs the potential benefit for him and tried to help him get an official exemption from further shots, but it was denied. He states:
“I have been deprived of my human rights as a citizen … I try to gather all my strength so many times during the past few months to just go and receive my second dose in order to follow the laws.
But the fact that the science says there is an above-average chance that I may lose more of my sight has driven me to anxiety attacks, night terrors and disabling depression … This is a direct violation of my constitutional rights as a citizen and a human being.”
10. Young Woman Suffers From Seizures, Nearly Dies
Caution: This video contains language that may offend some people
Beginning her story by stressing she is NOT anti-vaccine or pro-conspiracy theory, this young woman describes what happened to her after she received a Moderna COVID-19 shot, which she decided to get so she and her husband could join some friends on a cruise.
The day after the shot she started feeling “weird,” delirious and “disassociated from herself,” she says. Soon after, she blacked out in the bathroom, and when her husband tried to revive her, she began seizing. She had three seizures between the time her husband called 911 and when the ambulance got her to the hospital.
She was intubated and suffered other severe effects, she says. She spent days in the hospital and is now taking anti-seizure medication, while living with ongoing anxiety about her near-death experience, which she believes was caused by the shot. “Go out there and do your research so you can make an informed decision,” she says. “Because you don’t want to put something in your body that could potentially harm you.”
Let Your Voice Be Heard
If you or a loved one has been injured by a COVID-19 shot, I will help you share your testimony. Vaccine mandates have led to injuries, devastation and deaths — while the brainwashing “get your vaccine now” campaign is being used to divide and conquer. One spark is all that is required to start a fire. There is a revolution building — a revolution for freedom to live your life without medical mandates or dictators calling the shots.
Please share your story with us, and encourage others you know who have a story to share theirs. It’s never been more important than now, for you and your family, to take control of your health.
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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III Scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research does not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The history of this war must be understood.
The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.
A bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
While addressing a meeting on socioeconomic support for the constituent entities of the Russian Federation on March 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin succinctly elucidated the salient reasons for pre-emptively mounting a military intervention in Ukraine in order to forestall NATO’s encroachment upon Russia’s security interests. Here are a few trenchant excerpts from the lucid and eloquent speech [1]:
“We are meeting in a complicated period as our Armed Forces are conducting a special military operation in Ukraine and Donbass. I would like to remind you that at the beginning, on the morning of February 24, I publicly announced the reasons for and the main goal of Russia’s actions.
“It is to help our people in Donbass, who have been subjected to real genocide for nearly eight years in the most barbarous ways, that is, through blockade, large-scale punitive operations, terrorist attacks and constant artillery raids. Their only guilt was that they demanded basic human rights: to live according to their forefathers’ laws and traditions, to speak their native Russian language, and to bring up their children as they want.
“Kiev was not just preparing for war, for aggression against Russia – it was conducting it … Hostilities in Donbass and the shelling of peaceful residential areas have continued all these years. Almost 14,000 civilians, including children have been killed over this time … Clearly, Kiev’s Western patrons are just pushing them to continue the bloodshed. They incessantly supply Kiev with weapons and intelligence, as well as other types of assistance, including military advisers and mercenaries.
“Just like in the 1990s and the early 2000s, they want to try again to finish us off, to reduce us to nothing by turning us into a weak and dependent country, destroying our territorial integrity and dismembering Russia as they see fit. The failed then and they will fail this time … Yes, of course, they will back the so-called fifth column, national traitors – those who make money here in our country but live over there, and live not in the geographical sense of the word but in their minds, in their servile mentality.”
Confirming Western support for Ukraine “with weapons and intelligence, as well as other types of assistance, including military advisers and mercenaries” that Putin alluded to in the speech, the Intercept reported [2] on March 17 the US military had deployed extensive ISR, or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, assets to countries neighboring Ukraine to monitor developments within the embattled nation. The aircraft include MQ-9 Reaper drones, Boeing RC-135 Rivet Joints, and Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS, which have been used to eavesdrop on communications and collect imagery intelligence.
“‘The U.S. is using a variety of drone and fixed-wing collection assets to obtain tactical information of the battlefield,’ the official said, adding that the intelligence is then passed on to the Ukrainians through a liaison officer. On Sunday, a Russian drone briefly crossed into Poland, a NATO member, leading to a warning from the alliance that it could respond with force — an alarming threat of direct confrontation with Russia.
“An MQ-9 drone pilot with the U.S. military also told The Intercept that Reapers had been deployed to the region. He said the U.S. was using MQ-9 services leased from private contractors before withdrawing them and replacing with government assets, which he said have been slower to stand up.
“The U.S. has particular experience with this type of indirect weapons and intelligence assistance against Russia, having previously sent arms to Syrian rebels combating the Russian-backed regime of President Bashar al-Assad.”
In many ways, the proxy war in Ukraine resembles the CIA’s Operation Timber Sycamore and the Pentagon’s $500 million train-and-equip program to provide guerrilla warfare training and lethal weaponry to rebels battling the Syrian government in the training camps located at border regions of Turkey and Jordan during Syria’s decade-long conflict.
In fact, Russia’s military intervention in Syria in Sept. 2015 in support of the Bashar al-Assad government battling Washington’s jihadist proxies was actually in retaliation for the CIA’s covert program initiated in 2014 for arming and training mercenaries and neo-Nazi militias in Russia’s backyard in east Ukraine in order to destabilize and provoke Russia.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month was only a logical culmination of a long-simmering, eight-year war of attrition initiated by NATO powers against Russia in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region after the 2014 Maidan coup toppling Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and consequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia.
In an explosive scoop [3], 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 neo-Nazi militias in eastern Donbas 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 [4] of 30 cruise missiles killing at least 35 militants on March 13, Zach Dorfman claims in a separate January report [5] 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 their counterparts there. The multiweek, U.S.-based CIA program has 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 has provided limited training to Ukrainian intelligence units to try and shore up an independent Kyiv and prevent Russian subversion, but cooperation ramped up after the Crimea invasion, said a former CIA executive.”
Notwithstanding, at the height of the Cold War in the sixties when Russia exploded the world’s largest 50-megaton thermonuclear Tsar Bomba in October 1961 and 400,000 US forces were deployed in Europe that were still outnumbered by Soviet troops, the Soviet leadership made repeated requests for signing a “no first use” nuclear treaty precluding the likelihood of pre-emptive nuclear strike, but the United States balked at the proposal due to conventional warfare superiority of the USSR in Europe.
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev even unilaterally pledged against the first use of nuclear weapons in 1982, though Russia has since dropped the pledge [1] in 1993 following the break-up of the Soviet Union and consequent tilting of balance of power in favor of the United States. After European powers developed their own military capacity following the devastation of the Second World War, NATO now holds conventional warfare superiority over Russia with a significantly larger number of ground troops and combat aircraft.
Despite Russia’s massive nuclear arsenal, several Pentagon officials, full of hubris and evidently suffering from misplaced superiority complex, have recently made their misconceived institutional logic public that they no longer regard Russia as an equal military power, instead they contemptuously dubbed it “a second-rate regional power,” and if given an opportunity, they wouldn’t hesitate to take Russia head-on, even if the risk is as perilous as the conflict spiraling into a catastrophic nuclear war.
Total number of nuclear warheads across the world currently stands at roughly 13,000: Russia has 5977; NATO has 5943, including 5428 in the US, 290 in France and 225 in the United Kingdom; China has 350, Pakistan 165, India 160, Israel 90 and North Korea has 20 nuclear weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
At the height of the Cold War in the sixties, Russia exploded the world’s largest 50-megaton thermonuclear Tsar Bomba in October 1961. A Tupolev Tu-95V aircraft took off with the bomb weighing 27 tons. The bomb was attached to a large parachute, which gave the release and observer planes time to fly about 45 km away from ground zero, giving them a 50 percent chance of survival.
The bomb was released from a height of 10,500 meters on a test target at Sukhoy Nos cape in the Barents Sea. The bomb detonated at the height of 4,200 meters above ground. Still, the shock wave caught up with the Tu-95V at a distance of 115 km and the Tu-16 at 205 km. The Tu-95V dropped 1 kilometer in the air because of the shock wave but was able to recover and land safely.
The 8-km-wide fireball reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane and was visible at almost 1,000 km away. The mushroom cloud was about 67 km high. A seismic wave in the earth’s crust, generated by the shock wave of the explosion, circled the globe three times. Glass shattered in windows 780 km from the explosion in a village on Dikson Island.
All buildings in the village of Severny, both wooden and brick, located 55 km from ground zero within the Sukhoy Nos test range, were destroyed. In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero, wooden houses were destroyed, stone ones lost their roofs, windows, and doors. Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage at even greater distances, breaking windows in Norway and Finland.
In conclusion, the Ukraine conflict is clearly spiraling out of control and has the potential not only of dragging NATO powers into the war but might also spell end to the human civilization by raising the apocalyptic specter of a catastrophic nuclear war between two formidable nuclear powers that hold between themselves over 90% of the world’s devastating nuclear arsenal.
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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.
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
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Leaked documents give new information about the Pentagon program in biolaboratories in Ukraine. According to internal documents, Pentagon contractors were given full access to all Ukrainian biolaboratories which handled dangerous pathogens, while independent experts were denied even a visit. The new revelations challenge the U.S. government statement that the Pentagon just funded biolaboratories in Ukraine but had nothing to do with them.
Last week U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland confirmed that “Ukraine has biological research facilities” and the U.S. is worried that “those research materials” may fall into Russian hands. What “research materials” were studied in these biolaboratories and why are U.S. officials so worried that they may fall into Russian hands?
The Pentagon activities in Ukrainian biolabs were funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). DTRA allocated $80 million for biological research in Ukraine as of July 30, 2020, according to information obtained from the U.S. Federal Contractor Registration. U.S. company Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. was tasked with the program.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) awarded Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. an $80 million contract under the Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP) in Ukraine in 2020.
The lawsuit estimates that it cost the Taliban about $100 million to $155 million to launch attacks in 2011 and about $300 million to maintain the insurgency. The lawsuit said protection money was one the largest and most reliable sources of income for the Taliban.
Pentagon contractors given full access to Ukrainian biolabs
First constructed following a 2005 agreement spearheaded by then Senator Barack Obama, the Ukrainian biolabs were accessible to Pentagon contractors but not to independent experts, according to internal documents published on Reddit by an alleged former employee of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health. Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. was given full access to freely operate in all biolabs in Ukraine that were engaged in biological research activities under the DTRA program, according to a letter dated July 2, 2019, from the Ukrainian Minister of Health to DTRA in Ukraine.
A letter dated July 2, 2019, from the Ukrainian Minister of Health Ulana Suprun to DTRA in Ukraine gives Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. full access to all biolaboratories in Ukraine involved in the U.S. military biological research program. Ulana Suprun is an American national and was conferred Ukrainian citizenship by former president Petro Poroshenko in 2015.
Ukraine rejected proposal for public control over the Pentagon-funded biolabs
While Pentagon contractors were given full access to all biolabs involved in the DTRA program, independent experts were denied such access under the pretext that these biolabs were working with especially dangerous pathogens.
According to a leaked letter, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine denied experts from the scientific journal Problems of Innovation and Investment Development access to the Pentagon-funded biolaboratories. The ministry rejected the proposal made by the scientific journal and did not allow an independent public control group of experts to supervise these biolaboratories.
“The Ministry of Health of Ukraine considers it inappropriate to create a working group for public control and it is not possible to allow members of the group to enter the premises of laboratories of especially dangerous infections of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine,” according to a letter dated 21 October 2016 from the Ukrainian Deputy Minister for European Integration Oksana Sivak to the scientific journal “Problems of Innovation and Investment Development.”
Another DTRA contractor that operated in Ukraine was CH2MHill. The Englewood, Colorado-based company, which previously managed the $5.26 billion Panama Canal expansion project and provided management consultancy services for the Iraq Common Seawater supply project, was awarded a $22.8 million contract (2020-2023) for the reconstruction and equipment of two new biolaboratories: the State Scientific Research Institute of Laboratory Diagnostics and Veterinary-Sanitary Expertise (Kyiv ILD) and the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection Regional Diagnostic Laboratory (Odesa RDL).
According to leaked documents, CH2MHill was tasked with an $11.6 million program “Countering Especially Dangerous Pathogen Threats in Ukraine.”
German-Ukrainian project on bird flu
German and Ukrainian scientists conducted biological research on especially dangerous pathogens in birds (2019-2020). The project was implemented by the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine (Kharkov) and the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (Greifswald, Germany). According to the project’s description, the main goal of this project was to carry out sequencing of orthomyxoviruses (causative agents of avian flu) genomes, as well as to discover new viruses in birds.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, DTRA funded a similar project in Ukraine—UP-4—in 2020. The project’s goal was to research the potential of especially dangerous pathogens to be transmitted via migratory birds, including the highly pathogenic H5N1 flu, whose lethality for humans can reach 50%, as well as Newcastle disease. The use of migratory birds for possible delivery of pathogens was a major research program between the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Department of Defense in the past.
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Dilyana Gaytandzhieva is a Bulgarian journalist and Middle East correspondent. Dilyana can be reached at [email protected].
Links to Documents Pointing to Pentagon Funding of Biolabs in Ukraine
(Note: these documents were removed from the U.S. embassy in Kyiv—moved to Lviv on February 24, but have been made accessible by internet sleuths)
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Award winning journalist Julian Assange and Stella Morris married at Belmarsh prison today with four guests and two witnesses in attendance.
In a joint statement Julian and Stellacalled on ordinary people everywhere to continue the fight against his extradition to the United States:
“This wedding is more than just your average tying of the knot. This is a powerful statement to the world that love transcends all bounds, even those of powerful states bent on revenge and corrupt self-interest. Support our fight for freedom, for truth, and for love. Help us get Julian back to his family. It is only by standing together, that we can stand at all.’’
Below is a picture of Stella Morris, her children and Julian’s brother Gabriel on the way to the prison for the wedding ceremony.
WikiLeaks has pointed out that, “No pictures of Julian Assange from today are available as prison authorities deemed images of the groom a ‘security risk’.’’
On the same day as the wedding the National Union of Journalists has renewed its call for the British government to halt Assange’s extradition to the United States where he would be kept in inhumane conditions.
I will leave the last words on Julian’s case to his wife Stella:
“Julian is not charged with a crime in the UK. The charges he faces in the United States are, according to Amnesty International, politically motivated. And according to every major press freedom organisation, the charges are also an attack on journalism itself, because they criminalise journalism and open the doors to imprisoning journalists for doing their jobs.
The urge of the authorities to silence and disappear Julian is born out of fear. We have the strength of our love and righteous conviction. Julian’s family will fight for his freedom and for his life, until he is free. Love over fear. Join us.’’
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Dr. Leon Tressell is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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***
The formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the rearmament of Germany confirmed that for the United States, the war in Europe was not entirely over. It still isn’t.
It goes on and on. The “war to end war” of 1914-1918 led to the war of 1939-1945, known as World War II. And that one has never ended either, mainly because for Washington, it was the Good War, the war that made The American Century: why not the American Millenium?
The conflict in Ukraine may be the spark that sets off what we already call World War III.
But this is not a new war. It is the same old war, an extension of the one we call World War II, which was not the same war for all those who took part.
The Russian war and the American war were very, very different.
Russia’s World War II
For Russians, the war was an experience of massive suffering, grief and destruction. The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was utterly ruthless, propelled by a racist ideology of contempt for the Slavs and hatred of “Jewish Bolsheviks.” An estimated 27 million died, about two thirds of them civilians. Despite overwhelming losses and suffering, the Red Army succeeded in turning the Nazi tide of conquest that had subdued most of Europe.
This gigantic struggle to drive the German invaders from their soil is known to Russians as the Great Patriotic War, nourishing a national pride that helped console the people for all they had been through. But whatever the pride in victory, the horrors of the war inspired a genuine desire for peace.
America’s World War II
America’s World War II (like World War I) happened somewhere else. That is a very big difference. The war enabled the United States to emerge as the richest and most powerful nation on earth. Americans were taught never to compromise, neither to prevent war (“Munich”) nor to end one (“unconditional surrender” was the American way). Righteous intransigence was the fitting attitude of Good in its battle against Evil.
The war economy brought the U.S. out of the depression. Military Keynesianism emerged as the key to prosperity. The Military-Industrial-Complex was born. To continue providing Pentagon contracts to every congressional constituency and guaranteed profits to Wall Street investors, it needed a new enemy. The Communist scare – the very same scare that had contributed to creating fascism – did the trick.
The Cold War: World War II Continued
In short, after 1945, for Russia, World War II was over. For the United States, it was not. What we call the Cold War was its voluntary continuation by leaders in Washington. It was perpetuated by the theory that Russia’s defensive “Iron Curtain” constituted a military threat to the rest of Europe.
At the end of the war, the main security concern of Stalin was to prevent such an invasion from ever happening again. Contrary to Western interpretations, Moscow’s ongoing control of Eastern European countries it had occupied on its way to victory in Berlin was not inspired so much by communist ideology as by determination to create a buffer zone as an obstacle to repeated invasion from the West.
Stalin respected the Yalta lines between East and West and declined to support the life and death struggle of Greek communists. Moscow cautioned leaders of large Western European Communist Parties to eschew revolution and play by the rules of bourgeois democracy. The Soviet occupation could be brutal but was resolutely defensive. Soviet sponsorship of peace movements was perfectly genuine.
The formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the rearmament of Germany confirmed that for the United States, the war in Europe was not entirely over. The lackadaisical U.S. “de-Nazification” of its sector of occupied Germany was accompanied by an organized brain drain of Germans who could be useful to the United States in its rearmament and espionage (from Wernher von Braun to Reinhard Gehlen).
West Germany joined NATO in 1955, which led to the formation of the rival Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. (Bundesarchiv, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
America’s Ideological Victory
Throughout the Cold War, the United States devoted its science and industry to building a gigantic arsenal of deadly weapons, which wreaked devastation without bringing U.S. victory in Korea or Vietnam. But military defeat did not cancel America’s ideological victory.
The greatest triumph of American imperialism has been in spreading its self-justifying images and ideology, primarily in Europe. The dominance of the American entertainment industry has spread its particular blend of self-indulgence and moral dualism around the world, especially among youth. Hollywood convinced the West that World War II was won essentially by the U.S. forces and their allies in the Normandy invasion.
America sold itself as the final force for Good as well as the only fun place to live. Russians were drab and sinister.
In the Soviet Union itself, many people were not immune to the attractions of American self-glorification. Some apparently even thought that the Cold War was all a big misunderstanding, and that if we are very nice and friendly, the West will be nice and friendly too. Mikhail Gorbachev was susceptible to this optimism.
Former U.S. ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock recounts that the desire to liberate Russia from the perceived burden of the Soviet Union was widespread within the Russian elite in the 1980s. It was the leadership rather than the masses who accomplished the self-destruction of the Soviet Union, leaving Russia as the successor state, with the nuclear weapons and U.N. veto of the U.S.S.R. under the alcohol-soaked presidency of Boris Yeltsin – and overwhelming U.S. influence during the 1990s.
The New NATO
Russia’s modernization over the past three centuries has been marked by controversy between “Westernizers” – those who see Russia’s progress in emulation of the more advanced West – and “Slavophiles,” who consider that the nation’s material backwardness is compensated by some sort of spiritual superiority, perhaps based in the simple democracy of the traditional village.
In Russia, Marxism was a Westernizing concept. But official Marxism did not erase admiration for the “capitalist” West and in particular for America. Gorbachev dreamed of “our common European home” living some sort of social democracy. In the 1990s, Russia asked only to be part of the West.
What happened next proved that the whole “communist scare” justifying the Cold War was false. A pretext. A fake designed to perpetuate military Keynesianism and America’s special war to maintain its own economic and ideological hegemony.
There was no longer any Soviet Union. There was no more Soviet communism. There was no Soviet bloc, no Warsaw Pact. NATO had no more reason to exist.
But in 1999, NATO celebrated its 50th anniversary by bombing Yugoslavia and thereby transforming itself from a defensive to an aggressive military alliance. Yugoslavia had been non-aligned, belonging neither to NATO nor the Warsaw Pact. It threatened no other country. Without authorization from the Security Council or justification for self-defense, the NATO aggression violated international law.
At the very same time, in violation of unwritten but fervent diplomatic promises to Russian leaders, NATO welcomed Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as new members. Five years later, in 2004, NATO took in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia and the three Baltic Republics. Meanwhile, NATO members were being dragged into war in Afghanistan, the first and only “defense of a NATO member” – namely, the United States.
Understanding Putin – Or Not
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin had been chosen by Yeltsin as his successor, partly no doubt because as a former KGB officer in East Germany he had some knowledge and understanding of the West. Putin pulled Russia out of the shambles caused by Yeltsin’s acceptance of American-designed economic shock treatment.
Putin put a stop to the most egregious rip-offs, incurring the wrath of dispossessed oligarchs who used their troubles with the law to convince the West that they were victims of persecution (example: the ridiculous Magnitsky Act).
On Feb. 11, 2007, the Russian Westernizer Putin went to a center of Western power, the Munich Security Conference, and asked to be understood by the West. It is easy to understand, if one wants to. Putin challenged the “unipolar world” being imposed by the United States and emphasized Russia’s desire to “interact with responsible and independent partners with whom we could work together in constructing a fair and democratic world order that would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but for all.”
The reaction of the leading Western partners was indignation, rejection, and a 15-year media campaign portraying Putin as some sort of demonic creature.
Indeed, since that speech there have been no limits to Western media’s insults directed at Putin and Russia. And in this scornful treatment we see the two versions of World War II. In 2014, world leaders gathered in Normandy to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings by U.S. and British forces.
In fact, that 1944 invasion ran into difficulties, even though German forces were mainly concentrated on the Eastern front, where they were losing the war to the Red Army. Moscow launched a special operation precisely to draw German forces away from the Normandy front. Even so, Allied progress could not beat the Red Army to Berlin.
However, thanks to Hollywood, many in the West consider D-Day to be the decisive operation of World War II. To honor the event, Vladimir Putin was there and so was German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Then, in the following year, world leaders were invited to a lavish victory parade held in Moscow celebrating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Leaders of the United States, Britain and Germany chose not to participate.
This was consistent with an endless series of Western gestures of disdain for Russia and its decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany (it destroyed 80 percent of the Wehrmacht.) On Sept. 19, 2019, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on “the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe” which jointly accused the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany of unleashing World War II.
Vladimir Putin responded to this gratuitous affront in long article on “The Lessons of World War II” published in English in The National Interest on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the end of the war. Putin answered with a careful analysis of the causes of the war and its profound effect on the lives of the people trapped in the murderous 872-day Nazi siege of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), including his own parents whose two-year-old son was one of the 800,000 who perished.
The siege of Leningrad, 1942. (Av Boris Kudojarov/RIA Novosti arkiv. Lisens: CC BY SA 3.0)
Clearly, Putin was deeply offended by continual Western refusal to grasp the meaning of the war in Russia. “Desecrating and insulting the memory is mean,” Putin wrote. “Meanness can be deliberate, hypocritical and pretty much intentional as in the situation when declarations commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War mention all participants in the anti-Hitler coalition except for the Soviet Union.”
And all this time, NATO continued to expand eastward, more and more openly targeting Russia in its massive war exercises on its land and sea borders.
The U.S. Seizure of Ukraine
The encirclement of Russia took a qualitative leap ahead with the 2014 seizure of Ukraine by the United States. Western media recounted this complex event as a popular uprising, but popular uprisings can be taken over by forces with their own aims, and this one was. The elected president Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown by violence a day after he had agreed to early elections in an accord with European leaders.
Billions of U.S. dollars and murderous shootings by extreme right militants enforced a regime change openly directed by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (“F___ the EU”) producing a leadership in Kiev largely selected in Washington, and eager to join NATO.
By the end of the year, the government of “democratic Ukraine” was largely in the hands of U.S.-approved foreigners. The new minister of finance was a U.S. citizen of Ukrainian origin, Natalia Jaresko, who had worked for the State Department before going into private business. The minister of economy was a Lithuanian, Aïvaras Arbomavitchous, a former basketball champion. The ministry of health was taken by a former Georgian minister of health and labor, Sandro Kvitachvili.
Later, disgraced former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili was called in to take charge of the troubled port of Odessa. And Vice President Joe Biden was directly involved in reshuffling the Kiev cabinet as his son, Hunter Biden, was granted a profitable position with the Ukrainian gas company Barisma.
The vehemently anti-Russian thrust of this regime change aroused resistance in the southeastern parts of the country, largely inhabited by ethnic Russians. Eight days after more than 40 protesters were burned alive in Odessa, the provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk moved to secede in resistance to the coup.
The U.S.-installed regime in Kiev then launched a war against the provinces that continued for eight year, killing thousands of civilians.
And a referendum then returned Crimea to Russia. The peaceful return of Crimea was obviously vital to preserve Russia’s main naval base at Sebastopol from threatened NATO takeover. And since the population of Crimea had never approved the peninsula’s transfer to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, the return was accomplished by a democratic vote, without bloodshed. This was in stark contrast to the detachment of the province of Kosovo from Serbia, accomplished in 1999 by weeks of NATO bombing.
But to the United States and most of the West, what was a humanitarian action in Kosovo was an unforgivable aggression in Crimea.
The Oval Office Back Door to NATO
Russia kept warning that NATO enlargement must not encompass Ukraine. Western leaders vacillated between asserting Ukraine’s “right” to join whatever alliance it chose and saying it would not happen right away. It was always possible that Ukraine’s membership would be vetoed by a NATO member, perhaps France or even Germany.
But meanwhile, on Sept. 1, 2021, Ukraine was adopted by the White House as Washington’s special geo-strategic pet. NATO membership was reduced to a belated formality. A Joint Statement on the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership issued by the White House announced that “Ukraine’s success is central to the global struggle between democracy and autocracy” – Washington’s current self-justifying ideological dualism, replacing the Free World versus Communism.
It went on to spell out a permanent casus belli against Russia:
“In the 21st century, nations cannot be allowed to redraw borders by force. Russia violated this ground rule in Ukraine. Sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances. The United States stands with Ukraine and will continue to work to hold Russia accountable for its aggression. America’s support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is unwavering.”
The Statement also clearly described Kiev’s war against Donbass as a “Russian aggression.” And it made this uncompromising assertion: “The United States does not and will never recognize Russia’s purported annexation of Crimea…” (my emphasis). This is followed by promises to strengthen Ukraine’s military capacities, clearly in view of recovery of Donbass and Crimea.
Since 2014, the United States and Britain have surreptitiously transformed Ukraine into a NATO auxiliary, psychologically and militarily turned against Russia. However this looks to us, to Russian leaders this looked increasingly like nothing other than a buildup for an all-out military assault on Russia, Operation Barbarossa all over again. Many of us who tried to “understand Putin” failed to foresee the Russian invasion for the simple reason that we did not believe it to be in the Russian interest. We still don’t. But they saw the conflict as inevitable and chose the moment.
Ambiguous Echoes
Putin explaining his reasons for going to war. (AP screenshot from YouTube)
Putin justified Russia’s February 2022 “operation” in Ukraine as necessary to stop genocide in Lugansk and Donetsk. This echoed the U.S.-promoted R2P, Responsibility to Protect doctrine, notably the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, allegedly to prevent “genocide” in Kosovo. In reality, the situation, both legal and especially human, is vastly more dire in Donbass than it ever was in Kosovo. However, in the West, any attempt at comparison of Donbass with Kosovo is denounced as “false equivalence” or what-about-ism.
But the Kosovo war is much more than an analogy with the Russian invasion of Donbass: it is a cause.
Above all, the Kosovo war made it clear that NATO was no longer a defensive alliance. Rather it had become an offensive force, under U.S. command, that could authorize itself to bomb, invade or destroy any country it chose. The pretext could always be invented: a danger of genocide, a violation of human rights, a leader threatening to “kill his own people”. Any dramatic lie would do. With NATO spreading its tentacles, nobody was safe. Libya provided a second example.
Putin’s announced goal of “denazification” also might have been expected to ring a bell in the West. But if anything, it illustrates the fact that “Nazi” does not mean quite the same thing in East and West. In Western countries, Germany or the United States, “Nazi” has come to mean primarily anti-Semitic. Nazi racism applies to Jews, to Roma, perhaps to homosexuals.
But for the Ukrainian Nazis, racism applies to Russians. The racism of the Azov Battalion, which has been incorporated into Ukrainian security forces, armed and trained by the Americans and the British, echoes that of the Nazis: the Russians are a mixed race, partly “Asiatic” due to the Medieval Mongol conquest, whereas the Ukrainians are pure white Europeans.
Some of these fanatics proclaim that their mission is to destroy Russia. In Afghanistan and elsewhere, the United States supported Islamic fanatics, in Kosovo they supported gangsters. Who cares what they think if they fight on our side against the Slavs?
Ukraine 24 presenter goes full Nazi, endorses Adolf Eichmann to call for genocide of Russians.
"By killing children, they will never grow up and the nation will disappear… and I hope that everyone will contribute and kill at least one Muscovite." pic.twitter.com/EAtTzhbaDT
For Russian leaders, their military “operation” is intended to prevent the Western invasion they fear. They still want to negotiate Ukrainian neutrality. For the Americans, whose strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski boasted of having lured the Russians into the Afghanistan trap (giving them “their Vietnam”), this is a psychological victory in their endless war. The Western world is united as never before in hating Putin. Propaganda and censorship surpass even World War levels. The Russians surely want this “operation” to end soon, as it is costly to them in many ways. The Americans rejected any effort to prevent it, did everything to provoke it, and will extract whatever advantages they can from its continuation.
Today Volodymyr Zelensky implored the U.S. Congress to give Ukraine more military aid. The aid will keep the war going. Anthony Blinken told NPR that the United States is responding by “denying Russia the technology it needs to modernize its country, to modernize key industries: defense and aerospace, its high-tech sector, energy exploration.”
The American war aim is not to spare Ukraine, but to ruin Russia. That takes time.
The danger is that the Russians won’t be able to end this war, and the Americans will do all they can to keep it going.
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Diana Johnstone was press secretary of the Green Group in the European Parliament from 1989 to 1996. In her latest book, Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press, 2020), she recounts key episodes in the transformation of the German Green Party from a peace to a war party. Her other books include Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Pluto/Monthly Review) and in co-authorship with her father, Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (Clarity Press). She can be reached at [email protected]
She is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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Memo to the White House: next time you video call a Chinese leader do not announce to the media that you issued a warning. The days of China heeding public warnings from a US president about Ukraine or any other issue, are over and it is bound to be detrimental to any outcome that would be advantageous to your point of view.
By all means issue it privately but publically playing that card makes it sound as if you are threatening China.
This is not a redundant point of procedure, or protocol, good manners or understanding history. It matters because there will, more than likely, come a time over the next 30 months when you will have to privately warn China. It won’t be about Ukraine. It will be about Taiwan.
Several Asian nations have sought to bolster security ties with the US as a result of the Ukraine invasion. China has border disputes, sometimes deadly, with neighbors including Japan, India and Vietnam. Beijing has stepped up military, diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan, sending warplanes on nearly 1,000 forays through the island’s air defense identification zone last year.
Consequently, the US has sought to build a coalition of democracies, including both traditional treaty partners such as Japan and the Quad, including Australia and India. Other nations in the region are looking to firm up their defense ties with Washington.
Ukraine has upset the apple cart. When Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping met at the Winter Games in Beijing in February, and hailed the “no limits” relationship between their countries, they wanted to establish another bloc to counter the declining West. That is not going to happen. Russia is diminished in China’s eyes not because of its actions in Ukraine but because it seemed so badly planned.
Planning is central to Xi’s philosophy or at least the appearance of having a plan. When Xi assumed office in 2012, he seemed a continuation of his steady but uncharismatic, actually deadly dull, predecessor, Hu Jintao. However, at the party congress of 2017 Xi revealed his “China Dream”. This was nothing less than an attempt, a plan, to revive China’s glory era, normally considered before the 19th century and the arrival of the rapacious West, and crucially, cement the power of the party, weakened by decades of rampant east-coast led consumerism. A “well-off society and the modernization of socialism” before 2035 was the goal.
Another goal was to establish China as a country with, what it describes, international influence by the mid-century. All long term plans, so why the hurry, why is next year or 2024 so important? Simple answer. Time. Born in June 1953, Xi is 68. Not old for a Chinese leader but he is in a hurry as the economy is failing and nationalism has to replace the pursuit of wealth if the party is to remain in power. Nothing in China is as it seems. Taiwan is not about Taiwan. It is about Xi and the party and the spluttering economy. Taiwan may be the key, not the economy, to the party’s supremacy. Xi has always had an eye on the history books. He wants to replace Deng Xiaoping, the real architect of modern China, as the most important leader since Mao Zedong. The gasping economy won’t do it for him. Getting Taiwan back, he believes, will.
Memo to the White House: issue warnings privately.
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Geopolitical analyst Tom Clifford reporting from Beijing. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Xi, who was on a four-day state visit to the UK, addressed both Houses of Parliament at Westminster, 21 October 2015 (Licensed under Public Domain)
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First published on April 27, 2021
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With the world being told that so-called ‘vaccine passports’ will be required for all international travel in future, and in many countries even to enter shops, restaurants, bars, gyms, hotels, theatres, concerts and sports events, the impression we are being given is that the measure is a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic. In Europe, however, which hosts 8 of the top 10 pharmaceutical exporting countries, planning for vaccine passports began at least 20 months prior to the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. Apparently, the pandemic conveniently provided European politicians with the ‘excuse’ they needed to introduce the idea.
The ‘European Commission’ – the executive body of Europe – first published a proposal for vaccine passports on 26 April 2018. Buried deep in a document dealing with ‘Strengthened Cooperation against Vaccine Preventable Diseases’, the proposal was essentially ignored by the mainstream media.
A roadmap document issued in early 2019 subsequently set out specific plans for implementing the European Commission’s proposal. The primary action listed in the roadmap was to “examine the feasibility of developing a common vaccination card/passport” for European citizens that is “compatible with electronic immunization information systems and recognized for use across borders.” The plan aimed for a legislative proposal to be issued in Europe by 2022.
Interestingly, the roadmap uses several terms that, while relatively uncommon in most countries prior to the pandemic, have since become heard on a daily basis in the mainstream media. Perhaps the most notable of these is ‘vaccine hesitancy’. Supporting European countries in “countering vaccine hesitancy” is listed in the document as one of the key action points.
The possibility of pandemics and “unexpected outbreaks” occurring is also referred to in the roadmap. Revealingly, specific reference is made to supporting the authorization of “innovative vaccines, including for emerging health threats.” Stating that the “vaccine manufacturing industry” has a “key role” in meeting the aims described in the document, the roadmap lists “improving EU manufacturing capacity” and stockpiling vaccines as further action points to be considered. Towards strengthening “existing partnerships” and “collaboration with international actors and initiatives,” the roadmap also refers to a global vaccination summit meeting that took place in September 2019. A close examination of the attendees and subject matter for this meeting is revealing.
The 2019 Global Vaccination Summit
Unreported by most mainstream media outlets, a ‘Global Vaccination Summit’ was hosted in Brussels, Belgium, on 12 September 2019. Organized by the European Commission in cooperation with the World Health Organization, the meeting took place just 3 months before the coronavirus outbreak began. Significantly, this was also only 36 days before the now infamous coronavirus outbreak simulation exercise, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which took place on 18 October 2019.
An invitation-only event, the vaccination summit participants included political leaders, high-level representatives from the United Nations and other international organizations, health ministries, leading academics, scientists and health professionals, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations.
The summit was structured around three round tables entitled ‘In Vaccines We Trust’, ‘The Magic Of Science’, and ‘Vaccines Protecting Everyone, Everywhere’. Notable panel members for these round tables included Nanette Cocero, Global President of Pfizer Vaccines; Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of GAVI, the Global Vaccine Alliance – an organization that has received vast amounts of funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and Joe Cerrell, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Managing Director for Global Policy and Advocacy.
Who really benefits from vaccine passports? Certainly not ordinary people, for whom sharing their health records and other personal data could soon become mandatory merely for participation in society. Instead, the chief beneficiary will be the multinational pharmaceutical industry. With global drug and vaccine sales already forecast to reach $1.5 trillion this year, pharmaceutical companies and their investors are salivating at the prospect of vaccine passports becoming mandatory worldwide.
The total market for COVID-19 vaccines is predicted to be worth $100 billion in sales and $40 billion in post-tax profits. Annual vaccinations against mutations of the coronavirus could raise these numbers still further. Unless we resist vaccine passports and instead ‘vote for reason’, drug and vaccine makers could force the world into long-term economic and political dependency. Our urgent goal must therefore be to replace the greed-driven pharmaceutical ‘business with disease’ with a healthcare system based on truly preventive approaches. Accepting the pharmaceutical industry’s alternative to this is simply unthinkable.
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Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings.
The first really large tranche of Pfizer documents — some 10,000 pages — was released by the FDA March 1, 2022. Included are nine pages of recorded side effects, about 158,000 different health problems in all.
On 20 March 2022, while we were conducting a humanitarian mission near Sartana, on the north-eastern outskirts of Mariupol, we came across many civilians who had recently fled Mariupol thanks to the advance of Russian and DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) troops. One of them, Nikolay, agreed to talk on camera about the crimes committed by the neo-Nazi Azov regiment against the inhabitants. A testimony confirmed by other civilians who managed to evacuate the city.
In the last two decades, the US-driven antagonism against Russia, closely followed by Europe, was mostly directed against one man, namely Russia’s leader, President Putin. It’s always easier to demonize a person than an entire country. That’s what Washington’s Inner Circle does best.
The letter appeals both to those who chose to take the vaccine and those who were coerced. It reflects on the broader implications of our actions in an effort to collaborate on a constructive path forward.
I compiled all the evidence we have into this article that prove Graphene Oxide, Graphene Hydroxide and other Graphene variants are in fact being injected into people by governments and Big Pharma. This evidence was discovered and proven numerous times already by independent research teams, scientists, Biotech whistleblowers and the few ethical Journalists remaining.
Since the Russian action in Ukraine began, provoked by Washington’s cold shoulder to Russian security concerns, Washington, in addition to doing all possible to keep the conflict going, has also dumped three more provocations on the Kremlin:an attempted coup or “color revolution” in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, NATO military maneuvers currently under way in the former Soviet republic of Georgia which is not a NATO member, and NATO maneuvers in Poland on the Border of Belarus, a former Russian province and current Russian ally.
Zelensky is now saying that “after a cease-fire and steps toward providing security guarantees,” Zelensky would negotiate “the status of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region held by Russian-backed separatists.” This is the first major change-in-position by EITHER side in the present conflict, and the fact that it is being made by Ukraine is indisputable proof that militarily Russia is winning the war.
As the conflict continues to intensify in Ukraine, the West seems interested in driving a new wave of international nuclearization. Washington announced that it will be organizing a nuclear contingency plan in order to face an eventual escalation of the crisis between Ukraine and Russia.
Twenty-three years ago marks the beginning of NATO’s aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia (March 24, 1999 – June 10, 1999). The bombings which lasted for almost three months were followed by the military invasion (under a bogus UN mandate) and illegal occupation of the province of Kosovo.
I am so angry with the Greek government which only cares for refugees from the Ukraine. Its message to me is clear. The refugees from Ukraine are seen as people like the Greeks. But refugees like me from Africa and the middle eastern countries are not such ‘good’ humans.
While in no way excusing Russia’s criminal invasion, NATO expansion eastward increased its likelihood. Although we’ll never know if the war would not have happened under different circumstances, after a month of Russian violence against Ukraine the two countries’ negotiators have reportedly agreed that it will reject joining NATO as part of a peace pact.
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Few would forget the antics of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison who, as Treasurer, entered Parliament with a lump of coal and proceeded to praise it with the enthusiasm of a fetish worshipper. “Don’t be afraid,” he told fellow parliamentarians. “Don’t be scared.”
He has, with deep reluctance, conceded that climate change is taking place and, with even deeper reluctance, that human agency might be involved. But under his leadership, the fossil fuel lobby of Australia has no reason to fear. Denialism has simply become more covert.
This month, Industry Minister Angus Taylor, the government’s premier ignoramus on climate change, promised AU$50.3 million to fossil fuel entities to guarantee Australia against “the devastating impacts of a gas supply shortfall, as seen recently in Europe.” His government was “accelerating priority gas infrastructure projects that will protect Australia from potential energy shortages, keep pressure on prices and create jobs in regional Australia as part of our plan for a stronger future.”
Indeed, the lobby has every reason to be delighted with that other recent announcement by Morrison to enlist Australian coal in Ukraine’s war effort. With a shamelessness only he can muster, the Prime Minister has managed to make digging and exporting coal, even in small amounts at great cost, virtuous. In an official statement, Morrison claimed that,
“in response to a direct request from Ukraine, Australia will donate 70,000 tonnes of thermal coal. This will help Ukraine’s power generators operating and supplying electricity to the power grid at this critical time.”
Little by way of logistical or pricing detail was given. We know who benefits the most from this. A triumphalist Whitehaven Coal will supply it, and the cost to the Australian taxpayer will be in the order of AU$31 million. Given that Whitehaven Coal has been a Liberal Party donor – AU$98,000 has been given over the last five years – the whiff of something rotten in the land of coal is strong.
The company’s board would have been delighted by the recent spike in its share prices. It also remains unclear whether the company offered a discount on the coal to the government. One thing is beyond doubt: Canberra is offering to foot the transport bill.
The coal, according to the Prime Minister, was needed “before the end of May and we have arranged the shipping for that to take place and are working with other countries to ensure it can get to Ukraine.” With beaming delight, Morrison could say that “it’s our coal. We dug it up. We’ve arranged the ship. We’ve put it on the ship and we’re sending it there to Ukraine to help power up their resistance and to give that encouragement.”
Richard Denniss, an economist based at the Australia Institute, is doubtful about the whole operation. “Sending a ship load of coal to Ukraine via Poland is just conservative virtue signalling.” If anything, the measure was insensible, given that Poland itself had “lots of coal. If we really thought Ukraine needed coal (I doubt it) we could just give them some money to buy Polish coal.”
The request is also slightly odd given that it was conveyed to Canberra from Poland itself. “It was made to me,” claimed Morrison, “through the Polish Prime Minister and we’re very pleased to be able to meet that need.”
The amount of thermal coal is also raising eyebrows amongst those not inclined towards astrological numbers and fantasy projections. Australia is sending a mere 10th of Ukraine thermal coal reserves, described by Resources Minister Keith Pitt as making “a real difference for the people of Ukraine by providing continued energy security, ensuring continued electricity supply to homes and industry”. With little justification, Morrison is also making the claim that a million Ukrainian homes will be powered, though left the duration of that effort in doubt.
The answer to such a crisis is not coal nor, in fact, fossil fuel exports masquerading as humanitarian rescue. Bernard Keane of Crikeymakes a relevant observation: “the clear lesson of Putin’s aggression in energy terms is the need to get out of fossil fuels as quickly as possible, removing the volatility and strategic weakness that reliance on global commodities brings.”
Whether the coal will ever reach its intended recipients is a question worth asking. If the coal transits through Poland, it will have to be transported via rail to Ukraine, which raises issues of viable infrastructure. Sea access is also bound to be unlikely, and even if that is taken, one analyst pithily notes that a vessel “should be quite a sitting target if the Russians knew what it was and where it was coming from.”
The Morrison government has made a habit of celebrating the announcement rather than the execution of detail. Mendacity and incompetence are twinned in this government’s insignia, and Ukrainian officials best ready themselves for disappointment.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
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***
The American Conservative magazine criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been on an embarrassing public relations campaign after being called out in Israel for historical revisionism relating to the Holocaust, attempting to elicit a disingenuous emotional response from the West, and demonstrating the illiberalism of Ukraine by banning political opposition parties.
Zelensky for quoting American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. in his speech to the US Congress on March 16.
“Zelensky also invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, not to advocate for peace and harmony but a no-fly zone, more military aid, and increased sanctions,” the article said in response to Zelensky telling Congress: “I have a dream. I have a need. I need to protect our skies. I need your help, which means the same you feel when you hear the words I have a dream.”
According to the author, the US assistance to Ukraine that Zelensky wants is unrealistic and would be very dangerous if the White House agreed. The journalist also criticized Kiev for exaggerating reality and outright lying. The author cited The Ghost of Kiev, claims of 11,000 dead Russian soldiers in just 11 days of fighting, and the Russians trying to destabilize nuclear material as examples of “when the Ukrainians have lied—or at least greatly overstated the truth—with the hope of eliciting an emotional response from the West that precipitates more Ukrainian aid.”
“I, too, hope Biden is a leader of peace, which is why the president and Congress should not give Zelensky what he wants,” the author concluded.
Although the Biden administration and its predecessors fuelled the war in Eastern Ukraine by arming and funding the Ukrainian military and its Far-Right militia partners, whilst ignoring international law breaches against Donbass civilians, it appears that a No-Fly Zone is an escalation too far even for Washington. None-the-less, this has not deterred Zelensky from lambasting and shaming Western countries for not imposing a No-Fly Zone.
Days later, on March 20, Zelensky caused outrage in Israel after delivering a speech to the Knesset that lawmakers described as “outrageous.” The Ukrainian President had the audacity to draw comparisons between the Holocaust and Russia’s military operation, whilst ignoring some Ukrainian’s complicity in the Nazi-led genocide.
Israeli Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel tweeted:
“I admire the Ukraine president and support the Ukrainian people in heart and deed, but the terrible history of the Holocaust cannot be rewritten.”
An unnamed senior minister told Ynet:
“Zelensky also distorted the part his country played in the murder of Jews.”
Religious Zionism MKs also criticized Zelensky, with the opposition party leader Bezalel Smotrich slamming the Holocaust comparisons and accusing the Ukrainian leader of trying “to rewrite history and erase the involvement of the Ukrainian people in the extermination of Jews.”
Although the West is whitewashing the prevalence of Nazi and Far-Right ideology in Ukraine and falsely alludes that the country is a liberal bastion struggling against an authoritarian Russia, the Israelis are not entertaining this notion. Although the West cheaply dismisses Ukraine’s harboring of Far-Right ideology within the political and military apparatus of the country because Zelensky is Jewish, journalists Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal have already debunked this line of thinking.
More shockingly though, and exposing the illiberalism of Ukraine despite a constant media campaign to claim otherwise, Zelensky banned 11 opposition parties over alleged Russian links. However, even ignoring the contradiction of banning Russia-friendly political parties in a supposedly liberal and free society, many of the banned opposition parties in fact have no links to Russia and even condemned what they termed themselves as an invasion of Ukraine.
Avi Yemini, the Australian-Israeli Chief of Rebel News Australia, tweeted:
“Zelensky is so full of s***. First, he demands Israeli weapons from the Knesset, claiming Ukraine was a safe haven for Jews in the holocaust. And then, he banned 11 opposition parties but left the Nazi parties.”
Western media falsely claimed that all 11 opposition parties were Russia-linked, but as Yemini highlighted, the Nazi parties were left alone, something omitted from Western media reports. Western media intentionally omits such information as it once again indicates the illiberalism of Ukraine.
In this way, although Zelensky is mostly receiving endless plaudits from the West, cracks in the official narrative are beginning to emerge. Firstly, American conservatives called out Zelensky for attempting to manipulate the emotions of the US Congress to try and achieve a No-Fly Zone, something which will ultimately lead to a greater conflict. Then prominent Israeli voices did not hold back in calling out Zelensky’s attempts of historical revisionism regarding Ukrainian complicity in the Holocaust. Finally, the banning of 11 opposition parties on March 20, something that alienates and isolates Ukraine’s ethnic Russian community, accounting for about 20% of the country’s population, rounds up Zelensky’s latest illiberal actions.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Featured image: Zelensky in 2019, photo by President.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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***
Since the Russian action in Ukraine began, provoked by Washington’s cold shoulder to Russian security concerns, Washington, in addition to doing all possible to keep the conflict going, has also dumped three more provocations on the Kremlin:an attempted coup or “color revolution” in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, NATO military maneuvers currently under way in the former Soviet republic of Georgia which is not a NATO member, and NATO maneuvers in Poland on the Border of Belarus, a former Russian province and current Russian ally. See this.
The signal Washington consistently sends to the Kremlin is aggression.Why has no member of any government in the Western world, no presstitute in the Western media pointed this out?It is difficult to fathom the irresponsibility of Washington adding to the Ukraine provocation three more provocations simultaneously.Why provoke a country already concerned with its security with more security concerns unless you are trying to widen the war?
The US Treasury is working with Congress to prevent Russia’s use of her gold reserves that she kept in her own hands, with the bulk of Russian reserves having been seized, a theft made easy by the stupid fool that Putin keeps as head of the Russian central bank. It is extraordinary that the Russian central bank kept Russia’s reserves in Western hands while Russia intervened militarily in Ukraine. The Russian central bank must have wanted Russia to lose her reserves.
Now the remaining reserves are to be targeted by Washington in this way. Sanctions will be applied to every country that permits or facilitates Russian payments in gold or the buying and selling of gold by Russia. This, the US senator, Angus King, said, will collapse the Russian economy, leaving Russia no means of payment.
Senator King and the US Treasury are overlooking that all acts of war are not military, and what the senator is sponsoring is an act of war. Putin recognizes it as such. He declared it to be “a total undisguised aggression” and “a war waged by economic, political, and informational means.”
So what is Russia doing in response to the declared intent of the West to destroy her?
She is enabling her own destruction.
She distributes her foreign exchange reserves among Western banks where they can be seized.
She keeps the economies of her enemies alive by continuing to supply them with energy and minerals–all because her moronic central bank thinks Russia needs foreign exchange, which will be seized regardless.
She continues with a go-slow war that gives her enemies more time to demonize Russia and create permanent hatred of Russia in the Western populations, that gives Western idiots more time to blunder into a wider war, such as the Western plan to deploy NATO peacekeepers in Ukraine.
In short, the Kremlin’s response to the sanctions is mindless. Here for example is Germany’s own assessment of the impact on Germany if Russia stops sustaining Germany’s existence with Russian energy:
“A 2018 stress test run by the German civil defense agency, the BBK, found that all crucial services will be impacted by a gas supply shortage.The two-day crisis management exercise Lukex 18, which involved several states in southern Germany, found that the shortage of gas supply will have ‘a drastic effect on public life,’ including the closure of public and private facilities. The disruption of supply will also lead to ‘far-reaching, difficult-to-predict consequences for the service sector and the production of goods,’ according to the BBK.”
If Russia turned off the energy, Germany would force an end to the sanctions on Russia or Germany would leave NATO despite Germany’s occupation by US troops. But apparently the Kremlin would rather risk Russia’s destruction than to violate a contract or forego foreign exchange earnings that it cannot use. The Kremlin seems destined to forego the opportunity to crush the sanctions and continue selling energy to Germany until Germany has had time to locate and construct the facilities for an alternative means of supply.
The West’s naked aggression and the Kremlin’s insouciance guarantee a wider war ending in world destruction. Can no one in leadership position see it coming? Do Western politicians believe Russia will allow herself to be defeated by non-military means? Does the Kremlin believe that resolving the Ukrainian situation will end the West’s attacks on Russia? As always in human affairs, stupidity prevails.
That Washington and its despicable puppet states parade around like goody two shoes, shouting accusations at Russia when it is Washington and its puppets who are provoking war, and everyone falls for it tells me that Washington has the world on the road to nuclear armageddon.
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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Joe Biden said he would target Russia when he became US president. But, his war with Russia will have mainly European casualties. Photo Credit: The Cradle
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
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***
A small batch of documents released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in mid-November 2021 revealed that in the first three months of the COVID jab rollout, Pfizer received 42,086 adverse event reports that included 1,223 deaths
The first really large tranche of Pfizer documents — some 10,000 pages — was released by the FDA March 1, 2022. Included are nine pages of recorded side effects, about 158,000 different health problems in all
An initial review of case report forms (CRFs) reveal significant data collection errors and anomalies
Problems included patients entered into the “healthy population” group who were far from healthy; serious adverse event (SAE) numbers that were left blank; sample barcodes that were missing; at least one death of a patient the day before being listed as being at a medical checkup; and second doses that were administered outside the three-week protocol window. There also are questions as to whether participants were properly observed for an adequate amount of time; plus adverse events were listed as “not serious” despite extended hospital stay and much more
A majority of the CRFs in this release were from Ventavia-run trial sites. Ventavia is currently facing a lawsuit brought by Brook Jackson, a former Ventavia regional director. Jackson was fired shortly after she brought concerns about potential data falsification and poor laboratory management to the attention of the FDA and higher-ups in the company
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In September 2021, a group called Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to obtain the documentation used to approve Comirnaty, including safety and effectiveness data, adverse reaction reports and lists of active and inactive ingredients.
When, after a month, the FDA still had not responded to the FOIA request, the PHMPT sued.1 Pfizer and the FDA asked the judge to give them 75 years to release all the documents (doling out just 500 pages per month)2 but, fortunately, the judge ruled that they have to release them at a rate of 55,000 pages per month.
COVID Jab Supporter Gets Red-Pilled
In mid-November 2021, the FDA released the first 91 pages,3,4 which alone revealed the FDA has been aware of shocking safety issues since April 30, 2021. For nurse educator John Campbell, featured in the video above, these documents appear to have served as a “red pill,”5 waking him up to the possibility that the jabs may be far more dangerous than anyone expected, but he didn’t get around to reviewing them until now.
In his video, Campbell reviews the documents listed as “5.3.6. Postmarketing Experience,” which were originally marked “confidential.” They reveal that, cumulatively, through February 28, 2021, Pfizer received 42,086 adverse event reports, including 1,223 deaths.
As noted by Campbell, “It would have been good to know about this at the time, wouldn’t it?” referring to the rollout of the jabs. Campbell has been fairly consistent in his support of the “safe and effective” vaccine narrative, but “This has just destroyed trust in authority,” he says.
To have 1,223 fatalities and 42,086 reports of injury in the first three months is a significant safety signal, especially when you consider that the 1976 swine flu vaccine was pulled after only 25 deaths.
Now, the number of doses shipped has been redacted under a FOIA redaction code that stands for “Trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential.” Why would the number of doses shipped be confidential?
Campbell is clearly bothered by this redaction, as you cannot calculate the incidence rate or side effects if you don’t know what the denominator is. As noted by Campbell, that number cannot be proprietary. It’s being withheld for some other reason (and I just stated what that might be).
Even without knowing the underreporting factor, Campbell is appalled by the number of reported side effects. It is very clear that this information red-pilled Campbell. For an overview of the types of side effects recorded, check out Campbell’s video. I’ve already reviewed that in previous articles.
Here, we’ll move on to the first really large tranche of Pfizer documents, which was released March 1, 2022. In all, the FDA has some 450,000 pages of data from Pfizer’s COVID jab trials, and we now have just over 10,000 of those pages. You can find them all on PHMPT.org.6
Findings From Early Review of Case Reports
March 7, 2022, investigative journalist Sonia Elijah published a review of her initial findings on Trial Site News,7 having glossed through some of the thousands of newly-released documents.
Her review centers primarily on the case report forms (CRFs). These are documents used in clinical research to record standardized data from each patient, including adverse events. As such, they’re a crucial part of the clinical trial process.
A majority of the CRFs in this release were from Ventavia-run trial sites. Ventavia is currently facing a lawsuit brought by Brook Jackson, a former Ventavia regional director. Jackson was fired shortly after she brought concerns about potential data falsification and poor laboratory management to the attention of the FDA and higher-ups in the company.
Her testimony was published November 2, 2021, in The British Medical Journal — the oldest and most prestigious medical journal in the world — by investigative journalist Paul Thacker.8 Facebook fact checkers actually tried to “debunk” this BMJ article and censored it.
In her review of the CRFs, Elijah found a number of errors and anomalies that seem to corroborate Jackson’s claims, including the following:9
In closing, Elijah writes:10
“All the evidence gleaned over a limited time appears to back up whistleblower Jackson’s claims of poor trial site data management and raises questions as to how Ventavia conducted the Pfizer clinical trials.
The errors and anomalies in the CRFs also allude to her claims that the clinical research associates were not trained adequately, with many having had no prior clinical experience history. If such egregious findings are true at these sites, could they manifest at other trial sites around North America and beyond?”
Enormous List of Side Effects
The latest tranche of Pfizer documents also includes a whopping nine pages of recorded side effects — 158,000 in all! The picture below speaks louder than anything I can say about this list.
Enormous Gap Between What We’ve Been Told and Reality
The Pfizer documents reveal an enormous gap between what we were told about the jab and what the FDA and Pfizer actually knew about it. In a recent article published by The Defender,11 Dr. Meryl Nass asks, “Pfizer, FDA documents contradict official COVID vaccine safety narrative — Is this fraud?”
As noted by Nass, what we’re told in the media is one thing, and what these documents reveal is another. And, importantly, the content of these documents “tell us what information Pfizer and the FDA are willing to stand by.” They also establish what the legal requirements for emergency use authorization and licensing.
“It may come as a shock, but what the FDA said when it issued both the EUA and the license for Pfizer’s vaccines was very different from what you heard from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the media and other sources,” Nass writes.12
One glaring example of official recommendations running counter to the data is the CDC’s recommendation to vaccinate during pregnancy. CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky 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, confirmed the COVID jab was safe during pregnancy:
How can this be, when as late as December 2021, the FDA and Pfizer claimed there was inadequate information to determine if there are risks in pregnancy? How can Walensky and Fauci make definitive claims about safety when there are no data?
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.”13
What are they basing this on? The absence of data certainly isn’t a solid basis on which to make safety claims. As noted by Nass:14
“… the CDC, in its own Jan. 7 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,15 stated there was insufficient data to make any determination of COVID vaccine safety in the first trimester.
So, while the federal agencies had no reason to believe the vaccine was safe in pregnancy, and made sure their legal documents said so, they nonetheless advertised the vaccine as safe for pregnant women.
Then ACOG, a nonprofit professional organization of obstetricians, not only provided their members with false information on vaccine safety, but furthermore instructed them on the use of propaganda to convince expectant mothers to take the shot.”
CDC Guidance Contradicts Comirnaty Label
She also lists several instances where CDC statements to the public clearly contradict statements on the Comirnaty label. For example:16,17
While the CDC initially claimed that anaphylactic reactions to the jab occur at approximately the same rate as other vaccines, they’ve since removed that claim, and both the CDC and the Comirnaty label now states that administration of Comirnaty is limited to facilities that can medically manage anaphylactic reactions.
“This is not the case for other vaccines,” Nass says, adding that research from Harvard hospitals reveal the rate of anaphylaxis in employees who got the COVID jab was 50 to 100 times higher than the rate claimed by the CDC, which calculates that rate based on reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Interestingly enough, this matches up with what we believe to be the underreporting factor for VAERS might be.
While the CDC claims post-jab myocarditis is mild and resolves quickly, the Comirnaty label clearly states that “Information is not yet available about potential long-term sequelae.”
The CDC recommends the COVID jab for pregnant women, yet the label states that “available data on Comirnaty administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine associated risks in pregnancy.”
The CDC, FDA and mainstream media contend that the COVID jab cannot cause cancer or fertility problems, yet the Comirnaty label clearly states that “Comirnaty has not been evaluated for the potential to cause carcinogenicity, genotoxicity, or impairment of male fertility.” If it has not been evaluated, how can they claim to know that it cannot cause these kinds of problems — especially considering the list of reported side effects, above?
Even though the stated purpose of mass vaccination is to create “herd immunity,” the FDA did not require Pfizer to assess whether the jab could protect against asymptomatic infection or prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
What Was It All For?
With each passing week, the cracks in the official COVID narrative keep multiplying and widening. It’ll be interesting to see what finally breaks the proverbial dam.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is now out there pushing for a fourth shot,18 saying a second booster will be “necessary for most,” as three shots not only can’t protect against variants, but they rapidly wane in strength. For those same reasons, Americans must expect to get an annual booster each fall.
Under normal circumstances, that should have ripped the wool off of people’s eyes, but the COVID brainwashing has been so successful, many still can’t see just how badly they’ve been lied to. I believe the final salvo that will wake up the masses will either be revelations about harms, or the realization of what the planned social credit system would actually mean for the average American.
In 2018, Pfizer proudly partnered with a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) payment platform, Alipay, which was used to implement an early Chinese version of vaccine passports, called the “Internet + Vaccination” initiative, aimed at creating “Disease awareness via mobile devices.”19
According to the U.S. State Department, Alipay is a “tool” used by the CCP in its build-up of “technology-facilitated surveillance and social control” network, also known as a social credit system. The same sort of system is now being rolled out in other parts of the world, including the U.S., so it’s interesting to note Pfizer’s involvement with that early digital vaccine passport initiative.
Mid-March 2022, Bourla gave an interview with Washington Post Live (above), admitting the decision to use mRNA technology in the creation of a COVID “vaccine” was “counterintuitive,” as Pfizer has “good experience” with several other vaccine technologies, but only two years’ worth of experience with mRNA, which had never been used in a commercially available medicine before.
In the end, Bourla may come to regret that decision, as it has turned out to be an incredibly lethal one. Although I guess it will depend on whether he’s ever held to account for those choices.
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So: Zelensky is now saying that “after a cease-fire and steps toward providing security guarantees,” Zelensky would negotiate “the status of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region held by Russian-backed separatists.” This is the first major change-in-position by EITHER side in the present conflict, and the fact that it is being made by Ukraine is indisputable proof that militarily Russia is winning the war.
In other words: after a “cease-fire,” Ukraine would be in the weaker position, and, in that position, would then find itself obligated (by what Zelensky has just now said on this matter) to negotiate its acceptance that neither of those two regions is any longer a part of Ukrainian territory. Ukraine’s government would then be demanding from Russia’s Government “security guarantees.” Ukraine’s government would be requiring these “security guarantees” no longer from the U.S. Government (NATO), but instead from Russia’s Government.
Russia’s Government had invaded Ukraine on February 24th for two reasons:
(1) to permanently block Ukrainian membership for Ukraine in the anti-Russian military alliance NATO; and,
(2) to “denazify” Ukraine. The current breakthrough (“Zelenskyy said that Kyiv will be ready to discuss the status of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region held by Russian-backed separatists after a cease-fire and steps toward providing security guarantees”)
This opens the door to achieving (1); however, the deeper, and continuing deadlock is (2) denazification of Ukraine.
In my news-report on March 21, “Why The Question Of Which Side Is ‘nazi’ Blocks Any Peace Settlement”, was explained WHY that issue is so extremely unlikely to be able to be agreed-upon between Zelensky and Putin — and, therefore, why Russia will either have to accept defeat in this war, or else defeat Ukraine 100% militarily before there will be any capitulation by Ukraine in this conflict.
Since we now know that Russia is, at present, winning the war, the ONLY possibility by which Ukraine will be able to impose capitulation on Russia is by reversing the current military reality.
In any case, however, this is an extremely interesting situation. If Russia wins this conflict, then the post-World-War-II domination of the world by the United States will have definitively ended. However, if Ukraine wins it, then Russia will have to accept that, ultimately, it will become conquered by the U.S., and that the only agency remaining for Russia’s Government will be to decide whether that defeat will come by a peaceful capitulation, or, instead, by a world-annihilating WW III.
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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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I wanted to turn your attention to a fascinating poll that came out the other day.
The Toronto Star hired a polling agency to survey Canadians about their views about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. What made this poll unique is that it separated the sides to three separate groups: the triple vaccinated, the double vaxxed, and the unvaccinated.
Now, it’s one thing to have taken two COVID injections, but those who committed to the repeated booster regime were either compelled to do so (frequently under duress) or became true believers to the COVID narrative. As the polling shows, this group, by and large, submits to authority figures and embraces the current narrative, regardless of the actual merits of the solutions.
The other group — and remember, unvaccinated Canadians have faced severe discrimination for not taking the mRNA injections — saw the government’s appeal to their supposed health, and wholly rejected the COVID narrative. Unvaccinated Canadians are still not allowed to leave the country. Their rejection of the government narrative comes at an incredible personal and professional cost.
While the triple shot crew fully embraces the Ukraine narrative, you can see that the unvaccinated are incredibly skeptical. Those who received two shots and stopped there are a mixed bag.
Those who were fully compliant to the booster regime are even willing to fight World War 3 over Ukraine, via a no fly zone, the poll shows.
To me, this speaks to an incredible divide in western society today. We are not so much split between party lines as we are between compliant and non compliant citizens. There are those who instinctively question the commands coming on down from above from authority figures (we tend not to respect their credentials as a blanket appeal to our submission), and there are those who accept the government narrative, because they are under the impression that these authority figures are here to help us.
Supporting the Current Thing is encouraged by our leaders as a virtuous endeavor, and just like COVID Mania, there are perks attached to it. As with COVID Mania, it is much easier to adhere to the Ukraine narrative than to balk at it.
Not supporting a crippling sanctions regime on Russia, or arming neo fascist Ukrainian militias to the teeth, or even the imposition of a World War 3 level no fly zone over Ukraine, has become akin to being a bad person, and will sometimes even result in your labeling as a traitorous agent for a foreign regime. You don’t want to be a bad person, do you? The ruling class thinks it’s best for you to continue to support the Current Thing and leave independent thinking to your betters!
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***
The cultural vandals and iconoclasts have been busy of late, removing Russians from the stables at short notice and demanding what might be called a necessary affirmation of disloyalty. It’s all good to talk about world peace and the resolution of disputes, but that will hardly do for the flag-bearing choirs who have discovered their object of evil. Do you hate Vladimir Putin? If so, good. Do you love freedom? Well, of course, as everyone does with squeaking enthusiasm, even if they cannot define it.
The main interest is never in the second answer, but the first. Putin must be condemned and banished from your conscience, your mind and history. Ignore the fact that he is the elected leader of a country – he remains a tyrant to be condemned to liberal democratic execration. Best go about punishing people innocent of this fact.
Such a cringeworthy approach has seduced and trapped some able minds over the years. During the Cold War, the division of camps and ideologies demanded unthinking loyalty, not so much to truth but a version of it long lost in political drag and the hypocrisy of appearances. On September 22, 1947, delegates from Communist parties across the European spectrum heard the infantile ravings of the main Soviet delegate Andrei Zhdanov, who suggested with nether clenching tediousness that the world was divided between the “imperialist and democratic camp”. The US, allied with Great Britain and France, made up the former. “The anti-fascist forces comprise the second camp”, rooted in the USSR and its various, anomalously named “new democracies.”
In the United States, divisions were also being marked by the mind ravaging nature of ideological conformism. Executive Order 9835, issued by President Harry Truman, focused on whether “reasonable grounds exist for belief that the person involved is disloyal” with any organisation designated by the Attorney General to be “totalitarian, Fascist, Communist, or subversive”, or advocating or approving the forceful denial of constitutional rights to other persons or seeking “to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means.”
The President’s Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty (TCEL), packed with representatives from six government departments overseen by Special Assistant to the Attorney General A. Devitt Vanech, dealt with assessing federal loyalty standards and developing procedures to expunge or disqualify “any disloyal of subversive person” from federal service.
In this atmosphere, the vulgar and coarse Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy operated, at least for a time, with pugnacious impunity, claiming in his infamous Wheeling, West Virginia speech that 57 communists had found their way into the US State Department. The House Un-American Activities Committee also worked aggressively to advance the spirit of demonisation, ruining careers and blackening reputations. The stupid tend to linger in political accusation.
The Ukraine War is now making Russian citizens, at the behest of various quarters, undertake acts of purification in various foreign theatres. They are being told to engage in crude demonstrations of loyalty (or, in some cases, disloyalty). Admit you hate Putin, and you can attend a tournament to earn your crust.
UK Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston has taken a keen interest in this daft effort, hoping to encourage the organisers of Wimbledon, the All England Law Tennis Club (AELTC) to take a more severe approach to players from “pariah states”, as long as they do not include such angelic wonders as Saudi Arabia. Before a select parliamentary committee, Huddleston noted that, “Many countries have agreed that they will not allow representatives from Russia to compete. There are also visa issues as well. When it comes to individuals, that is more complex.”
Complexity and Huddleston do not get along. “We need some potential assurance that they are not supporters of Putin and we are considering what requirements we may need to try to get some assurances along those lines.”
Tennis player Daniil Medvedev and his colleagues are facing the prospect that not engaging in public denouncement of the Kremlin will be insufficient to enable them to compete. They are already not permitted to compete under the Russian flag, and they are being told that a Russian winning Wimbledon would be unpardonable for the glorious British tournament. Their country has already been banned from competing in team events such as the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King tournaments.
Across the sporting world, players from Russia now see their country barred by the International Ski Federation, Formula One, hosting the European Champions League Final, the indefensibly boring European curling championships and the International Biathlon Union.
Such expectations are so extreme as to remind one of Cold War parallels. An occasional voice of reason can be found, even if they come from an individual who has no reason to fear repercussions himself. Australian tennis commentator and former player Todd Woodbridge told Nine’s Sports Sunday that this line of reasoning placed one on “slippery and dangerous ground.” Everyone knew “they have families back in whatever part of Russia they are from, and you do not want to be on the wrong side of that, because your family will pay the price.”
Woodbridge is a reliably unworldly sort, but these are sensible, humane words lost in the feverish hysteria that will cake and cloak discussion in this field for months. From culture to sporting fixtures, the smug, Putin hating establishment, under direction from their various advisors, are being told that denigrating and cancelling the representatives of Barbarian Rus is the way to go. Individuals will be crucified.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
Featured image: Daniil Medvedev’s ‘world peace’ post on Instagram. (Instagram)
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“The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we’re part of the medium. The scary thing is, we’ll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us.”—Director Steven Spielberg, Minority Report
We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by such science fiction writers as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick.
Much like Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984, the government and its corporate spies now watch our every move.
Much like Huxley’s A Brave New World, we are churning out a society of watchers who “have their liberties taken away from them, but … rather enjoy it, because they [are] distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing.”
Much like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the populace is now taught to “know their place and their duties, to understand that they have no real rights but will be protected up to a point if they conform, and to think so poorly of themselves that they will accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away.”
And in keeping with Philip K. Dick’s darkly prophetic vision of a dystopian police state—which became the basis for Steven Spielberg’s futuristic thriller Minority Report which was released 20 years ago—we are now trapped into a world in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams and pre-crime units will crack a few skulls to bring the populace under control.
Minority Report is set in the year 2054, but it could just as well have taken place in 2022.
Seemingly taking its cue from science fiction, technology has moved so fast in the short time since Minority Report premiered in 2002 that what once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.
Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, Spielberg’s unnerving vision of the future is fast becoming our reality.
Both worlds—our present-day reality and Spielberg’s celluloid vision of the future—are characterized by widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, fusion centers, driverless cars, voice-controlled homes, facial recognition systems, cybugs and drones, and predictive policing (pre-crime) aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage.
Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Government agents listen in on our telephone calls and read our emails. Political correctness—a philosophy that discourages diversity—has become a guiding principle of modern society.
The courts have shredded the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact, SWAT teams battering down doors without search warrants and FBI agents acting as a secret police that investigate dissenting citizens are common occurrences in contemporary America.
We are increasingly ruled by multi-corporations wedded to the police state. Much of the population is either hooked on illegal drugs or ones prescribed by doctors. And bodily privacy and integrity has been utterly eviscerated by a prevailing view that Americans have no rights over what happens to their bodies during an encounter with government officials, who are allowed to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.
All of this has come about with little more than a whimper from an oblivious American populace largely comprised of nonreaders and television and internet zombies, but we have been warned about such an ominous future in novels and movies for years.
The following 15 films may be the best representation of what we now face as a society.
Fahrenheit 451 (1966). Adapted from Ray Bradbury’s novel and directed by Francois Truffaut, this film depicts a futuristic society in which books are banned, and firemen ironically are called on to burn contraband books—451 Fahrenheit being the temperature at which books burn. Montag is a fireman who develops a conscience and begins to question his book burning. This film is an adept metaphor for our obsessively politically correct society where virtually everyone now pre-censors speech. Here, a brainwashed people addicted to television and drugs do little to resist governmental oppressors.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The plot of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, as based on an Arthur C. Clarke short story, revolves around a space voyage to Jupiter. The astronauts soon learn, however, that the fully automated ship is orchestrated by a computer system—known as HAL 9000—which has become an autonomous thinking being that will even murder to retain control. The idea is that at some point in human evolution, technology in the form of artificial intelligence will become autonomous and human beings will become mere appendages of technology. In fact, at present, we are seeing this development with massive databases generated and controlled by the government that are administered by such secretive agencies as the National Security Agency and sweep all websites and other information devices collecting information on average citizens. We are being watched from cradle to grave.
Planet of the Apes (1968). Based on Pierre Boulle’s novel, astronauts crash on a planet where apes are the masters and humans are treated as brutes and slaves. While fleeing from gorillas on horseback, astronaut Taylor is shot in the throat, captured and housed in a cage. From there, Taylor begins a journey wherein the truth revealed is that the planet was once controlled by technologically advanced humans who destroyed civilization. Taylor’s trek to the ominous Forbidden Zone reveals the startling fact that he was on planet earth all along. Descending into a fit of rage at what he sees in the final scene, Taylor screams: “We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you.” The lesson is obvious, but will we listen? The script, although rewritten, was initially drafted by Rod Serling and retains Serling’s Twilight Zone-ish ending.
THX 1138 (1970). George Lucas’ directorial debut, this is a somber view of a dehumanized society totally controlled by a police state. The people are force-fed drugs to keep them passive, and they no longer have names but only letter/number combinations such as THX 1138. Any citizen who steps out of line is quickly brought into compliance by robotic police equipped with “pain prods”—electro-shock batons. Sound like tasers?
A Clockwork Orange (1971). Director Stanley Kubrick presents a future ruled by sadistic punk gangs and a chaotic government that cracks down on its citizens sporadically. Alex is a violent punk who finds himself in the grinding, crushing wheels of injustice. This film may accurately portray the future of western society that grinds to a halt as oil supplies diminish, environmental crises increase, chaos rules, and the only thing left is brute force.
Soylent Green (1973). Set in a futuristic overpopulated New York City, the people depend on synthetic foods manufactured by the Soylent Corporation. A policeman investigating a murder discovers the grisly truth about what soylent green is really made of. The theme is chaos where the world is ruled by ruthless corporations whose only goal is greed and profit. Sound familiar?
Blade Runner (1982). In a 21st century Los Angeles, a world-weary cop tracks down a handful of renegade “replicants” (synthetically produced human slaves). Life is now dominated by mega-corporations, and people sleepwalk along rain-drenched streets. This is a world where human life is cheap, and where anyone can be exterminated at will by the police (or blade runners). Based upon a Philip K. Dick novel, this exquisite Ridley Scott film questions what it means to be human in an inhuman world.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). The best adaptation of Orwell’s dark tale, this film visualizes the total loss of freedom in a world dominated by technology and its misuse, and the crushing inhumanity of an omniscient state. The government controls the masses by controlling their thoughts, altering history and changing the meaning of words. Winston Smith is a doubter who turns to self-expression through his diary and then begins questioning the ways and methods of Big Brother before being re-educated in a most brutal fashion.
Brazil (1985). Sharing a similar vision of the near future as 1984 and Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, this is arguably director Terry Gilliam’s best work, one replete with a merging of the fantastic and stark reality. Here, a mother-dominated, hapless clerk takes refuge in flights of fantasy to escape the ordinary drabness of life. Caught within the chaotic tentacles of a police state, the longing for more innocent, free times lies behind the vicious surface of this film.
They Live (1988). John Carpenter’s bizarre sci-fi social satire action film assumes the future has already arrived. John Nada is a homeless person who stumbles across a resistance movement and finds a pair of sunglasses that enables him to see the real world around him. What he discovers is a world controlled by ominous beings who bombard the citizens with subliminal messages such as “obey” and “conform.” Carpenter manages to make an effective political point about the underclass—that is, everyone except those in power. The point: we, the prisoners of our devices, are too busy sucking up the entertainment trivia beamed into our brains and attacking each other up to start an effective resistance movement.
The Matrix (1999). The story centers on a computer programmer Thomas A. Anderson, secretly a hacker known by the alias “Neo,” who begins a relentless quest to learn the meaning of “The Matrix”—cryptic references that appear on his computer. Neo’s search leads him to Morpheus who reveals the truth that the present reality is not what it seems and that Anderson is actually living in the future—2199. Humanity is at war against technology which has taken the form of intelligent beings, and Neo is actually living in The Matrix, an illusionary world that appears to be set in the present in order to keep the humans docile and under control. Neo soon joins Morpheus and his cohorts in a rebellion against the machines that use SWAT team tactics to keep things under control.
Minority Report (2002). Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick and directed by Steven Spielberg, the film offers a special effect-laden, techno-vision of a futuristic world in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful. And if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams will bring you under control. The setting is 2054 where PreCrime, a specialized police unit, apprehends criminals before they can commit the crime. Captain Anderton is the chief of the Washington, DC, PreCrime force which uses future visions generated by “pre-cogs” (mutated humans with precognitive abilities) to stop murders. Soon Anderton becomes the focus of an investigation when the precogs predict he will commit a murder. But the system can be manipulated. This film raises the issue of the danger of technology operating autonomously—which will happen eventually if it has not already occurred. To a hammer, all the world looks like a nail. In the same way, to a police state computer, we all look like suspects. In fact, before long, we all may be mere extensions or appendages of the police state—all suspects in a world commandeered by machines.
V for Vendetta (2006). This film depicts a society ruled by a corrupt and totalitarian government where everything is run by an abusive secret police. A vigilante named V dons a mask and leads a rebellion against the state. The subtext here is that authoritarian regimes through repression create their own enemies—that is, terrorists—forcing government agents and terrorists into a recurring cycle of violence. And who is caught in the middle? The citizens, of course. This film has a cult following among various underground political groups such as Anonymous, whose members wear the same Guy Fawkes mask as that worn by V.
Children of Men (2006). This film portrays a futuristic world without hope since humankind has lost its ability to procreate. Civilization has descended into chaos and is held together by a military state and a government that attempts to keep its totalitarian stronghold on the population. Most governments have collapsed, leaving Great Britain as one of the few remaining intact societies. As a result, millions of refugees seek asylum only to be rounded up and detained by the police. Suicide is a viable option as a suicide kit called Quietus is promoted on billboards and on television and newspapers. But hope for a new day comes when a woman becomes inexplicably pregnant.
Land of the Blind (2006). In this dark political satire, tyrannical rulers are overthrown by new leaders who prove to be just as evil as their predecessors. Maximilian II is a demented fascist ruler of a troubled land named Everycountry who has two main interests: tormenting his underlings and running his country’s movie industry. Citizens who are perceived as questioning the state are sent to “re-education camps” where the state’s concept of reality is drummed into their heads. Joe, a prison guard, is emotionally moved by the prisoner and renowned author Thorne and eventually joins a coup to remove the sadistic Maximilian, replacing him with Thorne. But soon Joe finds himself the target of the new government.
All of these films—and the writers who inspired them—understood what many Americans, caught up in their partisan, flag-waving, zombified states, are still struggling to come to terms with: that there is no such thing as a government organized for the good of the people. Even the best intentions among those in government inevitably give way to the desire to maintain power and control at all costs.
Eventually, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, even the sleepwalking masses (who remain convinced that all of the bad things happening in the police state—the police shootings, the police beatings, the raids, the roadside strip searches—are happening to other people) will have to wake up.
Sooner or later, the things happening to other people will start happening to us.
When that painful reality sinks in, it will hit with the force of a SWAT team crashing through your door, a taser being aimed at your stomach, and a gun pointed at your head. And there will be no channel to change, no reality to alter, and no manufactured farce to hide behind.
As George Orwell warned, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.”
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Fears about the impact of climate change is a reality for billions of people around the globe.
In Southern Africa, a series of cyclones and tropical storms have done enormous damage in Mozambique, Madagascar and Malawi.
The most recent Cyclone Gombe resulted in the displacement of thousands of people in Mozambique and Malawi. An earlier Tropical Storm Ana struck Madagascar along with Mozambique and Malawi.
Cyclone Gombe reached the coast of Mossuril district in Nampula Province in Mozambique on March 11. The severe tropical event was marked by winds as high as 190km/h (118 miles) with rainfall at 200/24h (7.874 inches).
Gombe came just two months after Ana which struck Mozambique in January. In addition to this there was Tropical Depression Dumako which landed in February. Just in Mozambique, 200,000 people were impacted in Nampula, Zambezia and Tete provinces. Before the month of March was over there were forecasts for heavy rains in Zambezia, Sofala, Manica and Nampula provinces which could possibly result in flooding in Licungo and Zambezia river basins along with the southeast area of Tete.
According to an article on the climate situation in southeast Africa along the Indian Ocean, Afrik 21 notes:
“In neighboring Malawi, the disaster caused heavy rains leading to flooding in nine districts, including Machinga located 256 km (159 miles) from the capital Lilongwe. A total of seven people died in the south of the country, while authorities deployed rescue teams to flood-affected areas such as Liwonde, where the country’s fourth largest national park is located, and the Namandanje River, which serves as the border with Mozambique. Although Gombe did not reach Madagascar, the country most vulnerable to natural disasters in East Africa, the big island experienced other phenomena at the beginning of the year, such as cyclone Batisrai, which followed storm Ana and had wind gusts of 235 km (146 miles) per hour. After causing flooding across the country, destroying buildings and uprooting trees, the storm left 92 people dead and 50,000 displaced.”
All three of these states, Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar, belong to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a regional organization encompassing 16 countries across the entire sub-continent and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). SADC holds regular meetings to discuss issues of mutual concern including greater cooperation and economic integration among its members-nations.
However, the regional plans debated and ratified by SADC summits and working groups are impeded due to the repeated tropical storms and other weather disasters. The region of Southern Africa is endowed with natural resources and close proximity to the Indian Ocean, making its potential for growth and development unlimited.
For example, Mozambique is the center of a major energy project designed to produce Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) for export in Cabo Delgado province. Independent of the recent cyclones, there is an armed insurgency which has attacked towns and villages throughout the province stalling LNG development while prompting people to flee seeking safety outside the area. The SADC and Rwandan military forces have been deployed in Cabo Delgado to assist the Mozambique armed forces in anti-insurgency operations.
SADC countries are perhaps the most unified politically of the regional organizations across the continent. Even the African Union (AU), which encompasses 55-member states, which maintains a secretariat in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at its headquarters, has not been able to act as rapidly in implementing its proposals as the SADC.
Cyclone Gombe and other climate disastrous occurrences pose enormous challenges for the region along with geo-political areas. With the public health crisis over the last two years due to COVID-19, the compounding reality of cyclones and subsequent flooding, severely hampers the planning capacity for governments and other sectors of society. Consequently, cyclones are a contributing factor in the rising national debt levels of African states.
The Failed Legacy of COP26
Last year another major climate conference was sponsored by the United Nations in Glasgow, Scotland. The COP26 gathering was the scene of much political struggle surrounding the issues discussed and most importantly, the final declaration of the event.
“The UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) brought together 120 world leaders and over 40,000 registered participants, including 22,274 party delegates, 14,124 observers and 3,886 media representatives. For two weeks, the world was riveted on all facets of climate change — the science, the solutions, the political will to act, and clear indications of action…. ‘The approved texts are a compromise,’ said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. ‘They reflect the interests, the conditions, the contradictions and the state of political will in the world today. They take important steps, but unfortunately the collective political will was not enough to overcome some deep contradictions.’”
Yet these compromises are a direct result of the western states from Washington to Berlin which often objected to the adoption of concrete goals in regard to the emissions of greenhouse gases around the globe. It is the capitalist countries of the United States and Western Europe which are the most culpable in the degradation of the environmental status of the planet.
In fact, some studies suggest that it is the U.S. Department of Defense which is the largest polluter internationally. Through the demand for armaments, ordnances, fighter jets and other military equipment, along with the presence of more than 7,000 military bases established and administered by the Pentagon, Washington and Wall Street are behind the burning of harmful toxins which damage the air, land and water of countries around the globe.
“Yet, despite being the planet’s single greatest institutional consumer of fossil fuels, the Pentagon has been granted a unique exemption from reducing – or even reporting – its pollution. The U.S. won this prize during the 1998 Kyoto Protocol negotiations after the Pentagon insisted on a ‘national security provision’ that would place its operations beyond global scrutiny or control…. The Air Force accounts for about half of the Pentagon’s operational energy consumption, followed by the Navy (33 percent) and Army (15 percent). In 2012, oil accounted for nearly 80 percent of the Pentagon’s energy consumption, followed by electricity, natural gas and coal.”
Imperialism and Climate Change
With these facts being placed in an article without any refutation by the Pentagon, illustrates clearly that the struggle against climate change must also encompass as an essential point of departure, the role of the Pentagon’s imperialist militarism. These issues remain with the international community in the current period due to the war initiated through attempts to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Eastern European to the state of Ukraine combined with efforts to rearm Germany and to reverse the neutrality of Finland and Switzerland.
Anti-imperialists and solidarity activists based in the western countries should never refrain from pointing to the role of Pentagon military bases and war efforts as the major contributing factors to the worsening of climate change. East Africa has been a focal point for what is often labeled as “natural disasters” beyond the capacity of human beings to prevent. Nonetheless, many scientists and analysts have repeatedly drawn a connection between mass production, light industry, mining, food production, military services and climate change.
The countries of Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar contribute almost nothing to the advent of climate disasters. These states should be assisted with relief efforts and the building of infrastructure designed to minimize the impact of cyclones and other serious weather disturbances.
Reconstruction of damaged communities in Southern Africa should be supported by people of goodwill in the imperialist countries since it is their own governments and corporations which have for decades implemented policies which have disproportionate negative impact on the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as oppressed peoples and the working class inside the western industrialized states in North America and Western Europe.
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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: COP26 mass demonstration in Glasgow (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
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In a good number of Western states, the ruling classes, former and current, have lost their heads. Bugbear and boogieman Vladimir Putin’s efforts in Ukraine have lent themselves to some rather extreme suggestions, ranging from assassination to potential war crimes trials. This is not to say that the Russian leader has nothing to account for. As ever, it all depends on who is making the accusation, and who is seeking retribution.
Trying leaders for war crimes does not lack merit, even if law remains, at best, a blunt instrument all too readily concealing a vengeful motive. Butchers should never escape under the comfortable veil of state responsibility, claiming sovereignty as an all-dispensing reason to commit atrocities. But any war crimes procedures are riddled with claims of bias, partisanship and self-interest.
Many voices from the noisy tribes of accountability are calling for Putin to face legal proceedings as soon as possible. Former UK Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and Sir John Major have added their names to a petition calling for a Nuremberg-styled model similar to that used in 1945 by the victorious Allies against Nazi Germany.
Paving is being added to the proposition with remarks by US President Joe Biden that the Russian president is a war criminal. US Secretary of State Antony Blinkenagreed. “Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime.” A unanimous resolution by the US Senate has also condemned the Russian leader for “alleged war crimes”.
The International Criminal Court is already seized of the matter. But on the issue of the crime of aggression, otherwise known as the crime against peace in the charter of the International Military Tribunal, the ICC would need a referral from the UN Security Council, something that Russia will most likely veto.
The choristers for a war crimes tribunal seem an odd bunch. Some are individuals who themselves have committed, or approved of, acts of war that would qualify them for that very same process they now demand. Gordon Brown may not have liked being a part of the unlawful attack on Iraq in 2003, but as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was the man overlooking the purse strings of Britain’s war effort. The masterminds of that crime of aggression in Mesopotamia – US President George W. Bush, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Australia’s John Howard – were far from Brown’s mind as he told BBC Radio 4’s program that a “message” had to be “sent out” that such aggression would be judicially punished.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Brown attempted a sketch for the prosecution. Putin was the “ringleader” of murderous efforts against opponents in the UK. He invaded Georgia in 2008; annexed Crimea in 2014 and naughtily supported the Assad regime in Syria. But the Ukraine War stood out. “Aggression is Putin’s original crime: the planning, initiation and pursuit of a policy to declare and prosecute an invasion of Ukraine.” At Nuremberg, Nazi war criminals were held to account. “Eight decades on, we must ensure there will be a day of reckoning for Putin.”
Had these people consulted their history on this troubled subject, they would be aware that the tyrant-in-the-dock motif is a precarious one. The original suggestion of a tribunal to try leaders for war crimes, specifically Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, was opposed by President Woodrow Wilson for one fundamental reason: US presidents might find themselves facing a prosecutor’s brief at some point in the future. The motive was selfish but at least showed an awareness that such a course of action risked having a boomerang effect.
The issue did not go away during the Second World War. As discussions about a proposed war crimes process at war’s end began to take place, George Orwell penned a characteristically devastating and clear-eyed piece on its weaknesses in an October 1943 issue of the Tribune. In reviewing a work advocating Benito Mussolini’s trial, Orwell was firm. “In power politics there are no crimes, because there are no laws.”
Even if so, who could actually sit in judgment of him? True, the list of atrocities, brutalities and broken treaties were undeniable, the cruelty even admitted. “The only troublesome question is: How can something that was praiseworthy at the time you did it – ten years ago, say – suddenly become reprehensible now?”
Were Mussolini to call witnesses at his trial, he would find many on the side of the Allies impressed and even supportive of his various ghastly deeds. Lord Rothermere, for instance, in 1928, called the Italian leader “the antidote to a deadly poison.” Lord Mottistone in 1935 on the barbarous Italian action in Abyssinia was all approving: “I wanted to dispel the ridiculous notion that it was a nice thing to sympathise with the underdog.” It was the Abyssinians, “cruel” and “brutal” who were facing “others who are playing an honourable part.” The gassed natives got what they deserved.
In the witness box, Orwell declares, any number of individuals would be able to testify that Mussolini’s actions, from stomping on the Italian trade unions to using mustard gas on the Abyssinians and even building a navy against Britain, had the support of the British government “through thick and thin.”
At Nuremberg, the grounds for an indivisible international morality for leaders was proposed. Critics smelt a legally attired rat: What would this mean for the future of state craft and power politics? The righteous US Supreme Court justice and prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson, with an almost puritan certitude, stated the case for the prosecution. All, including state leaders, would be equal in the dock as personally responsible for war crimes. “The principle of personal liability is a necessary as well as logical one if international law is to render real help to the maintenance of peace.”
It is a view that has proven itself to be manifestly untrue in practice. Justice and accountability are divisible. Power politics continues to supply room for criminal conduct and excuse viciousness. Individuals such as former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, his blood spattered finger prints criss-crossing continents, hold sway with their view that international tribunals are unaccountable bodies dolling out unjust rulings against noble leaders. President Donald Trump, in this true Kissingerian spirit, went so far as to directly sanction members of the ICC for daring to investigate potential US war crimes in Afghanistan.
Since 1945, the leaders tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity, be they in the international criminal tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, or the International Criminal Court, have tended to come from a broken and defeated side. In some cases, the defeated, such as the UK and United States, have simply gone home to forget or justify their unlawful adventurism. Bush decided to take up painting. Blair decided to become a global consultant to dubious regimes. They only meant well. The Ukraine War promises to be no different for those in the Kremlin.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
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Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
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On a really cold day at the beginning of March, 7 people drowned off the coast of Lesvos. They were refugees, some from Somalia where I was born. On the same day the Greek government was shouting out that it was opening its arms and sending planes and buses to bring refugees from Ukraine to Greece.
I am a refugee. My family took me aged 5 from the war in my country which killed 5 of my brothers and sisters; my father was badly injured and, until his death in Somalia 4 weeks ago, struggled to live with his body filled with bomb fragments. My own move to Uganda saved my life but was a total disaster. From 9 years old I was homeless and alone. I had no schooling, no bed and survived on the streets. At the age of 24 I had a friend who got me out to Turkey and then I came to Samos where I applied for asylum. As yet I have no decision. I live in fear of deportation. Greece’s government decided in June last year that refugees from Somalia are, as Muslims, safe in Turkey and should be returned to make their asylum case there. But the government here does not tell the truth. Turkey is not a safe place for refugees from Somalia and many places.
Yesterday I met a Ukrainian refugee in a hospital in Athens. She is quite old. She was in a bad way with wounds to her stomach. She told me that she was alone and when bombed had escaped from her home. She had left her pet cats and dogs and her chickens. They would be dead now. We cried together.
I am more than ok that the refugees from Ukraine are being helped by many European countries including Greece. I am pleased that they are being sent buses and planes to travel to Greece and are not expected to come here like me in a rubber boat at night. I am pleased that they will get very quickly the papers they need to stay, work and get medical help in Greece. I am pleased that they are being offered good places to stay and not being sent to refugee camps like the prison on Samos even though it has loads of space these days.
But
I am so angry with the Greek government which only cares for refugees from the Ukraine. Its message to me is clear. The refugees from Ukraine are seen as people like the Greeks. But refugees like me from Africa and the middle eastern countries are not such ‘good’ humans. We are insulted! All my friends are angry like me. Those who have got their papers are now being abandoned. Many are now loosing their homes as the big refugee aid groups like Praxis are closing down. And in the past week we see the police in Thessaloniki and Athens targeting non Ukrainian refugees. Last week in one neighbourhood in Athens they took 69 refugees for immediate deportation because they did not have any papers on them. On the same day I was followed by 2 police to my apartment where I was asked for my papers.
Most of us are convinced that what is happening now shows the deep racism of the current Government. We hate the minister responsible for refugees, Notis Mitarakis. He has never said or done anything good for us. His talking about the Ukrainian refugees as real refugees and us as fake is just one example of his racism. But what we find hard to understand is why the Greek government is now ok with being seen as racist. It seems stupid to us. Will so many people want to holiday here? We hope not.
One major point we talk a lot about is the ways in which we see Greece as being frightened of Islam. Many seem to think we want to convert all Greeks to our religion. Many seem to think that Islam completely controls our lives and makes us into different types of human beings with nothing in common with Greek people. So they say we have no place here. They tell us to see Greece only as a gateway to Europe. Move on. Don’t stay here. You will never belong here.
But it is crazy thinking. It is so wrong in hundreds of ways. There are thousands of Muslims now living in Athens and Thessaloniki from many different countries. Many live in peace with their Greek neighbours. We shop in the same places; work together and play together. Things are getting better in our relationships. We know that we face the same problems with many Greeks as petrol and electricity price rises cripple us. We help each other.
Like many of my friends I see the government and not the people as the problem. We are shocked by the war in Ukraine. We must help these refugees. But we must also speak out and demand that all refugees should be treated as the Ukrainians. We cannot accept the government dividing the refugees by saying that those from Ukraine deserve better and kinder treatment than us because they are not Muslims and are mainly with white skin.
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Featured image: Ukrainian refugees (Source: Twitter)
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***
As the conflict continues to intensify in Ukraine, the West seems interested in driving a new wave of international nuclearization. Washington announced that it will be organizing a nuclear contingency plan in order to face an eventual escalation of the crisis between Ukraine and Russia. The American arguments to “justify” this type of measure are based on distortions of previous pronouncements made by Moscow’s officials, which reveals that NATO is ready to do anything to make the current situation a pretext for global re-nuclearization.
American President Joe Biden is about to start his tour across Europe to attend meetings at the European Council and NATO, where the main topic to be discussed will certainly be Ukraine. In a recent statement, White House spokespersons said that among the issues on the agenda for discussion will be the potential use of nuclear weapons in the conflict, which is being treated with increasing attention by the US government – supposedly in response to an alleged “Russian nuclear threat”.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan commented on the case, stating:
“President Putin in the early days of the conflict actually raised the spectre of the potential use of nuclear weapons. It is something that we do have to be concerned about. Based on our current analysis we have not changed our nuclear posture to date. But we are constantly monitoring for that potential contingency and of course we take it as seriously as one can possibly take it. We will be consulting with allies and partners on that potential contingency among a range of others and discussing what our potential responses are (…) [Joe Biden] will work with allies on longer-term adjustments to NATO force posture on the eastern flank. He will [also] announce joint action on enhancing European energy security and reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian gas at long last”.
When mentioning Putin, the American adviser refers to the episode in which the Russian president ordered the country’s nuclear forces to be placed on alert, in the last days of February. At the time, there was great tension and misinformation around the world, with pro-Western media outlets claiming that Putin was “threatening to use nuclear weapons”, which is absolutely false, considering that Putin’s order was just a punctual response to a previous controversial and bellicose speech by the British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, in which the possibility of NATO involvement in the conflict was mentioned.
In addition, later Russian spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also had her words distorted by the Western media. Zakharova had commented during a press conference that a possible Third World War would be nuclear – leading Russia to avoid this scenario. At the time, Western agencies distorted the spokeswoman’s speech, also alleging some kind of threat (when, in practice, Zakharova has only said an obvious thing that everyone understands: that a new world war would be nuclear – which is precisely the reason why international society has been trying to avoid this situation since 1945).
On several occasions, Moscow officials have shown efforts to make even clearer the Russian position of trying to avoid, not provoke, the nuclear escalation of the conflict. For example, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN that his country would only use nuclear weapons if there was an existential threat to the existence of the Russian state:
“We have a concept of domestic security, it is public, you can read all the reasons for [Russia’s] nuclear arms to be used (…) If it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used in accordance with our concept”.
It is no secret that Washington has been trying to re-nuclearize international relations in recent years. In 2020, the US government began to discuss the possibility of resuming nuclear tests, for example. This type of attitude emerges as an extreme and reactive measure in the face of the process of geopolitical decentralization. In other words, in the midst of the rise of the multipolar world, Washington’s last resort to protect its global dominance is to drive a new nuclear wave.
The main problem, however, is trying to justify the re-nuclearization plan with distortions of Russian pronouncements. At no time was there any Russian position in favor of the nuclearization of the conflict in Ukraine. On the contrary, Moscow has been clear in its stance: nuclear weapons are out of the question unless there is an existential threat to Russia. The reason nuclear forces are on the alert is simply because of the escalation promoted by NATO itself, with some Western political leaders considering greater involvement of the alliance in the conflict. Obviously, an eventual NATO action in Ukraine could be interpreted as an existential threat, as the bloc accumulates the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. So, for there to be no risk of escalation and for the Russian alert to nuclear forces to be revoked, the first step to be taken is for NATO to abdicate any involvement in the conflict that could constitute an existential threat.
A re-nuclearization of the world is unlikely to mean any kind of bellicose use of such weapons. Neither side wins in a conflict where two nuclear powers face each other and a war between Russia and NATO would certainly be the end of the world. So, obviously, the American attitude would not be to use nuclear weapons against enemies, but only to drive a new wave of nuclearization, returning to the tensions of the Cold War era. It is possible that nuclear tests will be resumed, for example, and that the production of new weapons will be boosted, creating a new nuclear race.
Unfortunately, while a nuclear conflict is virtually impossible, some degree of nuclearization seems an inevitable side effect of the current situation.
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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
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***
The wager by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that his country could ride out inflation and currency shock with low rates has been fading fast because of the sustained rise of crude oil prices, which is not being helped by the war in Ukraine. Ankara is facing a severe economic crisis as the gas import bill alone is expected to jump to $40 billion this year against the net official foreign reserves of $18 billion. Economists are now ratcheting up forecasts of a massive current account deficit and an annual inflation rate as high as 70%. This is affecting how the youth of Turkey view their president despite Erdoğan’s promise to raise a “pious generation.”
Erdoğan’s popularity is waning, which might bear upon the prospects of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) returning to power in the next general election. Amidst the rising cost of living and intensifying shortages of essential commodities, Ankara has seen more than 60 strikes, factory occupations, protests and boycott calls in less than two months, according to the independent Labor Studies Group. Workers in a various industries, including textiles, transportation, mining and construction have joined protests against the unaffordable cost-of-living, posing a massive threat to Erdoğan’s re-election campaign as he has failed to meet the people’s expectations.
As per the call of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), Turkey’s healthcare workers were on a two-day strike on March 14 and 15, which falls on “National Medicine Day.” The TTB accused the government of low wages and poor working conditions, and they demanded a minimum pay rise of 150% for healthcare workers.
The TTB said that working conditions for health workers and doctors in Turkey was very bad. At least 1,361 doctors left Turkey in the first 11 months of 2021, compared to 59 only in 2012. Long hours, low wages, violence toward healthcare staff, workplace bullying and poor working conditions have led many physicians to leave Turkey – thus fuelling an unprecedented brain drain.
Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), while criticizing the Erdoğan administration, stated that the government made incompetent and insensitive appointments to the executive positions and directed violence against all healthcare workers, which became widespread.
Atilla Yesilada, an Istanbul-based economist at emerging-market analysis firm GlobalSource Partners, predicted a tough battle. He said to Bloomberg, “you can try to attract investments with cheap labor as a developing nation, but you can’t convince people to live with conditions worse than they are used to”.
Support for Erdoğan’s AKP has declined, despite claims from loyalists about continued people’s confidence in the president. A Metropoll study in February showed 72% of Turkish citizens are unhappy with living conditions. Backing for the ruling party has fallen to 25%, its core level of support, according to Ozer Sencar, head of the leading Turkish pollster Metropoll.
Meanwhile, a study published in Ankara by University Professor Ali Caglar and commissioned by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) think tank, stated that a significant majority (62.5%) of the ‘Generation Z’ (18-25 years age group) are frustrated with the Turkish government. Increasing economic difficulties, diminishing returns on their education and high level of restrictions on civilian rights are cited as reasons for their dissatisfaction. College debt and unemployment aggravated their discontentment. They found that the government’s policies are mostly irrelevant for them.
Bilal Erdoğan, the son of Recep Tayyip, remarked at the opening ceremony of the Turkey Youth Foundation in the northern province of Samsun that ordering Turkish coffee at Starbucks instead of a latte is better as it is symbolically connected with their faith, religion, identity and culture.
In the past, the ruling AKP could connect with the youth. However, in the digital environment, photos showing the luxurious lifestyle of the president, who lives in a literal palace worth $600 million, is frustrating Gen Z. Despite all government resources, the Erdoğan administration has failed to raise a “pious generation”, as the Turkish president himself promised, and the interests of the youth in religion is decreasing.
In the upcoming general election, this age group (Gen Z), accounting for 13 million people (15%) of the electorate, is decisive. Erdoğan’s much hyped moulding of young Turks into a so called “pious generation” of Turkish nationalists following his brand of Islamic political rule seems to be failing as a younger generation longs for what the president refuses to grant them. If the economic crisis in Turkey is not resolved, it will likely see the AKP ousted in the next election and replaced with the CHP, who historically are much friendlier to Washington and the West.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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***
On the campaign trail in 2020, Joe Biden was barely probed about his long-standing support for the Iraq War, a fact he attempted to conceal. According to Biden (who repeatedly touted his experience in foreign policy in the lead-up to the presidential election), he had opposed the war from the very beginning — the “very moment” the first bombs came roaring down on Baghdad.
Not only did Biden cast a critical vote to authorize military force; he also played a crucial role in creating the case for war in the first place. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden built support for a bipartisan resolution that ultimately gave George W. Bush’s administration wide discretion to defend the United States from any perceived threat from Iraq. In the years since, Biden has argued that he only voted for the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq to enhance the United States’ bargaining power at the United Nations — as if putting a gun to the head of the international community (what Biden called “tough diplomacy”) represented anything other than a call for war.
Far from the reluctant warrior he’s portrayed himself as, Biden — by rejecting alternative resolutions that would have required the United States to predicate military action on authorization from the United Nations Security Council, and disparaging more progressive Democrats who balked at the prospect of war as purists — ultimately created the very conditions in which opposition to war became untenable in the first place.
Even a series of high-profile hearings Biden held in 2002 — ostensibly an evenhanded attempt to inform the US public of the risks of an invasion — was a ruse: he enlisted a host of pro-war operatives to parrot the Bush administration’s propaganda about Iraq’s mythic weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and alleged ties to al-Qaeda, with nary a skeptical voice among them. According to the chief UN weapons inspector at the time, Scott Ritter, the hearings were a “sham” designed to provide cover for Biden’s “pre-ordained conclusion” that either Saddam Hussein or his weapons had to go — despite the fact that the CIA’s George Tenet had personally told Biden there was no evidence these WMDs even existed.
In fact, Biden had called for war with Iraq for years. In 1998, he warned that the country represented a grave threat to US interests. According to Biden, it was impossible for inspectors to guarantee that Hussein would not develop WMDs in the future (if he didn’t have them already), and that “the only way . . . to get rid of [him]” was to put boots on the ground — sooner or later.
But the rationale that Biden had so diligently crafted for years — that Iraq posed an existential threat to the United States — never materialized. A desperate search for WMDs in the wake of the invasion produced nothing. Within a year, a majority of Americans realized that the invasion had been a mistake. And by the end of 2014, lawmakers and the intelligence community alike conceded that not only did Iraq have no such weapons — biological, chemical, or nuclear — but prewar intelligence had been deeply flawed.
And yet not even during the heated final debate of the primaries in 2020 did Bernie Sanders (who had voted against the invasion in 2002 as a representative of Vermont) make the case — which he had alluded to on the campaign trail more than once — that Biden was unfit to serve as president because of what was, in Sanders’s view, “the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of the United States.”
Elizabeth Warren, another candidate who had called the Iraq War a mistake, also failed to challenge Biden’s historical defense of the invasion — from denying that he had ever believed Hussein possessed WMDs to lamenting that the only mistake he had made was to trust the Bush administration. When asked whether Biden was to blame, Warren — a legal academic who had begun her political career taking on the president over the 2005 bankruptcy bill — demurred.
In fact, the most strenuous criticism against Biden’s role in the Iraq War was leveled in March 2020 by an air force veteran who accused Biden of having the blood of fellow service members on his hands. But despite his overtures that he had come to regret his support for the war — which became increasingly unpopular in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party in subsequent years — Biden never learned from his mistake.
Eleven years after the intervention in Libya’s civil war and twenty thousand deaths later, it’s clear the United States’ seven-month bombing campaign not only suffered from poor planning, no exit strategy, and flawed intelligence — the same faults Biden attributed to the Iraq War — but also had nothing to do with protecting civilians in the first place. Despite Barack Obama’s initial declaration that regime change was out of the question, Biden would come to praise NATO for removing the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Biden’s revelation, years later, that he had opposed the intervention from the beginning again shows how he continues to deny responsibility for the United States’ repeated misadventures in the Middle East — all on his watch.
“The Original Sin of the Twenty-First Century”
The fact that the Iraq War — one of the most heinous acts of aggression in modern times — was not only a complete disaster but an outright crime is seldom acknowledged in mainstream US politics. Since George Bush’s infamous address in May 2003 — in which he declared an end to major combat operations aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln a month after the invasion — hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children have been killed, millions have been maimed or injured, and many times more have been displaced.
Within a few years, studies concluded that over a million Iraqis had lost their lives, and, since the fifteenth anniversary of what the scholar Tallha Abdulrazaq calls “the original sin of the 21st century,” it’s estimated that the corpses of 2.4 million people litter the very cradle of civilization. In addition to leading to widespread death and destruction, destabilizing the region, and giving rise to the Islamic State, the war has also had more distant (albeit foreseeable) long-term effects, such as the global refugee crisis and the rise of right-wing governments on both sides of the Atlantic.
American voters used to give a damn about the Iraq War. In 2008, Barack Obama leveraged widespread discontent with the war to secure the Democratic nomination, courting progressives and young people alike. In fact, it’s widely believed that Hillary Clintonlost to the senator from Illinois not just because she had voted for the war — and was instrumental in rallying ambivalent Democrats to the cause — but because Obama had decried the invasion from the start.
In later years, vast swaths of the American public became convinced that the war was a disaster. Bush’s approval rating dropped to an all-time low of 25 percent, based in large part on the widespread belief that the occupation was a mess. By 2016, even Republicans like Donald Trump, who had run on a nihilistic platform of killing the families of purported terrorists and “bringing torture back,” would come to attack Clinton’s lack of foresight from the left.
Obama’s obvious contempt for his predecessor’s war, based on a haphazard and incoherent policy in Iraq, was soon overshadowed by what can only be described as his neglect. Under his leadership, US forces withdrew in 2011, only to return a few years later with a seemingly never-ending mandate to fight ISIS — a creation of the occupation itself that the president not only gravely underestimated as al-Qaeda’s “JV team” but subsequently emboldened, spending billions of dollars more than Bush ever had in the process.
Despite inveighing at length against the Iraq War — calling it a “big fat mistake” — Trump would also come to authorize further troop surges and bombing raids. In July 2017, Trump joined Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi in declaring Mosul free from ISIS control after Iraqi and US forces completely destroyed the city in some of the most horrific violence since the invasion — based in no small part on the fact that Trump had removed restrictions on US military operations designed to reduce civilian casualties. Only in the dying embers of his first and final term did Trump decide to reduce troop levels in Iraq — by a pittance.
By the time the Iraqi people made their first forays into democracy in decades, the war had already faded from the American imagination. Following ISIS’s expulsion from Iraq in December 2017, massive demonstrations rocked the country again and again, with everyday people taking to the streets to protest high unemployment, widespread government corruption, and a lack of basic services like water and electricity. In 2019, Iraqis even burned down the Iranian consulate in the holy city of Najaf and forced the prime minister to resign — a powerful rebuke of an unpopular government that had killed hundreds of protestors.
But the convulsions in Iraq were barely reported in the United States. Media coverage of the war has fallen precipitously for years; even when it is in the news, it’s on the periphery. Trump’s assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 drew censure from Democrats who condemned his failure to obtain congressional authorization for what was called an act of war. But the fact that the strike had taken place at the Baghdad airport, or that Iraqi authorities hadn’t been consulted in advance, wasn’t questioned at all.
During the Trump administration, the twin war in Afghanistan — the longest running armed conflict in US history, also born out of the events of September 11 — gripped the American imagination. Whether it was attempts to thwartthe International Criminal Court’s probe into US atrocities, the first use in combat of the “mother of all bombs” on ISIS, or Biden’s mishandled withdrawal from the country last August, the people of Afghanistan continue to suffer from Taliban rule, a massive humanitarian crisis, and ongoing pillage of their own funds by the United States.
The Iraq War made headlines again when, in a desperate response to his electoral loss, Trump declared that all troops in the country would be home by January 2021. But despite Biden’s belated decision to bring the nearly twenty-year conflict to an ignoble end (met with a combination of faux outrage, sentimental nostalgia, and legitimate concern), it’s unclear whether his announcement last December that the United States had concluded the combat mission in Iraq for the umpteenth time amounted to anything more than a verbal sleight of hand.
“The Supreme International Crime”
There’s a reason why Americans have become inured to constant violence in a country their government has been bombing for dozens of years: there has yet to be a shred of accountability. In late 2004, then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan declared that the Iraq War was an outright violation of the UN charter, which prohibits the use of force except in self-defense. What’s more, the belligerents had been warned that invading Iraq would not only be illegal under international law but amount to a criminal act.
Before famously changing his mind, UK attorney general Peter GoldsmithadvisedTony Blair on the eve of the invasion that the prime minister would be susceptible to prosecution in UK court for the “crime of aggression” — or what the Allies called “crimes against peace” — an offense established after World War II precisely to impose individual criminal liability on Axis leaders for the sin of having gone to war in the first place. According to the Nuremberg court, the crime of aggression “is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
Subsequent calls around the world to bring the perpetrators to justice failed. In June 2008, thirty-five articles of impeachment against Bush were introduced in the House by Representatives Dennis Kucinich and Robert Wexler, fifteen of which had to do with the Iraq War alone. None made it to the floor. Obama, who ran on a campaign of accountability and transparency, later revealed he was reluctant to order an inquiry into the Iraq War in the first place, much less hold perpetrators accountable. In terms pithy and perverse, the president advised Americans that “we need to look forward,” despite his concession that “we tortured some folks.”
On the other side of the pond, Iraqi general Abdul-Wahid Shannan Al-Rabat brought a private prosecution against Blair, Goldsmith, and former foreign secretary Jack Straw in 2016 for the crime of aggression as well, based on the results of a yearslong investigation into the UK’s role in the Iraq War. The High Court subsequently dismissed the case.
For senior members of the Democratic Party, the crimes of the Bush era were largely inconsequential. Despite repeated calls for impeachment among leading Democrats at the time, House Leader Nancy Pelosi made it clear that it was “off the table,” even after the party gained control of Congress in 2006. Years later, she revealed that she knew Bush was lying through his teeth the whole time, and that the Iraq War was a sham — but that, in her view, it didn’t rise to an impeachable offense. Obama echoed this in his latest memoir, in which he praises his predecessor and chastises Americans who condemned Bush as a war criminal.
Republicans have strenuously defended Bush’s legacy as well. In November 2020, in a rare act of defiance, several prominent members of the party condemned Trump’s plans to reduce troop levels in Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump himself granted clemency to US soldiers and contractors for some of the most heinous crimes committed on Iraqi soil, including the infamous massacre of seventeen Iraqis in 2007 by Blackwater mercenaries. And among his own party, Bush remains as popular as ever. As of 2018, his approval rating among Republicans hadn’t dropped below 75 percent in ten years.
The fact that not a single official has been held accountable for the decision to invade Iraq is emblematic of the “war on terror” in general. Whether it’s Abu Ghraib, torture, extraordinary rendition, black sites, secret surveillance, drone strikes, or Guantanamo, the United States has consistently denied responsibility for the crimes of the Bush administration and beyond. Perpetrators like former secretary of stateColin Powelland secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld have also escaped justice altogether — in death. Even US allies have taken more responsibility for their respective roles. In recent years, Canada has compensated former detainees at Guantanamo, Italy has convicted CIA agents for torture in absentia, and Australia has concluded a probe into war crimes committed by special forces in Afghanistan.
Screenshot from Collateral Murder video released by WikiLeaks.
In contrast, investigations by the United States have probed only the extent to which the Iraq War represented a massive intelligence failure, precisely to avoid implicating the political leadership involved. The Chilcot report, released in 2016, not only laid bare the baseless and confused rationale for the war but placed the blame squarely on Blair’s government. And since taking office, Biden — just like his predecessor — has doggedly pursued whistleblowers like Julian Assange for the audacity of exposing, among other things, US forces murdering Iraqi civilians for sport.
The Forever Wars
Nineteen years later, it’s as if the Iraq War never happened. Following the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, the Trump administration did everything short of a declaration of outright war to provoke Iran — including protracted economic warfare, parking aircraft carriers in Iranian waters, and killing the country’s “second most powerful man.” A week before Biden took office, then secretary of state Mike Pompeo even announced that Iranian ties to al-Qaeda had been discovered — the same canard used to justify the Iraq War two decades prior. Biden later withdrew sanctions in the lead-up to diplomatic talks, only to thwart them altogether with strikes on Iranian forces — in a country we are not at war with (Syria), from a country we have no right to be in (Iraq). In recent days, the Biden administration has gone so far as to call President Vladimir Putin’s accusations that Ukraine is harboring bioweapons, a pretext for Russia’s invasion, everything from “disinformation” to outright “malarkey” — without a hint of irony.
Whether it’s proxy wars with neighboring countries or ongoing drone warfare in the region, the US continues to wage forever war against an inchoate enemy — with Iraq as base of operations. There is no indication that Biden intends to deliver any semblance of justice to the Iraqi people either. All eyes are on whether Congress’s decision to finally rescind the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force will bring an end to the carnage once and for all — or merely update it for yet another phase of US interventionism.
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***
No one should be surprised by the recent revelations that Israel had a secret base in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region. The news emerged after Iran launched ballistic missiles at the base last weekend, allegedly in retaliation for an Israeli attack on an Iranian military drone plant in Kermanshah.
While news of the Israeli base in Erbil might have caught some observers off guard, it actually follows from a long relationship between Israel and Iraqi Kurds. After the founding of Israel in 1948, many Kurdish Jews began emigrating to the country, with their population today standing at around 300,000.
In the mid-1960s, Israel sent Brigadier General Tzuri Sagi to Iran to mount a campaign against Iraq, whose forces had struck deadly blows against Israeli forces during the 1948 war. His mission also entailed bolstering the fight for an independent Kurdistan in Iraq, as he helped to build up and train the Kurdish army.
As the Kurds continued to battle for independence from Iraq, Israel supplied them with significant amounts of weaponry. Sagi once said he identified so closely with the Kurds that he “became a patriotic Kurd”.
Covert operations
After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Kurds grew in strategic importance for Israel, representing a countervailing regional force that could destabilise the new rule in Tehran. This, in turn, fuelled enmity among Iranian leaders, who feared the Kurds could give the Israelis a deeper local foothold.
The Mossad has maintained a network of spies in Iraq’s Kurdish region, along with Azerbaijan and other sites bordering Iran. Back in 2005, Yedioth Ahronoth reported that former Israeli commandos were training Kurdish forces in “anti-terrorism” techniques.
Seymour Hersh reported on such operations in the New Yorker in 2004: “Israeli intelligence and military operatives are now quietly at work in Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and, most important in Israel’s view, running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria.” According to a CIA official cited in the piece, “the Israeli presence was widely known in the American intelligence community”.
At the same time, intelligence missions and attacks on Iranian targets have allegedly been planned and executed from Israeli bases, such as the one in Erbil. An Iranian general recently told a Yemeni news outlet that there are at least two other such bases in Iraq.
Potential for escalation
News about the Israeli base in Iraq brings to mind Israel’s close relationship with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, through which Israel reportedly gained access to Azeri airbases on Iran’s northern border. There have been reports that Israeli F-35s are now stationed there. Israel also provided Azerbaijan with deadly drones during the country’s 2020 war with Armenia.
Yet, despite the bravado of the Erbil-Kermanshah operation, such attacks have little long-term impact. Yes, they might deplete Iran’s drone capabilities. But not only does Iran have other drone bases, it also retains the know-how to replenish the destroyed stock. Given Israel’s repeated sabotaging of Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iranian engineers have certainly built redundancy into all aspects of military planning and production.
If Israel’s attack was meant as a warning, Iran will surely not be listening. It will continue its efforts to penetrate Israel’s defences, whether by drones or other means. The recent attack may even escalate hostilities further, potentially leading to a larger-scale war.
Indeed, a miscalculation on either side could bring Israel and Iran into direct conflict, in which there may be no limits to the destruction wrought by both sides.
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Richard Silverstein writes the Tikun Olam blog, devoted to exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state. His work has appeared in Haaretz, the Forward, the Seattle Times and the Los Angeles Times. He contributed to the essay collection devoted to the 2006 Lebanon war, A Time to Speak Out (Verso) and has another essay in the collection, Israel and Palestine: Alternate Perspectives on Statehood (Rowman & Littlefield) Photo of RS by: (Erika Schultz/Seattle Times)
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***
While in no way excusing Russia’s criminal invasion, NATO expansion eastward increased its likelihood. Although we’ll never know if the war would not have happened under different circumstances, after a month of Russian violence against Ukraine the two countries’ negotiators have reportedly agreed that it will reject joining NATO as part of a peace pact.
Russia has long objected to NATO’s eastward expansion, particularly Ukraine’s de facto incorporation into the alliance. It repeatedly raised objections to NATO encircling its territory in the months leading up to its illegal invasion.
Last week the head of the European Union’s foreign policy, Josep Borrell, even admitted the push to expand NATO into Ukraine was an error.
“I am ready to admit that we made a number of mistakes and that we lost the possibility of Russia’s rapprochement with the West,” he told French TV TF1. “There are moments that we could do better, there are things that we proposed and then could not implement, such as, for example, the promise that Ukraine and Georgia will become part of NATO.”
Over many years Canadian parliamentary and media reports have noted Russia’s opposition to NATO expansion. A 2004 National Post story about Ukraine’s North American financed Orange Revolution explained why Moscow opposed its adhesion to the alliance. “For Russia,” wrote international affairs reporter Matthew Fisher, “if Ukraine were to join NATO, and turn its Black Sea ports and its northern airports into havens for Western warships and fighter jets, it would be like having a dagger plunged close to its heart.”
Joining NATO means subordinating Ukrainian military, and to a lesser extent foreign, policy to the alliance. As is the case with most other European NATO members, Ukraine would likely also host aggressive US weapon systems.
Regardless, Canada has forcefully promoted NATO expansion, which has seen the alliance increase from 16 members in 1999 to 30 members today. Despite promises to Soviet officials that NATO wouldn’t expand one inch eastward if they accepted German reunification, Jean Chretien pushed to bring in new members upon taking office in 1993. With Ukraine joining NATO’s Partnership for Peace and North Atlantic Cooperation Council in the early 1990s Canada added the country to its Military Training and Cooperation Program (MTCP), which among other things strengthens militaries’ capacity to operate in tandem with NATO forces. According to the government’s “Canada’s engagement in Ukraine” page, “Ukraine is the single largest recipient of training and funding under the MTCP” since 1993.
By 1996 Canada’s prime minister had publicly called for Ukraine to join NATO. But Ukrainians and their politicians were somewhat ambivalent on the issue. In 2004 Canada and the US helped bring to power an individual who strongly supported joining NATO. A month after becoming president in the Orange Revolution Viktor Yushchenkomet George W. Bush on the sidelines of a NATO summit. During the February 2005 meeting the US president declared, support for Ukraine’s membership in NATO. At that summit Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin also expressed support for deepening Ukraine’s ties to NATO. Over the next year NATO would take steps towards incorporating Ukraine with Yushchenko pushing for full membership in NATO.
Not long after, however, Ukrainian electors delivered a blow to the NATO expansionists. In the 2006 parliamentary elections Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions won the most votes and at the start of 2008 parliament was effectively shuttered for six weeks due to a dispute over NATO. At this point polls showed that most Ukrainians rejected the idea of joining NATO. Barely a quarter of Ukrainians wanted to join the alliance, reported former Soviet specialist on the US National Security Council F. Stephen Larrabee in 2011. They generally viewed NATO as a threat rather than a form of protection.
That didn’t stop Stephen Harper from joining George W. Bush in pressing the issue. In the lead-up to the April 2008 NATO summit Canada’s PM expressed “strong support” for Ukraine to join NATO. “I call upon our NATO partners to agree that we should keep Ukraine moving forward toward full membership in the alliance”, declared Harper. But Germany and France strenuously opposed Ukraine joining. They were concerned about Russia’s reaction and how the North American dominated alliance would further undercut European centric security initiatives.
When Yanukovych won the 2010 presidential election NATO membership was put on pause. In June 2010 Ukraine’s parliament voted to abandon NATO membership. But the US and Canada helped oust Yanukovych in February 2014. The individual selected by US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt to lead the unconstitutional post-coup government, Arsenii Yatseniuk, announced that he would ask parliament to put Ukraine on path towards NATO membership. In December 2014 parliament renounced Ukraine’s non-aligned statusand called for joining NATO.
Since that time Canada has devoted significant resources to preparing the Ukrainian military, which largely collapsed in the violent aftermath of Yanukovych’s ouster, to join NATO. For seven years 200 Canadian trainers through Operation UNIFIER have been working to “modernize the Ukrainian Armed Forces”, noted former defence minister Harjit Sajjan, so the country could join NATO. A 2017 Standing Committee on National Defence report on “Canada’s Support to Ukraine in Crisis and Armed Conflict” noted that “Ukraine intends … to achieve full military interoperability with NATO members” and that Canada was “actively engaged in assisting” them. On January 30, La Presse reported that “Canadian training allows Ukrainian forces to practice and do joint maneuvers with NATO.” The story quoted Lieutenant-Colonel Luc-Frédéric Gilbert saying,
“we are working to bring them to a context where they would be interoperable with NATO forces. That’s what we’re aiming for: changing an army that was based on a Soviet model to transform it to the NATO model.”
To support Ukraine’s possible accession to the alliance, Canada has supported the NATO-Ukraine Joint Working Group on Defence Reform and Canada has shared the role of NATO Contact Point Embassy in Kyiv since 2019.
In June 2020 NATO offered Ukraine “Enhanced Opportunity Partner status”. According to the British government report “Military assistance to Ukraine 2014- 2021”, “this status provides Ukraine with preferential access to NATO’s exercises, training and exchange of information and situational awareness, in order to increase interoperability. In September 2020 Ukraine hosted Exercise Joint Endeavour, with British, US and Canadian troops”, which was “the first exercise conducted under Ukraine’s new enhanced status.”
A number of other major exercises have been organized since and others, involving tens of thousands of troops, were planned for 2022.
In response to Ukraine’s growing NATOification Moscow became more belligerent. In April 2021 50,000 Russian troops were massed along its border to threaten Ukraine and at the end of November Russia once again stationed tens of thousands of troops near its neighbour. Moscow demanded a guarantee that Ukraine wouldn’t be incorporated into NATO, which was formally rejected.
Viewing Ukrainians as cannon fodder to weaken Russia, Canada’s foreign affairs minister doubled down. In mid-January Mélanie Joly reiterated that “Canada’s position has not changed… We believe that Ukraine should be able to join NATO.”
While Russia’s invasion is a flagrant violation of international law, Canada should not have pushed Ukraine to seek membership in NATO. Now, Ottawa should state clearly that Canada opposes Ukraine’s adhesion to the alliance and supports the country remaining neutral (similar to Austria and Finland).
Peace minded Canadians should redouble our efforts to get Canada out of NATO. Even if the alliance’s eastward expansion played only a small part in precipitating Russia’s criminal invasion it’s an added reason to oppose an alliance that has attacked Libya, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia over the past two decades.
Last week former Bolivian President Evo Morales said,
“NATO is a danger to world peace, to security, so we are in the task of reaching agreements with social movements, not only in Latin America, but in all continents, to eliminate it. If nothing is done against NATO, it will become a permanent threat to humanity.”
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***
Realism is a theory and approach to the study of international relations. Its main assumptions are that all nation states seek security within a generally anarchic (no overall authority) international system, and that national decision makers tend to act in a rational manner. The late Kenneth Waltz, an American political scientist who was a member of the faculty at both the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University, is the leading purveyor of what is known as defensive realism, in which states maintain careful and reserved policies. By comparison, offensive realism proposes that states actually seek security through maximizing their power position—security through dominance. This way of looking at the world can provide useful insights that cut through emotional responses and the distortions of the inevitable propaganda, particularly with respect to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
Overwhelmingly, Western commentators have identified Russia as an aggressive actor, but this is normal in any such conflict: “we” are always said to be responding to “their” aggression. Correspondingly, the same position (reversing who is “we” and who is “they”) is being taken by official Russian commentators and their media and propaganda organs. National opponents are also usually vilified, as with the “Huns” (Germans) in the First World War, who were said to be bayoneting babies, the Japanese who were depicted as sub-human in Second World War propaganda, and more recently Iraqi soldiers “throwing babies from incubators” (a lie told by the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States after being prepared by public affairs group Hill and Knowlton), or the Iraqi state producing the fictitious “weapons of mass destruction,” or the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was said to be attacking unarmed civilians during protests in 2011 (proven incorrect).
Another part of this is to claim it was Russia that attacked Georgia in their war of 2008, when in fact an investigation by the European Union found Georgia responsible for triggering that conflict. As the saying goes, truth is the first casualty of war. Opposition leaders may also be vilified, ridiculously being compared to the monster Hitler or being cast as “autocrats” even if they are duly elected. This is all par for the course and should be dismissed in any serious analysis.
No conflict “just happens,” it is an historical process and therefore we must look at that process. I propose that we start with the collapse of the Soviet Union; a time when the “peace dividend” was widely proclaimed. It has now been comprehensivelydocumented that a number of US state officials made explicit promises that with the unification of Germany the Western NATO alliance would not move any further east. Instead, a neutral Eastern Europe was envisaged, especially by the Russians, as a way of ensuring an enduring peace. With the collapse of Russia into a depression worse than that suffered by the US in the 1930s, and the weakness of the Russian leadership of Boris Yelstin, such considerations were thrown aside.
In 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined the ranks of NATO members. In 2004, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were added; with Latvia and Estonia sharing borders with the main part of Russia—the latter not far away from the major Russian city of St. Petersburg. Several years later, at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin explicitly stated his discomfort and alarm at the eastward march of NATO. His concerns were rejected out of hand by the West. Then came the 2008 war with Georgia, which was partly triggered by tensions arising from Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili seeking NATO membership. At this time, Belarus was ruled by Alexander Lukashenko, a dictator who attempted to balance between East and West, while Ukraine was governed by the Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko (after the 2004 Orange Revolution that led to the overturning of the election of the Russian-leaning Viktor Yanukovych) who stated a desire to join the EU and NATO. Russia’s concerns about having a large Western-aligned state only 500 kilometres from Moscow were partly assuaged with the election of Yanukovych in 2010.
Then came the fateful events of 2014, as Yanukovych struggled to balance between the EU and Russia, leading to his rejection of an EU association agreement that would have significantly damaged trade relations with Russia and aligned Ukrainian foreign policy more with that of the West. At this time, a compromise agreement between the EU and Russia would have maintained the balance in Ukraine and helped allay Russia’s security concerns, but that was not forthcoming.
At this point we should stop and think about what the response of the US would have been to, for example, a Cold War alliance between Canada and the Soviet Union. Indeed, any reasonable person would assume either a US-inspired coup or an outright invasion. Belarus and Ukraine are to Russia what Canada and Mexico are to the US. Instead of a compromise agreement, the elected president of Ukraine was deposed in a coup—openly supported by Western politicians and diplomats who spent significant time in Maidan Square egging the protesters on—that installed an extremely anti-Russian administration. Imagine Russian politicians and diplomats publicly endorsing protestors against the current Canadian government who amassed outside parliament last month. Of course, the US would be extremely concerned, just as Russia was in 2014.
In response to the Maidan coup, Russia acted to maintain its national interests, including its massive naval base in Crimea. The debate over whether this was a breakaway region freely voting to join Russia or an annexation of Ukrainian territory by Russia is an endless one, but it is pointless from a realist point of view. Russia secured its security by maintaining its naval base in the Black Sea and making sure that such a base did not fall into the hands of the West. Russia also supplied arms and support to the two breakaway republics in the southwestern Donbas region, full of Russian speaking Ukrainians who did not wish to be ruled by a Ukrainian nationalist government.
Remains of an Eastern Orthodox church after shelling near Donetsk International Airport, eastern Ukraine, May 18, 2015. Photo by Mstyslav Chernov/Wikimedia Commons.
Since 2014 Ukraine has become increasingly aligned with the West, signing the EU association agreement and accepting extensive military training, coordination and munitions from Western nations, including Canada. Its leaders have increasingly called for membership of both the EU and NATO, with those calls escalating recently with little pushback from the West. Last year Putin stated Russia’s security redlines, which included a Ukraine in NATO, but again these were treated with disdain. Even his promises of a “military-technical” response by Russia were not heeded, and the Ukrainian president’s calls for Ukraine to become a nuclear power were not rejected by Western leaders.
Ultimately, Russia acted out of its rational self-interest after all of its calls for a non-military resolution to its legitimate, and actually existential, security concerns had been rejected. Russia invaded Ukraine and will turn it into a Russia-aligned nation, securing its own security; any commentators who think that Russia is not militarily capable of doing such a thing are ignorant of the basic facts on the ground and the Russian military.
All war is of course a horrible thing, as is the ongoing genocidal war in Yemen by a Saudi Arabia that Canada arms, as was the illegal war of aggression against Iraq by our ally the US, and as was the destruction of the state of Libya by NATO. Those who cry out against the civilian deaths in Ukraine must take time to consider why those other deaths aren’t as important, just as with the over 13,000 civilian deaths in the Donbas in the last eight years caused chiefly by Ukrainian government forces and pro-Kyiv militias. The answer is of course that they are not different, just some of the killing is done by those our state considers to be allies and some by those it considers to be enemies.
A realist analysis puts such considerations to one side and allows us to rationally assess what actions are appropriate; just as cooler heads prevailed during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and saved the world from nuclear annihilation. To get lost in our own propaganda is incredibly dangerous when our opponent is a nuclear power capable of ending human civilization.
This should be a time for reflection on the Western policy establishment’s responsibility for creating an existential threat to Russia that should have been expected to lead to a major response. The sanctions currently being leveled against the Russian economy are unlikely to dissuade Putin, and Russia has extensively prepared for them; it is a massive exporter of raw materials that the world cannot do without, and the ‘international community’ outside the West has refused to sanction Russia.
The extensive damage to Western economies, especially Europe, through the range of sanctions enacted, are currently being exacerbated through the theft of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves. The West benefits hugely from the current global financial system based upon the US dollar, but it has now been displayed that the West thinks nothing of outright theft and financial warfare. The previous cases of Iran, Venezuela, and Afghanistan were relatively small. The case of Russia is large enough to catch other nation’s attention and lead them to create a parallel financial system.
What’s more, Western statements of support, no matter how fulsome, come to nothing when a real war starts with a country that possesses a highly competent military and nuclear weapons. Ukraine in reality is on its own against Russia, no matter how many Western sanctions are implemented or how much material is provided. Other nations will take note of this.
Reflection does not seem to be in order though, as the US has threatened nations who have refused to sanction Russia. The most profound outcome of such threats may be a reconciliation of India with China, and a closer relationship between India and its erstwhile ally Russia. This is not 1995, and the West can no longer push nations such as India around without significant blowback.
After the Cuban missile crisis, the US leadership realized that it must treat the Soviet Union with some respect if nuclear war was to be averted. The West must now learn to respect other nation’s security needs if it wants to avoid becoming increasingly separated from the rest of the world. As the philosopher Mike Tyson put it so well, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The Russian invasion is the West’s punch in the mouth, and it desperately needs a new plan.
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Roger Boyd is a Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Prior to completing his doctoral studies he spent 25 years as an executive in the financial industry, and authoured a book exploring the links between the energy and financial systems. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Balsillie School.
Featured image: A Ukrainian servicemen stands by a burned military vehicle near Sytniaky, Ukraine, March 3, 2022. Photo courtesy General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine/Facebook.
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***
The US-backed war on Yemen started seven years ago this week, and after all this time US policy is practically unchanged. The coalition bombing campaign has picked up again in recent months with 700 airstrikes in February alone, and according to the Yemen Data Project the bombing has been more intense during this period than at any point since 2018. 1,500 civilians have been killed or wounded in these attacks. Despite being far more destructive and killing many more people, including 91 people in a migrant detention center, these airstrikes have received no criticism from the US.
Instead of withholding military assistance from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as it should have done, the Biden administration has been rushing more jets, ships, and air defense interceptors to the governments that have been brutalizing the people of Yemen directly and through their armed proxies. The US also backed a one-sided UN Security Council resolution that named the Houthis as a terrorist group while ignoring the many atrocities committed by the coalition governments and their proxies. While the US condemns aggression in Ukraine, it continues to support it in Yemen.
Yemen’s humanitarian crisis continues to worsen because far too little has been done to halt the slide towards catastrophe. The UN has warned again that famine is spreading in the country. According to their estimate, there will be 161,000 people in famine conditions this year, and that figure is five times larger than it has been in the past. The World Food Program’s David Beasley commented on the projection, “These harrowing figures confirm that we are on a countdown to catastrophe in Yemen and we are almost out of time to avoid it.”
Two days after he said that, the UN aid drive for Yemen came up with a paltry $1.3 billion in donations, far short of the $4.27 billion that they were requesting. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have donated to these drives in the past to distract from their responsibility for the crisis, but this year they gave nothing. Yemen desperately needs more resources to stave off the worst-case scenario of widespread starvation, but more than that it needs an urgent effort to halt the fighting and lift the blockade. Even when there were no other major crises in the world, Yemen’s plight was badly neglected, and now it is being almost completely ignored.
To make matters worse, the war in Ukraine threatens to drive food prices much higher. In countries where tens of millions are already severely food insecure, including Yemen and Afghanistan, the effects of food shortages and rising global food prices will hit hardest. Yemen and Afghanistan were already facing some of the worst man-made famines before this because of economic warfare being waged against them, and this makes mass starvation even more likely.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE assume that they can extract more support from the US on account of higher energy prices, and the Biden administration has given them every reason to think that this will work. The US put no real pressure on either government over the last year, and Biden has signaled to these clients that he will give them practically anything they want. As usual, letting client states get away with murder just encourages them to make more demands and complain that they are being abandoned if they are not immediately satisfied. This is what comes of Biden’s so-called “back to basics” approach to the region, where the US remains deeply complicit in the crimes of its clients without using any of its leverage to get cooperation from them.
The war on Yemen is undoubtedly a war of aggression, but because it is waged by US client states with US backing it is not widely condemned in the same way as Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. The only real difference between the two is that the Saudi coalition dresses up their aggression by claiming to be seeking to restore a deposed dictator as president, but that is a pitiful fig leaf for an unprovoked attack on a neighboring country. It certainly cannot justify the many thousands of airstrikes that have battered Yemen’s cities and villages and killed and injuredtens of thousands of civilians. The people of Yemen have borne the brunt of the war for seven years, and they have done so mostly without the rest of the world paying them much attention.
The US has a special responsibility to bring this conflict to an end because our government has done so much to fuel and enable it, and time is of the essence in averting a major famine that this US-supported war is creating. The Biden administration has proven that it isn’t going to make more than a token effort on its own. It falls to the public and members of Congress to insist that the US use all the leverage that it has with these states to put a stop to this indefensible war.
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Daniel Larison is a contributing editor and weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
Featured image: WFP Provides Food Assistance to a Record 7 Million People In Yemen In August 2017. UN World Food Program. [Source: wfp.org]
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With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, calls have rung out from every corner of the U.S. foreign policy establishment for measures to be taken in retaliation against Russia’s aggression. The initial response made by the United States was little surprise to anyone: the announcement of sanctions against Russia. In the modern age, sanctions have become the go-to tool to use against rogue states who find themselves on the wrong end of the American-led geopolitical world order. Hit their country with sanctions, and then hope that the economic pain forces them to reconsider their course of action. That’ll show em!
Sanctions are, more than anything else at this point, a mindless knee-jerk reaction. They have become so commonplace that questions surrounding their efficiency or morality aren’t even asked, much less answered. It is taken as a given that in all geopolitical crises, the United States must do something. War is messy, but sanctions are easy and cheap! They don’t require any active effort, they make a strong statement, and looks good on the news. After all, we can’t just sit back and do nothing!
Despite this popular perception, sanctions have massive repercussions on the lives of ordinary people that just so happen to be living under the “wrong government”. In theory, they are aimed at governments. In practice, they always end up hitting the people. When countries are cut off from international trade, they lose access to imports of goods they are dependent upon. This leads to shortages, high prices, recessions, and an abundance of difficult choices for the domestic population. These economic disturbances are not just a mild inconvenience, but malicious and destructive to all aspects of their lives.
A few case studies can sharply illustrate the real and tangible impact of sanctions.
Cuba
Ever since Cuba’s Communist revolution in 1959, the relationship between it and the United States has been tumultuous, to say the least. When the U.S. backed Batista government was overthrown, the prospect of a communist country just miles off the coast of the U.S. mainland during the spooked many U.S. lawmakers. The result was the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, which forbid any form of assistance to communist countries and imposed a total embargo on Cuba.
Because of plentiful assistance from the Soviet Union, Cuba’s economy was able to withstand the economic pressure from the U.S. for several decades, experiencing roughly 2% growth per year. However, when the Soviet bloc collapsed, so too did Cuba’s economy. The American Journal of Public Health found that post-1989 the value of Cuba’s imports, which its economy was heavily dependent upon, decreased from $8 billion to $1.7 billion. To make matters worse, the U.S. embargo was tightened in Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 through further restrictions on other nation’s trade with Cuba.
The first several years of the 1990s were turbulent for the Cuban economy. In a 2001 study by the U.S. Trade Commission, they found that by 1994, Cuba’s real GDP had dropped by 40% from 1989, and agricultural production had decreased by 54%. The aforementioned American Journal of Public Health recorded that during the 1980s, half of all protein and calories for human consumption were imported into the country. From 1989 to 1993, imports of these foodstuffs declined by half. As a consequence, protein and caloric availability dropped by 25% and 18% respectively. Much of the imports coming into Cuba that were lost were medical and health related. The loss of these goods led directly to an increase in mortality in the Cuban population aged 65 and older by 15%. Cases of tuberculosis in the population increased threefold, deaths to infection and parasites increased by 67%, and deaths due to influence increased by 77%.
Through a series of reforms and moderation of communist economic policies, Cuba’s economy managed to recover by the end of the decade. Even so, the country remains relatively poor. It boasts a GDP per capita of $9,099, roughly one-seventh of the United States. The Biden administration is yet to lift any major sanctions from Cuba, signaling no change from the last 60 years of economic pressure on the country. For the foreseeable future, the U.S. will continue to keep its thumb on Cuba.
Iraq
During the same period that Cuba was experiencing the worst of its economic woes, another country on the wrong end of the United States’ ire was also suffering under onerous sanctions: Iraq. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United States led a coalition into Kuwait against the Iraqi army in what would come to be known as First Gulf War, or Operation Desert Storm. The Iraqi army was soundly defeated, Kuwait was liberated, and it all looked good on camera to boot. After the war, heavy sanctions were placed on Iraq with the hope of regime change against Hussein to remove him for good.
During the war, the country of Iraq itself had been subject to U.S. air attacks, which crippled the civilian infrastructure within the economy. In a report from The New England Journal of Medicine, only two of the Iraq’s twenty electricity-generation plants were still operational by the end of the war. This lack of electricity had a spiraling effect on the rest of the country. Water purification plants, which required electricity to operate, ground to a halt. Sewage systems throughout the country were also paralyzed. Much of this damage was irreparable, and what could be repaired would take months and years.
The damage done to Iraq, in addition to the burdensome sanctions levied against the country, led directly into a humanitarian crisis. The World Health Organization, or WHO, conducted a study in 1996 which contained horrifying revelations as to the conditions on the ground within the country. Food shortages were rampant, with the country only receiving 25% of the needed red meat and poultry, 40% of cereals, 10% of fish, and 10% of sugar. Overall availability of calories decreased by 65%. They designated the diet of the Iraqi general population as being “semi-starvation”.
This lack of sufficient nutrition greatly impacted health and well-being, especially in children. The WHO cites internal research done in 1995 that found 28% of children in Baghdad had stunted growth, 29% were underweight, and 12 were wasting. Given that these were the conditions in the capital city, we can surmise the situation was even more dire in the outside provinces. In total, the mortality rate for children increased sixfold over the pre-war period. Diseases, such as Typhoid, Cholera, and Malaria, were all at epidemic proportions, diseases to which children were particularly vulnerable.
Nobody is quite sure how many people were killed as a result of the sanctions. An infamous report from the UN in 1995 claimed that 500,000 children had been killed, which led to an even-more infamous moment in a “60 Minutes” interview, but this number has been called into question. The number of children killed is still certainly somewhere in the hundreds of thousands, with a conservative estimate being around 300,000 children killed.
U.S. sanctions on Iraq persisted until the invasion of the country in 2003, at which point the Iraqi people had to endure eight long years of conflict and civil war that had been foisted upon their country. It was only several years after the American withdrawal in 2011 that ISIS invaded and occupied parts of Northern Iraq, which required several more years of war to expel them fully from the country. Only now, decades later, Iraq has the chance to begin to rebuild after decades of turmoil and despair.
Venezuela
In 1998, Hugo Chavez was elected as the president of Venezuela on a nationalist and socialist platform. In the following years, he implemented a litany of economic and political reforms with the goals of redistributing wealth, alleviating poverty, and nationalizing many areas of industry. The first sanctions placed by the United States on the country was in 2006, under the pretense of a failure to comply with the U.S.’ anti-terrorism efforts. These first sanctions were relatively minor, but would be far from the last imposed upon the country.
Venezuela’s economy was and is largely based off of exporting oil. As long as the price of oil was relatively high, the government had plenty of money for its social programs. However, beginning in mid-2014 the price of oil began to decline, which led to an economic crisis. As Venezuela’s economy crashed, sanctions upon the country ramped up. In 2014, Congress passed the “Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Society Act of 2014”, which levied sanctions on specific individuals within the Maduro government. The Trump administration took a very hard line towards Venezuela, casting new rounds of sanctions in 2017, twice in 2018, 2019, and 2020.
The combination of Venezuela’s collapsing economy and sanctions pushed the country into economic freefall. One of the most visible symptoms has been hyperinflation, which has thoroughly destroyed the value of the Bolivar. As of this writing (March 2022), one U.S. Dollar is worth over 428,000 Bolivars. In 2014, one Dollar was equal to roughly 6 Bolivars. The worst year of inflation was 2018, where inflation was over 65,000% annually.
The crisis is far more widespread than just in the monetary realm, however. GDP per capita has plummeted by 87% over the decade from 2011–2021. Venezuela relies heavily on imported food products, with roughly 75% of its foodstuffs being imported into the country. The available of these goods has dropped precipitously, as imports into the country had dropped by 82% over 2010–2020. This has all resulted in massive shortages of essential goods for the Venezuelan people. The Food Security Information Network (FSIN) reports that one-third of the population was food insecure, meaning they were unable to meet their caloric needs on their own. 60% were moderately food secure, meaning they could afford food as long as they went without other basic necessities. The rise in prices for goods was also accompanied by a drop in incomes: 37% responded to a FSIN survey stating that they had lost all of their income in the economic collapse, and 51% had lost a portion of their income.
The health of the Venezuelan people has diminished greatly in conjunction with the economic crisis. A study conducted by three Venezuelan universities that found an overall 31% increase in total mortality from 2017 to 2018 alone. Essential medicines were available at only 15% of the required stocks. Children have been greatly affected as well, with a UN study finding that 22% of children under five are experiencing stunted growth.
Venezuela’s economy as continued to decline year-after-year, and is showing no signs of halting its impoverishing decline. The Biden administration has shown no signs of easing any of the sanctions placed by the Trump regime, indicating that little chance for respite for the Venezuelan people. The principal question at this juncture is how long the collapse can continue, and how much more suffering the Venezuelan people can endure.
Conclusions
While only a small sampling, these instances show the consequences that sanctions bring. While not often seen, acknowledged, or felt by the imposers, they hurt and affect real people. Even if they aren’t intended to hurt innocent civilians, their effects are clear, regardless of the stated intentions. Will Russia suffer the same dismal fate as Cuba, Venezuela, or Iraq? Likely not, but a squeeze upon the Russian people will be felt all the same. Sanctions are often thought of as merely an ordinary and insignificant piece in the game of foreign-policy. On the contrary, sanctions are a form of war; specifically, economic war. Every war has sacrifice, and in an economic war it will be the people, not the government, soldiers, or oligarchs, who will ultimately pay the price.
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