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Highlights

The globalist cabal is planning to monopolize health systems worldwide through the creation of an international pandemic treaty that makes the World Health Organization the sole decision maker on pandemic matters

The WHO may also be planning to seize power over health systems more broadly. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has stated that his “central priority” as director-general of the WHO is to push the world toward universal health coverage

In the name of keeping everyone “safe” from infection, the globalist cabal has justified unprecedented attacks on democracy, civil liberties and personal freedoms, including the right to choose your own medical treatment.

Now, the WHO is gearing up to make its pandemic leadership permanent, and to extend it into the health care systems of every nation. The idea is to implement universal health care organized by the WHO as part of the Great Reset

If this treaty goes through, the WHO would have the power to call for mandatory vaccinations and health passports, and its decision would supersede national and state laws. Considering the WHO changed its definition of “pandemic” to “a worldwide epidemic of a disease,” removing the requirement of high morbidity, just about anything could be made to fit the pandemic criterion, including obesity

The SMART Health Cards system is used by more than a dozen countries, 25 U.S. states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.; the Australian Parliament is pushing a “Trusted Digital Identity Bill”; U.S. Congress is pushing the “Improving Digital Identity Act,” and the WHO has signed a deal with a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary to build the first global digital vaccine passport. All of these have one thing in common: the end goal, which is to expand them into a souped-up, global social credit system

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The globalist cabal is planning to monopolize health systems worldwide, and that plan is already underway. In June 2021, Dr. Julie Gerberding wrote a Time article¹ laying out the framework for an international pandemic-surveillance network, which would include threat prediction and preemption as well.

Gerberding served as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2002 until 2009.² After leaving the CDC, she became the executive vice president of vaccines and then switched, years later, to strategic communications at Merck. This is particularly egregious as she was head of government’s regulatory agency for vaccines and immediately took a job with one of the largest vaccine manufacturers in the world. Unethical in spades, but perfectly legal.

Gerberding’s next spin through the revolving door was being named CEO of the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), March 1, 2022.³ Yesterday, I discussed the massive conflicts of interest at the FNIH, as its board is loaded with Big Pharma executives and even a representative of BlackRock, one of the top three largest investment firms in the world.

While Gerberding did not name the World Health Organization in her article, we now know that’s the organization designated as the top-down ruler of all things related to pandemics. However, some of the statements that have been made suggest that, in time, the WHO may also seize power over health systems more broadly.

The Globalists’ Next Move

In a February 18, 2022, article, Dr. Peter Breggin, author of “COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey,”⁴ warned that the next move in the globalists’ war on humanity is to seize control over the health care systems of the entire world:⁵

“We have discovered the next move of the global predators — already in progress — in their escalating assaults against individual and political freedom. The next big assault on human freedom involves a legalized takeover of national healthcare systems by the World Health Organization (WHO).

This stealth attack — with its initial plans already backed by many nations — will begin full implementation in 2024 if it is not quickly recognized and fought! … The Chinese Communist influence over WHO has been solid for more than a decade, and the party was able to install Tedros without any competition.

He became the first and only Director-General who is not a physician and instead is a communist politician. Now the Director-General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — known simply as Tedros — has unveiled plans to take charge of all global health.

While addressing the WHO Executive Committee on January 24, 2022, Director-General Tedros spelled out his global health plan, including his final priority for his enormous scheme: ‘The fifth priority is to urgently strengthen WHO as the leading and directing authority on global health, at the center of the global health architecture.’

Tedros’s closing words to his report to the executive committee are chilling in their grandiosity and echo Marxist exhortations to cheering mobs by a Stalin, Mao, or Xi Jinping: ‘We are one world, we have one health, we are one WHO.’ Tedros seeks to become super-Fauci for the world, and, like Fauci, he will do it on behalf of the global predators.”

The Rise of Health Fascism

As explained by Breggin, the global health care takeover really began with Gates’ Decade of Vaccines, announced in 2010 at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) annual meeting in Davos. At that time, Gates installed Fauci on his vaccine advisory board, thereby guaranteeing his plans would receive support from the NIAID. Breggin continues:⁶

“A theme for the Decade of Vaccines was ‘Public-Private Partnerships Drive Progress in Vaccine Development, Delivery’ — essentially the precursor to the Great Reset establishing a world governance of public and private health united in the spirit of fascism.

By 2012, Gates achieved official UN approval for his scheme, establishing a broad network of global predators aimed at exploiting and dominating humanity through public health.

Communist China would play a prominent role through its control over the UN and WHO and through its close relationships with global predators like Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Mike Bloomberg, Big Tech executives, and many other billionaires and world leaders.

A decade and more later, during COVID-19, WHO has proven its usefulness to the predators in orchestrating science, medicine, and public health in the suppression of human freedom and the generation of wealth and power for the globalists.”

Under the guise of a global pandemic, the WHO, the WEF and all of its installed leaders in government and private business, were able to roll out a plan that has been decades in the making. The pandemic was a perfect cover. In the name of keeping everyone “safe” from infection, the globalists have justified unprecedented attacks on democracy, civil liberties and personal freedoms, including the right to choose your own medical treatment.

Now, the WHO is gearing up to make its pandemic leadership permanent, and to extend it into the health care systems of every nation. “The idea is ‘the principle of health for all’ — universal health care organized by WHO as part of the Great Reset,” Breggin explains.

The International Pandemic Treaty

Conspiracy theory or… pic.twitter.com/4pZ6DeY0zj

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) March 3, 2022

May 24, 2021, the European Council announced it supported the establishment of an international Pandemic Treaty, under which the WHO would have the power to replace the constitutions of individual nations with its own constitution under the banner of “pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”⁷

March 3, 2022, the Council authorized the opening of negotiations for an international agreement. The infographic below, sourced from the European Council’s website,⁸ summarizes the process.

The WHO’s World Health Assembly has also established an intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) for this purpose.⁹ March 1, 2022, the INB held its first meeting to draft and negotiate an international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response under the authority of the WHO.¹⁰

If this treaty goes through, the WHO would have the power to, for example, call for mandatory vaccinations and health passports, and its decision would supersede national and state laws.

But considering the WHO changed its definition of “pandemic” to “a worldwide epidemic of a disease,”¹¹ without the original specificity of severe illness that causes high morbidity,^12,13 just about anything could be made to fit the pandemic criterion, including obesity, which was designated as a disease in 2013¹⁴ and occurs globally. Tedros has also gone on record stating that his “central priority” as director-general of the WHO is to push the world toward universal health coverage.¹⁵

“The world has already seen how any pandemic emergency, real or concocted, now or in the future, could then justify WHO taking over the entirety of government operations of sovereign nations, robbing all individuals of their freedoms, and fully crushing the democratic republics of the world,” Breggin warns.¹⁶

“The spirit of Communism can be felt throughout the document. We are told that the ‘purpose’ of the new strategy will be ‘guided by a spirit of solidarity, anchored in the principles of fairness, inclusion, and transparency.’ Notice, as in all pronouncements by global predators; there is no mention of individual rights, political liberty, or national sovereignty.

The great engine of human progress, human freedom, will be replaced by the great destroyer of humanity, collectivism, under the rule of the elite. Tucked into the report were the real goals … Here are three main purposes or goals of the proposed treaty:

1. response to any future pandemics, in particular by ensuring universal and equitable access to medical solutions, such as vaccines, medicines, and diagnostics

2. a stronger international health framework with the WHO as the coordinating authority on global health matters

3. the ‘One Health’ approach, connecting the health of humans, animals, and our planet

The report adds, ‘More specifically, such an instrument can enhance international cooperation in a number of priority areas, such as surveillance, alerts, and response, but also in general trust in the international health system.’ Clearly, they were building support for Tedros’s January 24, 2022 announcement that WHO would take over the international health care system.”

WHO Moves Ahead With Global Vaccine Passport Program

While countries around the world are now scrubbing their COVID measures, and many have announced they won’t be pursuing vaccine passports after all, the vaccine passport program is still alive and well — under the direction of the WHO. As reported by Off-Guardian, March 1, 2022:¹⁷

“This week, while the eyes of the world are fixed on Ukraine and the next wave of propaganda, the World Health Organization is launching an initiative to create a ‘trust network’ on vaccination and international travel.

According to a report in Politico published last week, ‘WHO making moves on international vaccine ‘passport.’

The article quotes Brian Anderson, co-founder of the Vaccination Credential Initiative, which describes itself as ‘a voluntary coalition of public and private organizations committed to empowering individuals with access to verifiable clinical information including a trustworthy and verifiable copy of their vaccination records in digital or paper form using open, interoperable standards.’

They are, to take the PR agency sheen off this phrase, a corporate/government joint project researching and promoting digital medical identification papers. In short, vaccine passports.”

Members of the VCI, which was founded in January 2021, include Google, Amazon, insurance companies, hospitals, biosecurity firms and most of the major universities in the U.S. Its steering committee consists of representatives from Apple, Microsoft, the Mayo Clinic and the MITRE Corporation, a government-funded research organization.

As noted by Off-Guardian, the International Pandemic Treaty will undoubtedly include provisions on international vaccine certification. And why wouldn’t it, seeing how a WHO-backed global health passport is already underway? While Off-Guardian predicted VCI’s SMART Health Cards system might be chosen, the WHO has now signed a deal with a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary called T-Systems to build the first global digital vaccine passport.¹⁸ As reported by the Western Standard:¹⁹

“The WHO fully intends to provide support to its 194 member states to facilitate the implementation of the digital verification technology for countries’ national and regional verification of vaccine status.

‘COVID-19 affects everyone. Countries will therefore only emerge from the pandemic together. Vaccination certificates that are tamper-proof and digitally verifiable build trust. WHO is therefore supporting member states in building national and regional trust networks and verification technology.

The WHO’s gateway service also serves as a bridge between regional systems. It can also be used as part of future vaccination campaigns and home-based records,’ said Garrett Mehl, unit head of the WHO’s Department of Digital Health and Innovation, on Deutsche Telekom’s website.”

SMART Health Cards and Digital Identity Are Tools of Tyranny

Already, the SMART Health Cards system is used by more than a dozen countries,²⁰ 25 U.S. states, Puerto Rico and D.C.²¹ The Australian Parliament is also paving the way to tyranny with its “Trusted Digital Identity Bill 2021,”²² and the U.S. Congress has its “Improving Digital Identity Act of 2021.”²³

All of these have one thing in common: the end goal, which is to expand them into a souped-up, global social credit system — one in which everything you do and say is monitored, recorded and assessed for threat value, and if you misbehave or engage in wrong-think, they have 101 ways to punish you and force you into compliance, from restricting your ability to travel to seizing your bank accounts.

Don’t think for one second that government won’t have access to or use your data against you for political purposes. As explained by Off-Guardian:²⁴

“SMART Health Cards are run by VCI, which was created by the MITRE Corporation, which is funded by the United States government. If you give SMART access to your medical records, you’d better believe the U.S. government and its agencies will get their hands on them.

They might not have their own database, but they would have access to MITRE’s database when and if they needed or wanted it. And so would Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. That’s how private-public partnerships work. Symbiosis.

Corporate giants serve as fronts for government programs and, in return, they get a big cut of the profits, bailouts if they’re needed, and regulatory ‘reforms’ that cripple their smaller competitors …

This allows the federal government ‘truthfully’ claim to not be implementing a federal passport system, or keeping a vaccination database, all the while they are sub-contracting tech giants to do it for them. This system of backdoor government surveillance via corporate veneer is already spreading across the U.S., and it looks like it will play some part in any future ‘pandemic treaty’ too.”

Surgeon General Demands Hit List From Big Tech

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy also appears to be building a narrative to justify an international health authority. March 3, 2022, Murthy formally requested that all major tech platforms submit data on the scale of COVID-19 misinformation. This includes social networks, search engines, crowdsource platforms, e-commerce platforms and instant messaging systems. Thankfully, his request is not legally enforceable. As reported by The New York Times:²⁵

“A request for information from the surgeon general’s office demanded that tech platforms send data and analysis on the prevalence of COVID-19 misinformation on their sites, starting with common examples of vaccine misinformation documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.²⁶

The notice asks the companies to submit ‘exactly how many users saw or may have been exposed to instances of Covid-19 misinformation,’ as well as aggregate data on demographics that may have been disproportionately exposed to or affected by the misinformation.

The surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, also demanded information from the platforms about the major sources of Covid-19 misinformation, including those that engaged in the sale of unproven Covid-19 products, services and treatments … The request for information is part of President Biden’s COVID National Preparedness Plan^27,28 …

In addition to demanding misinformation data from the tech platforms, the surgeon general called on health care providers and the public to submit information about how COVID-19 misinformation has negatively influenced patients and communities.”

As noted by Dr. Meryl Nass,²⁹ “This is truly frightening. Misinformation (to be controlled via tech companies) is being treated as a crime, though never defined.” Nass also highlights a new bill,³⁰introduced by two Democrat senators March 2, 2022, that would give tech companies “cover to censor and turn over private data to government.” “In other words, Congress may ‘legalize’ censorship and criminalize First Amendment rights to freedom of speech,” Nass says.

CDC Has Created Loads of Misinformation

The irony here is that the most of the CDC’s answers to “COVID myths”³¹ are themselves misinformation. For example, the CDC claims it’s a myth that natural immunity is better than the immunity you get from the COVID shot.

Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find scientific backing for that statement. They basically just made that up. It’s a long-standing scientific fact that natural immunity is more robust and longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity.

The CDC also claims it’s a myth that mRNA shots are not vaccines. They say mRNA injections are vaccines because they trigger an immune response. What they don’t admit is that they changed the definition of “vaccine” in the middle of the pandemic.³²

Before the pandemic, a “vaccine” was “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease.” In the latter half of 2021, as the mRNA shots were nearing distribution, the CDC changed that definition to “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases,” effectively removing the need for a vaccine to produce immunity — the key thing a vaccine is supposed to do.

Incidentally, the CDC’s answer to this “myth” basically refutes its answer to the “myth” that vaccine immunity is better than natural immunity, since the COVID shots don’t provide immunity at all. They only stimulate an immune response, which by the way, can be either beneficial or detrimental, depending on how your immune system is stimulated.

The CDC also still insists that the COVID jabs cannot change or interact with your DNA in any way, yet published research shows otherwise. Swedish research actually shows the Pfizer shot’s mRNA incorporates into human DNA in as little as six hours.³³

Murthy’s unconstitutional request for data from tech companies on users who share information that violates the CDC narrative seems to be an effort to continue building justification for an international health authority with power to dictate truth around the world.

If there’s only one narrative, across every country, disseminated from a single entity, then the truth will be whatever they say it is. Eventually, research won’t even be published unless it conforms to the chosen narrative.

The WHO Is Totally Corrupt

There are many reasons to reject the WHO as the sole arbiter of health facts. It’s corrupt to the core, and has been for years.³⁴

In the aftermath of the swine flu pandemic of 2009, the vaccine for which left many thousands injured, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) concluded that “the handling of the pandemic by the WHO, EU health agencies and national governments led to a ‘waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public.'”³⁵

Specifically, PACE concluded there was “overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by WHO,” and that the drug industry had influenced the organization’s decision-making.

A joint investigation by the British Medical Journal and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) also uncovered serious conflicts of interest between the WHO — which promoted the global vaccination agenda — and the drug companies that created those vaccines.³⁶

The WHO has also been accused of massive money mismanagement, spending more on travel expenses each year — some $200 million in 2017 — than it does on some of the biggest public health problems, including AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.³⁷

By now, most people also know that the WHO has been bought and paid for by Bill Gates. He contributes more to the WHO’s $4.84 billion biennial budget than every member-state government. The U.S. has historically been the top funder, but the combined contributions from the Gates Foundation and GAVI made Gates the unofficial top sponsor of the WHO as of 2018.

In the documentary “TrustWHO”³⁸ (above), Lilian Franck reveals this and other clandestine influences that control the WHO, to the peril of public health. For example, we’ve seen that the WHO has strong allegiance to China, and shares China’s ruthless suppression of counternarratives.

The WHO’s investigation into COVID-19’s origin was a fake from start to finish, and even before the COVID pandemic, the WHO had been in discussions with Facebook to “ensure people can access authoritative information on vaccines and reduce the spread of inaccuracies.” Given the strong and ongoing evidence that WHO is heavily conflicted and controlled by industry, its usefulness as a guardian of public health needs to be seriously reevaluated.

The Plan for a Never-Ending Pandemic

While the White House has issued a plan to transition out of the pandemic,^39,40 it seems more like a plan for a never-ending pandemic. As reported by STAT News:⁴¹

“The report plots a course to what its authors call the ‘next normal’ — living with the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a continuing threat that needs to be managed. Doing so will require improvements on a number of fronts, from better surveillance for COVID and other pathogens to keeping tabs on how taxed hospitals are; and from efforts to address the air quality in buildings to continued investment in antiviral drugs and better vaccines.

The authors also call for offering people sick with respiratory symptoms easy access to testing and, if they are positive for COVID or influenza, a quick prescription for the relevant antiviral drug …

The report suggests the U.S. response to Covid-19 should transition from one directed solely at this single disease to one where prevention, mitigation, and treatment efforts are focused on COVID as one of a number of respiratory viruses, including influenza.”

Part of the plan is to create a new post: deputy Assistant to the president for biosecurity within the National Security Council.⁴² The deputy assistant for biosecurity would be responsible for “monitoring, addressing, and coordinating responses to and communications about any biosecurity and pandemic threats.”

Importantly, this post would also be responsible for coordinating “efforts to counter foreign and domestic sources of anti-science misinformation on vaccines and drugs.” The COVID Roadmap also details strategies to improve documentation, monitoring and accountability for communication goals.

This includes monitoring “health iniquities” to “increase public accountability and support values that promote social well-being and health equity in infectious diseases.” It sounds to me like a plan to promote propaganda that shames people who don’t want to sacrifice their own health for “the greater good.”

It also includes the establishment of “standards for streamlined clearance of health messages without political interference.” Will the WHO be responsible for such standards? Probably.

The roadmap also specifies that tech platforms and legacy media are to be urged to “design mechanisms to detect, deflect and deny the posting of harmful and false advice that hurts public health.” In other words, across the board censorship. If the WHO is given complete authority over health, censorship will be a given and science as we know it will basically cease to exist.

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Notes

¹ Time June 9, 2021

² Student Life April 15, 2021

³ FNIH Announcement March 1, 2022

⁴ COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey

^{5, 6, 7, 16} America Out Loud February 18, 2022

⁸ European Council March 3, 2022

⁹ Our World UN University January 28, 2022

¹⁰ DCAT December 2, 2021

¹¹ Wayback Machine, WHO Pandemic Preparedness captured September 2, 2009 (PDF)

¹² The BMJ 2010;340:c2912

¹³ Wayback Machine, WHO Pandemic Preparedness captured May 1, 2009 (PDF)

¹⁴ Obesity Medicine February 8, 2017

^15, 34, 37 National Review June 14, 2017

^17, 21, 24 Off-Guardian March 1, 2022

^18, 19 Western Standard March 2, 2022

²⁰ VCI.org, Worldwide Footprint

²² Digital Identity Bill 2021

²³ HR 4258, Improving Digital Identity Act of 2021

²⁵ New York Times March 3, 2022 (Archived)

^26, 31 CDC Myths and Facts About COVID-19

^27, 40 White House National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan

²⁸ NPR March 2, 2022

²⁹ Meryl Nass Substack March 4, 2022

³⁰ Ben Ray Lujan US Senator for New Mexico March 2, 2022

³² Miami Herald September 27, 2021

³³ the Expose February 27, 2022

³⁵ Assembly.coe.int June 24, 2010

³⁶ Natural Society February 23, 2014

³⁸ The Defender September 7, 2021

³⁹ COVID Roadmap

⁴¹ STAT News March 7, 2022

⁴² COVID Roadmap, Biosecurity and Pandemic Leadership

Featured image is from Humans Are Free

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization.

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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 condemns 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.

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A top Russian diplomat said Saturday that Moscow has informed U.S. officials that it views Western arms shipments to Ukraine as “legitimate targets” for military attacks, heightening fears of a direct confrontation between the nuclear-armed powers.

“We warned the United States that the orchestrated pumping of weapons from a number of countries is not just a dangerous move, it is a move that turns these convoys into legitimate targets,” Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, told a state television outlet Saturday morning.

Ryabkov added that Moscow emphasized to Washington “the consequences of the thoughtless transfer to Ukraine of weapons like man-portable air defense systems, anti-tank missile systems, and so on.”

While U.S. President Joe Biden has vowed not to involve American troops directly in any conflict with Russia, the administration has been pouring arms and advanced weaponry into Ukraine for months, shipments that ramped up after Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24.

On March 4, as the New York Times reported, “some 14 wide-bodied aircraft transported a bristling array of Javelin antitank missiles, rocket launchers, guns, and ammunition to an airfield near Ukraine’s border.”

“The top U.S. military adviser to President Biden inspected the weapons transfer operation in an unannounced trip, meeting with troops and personnel from 22 countries who were working around the clock to unload the armaments for transport by land to the Ukrainian forces,” the Times continued. “The American weaponry, which included the Javelins as well as small arms and munitions, was part of a $350 million package that Mr. Biden authorized.”

“Within two days, one official said, the deliveries were landing at an airfield near the border that can process 17 airplanes a day,” the Times added. “What began as a trickle—with only two or three planes arriving a day—is now a steady flow, the official said, with 14 loads from one airfield alone.”

The Washington Post reported Friday that the Biden administration is currently “working with European allies to expedite more sophisticated air-defense systems and other armaments into the war zone.”

Ryabkov’s remarks Saturday came after NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned that a Russian attack on supply lines of countries providing weapons to Ukraine—which is not a NATO member—would constitute a dangerous escalation.

“The allies are helping Ukraine uphold their right for self-defense, which is enshrined in the U.N. Charter,” Stoltenberg said in an interview with CBC News.

“Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is defending itself. If there is any attack against any NATO country, NATO territory, that will trigger Article 5,” Stoltenberg added, referring to the self-defense clause of NATO’s founding treaty.

The Intercept‘s Jeremy Scahill argued in a column on Thursday that the rapid acceleration of arms shipments into Ukraine represents “a significant escalation of Western involvement” in the deadly conflict.

“It is understandable and reasonable that people across the U.S. and Europe are demanding their governments send more weapons to support Ukraine in resisting the Russian invasion,” Scahill wrote. “Without the Western-supplied weapons Ukraine already possessed, it is very likely Russia would be in control of much larger swaths of the country.”

“It is also vital,” Scahill added, “that people advocating such a policy consider whether a sizable increase in U.S. and NATO weapons transfers will prolong the conflict and result in even more civilian death and destruction.”

 

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The attempt to “cancel” the existence of Russia has been promoted not only by Western liberal governments, but also by big companies, mainly multinationals in the technology sector. The so-called “Big Tech companies” have been a major point of boycott against Russia, acting on the cyber front and in information warfare. Russian profiles on social media have been deleted, pages of Russian newspapers are banned and people who express pro-Russian views are permanently blocked without any notification from the platforms. Definitely, social networks have become a battlefield on which the West seeks to banish Russian existence.

The current conflict on Ukrainian soil is generating as a side effect a real division of the world internet. Unwilling to use its physical forces to face Russian troops, the West has bet on a series of sanctions aimed at disconnecting Moscow from the rest of the world. And such measures have also been adopted autonomously by private companies, which leave their ideological principles increasingly exposed, giving up the broad Russian consumer market just to defend pro-Western political agendas. In the technology and internet sector, this situation has become more serious day by day.

Corporate giants like Meta, Google, Twitter, TikTok, and Apple are now showing their political identity, removing all or many of their products out of Russia in response to the Special Operation Ukraine. During the last two weeks, profiles of Russian citizens have been automatically removed from these platforms – and so have non-Russian users who share news’ links from Russian websites or simply write publications with positive opinions about the Russian government. Official Russian state media and even private Russian newspapers have been banned, keeping any and all information produced in Russian territory under the label of “fake news” and “disinformation campaign”, without any prior content analysis.

Undoubtedly, the most shocking actions were the ones implemented by the Meta group – the American conglomerate that controls Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and all the other companies owned by the billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. Meta’s actions went far beyond the limits of information warfare, reaching the status of incitement to physical violence and anti-Russian racism. In some countries, Facebook and Instagram have implemented exceptional measures approving hate speech against Russians on topics related to Ukraine.

In the words of Meta’s official statement to moderators, it is possible to read: “We are issuing a spirit-of-the-policy allowance to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the Hate Speech policy when: (a) targeting Russian soldiers, EXCEPT prisoners of war, or (b) targeting Russians where it’s clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (…) We are doing this because we have observed that in this specific context, ‘Russian soldiers’ is being used as a proxy for the Russian military”.

In practice, the new rules mean even allowing death threats, as almost all matters involving Russia can be automatically linked to the Ukrainian issue by the platforms’ artificial intelligence. Now, for example, posts like “death to the Russians” or “death to Putin” are allowed, which reveals the bellicose and aggressive nature of the attitude taken by Meta.

Obviously, in response, the Russian government has also adopted sanctions on foreign media, being forced to react in the face of a true virtual aggression promoted by the global coalition of Big Tech companies. Russian social media networks have been favored with this scenario, starting to receive a surprising number of users in recent days. VKontakte (VK), for example, which had a stagnant number of users in recent years, is now dealing with a crowding of profiles and account creation requests, which has even obstructed the functioning of the platform at some times. The same has been happening with Telegram, which becomes a viable alternative for Russian users and pro-Russian foreign citizens as other chat media like WhatsApp increasingly sanction Moscow.

Specifically regarding Meta’s attitudes, Russian prosecutors have started a court case pointing to Meta as a terrorist organization that threatens the lives of Russian citizens. An investigative committee was formed in order to investigate the case. This could be the end of American social media on Russian territory in case they are deemed terrorists due to their new racist anti-Russian norms.

What all this means, in practice, is that once again anti-Russian sanctions can drive a process of multipolarization. For decades, social media has been controlled by Western Big Tech, which concentrate power and money in the hands of a multibillionaire elite, whose influence becomes capable of interfering in the political directions of governments around the world. With these companies leaving Russia, millions of users may lose their accounts on the networks, but this, at the same time, will favor Russian social networks and boost an alternative market – also abroad, considering the boycott against citizens from other countries who share pro-Russian ideas. In the end, Western companies will lose market and Russian companies will gain a huge consumer audience, which will make the technology sector more diverse, polycentric and competitive.

What must be fought and even condemned by the international organizations, however, is the blatant racist and terrorist-like hate speech of these platforms, which use the excuse of a conflict to advance retrograde anti-Russian ideas. Indeed, there is no “humanitarian concern” for the Ukrainians on the part of Meta and other companies – there is only an ultra-liberal ideological agenda that considers Russia an obstacle to a globalist world order, making use of anti-Russian animosity to promote a political campaign against Moscow.

In fact, Western governments already know this, as there is constant friction between liberal democracies and Big Tech companies. In Washington, Republicans and Democrats agree to impose several sanctions on the high-tech sector because they consider the influence of these groups to be a strong social threat. Obviously, Western governments will ignore the current attitude because there is a common interest between them in defeating Russia.

Big Tech is making it clear that they are willing to do anything guarantee their interests. Before, these companies were limited to “canceling” their enemies, as they did with Donald Trump. Now they are even inciting the murder of citizens of countries considered enemies. The undeniable truth, however, is that Russia is just the current enemy, and the next one could be any western government, as the ideological agenda of these companies does not respect classical democratic values, but defends a global order without National States, where companies have decision-making power at the United Nations.

The West is once again repeating the mistake of giving these companies too much power and will surely pay the price soon.

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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

Featured image is from tag24.com

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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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.

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This article originally published on Ottawa Citizen in October 2021. confirms that Canadian Forces are supporting Neo- Nazi forces in Ukraine
***

Far-right extremists in Ukraine’s military have bragged they received training from the Canadian Forces and other NATO nations, a new study from an American university has uncovered.

The study from an institute at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., tracked social media accounts of the far-right group Centuria, documenting its Ukrainian military members giving Nazi salutes, promoting white nationalism and praising members of Nazi SS units.

The far-right group has been active since 2018 at the Hetman Petro Sahaidachny National Army Academy or NAA, according to the report from George Washington’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies.

 

The NAA is Ukraine’s premier military education institution and a major hub for western military assistance to the country, including from Canada.

Centuria members acknowledged on social media they have received training from the Canadian military and have participated in military exercises with Canada. In May, Centuria organizers boasted to their followers that its members currently served as officers in Ukraine’s military and “have succeeded in establishing cooperation with foreign colleagues from such countries as France, the United Kingdom, Canada, the USA, German and Poland,” according to the institute’s report.

Click here to read the full article.

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Featured image: Photo posted by “Centuria’ on Telegram, Photo posted by Roman Rusnyk on Instagram, Photo posted by Vladyslav Vintergoller on Instagram, Photo posted by Vitaliy Rosolovskiy on Instagram, Photo capture of Tweet posted by the Embassy of Ukraine to the United Kingdom.

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization.

 

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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.

---

The former US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard Sunday posted a video on Twitter reiterating claims about US-funded Biolabs in Ukraine. Expressing concerns over the “inadvertent or intentional” breach of these dangerous pathogens, Gabbard called for an immediate ceasefire around these US-funded laboratories in Ukraine.

In a two-minute video, Gabbard said there are 25 to 30 American-funded biological laboratories in Ukraine and called for an immediate ceasefire at the laboratories as they could spread dangerous pathogens.

There are 25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world. We must take action now to prevent disaster. US/Russia/Ukraine/NATO/UN/EU must implement a ceasefire now around these labs until they’re secured & pathogens destroyed pic.twitter.com/dhDTH5smIG

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) March 13, 2022

“Here are the undeniable fact”, said Gabbard, backing Russia’s claims that there are 25-30 US-funded Biolabs in Ukraine. She further warned that “According to the US government, these Biolabs and conducting research on dangerous pathogens. Ukraine is an active war zone with widespread bombing, artillery and shelling and these facilities, even in the best of circumstances, could easily be compromised and release these deadly pathogens.”

She added that

“like Covid these pathogens know no borders. If they are inadvertently or purposely breached or compromised they will quickly spread all throughout Europe, The United States, and the rest of the world causing untold suffering and death. So in order to protect the American people, the people of Europe, the people around the world, these labs need to be stud down immediately and the pathogens that they hold need to be destroyed.”

Gabbard also urged the Biden administration in the United States not to cover up, but rather to take concrete steps to immediately stop US military from operating “dangerous” Biolabs in Ukraine.

“Instead of trying to cover this up, the Biden-Harris administration needs to work with Russia, Ukraine, NATO and UN to implement immediate ceasefire for all military actions in the vicinity of the labs and until it is secured and these pathogens are destroyed,” said the former US Congresswoman.

Gabbard reiterated China’s recent accusation of the United States. She claimed that the United States has 300 or so dangerous research labs around the world similar to the lab in Wuhan, China, where COVID-19 may have originated from.

“Now after realising how dangerous and vulnerable these labs are, they should have been shut down two years ago, but they haven’t,” she further said, adding that this is not a politically partisan issue.

“The US administration and Congress needs to act now for the health and well being of every American and every person on the planet,” Gabbard said as she concluded her video monologue.

Notably, Tulsi Gabbard’s video caused quite a stir, with Utah Senator Mitt Romney harshly criticising her and implying that her remarks about the existence of so-called “US Biolabs” in Ukraine would result in people being killed.

The Republican senator accused his ex-House counterpart of spreading “treasonous lies” that amounted to “Russian propaganda”.

“Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives”, Tweeted Mitt Romney in response to Tulsi Gabbard’s video post.

Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) March 13, 2022

Russia and China accuse US of having Biolabs in Ukraine

It may be recalled that prior to this, both Russia and China had accused the US military of operating “dangerous” Biolabs in Ukraine. On March 9, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian Tweeted a snippet from a press conference where he asked the US to release “relevant details as soon as possible” regarding alleged US biological laboratories in Ukraine.

On Sunday, March 6, the Russian Defense Ministry had claimed that there were “evidence of a US-financed military biological program developed in Ukraine.”

US admits there are biological research facilities in Ukraine

Interestingly, on Tuesday, the US State Department official Victoria Nuland in a way had admitted that US-funded Biolabs are working on developing bioweapons on Ukrainian soil. Nuland testified before a Senate Foreign Relation Committee hearing on Ukraine in Washington, DC, and said that the United States was working with Ukraine to prevent invading Russian forces from seizing biological research material. The State Department also stated that it was concerned that Russian forces are trying to gain control of biological research facilities within Ukraine.

By stating that Russia will be held responsible for any ‘biological or chemical weapon attack,’ Nuland had effectively admitted what the Russian government has been saying all along: that US-funded Biolabs are developing bioweapons on Ukrainian soil.

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Featured image: U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard speaking with attendees at the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention at the George R. Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Credit: Gage Skidmore/ Flickr) 

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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---

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.

---

At Monday’s routine news conference of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the spokesperson for the ministry rebutted the US’ inconsistent and flawed responses regarding its biological laboratories in Ukraine, urging a full clarification of its bio-military activities within and outside its borders.

When a BBC reporter asked that the US claims seem to suggest that its secret research involving viruses in Ukraine has nothing to do with the military, Zhao Lijian, the ministry’s  spokesperson, directly pointed out that the US’ response to the issue so far has been contradictory and confusing.

Under a 2005 agreement between the US and Ukraine, US Department of Defense representatives are authorized to participate in all activities related to Ukrainian facilities, and Ukraine is prohibited from releasing information that the US determines to be “sensitive.”

According to the US submission to the 2021 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Meeting of States Parties, the US has 26 laboratories and other cooperative facilities in Ukraine.

“We can’t help but ask: Did the US send teams to Ukraine or not? What exactly is the scope of their activities? How many collaborative facilities are there? What sensitive information in the field of public health is not allowed to be disclosed? Does Ukraine know what the US is doing in Ukraine?” Zhao asked.

Public information shows that tens of biological laboratories in Ukraine were operated on the orders of the US Department of Defense, that the US has invested more than $200 million in these laboratory activities, and that US research was aimed at establishing mechanisms for the covert spread of deadly viral pathogens.

Screengrab of Russian Defence Ministry briefing showing US-sponsored biolabs on Ukraininan territory. Photo: Russian Ministry of Defence

Russian officials said that Russia found more than 30 biological laboratories affiliated with the US on the territory of Ukraine and that the relevant items were urgently destroyed, but traces of plague, anthrax and other pathogens were found.

While the US initially slammed information about its bio warfare labs in Ukraine as “fake,” on March 8, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland admitted the existence of US-funded “biological research facilities” in the country.

“If the information released by the US itself is inconsistent and full of loopholes, how can the international community believe that the US is fulfilling its BWC obligations?” Zhao asked.

The US is the only country that opposes the establishment of a verification mechanism for the BWC. At the same time, for decades the US has been accusing other countries of not complying with the treaty, and even sanctioning and using force against these countries.

“When it happens to the US, it evades inspection, which is a typical US double standard,” Zhao said.

The spokesman urged the US to make a full clarification of its bio-military activities within and outside its borders in a responsible manner and to stop opposing the establishment of a verification mechanism for the Biological Weapons Convention, which would help restore the international community’s confidence in the US compliance with its international obligations and would also help raise the level of global biosecurity.

The World Health Organization has “strongly recommended” to the Ministry of Health in Ukraine to safely destroy “high-threat pathogens” that might be housed within the country’s public health labs in order to prevent “any potential spills.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums, etc.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization.

 

---

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.

---

Little is yet known about why Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated the special military operation in Ukraine when he did, and it seems that many pundits are also yet reluctant to risk their reputations by speculating about the potential objectives of a political leader who is viewed by many as one of the most cunning and effective strategists of the 21st century. After all, who can really claim to know what Putin is planning?

The March 3rd phone call between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron saw a continuation of Putin’s limited statements thus far regarding his objectives, with Putin telling Macron that Russia would “achieve the goals of its military intervention in Ukraine whatever happens”.  According to a reported statement released by the Kremlin following the phone call [1]:

“Vladimir Putin outlined in detail the fundamental approaches and conditions in the context of negotiations with representatives of Kyiv. It was confirmed that, first of all, we are talking about the demilitarisation and neutral status of Ukraine, so that a threat to the Russian Federation will never emanate from its territory.”

As Putin seeks to outwardly frame the military intervention as justified self-defense, with the Kremlin stating that Russia needs to ensure that Ukraine is prevented from posing an ongoing threat to Russia and her people, many experts doubt that Putin actually views the much smaller and far less well-equipped Ukraine as an actual threat to national security, despite the ongoing clashes in Donbas since 2014. The sheer scale of Putin’s special military operation, and its territorial gains thus far, hint at greater ambitions.

Far more likely is that Putin, who turns 70 later this year, has recognized that his time is running short to cement his legacy as the greatest leader in Russian history.

Putin has never hid his admiration of the Soviet Union’s former glory and the influence wielded by that former superpower, and it has become clear in recent years that Putin is seeking to restore Russia to its rightful status on the world stage.

While Russia has always exerted influence in the near abroad, concrete steps were taken by Russia to solidify its ascension toward superpower status by expanding its territorial limits in Europe, first following the conflict in Crimea in 2014, and then following the disputed election in Belarus in 2020.

Ukraine’s legitimacy as a nation and the sovereignty it was granted at the dissolution of the Soviet Union has long been contested by Putin, so bringing Ukraine’s territory and people back into the fold as part of an expanded confederation within the Union State (currently comprising Russia and Belarus) would effectively ensure that Russia can reestablish its European borders to where they essentially existed at the height of the U.S.S.R’s glory. This would not only thwart further EU and NATO expansion eastward (the real threat to Russia’s security), it would also allow Putin to undo what some Russians view as an historical injustice. As such, many analysts speculate that the eventual goal of the special military operation is to return Ukraine to Russia by deposing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and putting in place a new government that would be cooperative with Russia.

It is not clear if Russia’s military anticipated the fierce resistance it has met thus far from Ukrainian forces and from the civilian volunteers and foreign fighters supporting them.

What is clear is that, due to Russia’s incredible military superiority and NATO’s very clear stance of non-interference, there is a risk of bloodshed on a massive scale if Russia’s armed forces unleash their full potential. If Putin does truly wish to establish closer ties with Ukraine and its people, it might seem counterintuitive to reduce the country to rubble first.

However, it is unlikely that Russia would succeed in effecting regime change in Kyiv without a dramatic escalation of violence, which certainly would not make the average Ukrainian more sympathetic towards Russia. Putin will need to find the right balance.

If we consider that Russia’s borders will inevitably be redrawn following the military intervention, and sections of what are currently modern-day Ukraine will reside within those new borders, it would perhaps seem more realistic to expect that Putin does not intend to “occupy” all of Ukraine.

It would instead appear more likely that Putin will seek to restore the Russian status of what he has indicated are “historically Russian lands” in New Russia (primarily in the south and east of the country), thus creating a much needed land bridge to Crimea. This would then allow Putin to demonstrate that his intent has never been to “occupy” Ukraine or to eliminate the concept of Ukrainian nationhood, as the Western part of the country could remain outside of the Kremlin’s control, potentially with the western city of Lviv as its potential capital.

This reduced Ukrainian state, along with Moldova (another former Soviet Republic), could then form something of a buffer between Russia and NATO members Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. From the perspective of military strategy, this might also make sense, as a prolonged campaign in western Ukraine could present additional logistical challenges for Russia; for example, maintaining supply lines for ground forces over ever-increasing distances will be difficult, as will be getting troops and equipment across the Dnieper River, which forms an important barrier limiting Russia’s ability to project their logistics chain westward. In addition, securing the logistics chain from the ever-present risk of insurgent attacks in occupied territories will become more difficult to contend with the further Russian troops move away from supply hubs in the east.

Another possibility is that Putin does not actually have major territorial ambitions, but is using this intervention as exactly what he is calling it – a special military operation, which clearly implies that the activities would be limited in scope.

As of March 4th, there has been a marked shift in President Zelenskyy’s tone, his frustration and dismay with the EU and NATO apparent. With NATO unambiguously stating that it will not intervene militarily so long as NATO countries are not attacked, not even to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine (fearing this would lead to full-fledged war in Europe), Zelenskyy told NATO in a video released March 4th that

“All the people who die from this day forward will also die because of you, because of your weakness, because of your lack of unity”, adding “Today, the leadership of the alliance gave the green light for further bombing of Ukrainian cities and villages, having refused to set up a no-fly zone” [2].

Should this sentiment become further entrenched amongst the Ukrainian political leadership and intelligentsia, and if it is indeed genuine and not merely posturing on Zelenskyy’s part (for example, in the hopes that it might shame NATO into taking action), it risks pushing Ukraine further away from eventually joining the EU and NATO.

The Ukrainian people may well conclude that they are alone in their struggles, and that the EU and NATO abandoned them when Ukraine needed them the most. This can occur despite aggression from Russia; Ukraine does not necessarily need to become closer to Russia in order to move further away from the EU and NATO.

Estrangement from the EU and NATO could then create conditions allowing Putin to return to the negotiating table from a position of power, which could in turn permit him to pull back his military knowing that he has succeeded in quashing Ukraine’s ambitions to join these Western alliances, establishing what he has long hoped would be a neutralized Ukraine devoid of any short term threat to Russia, while only holding onto relatively small portions of Ukraine’s current territory in the east and south.

This potential strategy might also explain why Russia’s military has proceeded at what might seem like a glacial pace thus far, where it’s well known that Russia could have likely battered Ukraine into submission by now, had it truly wanted to. This strategy also aligns with Russia’s well-known practice of sowing discord, supported by effective propaganda, within an adversary population; by turning the hearts and minds of Ukrainians against the EU and NATO, Putin accomplishes his goal using what would only really amount to a show of strength, thus minimizing bloodshed and not risking another Euromaidan by ruling as occupiers or via a pro-Russian proxy government over a people resolved to repel Russian influence.

Also possible is Putin’s strategy may backfire, and he may well exacerbate what is already a difficult relationship with Ukraine, where Ukrainian disappointment in NATO’s non-intervention might be relatively short-lived, and this military initiative may only further reinforce to Ukrainians their need to work towards the reforms required for them to join the EU and NATO in order to guarantee that Russia is unwilling to take military action again in the future.

Russia’s actions in Ukraine have drawn the ire of the international community, which has been swift in its condemnation of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. The almost daily imposition of new sanctions is already impacting Russia’s economy.

On March 1st, France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire declared an “all-out economic and financial war on Russia” [3], which demonstrates that the EU and its allies are choosing to use sanctions as their weapons since they are unwilling to use conventional ones.

Major corporations are ceasing operations in Russia, including behemoths like Visa and MasterCard. Scores of western airlines are refusing to operate in Russia, and countries have closed their airspace to Russian planes.

Even famously neutral Switzerland is moving in lockstep with the European bloc, approving sanctions against Russia in a dramatic departure from its typical isolationist stance. And in one of the few places where Russia and western nations typically play nice, the Arctic Council, Russia is being isolated, with the other member states indicating on March 3rd that they won’t participate in the work of the Arctic Council, or attend any of its meetings, until further notice.

What does this mean for Russia and its people?

For one, Russia will be further isolated, and the lives of everyday Russians will only get harder. There are historical lessons to learn about similar tactics employed against such countries as North Korea and Iran, where the people in those countries suffer greatly due to economic sanctions, and their governments nevertheless continue their quest to develop nuclear capabilities unabated.

And without being overly alarmist, it is worth reminding readers that the current isolationism and crippling sanctions being imposed on Russia is not dissimilar to the severe reparations imposed on Germany post-WWI, which many historians have concluded played a role in the rise in German nationalism that acted as a catalyst for the political events that eventually led to WWII. Will these sanctions – which are likely to impact the average Russian citizen far more than the Russian government and allied oligarchs that are being targeted – cause Russians to turn against the government en masse in a series of ever-growing protests; or, will they more likely result in Russians feeling unfairly targeted by the West, which can then give rise to a renewed Russian nationalist movement, which may in turn further embolden the Russian government?

Another factor to consider is how the Western response to Russia’s special military operation might shape geopolitics in the longer term.

It seems likely that these sanctions will result in a further rapprochement between Russia and China, since many markets will now be closed to Russian imports and exports, and China’s economic ambitions could marry well with Russia’s newfound need for willing trading partners. China could, for example, provide economic support through new infrastructure projects in Russia, perhaps to further some of its Belt and Road Initiative ambitions.

China may also provide political support for Russia’s claims in Ukraine, as there are parallels with China’s claims in relation to Taiwan. However, China may well be too wary of drawing the ire of Western nations, and the potential consequences for its own economy, which could force Russia to develop new trade agreements and alliances with less scrupulous partners who might see an opportunity to better their own lots due to Russia’s perceived disadvantage.

So what does all of this spell out for the West?

In short, the EU and NATO are forced to contend with a country whose nuclear arsenal has been placed at high alert while seeking to take concrete actions that may or may not be perceived as an act of aggression – or even worse, an act or war – by a leader whose ambitions are unclear.

On March 5th, Putin warned that the economic sanctions being levied against Russia are “akin to an act of war” – how would he perceive NATO warplanes patrolling Ukrainian airspace? It appears that NATO is unwilling to find out for sure.

Without knowing what Putin specifically seeks to accomplish in Ukraine, the West is once again left in a position where it must react to Putin’s actions while trying to convince Russian negotiators to come back to the table in earnest.

While Russian and Ukrainian delegations continue important negotiations surrounding ceasefires and securing safe passage for refugees, western political leaders must keep lines of communication with the Russian leadership open in order to find a resolution to the current crisis.

The West needs to keep Putin talking, as Macron attempted, in order to develop an effective strategy for convincing Putin to put an end to his special military operation; if Putin decides that he’s done talking, perhaps because Russia will have essentially been made into a pariah state, there will be no hope left for a resolution.

A diplomatic solution is the only real solution to the situation in Ukraine, so the EU and NATO must figure out what Putin truly seeks to accomplish (by whatever means necessary) in order to attempt to meet him halfway. Right now, Putin has the upper hand, and it’s hard to imagine that banning a few Russian oligarchs from visiting Switzerland is really going to change Putin’s mind about anything.

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Nicholas Meyers writes with a focus on Russian and Eurasian issues, and draws on his military background to provide a unique perspective on geopolitics. Nicholas can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

1. Oatis, Jonathan, editor. “Putin tells Macron Russia will achieve its goals in Ukraine”. Reuters, 3 Mar 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-tells-macron-russia-will-achieve-its-goals-ukraine-2022-03-03/.

2. “NATO rejects no-fly zone; Ukraine slams ‘greenlight for bombs’”. Al Jazeera, 5 Mar 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/5/nato-rejects-no-fly-zone-ukraine-decries-greenlight-for-bombs.

3. Lough, Richard. “French minister declares economic ‘war’ on Russia, and then beats a retreat”. Reuters, 1 Mar 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/france-declares-economic-war-against-russia-2022-03-01/.

Featured image is from Chen Xia/GT

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization.

---

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.

---

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine moves past its third week, there are slight hopes that negotiations between the two sides may soon produce a ceasefire. But with the shrill warmongering talk in Washington, it almost seems like the US government would hate to see that happen.

Congress and the US Administration seem determined to drag the United States into a war with Russia over Ukraine. Senator Lindsay Graham is openly calling for someone to kill the Russian president and many in the US House have demanded that the Administration establish a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine.

Are they insane? A no-fly zone means you destroy anything and everything that can prevent total US air dominance. That means an attack on Russian missile and air defense systems within Russia. In other words, World War III.

We can all feel disgust at the destruction in Ukraine, but is it really necessary for us to gamble with our own nuclear annihilation?

Sadly, a large bipartisan group in Congress seems to think so.

Much of what is happening in Ukraine can be traced back to the Obama Administration. State Department officials like Victoria Nuland and Antony Blinken planned and executed the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014. This is what set us on this path to conflict, as the government put in place after the coup began demanding NATO membership.

Blinken, Nuland, and the others responsible for this heinous act returned to government in more senior positions under President Biden and they have continued to push their Ukraine agenda.

Last week Secretary of State Blinken – our top diplomat – sought to send Soviet-era Polish fighter jets into Ukraine to shoot Russians. When the Poles said they’d be happy to ship the planes to a US base in Germany and let the Pentagon transfer them to Ukraine, the Pentagon finally stepped in to quash an extraordinarily high-risk move that even the Pentagon said would have no real effect on the outcome of the war.

The State Department is trying to get us into a war and the Pentagon is trying to keep us out. How ironic!

Back when I was on the campaign trail I would say that we have a few thousand diplomats in government, it might not be a bad idea to use them. But I certainly did not mean that we should use them to try and get us further involved in a war!

Three weeks into this terrible war, the US is not pursuing talks with Russia. As Antiwar.com recently reported, instead of supporting negotiations between Ukraine and Russia that could lead to a ceasefire and an end to the bloodshed, the US government is actually escalating the situation which can only increase the bloodshed.

The constant flow of US and allied weapons into Ukraine and talk of supporting an extended insurgency does not seem designed to give Ukraine a victory on the battlefield but rather to hand Russia what Secretary of State Blinken called “a strategic defeat.”

It sounds an awful lot like the Biden Administration intends to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. The only solution for the US is to get out. Let the Russians and Ukrainians reach an agreement. That means no NATO for Ukraine and no US missiles on Russia’s borders? So what! End the war then end NATO.

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

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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.

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I don’t know if the U.S. foreign-policy elite wanted Russia to invade Ukraine – an argument could be made for the affirmative – but I’d hate to think it did. Yet given its long record of global mischief (a polite word for its machinations), we certainly cannot rule out the point a priori.

Perhaps the best evidence in favor of the proposition is that President Biden refused to take the few simple steps that might have averted the whole thing. (The attempt would have cost nothing.) But if an invasion might have been averted and was unwanted, why was so much weaponry and other military aid poured into Ukraine in apparent anticipation of a splendid little war?

I acknowledge that none of this constitutes a smoking gun (pun intended), but the question is worth asking. One might say it was a “just in case” move, but the risks were high because, first, US support might have encouraged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to do something foolish, and second, the arms flow itself might have provoked a Russian response, particularly since the Ukrainian National Guard has the pro-Nazi Azov Battalion incorporated into it.

That said, I am far more confident that, from Biden on down – if I’m not giving him too much credit – the foreign-policy makers foresaw benefits in the reprehensible Russian invasion.

Benefits? Qui bono? To whom? Well, certainly not the Ukrainians who are dying, hurting, and fleeing their homes in terror. Nor do the beneficiaries include the rest of the world’s regular people, including Americans, who now must wonder if the end of the world is at hand, or if not that, then how they’ll cope with the inevitable economic hardship that war and sanctions impose: rising prices, food shortages, and so on.

But make no mistake: there are beneficiaries, as there are in all wars. (“There’s not much I can tell you about this war. It’s like all wars, I guess. The undertakers are winning.”) The American foreign-policy elite itself is a beneficiary because the heightened tensions and potential for conflict offer enormous political opportunities for bigger budgets, grander missions, and the prestige that comes from playing Winston Churchill.

Then there are the sheer economic benefits – the profits, compliments of the taxpayers – to the military-industrial complex, which has profited handsomely from NATO expansion since 1998 and from the increased military budgets in NATO countries. Crystal City, Va., will not be on hard times, so matter how the rest of us fare. (Remember when Salesman-in-Chief Donald Trump used to chide the NATO countries for spending too little on their militaries? Get it now? Did you really think he had the American taxpayers in mind?)

And let’s face it, NATO needed a shot in the arm. The Soviet Union was long gone, and international terrorism has just not lived up to its ominous billing. It hasn’t had the staying power to justify the sinecures that the obsolete alliance had provided over the years. Now things have changed – in Finland and Sweden, historically neutral countries, “public support for joining NATO has surged to record levels,” Yasmeen Serhan writes in The Atlantic.

Nor should we underrate the satisfaction that the elite expects to get from the likely prolonged Russian quagmire. As Scott Horton writes,

Weapons to Ukraine had all been supposedly “calibrated” they said, “not to provoke Mr. Putin,” officials told the New York Times. Maybe arming an insurgency truly is Plan B after an invasion they truly meant to deter and these Democrats are just very poor at “calibration.” But they sure seem to be thinking ahead to how an invasion could hurt Russia, with the poor Ukrainians serving as merely an instrument against them.

“The level of military support would make our efforts in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union [in the 1980s] look puny by comparison,” said former Hillary Clinton adviser retired Adm. James Stavridis. I sense some anticipatory glee.

The failed presidential candidate herself – the one who did as much as anyone to ratchet up tensions with Russia during and after her witless campaign – herself weighed in during a Feb. 28 MSNBC interview. She was asked what she thought about Americans going to fight as private individuals (as they did during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s), and also whether other countries, including NATO members, ought to send troops to fight the Russians. Clinton responded:

It may well be that some people will go into Ukraine to help fight the Russians.

I don’t think it`s a good idea for that to be a government-sponsored effort. And I think people who go should be made aware that they are going on their own.

It is heartbreaking to see Ukraine standing alone against Russia, although they`re doing so far an amazing job in rallying their citizens. I don`t think you will find any country right now that will do that.

And then she added:

But, remember, the Russians invaded Afghanistan back in 1980. And although no country went in, they certainly had a lot of countries supplying arms and advice and even some advisers to those who were recruited to fight Russia. It didn`t end well for the Russians. There were other unintended consequences, as we know. But the fact is that a very motivated and then funded and armed insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan.

Did you catch the carefully buried reference to 9/11 and all the death and destruction that ensued in the “war on terror” and that still plagues the Middle East? It’s in these words: “There were other unintended consequences” – as though what followed was an insignificant detail of the valiant effort to aid the mujahideen – al Qaeda was there – against the Russians beginning in 1979.

Scott Horton, the author of Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, commented:

People really should watch the entire clip to see the way Clinton smirks at the cute little irony of al Qaeda’s attacks against America and the entire 20-year terror war: What are two million dead humans, 10 trillion dollars wasted, the 21st century and new millennium started off soaking in blood just a decade after the peaceful victory for the West after the fall of the USSR? Just a few little-old “unintended consequences,” not even worth mentioning.

Anyone who can talk the way Clinton does is a seriously flawed human being. And she’s not the first. Recall that President Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, bragged, no doubt with exaggeration, that he personally lured Russia into Afghanistan so Russia would have its own “Vietnam.” Now here’s Hillary Clinton essentially saying that, with Western help, Ukraine just might be Russia’s 21st-century Afghanistan. Oh, joy!

We shouldn’t be surprised by her cynical neglect of the suffering Afghans and Ukrainians. Remember, she was co-president in the 1990s when she and her husband, Bill Clinton the triangulator, helped to pave the way for every virtually manmade disaster of the 21st century.

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Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute, senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society, and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies, former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education, and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest book is What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

Featured image is from Al Mayadeen

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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Abu Zubaydah, whom the CIA once mistakenly alleged was a top al-Qaeda leader, was waterboarded 80+ times, subjected to assault in the form of forced rectal exams, and exposed to live burials in coffins for hundreds of hours. Zubaydah sobbed, twitched and hyperventilated. During one waterboarding session, he became completely unresponsive, with bubbles coming out of his mouth. “He became so compliant that he would prepare for waterboarding at the snap of a finger,” Neil Gorsuch wrote in his 30-page dissent in United States v. Zubaydah.

On March 3, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court dismissed Zubaydah’s petition requesting the testimony of psychologists James Mitchell and John Jessen, whom the CIA hired to orchestrate his torture at a secret CIA prison (“CIA black site”) in Poland from December 2002 until September 2003. Zubaydah was transferred to other CIA black sites before being sent to Guantánamo in 2006, where he remains today with no charges against him.

Zubaydah sought information: (1) to confirm that the CIA black site in question was located in Poland; (2) about his torture there; and (3) about the involvement of Polish officials. First the Trump administration — now the Biden administration — claim that confirming the location of the CIA black site in Poland is a “state secret” that would significantly harm U.S. national security interests. Zubaydah needs Mitchell and Jessen’s testimony to document his treatment from December 2002 to 2003 at the CIA black site in Poland for use in the ongoing Polish criminal investigation of Poles complicit in his torture. Those details have not been publicly documented.

Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo wrote in a declaration that although the enhanced interrogation techniques are no longer classified, the location of the CIA black site in question remains a state secret. Pompeo maintained that soliciting information about the involvement of Polish nationals in Zubaydah’s treatment could compromise national security.

But the location of the Polish CIA black site has been publicly acknowledged in several venues. The 683-page report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published in 2014, detailed the CIA detention and interrogation program, including details about Zubaydah’s torture prior to being sent to the CIA’s black site in Poland. In 2007, the Council of Europe issued a long report that found Zubaydah was held at the Polish CIA black site after his capture in 2002. The former president of Poland told reporters in 2012 that the CIA black site in Poland was established with his knowledge. In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights concluded beyond reasonable doubt that Zubaydah was held in Poland from December 2002 to September 2003.

Moreover, in 2017, the U.S. government allowed Mitchell and Jessen to testify about how they developed the idea of waterboarding, that they asked the CIA to stop using “enhanced interrogation techniques” (aka torture) on Zubaydah, and how the CIA leadership refused. Once again, in 2020, the U.S. government permitted the two psychologists to testify at military commission hearings at Guantánamo about how Zubaydah was waterboarded and kept awake for 120 consecutive hours.

Zubaydah’s attorneys sought to elicit information about Zubaydah’s conditions of confinement and the details of his treatment without risk to any state secrets. They asked that the two psychologists be allowed to testify without confirming the location of the black site or the cooperation of foreign nationals. They offered to use code words to avoid specific reference to Poland or the involvement of Polish officials.

“The Polish prosecutor already has information [that it happened in Poland] and doesn’t need U.S. discovery on the topic,” David Klein, Zubaydah’s attorney, told the court during oral argument. “What he does need to know is what happened inside Abu Zubaydah’s cell between December 2002 and September 2003. So I want to ask simple questions like, how was Abu Zubaydah fed? What was his medical condition? What was his cell like? And, yes, was he tortured?”

Breyer Defers to Pompeo’s Spurious National Security Claims

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the state secrets privilege did not apply to information already publicly known, and since Mitchell and Jensen are private parties, their disclosures would not be attributed to the U.S. government. But the Supreme Court disagreed and reversed the Ninth Circuit’s decision, deferring to Pompeo’s spurious national security claims.

Stephen Breyer (whose less-than-liberal voting record I documented in my February 5 Truthout article) wrote the plurality opinion, joined by five of his right-wing colleagues on the court. Gorsuch filed a scathing dissent on behalf of himself and Sonia Sotomayor. Elena Kagan agreed with the dissent that Zubaydah’s petition should not be dismissed, but she disagreed with the dissent’s reasoning.

Even though it was widely known that the site where Zubaydah was tortured was located in Poland, the court’s plurality agreed with the Biden administration and held that allowing Mitchell and Jessen to testify at a criminal proceeding in Poland would officially reveal a state secret — i.e., the location of the CIA black site in Poland — that could harm national security.

“[A] court should exercise its traditional ‘reluctan[ce] to intrude upon the authority of the Executive in military and national security affairs,”’ Breyer wrote. He cited Pompeo’s claim that “sensitive” relationships with other countries are “based on mutual trust that the classified existence and nature of the relationship will not be disclosed.”

The plurality rejected the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion that since Mitchell and Jensen are private parties, their disclosures did not amount to the U.S. confirming or denying anything. Because the psychologists “worked directly for the CIA as contractors,” created and implemented the enhanced interrogation program, and personally interrogated Zubaydah, their confirmation or denial “would be tantamount to a disclosure from the CIA itself,” Breyer concluded.

Thus, the court held, Zubaydah cannot secure the testimony of Mitchell and Jensen about any of his three requested categories of inquiry, including the details of Zubaydah’s torture during the period in question.

Gorsuch’s Dissent Says That Publicly Known Information Would Not Harm National Security

“Nothing in the record of this case suggests that requiring the government to acknowledge what the world already knows to be true would invite a reasonable danger of additional harm to national security,” Gorsuch wrote in dissent. He noted that the government has the burden to prove it is entitled to assert the state secrets privilege, and it has failed to carry that burden.

Decrying the court’s failure to even probe the government’s privilege claim at all, Gorsuch observed, “We have replaced independent inquiry with a rubber stamp.”

“The Constitution did not create a President in the King’s image but envisioned an executive regularly checked and balanced by other authorities,” Gorsuch declared. He cited the executive branch’s over-classification of documents and cautioned the court against “abdicating any pretense of an independent judicial inquiry into the propriety of a claim of privilege and extending instead ‘utmost deference’ to the Executive’s mere assertion of one.”

The dissent accused the government of seeking dismissal of Zubaydah’s petition to avoid “further embarrassment for past misdeeds.” Gorsuch noted that “our government treated Zubaydah brutally — more than 80 waterboarding sessions, hundreds of hours of live burial, and what it calls ‘rectal rehydration.’”

Indeed, as Zubaydah’s attorney Joseph Margulies said in 2016, Abu Zubaydah is “the poster child for the torture program, and that’s why they never want him to be heard from again.”

Gorsuch concluded his dissent by writing, “But as embarrassing as these facts may be, there is no state secret here. This Court’s duty is to the rule of law and the search for truth. We should not let shame obscure our vision.”

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn, a former criminal defense attorney, is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, past president of the National Lawyers Guild, and member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She has published four books about the “war on terror”: Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law; The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse; Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent; and Drones and Targeting Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. 

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: By 2006, at least 100 prisoners had died in US custody in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of them violently, according to government data. (Photo: US torture Image by Witness Against Torture)

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 west doesn’t care about the people it kills. Part of the evidence for this has been on the front pages of every newspaper and on every news show since Russia launched the Ukrainian invasion. The rest of the evidence is what has been missing on the front pages of the newspapers and TV shows. The contrast makes the point.

You see no universal Western outrage over the US support for the Saudi blockade on Yemen. The war had  killed an estimated 377,000 by the end of 2021, the majority of them children dead of famine. We see an occasional story but nothing remotely like the moral outrage over the Ukrainian invasion. The children are Arabs and we are supporting the ones most responsible for killing them.

And then there are our sanctions on Afghanistan and the American theft of their money. In that link, Ezra Klein in the New York Times attributes good intentions to Biden officials but makes it clear what the obvious results will be—immense suffering and death. He suggests they might be blinded by their ideology, unable to zoom out from it.

WFP Provides Food Assistance to a Record 7 Million People In Yemen In August 2017. UN World Food Program. [Source: wfp.org]

And then there are the sanctions we are imposing on various countries such as Iran, Syria and Venezuela. These sanctions are designed precisely to pressure governments by causing suffering and in the end, increased mortality rates among the population. Richard Nephew who designed the sanctions imposed on Iranduring the Obama Administration explicitly admits that sanctions are meant to cause pain in his book “The Art of Sanctions”. (The “look inside” feature on Amazon shows enough to see Nephew’s declaration about the purpose of sanctions being the inflicting of pain.)

And of course there is the ongoing American support for the apartheid state of Israel, with photos of brutality against Palestinians which people have falsely attributed to the Russian invasion.

All of these things are happening right now and the Yemen and Afghanistan crises involve mass death, with a child dying of war-caused famine every nine minutes in Yemen and the possibility of worse in Afghanistan.

There hasn’t been anything close to the level of outrage or calls for action on these issues as there has been for the Ukraine invasion. The Russian invasion has its own uniquely dangerous and terrifying feature because there is the very real danger of a nuclear war breaking out due to escalation and miscalculation. But most of the outrage has been directed towards the war itself and Putin’s responsibility for the suffering. If this outrage were motivated by genuine universal concern for human life, we would be seeing daily photos or at least references to the children dying in Yemen and this would be linked to our support for the Saudis, but we don’t.

The recent Atlantic profile of Mohammed bin Salman refers to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, but says nothing about the Saudi blockade. It only references US attempts to cut back on Saudi bombing of civilians, implying that we are the good guys– but the Saudis are using American planes dropping American bombs. The Houthis are not innocents either, but there is a liberal coating of whitewash given to American responsibility in Yemen.

That said, over the past 20 years no American who has paid attention to the news and becomes exercised over political issues can legitimately claim ignorance. As bad as the mainstream press usually is, as laced with bias and jingoism as it tends to be, there has been enough accurate reporting for people to know that the US commits war crimes or supports others who do, and these are not simply the excesses of the occasional soldier but are in fact policy.

Sanctions are policy. Blockades are policy. Massive bombing of civilians in Raqqa and Mosul was policy. Support for Israel no matter what it does to Palestinians is policy.

And yet little of this knowledge is reflected in our political culture, and European countries are no better. People act as though Putin’s brutality is some uniquely awful thing that “civilized” people would never do to other “civilized” people in our enlightened era. And all of these attitudes become part of everyday life. On my daily commute I just started seeing a church with a big blue and yellow banner saying “Pray for Ukraine”. In the many years I have driven past that church I don’t recall ever seeing a banner about Yemen or Gaza.

Why are we so brutally callous towards our own victims? The question partly answers itself. People don’t like to admit that the politicians they support, both Democrats and Republicans, are implicated in war crimes. So they ignore them or worse, justify them. It is easy to criticize, Democratic partisans will say. Republicans barely even bother to care (with a few exceptions).

The rest of the explanation, of course, is a mixture of racism and ethnocentrism. There is an explicit admission by some reporters and others that they care about Ukrainians because they look like “us” ( white people are “us”, apparently), and Ukraine is a “civilized” (white) place. At other times I have seen people state in so many words that our actions that plunge other countries into chaos are not so bad because they would be killing each other anyway.

But most important is the role of the press. As stated before, the Western press sometimes does report on Western atrocities, but with nothing like the level and quantity of moral outrage they reserve for the crimes of our enemies. People may think they can rise above this, but observation suggests this is largely false. If there isn’t a constant drumbeat of stories about our atrocities as there is for Putin’s, and pundits aren’t constantly agonizing over our need to do something, the unspoken message is that our crimes simply aren’t that important or bad. And there is always the social pressure to conform. And people absorb this message. They are embarrassed by the wrong kind of moral outrage. It isn’t normal and not the sort of thing you see serious people doing. That said, an explanation is not an excuse.

In the current climate of extreme stupidity the standard reaction to my argument would be that it is an example of “whataboutism.” Yes, that is exactly what it is, and only a moral imbecile would think there is something wrong with it because of that.

When people are behaving like hypocrites, denouncing one set of crimes committed by their enemies and ignoring, excusing or actually advocating the crimes committed by their own country or its allies, you should say to those people “what about the crimes your country supports”? And we aren’t even comparing past crimes committed by the US with current crimes committed by Putin. All of these crimes are occurring now.

Two more points. There are several pieces published recently where people try to outline a morally consistent anti-war position, where lefties oppose both American imperialism and imperialism by other countries such as Russia. This is a fine goal, and do it because it is right, but don’t do it because you think it will gain you more credibility with mainstream liberals. The ideology of mainstream liberalism requires them to see themselves as “civilized”. They may make tragic mistakes but always with good intentions. It can’t be that they are supporters of a system that has them making the same types of “tragic mistakes” over and over again. They are nice people. They can’t possibly be as guilty as someone like Putin. I am not being sarcastic. People in the Western world who make the decisions or identify with those who make the decisions are not going to accept a truly principled anti war critique. They will see the equation of their crimes with Putin’s as “whataboutism” and therefore not serious. Ezra Klein bumped up against that attitude ( we are the good guys doing our best) in the officials he questioned when writing his post on our Afghanistan policy. If these people accepted the anti war critique they would have to resign and speak out. Fundamentally Western liberals who consider themselves serious people cannot admit to themselves that Western leaders might be morally as responsible for war crimes as someone like Putin. It can’t be accepted. It also means that even when they do admit something is wrong, like Yemen or Afghanistan, it has to be seen as a tragic mistake by well intentioned people and not the result of an ideology and attitudes which keep leading to such “mistakes”. Tony Blinken is this nice soft-spoken guy but I gather he was in favor of both the Iraq invasion and the decision to support the Saudi war in Yemen. All liberals care about is that he is a nice guy (which I think he is), like them.

And finally, having condemned brutal sanctions, including the ones we may level on Russia (Russians are considered “them”, btw), how could I support BDS? Speaking only for myself, it is because BDS is largely symbolic and not remotely lethal. The reaction of Israel and its supporters demonstrates this. On the one hand they laugh off the effects as trivial economically, which they are, but on the other hand they react with near hysterical accusations of antisemitism if some musician or author refuses to perform in Israel or have a book translated by some Israeli firm. The symbolism frightens them.

It is impossible to imagine that the “civilized” West would ever allow “civilized” Israel to be subjected to the sorts of brutal sanctions that “civilized” nations inflict on “uncivilized” nations. So I don’t have to face the moral dilemma but what if it happened? One could decide based on what Palestinians themselves actually living there would say, because they as the people with no power are the ones who would suffer the most. Perhaps they would be united in favor of sanctions that would hit them hard. I would still not want to be responsible for killing people.

Gazan artist killed by Israeli soldiers (Source: Just World Educational)

Meanwhile, in the real world, being a citizen of the US, I already am responsible for killing people. We are doing exactly that to various countries, and Gazans are living in a giant prison camp, so the preceding paragraph amounted to moral posturing regarding a situation that Western nations would never allow to happen to one of their own. Westerners inflict sanctions that hurt people living under authoritarian governments, hoping to see people suffer so much they might rebel or at least pressure their respective government to change course.

But somehow affluent citizens of democratic countries are never seen as suitable subjects for targeted sanctions even though they should have far more control over their own country’s actions.  One can’t easily target only the guilty classes on a large scale (you can hit individual oligarchs or dictators or in theory American politicians) which is why sanctions in practice, the ones imposed on an entire country, generally hit the poor the hardest.  And Westerners are fine with that.

Two concluding notes.

1. There are very early examples of the validity of whataboutism in the Bible. Notably in the famous line from the Sermon on the Mount, where Matthew quotes Jesus: “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

2. Here is a later example of a hypocrite objecting to a legitimate question regarding accountability.

Last June Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership issued a statement rejecting Rep. Ilhan Omar’s criticisms of American and Israeli actions. “[D]rawing false equivalencies between democracies like the U.S. and Israel and groups that engage in terrorism like Hamas and the Taliban foments prejudice and undermines progress toward a future of peace and security for all,” the leaders said.

What triggered the hypocrites? Omar questioned Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the International Criminal Court prosecuting war crimes:

I know you opposed the court’s investigation in both Palestine and in Afghanistan. I haven’t seen any evidence in either cases that domestic courts both can and will prosecute alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. And I would emphasize that in Israel and Palestine, this includes crimes committed by both the Israeli Security Forces and Hamas. In Afghanistan, it includes crimes committed by the Afghan national government and the Taliban.

Blinken responded to Omar that the US and Israel are accountable. This is ludicrous. And as someone who was part of the decision to give the Saudis the green light on bombing Yemen, he shouldn’t be speaking about accountability.

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Featured image: Yemen children impacted by genocidal war (Credits to the owner of the photo)

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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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.

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On 24 February 1990, U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush secretly informed German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at Camp David, that though Bush and all of his agents such as Secretary of State James Baker had verbally promised the Soviet Union’s leader Mikhail Gorbachev that (as Baker put it) NATO would not expand “one inch to the east” (toward Russia’s border) if communism and the Soviets’ NATO-mirror military alliance Warsaw Pact would end, and the Soviet Union break up, this had been only in order to deceive Gorbachev, and, that actually, the Cold War on the U.S.-and-allied side would secretly continue until Russia itself would ultimately become part of the U.S.-controlled empire. Later, Bush similarly informed other U.S.-allied heads-of-state.

A colleague recently told me that he considers this okay because there was no signed agreement by Gorbachev and Bush on this matter; so, those promises should just have been ignored by Gorbachev. (In other words: Bush’s intention for America and its allies to conquer Russia was okay.) I responded to him as follows:

Because of your underlying assumption that ONLY WRITTEN agreements count, I just now did some research on whether America’s now having unilaterally cancelled Russia’s membership in the WTO (World Trade Organization) so as to be able to tariff at sky-high rates Russian imports into the U.S. is legal. America is a signed member of WTO, and so is Russia.

The WTO Treaty (called “GATT” for “General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade”) opens with Article 1, Paragraph 1, which prohibits any member from providing “any advantage, favour, privilege or immunity granted by any contracting party to any product originating in or destined for any other country” unless the same treatment is being provided to all other member countries. That’s the core of the GATT: non-discriminatory international trade

The next question is whether (or under what conditions) a country can be expelled from the WTO (as America and its allies claim to be doing). The entire WTO Treaty fails even so much as to just mention expulsion — and, so, the honest answer here is clearly No.

Yet America ‘did’ it, and its vassal-nations (‘allies’) joined in — all of them clearly violating that written Treaty, which all of them (just as Russia had done) had signed.

On 12 March 2022, the neoconservative Washington Post, Jeff Bezos’s newspaper, bannered “There are two ways to kick Russia out of the world trade system. One is more likely to work.”, and it argued that, “Even if WTO members do not act collectively to suspend or expel Russia, they can act individually to effectively remove Russia’s WTO privileges. Indeed, Ukraine and Canada have already done so.”

The argument is that this can be done if “a WTO member ‘considers necessary for the protection of its essential security interests . . . taken in time of war or other emergency in international relations.’” That excuse can be used by any country against any country it wants to harm, but since the Treaty includes no provision to expel any member, any country that uses this as a mere excuse — i.e., when NOT under threat (unlike Ukraine, which IS actually at war with Russia) — such as the U.S. and its allies are — violates the Treaty’s opening paragraph.

Previously, America’s having punitively tariffed China in 2018 had been ruled illegal by the WTO in 2020.

On 22 August 2018, the neoconservative Wall Street Journal had headlined “For U.S. to Stay in WTO, China May Have to Leave. Instead of unilateral tariffs, the U.S. and its allies could use the World Trade Organization to force China to alter its trade-distorting behavior — or leave”. It reported that:

There may be a more effective solution: threaten China with expulsion from the WTO. Calling this the nuclear option doesn’t really do it justice since the nuclear weapons don’t even exist. The WTO lacks a formal mechanism to throw out a member. But its founding charter, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, includes a section, Article XXIII, that can achieve the same thing. It allows a case to be brought against a member for behavior that doesn’t specifically violate the treaty but “nullifies or impairs” the benefits every other country expects to derive from the WTO.

Of course, since their argument was merely smoke and mirrors, the only people whom it might have fooled would have been other neoconservatives — certainly no international legal body. (That’s WHY the WTO rejected it.)

Consequently, it is clear that at least in regard to America’s having signed onto the WTO Treaty, its signature (and that of its vassal-nations) means actually nothing. That was a signed, sealed, and delivered American-and-international contract (Treaty), but America (and its ‘allies’) violate it with impunity. (They, in fact, do this routinely.)

So, the real issue here isn’t ‘signed’ versus ‘only spoken’, but, instead, honest versus dishonest, and maybe even more basically war (coercive) versus peace (non-coercive). Russia had done everything it could to avoid needing to invade Ukraine in order to disempower the nazis who have been running the country ever since Obama’s 2014 coup placed it into the hands of rabidly anti-Russian racist-fascists there.

Both the U.S. regime and its NATO military alliance answered Russia’s demand clearly: No, never — only we can have any say over whether or not Ukraine, on Russia’s border, joins NATO!

What other option did Putin then have, in order to avoid a Cuban-Missile-Crisis-in-the- reverse-direction? Why is U.S. President Biden (and why aren’t his predecessors and his allies) who refused even to consider Putin’s very reasonable demand to exclude Ukraine from NATO, not being blamed as having actually caused this war?

On 24 February 1990, Bush introduced the plan. The war in Ukraine is one climactic result of that plan, which G.H.W. Bush had started and Barack Obama raised to the threat-level it now poses. Vladimir Putin really is responding to that plan, in the only way that is realistically left to him to do.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

This incisive article by the late Robert Parry published almost eight years ago (July 8, 2014), documents a process which is now unfolding in Ukraine on a much larger scale with the influx of Islamic mercenaries.

The legacy of Robert Parry lives. 

***

In a curiously upbeat account, The New York Times reports that Islamic militants have joined with Ukraine’s far-right and neo-Nazi battalions to fight ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. It appears that no combination of violent extremists is too wretched to celebrate as long as they’re killing Russ-kies.

The article by Andrew E. Kramer reports that there are now three Islamic battalions “deployed to the hottest zones,” such as around the port city of Mariupol. One of the battalions is headed by a former Chechen warlord who goes by the name “Muslim,” Kramer wrote, adding:

“The Chechen commands the Sheikh Mansur group, named for an 18th-century Chechen resistance figure. It is subordinate to the nationalist Right Sector, a Ukrainian militia. … Right Sector … formed during last year’s street protests in Kiev from a half-dozen fringe Ukrainian nationalist groups like White Hammer and the Trident of Stepan Bandera.

“Another, the Azov group, is openly neo-Nazi, using the ‘Wolf’s Hook’ symbol associated with the [Nazi] SS. Without addressing the issue of the Nazi symbol, the Chechen said he got along well with the nationalists because, like him, they loved their homeland and hated the Russians.”

As casually as Kramer acknowledges the key front-line role of neo-Nazis and white supremacists fighting for the U.S.-backed Kiev regime, his article does mark an aberration for the Times and the rest of the mainstream U.S. news media, which usually dismiss any mention of this Nazi taint as “Russian propaganda.”

During the February 2014 coup that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the late fascist Stepan Bandera was one of the Ukrainian icons celebrated by the Maidan protesters. During World War II, Bandera headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B, a radical paramilitary movement that sought to transform Ukraine into a racially pure state. At times coordinating with Adolf Hitler’s SS, OUN-B took part in the expulsion and extermination of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles.

Though most of the Maidan protesters in 2013-14 appeared motivated by anger over political corruption and by a desire to join the European Union, neo-Nazis made up a significant number and spearheaded much of the violence against the police. Storm troopers from the Right Sektor and Svoboda party seized government buildings and decked them out with Nazi insignias and a Confederate battle flag, the universal symbol of white supremacy.

Then, as the protests turned bloodier from Feb. 20-22, the neo-Nazis surged to the forefront. Their well-trained militias, organized in 100-man brigades called “sotins” or “the hundreds,” led the final assaults against police and forced Yanukovych and many of his officials to flee for their lives.

In the days after the coup, as the neo-Nazi militias effectively controlled the government, European and U.S. diplomats scrambled to help the shaken parliament put together the semblance of a respectable regime, although four ministries, including national security, were awarded to the right-wing extremists in recognition of their crucial role in ousting Yanukovych.

At that point, virtually the entire U.S. news media put on blinders about the neo-Nazi role, all the better to sell the coup to the American public as an inspirational story of reform-minded “freedom fighters” standing up to “Russian aggression.” The U.S. media delicately stepped around the neo-Nazi reality by keeping out relevant context, such as the background of national security chief Andriy Parubiy, who founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991, blending radical Ukrainian nationalism with neo-Nazi symbols. Parubiy was commandant of the Maidan’s “self-defense forces.”

Barbarians at the Gate

At times, the mainstream media’s black-out of the brown shirts was almost comical. Last February, almost a year after the coup, a New York Times article about the government’s defenders of Mariupol hailed the crucial  role played by the Azov battalion but managed to avoid noting its well-documented Nazi connections.

That article by Rick Lyman presented the situation in Mariupol as if the advance by ethnic Russian rebels amounted to the barbarians at the gate while the inhabitants were being bravely defended by the forces of civilization, the Azov battalion. In such an inspirational context, it presumably wasn’t considered appropriate to mention the Swastikas and SS markings.

Now, the Kiev regime has added to those “forces of civilization” — resisting the Russ-kie barbarians — Islamic militants with ties to terrorism. Last September, Marcin Mamon, a reporter for the Intercept, reached a vanguard group of these Islamic fighters in Ukraine through the help of his “contact in Turkey with the Islamic State [who] had told me his ‘brothers’ were in Ukraine, and I could trust them.”

The new Times article avoids delving into the terrorist connections of these Islamist fighters. But Kramer does bluntly acknowledge the Nazi truth about the Azov fighters. He also notes that American military advisers in Ukraine “are specifically prohibited from giving instruction to members of the Azov group.”

While the U.S. advisers are under orders to keep their distance from the neo-Nazis, the Kiev regime is quite open about its approval of the central military role played by these extremists – whether neo-Nazis, white supremacists or Islamic militants. These extremists are considered very aggressive and effective in killing ethnic Russians.

The regime has shown little concern about widespread reports of “death squad” operations targeting suspected pro-Russian sympathizers in government-controlled towns. But such human rights violations should come as no surprise given the Nazi heritage of these units and the connection of the Islamic militants to hyper-violent terrorist movements in the Middle East.

But the Times treats this lethal mixture of neo-Nazis and Islamic extremists as a good thing. After all, they are targeting opponents of the “white-hatted” Kiev regime, while the ethnic Russian rebels and the Russian government wear the “black hats.”

As an example of that tone, Kramer wrote:

“Even for Ukrainians hardened by more than a year of war here against Russian-backed separatists, the appearance of Islamic combatants, mostly Chechens, in towns near the front lines comes as something of a surprise — and for many of the Ukrainians, a welcome one. … Anticipating an attack in the coming months, the Ukrainians are happy for all the help they can get.”

So, the underlying message seems to be that it’s time for the American people and the European public to step up their financial and military support for a Ukrainian regime that has unleashed on ethnic Russians a combined force of Nazis, white supremacists and Islamic militants (considered “brothers” of the Islamic State).

[For more on the Azov battalion, see Consortiumnews.com’s “US House Admits Nazi Role in Ukraine.”]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization.

***

 

The U.S. Government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database was updated this past Friday, March 11, 2022, and it is now reporting that there have been 1,168,894 cases of injuries and deaths following COVID-19 vaccines since December of 2020, when the FDA issued emergency use authorizations for the COVID-19 vaccines. (Source.)

By way of contrast, there were 926,031 cases of injuries and deaths following all FDA-approved vaccines for the previous 30+ years, from 1990 through November of 2020. (Source.)

So there have been more injuries and deaths recorded in VAERS during the past 15 months following COVID-19 vaccines, than there were for the previous 30+ years combined following all vaccines recorded in VAERS.

Fetal Deaths Increase by 3,525% Following COVID-19 Vaccines

This most recent update of VAERS shows that there have now been 3,852 fetal deaths following COVID-19 vaccines. (Source.)

To arrive at the number of fetal deaths recorded in VAERS I tested several different searches on listed “symptoms” and then checked to see if the search results documented fetal deaths, since there is no demographic for “fetal deaths.”

The following is the current list of “symptoms” in VAERS that reveals fetal deaths:

• Aborted pregnancy
• Abortion
• Abortion complete
• Abortion complicated
• Abortion early
• Abortion incomplete
• Abortion induced
• Abortion induced incomplete
• Abortion late
• Abortion missed
• Abortion of ectopic pregnancy
• Abortion spontaneous
• Abortion spontaneous complete
• Abortion spontaneous incomplete
• Ectopic pregnancy
• Ectopic pregnancy termination
• Ectopic pregnancy with contraceptive device
• Foetal cardiac arrest
• Foetal death
• Premature baby death
• Premature delivery
• Ruptured ectopic pregnancy
• Stillbirth

This list may not be exhaustive. But if we use the exact same search using these symptoms, we can compare “apples to apples” in examining fetal deaths following COVID-19 vaccines as compared to fetal deaths following all non-COVID vaccines.

Using this search for all FDA-approved vaccines for the previous 30+ years before the COVID-19 vaccines were given emergency use authorization in December of 2020, we find 2,550 fetal deaths, the vast majority of which followed vaccines produced by Merck, which would include the Gardasil vaccines. (Source.)

Here are the yearly averages then according to VAERS:

• 85 fetal deaths per year following non-COVID vaccines
• 3082 fetal deaths per year following COVID-19 vaccines

That’s a 3,525% increase in fetal deaths following COVID-19 vaccines, compared to reported fetal deaths following all FDA approved vaccines combined for the previous 30 years.

And still, I have not seen one single source in the Alternative Media report on these statistics (although a few of them have picked up our articles on the topic.)

Why is that?

Is it because they are afraid to cite us as a source for coming up with these search parameters, due to the fact that we also report the truth on pro-vaccine Donald Trump, and the pro-vaccine superstar doctors, which would upset their reader base and supporters?

Is that why these statistics are censored in the Alternative Media? If so, then you all have blood on your hands, because you are withholding what could be life-saving information to help a pregnant woman or child-bearing age woman make an informed decision about whether or not to receive one of these shots.

I don’t need any credit or links back for this information to be published! Do your own searches and report the same thing if you don’t want to be associated with us. There’s no ego here, and I do not earn any money from publishing these statistics.

This is about informed consent, and giving the public the statistics from the U.S. Government’s own database to have the data one needs to make an informed decision about these COVID-19 vaccines.

Facebook Fact Checkers Try to Discredit These Reports but End Up Verifying Them Instead!

Source.

Since we appear to be the only one publishing these statistics on fetal deaths, they have been shared widely on Facebook, as one would expect, forcing Facebook to call out their “Fact Checkers” to kill the traffic to our websites where we publish this data.

If you look at the image above from one of their “Fact Checking” sites, Politifact, one is led to believe that they have actually fact checked our data and found it be false.

But if you read the actual article they wrote, if you understand English and have at least a 3rd grade reading level, you will quickly see that they do not deny the facts we are reporting at all, but instead are attacking us based on the search tool we used to extract this data from VAERS, which is Medalerts.org.

But even then, they are not disputing the fact that the data extracted from VAERS through Medalerts.org is inaccurate or different from the CDC’s own front-end search tool for VAERS, because it is not, it is because they do not like the organization who developed this search tool, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), who they refer to as “an anti-vaccine organization.”

If you have ever studied logic, you will know that this is a logical fallacy called an “ad hominem” attack, which means an attack against the reputation of the person making a claim, but not the actual facts of what they are claiming.

The opposite of an “ad hominem” fallacy is the “appeal to authority” fallacy, which says that something is true based on the person’s reputation independent of whatever “facts” they are claiming to be reporting.

And that’s all Facebook is doing here. They are saying that the results from Medalerts.org are not trustworthy because the NVIC is “an anti-vaccine organization,” and they are disagreeing that the facts from VAERS proves that the COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous for pregnant women, because the CDC, The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and The American Academy of Pediatrics all agree that the vaccines are safe for pregnant women, regardless of what is published in VAERS.

Notice that they never once say that the actual data from VAERS is inaccurate, because it is not. The data extracted from VAERS via Medalerts.org is exactly the same data you will extract from VAERS on the CDC website, but the search tool on the CDC website is very difficult to use (intentionally??), which is why most people will choose to use Medalerts.org instead.

If you search for all cases filed in VAERS following a COVID-19 vaccine from Medalerts.org today, you will get a result of 1,168,894 cases. (Source.)

One of the nice features of the Medalerts.org search tool is that they provide a URL at the bottom of every search conducted to display the results of that search, so you can go back to it and share the link with others.

The CDC VAERS search tool does not supply that. But if you do a search on their site for all cases in VAERS following a COVID-19 vaccine, you get the exact same number: 1,168,894.

In another, more recent, Facebook “Fact Check” article that did not slander Health Impact News, but Steve Kirsch, where they also tried to discredit Medalerts.org, they actually admit that the Medalerts.org search tool is the original one, and that the CDC Wonder tool came years later.

Again, if you simply just look at their headline: “How an alternative gateway to VAERS data helps fuel vaccine misinformation“, and don’t actually read the article, you would be led to believe that they totally discredited Medalerts.org as reporting false data.

But this is what they actually wrote about Medalerts.org, after you get past all the ad hominem attacks against Kirsch:

Understanding MedAlerts

MedAlerts is an online search tool that allows users to sort through records from VAERS, the federal repository of reports about things that happen to people after they are vaccinated. Created in 2003, a few years before the Centers for Disease Control developed its own Wonder search tool, MedAlerts was a pioneering step in making VAERS reports more accessible and visible to the general public.

The MedAlerts site says that it has “a better user interface, more powerful search capabilities, and more extensive reporting,” than CDC Wonder, “making it the best VAERS search facility.” (Source.)

They even give credit to the NVIC for being the ones who originally made this data in VAERS accessible to the public!

NVIC says it played a role in developing the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which Congress passed in 1986. The law created a compensation program for families who claimed injury from vaccines, while limiting the legal exposure for drug makers.

“NVIC has monitored and reported on the implementation of the safety provisions in the (National Childhood Vaccine Injury) Act since it was enacted in November 1986,” Barbara Loe Fisher, NVIC’s president and co-founder, told PolitiFact.

The law also led to the creation in 1990 of VAERS, the reporting system that the government would use to track suspected vaccine side effects, Seth Mnookin wrote in “The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear,” a history of the anti-vaccine movement.

For years, VAERS reports were mostly invisible to the public. Until 2001, the public could access the reports only through a Freedom of Information Act request. In the early Internet era, the reports were digitized and made available for download from the VAERS website. Only in 2006 did the government develop CDC Wonder, a search tool for all of the agency’s data.

MedAlerts came before that. It was initially created by computer scientist Steven Rubin in 2003, before becoming subsumed by NVIC in 2005. The purpose of MedAlerts is to provide the public with a “user-friendly way to search the VAERS database,” Fisher said.

MedAlerts presents users with a simpler interface for queries and search results displayed in neatly formatted, easy-to-read tables. Whether they’re accessed through MedAlerts or CDC Wonder, though, the underlying data are the same VAERS reports. (Source.)

Never once do they state that the data pulled from VAERS via the Medalerts.org search tool is inaccurate.

Again, they attack NVIC instead, which is a non-profit, and their biggest donor, Dr. Joseph Mercola, but not the accuracy of the data they extract from VAERS.

And what is NVIC’s biggest sin in allowing people to use this free tool to easily retrieve data from VAERS according to this “Facebook Fact Checker” article?

One key difference between the two search tools is how forthcoming they are about those limitations and flaws. CDC Wonder requires users to acknowledge a lengthy disclaimer before initiating a search, and repeats the full text of the disclaimer with the search results.

On the NVIC’s MedAlerts, by contrast, you can search freely without ever seeing the disclaimer. There’s an inconspicuous link to the government disclaimer on the home page, and another link shown with the search results.

But people who don’t notice or click on the link won’t see the warnings. This leaves little standing in the way between the public and raw, unverified data. (Source. Emphasis mine.)

Oh no!!! We can’t let the public have access to the raw data without the Government explaining it and making them sign a disclaimer agreeing with the government before letting them search! Oh no, that should not happen because the public is too stupid to read raw data! They might actually believe that there are safety problems with the vaccines, and that would hurt sales!

If you read the Government disclaimer, which they even admit is provided on Medalerts.org, just not required to agree to prior to searching, it basically says that the information in VAERS is not reliable and that only the U.S. Government can interpret it.

I am sure they would love to get rid of VAERS completely, but they are required by law to maintain this database. It was one of the requirements in the 1986 Act that now prevents people from suing vaccine manufacturers over injuries and deaths due to vaccines.

The pharmaceutical companies have legal immunity from these lawsuits, and one has to sue the Federal Government in their own Vaccine Court instead, and even then you cannot sue for any damages from a COVID-19 vaccine, because they are part of the PREP Act.

So if the U.S. Government wants us to believe that VAERS is not reliable and should not be used to determine if a vaccine is safe or not, then the 1986 National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program should be abolished, and people should be able to start suing the pharmaceutical companies again if they put bad vaccines into the market that kill and maim people (which is pretty much all of them).

In the meantime, Facebook’s “Fact Checkers” are anything but sources of checking “facts.” They are constantly being sued, and in a lawsuit filed last year, they were forced to take the position that their “fact checking” articles were actually “protected opinions” so that they could at least have the illusion of being protected by the First Amendment right to “Free Speech.”

The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory; to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion. (Source.)

As for the fetal deaths that are following the COVID-19 vaccines in record numbers, here are two recent stories from young mothers who lost their unborn babies just after receiving a second COVID-19 vaccine.

Perhaps their words and their experiences, which obviously represent, at least, many thousands of others, can better communicate just how truly horrible this is.

This is on our Bitchute channel, Odysee channel, and also on our Telegram channel.

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Featured image is from HIN

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***

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the fifth leading cause of death in elderly adults according to researchers in Taiwan. The progressive disease can heavily deteriorate the life and independence of an individual, sometimes just years after showing the first symptoms.

Now, those same researchers are investigating whether a specific species of mushroom might offer hope. The mushroom, known to scientists as Hericium erinaceus, is commonly known as The Lion’s Mane Mushroom. Lion’s Mane is a gourmet edible mushroom that possesses neuroprotective properties. These could help prevent or improve the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

While many studies conducted on cell cultures and mice show promise in the treatment of Alzheimer’s with Hericium erinaceus, a limited number of extensive clinical trials have been performed. The research team led by I-Chen Li from the Biotech Research Institute in Taoyuan City, Taiwan conducted a study to test the efficacy of these mushrooms for patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. They published their study in June 2020 in the section “Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias”  from the peer-reviewed scientific journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.

This 49-week double-blind study used 2 parallel groups; one was fed three 5 mg/g capsules with Hericium erinaceus extract per day while the placebo group received identical-looking placebo capsules. Throughout the study period, data from ophthalmic examinations, biomarker collection, neuroimaging, and cognitive tests were collected to measure the effects of the treatment.

The researchers saw the potential in Hericium erinaceus because two important, low-molecular weight chemicals had previously been isolated and studied from this mushroom. These relatively hydrophobic compounds, Hericenones and Erinacines, have been proven to stimulate nerve growth factor synthesis, an important biochemical for the growth of nerve cells.

The team used Erinacines in particular because evidence suggests that they are capable of easily passing the blood-brain barrier. What makes Erinacines interesting is that they are not actually produced in large quantities by the mushroom fruiting bodies but instead they are produced in the mycelium, the underground white “roots” of the fungus. For this reason, researchers made an extract from the cultivated mycelium of Hericium erinaceus that contained high quantities of Erinacines.

The results of this study show that subjects with mild Alzheimer’s Disease consuming Hericium erinaceus capsules showed improvement in their cognitive abilities. Patients receiving the mushroom capsules had remarkably high scores in cognitive tests and neutral examinations. The authors of the study believe that this may be associated with the improvement of blood biomarkers and the reduced structural deterioration in certain parts of the brain.

This is good news for many individuals personally affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Unlike other major diseases, which have shown progress in the development of novel therapies, no new treatment for Alzheimer’s disease has been approved since 2003. Researchers suggest that this is because of the challenging nature of this disease which may cause damage for years before the onset of symptoms.

In addition to showing promise as a natural way to help treat or prevent mild cases of Alzheimer’s disease, Hericium erinaceus could also improve our understanding of neurology and cognitive health. By understanding how Hericium erinaceus reacts in the body, researchers hope to gain deeper insights into the cryptic workings of the brain and how to develop new medicines to fight this illness.

The study is available online.

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Timo Mendez is an environmental scientist, naturalist, and writer. His work mostly focuses on topics related to mushrooms and organic gardening.

Sources

Li, I., et al. “Prevention of early Alzheimer’s disease by erinacine A-enriched Hericium erinaceus mycelia pilot double-blind placebo-controlled study.” Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience 12 (2020): 155. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2020.00155

Featured image: Hericium erinaceus mushroom growing from old rotting trunk. Source: NCBioteacher WikiCommons.

 

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

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***

There is new evidence of how the Biden Administration’s total disregard for reality evident in its blundering its way into war with Russia has severely damaged what once used to be referred to as national security. And while the White House and its media barking dogs continue to push the false argument that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is somehow a threat to the United States, many thousands of illegal immigrants and alleged political refugees continue to enter the country under the radar without any serious attempt being made to determine if the flood of new arrivals is in any way beneficial.

This flow of illegals will undoubtedly increase dramatically with the fighting in Ukraine, which will produce the usual wave of refugees, most of whom will likely be Jewish based on the reality of who has power in Washington DC and will be able to influence the selection process. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has already declared that his country is prepared to welcome thousands of Ukrainian refugees and he has predictably appointed a Jewish former Member of Parliament as government minister to lead the effort. Appointee Richard Harrington is also a former head of Conservative Friends of Israel.

There have been reports that claim Ukrainians, aided by charities in the US, are already heading towards Mexico in significant numbers, buying up cheap used cars and heading north to the border to claim asylum. As this development continues and accelerates, the shifting demographics which have already changed the character of the nation will almost certainly do more damage to the economy and the cultural and political cohesion of the United States.

Entry by illegal immigrants into the United States has doubled in the past year and it is estimated that nearly 47 million US residents, 14.2% of the total population of the country, are now foreign born, the highest percentage in the past 112 years. As many are illegals and are not on a path to eventual citizenship, the Democratic Party policies has sought to empower them by relaxing voting requirements at state levels, meaning that the potential for fraudulent voting will be enormous. As expected, the White House and Congress use a euphemism to explain their position, calling it “voting rights,” which it most definitely is not. In some cases, the Democrats are pushing for illegal extension of the voting franchise. New York City, for example, has already declared that it will allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.

The Biden Administration has systematically ignored and has challenged court rulings requiring asylum seekers along the southern border to remain in Mexico while their cases are being reviewed and it has even been using taxpayer money to aid in the transporting of the illegals to cities like San Antonio, from which point they are put on planes and buses and moved to other parts of the country where they disappear into the local immigrant population. Mexico, for its part, has ignored agreements failed to implement agreements intended to slow the flow of the potential immigrants through its territory.

The Border Patrol has reported over two million “encounters” with illegal immigrants in the past year, with a likely half million more who entered the country without being detected. Deportations of the illegals have declined precipitously under orders from Washington. In January alone, 62,573 illegal immigrants were “released” by the Administration and administratively allowed to enter the US, more than were released in all of 2021, so the trend is to develop something like an open border in the south of the country. US Border Patrol personnel who object to what is going on are themselves frequently punished under orders coming from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security.

Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Alejandro Mayorkas even boasted last month of having “fundamentally changed” immigration enforcement, declaring that even criminal illegals have rights under the Biden Administration. He said that “For the first time ever, our policy explicitly states that a noncitizen’s unlawful presence in the United States will not, by itself, be a basis for the initiation of an enforcement action.” Illegal immigrants who kill someone while drunk driving are, for example, not subject to deportation. In other words, the US government is enabling illegal and even criminal activity. Get past the border and no one will bother you.

The White House and tame media have effectively hidden much of what is going on along the country’s southern border, but a new immigrant issue has recently surfaced relating to potential security issues relating to asylum seekers and refugees. The Department of Homeland Security is seeking to resettle in the United States thousands of Afghans who recently fled the change of government in their country. The program has the usual euphemistic tag attached to it: “Operation Allies Welcome.”

One of the processing centers being set up is in Northern Virginia, in Loudoun County, at the National Conference Center. Depending on what information one believes to be reliable, between one and two thousand Afghan refugees will be housed and transitioned monthly to their new lives, possibly the first wave of a total of 16,000 or more other asylum speakers who will follow. The first new arrivals, a group of 300, arrived last Tuesday. They and the other future arrivals are reportedly coming from screening in Qatar and some are also apparently already being held at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. Reportedly, more than 80,000 Afghan refugees have already been settled in the United States as “displaced persons from Afghanistan” who have been admitted into the country under a special immigrant visa (SIV) or humanitarian parole. Many thousands more are still waiting in processing centers overseas and will also be in the pipeline.

No one is denying that the United States government has an obligation to assist the Afghans who actually worked for or directly assisted US forces in Afghanistan before the country fell to the Taliban in August. Those individuals would have documentation confirming their status and identities and those documents should be confirmable through records retained by the US Embassy and military commands in the country at the time. They and their families should and must be helped.

So the question comes down to “Are all these refugees legitimate? And what do we know about them?” And “What are the security implications of their being resettled in our communities?” One can only recall how hundreds of people escaping Kabul were stuffed into airplanes and the presumption has to be that very little was known about many of them. According to DHS, the refugees include members of groups considered to be in danger if they had staying in Afghanistan, to include teachers and “women rights activists.” How were these latter groups identified and authenticated? DHS also claims that all asylum seekers entering the US had received “rigorous screening and vetting” before being let into the country.

The be sure, the Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman has advised some caution and and raised some issues about the vetting process that has apparently taken place as well as the security at the conference center. He observed that only 30% of the arriving Afghans reportedly speak any English, which challenges the claim that they were interpreters or worked closely with American personnel. Bear in mind that the Department of Homeland Security will inevitably want those on the receiving end of the resettlement to believe whatever narrative it chooses to promote, so it claimed that 15 Federal Protection Officers would be on site to provide security and control the movements of the refugees. Chapman observed, however, that they have no law enforcement authority in Virginia so they can hardly be called upon to police their wards.

Sheriff Chapman’s concerns about the selection and vetting process are in line with my own experience. I was in Kabul in early 2002 as part of the joint team that was setting up airport and facility security. The issue of how to determine Afghans who were actually friendly or non-threatening from those who might be otherwise was of prime importance. We quickly learned that identifying Afghans was not easy. Many Afghans had only one name or names that were not distinguishable. Most had no identity documents of any kind. Few knew when they were born, and often where they were born. It was so difficult to determine who they were that we began using biometrics and created our own records based on that physical information. Since 2002, Afghanistan has had a puppet government that did not control much of the country and has been assailed by an active insurgency. I would have to believe that any possible process to identify the Afghan people has not progressed very much outside of Kabul. So who are they, these folks coming over here as a result of Biden’s great bungle in the evacuation of Afghanistan?

The Loudoun political establishment led by Chair Phyllis Randall, a loyal Democratic Party team player, asserts that “These individuals are not refugees; they are our allies and family members of American citizens and lawful permanent residents,” but that is contradicted by other government sources. In fact, as Sheriff Chapman suggested, there have been problems. Dozens of the so-called Afghan refugees already released inside the country have Pentagon records that “indicate potentially significant security concerns,” according to a new federal audit, mostly due to failure to properly vet thousands of the Afghans. The possibly dangerous refugees are somewhere in the US and cannot be located, with the Department of Defense observing that “As a result of…not vetting Afghan evacuees against all available data, the United States faces potential security risks if individuals with derogatory information are allowed to stay in the country.”

President Biden ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to be the lead agency in the program to resettle the Afghans and the White House assured Americans that the refugees would be thoroughly screened. That has not materialized and for months media reports have “exposed crimes, including child molestation, assault and domestic violence committed by Afghans temporarily housed at military bases throughout the US.” And it should be noted that those Afghans at the military bases are free to wander around outside the perimeters after they receive medical clearance, contrary to the assurances given to Sheriff Chapman.

To put it succinctly, there is a certain recklessness about how the Biden Administration does or does not apply any standards regarding measures to be taken before new potential citizens or permanent residents arrive in this country. It is changing the country and not for the better. One does not have to go far to encounter other Americans who are beginning to wonder if the nation as conceived by the Founders can survive at all. It is a legitimate concern.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Sunday said the vaccine maker plans to submit data on a fourth dose of its COVID-19 vaccine to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration because protection after three doses is “not that good against infections” and “doesn’t last very long” when faced with a variant like Omicron.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Sunday told CBS “Face the Nation” a fourth dose of its COVID-19 vaccine will be necessary to maintain manageable levels of hospitalizations and mild infections.

The company plans to submit data on a fourth dose to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is working on a vaccine that protects against all COVID variants for at least a year.

In an interview on “Squawk Box,” Bourla said:

“I think we’re going to submit to FDA a significant package of data about the need for a fourth dose, and they need to make their own conclusions, of course, and then CDC also. […] to see that clearly  there is a need in an environment of Omicron to boost the immune response.”

Bourla said a fourth dose is “necessary for right now” because protection after three doses of Pfizer’s vaccine is “not that good against infections” and “doesn’t last very long” when faced with a variant like Omicron.

Bourla said Pfizer is making a vaccine that covers Omicron and all other variants and is optimistic about the preliminary data he’s seen so far.

“There are so much trials that are going right now, and a lot of them we’ll start reading by the end of the month,” he added.

Bourla told CBS he foresees Americans needing to prepare themselves every fall for a COVID booster just like they do with the flu vaccine.

Pfizer CEO @AlbertBourla tells @margbrennan his company is working “very diligently” to make a covid vaccine that will protect against variants & will protect “for at least a year.” pic.twitter.com/yf2baRwy4K

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 13, 2022

A third dose of Pfizer’s vaccine is currently available to anyone 12 and older who received a second dose at least five months prior to seeking the third dose.

Pfizer always planned for yearly boosters to boost profits

As The Defender reported Feb. 26, 2021, just two months after the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Bourla was already telling media outlets the company’s plan long-term was to have yearly vaccine boosters.

“Every year, you need to go to get your flu vaccine,” Bourla said during an interview with NBC News. “It’s going to be the same with COVID. In a year, you will have to go and get your annual shot for COVID to be protected.”

That will mean even more sales — and more profits — from the vaccine, reported WRCBtv, a CBS subsidiary.

During a February 2021 earnings call, Bourla told analysts, big banks and investors the company could make significant profits by charging higher prices and implementing routine booster doses for new variants of the virus.

During the Barclays’ Global Health Conference in March 2021, CFO Frank D’Amelio said Pfizer didn’t see this as a one-time event, but “as something that’s going to continue for the foreseeable future.”

At the time, Pfizer had already launched a study of a third vaccine dose to address variants, called for annual boosters and told investors to expect a revenue stream similar to that of flu vaccines.

The FDA said at the time it was willing to authorize booster shots based on small clinical trials, accepting data on how well vaccines prime the immune system rather than holding out for long-term safety and efficacy results on protection against COVID.

Pfizer said last month it expects 2022 sales of its COVID vaccine and antiviral pill, Paxlovid, to yield $54 billion, Reuters reported.

Pfizer said its vaccine is projected to bring in $32 billion in 2022 — a 13% decline from 2021 levels.

New UK data suggest vaccines aren’t effective

According to data published on Substack by Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter, hospitalizations and deaths in the UK “remain stubbornly high and overwhelmingly occur in vaccinated people.”

Last month, 90% of the 1,000 Britons who died each week of COVID were vaccinated. During the four weeks ending Feb. 27, 397 unvaccinated people in Britain died of COVID compared to 3,512 who were vaccinated.

Berenson wrote:

“Using a broader definition, which may include more incidental deaths unrelated to COVID infections, the numbers are even worse, with 5,871 vaccinated people dying compared to 570 unvaccinated. (The United States does not publicly provide this data; it is not even clear American public health authorities collect it comprehensively.)

“The report also shows for the first time that adults under 50 are now just as likely to be hospitalized for COVID whether they are boosted or unvaccinated. The report does not provide a similar hospitalization estimate for people who were vaccinated but unboosted, but based on the raw numbers it does provide, those rates are the highest of all.

“Meanwhile, new Covid infections have nearly doubled in Britain in the last two weeks, and now top 60,000 a day.”

According to data, even boosters appear to “offer no protection against hospitalizations in younger people,” Berenson wrote.

Pfizer shot for kids under 5 could be authorized by May, company says

According to The New York Times, more than 22 million people in the U.S. under 18 are fully vaccinated with Pfizer’s vaccine, but the number of people getting vaccinated is tapering off. Yet, there is still a demand to vaccinate children under the age of 5.

Last month regulators pressed Pfizer and BioNTech to submit preliminary results from its three-dose pediatric trial. The FDA was poised to begin vaccinating the youngest age group with two doses even though it did not yet have final results on three doses.

While it’s still not clear why the effort collapsed, data from Pfizer showed overwhelmingly that two doses failed to adequately protect against symptomatic infection.

“The data that we saw made us realize that we needed to see data from a third dose, as in the ongoing trial, in order to make a determination that we could proceed with doing an authorization,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told reporters on a call.

Marks said he hoped the decision would “reassure” people the FDA was “making sure that anything that we authorize has the safety and efficacy that people have come to expect from our regulatory review of medical products.”

Asked about the situation on Sunday, Bourla said FDA officials were “very keen” for the company to send the data over but Pfizer executives were “a little bit reluctant to submit on two doses because we felt that the three-dose [regimen] is what kids will need.”

​​Bourla said data on how a three-dose regimen works for children as young as 6 months will probably be available in April, with authorization granted in May, “if it works.”

Pfizer asked FDA to waive reporting of some safety data

While Pfizer doesn’t know if its vaccine will prove effective enough for the youngest age group, the company says its research shows the vaccine is safe.

According to the most recent data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) — the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. — a total of 1,168,894 adverse events following COVID vaccines were reported between Dec. 14, 2020, and March 4, 2022.

The data included a total of 25,158 reports of deaths — and 203,888 reports of serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period.

Of the total adverse events reported, 667,973 are attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine. Of the 25,158 reported deaths following COVID vaccines, 16,475 are attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.

Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

According to Pfizer data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the company applied for an FDA waiver to avoid recording certain safety data on the injections because the company claimed the VAERS system was adequate in revealing any safety issues with the injections.

In its waiver request, Pfizer stated VAERS is a “robust” system that is “designed to detect safety concerns with vaccines.”

Pfizer documents also revealed the company paid $2.87 million when it submitted its COVID vaccine application to the FDA, which has been reluctant to release the documents forming the basis of approval for Pfizer’s vaccine.

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

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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 condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

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First posted on Global Research on March 1, 2022

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Notes from a 1991 meeting prove that the US, UK, France, and Germany assured the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand east. It’s part of a growing body of evidence that the West broke its promise to Russia.

A newly discovered document provides more evidence that Western governments broke their promise not to expand NATO eastward after German reunification.

Notes from a 1991 meeting between top US, British, French, and German officials confirm that there was a “general agreement that membership of NATO and security guarantees [are] unacceptable” for Central and Eastern Europe.

Germany’s diplomatic representative emphasized that the Soviet Union was promised in 1990 that “we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe” river, in eastern Germany.

The document, which was formerly classified as secret, comes from the British National Archives.

It was made widely known this February by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, but was actually first published by US political scientist Joshua Shifrinson in 2019.

Well, here's something: German Foreign Ministry official explaining in March 1991 that NATO "made it clear" to Sovs it wouldn't expand "beyond the Elbe" and so couldn't "offer membership of NATO to Poland and the others." Validates my @Journal_IS thesis: https://t.co/jLjHPTCrS0! pic.twitter.com/f5bO8okZYz

— Josh Shifrinson (@shifrinson) August 11, 2019

The document describes a meeting between senior officials from the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany in the city of Bonn on March 6, 1991.

The subject of the gathering was “Security in Central and Eastern Europe.”

German diplomat Jürgen Chrobog is quoted in the notes saying,

“We had made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations that we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe. We could not therefore offer membership of NATO to Poland and the others.”

The 2+4 negotiations were talks in 1990 that allowed for the reunification of Germany, featuring capitalist West Germany and socialist East Germany (the 2) along with the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and France (the 4).

Chrobog’s comments in the notes, therefore, confirm that the Western powers had promised the USSR in 1990 that they would not expand NATO eastward after German reunification.

Further clarifying this fact, the document adds that there was a “general agreement that membership of NATO and security guarantees [are] unacceptable” for countries east of Germany.

NATO has added 14 member states east of Germany since end of First Cold War

Since the end of the First Cold War and the overthrow of the Soviet Union,14 countries in Central and Eastern Europe have joined the US-led NATO military alliance – all countries east of Germany, in flagrant violation of the promise not to expand.

In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO.

In 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined as well.

In 2009, Albania and Croatia joined.

In 2017, Montenegro joined.

In 2020, North Macedonia joined.

NATO has also discussed the possibility of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine joining in the future.

In December 2021, the Russian Federation demanded that NATO agree to a series of security guarantees, including a promise not to add any more members. The United States and NATO rejected Moscow’s demands.

Map of NATO expansion

More evidence that NATO broke its promise not to expand east of Germany

The newly discovered 1991 diplomatic record is part of a growing body of evidence that the Russian government’s accusation that NATO broke its promise is indeed correct.

As Multipolarista previously reported, declassified documents from the governments of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and the former Soviet Union and Russian Federation prove that NATO pledged not to expand east.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, DC published records showing that US Secretary of State James Baker reassured Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev “not once, but three times” that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward,” in a February 9, 1990 meeting.

Baker admitted that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”

US Secretary of State Blinken claimed the military alliance “NATO never promised not to admit new members.”

This is a lie contradicted by multiple Western government documents, showing NATO promised the USSR not to expand "one inch eastward" past Germanyhttps://t.co/X6sSXLDngV

— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) January 27, 2022

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Saudi Arabia’s execution of 81 people at the weekend is a sharp reminder of the need to challenge Britain’s hypocritical foreign policy.

Boris Johnson is reportedly planning to travel to the Gulf kingdom this week to plead for increased oil production to make up for the impact of sanctions against Russian oil following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Yet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — a man whose British propaganda operation included emblazoning London taxis with the slogan “Saudi Arabia is changing” a few years ago, a charm offensive undermined by the murder and dismemberment of critical journalist Jamal Khashoggi — is not only a tyrant presiding over a sharp increase in state beheadings.

His state is engaged in a brutal war against its poverty-stricken southern neighbour Yemen that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Russia’s savage attack on Ukraine has rightly been condemned across the political spectrum.

Yet the British establishment has a very different attitude to the war in Yemen.

The two are in some ways analogous.

In 2014, a Ukrainian government friendly to the regional big power, Russia, was overthrown in an uprising sponsored by the United States and EU.

In 2014, a Yemeni government friendly to the regional big power, Saudi Arabia, was overthrown in an uprising supported by Iran.

Russia’s response to the Maidan coup of 2014 was immediate, through the annexation of Crimea and the provision of support to a separatist uprising in the Donbass.

Eight years on, Moscow has decided to launch a full-scale invasion of its neighbour, whose precise war aims are still unclear — Putin’s demands for “demilitarisation,” “de-Nazification” and “de-communisation” are open to varying interpretations — but appear rooted in a determination to reverse Ukraine’s alliance with the United States.

Saudi Arabia launched its onslaught on Yemen in 2015. And it has been horrific.

The Saudis have bombed children on their way to school — on August 9 2018 they bombed a school bus, killing 40 children aged between six and 11.

They bought the bomb in question from US arms firm Lockheed Martin, whose share value is now soaring because of the new war in Ukraine.

The world erupted in justified outrage last week at the Russian bombing of a hospital in Mariupol.

The Saudis have bombed hospitals in Yemen repeatedly. In 2017, just two years into the war, Save the Children and Watchlist recorded 160 attacks against medical facilities and personnel in Yemen.

In 2016 they bombed the Abs hospital in Hajjah, killing 19 and injuring 24. The two charities’ report specifies that “at the time of the attack, 23 patients were undergoing surgery [and] 25 children including 13 newborns were in the paediatric unit.”

So blatant has been the deliberate killing of civilians that the US Congress even voted to stop selling arms to the Saudis, though Washington has since resumed doing so.

Britain has maintained an uninterrupted supply of weapons to Saudi Arabia and continues to provide logistical assistance for the war. The wounding of five British special forces soldiers in Yemen in 2019 indicates that our military is even more deeply involved than is officially admitted.

To point to the crimes of one country in response to the crimes of another is sometimes dismissed as “whataboutery.”

If it is a bid to deflect blame the accusation carries weight. Putin’s crimes in Ukraine are no less shocking because of Bin Salman’s crimes in Yemen.

But it is absolutely justified for British campaigners to highlight the hypocrisy of our government that cries crocodile tears for Ukraine while actively supporting Saudi Arabia’s war. And to campaign for that support to end right now.

At its conference last autumn, Labour shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said Britain should stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia. If Sir Keir Starmer is to avoid the charge of being as hypocritical as Johnson, he must repeat that demand this week.

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Strategic Thinkers Who Warned for NATO Expansion

By Marc Vandepitte, March 15, 2022

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Ukraine war is the large number of top strategic thinkers who have been warning for years that this war was imminent if we continued down this path. We list the most important of these warnings.

Massive Conflicts of Interest at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 14, 2022

One of the primary vehicles for kickbacks and fraud seems to be foundations associated with federal agencies. The reason they’re so frequently used for questionable transactions is because foundations are private entities and not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests and other open records laws.

The Mainstream Media Now Acknowledges that The PCR Test is Flawed

By Jo Macfarlane and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 14, 2022

Media disinformation has prevailed for more than two years despite the fact that the WHO and the CDC (with the usual innuendos) have confirmed what was known from the very outset in January 2020, namely that the RT-PCR test used to justify every single policy mandate including lockdowns, social distancing, the mask, confinement of the labor force, closure of economic activity, etc. is flawed and invalid.

Biden Administration Secretly Paid Media to Promote COVID Shots

By Megan Redshaw, March 14, 2022

The Biden administration made direct payments to nearly all major corporate media outlets to deploy a $1 billion taxpayer-funded outreach campaign designed to push only positive coverage about COVID-19 vaccines and to censor any negative coverage, according to documents obtained by The Blaze.

“War Hysteria”: No Earthly Justification Excuses the Capitulation of Reason to Public Opinion

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, March 14, 2022

More than 100 years later, we citizens of the West are once again confronted with war hysteria and a deeply racist US-dominated public opinion that makes a mockery of all common sense.

Former Yugoslav FM: US, NATO Expansion Root Cause of Ukraine War

By Živadin Jovanović and Xinhua, March 14, 2022

U.S. and NATO military expansion in Eastern Europe is the root cause of the current Ukraine crisis, Zivadin Jovanovic, former minister of foreign affairs of Yugoslavia, has said.

NATO Is Arming and Training Nazis in Ukraine, as US Floods Russia’s Neighbor with Weapons

By Ben Norton, March 14, 2022

NATO is sending weapons and trainers to help neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s white-supremacist Azov movement fight Russia. This follows numerous reports of Western government support for Ukrainian far-right extremists.

Video: Long List of COVID Vaccine Side Effects: Dr. John Campbell

By Dr. John Campbell and Dr. Gary G. Kohls, March 14, 2022

The FDA, the CDC, Fauci, any agency, clinic, hospital, physician or pharmacy that administered or recommended vaccination without giving proper information about these dangers — and perhaps even your Public Health agencies — need to be sued for ADRs experienced (and probably DO NOT ask for a booster!).

Majority of Americans Sense Something Doesn’t Add Up in the Media Ukraine Narrative

By Sundance, March 14, 2022

The bad news is the propaganda from the global media and intelligence apparatus is astronomical surrounding the Ukraine narrative.  The good news is that most Americans can sense the background manipulation, even if they cannot quite put a finger on it.

RIP, William Hurt. Thank You for Speaking the Truth About 9/11

By AE911Truth and William Hurt, March 14, 2022

Many eulogies will be written about William in the coming days, and virtually all of them will omit the fact that one of the things he cared most about in the latter years of his life was exposing what really happened on September 11, 2001, and bringing justice to the families of those who perished that day.

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***

 

Julian Assange, even as he is being judicially and procedurally tormented, has braved every legal hoop in his effort to avoid extradition to the United States.  Kept and caged in Belmarsh throughout this farce of judicial history, he risks being extradited to face 18 charges, 17 based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.

District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser initially ruled on January 4, 2021 against the US, finding that Assange would be at serious risk of suicide given the risk posed by Special Administrative Measures and the possibility that he would end his days in the ADX Florence supermax facility.  It took little to read between the lines: the US prison system would do away with Assange; to extradite him would be oppressive within the meaning of the US-UK Extradition Treaty.

The US Department of Justice appealed to the High Court of England and Wales, citing a range of implausible arguments.  Baraitser, they argued, could have sought reassurances from the prosecutors about Assange’s welfare.  A number of diplomatic reassurances were duly offered after the fact.  Assange would not be subjected to SAMs, or spend his time in the supermax facility.  Adequate medical attention to mitigate the risk of suicide would also be provided.  Just to sweeten matters, the publisher would be able to serve the post-trial and post-appeal phase of his sentence in Australia.

Every one of these undertakings was served with a leaden caveat. Everything was dependent on how Assange would behave in captivity, leaving it to the authorities to decide on whether to honour such undertakings.  Given that the US authorities have previously instigated surveillance operations against Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy, and contemplated his possible poisoning and abduction, such undertakings sounded crudely counterfeit.

The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Ian Burnett, and Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde, in their December 2021 decision, ate from the hands of the US prosecution.  They did “not accept that the USA refrained for tactical reasons from offering assurances at an earlier stage, or acted in bad faith in choosing only to offer them at the appeal stage.”  There was no evident “basis for assuming that the USA has not given the assurances in good faith.”  It followed that Assange’s suicide risk would be minimised – he had, the judges reasoned, little to worry about.  He would not be subjected to SAMs or be sent to ADX Florence.

Assange’s legal team made several formidable arguments, suggesting that the US prosecution had inappropriately introduced fresh evidence against an adverse ruling “in order to repair holes identified” in their case.  Natural justice issues were also at stake given the timing of the move to provide assurances at such late stage.  There were also issues with the “legality of a requirement on judges to call for reassurances rather than proceeding to order discharge”.

The defence readied themselves for an appeal.  In a short ruling on January 24, Lord Burnett kept the grounds of the appeal to the UK Supreme Court anaemically thin.  “Assurances [over treatment] are at the heart of many extradition proceedings.”  The question left facing the Supreme Court was a lonely one: “In what circumstances can an appellate court receive assurances from a requesting state which were not before the court at first instance in extradition proceedings”.  This did not even consider the point that diplomatic assurances are not legal considerations but political undertakings to be modified and broken.

Other public interest grounds were also excluded.  No mention of press freedom.  No mention of the role played by the CIA, the dangers facing Assange of ill-treatment in the US prison system, or risks to his mental health.  There was nothing about the fact that the prosecution case is wretchedly shoddy, built upon the fabricated testimony of Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson, famed conman, convict and trickster.  This was an appeal encumbered with the serious prospect of failure.

Despite this, Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, was initially confident that the High Court had done enough, certifying that “we had raised a point of law of general public importance and that the Supreme Court had good grounds to hear this appeal.”

On March 14, Moris and others of same mind were roundly disabused.  The Supreme Court comprising Lord Reed, Lord Hodge and Lord Briggs, were curt in dismissal.  In the words of the Deputy Support Registrar, “The Court ordered that permission to appeal be refused because the application does not raise an arguable point of law.”

Birnberg Peirce Solicitors, the firm representing Assange, expressed “regret that the opportunity has not been taken to consider the troubling circumstances in which Requesting States can provide caveated guarantees after the conclusion of a full evidence hearing.”  In the matter of Assange, “the Court found that there was a real risk of prohibited treatment in the event of his onward extradition.”

Dismay at the decision was expressed by Amnesty International’s Deputy Research Director for Europe, Julia Hall.  “The Supreme Court has missed an opportunity to clarify the UK’s acceptance of deeply flawed diplomatic assurances against torture.  Such assurances are inherently unreliable and leave people at risk of severe abuse upon extradition or other transfer.”

The next stage in this diabolical torment of the WikiLeaks founder involves remitting the case to Westminster Magistrates’ Court, which will only serve a ceremonial role in referring the decision to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel.  Only the most starry-eyed optimists will expect extradition to be barred.  (Patel is fixated with proposed changes to the UK Official Secrets Act that will expansively criminalise journalists and whistleblowers who publish classified information.)  The defence will do their best in submissions to Patel ahead of the decision, but it is likely that they will have to seek judicial review.

In the likely event of Patel’s approval, the defence may make a freedom of press argument, though this is by no means a clear run thing.  It will still be up to the higher courts as to whether they would be willing to grant leave to hear further arguments.  Whichever way the cards fall, this momentous, torturous journey of paperwork, briefs, lawyers, and prison will continue to sap life and cause grief.

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

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One of the most fascinating aspects of the Ukraine war is the large number of top strategic thinkers who have been warning for years that this war was imminent if we continued down this path. We list the most important of these warnings.

George Kennan, architect of the Cold War in 1998:

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.

Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”

Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State in 2014:

“If Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them. The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country.

Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia.

Ukraine should not join NATO.”

John Mearsheimer, John Mearsheimer, one of the foremost geopolitical experts in the US, in 2015:

“Russia is a great power and it has absolute no interest in allowing the United States and its allies to take a big piece of real estate of great strategic importance on its western border and incorporate it into the West.

This should be hardly surprising to the United States of America as all of you know we have a Monroe doctrine. The Monroe doctrine says that the Western hemisphere is our backyard and nobody from a distant region is allowed to move military forces into the western hemisphere.

You remember how we went stark raving crazy at the idea of the soviets putting military forces in Cuba. This is unacceptable. Nobody puts military forces in the western hemisphere. That’s what the Monroe doctrine is all about.

Can you imagine 20 years from now a powerful China forming a military alliance with Canada and Mexico and moving Chinese military forces onto Canadian and Mexican soil and us just standing there and saying, this is no problem?

So nobody should be surprised that the Russians were apoplectic about the idea of US putting Ukraine on the Western side of the ledger. … But we did not stop our efforts to make Ukraine part of the West.

The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked […] What we’re doing is in fact encouraging that outcome.

If you think these people in Washington and most Americans are having trouble dealing with the Russians, you can’t believe how much trouble we are going to have with the Chinese.”

Jack F. Matlock, the last US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, in 1997:

Als de NAVO het belangrijkste instrument moet zijn om het continent te verenigen, dan is de enige manier waarop ze dat kan doen, logischerwijs door uit te breiden tot alle Europese landen. Maar dat lijkt niet het doel van de regering te zijn, en zelfs als dat zo is, is de manier om het te bereiken niet door geleidelijk nieuwe leden toe te laten.”

“NATO expansion was the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War.

Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation [Russia] since the Soviet Union collapsed.

If NATO is to be the principal instrument for unifying the continent, then logically the only way it can do so is by expanding to include all European countries. But that does not appear to be the aim of the administration, and even if it is, the way to reach it is not by admitting new members piecemeal.”

William Perry, Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton in 1996:

“I feared that NATO enlargement at this time would shove us into reverse. I believed that a regression here could squander the positive relations we had so painstakingly and patiently developed in the opportunistic post–Cold War period.

I believed that we needed more time to bring Russia, the other major nuclear power, into the Western security circle. The over-riding priority was obvious to me.

When I considered that Russia still had a huge nuclear arsenal, I put a very high priority on maintaining that positive relationship, especially as it pertained to any future reduction in the nuclear weapons threat.”[i]

Noam Chomsky, one of the most important living intellectuals in 2015:

“The idea that Ukraine might join a Western military alliance would be quite unacceptable to any Russian leader. This goes back to 1990 when the Soviet Union collapsed. There was a question of what was to happen with NATO. Gorbachev agreed to allow Germany to be unified and to join NATO. That was a very remarkable concession, with a quid pro quo that NATO would not extend one inch to the east.

What happened. NATO instantly incorporated East Germany. Then Clinton expanded NATO right to the borders of Russia. The new Ukrainian government voted to move to join the NATO. President Poroshenko was not protecting Ukraine, but threatening it with major war.”

Jeffrey Sachs, top advisor to the US government and to the UN, three days before the invasion:

“The US would not be very happy were Mexico to join a China-led military alliance, nor was it content when Fidel Castro’s Cuba aligned with the USSR 60 years ago. Neither the US nor Russia wants the other’s military on their doorstep.

It was especially reckless in 2008 for President George W Bush to open the door to Ukraine’s (and Georgia’s) NATO membership.

Russia has long feared invasions from the west, whether by Napoleon, Hitler or latterly NATO.

Ukraine should aspire to resemble the non-NATO members of the EU: Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Sweden.”

This compilation is an adaptation of a twitter thread by Arnaud Bertrand.

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Marc Vandepitte is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[i] Perry W., My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, Stanford 2015, p. 128-9.

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One of the primary vehicles for kickbacks and fraud seems to be foundations associated with federal agencies. The reason they’re so frequently used for questionable transactions is because foundations are private entities and not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests and other open records laws

The board of directors of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) is heavily populated with Big Pharma players. This raises serious questions about conflicts of interest, as the foundation oversees the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars — unregulated funds that typically go right back into the coffers of the drug industry

This conflict of interest also, at least in part, helps explain the actions of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and now-retired director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins. Both have gone out of their way to protect the makers of COVID shots and dismiss evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was created in and escaped from a lab.

Dr. Julie Gerberding became the FNIH CEO March 1, 2022. She was formerly director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After leaving the CDC, she became the executive vice president of strategic communications at Merck

The FNIH’s board of directors includes seven current or former drug company executives, the FDA, the Sackler family (notorious for its creation of a deadly opioid epidemic), Johns Hopkins (co-sponsor of Event 201, which “predicted” COVID-19 and the subsequent destruction of human rights), and two major investment bankers, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock

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One of the primary vehicles for kickbacks and fraud seems to be foundations associated with federal agencies. This article will highlight and expose yet another way we are being conned and manipulated by examining the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health¹ (FNIH), whose board is plastered with major Big Pharma players.

This raises serious questions about conflicts of interest, seeing how the foundation oversees the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars — unregulated funds that typically go right back into the coffers of the drug industry. It’s a very clever strategy to extract even more funds from the American taxpayers.

This conflict of interest also, at least in part, helps explain the actions of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and now-retired director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins.² Both have gone out of their way to protect the makers of COVID shots and dismiss evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was created in and escaped from a lab.

FNIH Board — A Who’s Who of Big Pharma

In 2020, Fauci received the FNIH’s Charles A. Sanders MD Partnership Award for his leadership and support of “FNIH programs propelling research in lethal infectious diseases.”³

Dr. Charles Sanders was the FNIH chairman between 1996 and 2016. Before that, he was the chairman and CEO of Glaxo Inc. He also spent eight years with Squibb Corp., where he held several positions, including CEO of the Science and Technology Group.⁴ He’s currently a member of the FNIH board of directors.

In the video above, Fauci is interviewed by Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall about his career, his achievements and the public-private partnerships that allowed for the creation of Operation Warp Speed and the rapid deployment of a COVID-19 jab. Lewis-Hall is a former chief medical officer and executive vice president at Pfizer. She is also a current board member of the FNIH.

Another striking member of the FNIH’s board is Dr. Julie Gerberding. If you have a sharp memory for details, you may recall she served as director of the CDC from 2002 to 2009.

After resigning from the CDC, she entered the express revolving door between industry and government and was hired by Merck as their vice president in charge of vaccines. Imagine that — the head of the government agency responsible for policing vaccines is hired by one of the world’s largest producers of vaccines.

Sadly, it’s all perfectly legal. Later, she oversaw global public policy and strategic communications at Merck, followed by a position as chief patient officer and executive vice president for population health and sustainability.⁵ Gerberding has now taken her nefarious behavior to an entirely new level. She’s slid back through yet another revolving door and is the CEO of FNIH as of March 1, 2022.⁶Other FNIH board members include:

The two non-voting directors are Collins and Dr. Stephen Hahn, the current commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. This is quite the list.

We’ve got seven current or former drug company executives, the CDC, the FDA, the Sackler family (notorious for its creation of a deadly opioid epidemic), Johns Hopkins (co-sponsor of Event 201, which “predicted” COVID-19 and the subsequent destruction of human rights), and two major investment bankers, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock.

The inclusion of BlackRock is particularly interesting, and disturbing, considering they have a hidden monopoly on global asset holdings. Together with Vanguard, BlackRock has ownership in some 1,600 American firms, which in 2015 had combined revenues of $9.1 trillion. If you add in the third-largest global asset holder, State Street, their combined ownership encompasses nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms.⁷ Just what is BlackRock doing on the FNIH’s board of directors?

Then there are the donors. The largest donor to the FNIH is none other than Bill Gates. According to the FNIH’s 2020 statutory report,⁸ The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated $96,981,262 that year, accounting for 15% of the Foundation’s annual revenue.⁹

In 2019, the Gates Foundation’s contribution of $49,827,480 accounted for 35% of the annual revenue.^10,11,12 As the top donor, it’s not farfetched to assume Gates might have significant leverage over the direction of the foundation and its funds. GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Wellcome also donated between $5 million and $10 million each in 2020.¹³ FNIH programs funded by the Gates Foundation include but are not limited to:

• Combining Epitope Based Vaccine Design with Informatics-Based Evaluation
• Comprehensive Cellular Vaccine Immune Monitoring Consortium
• Global collaborative for Coordination of Gene Drive Research and Development
• The Partnership to Accelerate Novel TB Regimens
• mRNA encoded HIV Env-Gag Virus-like-particle Vaccines

The last program on the list — the creation of novel mRNA-based HIV vaccines — is described¹⁴ as a project to “test a new HIV vaccine concept in animals using noninfectious ‘virus-like particles’ encoded by an RNA vaccine with the goal of inducing protective antibody responses.”

The initial request for collaboration came from the NIAID at the end of July 2020. In August 2020, the FNIH Portfolio Oversight Committee approved the project, “contingent upon a commitment of full funding in the amount of $1.45 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”

The Gates Foundation fulfilled that commitment in October 2020. A memorandum of understanding between the FNIH and the NIAID was finalized in early 2021. A sub-award was granted to the University of Montreal (CHUM), and Bioqual was given a service agreement to manage the clinical trial.

Bill Gates also contributes to the FNIH through Gates Ventures,¹⁵ a rapidly growing venture capital and investment firm that works side by side with the Gates Foundation’s program teams “to identify investment opportunities.”¹⁶ Specifically, Gates Ventures is an organizational donor to the FNIH’s Biomarkers Consortium (BC), a cancer steering committee, alongside a long list of drug companies.

Congress Seeks Greater Transparency

As mentioned earlier, all of this can help explain Fauci’s and Collins’ behavior during the COVID pandemic. Collins is a board member, Fauci got the foundation’s top reward for support in 2020, and money flows into the foundation from drug companies and Gates, all of whom have vested interests in making sure that whatever the NIH does and recommends to the public, it will produce profits for them.

According to its 2020 Statutory Report,¹⁷ the FNIH has raised more than $1.2 billion, and as mentioned earlier, most of that money goes right back to the drug industry, without Congressional appropriation or oversight. While the whole thing reeks of conflicts of interest, it may be difficult to get to the bottom of because, as a 501c3, the FNIH is cleverly exempt from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Nonprofits are considered private entities, and therefore not subject to FOIA and other open records laws.^18,19 However, the NIH is subject to FOIA since it’s a government agency, and the funds raised go to the NIH. Basically, it’s a system set up to bypass oversight, and the U.S. Congress is responsible for creating this fraud-fraught system.

Congress Created This Fraud-Fraught System

Congress is responsible for the oversight of federal agencies, but in the early 1990s, it created what sure looks like a pay-to-play system. Not only did Congress create the FNIH, they also set up the CDC Foundation,²⁰ which funnels millions of dollars from drug companies and vaccine makers into the CDC.²¹

This explains the CDC’s highly irrational and harmful COVID recommendations. The fact that the CDC lies about its pharma funding only makes it all the more suspicious. The CDC has long fostered the perception of independence by stating it does not accept funding from special interests.

In disclaimers peppered throughout the CDC’s website²² and in its publications, it says the agency “does not accept commercial support” and has “no financial interests or other relationships with the manufacturers of commercial products.” With the information exposed in this article it is obvious that this is a cleverly obfuscated pack of lies — all possible through sheer semantics, as the funds are diverted through the foundation rather than going straight to the CDC.

In 2019, several watchdog groups — including the U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), Public Citizen, Knowledge Ecology International, Liberty Coalition and the Project on Government Oversight — petitioned²³ the CDC to stop making these false disclaimers²⁴ because, in reality, the CDC receives millions of dollars each year from commercial interests through its government-chartered foundation, the CDC Foundation, which funnels those contributions to the CDC after deducting a fee.²⁵

On the CDC Foundation’s website, you’ll find a long list²⁶ of “corporate partners” that have provided the CDC with funding over the years. The CDC even accepts money earmarked for specific studies or programs aimed at expanding corporate profits or reducing drug companies’ liability exposure.²⁷

As just one example, in 2018, Collins ended up canceling a $100 million study to assess the effects of moderate alcohol consumption after it was discovered that the NIH had inappropriately solicited money for the study directly from the spirits industry, and had designed the study “to satisfy industry interests.”²⁸ Collins also had to ditch a $400 million study into opioid dependency after an independent panel warned there were potential conflicts of interest.²⁹

In 2018, a congressional spending panel also warned the FNIH and the CDC Foundation that their disclosures of financial donations were inadequate. As reported by Science at the end of June 2018:³⁰

“Congress created the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) and the CDC Foundation … to raise private funds to support federal biomedical and health research.

It hoped to encourage transparency and prevent potential conflicts of interest by specifying in the law that the foundations had to report ‘the source and amount of all gifts’ they receive, as well as any restrictions on how the donations could be used.

But last week, legislators on the House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that oversees NIH and CDC expressed concern that the foundations may not be following those disclosure rules …

A report accompanying a 2019 spending bill moving through Congress reminds the foundations to abide by the PHSA when writing their annual reports … The lawmakers also say it’s not OK to hide the identity of donors who have attached strings to their gift by labeling them as ‘anonymous.’

The language ‘is a marker that we want more transparency,’ says one House appropriations staffer, speaking on background because of committee rules on who can speak to the press. ‘We’d like to see [the foundations] go further, and this language is meant to start a conversation.’”

Among “anonymous” donors to the FNIH in 2016 were the Gates Foundation, despite having given a sizeable $19.1 million grant.³¹ While the financial statements of these foundations may have improved since 2018, the system itself, which gives private industry the power to influence regulatory agencies through unregulated funding, remains unchanged.

Globalists Aim to Take Over Health Systems Worldwide

The reason for having a BlackRock representative on the FNIH’s board of directors could potentially have something to do with the globalists’ plan to monopolize health systems worldwide — a plan that is taking shape as we speak.

In June 2021, Gerberding, now head of the FNIH, wrote a Time article³² laying out the framework for an international pandemic-surveillance network, which would include threat prediction and preemption as well. While Gerberding did not name the World Health Organization, we now know that’s the organization designated as the top-down ruler, not only of all things related to pandemics but also health in general. I’ll have an entire article detailing this in tomorrow’s newsletter.

It’s important to realize that unless we can somehow prevent the WHO from acquiring this power, it will be able to dictate things like mandatory vaccinations and health passports moving forward, and its dictates would supersede all national and state laws. We simply cannot let this happen.

At the same time, we need to realize just how bought and paid for our U.S. regulatory agencies are, and figure out a way to clean up that mess. There’s been a revolving door between government and private industry for decades, which is how we got here in the first place. Closing that door might be a first step in the right direction, but it’s not going to be enough by itself.

The NIH, CDC and the Food and Drug Administration are all so thoroughly infiltrated by industry, restoring them to their intended functions is no easy task. Disturbingly, the same technocratic powers that are working to give the WHO global power over global health have also infiltrated these U.S. agencies. As a result, they’re unlikely to push back. They’re going to be more than willing to take orders from the WHO.

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Notes

¹ FNIH.org

² NIH.gov December 16, 2021

³ Leading Authorities Freda Lewis-Hall interviews Anthony Fauci

⁴ FNIH Charles Sanders

⁵ Merck Julie Gerberding Bio

⁶ FNIH Announcement March 1, 2022

⁷ The Conversation May 10, 2017

^8, 17 FNIH 2020 Statutory Report

⁹ FNIH Financial Statements 2019 and 2020, Page 23

¹⁰ FNIH 2020 Statutory Report, Page 23

¹¹ FNIH Financial Statements 2019 and 2020

¹² FNIH 2020 Annual Report, Financial Highlights

¹³ FNIH 2020 Annual Report Donations by Amount

¹⁴ FNIH 2020 Statutory Report, Page 5

¹⁵ Gates Ventures

¹⁶ Gates Foundation Strategic Investment Fund

¹⁸ Legal Beagle Is 501c3 Exempt from the Sunshine Law?

¹⁹ Nonprofit Quarterly May 30, 2017

^{20, 28, 29, 30, 31} Science June 29, 2018

²¹ Lew Rockwell November 20, 2019

²² CDC.gov MMWR Disclosure

²³ USRTK Petition to the CDC, November 5, 2019 (PDF)

²⁴ USRTK November 5, 2019

²⁵ USRTK Petition to the CDC, November 5, 2019 (PDF), Page 3

²⁶ CDC Foundation Our Partners: Corporations

²⁷ USRTK Petition to the CDC, November 5, 2019 (PDF), Page 4

³² Time June 9, 2021

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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.

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The whole idea of boycotting Russian vodka reminds too much of “freedom fries” from Gulf War II. It seems stupid and silly until you realize we are stupid and silly and this is how we are led to war.

The tsunami of pro-Ukrainian propaganda is only matched by its transparency. The Ghost of Kiev was crafted out of an aircraft computer game. The Ukrainians on that island who would rather die than surrender surrendered. The supermodels joining the army are holding toy rifles. Zelensky is Where’s Waldo, popping up in undated video with unidentifiable backgrounds, dressed in military cosplay reminiscent of George W. Bush in his flight suit. The simplistic narrative is the same simplistic narrative: plucky freedom fighters against some evil dictator. It’s the same story of the resistance fighters in Syria against Assad, the Kurds against ISIS, the Northern Resistance, the Sunnis who joined our side, the Taliban who Ronald Reagan called the equivalent of our Founding Fathers for their fight against the Red Army.

Putin now is the most evil man on earth, unhinged, mentally unwell. Saddam once was, Assad used to be, and Qaddafi was to the point where America cheered as he was sodomized with a knife on TV.  Putin is so unstable we don’t know what he’ll do. Familiar voices are raised: The Brookings Institution’s Ben Wittes demands: “Regime change: Russia.” The Council on Foreign Relations’ Richard Haass roared that “the conversation has shifted to include the possibility of desired regime change in Russia.” One headline wishfully notes “knocking Putin’s teams off the sports stage leaves him exposed to his own people.” No one seems to recall, however, our last attempt at regime change in Russia is what put Putin into power in the first place.

Putin’s goals have gone in a matter of days from sorting out Cold War borders to “the restoration of a triumphalist, imperialistic Russian identity, or another bloodstained nationalistic surge to cover for the criminality of his regime, or whether he just has come egotistically unmoored.” One former Iraqi War cheerleader tells us Ukraine, the “front line between democracy and autocracy, is a core interest of the United States… Ukraine is where the battle for democracy’s survival is most urgent. ”

Others are more direct. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Senator Roger Wicker, and Zelensky demand a no-fly zone. They have friends; a poll as the invasion began found “52 percent of Americans see the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as a critical threat to US vital interests” with almost no partisan division. No polling on what those vital interests might be. Rep. Eric Swalwell and Rep. Ruben Gallego want all Russians deported from the US. As if preparing for war, the U.S. has already closed its embassies in Ukraine and Belarus, and placed Embassy Moscow on “Authorized Departure” status for non-emergency staff and family members. On the other end of the government, the CIA is training Ukrainians for an insurgency. You know, like with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan years ago. Lawmakers at a congressional hearing discussed having American intelligence provide more direct assistance to Ukraine, including ground operatives.

No dissent is allowed. You are either “with us or against us.” The homogeneity of our social and MSM is terrifying. Censorship is in full fury; the fact checkers are hands off even the most outrageous claims (the Ukrainians have trained cats to spot Russian laser sights) and Twitter calls out Russian sources but not pro-Ukrainian ones. Facebook and YouTube post Ukrainian propaganda made in violation of the Geneva Convention. Google News will not include anything from Russian state media. The NYT is running anonymously-sourced tales claiming the Russians are deserting or sabotaging their own vehicles. Rolling Stone is naming “the American right-wingers covering for Putin as Russia invades Ukraine,” currently Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, J.D. Vance, and Tulsi Gabbard. The worst of all of course is Trump, whom Liz Cheney claims “aids our enemies” and whose “interests don’t seem to align with the interests of the United States.” When he proposed Congress vote on military escalations by the US in Ukraine, Senator Mike Lee was quickly called “Moscow Mike.”

If all that isn’t laying the ground work for a fight, it has been an awful lot of work for nothing.

We’ve been here before when everything was the same but not the same. Following Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea, and feints toward Ukraine, then-President Barack Obama said Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there. “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.” Obama showed the same realism in 2013 when in the face of war-mongering over Assad “gassing his own people in Syria” he backed away from widening the war (if only Obama had been equally pragmatic over Libya.)

But Biden is not Obama. Biden, due to age and background, is not a strong man. Unlike Obama, he does not see himself awash in the stream of history, but more as a caretaker until the Democratic Party can regroup, the Gerald Ford of his era. Biden is a weak man who will come under increasing pressure to “do something” as it becomes apparent the newest layer of sanctions against Russia accomplishes as little as the last layer of sanctions. The previous sanctions, among other things, did not stop Putin from invading Ukraine.

But more than anything else, Joe Biden is a Cold Warrior, burdened fully with a world view Obama was not. That world view says the role of the United States is to create a global system and enforce its rules. We can invade nations that did not attack us and demand regime change but you cannot. We decide which nations have nuclear weapons and which can not. We can walk our NATO-alliance right to your border but you cannot do the same with yours. We decide what systems control international commerce and who can participate in them. It is right and just for us to talk about crippling an economy, but not you. It was all best expressed by Condoleezza Rice, who commented with a straight face on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “When you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.”

This world view says the United States can empower former Soviet satellites and grow American influence by expanding NATO eastward (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Romania formally joined the alliance, East Germany by default) and to do this while taking the nuclear weapons away from those states so that none of them would become a threat or rival in Europe. It was American policy to have weak but not too weak states between Russia and the “good” part of Europe, dependent on America for defense.

As the Soviet Union collapsed, borders were redrawn to match the West’s needs (the same mistake was made earlier by the British post-WWI in the Middle East.) The reality of 2022 is Putin is seeking to redraw borders. Ukraine as a possible NATO member is a threat to Putin and he is now taking care of that. Americans live in a country that has no border threats and fails to understand the mindset time after time; imagine Mexico joining the Warsaw Pact in 1970.

We were warned. After the Senate ratified NATO expansion in 1998 despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ambassador George Kennan stated “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely. I think it is a tragic mistake. No one was threatening anybody else. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.”

That’s the circa-1998 trap Joe Biden is being lured back into. Only months after the America collapse and retreat from Afghanistan, Biden learned nothing. Our defeat did not teach us humility and restraint. It did not school us that America can no longer dictate global rules, sitting as judge while an ally invades a neighbor and then turning to hurl lightening bolts when an enemy invades one. It did not budge us a hair away from the destructive moral certainty that fuels our foreign policy. All that’s missing now is for someone to claim Russia and China are a new Axis of Evil.

Putin invaded Ukraine because, unlike Biden, he understands the new, new world order has different rules. Joe Biden, not always a quick study, has two choices. He can give in to the voices for war and try and prop up the myth of World’s Policemen for another round, or he can understand the consistent failures of American crusades and the global Pax Americana since WWII, especially those in the Middle East of the past two decades, plus the rise of multipolar economic powers to include China, have changed the rules. Negotiation is no longer appeasement. We aren’t in control anymore, and despite Iraq and Afghanistan, Biden may seek another bloody confirmation of that. Or he can understand America’s core interests are not in Ukraine and keep the peace.

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Introductory Note

From the very outset of this crisis in January 2020, the media has deliberately ignored the scientific evidence concerning the PCR test.

The results of the PCR test routinely tabulated by the WHO have been used to justify the lockdown policies imposed on more than 190 member states of the United Nations. Economic and social chaos has been triggered Worldwide.

Media disinformation has prevailed  for more than two years despite the fact that the WHO and the CDC (with the usual innuendos) have confirmed what was known from the very outset in January 2020, namely that the RT-PCR test used to justify every single policy mandate including lockdowns, social distancing, the mask, confinement of the labor force, closure of economic activity, etc. is flawed and invalid. 

The WHO issued its Mea Culpa more than a year ago on January 20, 2021. A few months later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  (July 21, 2021) called for the withdrawal of the PCR test as a valid method for detecting and identifying SARS-CoV-2. As of December, 31 2021, the PCR test is no longer considered valid by the CDC in the U.S.  

For more details see: CDC No Longer Recognizes the PCR Test As a Valid Method for Detecting “Confirmed Covid-19 Cases”?

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 14, 2022

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Below are excerpts of  Daily Mail Online article entitled:

Did Flawed PCR Tests Convince Us COVID Was Worse Than It Really Was? Britain’s Entire Response Was Based on Results – but One Scientist Says They Should Have Been Axed a Year Ago

by Joe MacFarlane

March 12, 2022

***

It has been one of the most enduring Covid conspiracy theories: that the ‘gold standard’ PCR tests used to diagnose the virus were picking up people who weren’t actually infected.

Some even suggested the swabs, which have been carried out more than 200 million times in the UK alone, may mistake common colds and flu for corona.

If either, or both, were true, it would mean many of these cases should never have been counted in the daily tally – that the ominous and all-too-familiar figure, which was used to inform decisions on lockdowns and other pandemic measures, was an over-count.

And many of those who were ‘pinged’ and forced to isolate as a contact of someone who tested positive – causing a huge strain on the economy – did so unnecessarily.

Such statements, it must be said, have been roundly dismissed by top experts. And those scientists willing to give credence to such concerns have been shouted down on social media, accused of being ‘Covid-deniers’, and even sidelined by colleagues.

But could they have been right all along?

Today, in the first part of a major new series, The Mail on Sunday investigates whether ‘the science’ that The Government so often said they were following during the pandemic was flawed, at least in some respects.

In the coming weeks we will examine if Britain’s stark Covid death figure was overblown. We will also ask if lockdowns did more harm than good.

Were the pandemic infection figures deliberately ‘sexed up’ to scare people in complying with lockdown rules?

But this week, we tackle the debate around Covid tests, and examine whether there is any truth to the claims that they were never fit for purpose.

(emphasis added)

To read complete article, click here.

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***

Yoon Suk-yeol, a conservative from the People’s Power Party has won the South Korean Presidency by the narrowest edge in the country’s history. In an election marred by several spectacular scandals, extreme voter apathy, and young voters representing the decisive margin, the outcome has given the U.S. a new hawkish partner in the region.

The foreign policy stances of the two candidates have been described in essence as the opposite from whatever the opposition party feels, and Yoon Suk-yeol is no exception, taking the contrary stances on China, Japan, the North, and the U.S. to his opponent Lee.

As such, Yoon is set to join in the chorus of the Pentagon’s “Pivot to Asia” which was going swimmingly until the character of U.S.-Russia relations changed from December on to the war in Ukraine. Biden has already congratulated Yoon over the phone, and emphasized cooperation for security in the Indo-Pacific.

In the 2018 National Security Posture review, the Trump Administration sought to decouple from unpopular “forever wars” in the Middle-East, and “Pivot to Asia” with the Pacific Deterrence Initiative—a massive new spending project to pepper the seas around allied island nations with bases, airfields, missile batteries, and surveillance stations in order to antagonize China.

At that same time however, attempts to hold summits with North Korea saw and suspension in the “longstanding practice of sending strategic bombers and carrier striker groups to the Korean Peninsula” as well as a “dramatically downsized scale and public profile of its combined military exercises with South Korea in an effort to create conditions for diplomatic negotiations,” reports CNA.

Yoon’s election will almost certainly mean a return to old deployment schedules, placing more weapons and American personal on the Peninsula, ballooning military budgets during the highest period of American inflation of money and credit since the 1970s, and the worst energy crisis since 2008.

An eye for an eye makes a few men very rich

Throughout the campaign Yoon slammed the incumbent Democrat Moon Jae-in’s North Korea policy as “subservient” and vowed he would keep up sanctions and dismiss all peace agreements until the North “makes active efforts in complete and verifiable denuclearization,” the same demand which killed off the 2019 summit organized by the Trump Administration.

Totally in the American spirit of “for thee and not for me,” Yoon’s advisors desire the return of American tactical nuclear missiles and other weapons to South Korea along the NATO-sharing lines, as well as potentially a South Korean-made nuclear deterrent, and even the greenlight to instantly use them in the face of kinetic Northern provocations.

During the campaign, Yoon stated “You can only prevent war when you have the capability for preemptive strikes and have the intent to do so,” according to translations from the Center for a New American Security fellow, Duyeon Kim.

This enhanced deterrence/sanctions policy without any meaningful reassurances, as Senior Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft writes, “has failed to stop North Korea’s nuclear armament and increased North Korea’s desire for nuclear weapons as a security guarantee.

Indeed, when Trump’s spur of the moment North Korean peace plan saw him opt out of re-authorizing another round of sanctions on humanitarian grounds, the opposition was that his “soft” stance would see Korea would allow the subsequent economic growth arm up even more; previous decades of stockpiling and weapons tests during the sanctions regime obviously didn’t count.

Late in December, incumbent President Moon Jae-in’s foreign minister stated that a draft agreement to formally end the Korean War had been reached along with the U.S., to which the North responded favorably. Time is not on Moon’s side however, and even if there were a draft agreement, it would take a Periclean effort to implement it.

Indo-Pacific policy is peppered with some of the most expensive items in the defense budget, and the 2023 NDAA, as well as future arms sales to Korea, should see many additional billions of printed dollars flow into the hands of weapons manufacturers.

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Featured image: President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol speaks during a press conference at the National Assembly Library. PC: James Lee. Fair Use, retrieved from Xinhua.

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***

The Biden administration made direct payments to nearly all major corporate media outlets to deploy a $1 billion taxpayer-funded outreach campaign designed to push only positive coverage about COVID-19 vaccines and to censor any negative coverage, according to documents obtained by The Blaze.

The Biden administration made direct payments to nearly all major corporate media outlets to deploy a $1 billion taxpayer-funded outreach campaign designed to push only positive coverage about COVID-19 vaccines and to censor any negative coverage.

Media outlets across the nation failed to disclose the federal government as the source of ads in news reports promoting the shots to their audiences.

According to a Freedom of Information Request filed by The Blaze, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) purchased advertising from major news outlets including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.

HHS also ran media blitzes in major media publications including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, BuzzFeed News, Newsmax and hundreds of local TV stations and newspapers across the nation.

In addition to paying news outlets to push the vaccines, the federal government bought ads on TV, radio, in print and on social media as part of a “comprehensive media campaign,” HHS documents show.

The ad campaigns were timed in conjunction with the increased availability of COVID vaccines. They featured “influencers” and “experts,” including Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the White House and director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

In March 2021, Facebook announced a social media plan to “help get people vaccinated,” and worked with the Biden administration and U.S. health agencies to suppress what it called “COVID misinformation.”

BuzzFeed News advised everyone age 65 or older, people with health conditions that put them at high risk of severe illness from COVID, healthcare workers and those at high risk of exposure to the virus to get vaccine boosters, in accordance with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Other publications, including the Los Angeles Times, featured advice from experts on how readers could convince “vaccine-hesitant people” to change their minds.

The Washington Post presented “the pro-vaccine messages people want to hear.”

Newsmax said COVID vaccines have “been demonstrated to be safe and effective” and “encouraged citizens, especially those at risk, to get immunized.”

Yet, the latest data from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System shows 1,151,450 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 24,827 deaths since Dec. 14, 2020.

Numerous scientists and public health experts have questioned the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines, as well as the data underlying the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of the shots.

The media rarely covered negative news stories about COVID vaccines, and some have labeled anyone who questions the shots “science denialists” or “conspiracy theorists.”

“These outlets were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments regarding the vaccine that were nearly uniformly positive about the vaccine in terms of both its efficacy and safety,” The Blaze reported.

Congress appropriates $1 billion tax dollars to ‘strengthen vaccine confidence’

In March 2021, Congress appropriated $1 billion U.S. tax dollars for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to spend on activities to “strengthen vaccine confidence in the United States,” with $3 billion set aside for the CDC to fund “support and outreach efforts” in states through community-based organizations and trusted leaders.

HHS’s public education efforts were co-chaired by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins, Fauci, Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky — with Vice President Kamala Harris leading the effort from the White House.

Federal law allows HHS, acting through the CDC and other agencies, to award contracts to public and private entities to “carry out a national, evidence-based campaign to increase awareness and knowledge of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines for the prevention and control of diseases, combat misinformation about vaccines and disseminate scientific and evidence-based vaccine-related information, with the goal of increasing rates of vaccination across all ages … to reduce and eliminate vaccine-preventable diseases.”

HHS did not immediately respond to The Blaze when asked if the agency used taxpayer dollars to pay for people to be interviewed, or for a PR firm to place experts and celebrities in interviews with news outlets.

The Blaze also reached out to several news organizations whose editorial boards claimed “firewall policies” preventing advertisers from influencing news coverage, but which nevertheless took money from HHS for targeted ads.

“Advertisers pay for space to share their messages, as was the case here, and those ads are clearly labeled as such,” Shani George, vice president of communications for The Washington Post, said in a statement. “The newsroom is completely independent from the advertising department.”

Although The Washington Post may have several departments, they’re all under the authority of the same CEO and key executive team.

A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Times said their “newsroom operates independently from advertising.”

Former Newsmax anchor confirms network paid to promote only positive coverage

According to Desert News, Emerald Robinson, an independent journalist who previously served as the chief White House correspondent for Newsmax and One America News, said she was contacted by a whistleblower inside Newsmax who confirmed the news organization’s executives agreed to take money from HHS under the Biden administration to push only positive coverage of COVID vaccines.

Robinson was also contacted by top Newsmax executives in 2021, and told to stop any negative coverage of the COVID shots as “it was problematic.”

Robinson said she was warned multiple times by executives and was told by PR experts who worked with Newsmax that medical experts or doctors likely to say negative things about COVID vaccines would not be booked as guests.

Robinson was reportedly fired by Newsmax after tweeting “conspiracy theories” about COVID vaccines and was later banned from Twitter for “repeatedly violating the platforms’ rules on COVID-19 misinformation.”

Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy in an op-ed applauded Biden for his vaccine efforts.

Ruddy wrote:

“At Newsmax, we have strongly advocated for the public to be vaccinated. The many medical experts who have appeared on our network have been near-unanimous in support of the vaccine. I myself have gotten the Pfizer vaccine. There’s no question in my mind, countless lives would have been saved if the vaccine was available earlier.”

In other examples cited by The Blaze, “fear-based vaccine ads” from HHS featuring “survivor” stories from COVID patients who were hospitalized in intensive care units were covered by CNN and discussed on ABC’s “The View” last October.

HHS ads on YouTube featuring celebrities like Sir Michael Caine and Sir Elton John garnered millions of views.

As The Defender reported in September, a group of people injured by COVID vaccines reached out to the media to tell their stories, only to be told by news agencies they could not cover COVID vaccine injuries.

Kristi Dobbs, 40, was injured by Pfizer’s COVID vaccine. Dobbs spent months pleading with U.S. health agencies to research the neurological injuries she and others are experiencing in hopes of finding a treatment.

Dobbs said she and others who developed neurological injuries after getting a COVID vaccineshared their experiences with a reporter, in hope of raising awareness about their experiences.

Dobbs said she and others knew they needed to tell their stories, without causing “vaccine hesitancy,” to protect others from the same fate — so members of the group started writing and calling anyone who would listen, including reporters, news agencies and members of Congress.

Dobbs said they tried the best they could as simple Americans to reach out to those who would hear their stories. Finally, a reporter from a small media company was willing to do a story. Dobbs and others from the group participated in a 2-hour and 40-minute interview.

“The story never went anywhere,” Dobbs said. She said the reporter told them a “higher up” at Pfizer made a call to the station and pressured staff there into not covering any other stories about vaccine adverse reactions.

As previously reported by The Defender, the same investment firms with financial interests in Pfizer also hold large ownership stakes of corporate media outlets.

Yep! Investment giants BlackRock + The Vanguard Group stand to benefit from their ownership stakes in most of the corporations that imposed COVID vaccine mandates, and in some of the technology firms developing vaccine passports.https://t.co/4hykJNQBsC

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 17, 2022

In addition, Pfizer has contracts with the federal government, which has spent billions of American tax dollars both buying COVID vaccines and promoting only positive coverage to the public.

Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver told Desert News, “People have been injured and died as a result of the most extensive propaganda campaign in U.S. history and it was paid for with our taxpayer dollars.”

COVID vaccines are not safe or effective, but the American public has been given propaganda by the Biden administration instead of truth from the news media, Staver said.

“The consequence is that many people have needlessly suffered as a result of the censorship and propaganda.”

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

Featured image is from CHD

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***

 

At the outbreak of the First World War, Romain Rolland (1), the French Nobel laureate for literature, spoke out in passionate appeals, articles and letters against the war hysteria and chauvinism of the Germans and the French. Hatred of war, which distances peoples from each other and destroys love, was a leitmotif in Rolland’s work. For him, however one justifies the origin of war, with whatever theses and reasons one explains it, it was certain: “No earthly justification excuses the capitulation of reason to public opinion.” (2)

More than 100 years later, we citizens of the West are once again confronted with war hysteria and a deeply racist US-dominated public opinion that makes a mockery of all common sense. Yet again, the common sense of many fellow citizens capitulates to the prevailing opinions and judgements about the Russian people and their president – who has now even been cleared for firing. This fatal behaviour of fellow citizens will only change when we have enough “enlighteners” and “free spirits” to take away people’s individual and collective prejudices and irrational fears and strengthen them.

The sinking of the individual soul into the abyss of the mass soul

In his anti-war novel “Clerambault – History of a Free Conscience in War” (3), Romain Rolland introduces the reader to the incipient mass psychosis before the First World War on the French side. That was over 100 years ago. It is worthwhile to take the time to read about that time again and compare it with today. For Rolland, the war resembles a “cosmic crisis”, a “phenomenon of collective pathology”. In the introduction to his novel, he clarifies:

“The subject of this book is not war, although war overshadows it. Its real subject is the sinking of the individual soul into the abyss of the mass soul. And this, to my mind, is a much more decisive phenomenon for the future of humanity than the temporary supremacy of one nation or another.” (S.11)

Rolland’s novel is a call for the necessary struggle of personal conscience against the masses. One page later he calls for learning to “think for all alone”:

“Whoever wants to be of use to others must first be free. Love, too, is worthless as long as it is that of a slave. Free souls, strong characters – that is what the world needs most today!” (…) Dare to separate yourselves from the flock that draws you away! Every human being, if he is a true human being, must learn to stand alone within all, to think alone for all – if necessary, even against all! To think sincerely means to think for all, even if one thinks against all. Humanity needs those who offer it chess out of love and rebel against it when it is necessary! You serve humanity not by falsifying your conscience and your thoughts for the sake of humanity, but by defending its sanctity against social abuse of power; for they are organs of humanity. If you become unfaithful to yourselves, you are unfaithful to them. Siders, March 1917, R. R.” (p. 12f.)

In the second part of his novel, Rolland vividly describes a phenomenon that we can also observe in discussions today: The protagonist of the novel tries to win his fellow citizens over to the anti-war idea, but he always encounters mechanisms of partly unconscious resistance from his discussion partners:

“Clerambault tried to talk to one or the other. But everywhere he encountered the same mechanism of subterranean, half unconscious resistance. They were all iron-girded with the will not to understand, or actually with a persistent counter-will. Their reason was as little touched by counter-arguments as a duck is by water. In general, people are equipped with a quite inestimable quality for the purpose of their comfort, namely, they can make themselves blind and deaf if they wish, if they do not want to see or hear something. And if by some embarrassing chance they have already noticed something that is annoying to them, they know the art of immediately forgetting it again. How many citizens there were in all the fatherlands who knew exactly how things stood with regard to mutual responsibility in the war, who knew exactly the fatal role of their political leaders, but they preferred to deceive themselves and pretend that they knew nothing about it. In the end, they even managed to believe the exact opposite.” (4)

Enlighten people, empower them and dissolve irrational fears

People’s reason will no longer capitulate to public opinion only when there will be enough enlightened people who will be able to take away from the broad masses of people those individual and collective prejudices that are the ideological background of humanity’s catastrophes. More than ever, therefore, we need “free spirits” to teach us what is truth and what is a lie. In this, the intellectual has a much greater responsibility than one would generally like to admit, because it would be his duty to think for other people and to proclaim freedom in general with the freedom of thought.

In the past two years, unscrupulous financial sharks, together with the eugenicist from Davos and the politicians and corporate media in bondage to them, have “successfully” stirred up irrational fears of an agonising death by suffocation among the people. Church leaders did not oppose this. The intended effect did not fail to materialise: Due to the prevailing religious and authoritarian upbringing, most people look up to politicians like children and therefore they reacted to the unleashed fears of the supposed authorities with an absolute obedience reflex.

Today, due to the irresponsible political actions of immoral and power-hungry “statesmen”, the fear of an intended or accidentally triggered nuclear war is added. Urgent admonitions by recognised personalities such as Albert Schweitzer with his teaching of “Reverence for Life” in the 1954 collection of writings “Peace or Nuclear War” were not heard. In the 1950s, it was a moral authority, a guiding principle in the fight against the nuclear armament of nations.

Due to social constraints and imponderables and because of prevailing educational practices, irrational fears and individual and collective prejudices, it is not possible – I am convinced of this from decades of personal experience – to directly set fellow human beings in motion for a humane, peaceful and free society. The psychological deficits of the great masses are too penetrating for that. If certain popular leaders and masses were able to overthrow the existing power relations somewhere as a result of the favour of certain circumstances, they usually set up copies of the earlier forms of rule, only with other names and other ideological disguises. Consequently, psychological groundwork would have to be done first. But where can such offers be found?

Only through calm and patient psychological education can people be relieved of their irrational fears. At the same time, they must be encouraged and strengthened emotionally. Only after such an uplifting experience will they be able to understand the psychological motivations for their mostly unconscious and involuntary “surrender of reason” to public opinion and draw appropriate conclusions from this understanding.

As long as I breathe, I hope….

For the intellectual enlightener, the point is not to condemn or reject the “good public servant”, but to understand his or her motives and, at times, his or her inner hardships. Even if he or she wanted to, he or she must not and cannot contradict public opinion. It would behoove every free spirit not to place itself emotionally above its fellow citizen. Perhaps the other did not have the same favourable conditions in his childhood and later life. The point is to pick up the fellow citizen where he is emotionally.

In my opinion, intellectual enlighteners and free spirits often delude themselves. They usually write for like-minded colleagues; they do not reach the vast majority of fellow citizens. Nevertheless, they are indispensable.

A final very personal hope concerns the political interest and commitment of the younger and younger generation. Since their near and distant future in particular is at stake, they should not allow themselves to be permanently lied to by the state and corporate media. This does not fit at all with an enlightened, progressive youth.

Finally, a quote attributed to Martin Luther: “Even if I knew that the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today.”

The tree represents life and hope.

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

Notes

(1) Romain Rolland (1866-1944): with the Red Cross in Geneva during the First World War; 1915 Nobel Prize for Literature; 1936 trip to the Soviet Union, encounter with Gorky; commitment to peace and social justice.

This article takes sections from an article published on 3 June 2015 in the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” NRhZ No. 513 entitled “Learning to think for everyone alone!” and builds on them

(2) Prologue to the novel, p. 7

(3) Reinbeck near Hamburg (1988). Translated from the French by Stefan Zweig. First published in 1920 by the Paris publishing house Ollendorff. Original title “One against all” (1917).

(4) op. cit., p. 105 f.

Featured image: Romain Rolland (Licensed under public domain)

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***

Recent diatribes between Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Chile’s Gabriel Boric and Colombian presidential candidate Gustavo Petro allow us to analyze two things: the Latin American left’s internal state and future relations between these governments.

Former Brazilian president Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva and Peru’s Pedro Castillo should also be added to the discussion. All have shown a clear intention to radically distance themselves from Caracas, shielding against the so-called “Venezuelanization” of the region’s politics.

The progressive leaders have denounced an alleged “democracy deficit” in the Venezuelan government. Meanwhile, Caracas has blasted the Latin American leftists for not taking a strong stance against US sanctions on Venezuela or conveniently forgetting to even mention the issue.

These leftist sectors’ position is no coincidence. Venezuela has become one of the main arguments the region’s right-wing bloc uses to attack any progressive formula or proposal that arises. Especially in countries with a large presence of Venezuelan migrants.

Corporate media and establishment actors have led a campaign to criminalize leftist leaders by linking them to Maduro. In response, these actors have tried to circumvent these “accusations” in the most pragmatic way: attacking the Venezuelan government or, if possible, avoiding the matter altogether.

To tell the truth, this argument has been a failed weapon when it comes to electoral processes since it was ineffective in Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Honduras and Chile. In all these countries, the winning candidates were precisely those who mainstream media tried to ideologically link to Caracas. Voters proved not to be easily manipulated.

However, the electoral campaign wrapped up and Boric has continued to reject the Maduro administration. Far from supporting a dialogue process in Venezuela, he is now joining the right-wing crowd that accuses Maduro of alleged human rights abuses, aligning with the United Nations High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet. It is worth recalling that while former Chile president Sebastian Piñera “recognized” US-backed Juan Guaidó, Boric has not shown yet his official stand on the matter.

For his part, Maduro without mentioning any names has said:

“A cowardly left has emerged trying to attack the successful and victorious Bolivarian model, our historical legacy, my office and the Bolivarian Revolution.”

This episode explains, to a certain degree, the internal situation of the Latin American left while giving a glimpse of how relations between these governments will shape up.

A new political cycle and the Venezuelan conundrum

The new progressive cycle that Latin America is experiencing now is not similar to the one at the beginning of the century.

In this new era, leftist politicians are trying to reach power after being defeated (not to say demolished) in the first cycle, as we saw in Brazil and Argentina. Meanwhile in Peru and Chile, progressive governments face opposing legislative powers as well as aggressive media and economic emporiums. All this is in addition to a judicialization drive that has targeted progressive figures. As a result, these politicians have opted for a more moderate discourse, depending on alliances and political pragmatism to survive.

Revolutionary experiences that survived the first cycle, such as Venezuela and Nicaragua, managed to do so by closing ranks as well. Their strategy was the judicialization of politics and radicalizing their stance against the US government while facing a high-level financial and even military siege. They ended up isolated and placed in an “axis of evil” that the new left is trying to avoid.

Today’s Latin American progressive bloc is composed of two major currents that do not have the ideopolitical cohesion of those first cycle surviving left forces.

Although it might happen, and it is already happening, that they could align strategically.

Despite clashes between leftist forces, the leadership of Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the potential victory of Lula da Silva in Brazil could help smooth out differences. Both leaders have clout over the region’s ideological currents and could coordinate efforts to reach a common strategy.

López Obrador has already achieved an unexpected “milestone,” having sat Maduro next to right-wing presidents in last year’s VI Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Summit in Mexico City.

On the reelection campaign trail, Lula has stated that “Bolsonaro is worse than Maduro” in order to distance himself from the Venezuelan leader. However, there are no harsh tensions between Lula and Maduro and if the former president reaches power again, Brazil could offer Caracas different types of political and economic backing. While in prison, Lula publicly acknowledged his support for Venezuela against US aggression. Whether he will continue to do so… remains to be seen.

In conclusion, these confrontations can be seen as part of a (pragmatic) political rhetoric, but their protagonists could end up aligned if there is strong leadership that prioritizes the defense of the region’s interests.

Would tensions persist or fade away?

Maduro has not opened fire or responded directly to criticism spawning from other leaders. He hopes that once in office, they will progressively backtrack their political approach towards Venezuela. With these potential progressive governments, the scenario of an invasion or increased pressure against Caracas is going out the window.

An example of this “slow normalization of relations” is Petro’s response to Maduro’s swipe about a “cowardly left.” The Colombian politician took the barb for himself and set even more distance from Caracas: “I suggest Maduro stop his insults. Cowards are those who do not embrace democracy.”

Although Petro continues to clash with Maduro, at the same time he has offered to resume relations if he wins Colombia’s presidential vote on May 29. This could be the final blow to the US interventionist agenda against Venezuela, currently sustained by the Iván Duque administration.

The same applies to Pedro Castillo. Even amidst his ambivalent position and Peru’s internal crisis, the progressive leader has recognized the Maduro government, condemning to the hall of historical failures the once-powerful Lima Group, which coordinated the attack against Venezuela in the last five years.

All these regional leaders have questioned Washington’s economic blockade against Venezuela. It is true though that they have changed their speech depending on the audience they are facing. Still, the fact that they have pledged to stabilize relations with the Maduro government in itself represents an invaluable political resetting.

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Ociel Alí López is a Venezuelan researcher who has published numerous written and multimedia works. He analyzes Venezuelan society for several European and Latin American media outlets. He is also co-founder of the alternative state television station Avila TV and recipient of the CLACSO/ASDI research prize and the Luis Britto García literature award.

Featured image: Nicolás Maduro has called out Chile’s Boric and Colombia’s Petro over their stances vis-a-vis Venezuela. (Venezuelanalysis)

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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 condemns 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.

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U.S. and NATO military expansion in Eastern Europe is the root cause of the current Ukraine crisis, Zivadin Jovanovic, former minister of foreign affairs of Yugoslavia, has said.

In an interview with Xinhua, Jovanovic who currently presides over the think-tank Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, said that the crisis resulted from “the U.S.-NATO strategy of military expansion to the Russian borders, rejection of the principle of equal and indivisible security.”

Serbia was the first victim of NATO’s expansion strategy, Jovanovic recalled.

In 1999, NATO troops led by the United States blatantly set the UN Security Council aside and carried out a 78-day continuous bombing of Yugoslavia under the guise of “preventing humanitarian disasters,” killing and injuring over 8,000 innocent civilians and uprooting nearly 1 million.

Jovanovic called for a peaceful solution to the conflict in Ukraine, “taking into account legitimate security concerns of all countries and peoples involved.”

Jovanovic said that the Ukrainian conflict and all that had preceded it, “calls to end the policy of military expansion, for recognition of legitimate rights of all countries to equal security without undermining the security of others,” as well as for the “global recognition of the new multi-polar world order.”

“We hope that the Ukrainian conflict will be resolved as soon as possible peacefully, through dialogue, taking into account the need for equal security of all countries and peoples. Sanctions, threats, double standards, one-sided approaches…are undermining peace efforts and therefore should cease,” he added.

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Our thanks to Rick Rozoff for bringing this to our attention.

Featured image is from CODEPINK

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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.

 

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NATO is sending weapons and trainers to help neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s white-supremacist Azov movement fight Russia. This follows numerous reports of Western government support for Ukrainian far-right extremists.

The US-led NATO military alliance is sending weapons to neo-Nazi extremists in Ukraine as they battle Russian soldiers.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the US government has flooded the country with arms, authorizing sending $350 million worth of military equipment to Kiev.

In less than a week in late February and early March, the United States and other NATO member states transported more than 17,000 anti-tank weapons, including Javelin missiles, over the borders of Poland and Romania into Ukraine, the New York Times reported.

Washington has also sent Kiev 2,000 stinger anti-aircraft missiles. And the Joe Biden administration gave the “green light” to NATO countries to send fighter jets to Ukraine.

Western governments have invited hardened right-wing militants from around the world to travel to Ukraine to join the fight against Russia – just as they did in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in a strategy that gave birth to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Meanwhile, as NATO creates an insurgency in Ukraine, some of the fighters receiving these arms are white-supremacist fascists.

The anti-Russian activist media platform NEXTA tweeted on March 8 that NATO countries had shipped Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW) guided missiles and sent instructors to the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

“The Azov regiment was the first to learn about new weaponry,” admitted NEXTA, a Western-backed Belarusian opposition outlet.

Azov is an explicitly neo-Nazi extremist group.

A shipment of NLAW grenade launchers and instructors from #NATO countries arrived in #Kharkiv. The Azov regiment was the first to learn about new weaponry pic.twitter.com/CCzjN40rW7

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 8, 2022

The Azov movement was founded as a fascist gang that served as the muscle behind a violent US-sponsored coup in Ukraine in 2014, overthrowing a democratically elected government that had maintained political neutrality, and instead installing a pro-Western and viciously anti-Russian regime.

After the 2014 putsch, the Azov Battalion was officially incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard. It is now known as the Azov Detachment or Azov Regiment, and helps oversee special operations.

Azov preaches a white-supremacist ideology that portrays Russians as “Asiatic” and Ukrainians and “pure” white people. It uses numerous neo-Nazi symbols, including the German wolfsangel and black sun.

The Nazi symbols used by Ukraine’s Azov Battalion

Given Azov’s links to white-supremacist fascist groups in the United States, there was actually a short-lived campaign to get the Ukrainian neo-Nazi militia listed as a terrorist organization.

In 2019, Democratic New York Representative Max Rose and 39 more congressmembers wrote a letter to the State Department asking it to label Azov as a terrorist organization.

That designation never came. Instead, Washington and NATO have armed Azov to wage a proxy war on Russia.

US, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Poland, and Canada support Nazis in Ukraine

The photos tweeted by NEXTA are far from the only piece of evidence showing that Western governments have supported Nazis in Ukraine.

In 2017, US and Canadian military officers met with Azov Nazis in Ukraine and advised them on how to battle Russian-speaking Ukrainian independence fighters in the eastern Donbas region.

Azov published photos of the meeting on its official website.

In the back of this photo, you can also see a Canadian officer, alongside US military officers, meeting with Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which uses Nazi-era symbols.https://t.co/8tOZ9A7YGK pic.twitter.com/dAZBeFaHdU

— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 16, 2018

The Canadian military officials who met with these Ukrainian Nazis later feared being exposed by the media.

The Ottawa Citizen newspaper reported that the exposure of Canadian training for Azov fascists led to an official military review.

Azov Nazis have also received weapons from Israel.

In 2018, mainstream news outlet Haaretz reported that a group of prominent human rights activists filed a petition with Israel’s High Court of Justice demanding that the country stop exporting weapons to Ukraine, after Azov posted a video on its official YouTube channel showing a far-right fighter using Israeli Tavor rifles.

Rights groups demand Israel stop arming neo-Nazis in the Ukraine https://t.co/mTH9yibe5L

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) July 8, 2018

A 2021 study published by George Washington University in Washington, DC showed how Western governments supported another neo-Nazi group in Ukraine, called Centuria.

Centuria is closely linked to Azov, and its extremist members have been photographed or filmed praising Nazi Germany and giving Hitler salutes.

These avowed neo-Nazis are now officers in the Ukrainian military, and were trained by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Poland, and Canada.

My latest article…Far-right extremists in Ukraine brag they have received training from the Canadian Forces: report https://t.co/0WmLNrIpft

— David Pugliese (@davidpugliese) October 4, 2021

The George Washington University study on this neo-Nazi gang, titled “Far-Right Group Made Its Home in Ukraine’s Major Western Military Training Hub,” stated:

As recently as April 2021, the group claimed that since its launch, members have participated in joint military exercises with France, the UK, Canada, the US, Germany, and Poland.

…

Meanwhile, several Western governments involved in training and arming Ukrainian troops stated, in response to the author’s request, that Ukraine is responsible for vetting Ukrainian soldiers trained by the West. None of the Western governments contacted—the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany—vet Ukrainian training recipients for extremist views and ties.

In 2017, NATO published a highly produced propaganda film honoring Baltic Nazi collaborators, known as the Forest Brothers.

The US-led military alliance depicted the fascist extremists as brave anti-Russian heroes for fighting the former Soviet Union, while curiously overlooking their alliance with Adolf Hitler.

This is the story of the Forest Brothers who fought the Soviet army for their homelands after WWII pic.twitter.com/4JcfuJPmeO

— NATO (@NATO) July 11, 2017

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Featured image: Ukrainian neo-Nazis from Azov receiving NATO weapons and training; all images in this article are from Multipolarista

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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 condemns 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.

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The Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks at his meeting with government ministers on Thursday constituted his first comments on the West’s “sanctions from hell.” They were focused almost entirely on “a set of measures to minimise the consequences of sanctions on the Russian economy and the people of our country.” 

Putin’s number one priority is to hold himself accountable to his people. Unlike his American counterpart, Joe Biden, Putin feels no need of grandstanding, given his high approval rating above 70%. 

The paradox is, while the western countries who imposed the sanctions are going through paroxysms of angst, gnawing worries and anxiety syndromes, the “victim”, Russia, seems nonchalant and is calmly adjusting to the “new normal.” The contrast couldn’t be sharper. 

Without doubt, the Kremlin prepared thoroughly for the western sanctions. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told Putin that a “special headquarters” has swung into action to coordinate the activities of all departments, including at the regional level. He said, “Steps to protect the most vulnerable areas are being worked through sector by sector.” The “core goals” are: 

• “protecting the domestic market”; 
• ensuring uninterrupted functioning of enterprises by eliminating disruptions in logistics and production chains;
• helping the people and businesses to quickly adapt to the changing circumstances; and, 
• maintaining employment. 

Over 20 major legislations are in the pipeline, which include specific proposals for stabilising financial markets, support  industries, especially for the private sector, as well as for the “return of capital.” 

One draft law aims to prevent shutdown of factories by foreign owners through “external management.” There is a vague hint of nationalisation, if push comes to shove.  Interestingly, most western owners are announcing “temporary suspension of operations” while paying salaries to employees. 

The IT sector, construction industry, transport companies and travel and tourism sector will receive special attention — as also agriculture, which is not only about jobs but also food security. There is an overall relaxation of regulatory measures, debt repayment schedules, bureaucratic procedure, etc.

Mishustin noted:

“Maximum freedom of economic activity in the country, minimal regulation and control and, of course, support for the labour market will remain the basis for our economic response. The Government will expand import substitution and help domestic producers replace foreign products in supply chains.” 

The highlight of yesterday’s event was the presentation by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov on measures to stabilise the domestic financial market, underscoring how accurately the Kremlin anticipated the West’s agenda to isolate Russia. 

Siluanov said,

“the Western countries have basically launched a financial and economic war” combining a default on their financial liabilities to Russia with a freeze on Russia’s gold and currency reserves. “They are doing all they can to stop foreign trade and the export,” he added, “trying to create a shortage of imported everyday essentials… (and) compel successful businesses with foreign capital to shut down.” 

In these circumstances, the government’s “priority is to stabilise the situation in the financial system and ensure uninterrupted operations.” Siluanov explained that the measures taken in this direction include “precautions to control the outflow of capital abroad” and a special procedure for servicing external debt, including national debt, whereby Russia will pay off its external liabilities in rubles and “carry out the conversion by de-freezing our gold and currency reserves.” 

Other measures include mandatory surrender of foreign exchange proceeds by companies, higher ruble interest rates, suspension of taxes on individual interest income for two years, suspended VAT on the purchase of gold and “a large project on capital amnesty.” 

The central bank will fully guarantee the liquidity and uninterrupted operations of financial institutions. Siluanov claimed,

“These measures have already produced results. The situation on the outflow of deposits is being stabilised and the amount of cash withdrawals has been reduced to almost zero… balance of payments is also improving. Current account receipts are balancing out capital flow.”

To be sure, the big increase in oil and gas revenue will offset any decline in revenue in other sectors, thereby reduce borrowing and public debt, and will provide funds for priority spending. 

Most important, Siluanov stressed that the government regards the social commitments as the “top budget priority.” He said,

“We will ensure the payment of pensions, benefits, salaries and other payments in a timely manner and in full. Medicines are provided as planned as well, including for children with complex diseases..

“In May, low-income families with children will start receiving new payments. We will earmark additional spending for these purposes in the budget system. The Government has begun to implement anti-crisis measures. Our top priority is to maintain employment and jobs, and to support people who need help under the current circumstances.” 

All in all, the prognosis here rubbishes the western predictions of “apocalypse now”. The EU’s rejection of Washington’s proposal for sanctions on Russia’s oil exports virtually ensures that there isn’t going to be any income deficit in Moscow. In 2021, the Kremlin balanced its budget with an oil price expectation of $45 per barrel. The prices currently exceed $130 per barrel!

This conservative fiscal approach by the government largely insulates the economy from the effects of Western economic sanctions. Ironically, the pressure is going to be on European leaders who are concerned about major energy supply disruptions from Russia and have to keep their economies supplied with fuel, while also punish Russia!

On the contrary, if Putin responds with gas cutoffs, that could spike energy prices further, drive inflation, and undermine Europe’s economic recovery. Simply put, Russia is much larger than the contiguous United States, and has an educated population and far more natural wealth than the West’s Russophobes might expect! 

Take Russia’s exclusion from SWIFT. The fact of the matter is that while seven Russian banks were removed from SWIFT, those targeted did not include Sberbank or Gazprombank, two of Russia’s largest banks by assets. Why? Primarily due to Europe’s continued reliance on Russia for energy! 

The point is, Russia is intricately connected to the global economy, holds large quantities of critical resources, and has been strategically preparing since 2014 to weather the long-term impacts of sanctions and a removal from SWIFT.

Furthermore, it needs to be understood that while several Russian banks are now cut off from SWIFT, they can still execute international transactions with other banks — except that they must use slower and less-secure methods of interbank communication, such as the outdated telex telegram network or phone calls and email.

By the way, Russia has also developed its own internal financial transaction messaging system, the System for Transfer of Financial Messages that could at a pinch serve as a functional alternative to SWIFT. 

Equally, the western sanctions against Russia are bound to cause ripple effects across global markets, including supply chain disruptions and higher prices on energy and agricultural goods. Apart from being a key exporter of oil and gas, Russia is the world’s largest producer of palladium and the second-largest producer of platinum—key commodities used in semiconductor manufacturing—and a major exporter of other critical minerals, mining commodities, and agricultural goods.

Clearly, Russia has no dearth of willing trade partners across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, as it comes under compulsion to rely primarily on non-Western-aligned nations for trade markets for the foreseeable future. 

This has larger implications. Western sanctions could potentially accelerate a global economic divide between the West and Russian-aligned economies that are open to break away from the current US-dominated financial system, thereby accelerating a broad global economic reorientation. 

Surely, sanctions will isolate Russia from the US and EU markets, but its large reserve of natural resources and strong ties to China decrease the likelihood that it will become economically isolated.

On the contrary, if Western sanctions persist, economic relations with Russia could help accelerate the growth of a non-Western bloc in the global economy, which would have deleterious impact on the status of the American dollar as the world currency.

Quite obviously, there are already incipient signs that thoughtful minds in Europe, especially France and Germany, feel troubled and are conscious of the need to rebuild bridges with Russia. How they pan out remains to be seen.

The likelihood is that once Russia has had its way as regards its security guarantees, a process of rapprochement will commence between the major European countries and Russia. In fact, at yesterday’s meeting, Putin expressed confidence that he expects a volte-face even by the US, just as the Biden administration has done vis-a-vis Venezuela and Iran recently.

The EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, a hawkish figure on Russia, made an abject confession on Thursday when he said EU has used up all of the possible restrictive measures against Russia: “Of course, one can always go further, but we have already reached the limits of what we can do. We have done everything we could.” Of course, Putin reserves his option to retaliate against Western sanctions at a time of his choosing and selectively. Presently, his focus is on navigating the Russian economy through the “sanctions from hell.”

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Seedy, compromised and creepy, the surveillance machine of Facebook, now operating under the broader fold of its parent company Meta Platforms, is currently giving out the very signals that it was condemned for doing before: encourage discussions on hating a group and certain figures, while spreading the bad word to everyone else to do so.

The Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin, and Russians in general emerge as the latest contenders, the comic strip villains who those in the broadly designated “West” can now take issue with.  According to a Meta spokesperson, the Russian attack on Ukraine had made the company make temporary “allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’”  Cryptically, the same spokesman goes on to say that, “We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.”  Meta gives us no guidelines on what would constitute a “credible call”.

Twitter has also permitted posts openly advocating homicide and assassination.  US Senator Lindsey Graham was caught up in the bloodlust of permissiveness, using the platform to ask whether Russia had its own Brutus.  “Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?”  The only way to conclude the conflict was “for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.”

The cartoon villainy approach of the Meta group also has precedent.  In July 2021, the policy on incitement and hate speech was eased with specific reference to Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei.  The firm decided to permit posts featuring “death to Khamenei”, or videos of individuals chanting the phrase for a two-week window.  Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai wrote pointedly at the time that this permission was “a bizarre choice that highlight’s Facebook’s power and often confusing content moderation rules.”

The Russia-Ukraine policy is only startling for being an open admission to a practice that Facebook has embraced for years.  With the company’s astronomical growth, accusations about how it utilises hate speech and deceptive content have reached a crescendo without deep effect. Mock efforts have been taken to deal with them, never deviating from the firm’s market purpose.

An example of this zig-zag morality meet reputational damage was given in 2018.  In August that year, the company employed 60 Burmese-language specialists to review posted and distributed content, with a promise to employ another 40 more by the end of the year.  Product manager Sara Su called the violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar “horrific and we have been too slow to prevent misinformation on Facebook.”

A more accurate appraisal of the company’s conduct was revealed by an internal trove of documents showing how harms were closely monitored but algorithmically exacerbated.  The documents, disclosed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission by whistleblower Frances Haugen, revealed a number of things, including the gulf between CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public statements on improvements and the company’s own findings.

In testimony given to Congress in 2020, Zuckerberg claimed that 94 percent of hate speech was removed before a human agent reported it.  The picture emerging from the internal documents showed that the company did quite the opposite: less than 5 percent of hate speech on the platform was actually removed.

Haugen summed up the approach in her opening statement to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security in October last year.  Conceding that social networks faced “complex and nuanced” problems in dealing with misinformation, counterespionage and democracy, she was blunt about the “choices being made inside Facebook”.  They were “disastrous – for our children, for our public safety, for our privacy and for our democracy – and that is why we must demand Facebook makes changes.”

The platform has also been the target of legal suits for encouraging hate speech.   In December, Rohingya refugees, having little time for the firm’s promises to turn a new leaf, instigated legal action in both the United States and the United Kingdom for $150 billion.  The San Francisco lawsuit, filed by Edelson and Fields Law on behalf of an anonymous plaintiff, alleges that Facebook’s introduction in the country in 2011 encouraged “the dissemination of hateful messages, disinformation and incitement to violence” which led to genocide of the Rohingya.

The Ukraine War has revealed a familiar pattern.  On February 26, 2022 Facebook initially announced that it had “established a special operations center staffed by experts from across the company, including native Russian and Ukraine speakers, who are monitoring the platform around the clock, allowing us to respond to issues in real time.”  The company promised that it was “taking extensive steps to fight misinformation and implementing more transparency and restrictions around state-controlled media outlets.”

Then came the easing of policies on hate speech regarding Russian figures, with the predictable and, given the context, understandable reaction.  The Russian embassy in Washington called the policy “aggressive and criminal […] leading to incitement and hatred and hostility”.  It gave Moscow a good basis to claim that this was yet another feature of an “information war without rules”.

Disinformation experts adopt a bit of hair splitting in approving Meta’s approach. “The policy calls for violence against Russian soldiers,” insists the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab’s Emerson Brooking.  “A call for violence here, by the way, is also a call for resistance because Ukrainians resist a violent invasion.”

This policy of intervening on the side of the Ukrainian cause to Russia’s detriment is encouraged by Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg.  In his March 11 statement, Clegg makes the case for selective violence even more pronounced.  “I want to be crystal clear: our policies are focused on protecting people’s rights to speech as an expression of self-defense in reaction to a military invasion of their country.” Had standard content policies been followed, content “from ordinary Ukrainians expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces would have been removed.”

This immoderate stance does not have universal agreement.  Media sociologist Jeremy Littau has made the pertinent observationthat, “Facebook has rules, until it doesn’t.”  It claims to be merely a platform above taking sides, “until it does.”  To not permit hate speech except in designated cases against certain people of a certain country was “one hell of a can of worms.”

Meta’s latest move is disturbingly refreshing in calling out a policy that remains haphazard, selectively applied, but always driven by the firm’s own amoral calculus. The Ukraine conflict now gives the group a cover for practices that enfeeble and corrupt democracy while picking sides in war.  The company is clearly not above encouraging posts advocating homicide and murder after testing the wind’s direction.  With Russia being rapidly cancelled culturally, politically and economically throughout the fold of Western countries, Zuckerberg is bound to think he is onto a winner.  At the very least, he has found a distracting alibi.

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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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The FDA, the CDC, Fauci, any agency, clinic, hospital, physician or pharmacy that administered or recommended vaccination without giving proper information about these dangers — and perhaps even your Public Health agencies — need to be sued for ADRs experienced (and probably DO NOT ask for a booster!). –Dr. Gary G. Kohls

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Featured image is from The Conservative Woman

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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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 condemns 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.

---

The bad news is the propaganda from the global media and intelligence apparatus is astronomical surrounding the Ukraine narrative.  The good news is that most Americans can sense the background manipulation, even if they cannot quite put a finger on it.

You can see the general sense of distrust across the broad spectrum of discussions online and in almost all social media platforms.  The majority of people sense something just doesn’t add up. While the people who follow political events closely are the ones who can see the more specific details of the manipulation. Those who were paying closest attention, in the 2014 Ukraine story line, are the ones who see the same methods deployed.

To get a sense of where the close political following group are, I asked the question last night.  The results are not surprising to the high-info crowd, but the responses have stunned the moderate observers:

The roughly 3:1 ratio is remaining consistent [updated results here].  What this shows us is the diminished power of the Mainstream Media, despite almost every outlet parroting the exact same talking points. The drumbeat of U.S. and global media propaganda is falling upon increasingly deaf ears.

Perhaps this outcome should not be surprising, given the nature of the institutional deployment of the same Ukranian propaganda playbook by western government and media, and yet it is.  The psychological bombardment by every aligned public-private corporate, multinational and government entity, is extreme.  Yet people can see through it.  That says something very positive about the current outlook of people toward government.

Unfortunately, amid the echo chamber that is globalist government, and amid the detachment of national politicians to the perspectives of the citizens they claim to represent, the disconnect between the people and the ruling self-described ‘elites’ is a recipe for either massive change or a more overt totalitarian effort by government officials who will never concede to the will of the majority.  That is our current status.

Our situation is rapidly building toward a zero-sum conflict.

As aligned governments and corporations become more oppressive, more controlling and more authoritarian in their approach, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for them to change direction.  This creates a self-fulling prophecy of conflict between government and people.   History is filled with these examples, and historically it does not end well for the governing minority.

• To understand our current position, we should reference the adverse vaccination impacts that are now surfacing as a result of inquiry, research and time.

As more and more independent investigative resources are used to dig deep into the vaccination outcomes, there is a very real possibility – now tending toward probability – that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or forever harmed physically by the vaccination program.

Harm caused by a mandatory COVID vaccination program is not an issue the global governing authorities can ever admit.  Even if vaccine harm evidence was irrefutable, there’s no way the global governing system – the alignment of pharmaceutical corporations and government – can ever admit they caused death or injury.

With the scale of coercion and forced mandates from the global government vaccination effort very much in the forefront of people’s minds, an admission of death, harm or serious injury would collapse their institutions almost immediately.  At least that is the preeminent opinion within the institutions as evidenced by their vitriol toward anyone who would dare raise the question.

• If we take that government overlay and now apply it to the current Ukraine sentiment, we can get a sense for what their threat assessments must now consist of.  The risk of the public discovering that everything about the Ukraine narrative is fraudulent is a risk that creates fear.  The need for control is a reaction to fear.

We are seeing that extreme control effort again right now.  We see it as the media and big tech systems inform the public that any information running counter to the official government position on Ukraine or Russia will be removed and banished from worldwide technology platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

All content, including comments on platforms, that challenges the officially sanctioned NATO or global government position on Russia and Ukraine, is considered adverse to the interests of the western global governing authorities.  It is not coincidental the same methods of information control were deployed identically in the previous COVID-19/vaccination narrative.

Yet, despite all of their effort, despite the sheer magnitude of all of it, the majority of people still know something isn’t right.

We are living in an era where the global system is trying desperately to get people to believe in something, and they are deploying every tool in their arsenal to convince and demand compliance.  Yet, the innate nature of the majority knows something just doesn’t feel right about it.

We live in remarkable times.

Live your best life my friends.

Do not distress yourself with dark imaginings, yet do not doubt your ability to sense when things just are not right.

God gave us instincts. Tune them, do not suppress them…

… use them.

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We at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth were deeply saddened to learn of the passing of William Hurt earlier today.

In addition to his extraordinary body of work as an actor, William was a producer of AE911Truth’s most recent documentary film, The Unspeakable, and a passionate supporter of 9/11 Truth.

Last November, in what may have been his final public expression, William penned a hauntingly moving article about his coming to terms with what he always “knew to be true” about 9/11. We encourage everyone to read it and share it widely so that the world will know what he stood for.

Many eulogies will be written about William in the coming days, and virtually all of them will omit the fact that one of the things he cared most about in the latter years of his life was exposing what really happened on September 11, 2001, and bringing justice to the families of those who perished that day.

William was an inspiration to all who worked with him here. We will truly miss him and be forever grateful to him for speaking the truth about 9/11.

Read his article below.

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“It Took Me a Long Time to Face What I Knew to be True About 9/11”

By William Hurt

November 10, 2021

I was born in 1950. Mom moved back to New York City with my two brothers and me in 1955, and we became New Yorkers.

I watched the South Tower “top off” in ’71. Mom had worked close to the Empire State Building during the War and would mention when we were growing up how, on a foggy July day in 1945, a B-25 had flown right into it. In ’78, I was watching the antenna being attached to the North Tower and remarked to my first-grade buddy that somebody “sure could run into those big things.”

Many veteran New Yorkers were rubbed the wrong way by their design. Manhattan is actually a small piece of real estate. Interwoven neighborhoods. People walk there. Shoulder to shoulder. I tended to stay far away from them even though I worked in a little theatre only 15 or so blocks away for 12 years.

At age 51, I permanently moved away with my younger sons two weeks before September 11, 2001. The towers were indelible reference points to me by then. To all of us.

On the day of the attack, I was in Boston with my eldest in a café having breakfast, with the pickup parked and packed, ready to go to Montreal for a gig. There was a little TV hung to the molding of a wall. Someone said, “Look.”

Being a general aviation pilot, my first thought was, “That’s no small plane. And no accident.” My next thought was of family and close friends. We called and, thank goodness, they were all okay. My third thought was about the borders. I assumed the borders would be closed immediately. I had a contract in Montreal to get to that day. I prayed that they would stay closed so that my contract wouldn’t force me to go to Canada only for the borders to be closed again, leaving me stranded from my kids.

Then the second plane hit. I started thinking about those lost. The massiveness. A completely new kind of shock entered my life. I hoped with all my heart that the first responders would be okay. Then the towers fell. And the world changed.

Unbelievably, the border did open up again the very next day. I was floored. The contract said I had to go. I hugged my kid and drove, shattered.

In my case, the journey toward understanding started with an unusual emotional experience. Ten days later, on the film set in Montreal, it seemed a nightmare that no one was stopping, even on their own, let alone as a group, to absorb this paradigm shift. Where was the ritual of mutual care when something massively terrible happens? I felt alone. A catastrophe of infinite meaning had taken place, and we were routinely going about our professional duties, saying nothing about it. Maybe it was just too big. Moviemaking is myopic like that. But it seemed wrong. Deep emotional turmoil filled me. Worry for my children.

It was a busy scene involving over a hundred people. As I returned to what they call “start marks” for another “master shot” (of the whole scene before tighter “coverage” setups begin), I stopped. And I suddenly couldn’t remember where I was. What city was I in?

Then my body just “went” to New York. It was “there,” floating high up inside one of the imploding towers. I was trying to catch the falling bodies in my arms. Trying to pick them from out of everything and grab them to my chest to save them, but everything was passing through me — the immense pieces of concrete and superstructure mingled with the bodies of my fellows. I couldn’t catch them. They went through my arms. Everything did. I was what they call “losing it.”

A crew member came up and said, “Mr. Hurt, we’re ready.” I had no idea what he meant. The man asked, “Are you okay?” I heard his voice and said, “I don’t think so.”

They led me to a trailer outside. Some caring people came to talk to me for a little while. The administration wanted to get the set back to work. One person, a fellow actor, seemed to understand. She recognized that I was going into deep shock.

I left the set and they sent a doctor. Someone wrote “possible TIA” (transient ischemic attack) on a piece of paper. But months later, after scans, that was completely ruled out. What happened was not a physical problem.

For me, the overriding fact was supremely simple. It was that, to my knowledge, big buildings just couldn’t fall down that way, under any circumstances. It had never happened because, well, it couldn’t happen. I kept finding myself saying to others, “But, look, buildings like that can’t pulverize to dust in mid-air and just fall down smack straight into their own socks.” No building constructed anything like them in the history of the whole world had ever fallen down like those buildings fell, except for one cause. In earlier days, I’d done some light construction work. I’d seen a couple of smaller things (like big silos) brought down. It was a kick. I asked how it was done. The answer? “Very, very carefully.”

A day later I was back at work. Another week later, and by sheer coincidence, there we were, filming on location in NYC. Prior to 9/11, a reservation had been made for us to stay at a hotel 12 blocks north of Ground Zero. I asked the young elevator man as we first went up to the room if he’d lost anyone close. Surprised and instantly in tears, he said, “My uncle. He was the window-washing machines overseer. Never missed a day.” Off my room, there was a patio. I could look down the avenue and see the site, smoldering in the night lights. In horror, I knew what it was partly made of. We all did. What I didn’t know at that time: Thermite keeps burning a long time. At night, I’d go down. They let me through the barriers because I was recognized. I’d talk to and hug the first responders.

It never left me.

The discrepancy.

The difference between the story we were told to believe and its impossibility.

I felt alone until 2013. Then I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I started digging. Digging for truth in the rubble of the official lie, then in another heavier layer of rubble that lay in my own mind, installed there by our mass media.

It took a while but, finally, I found pieces of evidence online. Mixed in among all the nonsense, there was sane and reasoned evidence. One of the sources, the strongest one by far, a source supported by thousands of responsible, honest, honorable, grounded, normal, respectful people — professional architects and engineers all around the world — was Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. An amazing act of courage and compassion meets us there when we can bring ourselves to seek the answers.

Why did I wait so long, like so many others, to start digging? It astonishes me, until I look at the size of what happened and also at my inability to believe that my government could have betrayed the families of those killed that day by not giving them the first thing they were owed: the truth.

It relieves me immensely to have given my name and my artistic advice as an executive producer of the new film The Unspeakable. I also deeply respect the definitive film SEVEN about the “other” building so few know of that also, somehow, fell neatly, “smack straight into its own socks” that day. An impossibility in any way but one.

The Unspeakable is about a horror that was committed upon innocent people and about their friends and loved ones struggling to heal while the truth is suppressed by those we are supposed to be able to trust. It’s also about the attempt to break the individual human heart and spirit — but how it cannot be broken in some.

The meaning of such evil acts can’t really be measured in numbers. The measure is taken one mother or father or sister or friend at a time. The question is not how could anyone do this to so many, but how could anyone do this to anyone.

The human heart has been the focus of my life’s study, so it is to the cause of these families and friends and this humbly heartfelt film that I add my name. I’m grateful and, again, very relieved to join with them in profound sorrow for their loss and to be a part of speaking their unspeakable truth.

I don’t suppose or pretend to know who or how or why this thing was done. But I feel it must begin with one step. NIST, our National Institute of Standards and Technology, must be brought to account for lying to all of us.

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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 condemns 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.

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While the globalist forces (in the name of NATO) have been using Ukraine as a staging ground for the Great Reset as they prepare to assume authority for the future of the world,  Russia has been fending off an existential crisis created by those same malicious forces since 1999.  The US promise to Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would not move any closer to the Russian border has always been a red flag and that pledge was almost immediately revoked as the West made its move to encompass the totality of Russia’s western border.

With its infinite patience, Russia has tolerated NATO’s overly aggressive behavior for the last two decades without crying foul –  until its survival is now gravely threatened.

NATO strategy, with the US as its ring leader, remains committed to containing, curtailing and/or isolating Russia on the world stage; as if Vladimir Putin who has been President of Russia since 2000, is personally responsible for Russia as an independent political force that refuses to be subservient to NATO.    They would be correct that Putin re-built Russia from the wreckage of the Soviet Union into a respected international powerhouse with significant nuclear capability.    By virtue of becoming President of Russia, the West has always seen Putin as representing a brazen threat to the West’s geopolitical interests and goals, with the added complication of his relationship with China.

As the sole defendant on the stage of international drama, daring to challenge the once-dominant hegemony of the West, there was no fair deal to be had for Russia as the military objective of protecting its border from NATO’s presence.  The eight years since the 2014 coup of constant shelling attacks, violent assaults and sabotage in eastern Ukraine became the ‘final straw’ of abuse and exploitation that Russia has endured with efforts to resolve being ignored with contempt.

Formed in 1949, NATO was formed specifically to respond to Russian military advances while the exact opposite has occurred.  As Russia is today accused of having initiated an invasion rather than a defense protecting its own sovereignty, NATO member nations were recruited to abut Russia’s border, to directly intimidate and threaten Russia with a tight-knit, well armed military alliance sitting on its front door.

Out of its current thirty NATO member nations who represent a mere 12% of the world’s population, thirteen are from what was once referred to as the ‘eastern bloc.’  Five of those nations have made ultra-aggressive moves to include military troops and sophisticated NATO military equipment and armaments.

By 1999, Poland, Czechia and Hungary joined NATO and between 2004 and 2020 almost all of the remaining eastern bloc countries joined as Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia became members of NATO.  Today the majority of those nations totally flank the length of the entire western Russian border as this map illustrates the immediate danger from its neighbors.  Most recently, Hungary has signed a ‘decree’ to allow deployment of NATO troops west of the Danube River as well as use of its airspace.

These five countries have added an incomparable threat by acquiescing to NATO to test the sovereignty of their countries and allow them to be militarized as if waiting for an imminent war with Russia:

Latvia is home to US troops; Lithuania allowed a NATO ballistic missile defense facility, a NATO base with international troops    as well as US troops; Poland has allowed four US troop bases, a  NATO air presence and a NATO base with international troops; Estonia has allowed a NATO ballistic missile defense facility and a base for NATO multinational troops Romania has a NATO air presence, US troops and a NATO ballistic missile defense facility.

As Belarus and Moldova have both fended off regime change attempts while the Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia have all succumbed.  Moldova has rejected NATO membership and Belarus has rejected NATO ballistic missiles.  Kalingrad, Russia’s only ice-free port on the Black Sea, remains independent but is surrounded by NATO.

For the last two decades, NATO with US support have tightened the noose around Russia with Ukraine identified in 2014 for a unique front row seat across the Azov Sea to contribute its country to those same menacing coercions.   You can bet your bottom dollar (as long as they exist) that the leader of every European NATO member nation, which would be ultra vulnerable to a full scale European war, is fully aware of the looming threat that its membership in NATO has created.  There can be little doubt that the majority of dumb-asses in the US Congress have no clue as to the implications of the entire debacle as all parties still refuse to recognize Russia’s legitimate security concerns.

A Question Remains:   Why would all those former eastern bloc countries sign up with NATO a decade  after the collapseof the Soviet Union when the old communist regime had been removed as NATO revealed its true agenda  – that is to put a lock on Russia’s border with an ominous military presence and to test Putin’s resolve.

There can be no doubt, no misunderstanding as to NATO’s intentions with a clearly coordinated determined effort over the years to challenge Russia’s very existence.

To be clear, every leader of those former Soviet Union satellite countries knows exactly how the game is being played and are willing to fall in line as NATO and the US cronies, all sponsored by the World Economic Forum, continue to reinvent the truth and bring war potentially within their own borders.

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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found at [email protected].

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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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***

 

Author, investigative journalist and attorney, Charlotte Dennett, who calls herself a “Pipeline tracker,” lays out the history of oil and gas pipelines, the conflicts surrounding them and the ruling elite agendas behind them, bringing out details that explain why former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger once said, “Control oil and you control nations. Control food and you control people.”

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This article was video published on The Whistleblower Newsroom.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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As everyone faces difficult times, the company which deals with the fulfillment of book sales on behalf of Global Research is no longer able to provide its services. We are unfortunately suspending the sale of print books until further notice.

Meanwhile, PDF versions are still available for purchase.

Thank you for your valuable support.

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Why did Vladimir Putin (Probably) Save Volodymyr Zelensky’s Life?

By Eric Zuesse, March 13, 2022

According to Ukrainian Government officials, a Chechen team led by Chechnya’s leader, an ardent supporter of Vladimir Putin, was about to assassinate Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, but Russia’s Government passed along to Ukraine’s Government the information that this team were in Ukraine and were intending to assassinate him; and, so, that team were killed by Ukraine’s Government forces.

WHO Calls for “New Global Public Health World Order” to Take Advantage of Future Plandemics

By Ethan Huff, March 14, 2022

In order to prevent another plandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) wants to create an international “pandemic treaty” that would restrict and legally bind its 194 member nations to medical martial law.

Many Africans Reject Washington’s Position on Ukraine Crisis

By Abayomi Azikiwe, March 14, 2022

Since the post-World War II period national liberation movements and independent countries in Africa have developed solid diplomatic and economic relations with the former Soviet Union and today’s Russian Federation.

Despite Risk of Nuclear War, Calls Grow for US to Impose a No-Fly Zone Over Ukraine

By Dave DeCamp, March 14, 2022

In order to impose a no-fly zone, the US and NATO would need to shoot down Russian planes and take out surface-to-air missiles that are inside Russia. Despite the risk of war with Russia, which could quickly turn nuclear, some members of Congress are warming to the idea.

Facebook and Instagram Say It Is Okay to Support Nazism in Ukraine, and They Modify Terms Allowing Advocacy for Death to Russians

By Sundance, March 14, 2022

Dropping all pretense of their hidden ideology, Reuters is reporting exclusively that Facebook and Instagram have modified their terms and conditions to permit advocacy and support for the Nazi party in Ukraine (Azov Regiment), and they have modified their violence terms to allow platform users to advocate for death to Russians.

VAERS Myocarditis Already 47% of 2021 in Just First 2 Months of 2022

By Daniel Horowitz, March 14, 2022

One of the most criminal aspects of the COVID regime was the decision to pressure low-risk teens into getting a shot that was known to cause cardiac inflammation. Myocarditis used to be a rare disorder discussed mainly in academic literature, but now it is everywhere.

Targeting the USSR in August 1945

By Prof. Alex Wellerstein and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 13, 2022

If the World War II alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom was the special relationship, what was the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union? The especially problematic relationship? The relationship that could really have used to go to counseling? A relationship forged out of extreme crisis that later seemed like a sketchy thing?

Ukraine and the Nuclear Issue. “We’ve Come So Close on Numerous Occasions”. Dr. Helen Caldicott

By Michael Welch and Dr. Helen Caldicott, March 12, 2022

During the now two week military incursion by the Russian armed forces, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant experienced power cuts to its critical cooling system which keeps its radioactive fuel rods from overheating. Electric generators are the system’s back-up when such an emergency takes place, however it is estimated the diesel which fuels the generators will only last about 48 hours.

Washington’s Resolve to Protect Ukraine’s Nazis: The UN General Assembly Extraordinary Vote of Ukraine and the USA

By Craig Murray, March 12, 2022

In Ukraine, support for the Ukrainian nationalist divisions who fought alongside the Nazis has become, over the last eight years, the founding ideology of the modern post 2013 Ukrainian state (which is very different from the diverse Ukrainian state which briefly existed 1991-2013).

The Alarming Rise of Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi MPs Since the 2014 “Pro-democracy Revolution”

By Shane Quinn, March 12, 2022

The decision by an increasingly far-right Ukrainian parliament to ban remembrance symbols which commemorate those who fought against the Third Reich is, therefore, a desecration of their memory. It is an attempt to wash over that awful suffering the Ukrainian state endured during the Nazi occupation, with Hitler outlining plans to turn the country into a servile colony of Germanic dominion.

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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***

In order to prevent another plandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) wants to create an international “pandemic treaty” that would restrict and legally bind its 194 member nations to medical martial law.

The United States would need to give up its national sovereignty under the plan, including all civil and health rights. Every other country that is part of the United Nations would be expected to do the same (if they have not already).

Back in December, the World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO’s 194-member health policy forum, agreed to initiate the process of drafting a pandemic treaty based on an already existing international legal instrument called the International Health Regulations (2005), also known as the IHR.

The stated purpose of the IHR is to: “Prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease in ways that are commensurate with and restricted to public health risks, and which avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade.”

In the event that another deadly bioweapon gets released from one of the Pentagon’s bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine, for instance, then the WHO would have at its disposal far more authoritarian power to tyrannize people for their own “safety.”

The IHR is already far-reaching all on its own, as evidenced by what already took place as part of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) plandemic. Now, the WHO wants even more power for the next one, which the powers-that-be are already hinting is soon to come.

“Indeed, it was in January 2020, that pursuant to article 12 of the IHR that the WHO Director-General (the ‘Director-General’) declared that the COVID-19 was a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ (a ‘PHEIC’), setting off a worldwide tidal wave of highly restrictive government health policies resulting in lockdowns, mandatory masking, social isolation, school and business closings, and eventually culminating in compulsory vaccination, contact tracing and testing, in some populations,” reported GreenMedInfo.

“This was all the more egregious as pertains the widespread push for mandatory vaccination given that the mRNA technology used in the COVID jabs are highly experimental, having never before been tested in human clinical trials for safety or effectiveness. Their coerced or mandated use therefore violate informed consent given that evidence-based risk/benefit information based on long-term safety trails are not yet available.”

Next plandemic will be even more brutal than the last one

The WHA’s decision late last year was, in fact, adopted as schemed. They called the dystopian move “The World Together,” and it is set to be implemented under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution some time in 2024.

Once that happens, the WHA will have the authority to adopt new conventions or agreements with respect to any matter deemed to be “within the competence of the Organization.”

A simple two-thirds vote is enough to make such changes on a whim, and all member countries will have to abide by whatever gets passed.

Keep in mind that this special session of the WHA is only the second to ever have occurred since 1948 when it was founded. This was the same year, by the way, that the modern-day nation-state of Israel was declared into existence.

On March 3, the WHA already announced changes to implement a “new global public health world order” that basically globalizes how governments respond to plandemic. The Fauci Flu appears to have just been a test run, as miserable as it was, the next one will be even more brutal.

“If you believe in bodily sovereignty, parental rights and informed consent, you must stand up now and let your voice be heard,” said popular health guru Sayer Ji.

*

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Featured image is from NaturalNews.com

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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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 condemns 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.

---

Since the post-World War II period national liberation movements and independent countries in Africa have developed solid diplomatic and economic relations with the former Soviet Union and today’s Russian Federation.

It is this history which underlines the refusal of numerous African governments and mass organizations to side with the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in its efforts to encircle Russia in order to leave it as a diminished state dependent upon the dominant imperialist nations globally.

In the immediate aftermath of the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the racist treatment of approximately 16,000 African students as well as thousands of others from Asia gained international news coverage. Africans were denied admission on to trains, refused food provided to Ukrainians, while attempting to seek refuge in neighboring countries such as Poland.

These incidents should not have been surprising considering the expansion and institutionalization of fascist and nazi ideology among those governing the Ukrainian state since the U.S.-backed Euromaidan coup of February 2014. Washington under the administration of former President Barack Obama sought to subvert any efforts by ousted President Victor Yanukovych to walk a middle-line between the U.S., European Union on the one side and Russia on the other.

The first-person accounts of the students who were more than willing to speak about what had been done to them in Ukraine, had to be swiftly suppressed in the western media. Although any keen observer of the unfolding crisis in Ukraine would know of the role of groupings such as the Right Sector and the Azov Brigades in creating an atmosphere of reaction against Russian-speaking Ukrainians because their worldview encompasses many of the assumptions which fostered the philosophical underpinnings of the rationale for the initiation of World War II (1939-1945).

United Nations, African States and the Ukraine War

A debate on March 2 over a resolution to essentially condemn and apportion exclusive blame on Moscow for the current military situation, was voted on by 141 UN representatives out of 191. 35 countries abstained from the vote including 17 member-states of the African Union (AU).  Cameroon, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso, Togo, Eswatini and Morocco were absent. Algeria, Uganda, Burundi, Central African Republic, Mali, Senegal, Equatorial Guinea, Congo Brazzaville, Sudan, South Sudan, Madagascar, Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa abstained on the resolution.

Although the resolution passed, it has not brought about an end to the fighting in Ukraine which has prompted over two million people to leave the Eastern European country. The only African state to vote against the resolution was Eritrea. In recent months, the government of Eritrea has been in discussions with Russia about the utilization of Red Sea ports inside the country. A similar situation is developing in neighboring Republic of Sudan where Port Sudan, also on the Red Sea, has been the subject of talks between Moscow and the military regime now controlling Khartoum.

Another leading African state, the Republic of South Africa, abstained from the March 2 UN General Assembly vote noting that the resolution did not emphasize the need for a negotiated diplomatic settlement to the crisis. The ruling party in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) has maintained close ties to Moscow since the period of national liberation from the 1960s to the 1990s. The former Soviet Union provided diplomatic, educational and military support to the ANC and many other liberation movements turned independent governments such as the South-West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) of Namibia, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), just to mention a few.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa who has been under tremendous pressure by the U.S. State Department over its position on Ukraine was quoted as saying:

“South Africa expected that the UN resolution would foremost welcome the commencement of dialogue between the parties and seek to create the conditions for these talks to succeed. Instead, the call for peaceful resolution through political dialogue is relegated to a single sentence close to the conclusion of the final text. This does not provide the encouragement and international backing that the parties need to continue with their efforts.”

A clear indication of the uneasiness and disapproval of the U.S. role in Ukraine was voiced by several African journalists during a briefing webinar on March 3 with Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Molly Phee. Several journalists asked critical questions related to the U.S. position in Ukraine probing Phee in regard to the demands by the White House and State Department that every country around the world denounce Russia and its President Vladimir Putin.

Journalists raised the issue of racism against Africans attempting to flee Ukraine into Poland along with unreasonable demands being placed on AU member-states. The transcript of the webinar read in part:

“This is Simon Ateba with Today News Africa in Washington, D.C.  You just mentioned reporting about Africans facing racism in Ukraine and Poland, being denied entry into trains in Kyiv, and being turned back at the border with Poland.  Is there any reason why the State Department has not publicly condemned racism against Africans in Ukraine and Poland?’…. ‘Yes, this is Katlego Isaacs from Mmegi News.  I wanted to ask, why should African countries support the position of the U.S. to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when the U.S. supports the aggression in Israel against Palestinians?’…. My name is Swift from Gabz FM in Botswana.  I wanted to ask, what is the position of the U.S. on censoring of social media and the complete wipeout of the other party, in this case obviously Russia, since free speech and free press is the cornerstone not only of democracy but a tool that can create a counterculture or counternarrative?’”

Within the streets of countries such as Mali, Central African Republic (CAR) and Ethiopia there have been pro-Russian demonstrations. Mali recently called for the departure of the French ambassador and military forces after Paris objected to the involvement of the Wagner Group, a Russian-based defense services company working to curtail rebel attacks in the northern and central regions of the West African state.

Ethiopia in early March commemorated “Victory Day” which celebrates the defeat of Italian colonialism in 1896 at the Battle of Adwa. Photographs were released of Ethiopians carrying their own national flag while some others waved the flag of Russia in solidarity with the military operation in Ukraine.

The German newspaper DW reported on the military ties between AU member-states and Moscow noting:

“In recent years, Russia has increasingly used this historic Soviet connection to expand its political, economic and, above all, military relations with African nations. In 2019, Vladimir Putin hosted a Russia-Africa Summit attended by 43 African leaders. Just one year later, Russia became Africa’s biggest arms supplier. According to a 2020 analysis by the peace research institute SIPRI, between 2016 and 2020 around 30% of all arms exported to sub-Saharan Africa countries came from Russia. This vastly overshadows weapon supplies from other nations such as China (20%), France (9.5%) and the USA (5.4%). This increased the volume of Russian arms shipments by 23% over the previous five-year period.”

These and other factors have frustrated the U.S. in its diplomatic efforts to win unconditional support for its war against Russia in Ukraine. The existence of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) since 2008 under the guise of enhancing the security capacity of AU member-states in their struggles against what is described as “Islamic Jihadism”, has proved to be an utter failure. Despite the existence of a military base housing thousands of Pentagon troops in the Horn of Africa state of Djibouti and the building of other makeshift installations, along with joint military operations and training opportunities for African military officers, the overall stability and security of many states has worsened.

Ending Imperialist War Requires a Rejection of U.S. Foreign Policy

Several countries within Latin America have maintained their trade and diplomatic relations with Russia. These states include Cuba and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Caracas has been under siege by successive administrations in Washington, both Democratic and Republican. In recent years, the White House has attempted to install a puppet regime in Venezuela while denying recognition of the government of President Nicolas Maduro. Billions of Venezuelan assets have been frozen in U.S. banks along with the expulsion of high-level employees of embassies and other outlets for Caracas.

Yet during the first weekend of March, the U.S. deployed a delegation to Venezuela to discuss the possibility of replacing banned Russian oil shipments with supplies from the Maduro administration which has been under a blockade by Washington at least since 2017. The move illustrates the illogical foreign policy positions under which President Joe Biden finds himself. Moreover, the opposition to the talks has forced Biden to publicly move away from this latest energy strategy. See this.

Energy, transportation and food prices are skyrocketing in the U.S. compounding the already 40-year high inflation rate. Although the corporate and government-controlled media agencies are proclaiming the dire straits that Russia is undergoing since the withdrawal of several banking services, McDonalds, Coca-Cola and other corporations, it is the Biden administration and the Democratic Party politicians who must face the U.S. electorate in 2022 and 2024.

Attitudes towards U.S. military policy among Africans and people in Latin America reveals the unsustainability of this approach to international affairs. These peoples know that the reckless approach by Washington and Wall Street will have a negative social impact on billions around the globe.

The inability of the Biden White House to pass legislation in Congress which would address the social crisis unfolding in the U.S. portends much for the political landscape in Washington. A U.S.-inspired war in Eastern Europe will not solve the economic stagnation and hyperinflation faced by the majority of working people and nationally oppressed.

These forces must unite to overturn the war program of the White House and Pentagon which only robs the people of their rights to decent housing, education, food, water, environmental justice and all other necessities of modern life. A new foreign policy must be developed which defunds the defense department and dismantles the U.S. bases which are waging war around the globe.

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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: Central African Republic solidarity demonstration with Russia. All images in this article are from Abayomi Azikiwe

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This was originally published on Global Research in April 2002.

Critics of the US war machine frequently cite U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s seminal speech in which he uncannily predicted the threat the “US military industrial complex” would pose to America and the world.

In 1961, Eisenhower, a retired U.S. Army general who led the allied invasion of Germany in WWII, uttered these prescient words,

 ” . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together . . .”

If only the citizenry had listened.

Eisenhower’s feared military industrial complex has been swept aside by the U.S. War Corporation. It took just 42 years for the War Corporation to eliminate the dividing line between the U.S. military and U.S. industry and eradicate the troublesome provisions of Posse Comitatus—an 1878 law that forbids military involvement in most domestic affairs, including law enforcement. The War Corporation has its tentacles in every element of the American political, military, economic and cultural milieu, and it affects the lives of every citizen in every country on the planet. It operates in the heavens, has claimed the Earth’s moon and, perhaps, through the U.S. Air Force’s Planetary Defense operation, has some Strangelovian designs for Mars.

The United States of America has been at war with the world since Eisenhower made his remarks 42 years ago. From 1961 to 2002, the War Corporation has fueled the fires of death and destruction in every corner of the globe in order to make the world safe-for-profit, using the clever ruses of freedom and democracy. The evidence is astounding and sickening: the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the bombing of Libya, the indiscriminant offshore shelling of Lebanon by U.S. battleships, the invasion of Grenada, the invasion of Panama, the Persian Gulf War, daily bombings of Iraq in the “no fly zone,” ill-conceived military interventions into Somalia and Haiti, cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and innocents in Sudan, U.S. state-sponsored assassinations in Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Congo, Rwanda, Brazil, Colombia, a likely resumption of nuclear testing, and, finally, the War in Afghanistan and the War on Terrorism.

To make some interventions more palatable to the public, the Pentagon devised Orwellian-sounding code names to convey “good intentions”—Operations Provide Comfort (Kurdistan), Noble Eagle (the War on Terrorism), Enduring Freedom (War in Afghanistan), Restore Hope (Somalia), Just Cause (Panama), Uphold Democracy (Haiti), Guardian Retrieval (Zaire), Shepherd Venture (Guinea-Bissau), Noble Response (Kenya), and one that could have only been devised by a military Freemason with entirely too much time on his hands, Noble Obelisk (Sierra Leone).

How many wars will a society tolerate until it says no more?

Arms for All

Consider the despicable global arms trade in which the U.S. dominates. The U.S. will sell weapons, gear and training to all comers with cash or a country with exploitable geography and resources. The U.S. War Corporation counts as its clients Chad, with an annual per capita income of $230, and Kenya, whose law enforcement is skilled at “common methods of torture . . . including hanging persons upside down for long periods, genital mutilation, electric shocks, and deprivation of air by submersion of the head in water,” according to the Council for a Livable World (CLW). Despite all this, the American citizenry refuses to heed Eisenhower’s warning and has taken its liberty “for granted,” placing its trust in U.S. officials who see “evil” and threats in every corner.

For this ignorance-of-the-damned, the American people have now brought upon themselves the militarization of American society that Eisenhower so feared, and that Herbert Marcuse so eloquently described in One Dimensional Man. The American people are routinely psyop’ed by the War Corporation into an “us-versus-them” mentality; we’re right, your wrong—no argument allowed. Is it any surprise that a less enlightened retired U.S. Army general, Colin Powell, recently admitted that the War on Terrorism will never end “in our lifetime”? Today, sadly, the U.S. War Corporation has taken almost complete control of America and has marshaled its entire war machinery against approximately 33 foreign terrorist groups, numbering perhaps 5,000 to 8,000 individuals who are mostly impoverished and oppressed by ruthless regimes who retaliate with the armaments, strategies and tactics purchased from the U.S. War Corporation.

GlobalIssues.org reports that close to $1 trillion dollars is spent on worldwide military expenditures and the international weapons trade. They rightly point out that globalization has caused weapons makers to take a globalization and porous border approach to selling weapons. In the words of one U.S. “defense” contractor, “We have no allegiance, this is a business and we sell to whatever country can afford them.” The CLW’s research indicates that U.S. military spending comprises over half (53 percent) of total discretionary spending ($755 billion), an increase from 48 percent in fiscal year 2001. The proposed military budget of $396.1 billion is 15 percent higher than the average Cold War budget, even in today’s dollars. CLW reports that from 1946 to 1989 the U.S. budget authority for defense was an average of $343 billion a year (fiscal year 2003 dollars). In terms of outlays, according to the Senate Budget Committee minority staff, the proposed spending in fiscal year 2003 exceeds the Cold War average by $44 billion. How much money is enough?

Forget the Poor

Just a fraction of what is spent on defense might—probably would—eliminate many of the conditions that breed terrorists in today’s world. Oscar Arias Sanchez, the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner and former President of Costa Rica declared, “The world’s priorities are wrong. With just a small amount of what the world spends on defense, we could address poverty, inequality, illiteracy, disease, environmental degradation, and drought.”

In 2002, the War Corporation’s “center-of-gravity or nexus of operations,” as it is known in war-speak, is in the Washington, D.C., metro region and includes the U.S. presidency and U.S. Congress, uniformed and non-uniformed war contractors (to include the four military branches, weapons manufacturers and mercenaries), war intelligence agencies, various war departments operating under Zemyatinesqe names like the Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Justice, and President of the United States. Even toy companies and bubble gum trading card companies are in on the war gig. And why not? It is the number one business in America. For just $45 American children can have their very own “Tora Bora Ted, Swift Freedom Delta Force Night OPS” action figure to replace GI Joe. Operation Enduring Freedom bubble gum cards are also on the streets. No, not even children are spared the insanity of the War Corporation’s propaganda.

A major U.S. War Corporation bureau of information—NBC News—is owned by major weapons contractor General Electric, which runs advertisements extolling the virtues of its global reach. According to globalissues.org, America’s leading weapons maker, Lockheed Martin, ran an advertisement claiming “the perception of peace means less jobs for Americans.” But the Turks build F16s, not Americans. Another Lockheed Martin propaganda piece claimed the F-22 was an antiwar plane. Many advertisements run on all the major networks emphasized that a better fighter plane would ensure loved ones can come back home. The U.S. Congress buys these claims, in the fishing metaphor, hook-line- and sinker. Between 1990 and 2002, opensecrets.org reports that the U.S. War Corporation weapons makers contributed more than $67 million to the U.S. Congress to protect their global interests. In one of the more crass instances of U.S. “defense” contractor lobbying, the weapons contractors defeated a U.S. congressional resolution recognizing Turkey’s culpability in the Armenian genocide in 1919. The reason? Turkey threatened to cancel U.S. military contracts.

The War Corporation influences politics and economics in every state of the American Union and as far away as provinces in China, on the sparsely populated Cook Islands in the South Pacific, and in more familiar places like Nicaragua, where it recently fixed the outcome of a national election, and Colombia, where the U.S. War Corporation helped assassinate a Catholic bishop opposed to the U.S. puppet regime there.

Profiting From Middle East Bloodshed

Perhaps nowhere is the War Corporation’s influence seen more vividly than in the current turmoil in the Middle East. The U.S. Department of State is completely militarized under the regime of Colin Powell—who helped whitewash the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, his deputy Richard Armitage—a former U.S. Special Forces and CIA dirty tricks operator in Southeast Asia, and Middle East Special Envoy retired US Marine Corps General and American proconsul Anthony Zinni. These so-called “diplomats” are the major U.S. players ostensibly responsible for bringing “peace” to the region. But as Robin Wright, a respected Middle East expert, pointed out in her column in the Los Angeles Times on March 31, 2002, even Kuwait has had enough of U.S. duplicity in the region.

“11 years after Kuwait was freed, about 4,000 demonstrators rallied at Flag Square in Kuwait City to denounce Israel and the United States. With the speaker of the Kuwaiti parliament and other top ministers present, the crowd shouted, “No god but Allah! America enemy of Allah!” and “Muslims, Muslims unite! Death to Israel, death to America!” the Reuters news agency reported.

In a reflection of shifting sentiments over the last 18 months, since the latest Palestinian Intifada began, the crowd also roared, “America and Zionism are against the Muslim nation!” Rallying on behalf of the Palestinians and against the United States is particularly ironic because the Palestinians sided with Iraq, not the Kuwaiti monarchy, during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.” But that’s of little consequence to the U.S. War Corporation.

Most Middle East analysts, from ex-Reagan administration department heads to former President Jimmy Carter—experts who have traditionally remained committed to even-handedness in their commentaries—are blaming the Bush administration, and primarily the State Department, for allowing events to explode out of control in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There should be little wonder why the U.S. chose passive disengagement over active engagement. After all, as Israel commits more occupying troops to the West Bank and Gaza, they will require more U.S. weaponry—tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, and consultants from the likes of MPRI and Dyncorp. And who will profit from prolonging bloodshed in the Middle East? The U.S. War Corporation and its surrogates.

In the fiscal year 2002 budget, Israel was allotted $2.04 billion in U.S. military aid. Under a memorandum of understanding signed between the U.S. and Israel on January 19, 2001, just a day before Bush’s appointment to the US presidency, U.S. military aid to Israel will likely grow to $2.4 billion by 2008. As Israel’s right-wing militaristic government continues to flex its muscles, its Arab neighbors will increase their own military stockpiles. Three of them—Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia—are among the largest recipients of U.S. military weaponry. From 1999 to 2000, Egypt received $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid and Jordan got $123 million. While Saudi Arabia receives no outright U.S. military assistance, it has bought over $33.5 billion of the most sophisticated U.S. weapons systems (AWACS, F-15’s and more) over the past 10 years. That’s more than U.S. military assistance given to Israel and Egypt combined.

Among the most vociferous propagandists of the Bush administration’s ratcheting up of Middle East tensions, ludicrous military spending, and U.S. takeover of the Persian Gulf and Middle East are retired U.S. military generals whose telephone numbers cram every cable and non-cable network producers’ Rolodex. The current crop of Pentagon generals and admirals unknowingly betray a long tradition of senior U.S. military officers refraining from political activity. Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and George Marshall refrained from voting, reflecting their desire for political neutrality among the officer corps. But that is of no consequence to the troupe of military officers who mock Dwight Eisenhower.

Weapons Everyone, Weapons!

According to a Congressional Research Service study, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, poor countries bought 68 percent of U.S. weapons output. American weapons producers signed contracts for some $18.6 billion dollars in 2000, up from around $12.9 billion dollars the previous year. U.S. contracts accounted for 49.7 percent of global sales in 2000 and the U.S. controlled half of the developing world’s arms market with $12.6 billion in sales. CLW commented that “this dominance of the global arms market is not something in which the American public or policy makers should applaud. The U.S. routinely sells weapons to undemocratic regimes and gross human rights abusers.” That list of countries includes those that Americans believe are trustworthy allies. These include Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Turkmenistan and Turkey.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, War Corporation member, Joint Strike Fighter winner and largest weapons producer—Lockheed Martin—is busy behind the scenes operating home mortgage tracking databases for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and providing state and local law enforcement and correctional facilities with an “Integrated Justice Information System,” a platform which “integrates and modernize systems for law enforcement, courts, and corrections.” Why do they need that business? The rationale behind the “commercial” ventures, and for those of every weapons contractor, is to make sure that enough profit is made courtesy of public largesse to keep weapons production lines open.

While Lockheed Martin personnel are hailed as “heroes,” few know that Lockheed’s mixed history includes bribing Japanese government officials in 1976. That action led fellow War Corporation member, the U.S. Congress, to pass the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 1977. And as of 2000, Lockheed Martin and the majority of U.S. weapons manufacturers refused to renounce production of landmines and their deployment along the Korean demilitarized zone and other killing fields in Africa and South Asia.

Landmines

On that cheery note, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines reports that the U.S. government admantly refuses to ban or place a moratorium on the production of antipersonnel mines. According to the United States Campaign to Ban Landmines, those devices kill 18,000 people a year, most of them civilians. The stockpile cap announced on January 17, 1997, does not preclude the production of new antipersonnel mines to replace those used in future combat operations. Former US Army Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, who was recently portrayed by Mel Gibson in the movie When We Were Soldiers, in a letter to President Bush, stated, “landmines pose a particularly grave threat to refugees and the internally displaced as they seek to return home and rebuild their lives.” He and other retired military veterans urged Bush to sign the international Mine Ban Treaty in a March 12, 2002, letter.

Yet, the U.S. War Corporation ignores their pleas. The U.S. is currently producing M87A1 Volcano mine canisters containing antivehicle mines at the Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant in Texarkana, Texas. This is a government-owned facility operated by War Corporate member Day and Zimmerman. Although the production of these mines is scheduled to end next November, the death and mayhem caused by these inhuman weapons have already been dealt.

In the end, the worst hit are the young people of the world. Because many anti-personnel mines look like toys, children have been attracted to them, with many losing their arms, legs, and eyesight, if not their lives. But there can never be too many weapons. The problem of overproduction was solved by George Orwell’s “Oceania” in 1984: “As for the problem of overproduction . . . it is solved by the device of continuous warfare, which is also useful in keying up public morale to the necessary pitch.”

Dwight Eisenhower, igonored by the U.S. War Corporation in his post-presidency, uttered words seemingly too lofty for the current generation of war mongers to understand:

 ” . . . Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war—as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years—I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.”

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

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There are very few things in this world that can leave me almost speechless.  This is one of them.

Dropping all pretense of their hidden ideology, Reuters is reporting exclusively that Facebook and Instagram have modified their terms and conditions to permit advocacy and support for the Nazi party in Ukraine (Azov Regiment), and they have modified their violence terms to allow platform users to advocate for death to Russians.

I don’t quite know where to begin.  However, this report from Reuters does actually make sense based on some pictures that were floating around a few days ago.  The pictures show U.S. military “advisors” training Ukrainian neo-Nazi’s in the Azov regiment how to use FGM-148 javelin missiles.

It would be odd if Big Tech were generically against all Nazi’s, while U.S. military advisors are in Ukraine training specific Azov Regiment Nazi’s to fight Russians.   The Javelin missile system, pictured above, is what Ukraine is using to defeat Russian tanks and armored vehicles.  The U.S. is sending the Ukraine military thousands of them.  Apparently arming and training Nazis is okay right now.

The Reuter’s article notes:

“Emails also showed that Meta would allow praise of the right-wing Azov battalion, which is normally prohibited, in a change first reported by The Intercept.  Meta spokesman Joe Osborne previously said the company was “for the time being, making a narrow exception for praise of the Azov Regiment strictly in the context of defending Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine National Guard.” (link)

March 10 (Reuters) –

Meta Platforms (FB.O) will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy.

The social media company is also temporarily allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland, according to internal emails to its content moderators.

“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

The calls for the leaders’ deaths will be allowed unless they contain other targets or have two indicators of credibility, such as the location or method, one email said, in a recent change to the company’s rules on violence and incitement.

The temporary policy changes on calls for violence to Russian soldiers apply to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine, according to one email.

[…] “We are issuing a spirit-of-the-policy allowance to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the Hate Speech policy when: (a) targeting Russian soldiers, EXCEPT prisoners of war, or (b) targeting Russians where it’s clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (e.g., content mentions the invasion, self-defense, etc.),” it said in the email. (read more)

For almost fifteen years we have been outlining the connection of the Obama and EU ideologues to Nazism.  This is something that everyone associated with the Democrat Party have denied repeatedly.   Now, all of a sudden, Facebook and Instagram, the support system in Big Tech for the ideology of Democrats, is openly admitting a change in position allowing public support for Nazism on their platforms.

This is a remarkable moment.

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Anyone following social media’s “Community Standards” knows how selectively they are enforced. Your humble writer was permanently banned from Twitter in 2019 for using a word to describe Sean Hannity’s mental slowness that is otherwise used perhaps millions of times per day by others with full impunity. Likewise, calls for violence against Sen. Rand Paul are also made routinely with impunity, in direct violation of the stated “Community Standards.”

But even the hypocrisy and cynicism we have seen to this point by Big Social Media does not prepare one for a shocking development today, as first reported by Reuters and then picked up by the Washington Post: Facebook (and Facebook-owned Instagram) have “updated” their “Community Standards” guidelines and will now allow calls for violence against Russians.

Yes that’s right. Russians – not the Russian government or the Russian economy, or even top Russian political figures but just plain old Russians – are now subject to new guidelines that ALLOW rather than forbid “Hate Speech” and even actual calls for violence!

EXCLUSIVE Facebook and Instagram to temporarily allow calls for violence against Russians https://t.co/dhcObdoDk6 pic.twitter.com/QVokunNzyx

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 10, 2022

For those who felt that Japanese internment camps and “colored” drinking fountains were a disgusting chapter, thankfully relegated to the dustbin of history, who were sure that we’ve moved far beyond such primitive racism and violence, here’s a reminder that lurking just below the surface and subject to re-activation by the powers-that-be in the propaganda machine is that same old violent hatred of others. And social media is more than happy to accommodate the wishes of its governmental masters.

It is very clear that we are not progressing as a society toward ever-more liberal values. We are regressing to a violent, feral state. Endlessly looking inward for enemies to destroy. “Anti-vaxxers,” Trump voters, and now just plain old everyday Russians. Kill them. They are evil. Is this OK?

Facebook, a de facto arm of government, is now encouraging calls for violence against innocent people who happen to be of a particular race or ethnic background or linguistic group.

Race-hate of an unpopular ethnic and religions group? Haven’t we seen this horrific movie before?

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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 condemns 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.

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President Biden on Friday said that a direct conflict between NATO and Russia would mean World War III amid growing calls for the US to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would involve direct fighting with Russia.

In order to impose a no-fly zone, the US and NATO would need to shoot down Russian planes and take out surface-to-air missiles that are inside Russia. Despite the risk of war with Russia, which could quickly turn nuclear, some members of Congress are warming to the idea.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) was one of the first members of Congress to outright call for the US to impose a no-fly zone. Since then, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has warmed to the idea, and Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) has said she’s in favor of the no-fly zone.

This week, Politico published an open letter signed by 27 foreign policy “experts” that urged the Biden administration to impose a “limited” no-fly zone over Ukraine. But since Russian air defense missiles can shoot down planes across Ukraine, the prospect of a “limited” no-fly zone is impossible.

The idea of a no-fly zone is also getting favorable media coverage, with some outlets publishing op-eds arguing endorsing the idea.

One of the no-fly zone’s biggest proponents of the no-fly zone is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who uses every opportunity he gets to call on the West to “close the sky.”

So far, the Biden administration is holding firm on not fighting Russia directly in Ukraine through a no-fly zone or boots on the ground.

“We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine. Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent,” Biden said.

In an interview with MSNBC on Friday, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby explained why the US couldn’t impose a no-fly zone.

“It is combat,” he said. “There’s no way you could do that without being willing to shoot and be shot at. It is combat, and I don’t think it’s in anybody’s interest, certainly not Ukraine’s interest, for the United States and Russia to be getting in a war in their airspace.”

While standing firm on the no-fly zone, the Biden administration is still risking provoking Moscow by flooding Ukraine with weapons and sharing intelligence with the Ukrainians as they fight Russia.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Featured image is from Yves Engler

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One of the most criminal aspects of the COVID regime was the decision to pressure low-risk teens into getting a shot that was known to cause cardiac inflammation. Myocarditis used to be a rare disorder discussed mainly in academic literature, but now it is everywhere. What have we done to a generation of young hearts, and what is being done to detect, diagnose, and treat the problem? Unless we can find an angle that ties in to Ukraine, our politicians, media, and medical establishment don’t care.

We are over a year into the known safety signals of this vaccine for myocarditis, and yet the shots still have not been pulled, even for younger males. In fact, it’s still a requirement in many colleges. Yet reports of myocarditis and pericarditis are so prevalent now that just in the first eight weeks of 2022, we’re already at 47% of the total VAERS submissions for 2021. There were 24,177 reports of pericarditis/myocarditis submitted to VAERS in 2021. In 2022, just through Feb. 25, there were 11,289 reports, which is nearly half of last year’s total. Here is the graphic presentation from Open VAERS:

The reporting to VAERS is very disturbing because the trend line of vaccination, especially for the younger people more prone to this heart inflammation, has halted to a trickle in recent weeks. So why are there so many more reports this year? There are likely two possible explanations. Either more people and doctors know about VAERS and know to look for myocarditis, or there is a time bomb with many more people now realizing they have heart problems months later. Either way, this means that the initial estimates of case prevalence were just the tip of the iceberg, and we are likely to see young hearts damaged for years to come.

What is so shocking is that several weeks ago, the CDC recognized the problem and attempted to get ahead of it by suggesting that “an 8-week interval may be optimal for some people ages 12 years and older, especially for males ages 12 to 39 years.” But historically, if we recognized even a fraction of heart problems from a shot, it would have been pulled from the market entirely! Yet here they are still recommending it, despite the fact that the virus poses low risk for this age group, notwithstanding the fact that the shot doesn’t stop transmission and that it is now outdated for the current strain of the virus!

If the reporting of myocarditis and pericarditis continues at this rate, we’ll see over 73,000 cases this year. And even if more people have become aware of VAERS, it is still woefully underreported.

It’s not acceptable (and never was) for the media and the pharma-paid “fact checkers” to automatically dismiss VAERS. It is our main pharmaco-surveillance tool and was put in place precisely to serve as the consolation to the public for Congress absolving vaccine manufactures of liability. Also, the data complements what we’ve learned universally from all the myocarditis vaccine studies – that it targets teens and early 20s more than other age groups and is more potent after the second dose. Here is the age breakdown of the VAERS reporting:

The CDC’s own researchers published a study in JAMA in which they clinically confirmed most of the myocarditis submissions to VAERS. As such, they concluded, “Given the high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination, underreporting is more likely. Therefore, the actual rates of myocarditis per million doses of vaccine are likely higher than estimated.”

Moreover, now we have documents released via FOIA showing that Pfizer admits VAERS is a robust and legitimate safety signal reporting tool. In a document from March 2020 titled, “WAIVER REQUEST FOR FDA-DESIGNATED SUFFIX FOR BIOLOGICS,” Pfizer responds to an FDA consideration that the shots might need a new adverse event monitoring system by advocating that “Pfizer believes that an additional suffix for COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine (nucleoside modified) would be burdensome and redundant as the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has existing methods to ensure safe dispensing and optimal pharmacovigilance of vaccines.” They referred to the existing methods as “robust” and listed VAERS as one of the tools.

Thus, Pfizer can’t have it both ways. If VAERS was a good enough system to support its licensure agreement, then it must be held accountable for the blaring safety signals emanating from the existing system. We also now know that Pfizer knew of over 1,200 fatalities early on, adverse events in 23% of the trial group, hundreds of categories of severe adverse events, understood the injection does not stay in the injection site, and was aware of the fact that 16% of the lipid nanoparticles are deposited in the liver. Pfizer also lied and stated that the shots provide “Active immunisation to prevent COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2,” as if it were a fully sterilizing vaccine. They also conceded early on in the newly released document (p. 24) that the inflammation increases with the second and third doses.

In other words, all this paints a picture that there is zero safety net for the public, and the sky is the limit in terms of the scope and severity of adverse events we will see in the coming months. The public already knows this, at least subconsciously, because we are now seeing warnings about cardio surveillance programs for athletes, as numerous athletes continue to drop suddenly.

For this academic year, the Orange County, California, public school system put out a new warning for its athletics department to now mandate electrocardiogram (ECG) screenings for all high school students signed up for athletic programs. The reason? “ECG screenings help identify athletes who are at risk for sudden cardiac arrest which is the leading cause of death in athletics.” Why beginning in 2021-2022? What changed? And why won’t they identify those who got the shots as the culprits? Well, some of these same California schools are stilling requiring this shot!

Unfortunately, electrocardiograms are often insufficient to detect myocarditis early on, according to several cardiologists I’ve spoken to who have been treating vaccine-induced cardiac injury. Cardiac MRIs are needed to detect scabbing, but insurance companies don’t want to pay for them. Our government has a responsibility to pay for cardiac MRIs in young males who’ve received the shots, so they can detect latent heart inflammation before it’s too late.

In 1999, when our government still cared about human beings, the RotaShield vaccine for rotavirus was pulled from the market after just 10,000 infants received it because of a suspected potential 1/2,500 risk of intussusception, a rare disorder causing the blockage of the intestines. At the time, the CDC strongly encouraged the use of VAERS to surveil the extent of the problem. Now, with hundreds of potentially dangerous ailments, they won’t stop the vaccine even for those at the lowest risk for COVID and the highest risk for myocarditis – even after the pandemic was declared over and even for a vaccine that no longer works.

Just how prevalent is myocarditis? In one emergency room at the University of Tel Aviv Medical Center, there were eight cases of myocarditis in a small age group after having received the shots, according to a study published in Circular. This was in February and March 2021, before practitioners were even on alert for this safety signal. In another study published in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, eight adolescents presented over the course of 36 days to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami with perimyocarditis. These were just the people who presented within 4 days of receiving a dose of the Pfizer shot, shortly after it was approved for this age group.

Ironically, the longer we go on promoting and mandating the shots, instead of pulling them from the market – despite the dreadful degree of safety problems – the more it acclimates the public to the new normal of “sacrifice” and tolerance for an even greater degree of risk in order to “do the right thing.” Which raises the bar even further so that anything short of proving with the scientific method that 50% of people will die from it will be insufficient for pulling the gene therapy. We are like frogs in boiling water.

Nobody explained it better than Stefan Oelrich, head of Bayer’s pharmaceutical division, at the 2021 World Health Summit (at 1:37:25). Gleefully trumpeting the future of “cell and gene therapy,” Oelrich touted the mRNA shots as the first triumph of this technology. “If we had surveyed two years ago the public if you were willing to take gene or cell therapy and inject it into your body we would have probably had a 95% refusal rate,” said Oelrich with a twinkle in his eye. “I think this pandemic has also opened many people’s eyes to innovation in a way that maybe was not possible before.”

Indeed! The new normal. Just wait until the next mRNA and you will heartily embrace the taste of innovation.

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Introduction

The civil and political human rights (CPR) require that the government should not interfere in people’s efforts to assure freedom of speech, freedom of press and other types of freedom. If the government prevents the freedom, it violates the CPR.

On the other hand, the economic, social and cultural human rights (ESCR) refer to the people’s right to a decent and dignified life. To be more precise, the ESCR means the right to decent housing, enough foods, sound clothing, effective public health, rewarding education, fair equality and other goods and services. 

It is the government’s responsibility to provide these goods and services or, at least, create the conditions and environment which facilitate the access to these rights. If the government fails to provide these goods and services, it violates the ESCR.

In this paper, I will discuss to what extent China and the U.S. violate the ESCR. This paper has the following sections.

First, I will compare the economies of China and the U.S., because the level of the economy has significant bearing on the ESCR. In principle, the higher the level of the economy, the greater should be the protection of ESCR. So, a priori, one should expect that in the U.S. the ESCR should be better protected than in China.

Second, I will compare the degree of the violation of the ESCR in China and the U.S. The comparison will be done for each type of the ESCR.

Third, I will discuss the impact of the corruption culture on the SECR.

Fourth, I will sum up the findings of this paper.

U.S. Economy and Chinese Economy

Before anything else, the speed at which the Chinese economy has been catching up with the American economy is just amazing. The following table shows some of the amazing features of the Chinese economy.

It is amazing to see that Chinese nominal GDP is already 72.4% of the American GDP. In the past, no country had its economy passing beyond 40% of the US economy. The Japanese economy once represented 37% of the American economy. If we consider the purchasing power parity, the Chinese GDP (PPP) already went beyond the American economy.

Yet, China is still a poor country. Its nominal per capita GDP is still 16.8% of the American per capita GNP. Therefore, we would expect that the economic, social and cultural rights be better protected and promoted in the U.S. But, as we will see, that is not the case.

Table: Economy of China and the U.S. 2021

 

ESCR Violation in China and the U.S.

The following areas of ESCR violation are discussed: inequality of income, housing right, medicare right, education right and group right.

Inequality of Income

China: There is little data on the state of inequality in China. One of the indices of the shape of income distribution is the Gini coefficient which varies between zero to 100. The higher the Gini coefficient, the more skewed is the income distribution in favour of the rich. In recent years, the Gini coefficient was 47 in China as against 49 in the U.S.

The Gini coefficient is supposed to decline as the per capita GDP increases. As we saw in the table above, the Chinese per capita GDP is mere 16.8% of the American per capita GDP. Yet, the American income distribution is abnormally unequal in favour of the rich. Here are some of the data which attest to this reality.

• 70% of households has had zero net asset increase in the period 1989-2019
• The top 1% of households gets 32% of household assets
• 40 million households find themselves in poverty representing 12% of the total number of households
• New York Times (2019.09.10) reported that the rich lived longer than the poor
• The chief executive of the largest MNE gets hourly income which is the annual income of the average worker
• Ten CEO of S&P 500 Index Companies earn 1,000 times the income of ordinary worker
• The US Congress refused for decades to increase the minimum wage of $7.25

Housing Right

China: The Chinese housing system is based on the government’s land ownership and privatization of construction, distribution and management. 

In the 1980s, 90% of the housing stock was rental and the rent was 1% to 3% of tenant’s income. However, in the period 1996-1998, 60% of the housing stock was sold to individuals. In 2020, 95% of the housing stock was owner-occupied.

The notion of home ownership is unique. The land belongs to the state so that the home owner is a tenant to be exact. The owner buys the occupation-right for 70 years without paying tax except once at the time of the contract. This is intended to prevent real estate speculation. Lately, there was a scandal of the Construction Company, Evergrande’s real estate speculation. But this was for the non-residential properties.

The Chinese housing system allows the citizens to spend a lifetime rental dwelling with relative security and safety with little fear of eviction.

In China, there are homeless people, but they are the victims of natural disasters. They are not homeless due to the shortage of dwellings or housing discrimination or excessive rent burden.

US: In the U.S., the production, distribution and management of housing is determined by the free market relying on the “invisible hands” (the price mechanism). However, the invisible hands become visible (real estate speculation and corruption of the real estate market) and distorts the housing market.

The textbook of microeconomics says that in order for the invisible hands (the price mechanism) to work, there should be no monopoly, no oligopoly; both the consumer and the supplier of housing should have complete market information, the houses should be geographically mobile. We know that such market does not exist.

The worst condition which prevents the housing market from doing its job is the distorted income distribution in favour of the rich. As we saw above, the American income distribution is the most distorted among the developed countries.

It is not surprising that the home ownership in the country of Uncle Sam dropped from 70% in 2004 to 60% in 2016. But, in 2022, it rose to 64%.

The home ownership is the central component of the “American Dream.” It is now threatened.

No less than one third of Americans live in rental dwelling. The problem is the fact that the great number of tenants has to allocate more that 30% of their income. If the rental burden exceeds 30% of income, the tenant has to sacrifice other expenses, especially, those for children education and health care.

In 2022, 40% of American tenants pay more than 35% of household income.

In the United States, one of the ugly phenomena is the increasing number of the homeless. They occupy a whole block of cities and even threaten the safety and hygiene of the city population.

In the U.S., in 2019 no less than 568,000 people were the homeless. In Los Angeles alone, there were 41,290 homeless people in 2019. In New York City, in 2019, there were 48,690 homeless people.

Medicare Right

China: In the public health programs, there is the basic medical insurance and supplementary medical aid for the poor.

There are two Basic Medical Insurance systems: the employee basic medical insurance (EBMI) and residential basic medical insurance (RBMI).

In China, 95% of Chinese has medical insurance. The rate of reimbursement is 70% to 80%. As for the medical aid, since 2018, 480,000,000 low income people benefitted from it.

US: The U.S., the richest country in the world has one of the most complex piecemeal and the most expensive health insurance system in the world. In 2019, 56% of American population had private insurance, of which 50% was employer initiated insurance, the remaining 6% being non-group insurance.

The government-run insurance programs comprise the Medicare and the Medicaid. The Medicare is for the old-aged people of 65 plus and some young people. No more than 14% of Americans benefit from it. On the other hand, 20% of Americans benefit from the Medicaid program. This program is for low income people. In addition, there is the military medical insurance.

The American health system has two basic problems.

First, almost 10 % of Americans have no medical insurance. It is just incredible to see that the wealthiest country in the whole cannot provide minimum medical insurance to all citizens.

Second, it is too expensive. The average annual medical expenditure of Americas is as much as USD 12,000. As long as more than half of the entire population have to rely on private insurance companies for medical service, the cost of medical service is bound to rise.

According to the LA Times (2019.01.23), about 65,000,000, representing 19.0% of American population cannot have medical treatment due to cost. And, 15,000,000 are unable to pay prescribed drugs.

Education Right

China: In China, the citizens have access to free public education including post-secondary education. Nonetheless, at the college level, students are expected to pay $400 to $2,200 a year. At private colleges, students pay up to % 9,000. It is estimated that the cost which the undergrad students pay is 2% of what undergrad students pay in the U.S. 

US: The American education system is perhaps the most sophisticated system in the world. It is also the most expensive system in the world. This is translated by students’ debts. To illustrate this point, it is known that in 2019 students’ debts were as much as USD 1.5 trillion, which was the South Korean GDP. Moreover, as many as 18% of the total number of 2-year college students are homeless students.

It is true that the American education system produces many of the best brains in the world. But, it produces also the inevitable consequences of alienating the less educated and increasing the risk of violating the human rights of the weak.

I think that it is important that graduates of the ivy league universities and the big businesses leaders should be aware of the fact that they are there at the top of the social hierarchy due partly to the public goods (social and industrial infrastructure facilities, national defence, security, diplomacy, public education and so many other public goods) produced by the whole of the population including the poor, the weak, and the less talented.

They should not think that they are at the top of the society due to their competence alone. They should not ignore their obligation toward the poor, the weak and the less talented.

I am asking: “Does the CEO of a large corporation have the right to earn in one hour what the average worker earns in one year?”

Minority Group Rights

China: In China, 90% of the population is represented by the Han Chinese. There are 58 minority racial groups. There are no reported cases of the violation of group rights.

However, in the region of Guangzhou, the place of the concentration of African population, in some restaurants, one reads “The Africans are not allowed to restaurants.” This is clearly a violation of the Africans’ rights to choose the place to eat.

The U.S.: In the U.S. we see the wide spread phenomena of group discrimination leading to the negation of the access to the right of decent and dignified life. We see bellow some cases of the violation of group rights.

Afro-American are easy victims of judicial and penal system discrimination. They are 5.9 times more likely to be incarcerated. As for the religious discrimination, no less than 82% of Muslim Americans admit to have had experience of religious discrimination.

The results of the Pew Research Center Survey 2019 “Race in America” are interesting:

• 46% says that the government has no done enough for racial discrimination
• 58% says that the situation is getting worse
• 76% of Afro-American and Asians had racial discrimination experience
• 58% of Latino had the same experience
• Here is the proportion of those who said that it was Donald Trump who made the situation worse: Afro-American, 73%; Latino 69%; Asians, 65%

The women are the very vulnerable victims of discrimination. In fact, the US does not seem to have a sincere wish to prevent discrimination against women; the US has not signed the international convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against women.

Here is some of information on the seriousness of discrimination against women.

According to the Website of the Everytown Research Report (2019.10.17), the US is the most dangerous place for women in the world.

• In 2015, 92% of women killed with guns in high income countries took place in the US
• In the US, women are 21 times more likely to be killed by guns than in peer countries
• 50% o women killed by guns is by present or former intimate partners
• Every day, 50 women are killed by intimate partners
• 4,500,000 women are threatened by guns
• A CNN Report says that 70% of women have had experience of sexual violence in life
• The Jama International Medicine reports that 3,000,000 women aged 18-44 were raped at the first time they had sexual relation
• UN Women Report (2019.11.24) says that 24% of female undergrad of universities are sexually assaulted

In the U.S., the worst kind of racial discrimination is the hate discrimination.

• The US Today (2019.06.27) reports that at the college campus, 122 extreme racial propaganda were published in 32 states
• In 2019, in El Passo, 22 people were killed by white supremacists
• On 2019.12.17, the Mississippi prosecutor has excluded Afro-Americans from trials since he took office.
• According to the FBI 2019 Report, among 1,617 victims of antireligious hate, 56.9% was against Jews and 14.6%, against Muslims
• FBI Data (2019.11.11) show that, in 2018, of 7,036 hate crimes, 57.5% was against race/ethnicity/ancestor biased; 42.1% .
• The Guardian Website (2019.08.04) reported that in Walmart Supermarket in a Texas Border city, a 21-year-old boy, Patrick Crucius, drove 650 miles to kill 22 people for the reason for their being Hispanic.
• According to CNN Report (2019.12.2, 14-year girl was walking to Indian Hill High Junior School, when a vehicle drove on the sidewalk and ran over the girl

The discrimination against indigenous people is still there; 28% of them had had discrimination experience. The Republic Radio (2019.11.18) says that a considerable number of indigenous households have no plumbing facilities.

The job discrimination is also threatening Afro-Americans-Latino-Asians. They represent 36% of American population but they take up 58% of miscellaneous jobs and 70% of baggage porter jobs, bell hop jobs or concierge jobs.

• In 2018, the income of Afro-Americans was 62% of the white’s income.
• According to the Bureau of Statistics (2019. 11.), in 2018, women received 81% of male’s wage.
• According to the Huffpost (2019.12.04), the US is the only country that does not guarantee paid time for new mom
• According to the WBUR Report (2019.10.28) on the low-wage jobs, in the case of the white, only 20% had low wage job as against 46% for Latinos

The visible minorities are subject to racial insults.

At workplace, the Afro-Americans are often told to “go back to Africa.”

• According to CNN Report (2019.08.28), at the Oklahoma TV Station, white co-anchor called the black anchor as “gorilla.”

Housing discrimination is an integral part of the malaise of the American society.

According to various data sources, 17% of Native Americans, 31% of Latinos, 25% of Asians and 45% of Afro-American have had housing discrimination experience. Not surprisingly, only 5 % the white has had the similar experiences.

• The value of dwellings inhabited by the Afro-American worth $ 48,000 less compared to dwellings inhabited by the white
• The Native Hawaiian represent 10% Hawaiian population, but, they represent 39% of homeless
• Among the indigenous people 59 out of 1,000 have no plumbing

The school discrimination is another ugly side of the richest country in the world. 

• The white school board gets $ 13,908 per students as against $11,682 for the black school board
• The number of enrolment is discriminatory. In the white school board, it is 1,500 as against 10,000 for the black school board.
• Black students are 3 times most likely to be suspended compared to the white students. In the South, 100% of the suspended is the black children 

Child abuse is perhaps the worst kind of human right violation.

• Department of Health and Human Service (2019.01.28) reported that there were 647,000 victims of child abuse of which 18.3% was physical abuse and 6.6% was sexual abuse
• In Indiana, in the period, 2016.07.01 – 2017.06.30, 65 children died due to abuse
• The National Center for Education Statistics (2019.04) shows that, in 2017, 827,000 children aged, 12-18, were victims of child abuse of which 503,300 took place outside the school

The abuse of the elderly is also a part of human right abuse in the U.S.

• According to the Elderly Feeding America (2019.09.19), 5,500,000 of persons aged of 65 plus did not have enough foods to eat.
• In Albany, at the nursing home, the inhabitant has to pay daily as much as $400, even if they qualify for medicaid; it amounts to $146,000 a year.
• Medical Exports Report (2019.06.14) reports that 16% of the elder is victim of mistreatment, financial exploitation, neglect, physical abuse, psychological abuse and sexual abuse.
• In 2017, ne less than 8,500 elders killed themselves

The disabled are deprived of care which they are entitled to get.

• The Center for American Progress Report (2019.07.26) said that 25% of the disable had no job
• According to Chicago Tribune (2019.07.26), a disabled person has to wait for 7 years to get into home care
• The LA Times (2019.04.01) shows that, due to government oversight, low rental housing has no facilities for wheelchair needed to go to bathroom and kitchen 

The migrants are also mistreated due to the 2018 zero-tolerance set by Trump.

• The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) shows that 5,400 children are separated from their parents at the Mexican border
• As of 2019, 2,838 children lived in poor facilities

Corruption

The corruption of political leaders and military leaders is one of the most important factors of human right violation.

China: The corruption of political leaders and military leaders is one of the most difficult challenges to handle in China. More than millions persons have been punished and, in many cases, they have been executed. But, corruption is still a part of the Chinese society.

The U.S.: In the U.S., the corruption of the political leaders can be guessed in terms of political lobbying. It is said that a few tens of thousands of lobbying people are operating in Washington. Lobbying is, in fact, the bribery paid by individuals, businesses and other organizations to politicians in order to obtain privileges which may be legal but immoral.

The problem of the lobbying culture in the U.S. is the fact that those who are not rich enough to pay the bribes are penalized in the allocation of public goods, which ends up by violating the rights of the weak and the alienated.

In the U.S. the Congressional election cost $5.7 billion. The Republican Rick Scott spent $ 6.3 million. In 2018, the largest donor gave $436 million to the PAC (Political Action Committee). This shows to what extent the American politics is governed by money and why the poor and the weak have little voice in politics.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have tried to compare the state of ESCR violation in the two global super powers. I admit that it is not always easy to judge the gravity of the violation of these human rights, because the capacity of protecting them varies greatly in relation to the level of economic development and the distribution of the fruits of economic development.

For the developing countries, it can be difficult to provide decent housing, adequate public health, productive education and other needed public goods.

Therefore, the debate is concerned with the capacity and the willingness of developed countries to provide these public goods, which varies in regime type.

In the neo-liberal countries represented by the U.S., the possibility of violating the ESCR is high, because in this regime it is the responsibility of each individual to provide what is needed to have a decent and dignified life.

This regime does not recognize the reality in which the alienation of people is the result of job-killing technologies and irresponsible skewed income distribution in favour of the rich.

Most of the developed countries including Canada have liberal politico-economic regime along with welfare programs. In developed countries with the exception of the U.S., the negative impact of the liberal regime on the unequal income distribution is dealt with by welfare system in which the inequality of income distribution is corrected by income transfer program on the one hand, and on the other, the supply of free public goods such as old-age pension, low cost public health services and low cost education and low-cost housing.

In general, economic, social and cultural rights are better protected by socialist countries for the simple reason that the major part of housing, public health, education and other public goods are provided by the government free of charge. Of course this observation can be modified depending on the quality of public goods and of the leaders’ integrity, honesty and dedication to the people’s wellbeing.

But, it seems that the violation of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) is much worse in the country of Eagle than in the nation of Dragon.

Finally, I sincerely hope that the human right debate should put focus as much on the economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) as on the civil and political rights (CPR), if not more. After all, if man dies because of poor housing condition, poor health and no job due to poor education, the freedom of speech means little.

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Dr. Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics at the Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM) and member of the Research Center on Integration and Globalization (CEIM) of UQAM.

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

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Annex

I have done my best to be objective and to compare as much as possible the state of human right violations of the two super powers which can ruin the humanity depending on the course of their mutual relations in years to come. It is understandable for China to wish to develop and make its people proud and happy.

The U.S. has saved the world from the evil of Nazism, Facism and Imperial Shintoism and international communism. It has ruled the world for almost a century and accumulated power, wealth and privileges.

Since the 1970 visit of Kissinger and the normalization of diplomatic relations with China in 1979, the U.S. has been the principal determinant of Chinese economic success and rising power.

Now China is catching up rapidly with the U.S. in terms of economic development. The Chinese nominal GDP is 72 % of the American GDP. The U.S. feels threatened by China even if China denied its intention of ruling the world. In fact, even if it wanted to, it will be almost impossible to do so partly due to its values.

Nevertheless, Washington regards China as enemy and deploys all means to contain China. One of the favoured weapons is the demonization of the nation-state through human rights violation. 

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Introductory Note

This article first published in April 2012 focusses on the “Special Relationship” between the US and the USSR. It is of utmost relevance to unfolding events in Ukraine.

While the US and the Soviet Union were allies during WWII, Prof. Alex Wellerstein documents U.S. “war preparations” against the USSR which took place in August 1945 “before the war was officially over”.

And then what happened:

The formulation of a diabolical project released by the War Department (declassified) on September 15, 1945 which consisted in dropping atomic bombs on major cities of the Soviet Union. 

 

According to this secret (declassified) document, “the Pentagon had envisaged blowing up the Soviet Union  with a coordinated nuclear attack directed against major urban areas.

All major cities of the Soviet Union were included in the list of 66 “strategic” targets. The irony is that this plan was released by the War Department prior to onset of the Cold War.

 

Access all the documents of the September 15, 1945 Operation here

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 13, 2022

 

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Targeting the USSR in August 1945

by Prof. Alex Wellerstein

If the World War II alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom was the special relationship, what was the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union? The especially problematic relationship? The relationship that could really have used to go to counseling? A relationship forged out of extreme crisis that later seemed like a sketchy thing? (Easily abbreviated as the sketchy relationship, of course.) My wife suggests perhaps calling it the shotgun marriage.

Maybe special fits the bill there too, in the sense of it being odd. Case in point: by August 30, 1945 — before World War II was officially over — some part of the U.S. military force (I’m not sure what branch; the Army Air Corps are a likely suspect) had already taken the time to draw up a list of good targets for atomic bombs in the USSR… and even overlaid a map of the Soviet Union with the ranges of nuclear-capable bombers, along with “first” and “second” priority targets marked on it.1

How many other war alliances end with one side explicitly plotting to nuke the heck out of the other ally? Probably not too many.

This amazing map comes from General Groves’ files, and was sent to him in September 1945 as part of a list of estimates for how many atomic bombs Curtis LeMay thought the US ought to have. I’ll talk about that another time, but here’s a hint: it was so many that even General Groves thought it was too many. Whoa.

A few things: the majority of these “dark” plots are B-29s (the same bombers that carried Fat Man and Little Boy), and they are going out of all kinds of “allied” bases (some currently in their possession, others labeled as “possible springboards”) around the USSR (Stavanger, Bremen, Foggia, Crete, Dhahran, Lahore, Okinawa, Shimushiru, Adak, and Nome). Which is an interesting way to quickly conceptualize the Cold War world from a military standpoint.

The very large, empty plots are for B-36s, which didn’t exist yet. They wouldn’t get fielded until 1949, but were already in the planning stages during the war. The actual B-36s as delivered had somewhat longer ranges (6,000 miles or so, total, if Wikipedia is to believed) than the ones estimated on here.

The target cities are a bit hard to make out (the next time I’m at NARA, I’ll try to get them to bring me the original map), but the “first priority” cities include Moscow, Sverdlovsk, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Stalinsk, Chelyabinsk, Magnitogorsk, Kazan, Molotov, and Gorki. Leningrad appears to be listed as a “second priority” target, which surprises me, but it might just be the microfilm being hard to read. All in all, it’s not the most interesting list of cities: they have literally just taken a list of the top cities in the USSR (based on population, industry, war relevance) and made those their atomic targets.

Stalin has a well-deserved reputation as a paranoid guy. But, as the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

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Alex Wellerstein is a historian of science and nuclear weapons and a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He is also the creator of the NUKEMAP.This blog began in 2011. For more, follow @wellerstein.

Notes

1. Citation: “A Strategic Chart of Certain Russian and Manchurian Urban Areas [Project No. 2532],” (30 August 1945), Correspondence (“Top Secret”) of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, microfilm publication M1109 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1980), Roll 1, Target 4, Folder 3, “Stockpile, Storage, and Military Characteristics.” The microfilm image I had of this came in two frames, a top and a bottom, and I pasted them together in Photoshop. This took a little bit of warping of the bottom image in odd ways (using Photoshop’s crazy “Puppet Warp” tool) because it didn’t quite line up with the top one due to folds in the paper and things like that. So there is a tiny bit of manipulation here, though none of it affects the content. 

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Restricted Data

The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States

By Alex Wellerstein

ISBN: 9780226020419

The first full history of US nuclear secrecy, from its origins in the late 1930s to our post–Cold War present.

The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and beyond, there were efforts to control the spread of nuclear information and the newly discovered scientific facts that made such powerful weapons possible. The totalizing scientific secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was new, unusual, and very nearly unprecedented. It was foreign to American science and American democracy—and potentially incompatible with both. From the beginning, this secrecy was controversial, and it was always contested. The atomic bomb was not merely the application of science to war, but the result of decades of investment in scientific education, infrastructure, and global collaboration. If secrecy became the norm, how would science survive?

Drawing on troves of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time through the author’s efforts, Restricted Data traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early twenty-first century. A compelling history of powerful ideas at war, it tells a story that feels distinctly American: rich, sprawling, and built on the conflict between high-minded idealism and ugly, fearful power.

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***

The following text is Chapter XIII of the author’s E-Book (14 chapters). To access the entire book click the link below:

.

The 2020-22 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

 

***

History of Economic “Shock Treatment”. From The Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) to “Global Adjustment”(GA)

Big Money including the billionaire foundations are the driving force. It’s a complex alliance of  Wall Street and the Banking establishment, The Big Oil and Energy Conglomerates, the so-called “Defense Contractors”, Big Pharma, the Biotech Conglomerates, the Corporate Media, the Telecom, Communications and Digital Technology Giants, together with a network of think tanks, lobby groups, research labs, etc. The ownership of intellectual property  also plays a central role.

This powerful digital-financial decision-making network also involves major creditor and banking institutions: The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), the IMF, the World Bank, the regional development banks, and the Basel based Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which plays a key strategic role.

By far the most powerful financial entities are the giant investment portfolio conglomerates including Black Rock, Vanguard, State Street and Fidelity. They control: “… a combined 20 trillion dollars in managed assets…. Conservatively counting, a 4 to 5-fold leverage power ( i.e. some US$ 80 to 100 trillion)” these powerful financial conglomerates have a leverage in excess of the the World’s  GDP which is of the order of about 82 trillion dollars. (See analysis by Peter Koenig)

In turn, the upper echelons of the US State apparatus (and Washington’s Western Allies) are directly or indirectly involved, including the  Pentagon, US Intelligence (and its research labs), the Health authorities, Homeland Security and the US State Department (including US embassies in over 150 countries).

The “Real Economy” and “Big Money”

Why are these Covid lockdown policies spearheading bankruptcy, poverty and unemployment?

Global capitalism is not monolithic. There is indeed “A Class Conflict” “between the super-rich and the vast majority of the World population.

But there is also intense rivalry within the capitalist system. Namely a conflict between “Big Money Capital” and what might be described as “Real Capitalism” which consists of corporations in different areas of productive activity at the national and regional levels. It also includes small and medium sized enterprises.

What is ongoing is a process of concentration of wealth (and control of advanced technologies) unprecedented in World history, whereby the financial establishment, (i.e. the multibillion dollar creditors) are slated to appropriate the real assets of both bankrupt companies as well as State assets.

The “Real Economy” constitutes “the economic landscape” of  real economic activity: productive assets, agriculture, industry, services, economic and social infrastructure, investment, employment, etc. The real economy at the global and national levels is being targeted by the lockdown and closure of economic activity. The Global Money financial institutions are the “creditors” of the real economy.

Global Governance: Towards a Totalitarian State

The individuals and organizations involved in the October 18, 2019 201 Simulation are now involved in the actual management of the crisis once it went live on January 30^th,  2020 under the WHO’s  Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), which in turn set the stage for the February 2020 financial crisis and the March Lockdown.

The lockdown and closure of national economies has triggered several waves of  mass unemployment coupled with the engineered bankruptcy (applied Worldwide) of  small and medium sized enterprises.

All of which is spearheaded by the installation of a global totalitarian State which is intent upon breaking all forms of protest and resistance.

The Covid vaccination program (including the embedded digital passport) is an integral part of  a global totalitarian regime. (see Chapter VIII)  The  infamous ID2020? is “an electronic ID program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for digital identity. The program harnesses existing birth registration and vaccination operations to provide newborns with a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity.red zones, face masks, social distancing, lockdown” (Peter Koenig, March 12, 2020)

V the Virus is casually held responsible for the process of economic destruction.

The World Economic Forum’s “public-private partnership” project entitled “Reimagine and Reset our World” has been endorsed by the United Nations.

Flash back to George Kennan and the Truman Doctrine in the late 1940s. Kennan believed that the UN provided a useful way to “connect power with morality,” using morality, as a means to rubber-stamp America’s “humanitarian wars”.

The Covid crisis and the lockdown measures are the culmination of a historical process.

The lockdown and closure of the global economy are “weapons of mass destruction” which in the real sense of the word “destroy people’s lives”.  

What we are dealing with are extensive “crimes against humanity”.

President Joe Biden and the “Great Reset”

Joe Biden is a groomed politician, a trusted proxy, serving the interests of the financial establishment.

Let’s not forget that Joe Biden was a firm supporter of the Invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “had weapons of mass destruction”. “The American People were deceived into this war”, said Senator Dick Durbin. Do not let yourself be deceived again by Joe Biden.

Evolving acronyms. 9/11, GWOT, WMD and now COVID

Biden was rewarded for having supported the invasion of Iraq.

During the election campaign, Fox News described Biden as a “socialist” who threatens capitalism:  “Joe Biden’s disturbing connection to the socialist ‘Great Reset’ movement”.

While this is absolute nonsense, many “progressives” and anti-war activists have endorsed Joe Biden without analyzing the broader consequences of a Biden presidency.

“The Great Reset” is socially divisive, it’s racist. It is a diabolical project of Global Capitalism. It constitutes a threat to the large majority of American workers as well as to small and medium sized enterprises. It also undermines several important sectors of the capitalist economy.

The Biden Presidency and the Lockdown

With regard to Covid, Biden is firmly committed to the “Second Wave”, i.e. maintaining the partial closing down of both the US economy and the global economy as a means to “combating the killer virus”.

Joe Biden will push for the adoption of  the WEF’s “Great Reset” both nationally and internationally, with devastating economic and social consequences. The 2021 World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings scheduled for Summer 2021 in Singapore will focus on the implementation of  the “Great Reset”. 

President Biden is a firm supporter of the Corona lockdown.

He not only endorses the adoption of staunch Covid-19 lockdown policies, his administration is committed to the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the ‘vaccine passport” as an integral part of US foreign policy, to be implemented or more correctly “imposed” Worldwide.

In turn, the Biden-Harris administration will attempt to override all forms of popular resistance to the corona virus lockdown.

What is unfolding is a new and destructive phase of US imperialism. It’s a totalitarian project of economic and social engineering, which ultimately destroys people’s lives Worldwide. This “novel” neoliberal agenda using the corona lockdown as an instrument of social oppression has been endorsed by President Biden and the leadership of the Democratic Party.

The Biden White House is committed to the instatement of what David Rockefeller called “Global Governance” ****

It should be noted that the protest movement in the US, against the lockdown is weak. In fact there is no coherent grassroots national protest movement. Why? Because “progressive forces” including leftist intellectuals, NGO leaders, trade union and labor leaders –most of whom are aligned with the Democratic Party– have from the outset been supportive of the lockdown. And they are also supportive of Joe Biden.

In a bitter irony, antiwar activists as well as the critics of neoliberalism have endorsed Joe Biden.

Unless there is significant protest and organized resistance, nationally and internationally, the Great Reset will be embedded in both domestic and US foreign policy agendas of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration.

It’s what you call Imperialism with a “Human Face”.

Where is the Protest Movement against this Unelected Corona “public-private partnership”?

The same philanthropic foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Soros, et al) which are the unspoken architects of the “Great Reset” and “Global Governance” are also involved in (generously) financing Climate Change activism, the Extinction Rebellion, the World Social Forum, Black Lives Matters, LGBT, et al.

What this means is that the grassroots of these social movements are often misled and betrayed by their leaders who are routinely coopted by a handful of corporate foundations.

The World Social Forum (WSF), which is commemorating its 21st anniversary brings together committed anti-globalization  activists from all over the World. But who controls the WSF? From the outset in January 2001, it was (initially) funded by the Ford Foundation.

It’s what you call “manufactured dissent” (far more insidious than Herman-Chomsky’s “manufactured consent”).

The objective of the financial elites “has been to fragment the people’s movement into a vast “do it yourself” mosaic. Activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement.” (Michel Chossudovsky, Manufacturing Dissent, Global Research, 2010)

In the words of McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation (1966-1979):

“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government

The Protest movement against the Great Reset which constitutes a “Global Coup d’état” requires a process of Worldwide mobilization:

.”There can be no meaningful mass movement when dissent is generously funded by those same corporate interests [WEF, Gates, Ford, et al] which are the target of the protest movement”.

 .

Ukraine and the Nuclear Issue. “We’ve Come So Close on Numerous Occasions”. Dr. Helen Caldicott

By Michael Welch and Dr. Helen Caldicott, March 12, 2022

 

Nuclear War is “On the Table”. Build Awareness. Say No to Joe Biden’s $1.2 Trillion Nuclear Weapons Program!

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 11, 2022

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization.

 

***

“We have found it almost impossible to imagine, 30 years after the end of the Cold War, that there could be a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, but the crisis in Ukraine is putting exactly that possibility on the table again.”

– Dr. Ira Helfand, former president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War [1]

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The nuclear gun will soon be taking a shot at a mostly indifferent public. In this author’s opinion, if the hammer is about to fall, the trigger was most likely pulled in Ukraine.

During the now two week military incursion by the Russian armed forces, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant experienced power cuts to its critical cooling system which keeps its radioactive fuel rods from overheating. Electric generators are the system’s back-up when such an emergency takes place, however it is estimated the diesel which fuels the generators will only last about 48 hours. [2]

If the fuel isn’t replaced soon, the water keeping the rods cool will start to evaporate. And once they are exposed to the atmosphere, the country’ in the north end of Ukraine and in Belarus will have a new kind of villain entering the picture: radioactive releases. [3]

Meanwhile, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant at which Russian forces had supposedly fired missiles, allegedly caused a fire in the five-story training facility building. The fire has since reportedly been put out. According to Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, blowing up Zaporizhzhia, would result in a disaster “10 times larger” than that of Chernobyl in 1986. [4]

And even beyond the prospect of an accidental collapse, or meltdown of one or more of it’s 15 nuclear reactors, there is the threat posed by the reappearance again of a nuclear war. As of the 27th of February in relation to “aggressive statements” and tough financial sanctions from leading NATO powers, President Putin put Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces on high alert, and ordered those forces be put in a “special regime of combat duty.” This suggests Russia could actually use them! [5]

On this week’s Global Research News Hour, we provide part two of a series on Russian’s actions in Ukraine with a special look at the nuclear question with two major anti-nuclear observers.

Our first guest is Libbe HaLevy, the host and producer of the weekly show Nuclear Hotseat. She talks about the above mentioned threats within Ukraine. She also deals briefly with the Fukushima Daiichi collapses from 11 years ago, and talks a little about her experience living within a mile of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor when it experienced a partial meltdown 43 years ago this month, and how that experience focused her attention on fighting against atomic power. She particularly highlights her brand new website – nuclearhotseat.com – which highlights MAJOR upgrades as of March 17th!

Our second guest is the legendary anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott. For nearly half an hour she talks briefly about potential Ukrainian reactors being destroyed, but largely about nuclear weapons entering the war time-fray, and the risk of escalation to a ballistic exchange, deliberate or accidental, between Russia and the United States. And she adds her most recent information on the disaster, disease, and death stemming from the ongoing Fukushima catastrophe.

Libbe HaLevy is producer/host of Nuclear Hotseat Podcast – www.NuclearHotseat.com – and author of the book YES, I GLOW IN THE DARK: One Mile from Three Mile Island to Fukushima and Nuclear Hotseat. Her play ATOMIC BILL AND THE PAYMENT DUE, about betrayal of humanity at the dawn of the Atomic Age, will be published summer 2022.

Dr. Helen Caldicott is a physician and co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility. She was a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, the recipient of the 2003 Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, and author or editor of several books including Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do (1979), If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal The Earth (1992), The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex(2001), and Sleepwalking to Armageddon (2017).

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Transcript – Interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott, March 8 2022

Part One

Global Research: Thank you for joining us, Dr. Caldicott. I’m delighted to have your back in the show again.

Helen Caldicott: Thank you, Michael.

GR: Well, let’s start with Ukraine. Before we talk about the threat of nuclear attacks on rival factions, could we focus on the threat of radiation just within Ukraine. Russia has invaded the country, it seems, and two nuclear facilities have been seized by Russian forces: the decommissioned Chernobyl in the north, the facility that exploded back in 1986 and contaminated the region, and the Zaporizhzhia facility in the south, which is still functioning, and it’s also the biggest nuclear plant not only in Ukraine but also all of Europe . So what kinds of dangers stand out for you about how this war could generate or exacerbate the dangers of a nuclear catastrophe, adding to the catastrophe posed by Chernobyl back nearly 36 years ago?

HC: Well, it’s very, very serious. No one would ever have thought of soldiers taking over a nuclear power plant, but that’s what’s happened. The Russians have taken over Chernobyl, and although it’s obviously not operating, it needs operators to keep it stable, and that’s very serious. And then, they have taken over the Zaporizhzhia power plant which contains six, six nuclear reactors. In fact, there are fifteen nuclear reactors in the Ukraine.

If the Second World War had been fought today with nuclear power plants all over Europe, Europe would be uninhabitable for the rest of time. So nuclear power plants do not go well with war. You know, one missile hitting a nuclear power plant could cause a meltdown and contaminate a huge area. In fact, 14% of the European land mass currently is still radioactive from the Chernobyl meltdown.

I don’t buy European food because I don’t know what food has concentrated the isotopes, particularly Turkish food. They got a huge fallout from Chernobyl, and the Turks were so angry with the Russians, they picked all the radioactive tea and sent it to Moscow.

So we’re sitting on the verge of two catastrophes, two nuclear catastrophes.  One, a meltdown or shocking accident at a nuclear power plant, and there are more reactors as I see it in the Ukraine, or, and or, and or, a nuclear war. Now it’s always been my horror to imagine that Russia and America would confront each other, because both have thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other. A hundred, a thousand nuclear weapons dropping on a hundred cities would induce nuclear winter and cause a short Ice Age and the end of most life on earth.

The Ice Age would last about ten years, and that would happen because cities burn huge clouds of toxic, black, oily, carbonated, radioactive smoke launched into the stratosphere and block out the sun for up to ten years. And, you know, that’s it. Very, very cold, and we’d die.

But the problem is that these weapons are on hair-trigger alert. In America, there are 450 nuclear missile silos in the Midwest armed or operated by two young men, each man has a pistol, one to shoot the other if one shows signs of deviant behaviour. They operate with floppy disks and telephones that sometimes don’t work, they take drugs, they go to sleep on duty. If they get a message that they’re under attack, they have three minutes to decide whether or not to launch. And it’s a short text they get to tell them to launch.

We’ve been close to nuclear war on numerous occasions. Very few of these occasions are reported to the press or in the press to the public, and we are standing on the edge of catastrophe. I don’t like to think about it too much, but in the middle of the night I sometimes wake up and have this intense fear in the pit of my stomach.

And for the Russians to invade Ukraine, like they have, and for the Americans to react the way they have, the Americans are so God damn self, I mean, they think they’re God’s gift to the world. The Americans have 800 bases in 80 countries, military bases, they’re metastasize like a cancer all over the world, and Putin, when he was in a more sane mode, before he, I think, lost the plot, asked America not to include the Ukraine in NATO, and to remove the weapons, the missiles that are placed, I think, they…

Since the end of the Cold War, when James Baker, Secretary of State, promised Gorbachev that NATO would not enlarge into these newly liberated countries, NATO has enlarged from five to twenty-eight countries. And, in those countries, they’re all armed with American missiles. And he feels very threatened, and I don’t blame him. I mean, imagine if the Warsaw Pact came to Canada, your country, and put missiles all along the border. Well America would probably blow up the world like it nearly did in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In fact, I got to know Robin McNamara, Secretary of Defense with Kennedy, quite well. And he and I became quite close friends, and he said, Helen, he said, you don’t know how close we came and the Cuban Missile Crisis to a nuclear war. Three minutes. Three minutes. So we’re standing on the edge of an nuclear precipice. Most humans don’t understand this, the media doesn’t attend to this, it attends to absolute rubbish most of the time to keep people enjoying things, but not to teach them what’s actually happening.

In the 80s, we did have a huge movement to freeze nuclear weapons, and it ended up, in 1988, at Reykjavik, where Reagan and Gorbachev met, and over a weekend too mere mortals, men, almost agreed to abolish nuclear weapons. My God. And that was the culmination of our work when we educated the doctors and others about the medical effects of nuclear war. Eighty percent of Americans supported what we were doing. We had a million people in Central Park protesting the nuclear arms race. I met with Reagan in the White House for an hour and a quarter holding his hand, trying to teach him about nuclear war, after which he said nuclear war must never be fought and can never be won.

And then he met with Gorbachev, but unfortunately Edmund Teller had got to him, that monster who created the hydrogen bomb, and he thought that a missile defense was the answer. Like, that Russian missiles can come in and bounce off. Gorbachov knew it would never work. And he should have said to Reagan look, you now have your missile defense but let’s abolish nuclear weapons. But the opportunity was lost. Therefore, we may destroy evolution.

GR: I think you should repeat the fact that there have been instances not of actual attacks but of near nuclear war occurring by accident. I remember the story of a Russian officer named Stanislav Petrov, that the Russians saved the world by simply not reporting what was believed to be five ballistic missiles were headed for the Soviet Union, and the launch was flashed on the screen, I believe this was September of 1983. I mean, if he had followed protocol and reported it to a senior Kremlin official, the world would likely be in nuclear war and we would all be extinct by now. But he didn’t.

HC: We’ve come so close on numerous occasions…a flight of geese nearly set off the mechanism in America to launch nuclear weapons. A rising moon. America launched a weather satellite in Norway, I think, some time ago…they informed the Kremlin that they were going to do it, but the Kremlin lost the data. And when the Russians saw it, they thought America launched the first strike against Moscow, and luckily, they realized it was, you know, not a first strike. But, by God. I don’t…I really… Michael in all conscience I don’t know how we’re still here.

GR: Oh my. Yeah, I mean…

HC: And the worst thing is I mean, you never could imagine Russia and America going to war against each other because they have all these bloody missiles all ready to go and their submarines and their ships and on land and one tiny mistake or era as we just talked about could launch the whole thing.

I don’t trust Biden is far as I could kick him. I think he’s a weak man. He’s employed neocons who helped to destabilize Ukraine the Maidan Square massacre, all of these neocons want to destroy Russia and that’s what they’re on their way to doing or trying to do. Biden I don’t think you, there’s a very rude expression in Australia, I won’t use it to describe someone who doesn’t really know what he’s doing. We’re in the hands of men, and one woman, Victoria Nuland, who, you know, it’s might or right. And that’s what’s always started wars.

Men have always fought and killed. Why? Why kill? I mean I’m a doctor. I spent my life trying to save lives and how precious life is, how precious. And then there’s the military industrial complex in America, you know, over half the discretionary budget in America – textuals – goes to build more weapons. These people are evil. It’s not the Department of Defense. It’s the department of murder. Because they murder. Since 9/11 they’ve murdered over one million people. And made a lot of profits. And the war now in Ukraine is causing the stock market in military equipment to go through the roof. That says it all. How dare they! How dare they!

GR: I don’t know if you can address this point, and forgive me if this it’s a question that you’re not capable of answering, but it seems as if there is a difference between the way things work in reality with the operating officers and the soldiers on the ground and such, and the way things happened at official levels with Biden and all these people making grand decisions. For example, the Petrov example I mentioned earlier. I was just wondering if in your talks and in your explorations of both levels if you have insight into how these differences matter. Does anything spring to mind about where these differences can matter on the grand stage?

HC: What differences?

GR: Well in terms of a, I mean on the one hand you have the presidents making a grand decision or something, and then maybe on the lower level, like a mid-level officer or something they might hold off or something like that?

HC: Well look, it’s huge, it’s massive, to recount and document all the near-misses we’ve had of human behaviour. You see, I think the US has pushed Putin to the point where he’s lost the plot. He’s not behaving in a rational manner. Some of my colleagues think that he’s got a round face, that he might be on steroids, which helps to build body function, he likes that, or else he’s sick. And steroids can produce psychosis.

So, you know, to arm the world like a ticking time bomb ready to blow up any minute, not ever imagining who will be in charge of these things, and how they could develop a brain tumour or psychosis or get sick or do something, you know, have a fight with their wife or get the flu or, I mean human beings are totally fallible and even, when you look at yourself, you’re fallible. You do some crazy things sometimes. Each of us do.

But to arm and to have these things on hair trigger alert with a 3-minute decision time it’s absolutely insane. It’s insane. And then they say, oh, it’s the Department of Defense and America is free. They’re not free. All lies. All lies. What we should be doing is making friends with all the countries in the world. China. You know, look what China has done in a few years from people starving, millions in poverty, to one of the richest countries in the world. It’s brilliant what they’ve done! They’re not an enemy! Why do countries think that they have to dominate each other? This is very testosterone oriented. I’m very sick of testosterone, Michael.

Intermission 

Part 2

GR: About forty years ago you raised the medical dimensions of a nuclear holocaust and that scared a hell of a lot of people into action, myself included. And now it seems as if those fears have gone away.

HC: I think that, I think that the television… What do you call your Commonwealth broadcasting commission? Canadian Broadcasting Commission? They should replay If You Love This Planet. It’s only half an hour long. It looks old because the haircuts are different, but it’s totally relevant now, and it reduces people almost to tears, and they suddenly get it in their gut what it would mean to have a nuclear war, and therefore I strongly prescribe that the Canadian Broadcasting Commission replay If You Love This Planet in a good time and advertise it, broadcast.

GR: Okay, I’ll put in the request for sure. I wonder, can we maybe move back, because… Like I say, this broadcast is going off on the eleventh anniversary of the Fukishima Daiichi disaster, as I mentioned at the beginning. Do you have an update for us?

HC: Yes, I do. Fukushima, they will never, ever decommission those melted down reactors. The radiation levels that workers are exposed to are horrendous. They can’t get near the melted fuel. They’re trying to remove huge pipes in reactor one where there was a hydrogen explosion that vented radioactive gases at the time of the accident. And those pipes are so radioactive that they’re giving off 16 rems per hour, and the workers are only allowed to get 5 rems per year. So they’re lethal doses of radiation.

The Yakuza, which is the mafia in Japan, are recruiting or collecting harmless people off the streets of Tokyo etc. and taking them up to run these reactors…or to work on those reactors where it’s so radioactive. I mean these people are going to die of cancer, obviously. Number one.

So they’ll never ever decommission them. And they will be nuclear tombstones, if you like, for the rest of time. They have now a million tons of highly radioactive waste stored in tanks because they have to continuously pour seawater into the damaged reactors to keep them cool, and then that comes out and it’s very radioactive. So they’ve been storing it in tanks, hundreds and hundreds of them. If you go to the Fukushima website, you’ll see these tanks beside each other.

And they want to empty this into the Pacific Ocean. Now the fishermen are very upset, because the fish will become very radioactive. What happens is, when you put radioactive elements like iodine and strontium and cesium into water, they bio -concentrate by orders of magnitude at each level of the food chain. Algae, crustaceans, little fish, big fish, us. You can’t taste, smell, or know that you’re eating radioactive food. So you eat some fish with cesium-137 in it and it goes to your muscle in your pancreas or your thyroid, it irradiates just a very small volume of cells for many years with beta radiation, electrons. Some regulatory genes in the cell get mutated, and the cell is not regulated anymore and starts to reproduce in terms of millions and trillions of cells, and that’s a cancer.

So the incubation time for developing a cancer is any time from five to fifty years. When they cancer arise, it doesn’t denote its origin, so you don’t know. The only way we do know is to do epidemiological studies and take irradiated populations like Hiroshima and Nagasaki or Fukishima, except they’re not doing that in Japan, they’re covering it up, and compare that population to non-radiated population to see what the elevation of abnormalities is. So it’s very serious.

GR: Do you have any… I mean we’re in that five-to-thirteen-year range now…are there any unusual clusters of cancer cropped up?

HC: Good question Michael. Well, the Japanese government are not looking at the victims at all. All they’re studying is thyroid cancer. Now all cancers and leukemias can be caused, or are caused, by radiation. Post Chernobyl, the Russians collected five thousand medical and scientific papers and published them, and… it seems that over a million people in Europe and Russia, Belarus, have died from cancer and the like.

But the Japanese are only looking at thyroid cancer, thank you very much. In children who were aged under eighteen at the time of the accident. And there’s a very elevated number of cancers in these people. Some have metastasized…but they’re not looking at leukemia or any other cancers or birth defects or anything.

What is happening in Japan is medically criminal. Medically criminal. How dare they? And who runs the Japanese government? Really, the nuclear power industry really run the Japanese government. So, and these, and they don’t know what they’re doing, and most politicians are scientifically and medically illiterate, they think nuclear power is very powerful, they have no idea.

The doctors are desperate. Some doctors have moved away from the Fukushima area, they just can’t stand what they’re seeing, and if the doctors even allude to patients that their diseases may be related to Fukushima, they get struck off by the government.

GR: Well I’m wondering…

HC: That’s evil!

GR: Yeah, I’m wondering though, in terms of buying Japanese food, especially Japanese fish, is it banned? No it’s not!

HC: Well, Hillary Clinton signed a deal just after the accident that she would import Japanese food and would not prohibit it. I went to a sushi restaurant in New York a few years ago, and it was lovely, you know posh and sake and well-dressed people, and I said where does your fish come from? It comes from Japan. [laughter]

Don’t eat Japanese food! The Fukushima prefecture is a very rich area in growing food. The radioactive rice, they dilute it with non-radioactive rice and sell it. Don’t buy Japanese seaweed. Don’t buy Japanese food because you don’t know where it’s been sourced. Or what they’ve done with it, and they’re not measuring for radiation.

GR: Okay, we only have a couple of minutes left. I just wanted to ask you maybe one more question. As basically, if you had the opportunity to talk either to President Joe Biden or President Vladmir Putin or somebody like that, what would you do? What would you say to try to impress upon them that the threat that’s posed today?

HC: Well, I would try and get through their psychic numbing. And I’m a doctor so I’m used to doing that with patients of course. And I would describe the medical effects of one bomb dropping on New York, or one bomb dropping on Washington, or Moscow – to get into their gut . To understand the medical implications – the environmental implications of what this means, and try and get them to understand that they must actually abolish nuclear weapons. And there is a proposal at the United Nations which has been signed by – oh I don’t know – over 60 nations, to abolish nuclear weapons.

I try and bypass the military industrial complex and all these stupid men surrounding these presidents to try and get them to understand. I’ve cut it with Reagan what really could happen. I’d love to meet with Biden. And Putin – well…

I mean Putin asked President – what was his name? President…

GR: Zelinsky?

HC: No. Putin asked if Russia could join NATO. And the president said no, you’re too big. He’s BEGGED the Americans not to let Ukraine join NATO. And why didn’t they agree to that? They still could agree to his requests. But, I mean, if their pride comes before a fall, pride comes before the end of life on earth. That’s what’s happening.

And they’re all men! All men.

GR: Well, I think we’re going to have to close it now Helen Caldicott, as you end on that odious note. But I want to thank you for …

HC: Hahaha!

GR: …for being a woman! For coming on at this most important issue. Thank you once again for joining us on the Global Research News Hour!

HC: Yes, and thank you for what you do Michael. And much love to Michel!

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Notes:

1. https://www.democracynow.org/2022/2/23/the_threat_of_nuclear_war_ukraine
2. Seth Borenstein (March 11, 2022), ‘EXPLAINER: What’s behind latest scare at Chernobyl plant?’, The Associated Press; https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/explainer-whats-behind-latest-scare-at-chernobyl-plant/
3. ibid
4. Maroosha Muzaffar (March 7, 2022), ‘Ukraine says fire has been put out near Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’, Independent; https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-fire-b2028358.html?src=rss
5. Molly Blackall (February 27, 2022), ‘Putin puts Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces on alert as global tensions grow amid Ukraine invasion’,inews; https://inews.co.uk/news/putin-russia-nuclear-deterrent-forces-alert-global-tensions-grow-ukraine-invasion-1487031?ico=in-line_link

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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 condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

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In early spring, we moved from the Pandemic reality to the war situation.  And as we know, war is the imperialists’ favourite method of postponing and concealing internal contradictions and crises of capitalism.  Nothing fuels the economy as well as the blood of workers. And the Russian-Ukrainian war, the new Iron Curtain and the renewed “Reds Under The Beds” propaganda – all highlight importance of the grassroots anti-war movement and prompt the need for Non-Aligned States and Nations Movement revival.

No Business – Like War Business

The self-dissolution of the Soviet Bloc and the emergence of a unipolar international reality in the 1990s brought a false reassurance to pacifists around the World.

Withdrawal of the threat of nuclear annihilation by the superpowers was falsely equated with no threat of war at all.  Unfortunately, imperialism does not function without wars, and for capitalism There’s No Business – Like War-Business.

Meanwhile, protests against each subsequent hegemonic military operation weakened.

From war to war, the protests against the aggressions against Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the conflict in Yemen, the intervention in Lebanon, the blockade of Gaza – were getting weaker and more niche.

More and more involving only usual suspects.  Pacifism and the disarmament movement have not disappeared but have been swept into a corner of a room with a sign: “Old hippies, nice, but don’t pay attention. Do feed, occasionally”.

And wars, war crimes, privatisation of wars by corporations – were happening somewhere safely far away.

After all, TV sets and news can always be turned off, and anyway, they always provide simple and easy diagnoses, thanks to which we can immediately distinguish the Goodies from the Baddies.

And since one side is only good and the other is only bad – it doesn’t make sense, it is wrong to put an equal sign between them, right?  We have to keep with the Goodies, wish them victory and cheer them on, because being against wars means helping the Baddies, right?

Not right, but we let them to convince us. We wanted to be convinced! We let our children to be taught that.  We accepted that such propaganda, the absolution of every war, every aggression, all armaments – triumphed in the media, films, games, the whole Geoculture.

We silently accept military censorship, even if our country is not formally a militant party.

We cannot recover after the pandemic – because there is war.

We cannot accelerate the achievement of the climate target – because there is a war.  And sanctions. And the Cold War. And bargaining of powers for new divisions of influences.

Unfortunately, capitalists and governments cannot offer us anything – because they are too busy with wars.  This is their point. And even some kind of truth: we will not learn from the so-called Pandemic, we will not get out of the cycle of crises of capitalism – as long as there are imperialistic wars.  Therefore, the peace movement is not and cannot be a Sunday hobby but must be the very essence of our opposition to capitalism and imperialism.

Ukrainian tragic experience

On the basis of Ukrainian experience, however, someone may say: “Well, you are against wars, you want to dissolve NATO and establish nuclear-free zones – don’t you see what happened to the Ukrainians!?”.  This is a very good question. Keep it when hearing.  Because it is Ukraine that confirms how right the anti-war movement is.

Vladimir Putin and Russians are now presented as exclusively responsible for the Ukrainian-Russian war as another archetypal Villains No. 1.

But this is the capitalist system which should be blamed in its quest for infinite accumulation, achieved also in Ukraine, managed by the financial establishment.

The conflict of interests of the Russian, Ukrainian and Western oligarchs is of a purely capitalist nature.  Because in fact British or American corporations interested in the liberalisation and colonisation of Ukraine are also examples of oligarchy.

The culprits in the war in Ukraine are imperialism and militarism – coming from the West, using NATO to absorb new areas and increase the threat of war.  Finally, nationalism is to blame, and in the most horrible, Nazi version, which always drugged the workers so that they would not see their class interests.

“And nuclear weapon, after all, Ukraine renounced that – and has been attacked!” – someone will shout.  Quite the opposite – as a neutral nuclear-free state, Ukraine was completely safe, although still subjected to the pathologies of oligarchic capitalism.  Ukrainians were attacked when, instead of neutrality, they were offered NATO militarism.  When nationalist politicians started to announce acquiring nuclear weapons and building “dirty bombs”. And the most of all, the war broke out when it proved to be in the interests of all the oligarchs-capitalists concerned.  Will we not understand anything from this lesson?

Obviously, global disarmament is the very first step, but peace-movement cannot be restricted to that one slogan. T

he essence of international security be a reference to the heritage of Non-Aligned States Movement, to Gandhi’s, Nehru’s, Nkrumah’s, Sukarno’s and Tito’s tradition.  And this time the New Bandung has to be aligned.  Aligned to the cause of peace, beyond and against the imperialist wars of Western and Eastern capitalists.

*

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

Featured image: US has whipped up war hysteria over satellite image of Russian military camp in Yelnya, over 500 kms from Ukraine border, to allege Moscow’s invasion plans and to justify NATO involvement  (Source: Indian Punchline)

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***

Of relevance to unfolding events in the Ukraine, this incisive article was first published on December 26, 2021

***

This is verbatim from the official report of the UN General Assembly plenary of 16 December 2021:

The Assembly next took up the report on “Elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”, containing two draft resolutions.

By a recorded vote of 130 in favour to 2 against (Ukraine, United States), with 49 abstentions, the Assembly then adopted draft resolution I, “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo‑Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”.

By its terms, the Assembly expressed deep concern about the glorification of the Nazi movement, neo‑Nazism and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials, holding public demonstrations in the name of the glorification of the Nazi past, the Nazi movement and neo‑Nazism, and declaring or attempting to declare such members and those who fought against the anti‑Hitler coalition, collaborated with the Nazi movement and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity “participants in national liberation movements”.

Further, the Assembly urged States to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination by all appropriate means, including through legislation, urging them to address new and emerging threats posed by the rise in terrorist attacks incited by racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance, or in the name of religion or belief. It would call on States to ensure that education systems develop the necessary content to provide accurate accounts of history, as well as promote tolerance and other international human rights principles. It likewise would condemn without reservation any denial of or attempt to deny the Holocaust, as well as any manifestation of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities on the basis of ethnic origin or religious belief.

In Ukraine, support for the Ukrainian nationalist divisions who fought alongside the Nazis has become, over the last eight years, the founding ideology of the modern post 2013 Ukrainian state (which is very different from the diverse Ukrainian state which briefly existed 1991-2013).

Ukraine Neo-Nazi Militia

The full resolution on nazism and racism passed by the General Assembly is lengthy, unnzaires but these provisions in particular were voted against by the United States and by the Ukraine:

6. Emphasizes the recommendation of the Special Rapporteur that “any commemorative celebration of the Nazi regime, its allies and related organizations, whether official or unofficial, should be prohibited by States”, also emphasizes that such manifestations do injustice to the memory of the countless victims of the Second World War and negatively influence children and young people, and stresses in this regard that it is important that States take measures, in accordance with international human rights law, to counteract any celebration of the Nazi SS organization and all its integral parts, including the Waffen SS;

7. Expresses concern about recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during the Second World War, as well as to unlawfully exhume or remove the remains of such persons, and in this regard urges States to fully comply with their relevant obligations, inter alia, under article 34 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949;

…

10. Condemns without reservation any denial or attempt to deny the Holocaust;

11. Welcomes the call of the Special Rapporteur for the active preservation of those Holocaust sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration and forced labour camps and prisons, as well as his encouragement of States to take measures, including legislative, law enforcement and educational measures, to put an end to all forms of Holocaust denial

As reported in the Times of Israel, hundreds took part in a demonstration in Kiev in May 2021, and others throughout Ukraine, in honour of a specific division of the SS. That is but one march and one division – glorification of its Nazi past is a mainstream part of Ukrainian political culture.

In 2018 a bipartisan letter by 50 US Congressmen condemned multiple events commemorating Nazi allies held in Ukraine with official Ukrainian government backing.

There are no two ways about it. The Ukrainian vote against the UN resolution against Nazism was motivated by sympathy for the ideology of historic, genocide active Nazis. It is as simple as that.

The United States claims that its vote against was motivated by concern for freedom of speech. We have the Explanation of Vote that the United States gave at the committee stage:

The United States Supreme Court has consistently affirmed the constitutional right to freedom of speech and the rights of peaceful assembly and association, including by avowed Nazis

That sounds good and noble. But consider this – why does the United States Government believe that avowed Nazis have freedom of speech, but that Julian Assange does not? You can have freedom of speech to advocate the murder of Jews and immigrants, but not to reveal US war crimes?

Why was the United States government targeting journalists in the invasion of Iraq? The United States believes in freedom of speech when it serves its imperial interests. It does not do so otherwise. This is the very worst kind of high sounding hypocrisy, in aid of defending the Nazis in Ukraine.

The second reason the United States gives is that Russia is making the whole thing up:

a document most notable for its thinly veiled attempts to legitimize Russian disinformation campaigns denigrating neighboring nations and promoting the distorted Soviet narrative of much of contemporary European history, using the cynical guise of halting Nazi glorification

The problem here is that it is very difficult to portray the Times of Israel or 50 bipartisan US congressmen as a Russian disinformation campaign. There is no historical doubt whatsoever of Ukrainian nationalist forces active support of Nazism and participation in genocide, not just of Jews and Roma but of Poles and religious minorities. There is no doubt whatsoever of the modern glorification in Ukraine of these evil people.

It is of course not just Ukraine. In Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania the record of collaboration with Nazis, of active participation in fighting for Nazis, and in active participation in genocide is extremely shaming. Throughout Eastern Europe there is a failure in these “victim nations” to look history squarely in the eye and to admit what happened – a failure the United States in actually promoting as “a campaign against Russian disinformation”.

I recommend to you the website www.defendinghistory.com, run by the admirable David Katz, which is a large and valuable resource on this website from a Lithuanian Jewish perspective that cannot remotely be dismissed as Russian or left wing propaganda. The front page currently features the December 2021 naming of a square in the capital after Lithuanian “freedom fighter” Juokas Luksa “Daumantas”, a man who commenced the massacre of Jews in Vilnius ahead of the arrival of German forces.

These are precisely the kind of commemorations the resolution is against. There has been a rash of destruction of Soviet war memorials and even war graves, and erection of commemorations, in various form, of Nazis throughout the Baltic states. That is what paras 6 and 7 of the resolution refer to, and there is no doubt whatsoever of the truth of these events. It is not “Russian disinformation”.

However the European Union, in support of its Baltic states members and their desire to forget or deny historical truth and to build a new national myth expunging their active role in the genocide of their Jewish and Roma populations, would not support the UN Resolution on Nazism. The EU countries abstained, as did the UK. The truth of course is that NATO intends to use the descendants of Eastern European racists against Russia much as Hitler did, at least in a cold war context.

You won’t find that in the Explanation of Vote. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

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First published on October 7,  2021

 

***

Introduction 

The upward trend in mortality and morbidity resulting from the Covid-19 vaccination program is overwhelming.

People are dying Worldwide.

The health risks of the mRNA vaccine are fully documented. Thrombosis, Blood Clots, Myocarditis, Heart Attacks, Cancer, 

The mRNA “experimental” vaccine was launched in mid to late December 2020. In many countries, there was a significant and immediate shift in mortality following the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccine.

 

Source: HeathData.org

Despite all the lies and distortions, the official figures of covid vaccine deaths for the EU, US and UK cannot be refuted.  (see below).

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While massive media and government censorship prevails, these registered official figures represent a very small percentage of the real figures pertaining to deaths and injuries. A very small percentage of deaths and injuries attributable to the vaccine will be reported/registered by the families of the victims.

Our Children and Adolescents are Dying Worldwide

Student at the Lycée Valabre de Luynes-Gardannem, Aix-en-Provence, France, Sofia Benharira, 16 years old passed away on September 21,  7 days after having received the deadly Pfizer vaccine. Heart attacks and Thrombosis. 

This is happening all over the World. 

Children and adolescents are dying. 

Either the media fails to report vaccine related deaths or it states (with authority) that the deaths are attributable to Covid-19. 

Pfizer Has A Criminal Record

And did you know that Pfizer has a criminal record with the US Department of Justice.

The “vaccine poison” imposed at the level of the entire planet is produced by a pharmaceutical company which was indicted by the US Department of Justice (2009) on charges of “fraudulent marketing”. 

 

 

“Fraudulent marketing” of an illegal and experimental “vaccine” is an understatement.

What is happening today is the outright “Criminalization of the state apparatus” whereby politicians, members of parliament, senior government officials are routinely bribed, coopted or threatened to abide by a diabolical project which is literally destroying people’s lives Worldwide.

Pfizer is killing our children. And our governments are being bribed by Big Pharma. 

GAVI COVAX and the Role of the Gates Foundation 

GAVI COVAX funded by the Gates foundation is the entity responsible for the Worldwide procurement and delivery of Covid-19 vaccine doses. In liaison with the WHO, the agenda is to fully vaccinate (several doses) more than 7 billion people.

In Europe and North America, the official figures suggest that a large percentage of the population have already been fully vaccinated, with Canada, Spain, Israel, Belgium, Uruguay, Chile and China in the lead (See Map below)

 

Are these figures reliable? One suspects that they may have been manipulated by Western governments, with a view to sustaining the propaganda campaign and dispelling the deaths and injuries incurred by the vaccinated. Moreover, vaccine related deaths and injuries are now routinely assigned to Covid-19 as the principal cause.

In several regions of the World, the imposition of the vaccine is facing fierce opposition. In India, this opposition pertains to Public Health Foundation India (PHFI), a so-called “public private partnership” set up under the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006, which “received millions of dollars of funding from pharmaceutical companies, vaccine manufacturers, & dubious philanthropic organizations” including  the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, among others.

In India’s state of Uttar Pradesh with a population of half the size of that of the European Union, the vaccine program is essentially defunct.

In sub-Saharan Africa, large sectors of the population have refused the vaccine. The percentage of the population which is vaccinated is exceedingly low.

Western Governments, the Billionaires and Big Pharma to the “Rescue of the Poor Countries”

And now in a twisted logic, the foreign aid budgets of the “Rich Countries” are being diverted to fund the delivery of about  1.8 billion doses of the deadly vaccine to the developing countries. (see Graph 1).

The developed countries are using their “Official Development Assistance” (ODA) budgets to help Third World Countries acquire the vaccine, which is slated to be applied to an impoverished population.

The Graph Below (Our World in Data) indicates the number of doses of the “vaccine” which are generously being donated as part of  the U.S. and EU Aid Programs to Developing Countries.

The Biden administration has promised to deliver 570.4 million doses of which 81.4 million have already been donated and scheduled for delivery.

The EU Commission headed by Ursula von der Leyen has committed itself to delivering via GAVI CoVAX 525 million doses. The EU Commission is currently negotiating with Pfizer a delivery in excess of 1.8 billion doses.

Other Western countries (several of which are former colonial powers) as well as Japan (member States of the OECD) have also made commitments to deliver some 826, 395 million doses to Third World countries (See Graph below).

ODA “bilateral aid” by the rich countries is a relic of the colonial period. According to the Brookings Institute, “Rich countries have a moral obligation to help poor countries get vaccines”.

What is this moral obligation?

“Foreign Aid” goes into the pockets of Big Pharma and the billionaires, while spreading death and destruction in the poor countries.

What we are talking about is a “donation” in excess of 1.8 billion doses of this poisonous substance, the inevitable result of which will be to precipitate the Third World into the Abysm. 

Where are the target countries

The largest share of non-vaccinated population is in Africa, India, parts of the Middle East and parts of South East Asia as well as a few countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. (See Map above, dated September 29, 2021)

Follow the “Money Trail”

What is the mechanism pertaining to the purchase and delivery of more about 1.8 billion doses of the Covid-19 “vaccine” to the Third World?

The global supply chain as well as the flow of money payments is complex.  The donations by the rich countries take the form of a “purchase” implemented via GAVI-COVAX which is responsible for the procurement (from Big Pharma) as well the delivery to the recipient developing countries.

What this means is that the funds allocated to “official development assistance’ (ODA) by the Rich Countries which historically have been tagged as a means to finance poverty alleviation and social programs in the Third World have now been redirected to fund the purchase of about 1.8 billion doses of the deadly Covid vaccine, for delivery to poor countries which cannot afford to buy it.

Ironically this comes at a time when the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres asserted in his Address to the UN General Assembly (rhetorically)

“we must bridge the gap between rich and poor, within and among countries”.

”Development Aid” Now Takes the form of 1.8 billion doses of a “poisonous substance”. The stated objective for GAVI COVAX AMC is:

“to procure vaccines and assist in delivery for LICs and LMICs [low income and low to medium income developing countries]”, i.e almost half of the World’s population. (See The Gavi Covax AMC)

Where does the money go?

The Gates Foundation (GF) as the main founding partner of GAVI plays a strategic role in the multibillion Worldwide distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine through an entity entitled GAVI COVAX AMC.

Since its inception in 2000, the GF has funnelled $4.1 billion into GAVI. At the 2020 Global Vaccine Summit, Bill Gates:

“… announced USD 1.6 billion for Gavi’s next 2021-2025 strategic period. In addition to this funding, the Foundation pledged USD 150 million in support of Gavi’s COVAX AMC to ensure equitable access to vaccines for AMC-eligible economies.”

From the “Rich countries” the “aid money” intended to assist developing countries is first channelled and deposited in the Gates sponsored GAVI COVAX AMC Facility which acts as an intermediary.

The money is then channelled towards Big Pharma (including Pfizer) via GAVI-COVAX (which exacts commissions and retainers), i.e. the aid money goes into both the pockets of Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation including its various affiliates, not to mention the politicians who are bribed into acceptance and submission.

What is the magnitude of this so-called Aid Program

“Saving Lives” in developing countries implies an “Equitable access” to the consumption of a “poisonous substance”

Pfizer currently charges Western governments $25.50 a dose for the Covid-19 vaccine

Add up the Figures: The cost of 1. 85795 billion doses of the killer vaccine disguised as “bilateral aid” is of the order of $46,45 billion. This money (“equitably” distributed) goes into the pockets of Big Pharma, the billionaire foundations, with generous bribes and money handouts for politicians and corrupt scientists.

It’s Genocide

It’s diabolical: upheld as a humanitarian endeavor on the part of Western governments, the delivery of hundreds of millions of doses of the ‘killer vaccine” via GAVI’s COVAX AMC spells a new wave of vaccine related mortality and morbidity directed against the Third World.

This project is coupled with the deadly impacts of the (partial) closure of national economies of developing countries coupled with engineered social chaos initiated in March 2020 which has already resulted in wave of extreme poverty, famine and despair throughout the Third World. 

It’s Genocide Conducted at the level of the Entire Planet. 

***

About the Author

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.

He has undertaken field research in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific and has written extensively on the economies of developing countries with a focus on poverty and social inequality. He has also undertaken research in Health Economics (UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC),  UNFPA, CIDA, WHO, Government of Venezuela, John Hopkins International Journal of Health Services (1979, 1983)

He is the author of twelve books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005),  The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015).

He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at [email protected]

See Michel Chossudovsky, Biographical Note

Michel Chossudovsky’s Articles on Global Research

 

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First published on March 2, 2022

Economic Warfare

A complex agenda of economic and social warfare under the auspices of the COVID-19 “Lockdown” was launched on March 11, 2020 against 193 member states of the United Nations. The stated objective was to combat the spread of the virus “with a view to saving lives”.

Amply documented this initiative emanated from the upper echelons of the financial establishment. It’s intent was not to save lives, quite the opposite. It involved a complex decision-making procedure requiring the cooptation of more than 190 national governments.

Its unspoken objective was to trigger economic and social chaos, resulting in bankruptcies, unemployment and poverty. 

Confinement of the labour force, the face mask, social distancing, the closure of schools and universities, the vaccine mandate, etc.

The Fundamental question: What is its relationship to the geopolitics and strategies of global warfare. How does it relate to US foreign policy and the US-NATO military agenda? 

From a strategic standpoint, the Covid-19 Lockdowns and Mandates constitute an act of “Economic Warfare”. 

Unprecedented in World history, this diabolical project affecting more than 7 billion people Worldwide was implemented simultaneously and concurrently in the course of the last two years with the planning and strategic deployment of US, NATO and military allied forces against Russia and China.  

Two Seemingly Different Crises are Unfolding Simultaneously

• The dangers of global warfare directed against Russia and China,
• The Covid mandates directed against more than 7 billion people. 

These two major crises which are occurring simultaneously are intimately related:

1.  The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the militarization of Eastern Europe. And now the EU has taken the decision to side with US-NATO against Russia following a decision of the President of the European Commission.
2. The ongoing crisis pertaining to the so-called Covid mandates over the course of the last two years which have undermined  the economic, social and political fabric of 194 sovereign nation states which are no longer sovereign. In turn, the Covid mRNA Vaccine has as triggered a Worldwide  upward trend of mortality and morbidity.

The Same Powerful Financial Actors are Behind these Two Interrelated Crises

The financial elites call the shots. It’s a de facto World War III agenda which consists in imposing a system of global governance.

The Covid Lockdown including the imposition of the mRNA Vaccine are part of a Hegemonic Agenda which consists in the subordination of sovereign nation states. They are instruments of submission.

In the present context, the Covid Agenda is an integral part of the broader military, intelligence and strategic arsenal.

The Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (proposed by the WEF) consist in imposing in the words of the late David Rockefeller

“The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers ….[which] is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” (quoted by Aspen Times, August 15, 2011, emphasis added)

The Covid Crisis Opens up a New Strategy of Economic Warfare

The Covid mandates (applied simultaneously Worldwide) constitute an instrument of economic and social warfare which is unprecedented in world history. Broadly speaking they are instruments of imperialism.

Undermining the national economy of  an Enemy Nation is the unspoken objective of modern warfare. Historically, the modus operandi of economic warfare has been: 

“to weaken an adversary’s economy by denying the adversary access to necessary physical, financial, and technological resources or by otherwise inhibiting its ability to benefit from trade, financial, and technological exchanges with other countries.

The “covid mandates” imposed by dominant financial interests go far beyond the existing strategies of economic warfare.

Entire countries have been weakened and destabilized without the need for “color revolutions” or military intervention. 

Countries which are categorized as “enemies” of America have complied and endorsed the covid mandates, including Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. Cuba’s economy has been literally destroyed. (And its socialist government has accepted the Covid mandates without batting an eyelid).

In so doing these “Enemies of America” have accepted a process of economic destabilization and social engineering which by all accounts is far more destructive than the peace-meal US economic sanctions imposed on non-compliant governments.

Global Debt and the Destabilization of the Nation State

We are at the crossroads of the most serious global debt crisis in World history.

The Covid Crisis is part of a Big Money Agenda, the objective of which is to ultimately trigger bankruptcies and massive debts, with a view to destabilizing the economic structures of sovereign nation-states.

The global debt crisis resulting from the lockdown measures has resulted in pushing up the levels of public debt (national, provincial, municipal).  Fiscal and monetary structures are increasingly controlled by external creditors. Social Democracy is dead. What was once as “The Welfare State” is slated for privatization.

Dollarization

Indebtedness is a de facto instrument of conquest and economic warfare. It’s the power of the US dollar. The external creditors call the shots, The Endgame is to erase the Nation State and impose a system of “Global Governance”.

From a strategic standpoint, the Covid-19 agenda plays a key role.

It weakens national governments, it installs corrupt politicians under the direct control of the financial establishment (eg. Trudeau, Macron, Johnson, et al).  In “enemy countries” such as Venezuela and Iran, Big Money interests take  control of vast petroleum and natural gas resources.

A World of Lies  

We are at a very dangerous crossroads. At the time of writing, Russia has invaded Ukraine.

We live in a World of lies which prevails over facts.

The imminent dangers of WW III are muted by a wave of censorship, the intent of which is to silence the independent media.

Corrupt Politicians are Groomed to believe in their own Lies. These lies (including fake science) are embedded in a complex and chaotic decision-making process involving US intelligence, the security apparatus, Big Pharma, the ICT giants, the UN, the WHO, the World Bank, IMF, BIS, Pentagon, powerful lobby groups as well as powerful actors within the financial and banking establishment.

We are no longer dealing with the contradictions of the Triple Alliance and Triple Entente diplomacy which had been carefully crafted by Chancellor Otto Bismarck, and which eventually led to the outbreak of World War I.

Today’s overlapping and contradictory alliances have led to a muddled and dangerous geopolitics which is beyond description.

First published by Global Research on April 16, 2019, this incisive article is of utmost relevance to an understanding of the Ukraine Crisis. .

What is happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications and could potentially lead to 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.

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Over the past few months, NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg has continued outlining his organization’s “recognition” for  Ukraine “to become a member of NATO”. Two weeks ago Stoltenberg pronounced publicly in Washington that “we work with Ukraine to help Ukraine move forward towards its transatlantic integration… we have trust funds, we have training, we have different kinds of activities which we are helping Ukraine”.

Comments like this are also a well-aimed provocation of nearby Russia. It is the equivalent of the Soviet Union having announced they had “trust funds” and “activities” occurring in Mexico, with the ultimate aim of luring America’s neighbour into the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact. Any such coercion by the Soviets would surely have drawn a swift military response from Washington.

It can occasionally be instructive to cast one’s eyes over a map of Europe, and a quick glance at the Ukraine reveals a long and winding border to the east with Russia; approximately 1,000 kilometres altogether no less. The Ukraine furthermore holds a generations-long history and association with Russia.

During the First World War, 3.5 million Ukrainians fought in the Imperial Russian Army, primarily in opposition to a German Empire which became a military dictatorship run by Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff – from late 1917 Tsarist forces ceased to exist as the October Revolution was implemented, ushering in the creation of Soviet Russia.

Over two decades later, up to seven million Ukrainian soldiers joined the Red Army during its “Great Patriotic War” against the Nazis. By 1945, around 2.5 million Ukrainian infantrymen within Soviet armies were killed by Hitler’s troops. The Ukraine’s young foot soldiers paid a heavy price indeed for their contribution in liberating Soviet lands from Nazi rule.

It has been rather galling, as a consequence, to witness the Ukraine in recent years led by a throng embedded with fascist figures – individuals with many years of neo-Nazi activism under their belts, such as Andriy Parubiy (image on the right), Chairman of the Ukraine’s Parliament since April 2016 and co-founder of the fascist Svoboda party. Parubiy is an old associate of other neo-Nazis such as Svoboda chief Oleh Tyahnybok, Oleh Makhnitskyi and Dmytro Yarosh, the latter a Ukrainian Member of Parliament (MP) since late 2014 and a former leader of Right Sector, another fascist party.

These men are all followers of the terrorist Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian Nazi who collaborated with the Third Reich before and during World War II. In early July 1941, with German soldiers pouring forward onto the frontiers of western Ukraine, Bandera’s “Act of Proclamation” declared,

“The newly formed Ukrainian state will work closely with the National Socialist-Greater Germany” and that Hitler “is forming a new order in Europe and the world and is helping the Ukrainian People to free itself from Moscovite occupation”.

In the postwar years, Bandera and his cronies received extensive protection from the Allied victors, enjoying significant aid and support from American and British intelligence services, the CIA and MI6.

For the meantime, Stoltenberg himself met recently with fascist Ukrainian MP Parubiy; as the NATO chief revealed via his twitter account on 27 November 2018, while he warmly shakes hands with him.

Met the Chairman of Ukraine's Parliament Andriy Parubiy today to discuss the serious situation in the Sea of Azov. #NATO stands with #Ukraine. Read the new statement from the North Atlantic Council here: https://t.co/JzEE41mQFn pic.twitter.com/I0isOvszJ5

— Jens Stoltenberg (@jensstoltenberg) November 27, 2018

Stoltenberg is a former social-democratic Norwegian prime minister, who in his youth actively protested the Vietnam War. He has for years been servile to Washington’s whims, and is seemingly comfortable mingling with neo-Nazis under the NATO banner.

There are other fascists currently working as MPs in the Ukrainian parliament, such as Ihor Mosiychuk (former Svoboda member), Oleh Lyashko (Radical Party head), Yuriy Bereza (Dnipro Battalion leader), Serhiy Melnychuk (former Aidar Battalion commander) and Andriy Biletsky (founder of the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly).

Almost all of the Ukraine’s far-right extremists are supporters of NATO and American-led military intervention, whilst many of them have enjoyed trips to see their de facto bosses in America. This includes Parubiy who visited Washington last summer, and he was previously in the US capital during February 2015, where he met among others senator John McCain and John Boehner, then speaker of the House. In the same outing, Parubiy held top level meetings with the US Department of State, Department of Defense and National Security Council. He was graced too with interviews from the editorial boards of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

Parubiy was invited to Ottawa, Canada in February 2016, and can be seen smiling in photographs with prime minister Justin Trudeau. In November 2018 Parubiy had discussions with Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament – where Parubiy called on Brussels to strengthen sanctions against Russia, while he pushed forward with proposals for the Ukraine to eventually join both NATO and the EU, moves welcomed by Tajani.

In February 2019, EU Council President Donald Tusk was in Kiev where he spoke to the national parliament, and highlighted among other things that Ukrainian MPs should “be resolute in rejecting the lure of radical nationalism and populism, as you have done so far”. Tusk was seemingly unaware some of those he was addressing hold rather more extreme outlooks than that of “radical nationalists” or “populists”. Indeed, Parubiy himself could be viewed sitting directly in the background while Tusk was speaking.

Prior to the American-led coup in the Ukraine (confirmed by Barack Obama on CNN), it was clear that this action would increase the risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia. It is again by the grace of luck that such a devastating encounter has been avoided. The putsch represented a major antagonization of Russia, which has been a nuclear superpower for decades with understandable concerns relating to what occurs along its boundaries.

The US stations many dozens of its nuclear weapons in four EU and NATO countries: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium; and also in NATO country Turkey; bringing the total number of nuclear states in reality to over a dozen. The presence of nuclear devices in the countries above constitutes the most serious violation of their sovereignty, while further endangering Europe and the globe.

Despite a heightened risk of nuclear war, the Ukraine crisis has enjoyed consistent Western backing from the beginning. Many press reports regarding the Ukraine are of a particularly propagandist nature, describing the illegal overthrow of an elected leader as a “pro-western revolution” with Russia alone “fomenting a war in eastern Ukraine that has now killed more than 10,300 people and displaced 1.6 million”.

There is not a word explicated in these substandard accounts pertaining to crucial American involvement in the country. No comment is to be read either relating to the Western-supported neo-Nazi units fighting Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine; such as white supremacists known as the Azov Battalion and Donbas Battalion, which comprise part of the National Guard of Ukraine – along with other Nazi-style squadrons like the Aidar Battalion, that belongs to the Ukrainian Ground Forces. The Dnipro Battalion has provided support too, and is commanded by the above-mentioned far-right Ukrainian MP, Yuriy Bereza.

Rather, the readers are led to believe that it is Russia alone which has been “fomenting a war in eastern Ukraine”. Also unreported are the war crimes committed by the Azov, Donbas, Aidar and Dnipro battalions against Ukrainian civilians, which have gone unpunished; such as murder, torture, sexual assault and deliberate starvation of civilians. The Donbas Battalion commander Semen Semenchenko – another far-right figurehead and Ukrainian MP – has received invitations to America where he saw members of Congress and Pentagon representatives, while seeking “non-lethal aid” from the US.

In September 2014 Semenchenko said that, “I want to make Ukraine into another Israel”. Over four years ago, he was elected as a parliamentary deputy, a position he continues to hold. In December 2018, it was reported that Semenchenko was briefly detained in Tbilisi, Georgia while illegally attempting to purchase weapons there, and avoided arrest due to his possession of a diplomatic passport. President Petro Poroshenko previously praised the much-decorated Semenchenko for his “courage, commander’s endurance and moral fibre” while also eulogizing the Donbas Battalion as “real heroes”.

Poroshenko is in actual fact a US-sponsored proxy leader who has sought NATO and EU membership; he is moreover an ally of Israel, having repeatedly visited the expansionist state, and signed a “free trade agreement” during another trip to Israel in January this year. Poroshenko has toured the US many times, including a particularly ingratiating visit to the White House in June 2017, where president Donald Trump was apparently reluctant to meet him.

Relating to America’s role in the Ukraine, perhaps one should not be too surprised that the superpower implemented an administration with strong neo-Nazi links. US governments and their special services have a history of cooperation with Nazi henchmen dating to the conclusion of World War II. The US State Department and CIA worked willingly with former Nazis like General Reinhard Gehlen and “Butcher of Lyon” Klaus Barbie, employing them in the east to again destabilize the Soviet Union.

In the Ukraine, its 21st century fascist battalions receive much of their funding from oligarchs with ties to the West; such as powerful billionaire businessman Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who is a Ukrainian-Israeli-Cypriot citizen with a US visa and he has spent periods living in America – where he holds vested corporate interests in states like Ohio and West Virginia.

Kolomoyskyi is presently being investigated by the FBI after being accused of “ordering contract killings” along with undergoing probes relating to claims of “financial crimes”, such as embezzlement and the laundering of money into America. Kolomoyskyi is thought to be firmly supporting the campaign of comic actor Volodymyr Zelensky, favourite to become the Ukraine’s new head of state next week.

Kolomoskyi has ownership of major television networks in the Ukraine, which have provided Zelensky with a crucial platform so as to communicate with the nation’s populace. Zelensky has been compelled to deny his connections to Kolomoyskyi, but Poroshenko inevitably pounces upon these ties in order to score political points.

Though the Ukraine as a state was far from an idyllic one under the ousted Viktor Yanukovych, conditions have noticeably deteriorated since the June 2014 assumption to power of Poroshenko. Corruption and avarice have increased, so too crime and homelessness, numerous neo-Nazis have gained positions in parliament, the general population is suffering from worsening poverty and disillusionment while state services disintegrate.

Led by a billionaire oligarch for almost five years, the Ukraine is today Europe’s poorest nation with about 60% of its people living below the poverty line. Not much of this bothers privileged elites, so long as the country remains benevolent to wealthy business interests.

Once more, little of these uncomfortable realities are ever covered in press articles. Entering 2019 and the New York Times, on 24 January, is still elaborating on its “pro-Western revolution” line, while denouncing former president Yanukovych as “a widely reviled figure”. The New York Times carefully avoids bestowing such a title upon Poroshenko, in spite of his being a more “widely reviled figure” than Yanukovych.

Just prior to his toppling in early 2014, Yanukovych’s approval ratings stood at 20%. Less than a month ago, Poroshenko’s popularity ratings were once more recorded at less than half that at 9%, making this ranking a “world low” for a government leader.

Due to further non-existent reporting, first world populations are likely unaware of these statistics. Neither are they fully in tune to the atrocious mess the Ukraine is in today, which can largely be traced to the “pro-democracy Revolution”.

However, regarding oil rich Venezuela, major press outlets have been quick to express concerns for the lack of “freedom and democracy” in the South American country. A New York Times editorial, from 3 April 2019, bemoaned how “it is terrible to witness the suffering of a nation [Venezuela]” as its people hover “on the edge of starvation” while “it certainly would be a great relief for Venezuela to be rid of the leader [Nicolas Maduro] who inherited a broken country”.

One can presume it would be a great relief too for Western oil manufacturers, if they could place their hands on Venezuela’s vast reserves. The New York Times editorial then outlines the potential of “a military intervention” but quickly concludes that “in a country bigger than Texas” it “would be ugly”, not to mention a violation of the UN Charter. Instead, “The reality is that Mr. Trump has no real option but to wait” as “It is hard to conceive that Mr. Maduro will hang on indefinitely”.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Stars and Stripes