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Global Research does not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A bilateral Peace Agreement is required.
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Western media agencies are in shock with the events that took place in Ukraine in the last 24 hours. Operations carried out by Moscow against military targets with the aim of neutralizing Ukrainian aggression are causing scandal, motivating international pressure through repudiation and severe financial sanctions. However, the issue has been analyzed from an extremely superficial point of view, with Russia being treated as an “aggressive dictatorship” and Ukraine as a “victimized democracy”, which does not correspond to the reality of the facts.
What the West had been eagerly waiting for has finally happened: Russia has hit targets inside Ukrainian territory. For Kiev and its allies, this would be an “invasion”. For any minimally rational and neutral analyst, it is just a war, in the purest sense of the term. For the past eight years, the war in Donbass has been seen by Moscow as a civil conflict, within the exclusive competence of the Ukrainian state. Russia has respected Ukrainian sovereignty throughout this time, demanding only the observance of the Minsk Accords and an end to the indiscriminate killing of the ethnically Russian population in the east. However, the continuity of the Ukrainian aggression led the Russian government to recognize Lugansk and Donetsk as countries, which absolutely changes the way of interpreting the conflict: it is no longer a civil war, but a war between different national states.
With that, Russia started a peacekeeping mission in order to protect the people of Donbass. Considering that Ukraine is the aggressor state in this war, pacifying the Donbass means, collaterally, fighting the Ukrainian armed forces and their allied paramilitary militias. So, in practice, the peacekeeping mission/humanitarian intervention carried out by Moscow implies a war against Ukraine – not because Russia wants such a war, but because it is Ukraine that attacks the sovereign republics of Donbass.
As well known, in every war there are attacks. Strategic targets are hit in an attempt to neutralize the opposing side and guarantee the victory. As there is a war between Ukraine and the Republics, there is the possibility of attacks by Lugansk and Donetsk against Ukrainian territory (in the same way that Kiev attacks Donbass almost daily for eight years). In the same sense, as Russia maintains a peacekeeping mission in defense of the republics, occasional attacks against strategic targets on Ukrainian soil are normal and expected.
What is happening this Thursday, February 24, is an occasional attack by Russia against important targets in some Ukrainian cities. Strategic bases of the Ukrainian armed forces and neo-Nazi pro-Maidan militias, which are actively engaged in the ethnic genocide in Donbass, are being neutralized. No civilian targets are being targeted and collateral damage to Ukrainian society is virtually non-existent.
Obviously, Kiev and the West are reacting very negatively. Zelesnky decreed martial law, called up reservists and veterans to enlistment, and began distributing weapons to the civilian population. The US, UK, EU, Australia and all pro-NATO governments condemned the attacks and announced financial sanctions on Moscow, but Joe Biden made it clear that there will be no intervention by the Western military alliance in the conflict, promising Zelesnky only “his prayers” in this moment. NATO troops are being deployed to Eastern Europe just to ensure that war does not reach the member countries of the alliance, keeping Ukraine out of the Western umbrella, as so many analysts had predicted.
The most rational position among all state pronouncements was the Chinese one. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Beijing stated the obvious truth that the West does not want to admit: there is no Russian invasion in Ukraine. Attacks do not necessarily constitute invasion. Attacks are violent measures of aggression or reaction, while invasion is the first phase of an occupation process. Invasions can occur through attacks, but they can also occur through peaceful, legal and institutional means. Moscow has already stated that the attacks are occasional and against specific targets, with no possibility of occupation, so there is no invasion underway.
In fact, Russia plans to neutralize the Ukrainian military infrastructure in order for the violence in the Donbass to be stopped. This is a measure of war, because there is a humanitarian intervention going on and humanitarian interventions configure wars. In wars there are attacks – and that is what is happening now.
NATO has assured that it will not intervene – and mere financial sanctions do not prevent wars. Zelensky needs to consider all these factors to act rationally, prioritizing the well-being of his own people over the neo-fascist pride that prevails in current Ukrainian nationalism.
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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
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California lawmakers want COVID vaccine mandates for all K-12 students and the right to “discipline” doctors who step outside public policy guidelines for treating COVID patients. But other states, including New Hampshire and Kansas, are eying legislation designed to protect physicians who prescribe drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Before the U.S. Supreme Court last month blocked the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates for large employers and allowed the mandate for healthcare workers to stand, all eyes were on the feds when it came to COVID-related policies.
But state lawmakers also have been busy drafting bills in an effort to shape COVID policies closer to home.
The California Assembly, for example, introduced over the past six months a flurry of bills designed to strengthen vaccination mandates and regulate treatment options for patients.
For example, Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) last month introduced legislation proposing COVID vaccine mandates for all K-12 students in California schools.
And this month, Assembly Member Evan Low (D-Campbell) introduced legislation (AB 2098) that, according to the Los Angeles Times, would “make it easier for the Medical Board of California to discipline doctors who promote COVID-19 misinformation by classifying it as unprofessional conduct.”
The bill defines “unprofessional conduct” as any action a physician or surgeon takes “to disseminate or promote misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.”
Under the bill, disciplinary action could be brought against a physician for disseminating information that “resulted in an individual declining opportunities for COVID-19 treatment or prevention that was not justified by the individual’s medical history or condition.”
Additionally, doctors could be disciplined for “misinformation or disinformation” that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus to an extent where its dissemination constitutes gross negligence” by the physician.
Commenting on the criteria, Dr. Meryl Nass, an expert in epidemiology and vaccine injury and member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory committee, said:
“I think this is clearly an attempt to legislate that the government of California or the Medical Board of California will define what is truth and what is misinformation, and medical providers will have to follow lockstep with that definition.
“This, of course, is the same thing as the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s “1984,” and if the California legislature actually votes for this bill, the intent of the action will be to enforce a one and only truth.
“Nowhere does this legislature define what is misinformation and disinformation. They do talk about contemporary scientific consensus but as we know in the last two years, the so-called scientific consensus — or the public health agency consensus — on masks, on vaccination, on boosters, etc. has flip-flopped all over the place. So we have adequate examples that the concept of “contemporary scientific consensus” is basically meaningless in this context.”
Contrary to typical board practice, under AB 2098, physicians could also be disciplined for public speech, including social media posts, unrelated to the actual treatment of patients.
Supporters of Low’s bill insist the legislation does not impinge on doctors’ freedom of speech.
“This isn’t a call for a policing of free speech,” Nick Sawyer, an emergency room doctor who founded a group called No License for Disinformation, told the LA Times. “This is a call for protecting the public against dangerous misinformation, which patients are parroting back to us in our emergency room departments every day.”
Nass disagreed:
“The result is removing options from doctors and patients. And the longer-term consequence is that doctors will become irrelevant if they are not needed to assess each individual’s personal risks and benefits from each type of medical care.
“The government and its partners in the healthcare industries can simply prescribe one-size-fits-all healthcare for everyone.”
Low’s bill, introduced as part of a larger effort by a group of Democratic state legislators to strengthen vaccination laws, set off a contentious debate over how far the state should go in pursuing COVID mandates.
Other COVID-related bills introduced in California include:
Assembly Bill 1993, authored by Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), would require employees and independent contractors to be vaccinated against COVID as a condition of employment unless they have an exemption based on a medical condition, disability or religious beliefs.
Assembly Bill 1797, introduced by Akilah Weber (D-San Diego), allows California school officials to more easily check student vaccine records by expanding access to a statewide immunization database.
Senate Bill 866, introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) would let children 12 and older be vaccinated without parental consent.
Other states pursue efforts to support alternative treatments
In contrast to California, several state legislatures are moving to provide legal support for off-label prescriptions and alternative approaches supported by physicians.
In New Hampshire, legislators last month held public hearings on a bill that would allow for over-the-counter dissemination of ivermectin at pharmacies, provided certain treatment plan requirements were met.
New Hampshire HB 1022 would permit pharmacists to dispense the ivermectin by means of a standing order entered into by licensed healthcare professionals.
Sponsors of the bill argued many healthcare workers are unable to prescribe ivermectin, either because of hospital politics or outside professional pressures.
The bill has support from Dr. Paul Marik, who traveled from Virginia to testify at the public hearing.
A former professor of medicine and chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, Marik sued the hospital he worked for after it banned physicians from prescribing ivermectin for COVID patients.
Marik resigned late last year in protest of the ban.
During his testimony in New Hampshire, Marik described ivermectin as “cheap, exceedingly safe and exceedingly effective.”
“If ivermectin had been promoted at the beginning of this pandemic, we would not be sitting here today,” Marik said.
Kansas lawmakers last month advanced a bill supporting the prescribing of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. The model legislation, also introduced in Tennessee, would require pharmacists to fill prescriptions for the off-label use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
In direct contrast to the California legislation, the Kansas bill also would mandate that doctors not be subject to disciplinary action for any “recommendation, prescription, use or opinion … related to a treatment for COVID-19, including a treatment that is not recommended or regulated by the licensing board,” Kansas Department of Health and Environment or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“Such actions,” the bill states, “could not be considered unprofessional conduct.”
Kansas lawmaker Sen. Mark Steffen (R-Hutchinson) supports the bill. Steffen, an anesthesiologist, said he’s under investigation by the University of Kansas Health System with which he is affiliated for prescribing ivermectin to COVID patients.
Dr. Festus Krebs III, a physician representing the Catholic Medical Association of Kansas City, also spoke in favor of the bill:
“With ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, we now have 76 ivermectin COVID-19 controlled studies which show 66 percent overall improvement and 57 percent decreased mortality.”
Meanwhile, in Florida, legislation that would extend protection for hospitals against patient lawsuits over COVID care sits on the desk of Gov. Ron DeSantis, awaiting signature or a veto.
And in New York, the state’s comptroller — citing the investment of the state’s public pension plan in Spotify — sent a letter to the company asking it to increase its screening of “misinformation” on their platform.
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David Charbonneau, Ph.D. is a fellow for The Defender.
Comments Off on California Bill Would Punish Doctors Who Promote COVID ‘Misinformation,’ as Other States Move to Protect Doctors’ Rights to Treat Patients
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“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” — James Madison
War is the enemy of freedom.
As long as America’s politicians continue to involve us in wars that bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and women, increase the chances of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that much closer to eventual collapse, “we the people” will find ourselves in a perpetual state of tyranny.
It’s time for the U.S. government to stop policing the globe.
This latest crisis—America’s part in the showdown between Russia and the Ukraine—has conveniently followed on the heels of a long line of other crises, manufactured or otherwise, which have occurred like clockwork in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms.
And so it continues in its Orwellian fashion.
Two years after COVID-19 shifted the world into a state of global authoritarianism, just as the people’s tolerance for heavy-handed mandates seems to have finally worn thin, we are being prepped for the next distraction and the next drain on our economy.
Yet policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad isn’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, it’s certainly not making America great again, and it’s undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.
Indeed, even if we were to put an end to all of the government’s military meddling and bring all of the troops home today, it would take decades to pay down the price of these wars and get the government’s creditors off our backs.
War has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.
What most Americans—brainwashed into believing that patriotism means supporting the war machine—fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with propping up a military industrial complex that continues to dominate, dictate and shape almost every aspect of our lives.
Consider: We are a military culture engaged in continuous warfare. We have been a nation at war for most of our existence. We are a nation that makes a living from killing through defense contracts, weapons manufacturing and endless wars.
We are also being fed a steady diet of violence through our entertainment, news and politics.
All of the military equipment featured in blockbuster movies is provided—at taxpayer expense—in exchange for carefully placed promotional spots.
What I didn’t know then as a schoolboy was the extent to which the Pentagon was paying to be cast as America’s savior. By the time my own kids were growing up, it was Jerry Bruckheimer’s blockbuster film Top Gun—created with Pentagon assistance and equipment—that boosted civic pride in the military.
And then there are the growing number of video games, a number of which are engineered by or created for the military, which have accustomed players to interactive war play through military simulations and first-person shooter scenarios.
This is how you acclimate a population to war.
This is how you cultivate loyalty to a war machine.
This is how, to borrow from the subtitle to the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, you teach a nation to “stop worrying and love the bomb.”
Why is the Pentagon (and the CIA and the government at large) so focused on using Hollywood as a propaganda machine?
To those who profit from war, it is—as Sirota recognizes—“a ‘product’ to be sold via pop culture products that sanitize war and, in the process, boost recruitment numbers….At a time when more and more Americans are questioning the fundamental tenets of militarism (i.e., budget-busting defense expenditures, never-ending wars/occupations, etc.), military officials are desperate to turn the public opinion tide back in a pro-militarist direction — and they know pop culture is the most effective tool to achieve that goal.”
The media, eager to score higher ratings, has been equally complicit in making (real) war more palatable to the public by packaging it as TV friendly.
This is what professor Roger Stahl refers to as the representation of a “clean war”: a war “without victims, without bodies, and without suffering”:
“‘Dehumanize destruction’ by extracting all human imagery from target areas … The language used to describe the clean war is as antiseptic as the pictures. Bombings are ‘air strikes.’ A future bombsite is a ‘target of opportunity.’ Unarmed areas are ‘soft targets.’ Civilians are ‘collateral damage.’ Destruction is always ‘surgical.’ By and large, the clean war wiped the humanity of civilians from the screen … Create conditions by which war appears short, abstract, sanitized and even aesthetically beautiful. Minimize any sense of death: of soldiers or civilians.”
This is how you sell war to a populace that may have grown weary of endless wars: sanitize the war coverage of anything graphic or discomfiting (present a clean war), gloss over the actual numbers of soldiers and civilians killed (human cost), cast the business of killing humans in a more abstract, palatable fashion (such as a hunt), demonize one’s opponents, and make the weapons of war a source of wonder and delight.
“This obsession with weapons of war has a name: technofetishism,” explains Stahl. “Weapons appear to take on a magical aura. They become centerpieces in a cult of worship.”
“Apart from gazing at the majesty of these bombs, we were also invited to step inside these high-tech machines and take them for a spin,” said Stahl. “Or if we have the means, we can purchase one of the military vehicles on the consumer market. Not only are we invited to fantasize about being in the driver’s seat, we are routinely invited to peer through the crosshairs too. These repeated modes of imaging war cultivate new modes of perception, new relationships to the tools of state violence. In other words, we become accustomed to ‘seeing’ through the machines of war.”
In order to sell war, you have to feed the public’s appetite for entertainment.
Not satisfied with peddling its war propaganda through Hollywood, reality TV shows and embedded journalists whose reports came across as glorified promotional ads for the military, the Pentagon has also turned to sports to further advance its agenda, “tying the symbols of sports with the symbols of war.”
This is how you sustain the nation’s appetite for war.
No wonder entertainment violence is the hottest selling ticket at the box office. As professor Henry Giroux points out, “Popular culture not only trades in violence as entertainment, but also it delivers violence to a society addicted to a pleasure principle steeped in graphic and extreme images of human suffering, mayhem and torture.”
No wonder the government continues to whet the nation’s appetite for violence and war through paid propaganda programs (seeded throughout sports entertainment, Hollywood blockbusters and video games)—what Stahl refers to as “militainment“—that glorify the military and serve as recruiting tools for America’s expanding military empire.
No wonder Americans from a very young age are being groomed to enlist as foot soldiers—even virtual ones—in America’s Army (coincidentally, that’s also the name of a first person shooter video game produced by the military). Explorer Scouts, for example, are one of the most popular recruiting tools for the military and its civilian counterparts (law enforcement, Border Patrol, and the FBI).
We are dealing with a sophisticated, far-reaching war machine that has woven itself into the very fabric of this nation.
Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhaul.
Eventually, all military empires fall and fail by spreading themselves too thin and spending themselves to death.
It happened in Rome: at the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise.
It’s happening again.
The American Empire—with its endless wars waged by U.S. military servicepeople who have been reduced to little more than guns for hire: outsourced, stretched too thin, and deployed to far-flung places to police the globe—is approaching a breaking point.
The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.
This is exactly the scenario President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against when he cautioned the citizenry not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties or democratic processes. Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.
Yet as Eisenhower recognized, the consequences of allowing the military-industrial complex to wage war, exhaust our resources and dictate our national priorities are beyond grave:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
We failed to heed Eisenhower’s warning.
The illicit merger of the armaments industry and the government that Eisenhower warned against has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation today.
What we have is a confluence of factors and influences that go beyond mere comparisons to Rome. It is a union of Orwell’s 1984 with its shadowy, totalitarian government—i.e., fascism, the union of government and corporate powers—and a total surveillance state with a military empire extended throughout the world.
The growth of and reliance on militarism as the solution for our problems both domestically and abroad bodes ill for the constitutional principles which form the basis of the American experiment in freedom.
As author Aldous Huxley warned: “Liberty cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.”
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The US used to produce experts on Soviet and Russian affairs like Jack Matlock. Today we get the likes of Michael McFaul. The decline of popular interest in Russian-area studies, combined with intellectual laziness on the part of the average US citizen, is to blame.
On February 21, Russia’s President Vladmir Putin gave what will most likely go down in history as one of the most important speeches in modern history. It was a brutally honest example of how current events are shaped by the forces of history. What is important about this speech isn’t so much the content–that is now part of the historical record–but rather how it was absorbed and interpreted by those who watched it.
As an American imbued with more than a little first-hand insight into Russian affairs, I have been struck by the inability of the American people to comprehend the historical foundation of Putin’s speech. It is not my place to either attack or defend the details put forward by the Russian president. I would hope, however, that my fellow citizens would be able to engage in an informed, intelligent, and rational discussion about the speech, given the immense geopolitical ramifications attached to it.
Unfortunately, the average American, lacking both the intellectual training and the critical resource of time, is ill-equipped to participate in such an exercise. Instead, they have subordinated this task to a category of public servant known as the “Russian expert.” Under normal circumstances, one might find the existence of such a class a relief; after all, Americans are willing to entrust their financial security to “financial managers.” Why not surrender the intellectual machinations required to make sense of something as complex as Russian affairs and all that topic entails to the hands of the specialists, men and women schooled in the history, economy, culture, and language of Russia?
This isn’t the first time Americans have been called upon to entrust critical Russia-related analysis and the decision-making derived therefrom to so-called “experts.” From 1945 through 1991 the US and Soviet Union were engaged in a massive geopolitical conflict known as the Cold War. I happened to be an eyewitness to the final years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and to a speech which, in its own way, was as impactful as the one given by Vladimir Putin this week.
On June 28, 1988, I was in the second week of work as a member of the advanced party of US inspectors dispatched to the Soviet city of Votkinsk, located about 700 miles (just over 1,000km) east of Moscow, in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. Our job was to work with our Soviet colleagues to make the necessary preparations to receive the main body of 25 inspectors scheduled to arrive on July 1, 1988, when portal monitoring operations began, a month after the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty entered into force. On that date, we would begin our treaty-mandated task of monitoring the activities of the Votkinsk Missile Final Assembly Plant, located some 12 kilometers outside the city of Votkinsk, to make sure the Soviets no longer produced ballistic missiles that had been banned under the terms of the treaty.
The advance party was billeted in a well-kept Dacha situated in the woods on the outskirts of the city. Built to house the former Minister of Defense Dmitry Ustinov and his entourage during their frequent visits to Votkinsk, the Dacha was equipped with a well-stocked kitchen, a pool table, and a lounge where one could watch Soviet television. On the evening of June 28, I was surprised to find my Soviet hosts gathered around the television screen. That evening, Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), had convened the 19th All-Union Conference of the CPSU. At first blush, I gave the event no thought–just another communist party “yes” fest with officials falling over each other in fawning admiration of a totalitarian leader. I said as much to one of my hosts, an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“You couldn’t be further from the truth,” he replied. “This is a revolution!”
Over the course of the next three days, during breaks from what was a very busy schedule, I joined my Soviet hosts as we watched history unfold before us. Gorbachev was introducing real reform–perestroika–to the Soviet people. He was being challenged by the communist party, in the form of his deputy, Yegor Ligachev, and by reformers, in the person of Boris Yeltsin. The conference had turned into an ideological battleground, where the future of the Soviet Union was being decided live, in public, before the Soviet people, for the first time in its history.
If you had asked the average American citizen about the importance of the 19th All-Union Party Conference at the time it transpired, they wouldn’t have been able to provide an intelligent answer. Even though the Soviet Union had been elevated to the status of an “Evil Empire” with which the US was prepared to engage in all-out nuclear war to constrain, the American public at that time, much like their counterparts today, was satisfied to leave the heavy thinking in the hands of a class of civil servant, the ‘Soviet expert’ who would monitor the situation and advise the political leadership, and, as needed, the public.
Among those who constituted this ‘Soviet expert’ class were a category of military officers known as ‘Soviet Foreign Affairs Officers,’ or FAOs. Provided with advanced linguistic training and graduate-level education before attending a year-long finishing school, the US Army Russia Institute, located in Garmisch, West Germany, a Soviet FAO was a subject-matter expert whose mission was to provide critical insight to policy makers about Soviet issues and, as needed, carry out specific military tasks–such as implementing the INF treaty.
The disparity between the Soviet FAO and his or her civilian counterpart was played out live in Votkinsk. The advance party consisted of five persons–three military officers (two FAO-qualified and me) and two civilian civil engineers. At night, when the work was done and the television turned on, you would find the two civil engineers playing pool or reading a book, while the three military officers were glued to the television set.
Over the course of the next two years, I bore witness to two critical events transpiring in parallel–the implementation of the INF treaty, and the implementation of perestroika. Both played an important role in shaping the events that led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. As trained Soviet experts, the FAOs and I were able to provide invaluable insight into the phenomenon of perestroika in the hinterlands of the Soviet Union. That which empowered us was the education we had received in Russian history and affairs from an American academic establishment that had, since the end of the Second World War, been prepared for just this task.
The Soviet FAO, together with their counterparts in the State Department and US Intelligence Community, were the beneficiaries of an education system which had seen an explosion in Russian Area Studies during the Second World War, when the Soviet Union was considered an ally, and which only grew after the war ended, and the Soviet Union was reclassified as an enemy. The unique circumstances which gave rise to the study of Russian Affairs in the US allowed for the retention of academic integrity in the face of ideological pressure to paint the Soviet Union in a negative light.
One of the clearest examples of this phenomenon can be found in the person of Richard Pipes, a renowned American academic who specialized in Soviet and Russian history and who taught at Harvard for decades while advising various US presidents, most notably Ronald Reagan, on matters pertaining to Soviet policy. Pipes was decidedly anti-Soviet, and the advice he provided was decidedly hardline in nature. His writings, however, were derived from historical fact subjected to proper analysis and scrutiny. His book, The formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and nationalism, 1917-1923, was mandatory reading for any student of Russian studies (indeed, it should be mandatory reading today, given the correlation between its subject matter and the content of Putin’s February 21 speech.) I have a first-edition copy of Pipe’s book in my personal library, and I have made extensive use of it over the years as I try to discern what is transpiring inside the former Soviet Union, and why.
Every one of my Soviet ‘expert’ counterparts was a byproduct of an American system of education designed to empower those who participated with critical fact-based discernment skills, capable of separating fact from fiction and filtering out personal and institutional bias. The result was a system that produced people like Jack Matlock, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union during its final years, and George Kolt, the CIA’s top Soviet analyst. Both will go down in history as predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union (the thing about experts is that while their advice might be prescient, it is still held hostage by politicians who answer to a domestic constituency which is often unmoved by fact-based analysis.)
The end of the Cold War, however, brought with it the end of both the Soviet expert and the academic establishment that produced them. By way of example, I had been given two classified commendations by the Director, CIA, for my work in the Soviet Union. But in 1992, after being invited to CIA Headquarters to interview for an analytical position, I was told by the head of the new Russia analytical unit that I was too imbued with “Cold War” thinking; the world had moved on.
Russia became a playground for a new category of ‘expert,’ the political and economic ‘exploiter’ who viewed Russia as a defeated power subject to the whim of the American victor. This class was dominated by the likes of Michael McFaul and his ilk, people who viewed Boris Yeltsin not as the by-product of Soviet and Russian history, but rather a malleable tool in their effort to transform Russia into a compliant “democracy” subservient to their new American masters.
Russian-area studies stopped being the go-to major when it came to interacting with the former Soviet Union, replaced by business and economics degrees sought by people whose purpose wasn’t to understand Russia but rather to exploit it.Interest in Russian studies dwindled, a byproduct of a decline in interest and numbers, in terms of graduate students and faculty. Moreover, the system became infected by the reality of “garbage in, garbage out”: as the old Cold War Soviet specialists were retired from their posts in academia, they were not replaced by people possessing similar academic discipline, but rather a new generation of academics governed more by political perception than fact-based reality. Again, Michael McFaul comes to mind, a man driven not by the complex history of the Soviet Union and Russia, but rather his own vision of what Russia should be.
It is the Michael McFauls of the world who dominate the mainstream media today, people whose academic pronouncements are in keeping with government-approved dogma and, as such, sympathetic to the media corporate executives who work hand-in-glove with the government to spoon-feed what passes for “objective truth” to the American people. Jack Matlock still writes on Russian affairs, his articles providing a fresh, fact-based look at the reality of what is transpiring in Russia today. A public debate between he and McFaul would be most welcome by those who truly seek insight into what is happening in Russia (I consider myself a student of Ambassador Matlock, and if he is not able to throw down the gauntlet of debate, I am–consider the challenge made, Mr. Ambassador!)
The American people are being poorly served by the new class of Russian experts to whom they have relegated all intellectual examination of current Russian affairs. Maybe when gasoline prices skyrocket, and inflation further shrinks their already burdened paycheck, the average American citizen might sit up and take notice. By then, however, it will be too late.
Vladimir Putin’s speech of February 21, just like Mikhail Gorbachev’s address at the 19th All-Union Party Conference in June 1988, should be viewed and assessed with expert eyes, trained to discern fact-based intent and relevance. This happened back in 1988, and we were able to effectively manage the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is not happening today, and we may very well find ourselves neck deep in a conflict which we do not understand and for which we have no answer other than war.
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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, served in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991 to 1998 served as a chief weapons inspector with the UN in Iraq. Mr Ritter currently writes on issues pertaining to international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has revoked the Emergency Act he had instituted on Valentine’s Day, 2022. Instead of waiting for Parliamentary authorization of the replacement to the War Measures Act, Trudeau directed federal, provincial and municipal police forces to link up. On Feb. 17 he directed the amalgamated force to violently dislodge truckers and their parked rigs. The combined police forces took their direction from a Prime Minister who acted through the office of an unapproved interim Ottawa Police Chief.
In plain view of the cameras, the Emergency Act police force committed atrocities directed at peaceful protesters. Police charged towards those they targeted with clubs, trampled them with horses, bludgeoned the resisters with rifle butts and sought to traumatize them with stun grenades and toxic chemical sprays. About two hundred people were arrested including some of the truckers whose rigs were seized and taken into police custody. Ottawa’s Mayor Jim Watson wants to sell the trucks and thereby edify his slush funds with the revenues.
Much of the damage was already done by Feb. 21 when the House of Commons voted along party lines to approve the Emergency Act. The quick plunge of Canada into the category of a failed state under a dictatorial rule stunned many conscientious observers at home and throughout the world.
The MPs of the Liberal and New Democratic Parties voted yes to adopting the successor legislation to Canada’s War Measures Act. The Conservatives Party and the Bloc Quebecois voted no. Then on Feb. 22 the motion went to the Senate. There a strong intention was expressed to give the matter serious deliberation rather than a peremptory approval like the Prime Minister seemed to expect.
Justin Trudeau was not overtly apologetic for the massive overreach he displayed in his vile effort to denigrate his political opponents. By the time the Truckers from throughout Canada converged on Ottawa on January 29, they were already planting hope worldwide that they had come up with a viable formula for dealing with even the most megalomaniacal of the COVID-crazed politicians.
With his frequent promotion of Klaus Schwab’s “Great Reset,” Trudeau put down the seeds that are now making him globally notorious. Trudeau will always be perceived as the epitome of those elected officials who used the pandemic to adopt the avuncular guise of attentive medical doctors.
With the media’s help, Trudeau and those of his ilk transformed many of their constituents into locked down, socially-distanced, and muzzled patients. By disseminating 24/7 fear porn, the legacy media did their part to shock, disorient and infantilize their audiences.
Trudeau’s patients are to this day still being instructed by their fake medical doctor to take multiple shots that do not guard against COVID infections and do not prevent transmission. What these gene-altering injections do induce, however, are serious cumulative attacks on natural immunity. Getting repeatedly jabbed makes the recipients more vulnerable to the full array of contagious diseases, many of them far more lethal than COVID.
Apparently Trudeau was himself traumatized by the arrival in Ottawa of convoys of truckers calling into question his tired and unconvincing doctor’s impersonation. In defending the constitutional right of all Canadians to enjoy the protections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Truckers highlighted the deeply unsound and unscientific character of the Prime Minister’s overall approach to the supposedly new coronavirus. Truckers came to Ottawa wanting a withdrawal of Trudeau’s vaccine mandates and his unconstitutional travel restrictions.
The longer they stayed in Ottawa the more the Trucker’s intelligence, decency, ingenuity and commitment to public safety stood in stark contrast to the all-round defamatory treatment heaped upon them. Among the top culprits in the desecration of Ottawa’s international image as a hospitable national capital are Trudeau himself, Ottawa’s Mayor Jim Watson, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, and the CBC’s own Ottawa-based propagandist-in-chief, Rosemary Barton.
One Feb. 23 Trudeau announced that “the immediate emergency situation is over.” He added, however, “the issue itself will not go away.” Trudeau did not clarify what issue he had in mind.
Is “the issue” Trudeau wants to keep in the forefront the fact that there are still unjabbed Canadians who the Prime Minister wants to render economically impoverished and socially ostracized? Can Trudeau not abandon this obsession which is well in line with that of his good friend, Bill Gates?
Does Trudeau dream of pleasing his mentors at the World Economic Forum by pushing COVID injections until there are no unpunctured citizens left?
Trudeau’s obsession flies in the face of news chronicling a massive jump in injection-related illnesses and mortality in 2021?
There is no doubt that the science points urgently to the fact that the clot shots are proving to be the most lethal and injurious set of medical products ever produced.
Trudeau announced that the report of a parliamentary review of the ten-day invocation of the Emergency Act would lead in 60 days to a report looking at what had happened and why. Trudeau suggested this report “could look at the funding, influence, and disinformation that supported the illegal blockades and occupations, both foreign and domestic.”
Will this report be a whitewash led by Trudeau and Singh? Or does the gravity of what has transpired during the short reign of Canada’s Emergency Act require a deeper and more objective investigation conducted by parties outside the compromised realm of Parliament?
The seriousness of what has already transpired, what is continuing to transpire and what might yet happen, calls for the invocation of a full-fledged Royal Commission. One of the first ironies a Royal Commission would have to address is Trudeau’s assertion that the Emergency Act was applied in conformity with its stated requirement that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms must be followed and applied.
How ironic that Trudeau has told us for two years that the Charter does not apply to many COVID-justified restrictions involving copious claims of medical emergencies. After two years of proclaiming that the Charter does not apply to COVID interventions, he is suddenly changing his tune.
With the flash of a stun grenade we are met by Trudeau’s spurious claim that he was able to meet the Charter’s requirements when he put Canada under the authority of the Emergency Act. Canada’s Emergency Act was used for the first time since its creation in 1988.
The importance of adhering to the Charter in enforcing the Emergency Act has been emphasized by Senator Marc Gold in introducing to his colleagues the Liberal/NDP Bill. He explained,
“Compared to the War Measures Act, the Emergencies Act has reduced powers, added significant Parliamentary review, and was created in part to support and uphold the Charter….The Charter applies to the Emergencies Act and to all actions taken pursuant to the act. There is no temporary suspension of rights or freedoms as there was under the old War Measures Act. Furthermore, all acts must be consistent with our international human rights obligations.”
How is the Charter being supported by Trudeau’s public statement that the Truckers targeted by police for removal from Ottawa are guilty of “illegal blockades and occupations, both foreign and domestic.” When have there been any procedures in court to test these highly political allegations from a Prime Minister seeking to justify the seizing and freezing of truckers’ bank accounts, the appropriation of their trucks, the removal of their licenses and the cancellation of insurance?
The answer is, never. These severe punishments were made to apply not only to the Truckers but to people who properly contributed to crowdfunding platforms supportive of the political objectives of the convoy members.
No trials have taken place where the question has been put before objective arbitrators concerning whether the individual members of the Freedom Convoy that touched down in Ottawa are guilty of “illegal blockades and occupations.” There is, therefore, no adherence of the Emergency Act to the Charter’s provision in 11 (d) that that “all citizens must be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.”
There is much that is obviously reprehensible in this most recent instance of yet more government overreach. This time the taint of state criminality shows up in the Trudeau government’s kleptocratic intrusion into the private financial affairs of protesters who are facing treatment as guilty felons, even terrorists, without so much as a single evidentiary hearing in a Canadian court.
The Most Aggressive Inquisitor of the Truckers Enters the Scene
Chrystia Freeland, who is Canada’s Finance Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and a leading Trustee of the World Economic Forum, is the Darth Vader of this saga of economic warfare.
In introducing the Emergency Act of Feb. 14 Freeland declared,
“This occupation and these blockades are causing serious harm to our economy, to our democratic institutions, and to Canada’s international standing.
The world’s confidence in Canada as a place to invest and do business is being undermined.
These illegal blockades are doing great damage to Canada’s economy and to our reputation as a reliable trading partner.
The blockade of the Ambassador Bridge has affected about $390 million in trade each day. This bridge supports 30 per cent of all trade by road between Canada and the United States, our most important trading partner.
In Coutts, Alberta, about $48 million in daily trade has been affected by the blockades.
In Emerson, Manitoba, about $73 million in daily trade has been affected by the blockades.”
Those costs are real. They threaten businesses big and small. And they threaten the livelihoods of Canadian workers, just as we are all working so hard to recover from the economic damage caused by COVID-19.
“This is about following the money. This is about stopping the financing of these illegal blockades. We are today serving notice: if your truck is being used in these protests, your corporate accounts will be frozen.”
In her brief presentation Freeland used the term, “illegal boycott” ten times. No “illegal boycott” took place in Ottawa during the ten days of the Emergency Act. As for explaining what really happened at crossing points along the Canada-US border, there has been very little reliable reporting of what actually took place. Part of the mandate of the Royal Commission might include investigating the episodes at border crossings and interpreting the findings within a framework recognizing the complexity of the many-faceted interactions that have taken place.
Certainly the true dynamic of what transpired on and around the Detroit-Windsor Ambassador Bridge is replete with dozens of unanswered question marks. The way the event unfolded raises many uncertainties about aspects of the movement of transport that don’t seem to make sense. Was the government involved in some hidden machinations?
All that can be definitively declared at this point is that the Ontario government and the Ontario Provincial Police had a role in bringing the action to an end.
I am closer to the event at the border crossing bounded by Coutts in Alberta and Sweetgrass in Montana. Just hours before the Valentine’s Day Emergency Act declaration, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who are contracted out to the Alberta government as its provincial police force, engaged in a number of dubious operations. Eye witnesses have raised many questions about possible police deceptions, provocations and the surreptitious planting of weaponry to justify Freeland’s all-purpose meme of “illegal blockades.”
Throughout the action at Coutts various kinds of traffic, including the passage of emergency vehicles and school buses, kept moving in both directions. This activity involved a range of active negotiations between police, provincial politicians, truckers and many serious and public-spirited supporters.
Then came a strange series of events that so far have been the subject of nothing but a trial-by-media. This media trial included the following report of a sequence of events that unfolded just before the Ottawa invocation of the Emergency Act.
On Monday, RCMP also charged Chris Carbert, 44, and Christopher Lysak, 48, both of Lethbridge, and Anthony Olienick, 39, of Claresholm with conspiracy to commit murder, mischief over $5,000 and possession of a firearm for a dangerous purpose.
Lysak is also charged with uttering threats.
Police seized a cache of long guns, handguns, oversized magazines, a machete and body armour, and say the suspects intended to kill RCMP if they attempted to break up the blockade.
RCMP called the threat to their officers “real and organized.”
The many claims and counterclaims accompanying this seriously contested media report deserve careful investigation. This investigation needs to pay close attention to the nature of the relationship, if any, between the truck-parking event in Ottawa and several events along the Canada-US border.
Chrystia Freeland certainly takes great license in attaching her politicized characterizations to a series of vague references to border actions. These characterizations form the primary basis of her ruinous generalizations about all the truckers, including those that parked their rigs in Ottawa.
In her assessment the truckers are all maliciously grouped together as terrorists denied any opportunity even to mount a self-defence under oath. Freeland describes the essence of her initiative as the use of the Emergency Act to widen the the scope of “the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act.”
Freeland fails to explain how reconstituting Canada’s financial institutions, including banks, as integral partners in police sting operations, will increase confidence in the soundness of the Canadian economy. The resulting breakdown in public trust became immediately manifest in the banking runs as many people domestically and throughout the world felt compelled to pull their money from our now-suspect financial institutions.
Although Freeland claims that some of the seized accounts have been restored to their owners with the dropping of the Emergency Act, she also indicated, “other accounts remain frozen under the regular authority of the courts, law enforcement, and financial institutions.
From the Dehumanization of Muslims to the Demonization of Freedom Convoys
Rampant Islamophobia was quickly generated by the specious interpretation of 9/11, an interpretation that was never looked into by any formal investigation rooted in Canadian perspectives, interests, and institutions. The failure of the Canadian government to investigate on its own, even though 24 Canadians were killed in the Twin Towers, set terrible precedents that continue to this day.
The Canadian government expects Canadians to take at face value another specious interpretation, this time involving systemic defamation of the Canadian Freedom Convoys. The result of this unsupported defamation is a disinformation and smear campaign that is creating the basis for yet another round of human rights violations. As if the demonization by Trudeau and many others of the so-called “unvaccinated” has not been bad enough, now politicians and their media spin doctors can matter-of-factly generalize about terrorist truckers.
In recent days the Trudeau government and its media presstitutes have created mental images of Truckers as criminals, insurrectionists, and terrorists. In my view the police force that illegally occupied and brutalized downtown Ottawa, especially between Feb. 17-20, are the true insurrectionists. They acted outside the law to advance Trudeau’s own political objectives before the House of Commons and the Senate had spoken to the Prime Minister’s invocation of the Emergency Act.
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Dr. Anthony Hallis editor in chief of the American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.
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During the fighting in the Soviet Winter Campaign, in mid-February 1942 the German Army had recovered its poise, as the situation stabilised for the invaders. Across the Eastern front, the Germans were able to hold on to most of the territory they had captured by early December 1941.
Astride the Russian cities of Rostov-on-Don and Moscow, where the Germans had received some of the heaviest hits of the Soviet Army’s winter counteroffensive, the Wehrmacht had only fallen back between 50 to 150 miles (1). The Germans avoided the disaster that had struck Napoleon’s invasion force, during their 1812 attack on Russia.
The Grande Armée failed to get through its first winter on Russian terrain, suffering complete defeat in December 1812. The Germans would survive 3 winters of fighting on Russian soil, a remarkable feat of arms. By May 1944 at their closest point the Germans were 290 miles from Moscow, while the Soviets were 550 miles from Berlin at that time. For example the Russian city of Pskov, 160 miles south of Leningrad, was not liberated by the Red Army until 23 July 1944. (2)
Military analyst Donald J. Goodspeed wrote that the German performance, in the winter of 1941-42, proved to be “much more significant than all the previous German victories” (3). This was because the Wehrmacht had prevented a collapse along the front, ensuring that the Second World War was now going to be an extended conflict – it would rumble on for considerably longer than “the Great War” (World War I), resulting in far more bloodshed and destruction than its predecessor.
Though the Nazis would be beaten in 1945 and Germany occupied and dissected, the weight of the blows they inflicted on the Soviet Union were a decisive factor in that state’s eventual demise in 1991. English historian Chris Bellamy wrote that Soviet Russia did not fully recover from the struggle with the German war machine and “was a long-term casualty of the Great Patriotic War” (4). It could be argued, therefore, that the conflict was not an unmitigated defeat for Hitler’s regime. Soviet military journals also state that the victory over the Nazis was achieved at a cost that was too great. (5)
Image on the right: Portrait photograph of Georgy Zhukov (Licensed under the public domain)
The Red Army’s counteroffensive of 1941-42 has often been regarded, through the decades, as a watershed Soviet triumph; but as Marshal Georgy Zhukov outlined in his memoirs, the reality on the ground does not support these claims. Between January to March 1942, the Germans inflicted more than four times as many casualties on the Red Army than the Wehrmacht had suffered, 620,000 losses as opposed to 136,000 (6). Zhukov described as “a Pyrrhic victory” the outcome of the Soviet counterattack. (7)
To use a sporting analogy, had the Nazi-Soviet War constituted a boxing match the Germans would have won by some distance on points scored. After 3 months of fighting, at the end of September 1941 the Soviet Army had suffered personnel losses of “at least 2,050,000”, while German manpower losses by then “numbered 185,000”, British historian Evan Mawdsley highlighted. (8)
From September to December 1941 the Soviets suffered 926,000 fatalities while, in the final quarter of the year, from October to December 1941 the Germans lost 117,000 men (9). Mawdsley, who has also presented these figures, revealed that “German losses on the Russian front in the last quarter of 1941, despite the onset of winter and the drama of the drive on Moscow, were lower than those in the summer… These fourth-quarter figures represented a ratio of losses between the Russians and Germans of as much as 8:1”. (10)
In the first six months of 1942, a similar ratio prevailed in the war. From January to June 1942 the Germans inflicted 1.4 million casualties on the Soviets, as opposed to 188,000 casualties for the invaders (11). The great portion of blame, for the disparity in these figures, should not be attached to the frontline Russian (or Soviet) soldier. In both world wars, he proved overall to be a tough and resourceful fighter, capable of fanatical resistance. The responsibility lies ultimately with the state’s long-time ruler, Joseph Stalin, who had taken it upon himself to purge the Soviet military’s officer ranks beginning in May 1937; just when the spectre of war was about to envelop Europe once more, so the timing could hardly have been worse.
As the distinguished Soviet diplomat Andrei Gromyko recalled in his autobiography, Marshal Zhukov spoke bitterly after the war of “the enormous damage Stalin had inflicted on the country by his massacre of the top echelons of the army command” (12). Around 20,000 Soviet military officers and commissars had been arrested “and the greater part were executed”, Mawdsley wrote (13). This is a smaller number than purported in Western propaganda, but it was still significant, and the Red Army’s senior commanders were of course disproportionately targeted.
The worst of the Red Army purges occurred between 1937-1938, but the arrests and executions continued right up to the eve of war with Nazi Germany on 22 June 1941, notably targeting the Soviet Air Force command (14). The result was that the Soviet military, despite lavish spending on armaments for years, was a weak instrument by the time the Germans attacked. The Red Army was desperately short of experienced and capable commanders, when they were needed most.
Mawdsley wrote of those that had been purged,
“These men possessed the fullest professional, educational and operational experience the Red Army had accumulated. They had presided over an extraordinary modernization of doctrine and matériel of the early 1930s. Despite professional and personal rivalries among themselves, these leaders had formed a fairly cohesive command structure. The paradox is that this was precisely why Stalin mistrusted them”. (15)
Had the officers in question been organising a plot to overthrow Stalin, one could at least understand the latter’s actions. Yet a coup does not seem to have been on the horizon. According to Zhukov, who knew some of the Soviet officers in question, those who had been liquidated were “innocent victims” (16). In addition, Zhukov wrote in his memoirs of “unfounded arrests in the armed forces” which were “in contravention of socialist legality” and this had “affected the development of our armed forces and their combat preparedness”. (17)
Of those who remained in the Red Army’s command structure, their initiative and ability to make independent decisions had been paralysed. It was an inevitable byproduct of the psychological damage inflicted by the purges also. Mawdsley realised “a mental state was imposed which was the very opposite of the German ‘mission-oriented command system’”, which encouraged and rewarded independent thinking. (18)
The Red Army purges convinced possible allies and enemies that the Soviet military was in disarray. Exploiting the circumstances, German agencies forwarded details of the purges to British and French intelligence (19). Hitler’s own opinion that the Red Army was of poor quality strengthened in the winter of 1939-40, when he learned of the Soviet forces struggling to overcome a much smaller Finnish Army. The purges were a factor too behind the British and French refusal to sign a pact with Russia, in the late 1930s, which would have aligned those three states against Germany, as during the First World War.
The British and French leaders were, by and large, intensely anti-Bolshevik which can’t be forgotten. The purges served as an excuse to increase their prejudices against communist Russia. Relating to the Anglo-French military hierarchy, Leopold Trepper, a leading former Red Army intelligence agent wrote in his memoirs, “I am inclined to think that the French and English chiefs of staff were less than impatient to seal a military alliance with the Soviet Union, because the weakness of the Soviet Army had become clear to them”. (20)
This weakness was acknowledged not only by Zhukov but other top level Soviet military figures, like Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. In early October 1941 Voroshilov, the pre-war commander of the Red Army, told the Communist International (Comintern) leader Georgi Dimitrov that the situation at the front is “awful”. Voroshilov went on that “our organisation is weaker than theirs. Our commanding officers are less well trained. The Germans succeed usually because of their better organisation and clever tricks”. (21)
Image below: Joseph Stalin (Licensed under the public domain)
The Soviet cause had been hindered too, by Stalin’s refusal to believe the intelligence reports warning of an imminent German invasion. The most plausible intelligence material regarding Nazi intentions came from Soviet agents, such as Trepper, Richard Sorge and Harro Schulze-Boysen, all of whom informed the Kremlin about Operation Barbarossa.
The reports converged and showed an obvious pattern, peaking in intensity and accuracy in the first 3 weeks of June 1941; but Stalin continued to discount the intelligence information sent to him personally. A few days before the Germans invaded, in mid-June 1941 Stalin told Zhukov, “I believe that Hitler will not risk creating a second front for himself by attacking the Soviet Union” (22). Also revealing is that when Stalin was awakened and informed of heavy German shelling along the Nazi-Soviet border, he said, “Hitler surely doesn’t know about it”. (23)
The Germans achieved a major element of surprise in their invasion, advancing quicker and inflicting more damage than they would otherwise have been able to. When the Axis forces swarmed over the frontiers, many Soviet troops were either on leave, separated from their artillery, overrun and taken prisoner before they could mount an effective defence. Within a week of the invasion, the Soviets had suffered about 600,000 casualties and the Germans had advanced more than halfway to Moscow.
Three and a half weeks into the attack, by 16 July 1941 the Wehrmacht was more than two-thirds of the way to the Soviet capital, having reached the city of Smolensk in western Russia, 230 miles from Moscow as the crow flies. Robert Service, an historian of Russian history, wrote how “A military calamity had occurred on a scale unprecedented in the wars of the twentieth century” (24). It is conventionally believed, for an offensive to succeed decisively, that the attackers should outnumber the defenders by 3 to 1 (25). This was certainly not the case in the Nazi-Soviet War, and it offers one crucial reason as to why the German invasion would fail.
The Germans and their Axis allies (mainly Romanians and Finns at first) attacked the USSR with 3,767,000 men; the Soviet military’s personnel strength on the eve of war, taking in the whole of the USSR, amounted to 5,373,000, of which 4,261,000 belonged to the ground forces, the remainder to the air force and navy (26). By the end of 1941, the Germans had virtually destroyed the original 5 million strong Soviet military. However, there was a reserve force to be called upon of 14 million Soviet citizens who, it must be said, had only basic military training; among the Red Army reservists were a million women, about half of them present on the frontline in a variety of roles (27). The Soviet Union’s population was more than 190 million in 1941, not far away from being double that of the Reich’s population.
The Soviet military possessed much larger numbers of tanks, airplanes and artillery than the Germans and their allies. Stalin must be given due credit here, because he had overseen the USSR’s armament drive since the early 1930s. Spending on the Soviet defence budget increased by 340% in absolute terms from 1932 to 1937, and expenditure on arms doubled again between 1937 and 1940. (28)
Directly involved in the fighting at the war’s outset were 11,000 Soviet tanks, in opposition to 4,000 Axis tanks, 9,100 Soviet combat aircraft compared to 4,400 Axis combat aircraft, and 19,800 Soviet artillery pieces as opposed to 7,200 Axis artillery pieces (29). The German-led armies, on paper, should have been at a clear disadvantage from the beginning.
The size of the USSR’s landmass was a further critical factor in Barbarossa’s failure. Russia by itself is easily the world’s largest country, but the Germans assailed other states like the Ukraine (Europe’s second biggest country today), and they also entered Belarus and the Baltic nations. Had the Red Army been concentrated in an area the size of France, the Wehrmacht would most probably have been victorious within a reasonably short space of time.
The farther that the Germans advanced into the western Soviet Union, the broader the land became, a vast expanse opening up in front of them. This was increasingly the case when an invading force attacked across the whole front. While the Germans could do nothing about the terrain’s breadth, they could have shortened the distance by directing their 3 Army Groups in a straight thrust towards Moscow, the USSR’s transportation and communications hub.
By the second half of August 1941, forward units of German Army Group Centre were just 185 miles from Moscow (30). The Wehrmacht’s real weakness was its high command’s strategic shortcomings, compounded by Hitler’s interference, most fatefully his directive of 21 August 1941 – when the Nazi leader postponed the advance on Moscow in order to capture Leningrad, Kiev and the Crimea among other goals. (31)
This directive, a pivotal turning point in the entire war, resulted in a 6 week delay in the approach towards Moscow. It meant in the end that the capital went uncaptured by the Nazis, and the Soviet Union as a result would survive the war, though a long and difficult struggle lay ahead.
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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Notes
1 Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 (Hodder Arnold, 23 Feb. 2007) p. 147
2 Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chronology and Index of the Second World War, 1938-1945 (Meckler Books, 1990) p. 278
3 Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 3 April 1985) p. 405
4 Chris Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (Pan; Main Market edition, 21 Aug. 2009) p. 6
5 Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953 (Yale University Press; 1st Edition, 14 Nov. 2006) p. 10
6 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 147
7 Ibid., p. 127
8 Ibid., pp. 85-86
9 Ibid., pp. 116-117
10 Ibid., p. 117
11 Ibid., p. 147
12 Andrei Gromyko, Memories: From Stalin to Gorbachev (Arrow Books Limited, 1 Jan. 1989) p. 216
13 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, pp. 20-21
14 Ibid., p. 21
15 Ibid.
16 Gromyko, Memories: From Stalin to Gorbachev, p. 216
17 Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov (Icon Books, 2 May 2013) p. 46
18 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 21
19 Leopold Trepper, The Great Game: Memoirs of a Master Spy (Michael Joseph Ltd; First Edition, 1 May 1977) p. 67
20 Ibid., pp. 67-68
21 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 19
22 Ibid., p. 18
23 Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Pan; Reprints edition, 16 April 2010) p. 410
24 Ibid., p. 411
25 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 19
26 Ibid., pp. 19 & 30
27 Roberts, Stalin’s Wars, p. 163
28 Roberts, Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov, p. 43
29 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 19
30 Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., Gene Mueller, Hitler’s Commanders: Officers of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine and the Waffen-SS (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2nd Edition, 15 Oct. 2012) p. 37
31 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 396
Featured image: The center of Stalingrad after liberation, 2 February 1943 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
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In the midst of turmoil and controversy, it is useful to review the most important preceding events and analyze how did this happen. Following are some key events and historical facts leading to the current crisis in Ukraine.
Fact 1. In February 2014, a coup overthrew the Ukrainian government which came to power in an election certified by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation). The president, Viktor Yanukovich, was forced to flee for his life.
This situation was presciently analyzed at the time by Seumas Milne who wrote, “The attempt to lever Kiev into the western camp by ousting an elected leader made conflict certain. It could be a threat to us all.”
Fact 2. The coup was promoted by United States officials. Neo-conservatives such as Victoria Nuland and John McCain actively supported the protests. As confirmed in a secretly recorded phone call, Nuland determined the post-coup composition weeks in advance. Later, Nuland bragged they spent $5 billion in this campaign over two decades. Before the coup was “midwifed”, Nuland forcefully rejected a likely European compromise agreement which would have led to a compromise government. “F*** the EU!”, she said. Nuland managed the coup but Vice President Biden was overall in charge. As Nuland says in the phone call, Biden would give the ultimate “atta boy” to the coup leaders. Subsequently, Joe Biden’s son personally benefited from the coup. Victoria Nuland has even more power now as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Secret US forces such as the Central Intelligence Agency must also be involved.
Fact 3. The coup government immediately acted with hostility toward its Russian speaking citizens. Approximately 30% of Ukrainian citizens have Russian as their first language, yet on the first day in power, the coup regime acted to make Russian no longer an official state language. This was followed by more actions of hostility. As documented in the video “Crimes of the Euromaidan Nazis”, a convoy of buses going back to Crimea was attacked. In Odessa, over thirty opponents of the coup government died when they were attacked and the trade union hall set afire.
Fact 4. During World War 2, there were Nazi sympathizers in western Ukraine when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. This element continues today in the form of Svoboda and other far right nationalist parties. The Ukrainian government has even passed legislation heroizing Nazi collaborators while removing statues honoring anti-Nazi patriots. The situation was described three years ago in an article “Neo-nazis and the far right are on the march in Ukraine”. The author questioned why the US is supporting this. Under President Poroshenko (2014 to 2019) nationalism surged and even the Orthodox Church split apart.
Fact 5. The secession of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk are a direct result of the 2014 coup. In Crimea, a referendum vote was rapidly organized. With 83% turnout and 97% voting in favor, Crimeans decided to secede from Ukraine and re-unify with Russia. Crimea was part of Russia since 1783. When the administration of Crimea was transferred to the Ukraine in 1954. they were all part of the Soviet Union. This was done without consulting the population.
Author’s note: I visited Crimea in 2017 and talked with diverse people including the popularly elected city council officials. There is no doubt about the overwhelming support for re-unification with Russia.
In the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk on the border with Russia, the majority of the population speaks Russian and had no hostility to Russia. The Kiev coup regime was hostile and enacting policies they vehemently disagreed with. In spring 2014, the Luhansk and Donetsk Peoples Republics declared their independence from the Kiev regime.
Fact 6. The Minsk Agreements of 2014 and 2015 were signed by Ukraine, Ukrainian rebels, Russia and other European authorities. They were designed to stop the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine and retain the territorial integrity of Ukraine while granting a measure of autonomy to Luhansk and Donetsk. This is not abnormal; there are 17 autonomous zones in Europe. These agreements were later rebuffed by the Kiev government and Washington. This led to the decision by Russia on 21 February 2022 to recognize the Peoples Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR).
But isn’t secession illegal under international law? The US and NATO have little credibility to oppose secession since they promoted the breakup of Yugoslavia, secession of Kosovo from Serbia, secession of South Sudan from Sudan, and Kurdish secessionist efforts in Iraq and Syria, etc.. The secession of Crimea is justified by its unique history and overwhelming popular support. The secession of Luhansk and Donetsk may be justified by the illegal 2014 Kiev coup.
US intervention, both open and secret, has been a major driver of the events in Ukraine. The US has been the major instigator of the conflict.
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Rick Sterling is a journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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Trucker Convoy is Coming to DC— Their Leader Has a Message for Joe Biden.
“This message is for the President of the United States of America.
“My name is Kyle Sefcik of the Freedom Convoy USA 2022 and our routes meet here in DC on March 1st, in time for your State of the Union address.
“We are very organized and our routes are public. I even put a permit for the National Mall to be respectful.
“I just want to be as transparent as possible from the start so there’s no confusion.
“We are coming peacefully and we’re going to do this lawfully and Constitutionally.
“I want the rest of the world to know our plans so that there’s no twisting and lying about who and what we are.
“I’m coming to you as a father, a small business owner who’s unaffiliated to any parties.
“We just want government overreach to end.
“On behalf of Freedom Convoy USA 2022, we are asking you to end the State of Emergency. End the mandates once and for all.
“Sir, the world is watching us, because they know that if what’s happening in Canada happens to us here in the Land of the Free, then freedom as we know it is gone.
“So, we are leaving the choice to you. The decision is in your hands.
“This whole convoy, this whole assembly on the national mall – it doesn’t even have to happen, if you just end things now and we can get on with our lives.
“To you other convoys that plan on meeting us here, we look forward to seeing you and joining with you.
“We’re going to do this right. We’re going to do this honorably.
“Mr President, we have no other motives in this mission.
“You see, the Government, our elected officials of both parties have failed us tremendously in the last two years and now it’s time for us, We the People to fix this. To end this.
“We’re ready to get back to our lives, the ones promised and guaranteed in the United States Constitution, Bill of Rights and the contract that you signed and swore an oath to under the One True God.
“This is simple. End this.”
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Russia’s recognition of the ‘people’s republics’ of Luhansk and Donetsk in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass on Monday is a watershed event. In a manner of speaking, by this decision President Vladimir Putin crossed the Rubicon. But a tumultuous period lies ahead.
Moscow followed up by putting the legal underpinnings in place “to deploy troops to these regions,” concluding two treaties on friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance between Russia and the two Donbass republics, and, obtaining the authorisation by Russia’s Federation Council, or upper parliament house, for the use of armed forces outside Russia (as required under the constitution.)
The resolution by Federation Council, which was unanimously supported by all the 153 senators at an extraordinary session on Tuesday and coming into immediate effect, says:
“The Federation Council rules to give its consent to the Russian president for the use of armed forces outside Russia on the basis of generally recognised principles and norms of international law. The strength of army units, areas of deployment, tasks and the duration of their stay outside Russia are determined by the Russian president in compliance with the Russian constitution.”
Notably, this authorisation is not Donbass-specific, nor is there any timeline set here. It is also not conditional. Simply put, discretion lies with Putin entirely to make decisions on troop deployments.
Putin’s national address to the Russian people on Monday, which has been amplified further by him in comments to the Russian media on Tuesday, throws light on the “potential future steps.” What emerges from the national address are three things.
First, Moscow views the post-2014 political developments in Ukraine as having been engineered to create an anti-Russian regime in Kiev with hostile intentions, nurtured by the West. This regime is hopelessly compromised to the West and Ukraine has been turned into an American colony.
Second, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) has made deep inroads into Ukraine’s political and defence system. “The Ukrainian troop control system has already been integrated into NATO. This means that NATO headquarters can issue direct commands to the Ukrainian armed forces, even to their separate units and squads.”
Third, NATO is about to grant membership to Ukraine. That will increase the level of military threats to Russia dramatically, considering that American strategic planning documents allow preemptive strike at enemy missile systems. Putin said, “ballistic missiles from Kharkov will take seven to eight minutes; and hypersonic assault weapons, four to five minutes. It is like a knife to the throat.”
Much of this has been said before by Russian leaders but never in such details. Besides, Putin was directly addressing the Russian public and expecting their backing for his decision on Lugansk and Donetsk (which will undoubtedly be a very popular move) and thereby seeking legitimacy for his future course of action. Clearly, the western assessment that Russian public disapproves of any intervention in Ukraine is proven wrong.
For the international audience, Putin’s interaction with the media on Tuesday may be of greater interest. Putin has dropped an important hint that Moscow no longer considers the Minsk Agreements to be pertinent, as the Ukrainian leadership had publicly declared that they were not going to abide by these agreements.
A second point is about the borders of Lugansk and Donetsk. This is a complex issue and the germane seeds of future course of events, perhaps, lie here. This needs some explaining.
The borders of the breakaway regions underwent significant changes when war erupted between the government forces and the separatist forces. in particular, in May 2014, the government forces captured the strategic port of Mariupol (on the Sea of Azov) which used to be part of Donetsk from the separatists.
Putin said on Tuesday that Russian constitution stipulates the borders of Donetsk and Lugansk regions “at the time when they were part of Ukraine.” This is a carefully worded formulation. At issue is Donetsk’s claim to Mariupol, which is a major port for the industrialised rust belt region of Donbass for export of coal, iron ore, etc.
Indeed, retaking Mariupol and the coastal region could give a direct land route from mainland Russia to the Crimean peninsula, which is otherwise accessible only via a 19-km long rail-road sea bridge built in 2018.
Also, if Donetsk regains the lost territory, Ukraine will have no access to the Sea of Azov, which would strengthen Russia’s primacy in the Black Sea and enhance the security of its Black Sea Fleet. By the way, Crimea would also get assured supply of fresh water, since Kiev had shut off water from the so-called North Crimean Canal in 2014.
Putin said Russia’s expectation is that all disputes will be resolved during talks between the current Kiev authorities and the leaders of these republics, but he also acknowledged that “at this point in time, we realise that it is impossible to do so, since hostilities are still ongoing and, moreover, they are showing signs of escalating.”
From the remarks, it seems highly likely that conflict will erupt over Mariupol, as Donetsk forces, emboldened by Russian support, are sure to make a determined pitch to retake the port city and the adjacent coastal region, which have a big Russian population too. Of course, Russia is obliged to assist the Donetsk forces militarily if need arises.
Putin floated an idea that the vexed question of Ukraine’s membership can be addressed in such a way that the West does not “lose face”. He suggested that Kiev could instead “refuse to join NATO. In effect, in so doing, they would translate the idea of neutrality into life.”
This is a tantalising thought that has been aired previously also. But Putin linked this to “the demilitarisation, to a certain extent, of today’s Ukraine” — that is to say, the West should not “pump the current Kiev authorities full of modern types of weapons.”
Lastly, Putin drew a red line on any attempt by Ukraine to develop nuclear weapons. He said:
“Ever since Soviet times, Ukraine has had fairly broad nuclear competencies… They only lack one thing – uranium enrichment systems. But this is a matter of technology, it is not unsolvable for Ukraine, it can be remedied quite easily.
“As to delivery vehicles.. they have old Soviet-made Tochka-U missiles with a range of 100 plus kilometres, 110 kilometres. This is also not a problem in view of the competencies, say, at Yuzhmash, which used to manufacture intercontinental ballistic missiles for the Soviet Union.”
Without doubt, there is a stark warning implicit here for the European countries well as as to what the ascendancy of extreme nationalist forces with neo-Nazi in Ukraine could presage in future. Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces. These are the descendants of forces that had collaborated with the Nazi invaders against Josef Stalin.
To neutralise Russian intervention, western intelligence had co-opted them to stage the coup in Kiev in 2014. The so-called Azov Brigade of neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian armed forces had proved to be the most effective fighting force in pushing back the Russians separatists in the Donbass region. With an eye on the Azov Brigade, more recently, Americans had hinted that they would support an insurgency against any Russian forces occupying Ukraine. (here and here)
Putin seemed disinterested to have any direct interaction with the authorities in Kiev. In fact, Russian diplomats in the embassy in Kiev and the consulates in Lvov, Kharkiv and Odessa are being evacuated.
Putin is looking beyond the current regime in Kiev. Of course, if the Western military assistance to Kiev continues in any form, Washington knows that Russia will regard it as a hostile act and there will be severe consequences.Putin has made it clear that he is prepared to use force to counter any further western encroachments into Ukraine to challenge Russia’s security.
In these circumstances, the question of the return of military detachments of Nato to Ukraine in the garb of ‘advisors’ or ‘trainers’ also does not arise. Putin won’t allow it. That being so, the big question is: How long could Zelensky and his government hold out in Kiev? The countdown may have begun.
Putin remarked derisively that Zelensky may simply choose to leave Kiev for the US, Paris or Berlin. In a TV interview yesterday, Foreign Minister Lavrov called Zelensky “an unstable, dependent man, directly dependent on his American curators.” The elites in Kiev are known to have big bank accounts in the West. But what can the curators do to prop up Zelensky at such a critical stage?
In his national address, Putin spoke with a lot of bitterness. At one point, he directly threatened the extreme nationalists who seized power in the 2014 coup and let loose a wave of violence and systematic persecution against ethnic Russians.
Putin said,
“The criminals who committed that atrocity have never been punished, and no one is even looking for them. But we know their names and we will do everything to punish them, find them and bring them to justice.”
Putin anticipates a new regime in Kiev.
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After a jury in 2006 declined to impose the death penalty on Zacarias Moussaoui, who had just pleaded guilty to being the 20th 9/11 hijacker, the government announced that another person was the 20th. Yet, that person, Mohammed al-Qahtani, was ordered released from the U.S. Naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last week.
Here is the backstory.
Moussaoui had been living in Minnesota and taking flying lessons when he was arrested in August 2001 for an immigration violation. When officials questioned him, the answers he gave aroused their suspicions about what he intended to do with a plane once he was qualified to fly.
The FBI conducted a criminal investigation, and shortly after 9/11, Moussaoui was indicted in Virginia for conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism on 9/11. The government sought the death penalty. Five years later, he pleaded guilty during his trial.
The court then conducted a penalty-phase trial before the same jury that had been hearing the case prior to the guilty plea. The jury declined to impose the death penalty with some jurors revealing their beliefs that he had nothing to do with 9/11, but was a jihadi wanna-be. The judge sentenced him to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Stung by the jury’s verdict on the death penalty, the government changed its characterization of Moussaoui as the 20th hijacker and declared that Mohammed al-Qahtani was the real 20th hijacker.
In August 2001, Qahtani had attempted to enter the United States at the Orlando International Airport where Mohamed Atta, one of the true hijackers, was waiting to greet him. Immigration officials rejected Qahtani’s paperwork and sent him back to Dubai. U.S. forces arrested him in Pakistan in December 2001 and accused him of being Osama bin Ladin’s bodyguard.
He was transferred to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay where he was tortured for two months in 2002 and 2003 by the military, pursuant to orders issued by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. He told his torturers what he thought they wanted to hear. His torture was so persistent and horrific that Army medics were frequently called upon to prevent his death and to revive him from his frequent blackouts so that the torture could resume.
When detailed logs of his torture were leaked to the media, Susan J. Crawford, President George W. Bush’s emissary overseeing tortures and prosecutions at Gitmo, acknowledged publicly that “we tortured (him)” and thus it would be impossible to try him.
Last week, the government decided to release Qahtani — whom it believes was the true 20th hijacker — to officials in Saudi Arabia. The stated reason for his release is his diminished mental capacity. The true reason is that he has become an embarrassment for the government.
Gitmo prosecutors, who had nothing to do with the torture, told the Bush Departments of Justice and Defense that no judge would permit a prosecution where the principal evidence against the accused was obtained from his torture. Successive teams of prosecutors told the Obama, Trump, and Biden DOJs and DODs the same. Only the present administration has acted upon this.
Qahtani’s case is a lesson in the clash between human rights and unbridled government. If Rumsfeld had listened to government lawyers, he’d have known that the American civilian and military legal systems are based on the inalienability of certain rights and values, and among them are bodily integrity, the presumption of innocence and the rule of law.
The Supreme Court jurisprudence on bodily integrity prohibits the introduction of anything into or upon the body of any person against his will. This includes everything from face masks, to whips and chains, to chemicals in the veins. The rule of law in America makes the intentional infliction of pain and severe discomfort by the government upon a prisoner a felony.
Neither Bush nor Rumsfeld had the legal authority to permit government agents to commit felonies, though we now know that they did.
But the big picture in Qahtani’s case is the admirable role played by the Supreme Court in assuring that the Constitution means what is says and the cowardly role played by the government, which argued that the Constitution doesn’t apply at its prison in Cuba.
In six Supreme Court cases involving the rights of Gitmo detainees, the Bush administration lost five. The sixth involved the location of the trial of an American detainee in the U.S.
But the jurisprudence that emerged from the five cases that the government lost clearly reflects the truism that the Constitution restrains the government wherever it goes, and its protections extend to all persons, not just Americans. The latter is so for two reasons — textualism and Natural Law.
The court held in these Gitmo cases that because the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and because the government is the creature of the Constitution, the creature cannot escape the restraints imposed upon it by its creator.
Moreover, the critical constitutional clauses reflecting the treatment of prisoners and defendants protect all “persons,” not just Americans. Because all persons have natural rights rooted in our humanity, the government is bound to respect those rights. Were this not so, then nothing could prevent the government from doing as British monarchs did — remove prisoners to foreign lands, torture them there, and then bring them home for trial and execution.
Yet, that horrific Bush-inspired scenario actually happened. After Bush lost at the Supreme Court, the government outsourced its torture and now finds itself as a witness in cases against the foreign torturers whom it hired to torture its prisoners.
Even worse, the man jurors found was not the 20th hijacker is in prison for life, and the man the government says was the 20th hijacker will soon be free. This is what happens when the government breaks its own laws and violates the Constitution that we have hired it to uphold.
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Listening to Putin’s recent speech that preceded the declaration to recognize the independent republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, it was difficult not to notice that something was incredibly off about his claims. They simply did not match what the western corporate press, those dutiful stenographers for NATO power have been reporting for years. Putin gave the world a history lesson, pulled back the curtain on western lies and hypocrisies, (only some of them, there are a thousand curtains that need pulling back) and showed the world he’s not going to be pushed around by the little hyenas of the European prairie any longer.
In some middle eastern folklore hyenas are referred to as symbols of treachery and stupidity. In other mythologies they are known as vampire creatures who stalk and suck the blood of their prey. The phrase ‘laugh like a hyena’ dates back centuries in English literature including Shakespeare, and now embodies the number two position of the American executive branch. More on hyenas later.
Putin’s speech corrected the hyena’s revisionist attempts of events in Ukraine the past eight years and revealed a man who, having watched his nation get pushed to its limits with broken promises and door mat NATO diplomacy, showed that he’s simply had enough. And good for him. In our new multi polar world of geopolitical chess the bear and dragon are ascendant, and realist foreign policy doesn’t require the permission of any community, particularly a deceitful paper tiger like NATO or useless cabal of globalist order-takers at the EU or UN. While there’s little to celebrate with these new circumstances for global conflict, a convenient distraction from the last engineered global conflict, we must recognize the chance for lasting peace and alliance between the west and Russia was denied by the U.S. every step of the way.
All that remains is brutal realism and the flexing of power, the kind of realism rooted in self interest to serve the people of a nation and defend it from encroaching hyenas. Twenty years of poking the bear has consequences, but hyenas don’t know anything beyond their instincts, treachery and stupidity.
Media A-Z
Given the role of the global corporate press in engineering a pandemic and all the crimes that followed the past two years, it’s astounding that people who know their lies and propaganda were constant and shameful watch the same servants of power report on Russia and Putin and believe what they are saying is the truth. But that’s how that saying goes: fool me once here and twice there, happy to get fooled again and again.
Everything they’ve reported since the U.S. backed coup in Ukraine of 2014, from the “dignity revolution” where Neo-Nazi nationalists from western Ukraine were mobilized as shock troops to overthrow the Yanukovych government with US Aid (Soros), and brutally attacked any Russian loyalists, burning forty alive in a building in Odessa, to the annexation of Crimea whose population prefers Russia, to the constant violations of the Minsk agreement by Ukrainian forces along the cease fire lines, to claims of “Ukrainian democracy” when it’s at best a dysfunctional corrupt Oligarchy, has all been one stream of endless lies.1 Add to that the domestic lies of Trump-Russia collusion, set up through CIA and FBI attempted coups of a democratically elected President at home engineered by the opposition party, while constantly vilifying anyone who asked any questions at all as “Putin’s Puppet” or a “Russian sympathizer” and you have one of the biggest psychological operations ever unleashed on western populations, not to mention grotesque acts of overt treason.
Yet still, many who know that the media and government pandemic lies are terrifyingly real, still believe the stories about Putin and Russia. But that’s how logic works: if A was lying about everything regarding X, they’re certainly telling the truth regarding Y and Z.
Russia is a dictatorship because they have state-run media that parrots the Putin regime propaganda. Not like America, where we have a totally free press 😒
If there was ever anything noble in war, the courage, bravery, facing one’s mortality, the tactics and maneuvers of battles that required out-smarting one’s enemy, Sun Tzu’s art, all that is lost to advanced technology and a desire to manipulate public sentiment above all things. They call them hybrid wars, asymmetric wars, psychological wars, information wars and has been proffered on this outfit the most evil of all where victims are unsuspecting innocents believing their governments have their best interests in mind – Silent Wars – atrocities by states against their own citizens.
Today wars are not fought, they’re curated like an exhibit at a museum. They are designed like a tapestry or an exotic dish on a cooking show. A little bit of false flag fava beans, julian propaganda peppers, sliced projection potatoes, a splash of historical revisionism radishes, piles of intel leeks and you have the makings of war by design. Put it all into an oven where your enemy feels the burn and acts in a way you can claim was their true evil nature all along, and you have a nice dish of cooked up conflict. When you control the global media machine who work for the head chefs designing this war dish, it makes it effortless to serve up this heaping load of detestable horse shit as reality. Millions will rush to obediently eat and regurgitate it. The ability to engineer pseudo realities is effortless through controlled information monopolies and compliant and passive populations who have become conditioned to believe what they are told. Contrary to the myth of the Internet age ‘liberating information’ for the masses, the opposite has been happening. Information is suppressed, people are corralled like grazing animals into silos for control and manipulation where they are fed carefully prepared morsels to digest. Two-thirds of the top 100 news and information websites are controlled by corporations with connections to war chefs at intelligence agencies and groups like the Atlantic Council and Council on Foreign Relations. They all read from the exact same scripts that are prepared by our benevolent war designers.
The war designers are part of a class of elites who detest their own citizens whom they view as lesser people, hunger games’ provincial rubes. Manipulating them through fear, lies, propaganda becomes a fun game. Socially engineering their reactions to events half a world away they couldn’t find on a map becomes the first front of battle. Getting them to believe up is down, Russia is evil, Putin is a monster and that the sudden issues in Ukraine are the cause of all the domestic problems they really care about like inflation, high gas prices and supply chain crises, requires constant psychological disinformation shelling.
It's worth remembering that for 8 years, Russia was the strongest proponent of the Minsk Protocol (w/Ukraine & OSCE) for peace in Donbas, which said the region was part of Ukraine. It was Kiev who repeatedly refused to follow the peace process, doing so with full US support.
Two-Faced Diplomacy (performance and propaganda) Two-faced diplomacy is easy. The secretaries of war meet to discuss ‘diplomatic resolutions’, while their intelligence operators and behavioral psychologists manipulate their war communication’s departments of the global corporate media by filling their inbox with messages of leaks that aren’t actually leaks but rather instructions to report the headlines and say it’s based on a “real leak”. This is blasted around the world as truth and amplified by the elite war designers in academia, think tanks and NGOs fronting for western hyenas.
This propaganda barrage serves two purposes. The first is to manipulate public opinion in their favor. This is nothing new, going back to at least the USS Maine and every conflict since. In our post printing press globally interconnected information world it becomes more challenging, requiring more audacious headlines that require people really put their imaginations to work believing what is reported. The skeptical discerning mind knows that none of it is true, but most people are neither skeptical nor discerning having outsourced their thinking to truth machines in technology and the corporate media. The second purpose is to trigger a reaction from their manufactured enemy to engender the conflict they desire.
While the propaganda barrage is ongoing the western secretaries of war meet with their Russian counterparts (Putin or Lavrov) to show how resolute they are, flexing for cameras and saying they really want a diplomatic resolution to the very problem they engineered and are using their media propagandists to make much worse. It’s all a performance of front stage diplomacy, that completely defies their back stage actions, so whenever the other side ends up doing what they said they would do, they can point to their performance and say, “We tried to resolve this peacefully and find a diplomatic solution, but look! They don’t want one.”
Putin once again out-witted the western war designers by recognizing the breakaway regions of mostly ethnic Russians, as independent republics. The rabid hyenas didn’t get the result in the all out attack on Ukraine the war chefs were trying to cook up the past few months. That hasn’t stopped them from incessantly yelling for an imminent invasion any second now, even getting their five eyes proxies in Australia to start echoing the same feverish lust for all out war.
This declaration of independent republics by Putin allowed him to follow the western script for occupation, and to send in his peacekeeping force to protect the people of Luhansk and Donetsk from the US-funded Ukrainian Neo-Nazi nationalists constantly shelling the breakaway forces for the past eight years in violation of the Minsk agreements. According to the western war designers, this is tantamount to “an invasion” of Ukraine, and so another curtain of hypocrisy goes up concealing the truth.
It’s entirely fine for the US to send in “peace keeping forces” to regions it desires to recognize as independent (or to overthrow) for its own “national security interests”, that aren’t anywhere near its own borders, but for Russia to do the same at its own border to protect Russian-speaking people, a majority of whom would rather be allied with Russia, is an “invasion”.
Hyenas In the Kitchen
The hyenas cooking up conflict reacted as they always do to this “invasion” they helped engineer, with more sanctions that won’t even affect Russia, and more bellicose laughable rhetoric about how Putin is a threat to world peace and needs to “be dealt with”. This is the expected behavior of hyenas.
Hyenas in the animal kingdom are pests. They have neither the patient cunning of the feline nor loyal devotion of the canine. They are a kind of bastard retarded hybrid of both with no likeable or redeeming qualities. They obnoxiously hover and harangue and wait for whatever scraps they can get, while running away at full speed if confronted by real power. Here’s Putin, finally flexing, and the hyena’s have shit their fur and fled Ukraine to neighboring Poland, whom to its own detriment will now increasingly assume the role of hyena vassal like Ukraine did. With Russia right on its border, and Poland inviting more antagonisms from their toxic hyena friends, they’re only inviting danger. When real power comes for Poland, the hyenas will run again despite the NATO pact and badger Russia from a different vassal state and it will be Poles who suffer, not hyenas and not Americans.
US foreign policy is a racket. The war designers in the MIC, the government, media and think tanks will never suffer consequences of their treachery and stupidity. The EU has agreed to a suicide pact with the U.S., which will require it buys U.S. natural gas at inflated prices rather than from their neighbor and friends in Russia whom they recently asked to build more pipelines to supply cheap energy to the continent. With friends like the U.S., who needs enemies? European nations who stand by the U.S. are putting their own people in harms way and need to step back and reconsider their own treachery and stupidity in allying with a bunch of rabid hyenas who only seek to engineer pseudo realities that create enemies and conflict where none need exist. As with everything we’ve experienced this century from these blood thirsty animals, this too is probably all by design.
“When there is no such thing as truth, you can’t define reality & when you can’t define reality, the only thing that matters is power.” – Maajid Nawaz
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All images in this article are from The Good Citizen
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The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, published a tweet on February 22 in which he assured that the sanctions imposed by the bloc against Russia will prevent multiple members of the Russian State Duma, who voted in favour of the recognition of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, from shopping in the Italian fashion city of Milan, partying in the French Mediterranean city of Saint-Tropez or make high-end purchases in the famous diamond shops of Belgium’s Antwerp.
The tweet was made before the widescale Russian missile attack to immobilize the Ukrainian air force, including the complete destruction of its Turkish-supplied drone fleet, during the early hours of January 24. Yet, even with this pre-emptive strike to immobilize Ukrainian aggression, Russian commodities continue to grow in value and the economy for now remains strong.
Borrell explained that the blocs sanctions package will affect 351 deputies of the Lower House of the Russian Parliament, as well as “27 individuals and entities who are undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence. This will cover political, military, business and media sectors.”
Following this tweet, he added (and then humiliatingly deleted):
“No more shopping in Milan, no more parties in Saint-Tropez and no more diamonds in Antwerp.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel that she knew that Borrell “did not manage his social networks and was not even aware of what was being written for him. It can happen. But these things should not be left in the hands of ignorant personnel.”
However, it can be argued that Zakharova was opening a door for reconciliation by passing on the blame of the naïve tweet to an ignorant social media handler rather than Borrell himself. This would be rather patient of Moscow though when remembering Borrell only days ago was involved in another fluff when he confusingly condemned “the use of heavy weaponry and indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, which constitute a clear violation of the Minsk agreements and international humanitarian law,” but added that the EU “commends” Ukraine’s “posture of restraint in the face of continued provocations and efforts at destabilization.” Borrell managed to condemn the violation of the Minsk agreement but also commend Ukraine for supposed “restraint” – a contradiction if there ever was one and something that enables Kiev to continue its violence.
Although Borrell deleted the tweet, it was already too late as the message was saved as an image and has been circulating around social media with much amusement. The most common response to Borrell was that:
“Russians will no doubt reply that the shopping is better in Moscow than Milano, these days, and the partying in Sochi beats the, very over-rated, Saint Tropez. Russia has the largest diamond reserves in the world.”
The EU's chief diplomat doesn't know that Russia has the largest diamond reserves in the world..
Meanwhile, Russians will no doubt reply that the shopping is better in Moscow than Milano, these days, and the partying in Sochi beats the, very over-rated, Saint Tropez. pic.twitter.com/RdAMiCBvdA
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 21 his decision to recognize the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, after which friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance agreements were signed. At the same time, the Russian president ordered the Ministry of Defense to guarantee the maintenance of peace by the Russian Armed Forces in both republics – thus inspiring the pre-emptive strikes against Ukraine’s provocative military.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden reported on the first package of measures against Russia, which includes: sanctions against two large Russian banking institutions; comprehensive sanctions on Russia’s sovereign debt and sanctions against Russian elites and their relatives. However, this is unlikely to have any real impact on the Russian economy, which has already fortified itself from feeling the full impact of sanctions.
As Brussels-based Bloomberg senior markets report Nikos Chrysoloras tweeted on February 23, just a day after the sanction announcements:
“European stock markets rebound today as the sanctions announced against Russia are seen as kind of ‘meh’, and clearly falling short of an outright economic war.”
As Reuters highlighted, the US has never before attempted to cut a $1.5 trillion economy out of global commerce, and it is unclear how much pressure unified Western sanctions can put on Moscow. A World Bank review and United Nations trade data shows that since sanctions were imposed against Russia in 2014 after unifying with Crimea, China has emerged as the Eurasian country’s biggest export destination.
According to Harry Broadman, a former US trade negotiator and World Bank official with China and Russia experience, it is speculated that new sanctions could prompt Moscow to deepen its non-dollar denominated trade ties with Beijing.
“The problem with sanctions, especially involving an oil producer, which is what Russia is, will be leakage in the system,” he said, adding: “China may say, ‘We’re going to buy oil on the open market and if it’s Russian oil, so be it.’”
Although Biden said he would “take robust action to make sure the pain of our sanctions is targeted at the Russian economy, not ours,” this will prove to be difficult, especially as Russia is among the world’s top exporters of oil, natural gas, copper, aluminum, palladium and other important commodities.
In fact, the World Bank’s World International Trade Solution database review found that Russia’s dependence on trade declined over the past 20 years, thus making it more immune to sanctions. So long as China remains Russia’s top supplier of imports, it is unlikely that Moscow will view these new sanctions with major concern.
The sanctions, as audacious as Borrell (and Biden) believe they are, will not stop Russians from shopping in Milan, partying in Saint-Tropez or buying diamonds in Antwerp – but Russians can also do such shopping and parting in Moscow, Sochi and elsewhere in Russia anyway, if they choose.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
February 24th, 2022 by Center For Biological Diversity
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The toxic chemicals imperil hundreds of species of already threatened or endangered birds, mammals, insects and amphibians, putting species and biodiversity at extreme risk. The full report can be found here.
An estimated 235 million pounds of herbicides and insecticides were applied to feed crops for factory-farmed animals in the United States in 2018, the most recent year for which complete information is available, according to the report’s findings.
Collateral Damage reveals that consumers may be having a greater impact on the health of animals and the planet from their meat and dairy choices than they realize.
“It is critical that we understand the full environmental footprint of animal products so people can understand the true impacts of their food choices,” said Cameron Harsh, programs director at World Animal Protection US. “Meat and dairy companies consume resources, such as feed crops and the land used to grow them, at unsustainable rates to create calorie-dense diets for the billions of farmed animals raised in the U.S. each year. Wild animals and ecosystems are paying the price.”
Among the report’s findings are the threats to protected species from the two most-used pesticides in this country — glyphosate and atrazine.
Glyphosate, roughly 100 million pounds of which were applied to feed crops in 2018, is likely to harm or kill 93% of plants and animals protected under the Endangered Species Act, according to federal regulators. Atrazine, the next most-applied chemical on U.S. feed crops, is banned in 35 countries and likely to harm or kill more than 1,000 protected species.
Expanding production of intensive corn and soy for farmed animal feed is also associated with converting native, biologically diverse grasslands to single-crop production and with polluting waterways, adding further threats to wild species.
“Endangered species like monarch butterflies, San Joaquin kit foxes and whooping cranes are threatened by these pesticides every day just to fuel the cruel and unsustainable factory farm industry,” said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This is outrageous and should be a call to action for everyone who cares about animals.”
World Animal Protection, US and the Center for Biological Diversity are calling on individuals and institutions to reduce their consumption of meat and dairy, opting for diets and menus that prioritize plant-based foods to lower impact on animals and the planet. Those interested in strategies for shifting their food choices can look to World Animal Protection’s Meating Halfway journey for resources.
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Fresh suspicion that COVID may have been tinkered with in a lab emerged today after scientists found genetic material owned by Moderna in the virus’s spike protein.
They identified a tiny snippet of code that is identical to part of a gene patented by the vaccine maker three years before the pandemic.
It was discovered in SARS-CoV-2’s unique furin cleavage site, the part that makes it so good at infecting people and separates it from other coronaviruses.
The structure has been one of the focal points of debate about the virus’s origin, with some scientists claiming it could not have been acquired naturally.
The international team of researchers suggest the virus may have mutated to have a furin cleavage site during experiments on human cells in a lab.
They claim there is a one-in-three-trillion chance Moderna’s sequence randomly appeared through natural evolution.
But there is some debate about whether the match is as rare as the study claims, with other experts describing it as a ‘quirky’ coincidence rather than a ‘smoking gun’.
SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid, carries all the information needed for it to spread in around 30,000 letters of genetic code, known as RNA. The virus shares a sequence of 19 specific letters with a genetic section owned by Moderna. Twelve of the shared letters make up the structure of Covid’s furin cleavage site, with the rest being a match with nucleotides on a nearby part of the genome. Source: Daily Mail Online
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Comments Off on More Evidence COVID Was Tinkered within a Lab? Now Scientists Find Virus Contains Tiny Chunk of DNA that Matches Sequence Patented by Moderna Three Years Before Pandemic Began
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Dr. Paul Elias Alexander on stage in California Adelanto Mojave speaking to the US truckers before they begin to roll out on their convoy Feb 23rd 2022.
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On Tuesday, the Senate met and was requested by the government’s representative to make a decision without having access to so-called ‘secret information’, a report which allegedly confirmed that the application of the Emergencies Act was required and justified.
In a long overdue decision, Russian President Putin after consulting with the National Security Council officially recognized the two breakaway republics of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk. Subsequently, the Russian parliament unanimously approved the decision and authorized deployment of Russian peace-keeping forces in the Donbass region.
The Americans and their satellites states go further and claim a right to expand their alliance, but on what legal, moral or security grounds this right is based they cannot say. They claim that nations have the right to join NATO of their own free will, but this again is a distortion of the facts.
The financial establishment not only controls Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland as well Jagmeet Singh are also members of Schwab’s “Leaders of Tomorrow”. With regard to the enactment of a National Emergency put forth by Trudeau, Klaus Schwab plays a key role.
Europe is heavily reliant on Russia for its gas needs, and to block the Nord Stream 2’s certification will only create havoc in European energy markets. Europe’s ultra-low gas storage levels for this time of year will keep the market very tight even beyond the winter season.
Five decades after then US President Richard Nixon made an ice-breaking visit to China in 1972 that helped start bilateral diplomatic engagement, US business leaders in China voiced hope for continued commercial communication between China and the US and rejected a decoupling between the two economies.
Under pressure from ultra-nationalists and Russophobes, successive governments in Ukraine have failed to address the grievances of the Russian speaking majority in the Donbass region. Ukraine has also not implemented the provisions of the Minsk agreement signed in 2015 to end the conflict in the region.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a week ago, rejected the Biden administration’s attempt to reinstate the mandate. In the meantime, faced with widespread refusal to take the vaccines, government to ease enforcement.
If you’re wondering how we’ll ever put an end to these draconian COVID-19 mandates that are destroying lives and sanity across the world, take heart. History can serve us in this regard. The parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic and its countermeasures that of previous smallpox pandemics are fascinating to behold, and therein we can also find the answer to our current predicament.
FDA Executive Officer Chris Cole: “The drug companies, the food companies, the vaccine companies. So, they pay us hundreds of millions of dollars a year to hire and keep the reviewers to approve their products.”
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Wednesday that his government will revoke the Emergencies Act (EA) despite it being approved by the House of Commons on Monday.
Trudeau had said at the beginning of the week that the EA was still needed because his government was worried about further freedom-oriented activity from Canadian truckers and patriots.
The drastic change in governance comes as the Canadian Senate has spent the last two days debating whether to approve the EA when a national emergency is not present.
Conservative Senator Leo Housakos has led the charge in the Senate, and he gave an impassioned speech today against using the EA under the circumstances.
“This country is deeply divided like I’ve never seen,” Housakos said. “It’s moments like this when the executive branch of government and every prime minister has an obligation to put the nations interests above the interests of himself, his party, and partisan politics.”
Many Canadian Senators are independent, even if appointed by a Liberal Prime Minister, and have expressed growing concerns that they believe Trudeau thinks they are there simply to “rubber stamp” his policies, even if objectionable.
Canadian politicos have opined that Trudeau saw the writing on the wall given the rising anti-Trudeau mood in the Senate and that the PM revoked the act before he could be made to look foolish for having invoked it in the first place.
Trudeau has revoked the Emergencies Act right as Senators began to speak out on it and as an urgent application for judicial review made its way to federal court today.
Imagine being a Liberal MP, and NDP MP, a Senator, a Trudeau journalist, who supported the Emergencies Act, who pledged your loyalty to Trudeau above loyalty to the Constitution. Imagine having burnt up your own reputation to support his — only to have him say, "just kidding!"
This story is developing, and it is not yet clear what will happen to bank accounts of convoy supporters that were frozen under the EA.
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Justin Trudeau has carried out an illegal and criminal police operation headed by an unapproved interim police chief against the Freedom Convoy. It started last Thursday, February 17th.
The measures taken included police violence, mass arrests, illegal freezing of bank accounts and the confiscation of truckers’ vehicles.
Trudeau had invoked the application of the 1988 Emergencies Act four days prior to the Vote in the House of Commons on Monday Evening.
On Tuesday, the Senate met and was requested by the government’s representative to make a decision without having access to so-called ‘secret information’, a report which allegedly confirmed that the application of the Emergencies Act was required and justified.
Visibly there was absolutely no evidence to support a major police operation against the Freedom Convoy.
Trudeau is a Liar. He was informed on Tuesday (February 22) that the Senate might refuse to “rubber stamp” the extension of the Emergencies Act.
Also on Tuesday the Premier of Alberta launched a lawsuit directed against Trudeau:
Kenney called the move – which Trudeau has argued is necessary to deal with a state of emergency caused by convoy protests and blockades – “one of the biggest mistakes of any modern Canadian government.”
“Mistakes” is a polite understatement.
And on Wednesday February 23 Trudeau backtracked. He confirmed that the Application of the Emergencies Act was no longer necessary and that it would be revoked within ten days.
The article below pertains to Trudeau’s accusations (without a shred of evidence) that the Freedom Convoy is Anti-semitic, when the evidence amply suggests that Trudeau himself is Anti-semitic.
A group of 23 prominent Israeli doctors and scientists wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “chastising him for equating demonstrators participating in the Freedom Convoy to Nazis”.
“The important fight against antisemitism should not be weaponized and directed at a legitimate civil protest which aims at restoring fundamental freedoms, to what used to be, not long ago, one of the freest countries in the world,” said the group in a letter on Friday”.
But there is something else which the media has failed to acknowledge. The forbidden truth is that Trudeau is known to have supported the Neo-Nazi Svoboda Party in Ukraine which has committed countless atrocities directed against Kiev’s Jewish Community.
“Equating demonstrators to Nazis” when our Prime-Minster Justin Trudeau in 2016 welcomed Andriy Parubiy (left of Trudeau), leader of the Svoboda party to the House of Commons. (details in the article below).
All of this is on record. This is no joking matter.
I call upon Canada’s Jewish Community to take a firm stance on the matter.
Michel Chossudovsky,
Global Research, February 23, 2022
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Justin Trudeau is unceasingly referring to swastikas intimating that the Freedom Convoy organizers are not only supportive of Nazi symbols but are anti-Semitic.
And on February 16, he directed these wild accusations against the Conservative Party of Canada:
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was cautioned against using “inflammatory” language by the Speaker of the House of Commons on Wednesday after he told Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman, who is Jewish, that her party stands with “people who wave swastikas.”
Ms. Lantsman, the MP for Thornhill, north of Toronto, told the House that Mr. Trudeau “fans the flames of an unjustified national emergency” and asked, “When did the Prime Minister lose his way?”
He responded by saying, “Conservative Party members can stand with people who wave swastikas. They can stand with people who wave the Confederate flag”. ( Globe and Mail)
In substance, Trudeau is accusing Conservative Party members of being Neo-Nazis.
Video: Is Justin Trudeau anti-semitic??
Video:Trudeau has lost control of the situation
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On February 2 ” Prime Minister Justin in a rather unusual and RIDICULOUS “twit” made the following declaration (allegedly adopted by a unanimous vote of the House of Commons). REALLY?
The following video refutes Trudeau’s accusations
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“Democracy with Neo-Nazi Characteristics”?
At the time of writing, the application of a National Emergency directed against The Freedom Convoy 2022 is being debated in the House of Commons. According to Trudeau, the scope of the Emergency is “reasonable”, the measures do not encroach upon Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, says Trudeau.
The House of Commons is divided. The NDP has signified that it will be siding with the Liberal minority government.
Meanwhile, a major police initiative against the Freedom Convoy involving a high tech “Nazi style” special forces operation is contemplated by the Prime Minister Trudeau.
This decision should come as no surprise. Both Prime Minister Trudeau together with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland (as part of Canada’s foreign policy)have “unofficially” supported Neo-Nazi politics in Ukraine.
Is the Trudeau Government supplying weapons and training to the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion?
Neo-Nazi politics in Ukraine is not a “Fringe Movement”, it is embedded in the military and national security apparatus, supported by the US and Canada.
According to the Ottawa Citizen (November 9, 2021)
“Canadian officials who met with members of a Ukrainian battalion linked to neo-Nazis didn’t denounce the unit, but were instead concerned the media would expose details of the get-together, according to newly released documents.
The Canadians met with and were briefed by leaders from the Azov Battalion in June 2018. The officers and diplomats did not object to the meeting and instead allowed themselves to be photographed with battalion officials despite previous warnings that the unit saw itself as pro-Nazi. The Azov Battalion then used those photos for its online propaganda, pointing out the Canadian delegation expressed “hopes for further fruitful co-operation.”
The Azov battalion which is part of Ukraine’s National Guard under the helm of the Ministry of the Interior is supported by Canadian tax payers.
Canada’s military training cooperation agreement with Ukraine has raised the concern of the Jewish Community. The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) “has called for an investigation by Canada’s Department of National Defence:
“We urge the Department of National Defence to immediately launch an investigation into the evidence that has been revealed by the George Washington University study and to develop new policies and procedures to ensure that all foreign trainees receive some type of background check to eliminate the possibility of neo-Nazi or other extremist affiliation before receiving training from Canadian forces.” (quoted in the Jerusalem Post, emphasis added)
See the NATO Flag (left), The Azov Battalion Nazi Insigna and the Swastika
Ukraine Neo-Nazi Militia
Who is Waving Swastikas?
Trudeau Accuses the Conservative Party of Supporting “People who Wave Swastikas.”
Does that not Describe Trudeau’s Relationship with Svoboda Neo-Nazi Party Leader Andrey Korubiy?
The leader of the Neo-Nazi party Svoboda Andrey Korubiy is a “political buddy” of our prime minister.
Andriy Parubiy co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda) was invited by Trudeau to Ottawa in 2016.
Andriy Parubiy believes that it was necessary “to introduce direct democracy to Ukraine, with Hitler as its torchbearer.”
Justin Trudeau invites Andriy Parubiy to Ottawa
Deputy Chairman of Ukraine’s Parliament, Andriy Parubiy, visited Ottawa in February 2016, meeting with the prime minister. At that meeting (from left) are Ukraine’s Ambassador to Canada Andriy Shevchenko, Verkhovna Rada Deputy Chairman Andriy Parubiy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Member of Parliament Borys Wrzesnewskyj.
Andriy Parubiy is a supporter of World War II Nazi leader Stepan Bandera.
Anti-Semitism
While Trudeau accuses the Freedom Convoy of anti-semitism (without a shred of evidence), he is supportive of the Ukraine’s National Guard which is integrated by Neo-Nazi elements.
Meanwhile (February 13), Trudeau confirmed that Canada will be “sending $7.8 million worth of lethal equipment and ammunition to Ukraine”.
Andrey Parubiy’s Neo-Nazi party Svoboda is leading the campaign against Kiev’s Jewish community. Juden Raus! (Jews Out!) is their motto.
Ukrainian nationalists [Parubiy’s followers] in Kiev chanted “Jews out” in German at a New Year’s Day march celebrating the birthday of a Nazi collaborator whose troops killed thousands of Jews.
Thousands attended the event in the center of the Ukrainian capital celebrating Stepan Bandera, a leader of Ukraine’s nationalist movement in the 1930s and ’40s. They held up his portrait while an unidentified person shouted the anti-Semitic slogan on a loudspeaker, prompting many participants to repeat it, a video published by the Federal News Agency showed.
Bandera’s movement included an insurgent army which fought alongside Nazi soldiers during part of World War II. Supporters of Bandera claim they sided with the Nazis against the Soviet army, believing that Adolf Hitler would grant Ukraine independence.
In 2018, Parubiy was accused by the British media for praising Adolph Hitler
Andrey Parubiy was also received by the US Congress
Is it a matter of concern that Canadian forces dispatched by our government are training Nazi paramilitary forces in Ukraine?
There is ample evidence of Canadian and US support to Neo-Nazis in Ukraine going back to the 2014 Euromaidan,
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In a long overdue decision, Russian President Putin after consulting with the National Security Council officially recognized the two breakaway republics of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk. Subsequently, the Russian parliament unanimously approved the decision and authorized deployment of Russian peace-keeping forces in the Donbass region.
Putin could have recognized the sovereignty of the breakaway republics as soon as Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. But being a pacifist, he kept waiting for eight years in the futile hope that better sense would ultimately prevail in Kiev.
After it became evident, however, that Volodymyr Zelensky and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko have struck an irrevocable Faustian pact with the NATO devil, he was left with no other choice than to protect Russia’s paramount security interests at any cost, specifically from the existential threat emanating along Russia’s western borders after the deployment of the NATO troops, strategic armaments, nuclear-capable missiles and air force squadrons in the Eastern Europe aimed at Russia, and the NATO forces alongside its regional clients provocatively exercising so-called “freedom of navigation” right in the Black Sea and conducting joint military exercises and naval drills.
Although being dubbed “an invasion” by the corporate media, the majority population of the breakaway Donbass region speaks Russian and cheered the deployment of peace-keeping forces in the hope of restoring peace and stability following the turmoil and violence claiming 14,000 lives during the eight-year conflict.
Nevertheless, the Ukraine crisis is only a sequel to the most momentous event of the twentieth century: the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, rebellions in Eastern Europe and the subsequent break-up and massacres in the former Yugoslavia. Therefore, a succinct description of the nefarious plot to destabilize the Cold War rival by the NATO powers wouldn’t be out of place.
Many erudite Eurasian historiographers I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with were under the misconception that the alleged economic collapse in the former Soviet Republics in the late-eighties due to presumed intrinsic flaws in the Marxist-Leninist ideology precipitated the dissolution of the Soviet Union in Dec. 1991. Nothing could be more asinine than favoring exploitative capitalism with its supposed intrinsic strengths over egalitarian communism in the backdrop of the Soviet dissolution debacle.
The Soviet Union, with vast natural resources, territorial possessions spanning almost the entire northern landmass of Eurasia and technologically innovative workforce, stood the ground despite waging the over 70-year Cold War from 1917 to 1991 against the neocolonial powers.
With the vast oil and gas reserves, Russia and several former constituent republics of the Soviet Union, including Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, are the top exporters of energy to the industrialized world alongside the Gulf States. Without the Russian natural gas, European would freeze to death in harsh winters, or as Putin facetiously quipped: “They’d soon be gathering firewood to keep themselves warm.”
Even if Russia dismantled its cutting-edge industrial sector on a whim and stopped producing value-added goods, the exportable raw materials produced in the Eurasian behemoth would be enough to sustain the population for many centuries. Recently announced economic sanctions on Russia and halting the certification of Nord Stream 2 is going to hurt Washington’s European allies more than having any marked effect on Russia’s thriving economy.
Any external force, no matter how resourceful, could never have unraveled the super power of the era, but it succumbed to subversive internal threats, first due to destabilizing force of ostensibly popular and democratic rebellions in the Baltic and East European states in the late eighties, then due to fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent reunification of Germany in Oct. 1990, effectively placing the East German communists under the neocolonial tutelage of capitalist exploiters, and the last nail in the coffin was struck after Boris Yeltsin was elected the president of the constituent Russian Republic in the June 1991 elections, precipitating a power struggle between communist leadership at the center and nationalist leadership in the republic.
In the ensuing cataclysmic events, on August 19, 1991, a cabal of Soviet apparatchik, including Mikhail Gorbachev’s vice president, prime minister, defense minister and KGB chief, organized a coup plot and placed Gorbachev under house arrest. The coup organizers expected some popular support but the public sympathy in large metropolitan cities was against them.
The coup attempt was thwarted after three days and Gorbachev returned as the president of the Soviet Union. But not only the power of the presidency was compromised but also the vulnerability of the central leadership was exposed in the eyes of the public following the foiled coup plot. That was the point of no return. It became obvious the status quo could not be sustained in the crumbling Soviet Union.
The Glasnost and Perestroika liberalizing policies initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev were especially significant because they shine light on the impact of new technology on the social and political life of a country. The late-eighties was the era of the advent of satellite television in the developing world and it coincided with the political developments in the Soviet Union.
The Soviet masses, which until then were acquainted with news and information only from national media, were exposed to pernicious influence of imperialist media. The foreign-funded corporate media, including CNN, VOA, BBC and host of other television channels, radio stations and print media, capitalized on the opportunity to sow the seeds of discontentment among viewers, specifically among non-Russian ethnicities of the former Soviet Republics, by insidiously depicting contrasting lifestyles among the extravagant Western bourgeoisie and the frugality and egalitarianism typically favored in socialist communities.
As with the leadership of the rest of Baltic and East European states conniving with NATO powers and stabbing the former patron in the back, the imperialist stooges, Volodymyr Zelensky and his equally treacherous predecessor Petro Poroshenko, elected presidents through sham electoral process in the bourgeois democracy called Ukraine, represent nobody but the avaricious and exploitative entrepreneurial oligarchs wanting to expand business empires and attract foreign investments by pandering to the corporate interests of the Western Europe and North America.
Centralized governments across the world are run by behemoth state bureaucracies. Politicians are merely show pieces meant to lend legitimacy to supposedly “elected governments” and to cater to interests of business elites which they really represent. Disenfranchised masses are least bothered whether government is being run by autocrats or by “elected representatives” of the bourgeoisie, though the political and business elites often get restless and mobilize their support base to demand a share in the power pie.
The national security and defense policies of modern nation states are formulated by civil-military bureaucracy, dubbed as the deep state. Whereas trade and economic policies are determined by corporate interests and business cartels within the framework of neocolonial economic order imposed on the post-colonial world by corporate America following the signing of the Bretton Woods Accords at the end of the Second World War in 1945.
Purportedly democratic governments, elected through heavily manipulated electoral process, are reduced to performing ceremonial gimmicks and are meant only to serve as showpieces to legitimize militarist and capitalist exploitation.
Not only the disenfranchised masses of Ukraine but underprivileged proletariats of all the former Soviet constituent republics and allied states in Eastern Europe share historical, political and cultural bonds with Russia. Ensuring the collective security of Eurasian nations is Russia’s responsibility as a successor to the former Soviet Union.
Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, the East European states didn’t become democracies overnight as projected in the parallel reality of media narratives constructed by spin-doctors, instead they became capitalist oligarchies ruled by ultra-rich business elites having stakes in the global economy and depositing lucrative profits from flourishing business enterprises into Western financial institutions.
The worst thing capitalist exploitation and neoliberal developmentalism do to organic societies is that they breed parasitic consumerist classes of filthy rich bourgeois hungry for foreign investment, particularly from the deep pockets of the multinational corporations based in the financial districts of North America and Western Europe, and wanting to expand their business empires at any cost, even if they have to sell their nations out to highest bidder for personal ambitions.
Such comprador bourgeois erode nations from within. They are wary of egalitarian socialist ideologies emphasizing equitable distribution of wealth, hence undermining financial stakes of oligarchs. In order to scuttle political ideologies favoring the interests of disenfranchised masses, they generously provide funds to pernicious media organizations and political forces insidiously promoting so-called economic liberalization, free trade and globalization, even if entire nations have to bear the cost of such market fundamentalism.
It was not a coincidence that the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991 and the Maastricht Treaty that consolidated the European Community and laid the groundwork for the European Union was signed in February 1992. The basic purpose of the EU has been nothing more than to entice the former communist states of the Eastern Europe into the folds of the Western capitalist bloc by offering financial incentives and inducements.
Even the Ukraine crisis was stoked by oligarchs in November 2013 by staging Euromaidan protests against the incumbent government after Viktor Yanukovych suspended the preparations for the implementation of an association agreement with the European Union and threatened to take Ukraine back into the folds of the Russian sphere of influence by accepting billions of dollars loan package offered by Vladimir Putin.
All the grandstanding and moral posturing of unity and equality aside, the hopelessly neoliberal institution, the EU, in effect, is nothing more than the civilian counterpart of the trans-Atlantic military alliance against the former Soviet Union, the NATO, that employs a much more subtle and insidious tactic of economic warfare to win over political allies and to isolate adversaries that dare to sidestep from the global trade and economic policies as laid down by the Western capitalist bloc.
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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Af-Pak and Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to Global Research.
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Major Stephen Chledowski has served the Canadian Air Forces for 20+ years. He has held several army command positions.
He has an urgent message for all Canadians.
He noted that the government has been using “tactics of fear, intimidation, coercion and financial and physical violence” against the people to “gain compliance for certain repeated medical procedures.”
“They have knowingly and repeatedly violated the highest laws of the land, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
Watch the video below.
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A lot of ink has been spilled lately on whether or not the USA and its NATO alliance promised the USSR that NATO would not expand into the space evacuated by the withdrawal of the Red Army from Europe. It is clear those promises were repeatedly made and clear they were repeatedly broken. There is no historical dispute. Claims to the contrary are propaganda to excuse NATO’s aggressive strategy against Russia.
The Americans and their satellites states go further and claim a right to expand their alliance, but on what legal, moral or security grounds this right is based they cannot say. They claim that nations have the right to join NATO of their own free will, but this again is a distortion of the facts. The NATO Treaty states that accession to the Treaty is by invitation only. So there is no right of any nation to freely choose to join NATO. That is a decision ultimately controlled by NATO, by the United States in fact, not the nation seeking to join. This contradiction in their propaganda is never addressed. Nor do they answer why, of all nations, Russia’s request to join was rejected. But the meaning of the rejection was clear at the time and is clear now.
The contradiction is never addressed because that would lead to questions on the methods used by NATO to obtain the requests by countries to join in the first place; which in turn would lead to an examination of the threats, intimidation, bribery, and extortion used to coax these otherwise peaceful nations, with no apparent or real enemy facing them, to join an American controlled military machine.
All this begs the question why the Americans want to expand their military alliance into those countries. There is only one possible answer, not as a means of defence, as they claim, but as preparation for aggression, which they have been conducting against Russia openly now since NATO attacked, without any justification whatsoever, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 gained control of the Balkan states and built its biggest military base, Camp Bondsteel, threatening Russia’s southwest flank.
The economic warfare has been constant since then, disguised as “sanctions” accompanied by hostile diplomatic moves, provocations along Russia’s borders, from Georgia to the Baltic, from the Black Sea to the Pacific all accompanied by a constant barrage of anti-Russian propaganda. The NATO aggression and invasion of Libya can be seen as part of their strategy to control the Mediterranean and the oil supplies in North Africa, to cause insecurity to Egypt, and the world has not forgotten their invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and, Syria, where American forces still refuse to leave, a fact ignored by the western media and politicians complaining about alleged threats of “Russian aggression.”
The Americans and their allies in NATO are the experts of hypocrisy, for not only do their constant aggressions violate all international law, including, inter alia, the UN Charter, and the Nuremberg Principles, their actions are also in absolute violation of NATO’s own treaty.
Article 1 of the NATO Treaty states,
‘The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.’
The USA and its NATO satellites are not attempting to settle disputes with Russia (or China for that matter) by peaceful means. Instead they are using the entire spectrum of hybrid warfare, total warfare, against Russia. Yet no NATO member nation has demanded of NATO that the alliance and its members comply with Article 1. None of them demand that it complies with the stated adherence to the UN Charter.
The NATO alliance is also in contravention of Article 7 and 8, which state,
‘Article 7
This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Article 8
Each Party declares that none of the international engagements now in force between it and any other of the Parties or any third State is in conflict with the provisions of this Treaty, and undertakes not to enter into any international engagement in conflict with this Treaty.’
The contradiction between the NATO Treaty and the security architecture created by the UN Charter is clear. Chapter VII of the Charter governs all nations with respect to international security. There can be no legal basis for the establishment of any military alliances such as NATO whose clear political objectives are aggression and American hegemony over the world.
Article 8 requires NATO member nations not to enter into any international “engagement’ in conflict with this Treaty. Yet they had already done so becoming members of the United Nations. So, not only is the NATO Treaty a violation of the UN Charter, in fact, a negation of it, its own members are in violation of the NATO Treaty by being members of the UN.
In consequence, the Americans and their allies have, to all intents and purposes, abandoned the United Nations as the final arbiter of international security and now promote their private club of aggressors as its replacement, not to establish peace, but to conduct war.
The NATO Treaty is not the only document to be considered. There is the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 which states,
“Article 1
The High Contracting parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.”
“Article II
The High contracting parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.”
The Kellogg–Briand Pact, otherwise known as the General Treaty For Renunciation of War As An Instrument of National Policy, signed by many nations, including the USA and its NATO members and the USSR, is still in force as established by this exchange in the British House of Commons on December 16, 2013.
‘Steve Baker: To ask the Attorney-General if he will make an assessment of whether the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy remains binding on the UK.
The Solicitor-General: I am advised by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy (also known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact) remains in force and that the United Kingdom remains a party.’
Of course despite this being a fundamental element of international law, the United States of America has engaged in continuous warfare as an instrument of national policy since the date they signed it.
Russia has acted consistently in accordance with international law and humanity in response to the American threats and actions but is met with the boorish behaviour and insults of thugs.
Earlier this year President Putin sent to the American president a proposal for a Treaty which would guarantee the peace in Europe. The offer was rejected out of hand by the Americans who played games with the text and offered to negotiate on peripheral items, while ignoring Russia’s demands that NATO cease its expansion, withdraw American nuclear weapons from Europe, dismantle the bases and equipment it has placed all over eastern Europe in preparation for war on Russia and agree not to place missile systems close to Russia’s borders.
In further reply to the Russian request to negotiate a Treaty, the Americans hyped up their propaganda against Russia and now provoke its puppets in Kiev to mount an offensive against the Donbass Republics. The result the world now sees as civilians are attacked by artillery bombardments, a war crime in itself, resulting in the evacuation of large numbers of people from the Republics into Russia. This mass movement of refugees is hardly mentioned in the western press, nor that it is due to their actions; nor the attempted assassination of Donbass leaders.
The Russian Duma voted last week to recommend to the President that the Republics be recognised as sovereign states. On Monday, February 21st President Putin, also acting on the request of the Donbass Republics, and the recommendation of the Russian Security Council, made the momentous and logical decision to do exactly that. The Minsk Agreements, though supported by Russia, were being impeded and sabotaged by some European nations, by the Kiev regime and the USA. They were at a dead end. The recognition by Russia was immediately followed by the signing of agreements of mutual cooperation between Russia and the Republics. The meaning and importance of this is obvious to everyone and will be seen clearly in the coming days. NATO and the US of course condemned the decision, though their recognition of the Serbian province of Kosovo as an independent state after they attacked Yugoslavia, occupied Kosovo and tore it out of the heart of Serbia, set the precedent; they have no right to complain about anything.
President Putin’s recent meetings with President Macron of France are a positive development as well as his talks with the new German Chancellor. In France, almost every party from the communists to the far right and everyone in between are calling for France to leave NATO and state Russia is the friend of France. Macron plays both sides against the middle but he knows which way the wind blows, and so is very active in order to be seen as a voice of reason and peace in Europe.
The French are also angry with the Americans over the submarine fiasco, in which the Americans kicked the French in the teeth by getting the Australians to cancel their purchase of French submarines to be replaced with American submarines, while the Germans see that the Americans, who still have occupation forces in Germany, are set on forcing them to buy expensive US liquefied gas, of doubtful supply, instead of the cheaper, secure supplies of Russian gas promised by the NordStream 2 pipeline.
In its reply to the Americans, handed to their ambassador in Moscow on February 17, Russia stated that,
“In the absence of the readiness of the American side to agree on firm, legally binding guarantees to ensure our security from the United States and its allies, Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of military-technical measures.”
This has the Americans in a panic, which may partly account for the hysteria of their propaganda because they have no idea what those military-technical measures will be. We can though look at the actions taken to date to have some idea of the possibilities, with the Chief of the Russian Defence Staff travelling to Syria to meet with President Assad, and the transfer of Russian advanced bombers and jet fighters to their bases in Syria. This has implications for control of the Mediterranean as well the illegal, and brutal occupation of Syrian territory by American forces. In the past week Russian military exercises have wound down in Crimea and region but continue in Belarus and President Putin himself is reported to have overseen nuclear force drills the past several days. The US has been placed on notice; your aggression stops here.
In regard to the situation in Ukraine the Russian document states,
‘To de-escalate the situation around Ukraine, it is fundamentally important to take the following steps. These are forcing Kiev to implement a set of measures, stopping the supply of weapons to Ukraine, withdrawing all Western advisers and instructors from there, refusing NATO countries from any joint exercises with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and withdrawing all previously delivered Kiev of foreign weapons outside the Ukrainian territory.
In this regard, we draw attention to the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a press conference following the talks in Moscow with French President Emmanuel Macron on February 7, 2022, stressed that we are open to dialogue and call for “thinking about stable security conditions for all, equal for all participants in international life.
Once again, Russia wants peace. Europe wants peace. But the United States wants its way and is willing to go to war. But if they go down that road, it will be their final act of aggression because as I wrote above, the Russians, have, as do the Chinese and North Koreans, now told the Americans, “we want peace, and are willing to achieve it, but your aggression stops here.’
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Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events,
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When Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin and Lugansk leader Leonid Pasechnik formally requested recognition from Moscow, the subsequent recognition by Vladimir Putin (as The President of Russia) on the 21st of February 2022 of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) as Sovereign Nations is perhaps the most logical and deeply humane action any political leader of any nation has taken this far in the 21st century.
It reveals the people of the Russian Federation to be deeply conscious: of the still open scars and the trauma of the chaos and destruction of the events of the great war against fascism which came to a mind-numbing apocalyptic close in 1945. It also reveals the sheer determination and strength of character and precision of clarity of thought under severe pressure; in decision making, of the Russian President and the exceptionally intelligent and heroic figure of the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov.
It also reveals what they were up against in a British foreign minister with ambitions of garnering the top job for herself within her own cabinet, unaware of the distance between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea and which parts of the Russian Federation are officially recognized by her own government as being legally part of Russia.
It also revealed the mental instability and imbalance of a head of state, who in a previous avatar played the leading role of a clown in a television comedy show, and who now, in his present reinvention, is found to be deeply un-hinged and totally dis-located from the reality of administering a nation by threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons on his own territory, thereby indicating clearly that he could care less about the cataclysmically dangerous situation that he was putting his own people in; albeit perhaps thinking that this is all a television show and he be playing a new role as the puppet clown on an imperialist string.
It also reveals the fascist elements that are now deeply and dangerously embedded within every facet of civil society, government administration, armed militia gangs, the military and decision making authorities within a country that was at one time considered to be the breadbasket of Europe. That at one time was called the settlement. The very edge of civilization where anything after was considered to be; beyond the pale.
It beggars belief that a leader of nation would ask his armed forces to bomb his own people out of their homes, indiscriminate of them being women and innocent children, in a freezing winter and then openly try to kill them as they fled, by attempting to carpet bomb the escape roads. These are tactics straight out of the fascist mind of another deranged maniac who left this world, helped on his way to hell by the Soviet army under Marshall Zhukov in 1945.
It also beggars belief that these same armed forces would then actually go ahead and do this, (to be specific, in that), kill their own people in acts of crazed vindictive violence in revenge; for whatever reasons the armed forces deemed them to be deserving of this punishment. They seemed to harbour a thought that their own people had committed some sort of perceived wrong against them. From the viewpoint of their own twisted logic, these people deserved the bombing and destruction of their lives.
Perhaps, this is the only part that makes sense as these armed forces are totally under the control of heartless fascists who themselves are under strict conditions of terms of finance; as well as, clear orders and instructions from an imperial power that is sadly morphing from the policeman of the world into more of a traffic cop of a dysfunctional self-proclaimed new world order.
There will be arguments made by the servants of imperialism who will say; so what that the Russian president has recognized the DPR and LPR? There were Russian troops there anyway and have been since 2014. That may be true but with the development of the 21st of February, the psychotically insane can no longer bomb the DPR and LPR anymore. Why so? You may ask. Well, if they do, it would mean bombing sovereign nations recognized by the Russian Federation with whom they now have a mutual pact of friendship and a de facto Right To Protect Agreement. A federation that also has a veto at the United Nations Assembly and could well drag you there and have you ruthlessly sanctioned under the legal instruments of international law.
You may think that sanctions are some sort of game that only you can apply like some sort of world order mafia don, on nation states that don’t pay you extortion and protection money, on which an entire financial system of global exploitation survives, but sadly there still remains this slight problem that you need to be overcome with regards to this thing called; international law. And that law is debated at the very institution that you yourself created and have now turned into a joke. That, of course, being the United Nations General Assembly.
The DPR and LPR have now become recognized sovereign nations and will remain so. They are not a part of the Russian Federation, nor a part of Ukraine. The federation remains a founding nation of the United Nations. They will table a motion at the UNSC that Ukraine must stop bombing these two sovereign nations, i.e., the DPR and LPR, and that Ukraine must come to the negotiating table to discuss what exactly is their problem with these two very small nations and what are the reasons for their actions towards them. What exactly have these two nations done to Ukraine for them to deserve this.
A resolution will be passed by the 15 member United Nations Security Council and that will then go to a UN General Assembly vote. Before any of that happens, Washington, Ottawa and London will “help” President Zelensky find “peace within himself” by having him removed from office and the new Ukraine government will be then be given clear instructions to stop this chaos, which will then in turn allow the UN motion to not having to be voted on at the United Nations, thus saving the member nations from having to openly take sides by publicly voting for either the “West” or the “East”. Namely, For either a unipolar world led by “errand boys and clerks”, as famously quoted by Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now or a multipolar world led by themselves as free nations unburdened by the chains of an imperial hegemon.
President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov should get the Nobel Peace Prize for their heroic efforts in stabilizing Syria and now for mitigating this crisis in the heart of Europe.
This below is the gist of the statement from the Russian Federation
“On top of this, Putin issued an ultimatum to the Kiev regime. The Zelensky government must immediately stop fighting in the region and obey to the ceasefire.
In other cases, Putin said, it will bear full responsibility for the further development of the situation. This shows that Russia is ready to kick off a peace enforcement operation against the Kiev regime if this is needed. In this case, it is possible that a large, if not more, regions of Ukraine’s south-east will be cleared from criminals that the current Kiev regime calls its ‘security forces’ and the ‘army’.” [reference SouthFront: 21/02/2022]
Zelensky has a maximum of 30 days of fife in his current avatar before he is discharged from duty by those who pull his string and the serious negotiations commence to offset the effects of the next round of chaos that will now erupt, where there will now be an attempt to “help” to bring “peace and security” to settle the issue of this upheaval by partitioning Ukraine into a West Ukraine from Lviv and an East Ukraine from Kiev.
Supratim Barman, MSc – Queen Mary University of London. MIEE MBCS MIAP. I live between the two extreme edges of what was the British Imperial Empire, in the vast and important cities of Kolkata and London; with the midpoint being where I was born and where I grew up, Bahrain: observing and experiencing events in a time of great change.
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Da ich Sie persönlich nicht erreichen werde, wende ich mich mit einem Offenen Brief an Sie.
Ich bin deutscher Wissenschaftler und Psychologe und lebe seit über zwei Jahren in Ihrem Heimatland Serbien.
Seit vielen Wochen verfolge ich von hier aus die weltweit von einer diabolischen Finanz-„Elite“ losgetretene Angst-Pandemie sowie den Zwang, sich mit einem genverändernden sogenannten Impfstoff impfen zu lassen. Dabei war ich immer sehr gespannt auf Ihre Stellungnahme und Ihr Verhalten als serbischer Ausnahme-Sportler und Vorbild nicht nur für die Jugend weltweit.
Als ich heute in den deutschen Zeitungen Ihre neue Stellungnahme las,
„Lieber Trophäen verpassen als gezwungen sein, einen Covid-Impfstoff zu bekommen“ (1)
und bei BBC:
„Ich bin nicht gegen Impfungen, würde aber Trophäen opfern, wenn man mir sagt, ich solle mich impfen lassen.“ (2)
war ich begeistert und möchte Ihnen zu Ihrem Mut gratulieren. Ganz Serbien wird stolz sein auf Sie. Sie sind für mich nicht nur ein Vorbild für eine freie Jugend, sondern für alle freie Menschen. Ich wünsche Ihnen weiterhin alles Gute.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Rudi Hänsel
Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe
Belgrad / Serbien
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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Trudeau is a groomed politician controlled by the financial establishment. He was a “student” of Klaus Schwab‘s “Leaders of Tomorrow” initiative (1992)
Klaus Schwab made the following statement in January 2016 at the Davos annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, less than three months after Justin Trudeau’s accession to the position of Prime Minister of Canada following the November 2015 elections.
Klaus Schwab on Trudeau’s loyalty to the World Economic Forum & not to the Canadian people. pic.twitter.com/8VaTKMAnb6
The following statement by Schwab was made a year later in 2017:
I have to say then I mention names like Mrs Merkel, even Vladimir Putin and so on they all have been Young Global Leaders of The World Economic Forum. But what we are really proud of now with the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, President of Argentina and so on, is that we penetrate the cabinets… It is true in Argentina and it is true in France now… (Klaus Schwab)
The financial establishment not only controls Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland as well Jagmeet Singh are also members of Schwab’s “Leaders of Tomorrow”.
With regard to the enactment of a National Emergency put forth by Trudeau, Klaus Schwab plays a key role.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) (acting on behalf of powerful financial interests) oversees both the Prime Minister of Canada as well as the Leader of the NDP Jagmeet Singh.
It is important that Canadians in all electoral districts across the land, contact their representatives (MPs) demanding that they exercise a:
NO VOTE in relation to Trudeau’s proposed enactment of a National Emergency, in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is a protégé of Klaus Schwab.
The NDP has a longstanding history of progressive politics going back to Tommy Douglas, Ed Broadbent and Jack Leyton.
At this crossroads in our history:
We call on all NDP Members of Parliament to SAY NO to Jagmeet Singh’s decision to support Trudeau.
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Europe’s energy crisis deepened Tuesday as Germany halted the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. Putin’s right hand man, Dmitry Medvedev responded to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s comments about the certification of the controversial Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline that ‘can’t happen right now’ by tweeting:
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has issued an order to halt the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Well. Welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay €2.000 for 1.000 cubic meters of natural gas!
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has issued an order to halt the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Well. Welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay €2.000 for 1.000 cubic meters of natural gas!
Based on Medvedev’s tweet, translating MWh to cubic meters, it appears gas prices for Europe could be headed back to crisis levels not seen since late 2021.
Europe is heavily reliant on Russia for its gas needs, and to block the Nord Stream 2’s certification will only create havoc in European energy markets.
Europe’s ultra-low gas storage levels for this time of year will keep the market very tight even beyond the winter season.
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At a moment the United States and Europe are busy mulling over what sanctions to impose on Moscow for Putin’s independence recognition for Ukraine’s separatist republics – on the one hand wanting Russia to feel the pain as a warning against moving further into Ukraine (beyond what the Kremlin is dubbing “peacekeeping” troops in Donetsk and Luhansk, which entered the republics overnight), and on the other wanting to avoid severe enough economic measures that would almost guarantee immediate escalation – Germany on Tuesday has announced it has halted the certification process for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
As European Union leaders prepare to sanction Moscow, Bloomberg quoted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as saying the Nord Stream 2 pipeline certification can’t happen right now. He explained to reporters that he contacted the Economic Ministry to withdraw a report on the security of supply required for the certification process of pipeline to move forward. Without it, NS2 “cannot go into operation” – he told reporters.
In essence as Bloomberg put it, the controversial Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline appears to be the first major Russian project to fall victim to Putin’s independence declaration for the breakaway Ukraine republics.
“That sounds technical, but it’s the necessary administrative step so that no certification of the pipeline can happen right now,” Scholz said of the move, adding that “without the certification, Nord Stream 2 cannot go into operation.”
Concerning the first wave of sanctions reportedly now being prepared targeting Russia, Scholz said, “I expect a very strong and focused package.” What’s expected to be in the package has been revealed and summarized as follows by Bloomberg:
EU proposed sanctions to target those involved in recognition of breakaway regions
EU proposed sanctions target banks financing Russian military and other operations in the region
EU proposed sanctions target Russia’s ability to tap EU’s capital and financial markets
EU proposed sanctions target tradefrom two breakaway regions to and from EU
EU says ministers to meet to finalize proposed first package of sanctions
EU has prepared and stands ready to adopt additional measures at a later stage if needed in the light of further developments
European natural gas jumped 13% today – hours after Russian troops began entering Donetsk and Luhansk. Brent prices nearing $100 a barrel, and German power and coal prices advanced. This all comes as Europe is dealing with one of the worst energy crisis in years.
Wow! Germany is killing the new $10bn Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia.
That's a huge step after refusing to be drawn on it in public for months. It'll have major consequences for European energy security and suggests the western sanctions against Moscow will be tough. https://t.co/hQknCtBEpG
The Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline was completed on Sept. 11 and has been ready to supply Europe for months. Even before this week’s geopolitical turmoil in Ukraine, Germany’s federal network agency, Bundesnetzagentur, halted the pipeline’s certification process in mid-November.
By December, Bundesnetzagentur President Jochen Homann said, “a decision won’t be made in the first half of 2022.” The latest developments to halt the certification process suggest Nord Stream 2 pipeline won’t supply energy crisis-stricken Europe with natural gas anytime soon.
Likely this first wave is only the very beginning of multiple waves of sanctions to come; however, hawks are already decrying these as too softened and easy for Moscow to endure…
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Five decades after then US President Richard Nixon made an ice-breaking visit to China in 1972 that helped start bilateral diplomatic engagement, US business leaders in China voiced hope for continued commercial communication between China and the US and rejected a decoupling between the two economies.
Monday marks the 50th anniversary of Nixon’s historic visit to China, during which the two countries issued a document known as the Shanghai Communiqué, which became the political foundation for the normalization of China-US relations.
“We as a US business chamber still hope that China and the US continue to maintain at least economic and trade interactions amid relatively complex global geopolitics… we don’t want the so-called decoupling,” Eric Zheng, President of AmCham Shanghai, told the Global Times on Monday.
According to him, the changes and challenges emerging in the two countries’ economic relations in the past few years, especially the trade war, had exerted negative impact on the markets and enterprises in both countries, and they didn’t help solve the specific problems.
“We hope that the two sides could figure out a more positive mechanism to resolve their trade and commercial disputes…instead of by increasing tariffs, which actually bring harm to both countries,” he said.
Zheng also noted that the AmCham Shanghai has been communicating with US policymakers, including the US Congress, the administration, and US think tanks, to provide accurate information on US companies’ operations in China.
Although bilateral relations had encountered many uncertainties, with disputes and sanctions, economic interactions seemed to have reached a new pinnacle with the entrance and success of many US companies like Tesla and Disneyland in the Chinese market in recent years.
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Featured image: A view of Yantian port in Shenzhen, South China’s Guangdong Province on February 16, 2022. Photo: cnsphoto
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Under pressure from ultra-nationalists and Russophobes, successive governments in Ukraine have failed to address the grievances of the Russian speaking majority in the Donbass region. Ukraine has also not implemented the provisions of the Minsk agreement signed in 2015 to end the conflict in the region
On Monday, February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in a press conference that the country will recognize the independence of the Donetsk and the Luhansk people’s republics. Refuting arguments that the move will harm possibilities for peace and violate provisions of the Minsk agreement, the Russian leader claimed that the decision was aimed at maintaining peace in the region.
According to Valentina Matviyenko, chairperson of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russian parliament, the situation in Donbass is of a “humanitarian disaster and genocide” and Russia’s move will help in easing the situation there. She claimed that Russia was left with no other option to prevent the bloodbath in the region as no one was listening to its calls for diplomatic and political solutions in the last eight years.
Russia’s move is based on certain facts and growing speculation at a time when war hysteria is being whipped up by the US and its NATO allies in the region. According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE), which was assigned the role to monitor the ceasefire under the Minsk agreement, the Ukrainian government has violated the ceasefire agreement several times in the last week. Several rounds of talks, revived between the parties of the Minsk agreement in the last couple of weeks, have also failed to address Russian concerns. The situation prompted the leaders of Luhansk and Donetsk to appeal to Putin to take immediate action.
Minsk agreement
The situation in Ukraine today is attributed to the rise of ultra-nationalist and Russophobe groups that compelled the then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich to resign during the Euromaidan protests in February 2014. Protesters called for Yanukovich to follow policies favorable for integration with the EU and NATO even at the cost of harming Ukraine’s traditional ties with Russia. This same set of ultra nationalist and Russophobe political groups have been hampering the implementation of the Minsk agreement by successive Ukrainian governments.
The Minsk agreement was signed in the context of the outbreak of civil war in Ukraine following the post-Euromaidan government’s move to crush the protests opposing the pro-EU and pro-NATO policies that it had adopted. Ukrainian forces declared a war on the protesters following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The war lasted for months before the 13-point Minsk agreement was signed, and led to the death of over 14,000 people and displaced over 2.5 million, with nearly half of them seeking refuge in Russia.
The Minsk agreement was signed by countries and groups forming the Normandy format including the OSCE, France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine in February 2015. The agreement was later endorsed by the UN Security Council (UNSC). According to the provisions of the agreement, apart from establishing an immediate ceasefire in the Donbass region, the government in Ukraine agreed to make provisions for greater autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the centers of rebellion, by first recognizing the right to self-government and also creating special status for the regions in the parliament. It was a necessary condition for them to remain within Ukraine and for Russia to hand over border control to the Ukrainian government, which it had taken over following the outbreak of the war. The OSCE was assigned the role of observing the implementation of the ceasefire agreement. The agreement also talked about broader constitutional reforms in Ukraine.
Non-implementation of Minsk agreement
According to Russian claims, over 1.2 million residents of the Donbass region have already applied for Russian citizenship out of a total estimated population of six million. Russian speaking people form an overwhelming majority in both the self-declared republics. They fear that if the international community abandons their cause, they will face another war and ethnic cleansing by the Ukrainian state.
Successive governments in Kiev have not paid much attention towards addressing the issue of the Donbass region and have failed to initiate moves to implement the Minsk agreement. One attempt made by newly elected Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019 also failed after large-scale ultra nationalist protests broke out in the country opposing the move. The protesters accused Zelensky of “capitulation” to Russian pressure and threatened to force him to resign. The fear of losing popular support made Zelensky adopt a “tougher” rhetoric towards Russia, blaming it for the problems in Donbass instead of addressing the real issue.
Russia has raised the Donbass issue in international forums on several occasions, like in the UNSC meeting called by the US and its allies to discuss the situation in the beginning of February.
During his presentation in the UNSC, Russian representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, asserted that Ukraine should respect the provisions of the Minsk agreement signed in 2014 and 2015. He said that if western powers push Kiev to “sabotage the Minsk agreement”, Ukraine will be on the way to self destruction.
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What should be understood as that Western Mercenary Forces are Deployed in Eastern Ukraine
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February 21 marked a historic event that shapes a new system of international relations for the entire world community. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia recognizes the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in the east of Ukraine as sovereign entities.
‘Do you want decommunization? I will show you what REAL decommunization is!’ said Vladimir Putin.
The decrees were signed, stating that the decision was based on the will of the people of the LDPR and Ukraine’s rejection of a peaceful settlement of the conflict in accordance with the Minsk Agreements.
“They are not interested in peaceful solutions – they want to start a Blitzkreig,” Putin stated referring to the policy of the current Kiev regime. The president noted that Ukraine does not even hide aggressive plans and prepares for the conflict with Russia into which it seeks to drag NATO member states.
Putin called to ‘find, put on trial and punish’ the persons responsible for the 2014 Odessa massacre (when neo-Nazi radicals killed and burned dozens of civilians who protested against the Maidan coup). As the massacre was supported on almost all levels of the Ukrainian government, this can refer to almost all representatives of the post-Maidan Ukrainian elites.
The Kremlin issued an ultimatum to the Kiev regime. The Zelensky government must immediately stop fighting in the region and obey the ceasefire. Should this fail to happen, Putin said, it will bear full responsibility for the further development of the situation.
After the ratification of the treaties of friendship and cooperation between the Russian Federation and the LDPR, Russia can legally deploy its troops in the Donbass region, as well as supply the republics with any weapons.
The Russian President signed a Decree instructing the Russian armed forces to provide peacekeeping functions in the DPR and LPR. During the night, units of the 8th Field Army of the Russian Armed Forces have begun to enter the territory of the LDPR.
Moscow’s decision has dramatically changed the situation on the Donbass front lines.
The activity of Ukrainian shelling of residential buildings on the territory of the Republics began to decrease and practically stopped after Ukrainian President Zelensky did not take any decisions following a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
On February 22, in the first half of the day, the escalation decreased, and the number of attacks on the entire front line sharply reduced.
However, despite the confusion in the ranks of the Ukrainian Army, the activity of Ukrainian sabotage groups continued on LDPR territory as well as in Russia. Earlier, sabotage groups of the UAF carried out terrorist operations on the territory of the DPR and LPR on a regular basis, their activity has increased significantly in recent days.
On February 22, three people were killed in an explosion on the Donetsk-Gorlovka highway, a representative of the People’s Militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic claimed.
Earlier, Donetsk reported on the breakthrough of a Ukrainian sabotage group deep into the republic in the Novoazovsky district, during the clash the group was neutralized.
On February 21, Ukrainian saboteurs crossed the border with Russia near the village of Mityakinskaya, in the Rostov region. They were stopped by Russian border guards. As a result of the clash, 5 violators of the border were killed and one saboteur as captured. Two infantry fighting vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were also destroyed. There were no casualties among the Russian military.
While Russia has moved into action, the West is in no hurry to support the Kiev regime with military forces, but only intimidates Russia with new sanctions.
US President Biden signed a decree aimed at banning investments, trade and financing of the DPR and the LPR. The EU called Moscow’s decision a violation of international law, promised to react firmly and respond with sanctions. The NATO Secretary General condemned the recognition of the LDPR, claiming that it undermines efforts to resolve the situation in Ukraine.
Russia’s decisive actions mark the time of consolidation of the block of counteraction to the global world system beneficial to the Anglo-Saxon elites and imposed by the so-called collective West. It seems to be clear that China is on Russia’s side. However, Beijing’s position and the level of its support are yet to be officially declared.
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Nearly a quarter of United States military personnel and 75 percent of Department of Defense contractors are defying President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for all service members, civilian Pentagon workers, and defense contractors, a workforce in excess of 740,000 people.
The revelation was included in a Department of Defense COVID-19 Vaccine Operations Update slide deck. The report was current as of January 10.
Continued Military Defiance of Biden’s Vaccine Mandate
The defiance of Pentagon workers and service members against Biden’s order continues amid a pause in enforcement as a result of a federal court injunction.
Court of Appeals Allows Federal Mandate Injunction to Stand
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a week ago, rejected the Biden administration’s attempt to reinstate the mandate.
In the meantime, faced with widespread refusal to take the vaccines, government to ease enforcement.
A Quarter of U.S. Service Members Partially Vaccinated or Unvaccinated
According to the DoD deck 339,883 of all U.S. service members, or 16 percent of the force, are only partially vaccinated and 179,952, or 8.4 percent of the force, have received no vaccine doses at all.
Three-Quarters of DoD Contractors Partially or Not Vaccinated
In addition, more than 75 percent of U.S. defense contractors – more than 3.3 million people – have defied the vaccination mandate.
According to the slide deck, 79,218 Pentagon contractors, or 4.4 percent of that group, are partially vaccinated, and 1,300,111, or 71.4 percent are not known to have taken any COVID vaccine.
The news of continued defiance to Biden’s vaccine mandates for the military comes amid increased tensions with Russia over Ukraine.
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Featured image: Pfc. Shaniah Edwards, Medical Detachment, prepares to administer the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to soldiers and airmen at the Joint Force Headquarters, February 12, 2021. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Leona C. Hendrickson – Source.)
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We were awakened to the roar of F-16s exercising overhead. The day before, February 10, the Social Democrat government announced yet another escalation in its war-threatening measures alongside its main partner, the United States: the “Defense Cooperation Agreement” (DCA). It entails more military might from the U.S. Perhaps, we were awakened by Danish fighter pilots’ celebrating.
For the first time in Denmark’s history, its politicians will allow U.S. troops and war machinery on Danish mainland soil. There have not been foreign troops welcomed in Denmark since shortly after World War II—other than the tacit acceptance of Nazi Germany—and they were British and Soviets.[1]
The self-described Social Democrat leaders said they would try and forge a similar relationship that the U.S. enjoys with Norway, which has hosted U.S. training exercises and war aircraft and agreed to have the U.S. build three more air and ship bases it will use. And as we go to press, Denmark has called its frigate Esbern Snare away from pirate patrol in Guniea Bay to join NATO ships threatening Russia
The NATO conflict with Russia over Ukraine and Crimea, begun in 2013-14, has been used by U.S.-NATO to broaden its military occupation in several parts of Europe with more aircraft bases and warships in harbors.
Recently, both Sweden and Finland expressed interest in joining NATO, despite majority opinion opposed to this. With more false-flag propaganda, public opinion is turning more to the right and pro-NATO “for security.” [2]
At this stage of the new DCA, there is not to be a U.S. military base and atomic weapons are not to be placed here during “peacetime,” which is still in effect since 1957 (explained in part 1). Nevertheless, the U.S. had secretly placed atomic weapons on its Greenland colony. H.C. Hanssen, another Social Democrat, had secretly granted permission to the U.S. to place atomic bombs
at Thule base on Greenland despite the 1957 nuclear free zone policy. A B-52G Stratrofortress aircraft carrying four thermonuclear bombs crashed due to a human error, which caused a fire. Several hundred Danish and US American clean-up workers died from radiation poisoning causing cancer.
Although the current Social Democrat prime minister said no to atomic weapons, she could lie as her predecessor did, or another prime minister could say yes and scratch the nuclear free-zone policy. There were no other conditions for U.S. troops and war materials explained by these leaders. What they did not inform (or remind) the public was that Denmark’s agreement with NATO when it first joined was that foreign troops would not be allowed on Danish soil in times of peace.
The U.S., however, may choose to interpret what “peacetime” means. Furthermore, whether a prime minister here or there says no to the U.S. does not mean the superpower will obey others’ national interests. The Pentagon—as Politiken’s February 11 editorial, “Uncle Sam in Denmark,” pointed out—does not tell others what they can do (nor does the CIA).
Russia’s ambassador to Denmark, Vladimir Barbin, replied to Danish media that his country sees the DCA as a definite confrontation against its sovereignty and its people. He also brought in the 1990 agreement—“Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Paris Charter” (OSCE)—signed by 34 heads of state, including the parties concerned with DCA. The ambassador said that this cooperative agreement is ignored by the U.S., NATO, and specifically by what Denmark is proposing.
The OSCE “ushered in a new era as states made an unprecedented commitment to domestic individual freedoms, democratic governance, human rights, and transnational cooperation.”
Seven years later, it was followed by the NATO-Russia Founding Act, which enshrined commitments to equal security and to not seek security at the expense of the other’s security. And in OSCE’s 1999 European Security Charter, its member-states committed “not to strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States.”
Some social democrat-oriented members of Denmark’s parliament have expressed concern that, if there were a war between the U.S. and Russia, Denmark’s capitulation to the U.S. would place it among the first targets, especially in a nuclear war. Some wonder why U.S. troops are “necessary” now when they were not during all the time the Soviet Union existed and when there were many proxy wars, such as against Southeast Asia.
“I don’t see how this is in Denmark’s interest,” questioned socialist-oriented parliamentarian Karsten Hoeng.
There are several references about a future U.S. president, like Donald Trump, being so erratic that his/her policies could bring Danes into an unwanted violent situation.
“A strategic bomb in Danish politics,” Politiken led off. The new approach places Denmark “closer to the allies’ inner-circle than ever before.” While this daily, and all others, are glad for that, there are a couple of possible drawbacks.
“The USA will hardly depart from its firm principle of neither confirming nor denying if there are atomic weapons on visiting aircraft and ships. Even if it did, what would Denmark do? Quietly accept atom-weapons on Danish turf?”
As the editors wrote, such was the case in the 1980s when Social Democrats, then more loyal to their principles, raised the issue with a conservative prime minister concerning a visiting U.S. warship suspected of carrying nuclear weapons. PM Paul Schlüter (1982-93) called an election over that single issue and he won again.
Politiken’s lead article kicked off with “Frederiksen’s admiring homage to the United States is close to overtaking Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s view of Denmark’s best friend in the world and its crucial security guarantee.”
Readers are reminded that right-wing PM Rasmussen was considered by many to be a “lapdog” for all of the U.S.’s policies, especially military and war, while Social Democrats were more independent. That has changed in the past two decades. SD is as tight with the U.S. on everything as the right wing and conservatives have always been. Now, both right and “left” are with the U.S.
Enhedslisten (Red-Green) Social Democrat support party spokesperson Eva Flyvholm brought up a little-heard term in Denmark—“sovereignty”—in her critique.
“The new strategy is a big thing in relation to Danish sovereignty. Americans will have control over the activities and soldiers that come. I mean we should not enter into such an agreement.”
One of Politiken’s sources, Henrik Breitenbauch, leader of Copenhagen’s University Center for Military Studies and a senior fellow at the pro-NATO) Atlantic Council, stated that “sovereignty is always a question of degree bending.” I doubt that any U.S. president would accept such a definition for its sovereignty.
DR and Politiken both interviewed separately Peter Viggo Jakobsen, a key military academic expert. He sees advantages with breaking tradition against foreign troops on its territory. “They come with money to spend,” he said, and “their presence will have a deterrent effect on any foreign power intentions to invade Denmark.”
That opinion can be translated to mean that, with all the demonizing propaganda against President Putin, the “peace-loving” but tougher American militarists will be such a deterrent, even if Russia sees this agreement as a provocation against its interests.
“There is not anything they can do about that. Denmark will also accept that USA itself will have legal jurisdiction over whatever their soldiers commit here,” confided Jakobsen.
DR’s international correspondent, Steffen Gram, opined: “This here is re-establishing NATO, which many were in doubt about what NATO could be used for after the Cold War”—a side-reference to Donald Trump. Gram foresees that the crisis with Russia will “last a very long time.”
Desperate Social Democrat Government Fabricates War Threat Distraction
The government’s unexpected announcement of the new “Defense Cooperation Agreement” must have been prepared to announce when, on January 31, the hard-pressed Social Democrat government held a press conference to announce a “new strategy to steer Danish foreign policy in ‘the most serious security crisis for Europe since the Cold War.’”
This strategy is deemed necessary simply based on unsubstantiated demonizing propaganda that “Putin” is prepared to invade Ukraine. It comes at the time (coincidentally?) when the government is confronted with what the PM calls the “very serious” breach of national security secrets.
“We are seeing a very worrying situation unfolding at the Ukrainian-Russian border…Russia’s aggression…shows us that you can never take peace or freedom for granted,” PM Frederiksen said.
“The new strategy contains five main areas for managing foreign and security policy: values diplomacy, security diplomacy, climate diplomacy, migration diplomacy and economic diplomacy. We want to strengthen our alliances and partnerships with the countries and societies that share our values. This applies not least to the United States…Denmark’s most important ally. NATO and the United States are the guarantors of Denmark’s security.”
Nothing concrete was forthcoming. DR concluded with a six-minute clip on how “aggressive” Russia is. Military experts say Denmark will be even closer to U.S. interests (if that is possible).
Bramsen had just sent four F-16s to the Baltic to “protect” them against the Russians. She gave an interview to the weekly Weekend Avisen in which she stated: “It basically requires that we have a security understanding throughout society: The threats live everywhere, and the whole of society must be aware.”
In other words: no deviation from U.S/NATO domination; Russia, China and Iran must tow the line.
Five days later, Bramsen lost her war post. Within a 24-hour period beginning at 9:00 a.m. on February 4, as the court session against Findsen began, other political, military and juridical events took place in Denmark, bringing the world to the brink of the greatest crisis since the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet there are no protests in this country.
Prime Minister Merete Frederiksen reshuffled three ministries. The most sensational change was the removal of unpopular Defense Minister Trine Bramsen. She was moved to head the new Transport-Equality ministry. There was no explanation for why “equality” issues should be with transport, nor why Bramsen was moved down the ministry ladder.
Tax Minister Morten Boedskov was given her former job, rewarded for his “experience and reliability.”
The previous transport minister, Benny Engelbrecht, did not get another ministry post. Enhedslisten had demanded his removal for informing Parliament that the ministry’s new $25 billion infrastructure plan was CO2 neutral when it was not, as the engineer trade newspaper revealed. “And to boot, back when the proposal was revealed, Engelbrecht informed Parliament that figures for CO2 emissions regarding the plan didn’t exist. Except they did, and Engelbrecht has been accused of deliberately keeping them from the other parties.”
The first thing new Defense Minister Morten Boedskov did, within hours of his appointment, was to tell the media that he saw no reason not to send some of Denmark’s remaining “Stinger missiles” to Ukraine, which it bought from the U.S in the 1990s.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Denmark had told the media that the Ukrainian military wanted them because they were so effective in the hands of Afghan rebels. Just three days before Bramsen was replaced, she had stated that Denmark did not have such weapons. Her lack of military knowledge is a key reason for being shifted out.
It was extremist Mujahadin jihadists, including Osama bin Laden, who fired U.S.-donated “Stingers” against Soviet aircraft. They were sent to overthrow the communist-led Afghan government in the 1980s.
Unfortunately for the fresh war minister, Boedskov’s technological military experts found that none of the Stinger missiles were good enough to use. The new war minister sent two F-16s to Bornholm, Denmark’s easternmost island, as a “signal” to Putin that he dare not invade Denmark.
President Joe Biden had just ordered that Germany’s new Chancellor Olaf Scholz disallow the newly completed Nord Stream 2 gas line to function if “Putin steps up his aggression against Ukraine.”
“There will no longer be anything called Nord Stream 2 if the Russians invade Ukraine,” Biden informed the entire world, pointing his finger to a leader of what he believes is a U.S. colony.
While Scholz tried to appease the war-thirsty U.S. president, he would not say what sanctions Germany would engage in. More than half of Germany’s energy comes from Russia, and it needs more.
So, the U.S.’s primary Eye within EU-Europe sent its Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to Germany to tell Scholz what he could do. He could buy more Danish windmills. DR’s piece concerning her visit points out that her Social Democrat chancellor-colleague is characterized by “some critics” as “soft-sweetened” over for Russia.
The Danish government opposes the gas pipeline, which runs along Bornholm, and the Prime Minister stressed after her meeting with Scholz, “The reports from the White House about Nord Stream 2 are very good.”
France’s President Emmanuel Macron visited President Putin in Moscow. He did not threaten sanctions; instead he wanted Europe to engage in its own dialogue with Russia and Ukraine, and not be bound to U.S. presidents. Chancellor Scholz plans to visit Putin as well.
Neither France nor Germany has threatened its own sanctions, albeit as members of the EU they are a part of any EU sanctions. When President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, the French and German governments opposed the war. However, they came around after much pressure from Washington-Wall Street.
Surprisingly to many readers (and myself at the time), the new Russian president in 2001, Vladimir Putin, extended real military and intelligence assistance to Bush’s war in Afghanistan, and even proposed that Russia join NATO. Bush took his aid but rejected Russia inside NATO.
President Vladimir Putin met with China’s Xi Jinping in Beijing on the Winter Olympics’ opening day, even as the United States and Denmark intensified their non-factual claim that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine. The claim is based simply on the fact that Russia has troops on its own land close to Ukraine—as though that is a war crime and something the U.S. never does. The U.S. has hundreds of bases and hundreds of thousands of troops in scores of other countries.
Putin and Xi enhanced their alliance: mutual support regarding the U.S-Ukraine NATO aggression; opposition to U.S.’s inciting Taiwan’s independence from China; and inciting and financing Hong Kong protesters against China’s interests.
China and Russia simply want U.S./NATO to stop provoking their geographic areas. Russia may step up its advanced military technology exports and energy fuels to China, and Russia will buy more consumer goods from China.T
The U.S./EU warn these two nations (the world’s greatest territory and the largest population) with more severe sanctions. They speak of ceasing exports to Russia of vital microchips and other technology; preventing economic transactions in U.S. dollars (perhaps confiscating their funds in U.S.-controlled banks); and freezing the expensive Nord Stream 2 natural gas connection between Russia and Germany.
Conclusion
When the current geo-political hullabaloo dies down, and Russia has not invaded anybody, the Western aggressors will claim that their bellicosity paid off, having scared the scoundrel Ruskies from an invasion they never planned. It is all about Western capitalist encroachment against Russia’s and China’s capitalist competitors, especially concerning energy. We had been taught that capitalism’s nature is all about competition, but the West has changed the rules.
In my mind, the “Defense Cooperative Agreement” emerges at a time when Denmark is desperate to show Big Daddy that the misfortunate problem with one or more whistleblowers concerning spying on any and all is to be compensated for.
Several media outlets have criticized the intelligence services for assuming that they are beyond “democratic control.” Editorials and juridical experts have criticized leaders of Denmark’s Defense Intelligence Service (FE)—the equivalent to CIA—and the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET)—the equivalent of FBI—for allowing increased power to go to their heads ever since they began receiving extra resources following the terror attacks in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. (See part 1 Danish Defense Intelligence Chief Is Jailed by Social Democratic Government—Possibly to Protect U.S. Spy Programs – CovertAction Magazine )
Politiken’s editors urged the government to present to parliament the judges’ investigation report so it could determine if FE has kept policymakers informed. They also proposed that the new Danish Intelligence Oversight Committee (TET) be granted powers to interrogate FE’s employees, and ascertain if they comply with the law, which until now has not been possible. Nothing like that has happened.
There are other ironies in these matters: the betrayal of Denmark’s long-standing friendly association with European countries and their leaders; the fact that it has been Social Democrat women leaders who have been backing illegal spying activities, starting with the first woman who became Prime Minister, Social Democrat Helle Thorning-Schmidt (2011-15).
Following Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations, she embraced her “comrade” Chancellor Angela Merkel, assuring her that Denmark was not and would not be involved in spying on her. All the while she was lying. Since June 2019, it has been the next Social Democrat woman PM, Mette Frederiksen, and her female war minister, Trine Bramsen, who have gone deeper into spying activities for their master state.
Last year, four women led four of the five Scandinavian countries—two of three are Social Democrats and one Red-Green. The only male was the conservative president of Finland, Süulí Väinämö Niinisto. Last October, a male Social Democrat, Jonas Gahr Stoere, took over as Norway’s prime minister. Now he is stuck with the DCA agreement that conservative PM Erna Solberg made with the United States. All five Nordic states are either in NATO or seek to be.
I fear that the generally accepted notion—that, if women become leaders, they would be more inclined toward peaceful diplomacy than more naturally aggressive males—seems to be untrue as well. The same goes for both genders of Social Democrats and Democrats: They are just as power-hungry and enthusiastic for war as right-wingers.
Philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in his 1867 inaugural address at the University of St. Andrews. “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing,” .
For a long time, it has been normal among the Danish populace that sovereignty is not an issue for the vast majority. It seems that they, the media and academics simply take it for granted that “national security” is best left in the hands of the White House, the Pentagon, and 17 intelligence services across the Atlantic Ocean.
“Everything goes” in the name of “necessary evil,” and “I have nothing to hide.” However, with the DCA issue, sovereignty is at least a word that some people are beginning to articulate; and perhaps a movement of opposition will develop.
Russia attacked German troops sent to occupy Bornholm island after Germany officially capitulated. During two days of bombings and battles, a few Danes were killed and wounded. Russian forces remained there for 11 months.↑
Are Denmark’s and United States values, according to its Social Democrat prime minister, such as Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks/Julian Assange have revealed to the world: Collateral Murder – Wikileaks – Iraq – YouTubeIt behooves all peace-loving, free speech/free press-loving, human values-loving people to come out with real support for Julian Assange, whom the U.S./U.K. and Denmark want to see dead.
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Ron Ridenour is a U.S.-born author and journalist, anti-war and civil rights activist since 1961. After joining the U.S. Air Force at 17, he saw the inner workings of U.S. imperialism and resigned. In the 1980s and 1990’s he worked with the Nicaraguan government and with Cuban national media.
He now lives in Denmark and, in addition to writing a dozen books, has served as a special correspondent and freelance investigative journalist for many publications in the U.S. and several Latin American and European countries.
Ron is a member of TCBH and correspondent for Covert Action Magazine.
Featured image: Danish purchased F-16s. Soon to be replaced with 27 F-35s. (Source: TCBH)
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If you’re wondering how we’ll ever put an end to these draconian COVID-19 mandates that are destroying lives and sanity across the world, take heart. History can serve us in this regard
Over 135 years ago, in 1885, England became the host to a massive anti-vaccination movement that ultimately resulted in people overturning the government’s compulsory vaccination rule
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in opposition to compulsory smallpox vaccinations. Many were fined and jailed, but in the end, the government relented and abolished the mandate
The trucker protest in Canada and elsewhere is almost identical to what happened during smallpox vaccination campaigns more than a century ago, when mass protests and peaceful disobedience broke the government’s tyrannical hold
The Leicester Model was proven successful in the wake of that 1885 anti-vaccination protest and has been standard ever since. By quarantining infected patients and improving public hygiene, smallpox was finally eradicated
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If you’re wondering how we’ll ever put an end to these draconian COVID-19 mandates that are destroying lives and sanity across the world, take heart. History can serve us in this regard. The parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic and its countermeasures that of previous smallpox pandemics are fascinating to behold, and therein we can also find the answer to our current predicament.
Smallpox, a highly infectious and disfiguring illness with a fatality rate around 30%,1 has been with us for many centuries, probably thousands of years. During the last four centuries, forced mass vaccination has been a recurring countermeasure relied on by government during these kinds of outbreaks, often with devastating results, and there have always been large portions of society that opposed it.
In the 1700s, Boston, Massachusetts, was hit by a series of outbreaks, and the introduction of a vaccine led to violent rebellion by those who believed it was dangerous and a violation of God’s will. Local newspapers were rife with disputes for and against the vaccine.2
The hypodermic needle had not yet been invented at this time, so the vaccination consisted of rubbing some cowpox pus into an open wound on the arm. Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, who introduced the inoculation at the urgings of Rev. Cotton Mather, was forced into hiding and was eventually arrested. Mather’s home was firebombed.
In 1862, it was Los Angeles, California’s turn. Compulsory vaccination was again rolled out, and anyone who refused was subject to arrest. Infected people were terrified of being forcibly quarantined in a “pest house,” miles outside the city limits, and for good reason. It was a place where you were dumped to die, with not so much as a bedsheet for comfort.3
The Anti-Vaccination Rebellion of 1885
In the decades to come, smallpox outbreaks were occurring all over the world, and forced inoculation was typically the answer, even though it had its own risks. In 1885, England became the host to a massive anti-vaccination movement that ultimately resulted in people overturning the government’s compulsory vaccination rule.
As reported by the BBC, December 28, 2019, mere weeks before COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic:4
“In the late 19th Century, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in opposition to compulsory smallpox vaccinations. There were arrests, fines and people were even sent to jail. Banners were brandished demanding ‘Repeal the Vaccination Acts, the curse of our nation’ and vowing ‘Better a felon’s cell than a poisoned babe.’ Copies of hated laws were burned in the streets and the effigy was lynched of the humble country doctor who was seen as to blame for the smallpox prevention program.”
A Substack user going by the moniker “A Midwestern Doctor”5,6 details this part of history, explaining why it matters to us today. He writes:7
“What is occurring now in Canada and other places is almost identical to what happened with the smallpox vaccination campaigns over a century ago, and I believe it is critical we understand these lessons from the past and it is vital this message gets out to the Truckers.
Briefly, the original smallpox vaccine was an unusually harmful vaccination that was never tested before being adopted. It increased, rather than decreased smallpox outbreaks. As the danger and inefficacy became known, increasing public protest developed towards vaccination. Yet, as smallpox increased, governments around the world instead adopted more draconian mandatory vaccination policies.
Eventually, one of the largest protests of the century occurred in 1885 in Leicester (an English city). Leicester’s government was replaced, mandatory vaccination abolished, and public health measures rejected by the medical community were implemented. These measures were highly successful, and once adopted globally ended the smallpox epidemic, something most erroneously believe arose from vaccination.”
The alternative countermeasure implemented in Leicester involved quarantining infected people and notifying anyone who’d been in close contact with the patient. They also used “ring vaccination” in which hospital workers who took care of infected patients had been inoculated.8
As a result, when smallpox broke out again between 1892 and 1894, Leicester got off lightly, with a case rate of 20.5 cases per 10,000. In all, the town had 370 cases and 21 deaths — far lower than the towns of Warrington and Sheffield, where vaccination rates were high.
On the other hand, there were well-vaccinated areas that had lower case rates and fewer deaths, and areas with low vaccination rates that also fared worse in this regard, so vaccination was probably not the determining factor either way.
In 1898, the U.K. implemented a new law that allowed people to opt out of vaccination for moral reasons. As reported by the BBC, this was “the first time ‘conscientious objection’ was recognized in U.K. law.”9 Now, we have to fight to regain that right yet again, all around the world.
Dissolving Illusions
“A Midwestern Doctor”10 goes on to discuss Dr. Suzanne Humphries’ 2009 book, “Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History,” in which she shatters the notion that vaccines (and certain other medical interventions) have been single-handedly responsible for improved health and increased life spans. As a nephrologist (kidney specialist), Humphries noticed a pattern among her patients.
Many who experienced kidney injury or kidney failure had recently received a flu vaccine. It was a singular common denominator. So, she began to challenge the hospital’s routine practice of vaccinating patients. Humphries was roundly ignored and was ultimately forced to leave. The book grew out of her frustration with people who insisted that vaccines had eliminated scourges like polio and smallpox. Once she delved into the research, what she found was something else entirely.
With regard to smallpox and smallpox vaccination, living conditions during the industrial revolution were horrid. Plagues and infectious outbreaks were commonplace, not because of insufficient vaccination, but because sanitation was near-nonexistent and people, including children, were overworked and underfed. Early progressives believed deadly plagues could be prevented by improving living and working conditions, and they were correct.
We know this because other plagues for which there were no vaccines disappeared right along with smallpox and polio. While the medical industry eventually embraced vaccination, and increasingly over time treated it as something that could not be contested or questioned, Humphries’ book details the opposition.
Smallpox Opposition
As it turns out, many doctors have spoken out against smallpox vaccination and published data demonstrating its dangers. For example:11
The Moving Goal Post
Once it became clear that the smallpox vaccine was incapable of providing long-lasting immunity as initially promised, the medical profession moved the goal post and started justifying vaccination on the basis that it could protect against more severe illness, even if it couldn’t provide lifelong “perfect” immunity the way recovering from the infection could.
This has been a basic mantra ever since, and we’ve gotten a double-dose of it during this COVID pandemic. Within months, the goal post was switched from “two doses are near-100% effective,” to “two doses wear off in six months and leave you more vulnerable to severe illness thereafter.” Some bargain!
Corruption of Vital Statistics Protect Vaccination Narrative
What’s worse, the trend of not reporting vaccine injuries due to “allegiance to the practice,” as noted by Henry May in the Birmingham Medical Review in January 1874, has continued unabated. According to May, vaccinated people who died were typically recorded as having died from some other condition, or were erroneously listed as “unvaccinated.”12 As noted by “A Midwestern Doctor”:13
“This corruption of the vital statistics creates many challenges in assessing the efficacy of immunization, and is also why many authors have noted no metric can be used to assess COVID-19 immunizations except total number of deaths (independent of cause) as this cannot be fudged.
Of note, a different significant overlap exists with the early polio campaigns (also detailed within ‘Dissolving Illusions’), where ‘polio’ diagnostic criteria was repeatedly adjusted to meet the political need for polio cases.
Governments responded to this skepticism by progressively using more and more force to mandate vaccination. Vaccination was made compulsory in England in 1853, with stricter laws passed in 1867. In the United States, Massachusetts created a set of comprehensive vaccination laws in 1855 (which created the Supreme Court case Jacobson v. Massachusetts a case that is frequently cited about state enforced vaccination).
Lemuel Shattuck emphasized the need for vaccination and pushed for house-to-house vaccination to be enforced by the authority of the City of Boston in an 1856 report, also noting ‘The City has already provided that no unvaccinated child shall be admitted into the public schools.’
A situation emerged I term the ‘Vaccine positive feedback cycle.’ Keep in mind that most systems in nature are instead negative feedback systems. In these, when something occurs, it self-corrects the system and turns it off rather than accelerating it, as occurs in a positive feedback system. The cycle is as follows:
A concerning disease exists.
↓
Immunization is cited as a potential solution to the problem.
↓
An immunization campaign is conducted and makes the problem worse.
↓
As the problem is now worse, the need for immunizations to address it increases and another campaign is conducted.
↓
This makes the problem worse.
↓
This increases the need for more aggressive measures to increase immunization.
↓
This makes the problem worse and further perpetuates the cycle, before long leading to very questionable governmental policies designed to force unwilling parties to vaccinate.
The underlying drivers of this process seem to be an unquestionable faith in vaccination, a conviction dating back to the days of smallpox, that vaccinating an ever-increasing proportion of the population through vaccination can end epidemics (now termed herd immunity), and the government having limited options to address the issue besides immunizations and governmental force.”
The Effects of Forced Smallpox Vaccinations
“A Midwestern Doctor” continues describing the effects of the government’s insistence of forced smallpox vaccination:14
“In accordance the positive feedback cycle, these results were found everywhere. Within the United States, as smallpox worsened in Boston, in 1855, the government made enacted strict enforcement of vaccination.
It was followed by the epidemics of 1859-1860, 1864-1865, 1867 (these were all similar in size to earlier epidemics), and then infamous 1872-1873 epidemic which dwarfed all previous epidemics (proving fatal to 1040 persons, at a rate of 280 deaths per 100,000 people).
By the end of 1868, more than 95% of the inhabitants of Chicago had been vaccinated. After the Great Fire of 1871 … strict vaccine laws were passed, and vaccination was made a condition of receiving relief supplies. Chicago was then hit with a devastating smallpox epidemic in 1872 where over 2,000 persons contracted smallpox, with over 25% dying, and the fatality rate among children under 5 being the highest ever recorded.
A 1900 medical article discussed vaccination in three European nations. In England, of 9392 small-pox patients in London hospitals, 6,854 had been vaccinated and 17.5% of the 9,392 died.
In Germany ‘official returns show that between 1870 and 1885 one million vaccinated persons died from small-pox.’ In France, ‘every recruit that enters the French army is vaccinated. During the Franco-Prussian war there 23,469 cases of small-pox in that army.’
An 1888 article in the Encyclopedia Britannica describing Prussia’s strict vaccination practices throughout the population (including mandatory re-vaccination for school pupils), noted: ‘Notwithstanding the fact that Prussia was the best revaccinated (boosted) country in Europe, its mortality from smallpox in the epidemic of 1871 was higher (59,839) than in any other northern state.’”
Other countries reported the same smallpox trends, including Italy and Japan, where smallpox death rates after successful vaccination campaigns were unprecedented. Vaccine injuries, including deaths, were also common. It is shocking how closely the miserable failures of the smallpox vaccines mirror the COVID jabs.
One of the most common causes of death after smallpox vaccination was erysipelas, a painful bacterial skin disease. An 1890 Encyclopedia Britannica article reported that smallpox vaccination had triggered a disastrous epidemic of erysipelas. Other side effects included jaundice, syphilis, tuberculosis, eczema vaccinatum (a rare and lethal skin condition).
Massive Historic Public Protests Over 135 Years Ago
As skepticism of and opposition against smallpox vaccination grew, enforcement increased. Vaccine refusers were fined, jailed and sometimes vaccinated by force. Parents were even forced to vaccinate their second child even if the first one died from the inoculation. Intermittently, riots would break out. A Midwestern Doctor details what happened next:15
“In 1884, 5,000 court summons had been issued against the unvaccinated, a case load that completely overloaded the court system. Letters in local newspaper at this time revealed widespread disdain for the irrationality of the procedure and the medical profession’s steadfast defense of a dangerous practice that had clearly failed over the last 80 years.
Tensions reached a boiling point and on March 23, 1885, a large protest estimated at 80,000 to 100,000 people erupted. It was composed of citizens of all professions from across England and receive support from citizens across Europe who could not attend it.
The procession was 2 miles long, with displays showing the popular sentiments against vaccination present throughout the crowd. The demonstration was successful, and the local government acceded to and acknowledged their demands for liberty. Many of the description of this protest (and the jubilant mood there) are extremely similar to reports I have read of the Trucker’s protest.
Mr. Councilor Butcher of Leicester addressed the protest and spoke of the growing opinion that the best way to get rid of smallpox and deadly infectious diseases was to use plenty of water, eat good food, live in light and airy houses, while it was the municipality’s duty to keep the streets clean and the sewers in order. He emphasized that if this was not done, it was unlikely any act of Parliament or vaccination could prevent the diseases.
That year, following the protest, the government was replaced, mandates were terminated, and by 1887 vaccination coverage rates had dropped to 10%. To replace the vaccination model, the Leicester activists proposed a system of immediately quarantining smallpox patients, disinfection of their homes and quarantining of their contacts alongside improving public sanitation.
The medical community vehemently rejected this model, and zealously predicted Leicester’s ‘gigantic experiment’ would soon result in a terrible ‘massacre,’ especially in the unprotected children, who were viewed by government physicians as ‘bags of gunpowder’ that could easily blow up schools (along with much other hateful and hyperbolic rhetoric directed at them).
This smallpox apocalypse would forever serve as a lesson against vaccine refusal the medical profession bet their stake upon. [But] the predicted catastrophe failed to emerge and Leicester had dramatically lower rates of smallpox in subsequent epidemics than other fully vaccinated towns (ranging from 1/2 to 1/32).
Various rationalizations were put forward to explain this, but as the decades went by, a gradual public acceptance of Leicester’s methods emerged, but even 30 years later, a New York Times article still predicted a disaster was right around the corner and it was imperative Leicester change their methods.
Fortunately, the value of Leicester’s novel approach of quarantining and improvement public hygiene was recognized and gradually adopted around the world, leading to the eventual eradication of smallpox.”
Keep in mind that these protests occurred when the population was much lower, so as a percentage of the population it was much higher. In 1885, the U.K. population was only 36,015,500,16 so a protest with 100,000 was just under 0.3% of the entire population. As of February 16, 2022, today’s U.K. population is 68,471,390,17 so to match that protest, percentage-wise, about 205,400 would have to hit the streets.
History Repeats Itself
Those who don’t know their history are bound to repeat it, and it seems that’s precisely what we’ve allowed to occur in the past two years. Many doctors predicted and warned that the pandemic would be prolonged and worsened by rolling out non-sterilizing vaccines (i.e., vaccines that do not prevent infection and transmission). And that’s precisely what we’ve witnessed.
Predictions of devastating side effects have also come true. And, as resistance to the shots grew, draconian mandates followed. History tells us forced vaccination is not the answer. History also tells us how to get out from underneath a tyrannical government’s insistence on forced vaccination.
The answer is peaceful noncompliance. The answer is standing together, en masse, and saying “No more. Enough.” The truckers in Canada, the U.S., Belgium and elsewhere have the right idea, and the rest of us need to join and support them, in any way we can.
“Like the smallpox vaccination campaigns, the COVID-19 immunization campaign has been so egregious it has inspired a large global protest movement with the large scale current protests being very similar to those that occurred 135 years ago,” A Midwestern Doctor writes.18
“My hope is that this movement can remember the lessons from the past and carry them forward to now so a future generation does not have to repeat our mistakes.”
If you want to learn more about the fraud of all vaccines, I would encourage you to carefully review Suzanne Humphries’ excellent book, “Dissolving Illusions.” In my view it is the best book out there on the subject.
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This is costing us a small fortune for the taxpayers of Ottawa. That’s one of the reasons why under the Emergencies Act I’ve asked our solicitor and our city manager how can we keep the tow trucks and the campers and the vans and everything else that we’ve confiscated and sell those pieces of equipment to help recoup some of the costs that our taxpayers are absorbing. So that’s one of the provisions of the Emergency Act and we have been a beneficiary of the Emergency Act.
As they debated on the hill I asked the Members of Parliament to consider it. It’s helped us a lot things like confiscating vehicles, not having to swear in peace officers through the RCMP and so many other things that have been very helpful over the course of this period including you can’t be under 18 and be in this rally.
We get copycats and people thinking I’m going down to Parliament Hill and parking there for three to four days and having a big roast and everything else under the sun. We have to prevent that and we need a short-term plan and a long-term plan to protect our residents much better than we have in the last four weeks.
Don’t forget that the interim police chief admitted that the department is keeping an eye on those who attended the protest. The police continue to gather intelligence on them, too.
Lovely behavior.
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Yesterday, Russia officially recognised the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) as independent states, becoming the first UN member state to do so. Russia had formerly already recognised identity documents, diplomas, birth- and marriage-certificates, and vehicle registration plates issued by the DPR since February 2017. Both the DPR and LPR are at the center of the 2021–2022 Russian-Ukrainian crisis. Ukraine regards both the DPR and the LPR as terrorist organizations.
Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Alexander Markovics to gain insight to this conflict between the US and Russia. Alexander Markovics is an editor at Deutsche Stimme Magazin in Germany, editor-in-chief of the magazine Agora Europa and translator. He has published numerous articles on geopolitics, philosophy, history of ideas, and interviews with important authors of the new right/neo-Eurasianism.
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Steven Sahiounie (SS): Western media reports say there will likely be a war between Russia and the West over Ukraine. In your opinion, will there be a war?
Alexander Markovics (AM): I don’t think that there will be precisely a war between Russia and the West over Ukraine, but more likely a war between Ukraine and the People’s Republics of Donezk and Lugansk, in which Russia will be forced to intervene in order to prevent a genocide against Russians living in Novorossiya. Since Joe Biden controversially took over the White House, the United States are preparing an escalation in Donbass. Their aim is to drag Russia into a prolonged conflict, where the West will force its Ukrainian colony to spill as much Russian blood as possible in the interest of Washington. It’s the declared goal of Washington, to create an “Afghanistan in Europe” for Moscow.
But Russia is not the US and knows how to decisively win a quick war with modern military equipment. The Russian army already proven in Syria, Belarus and Kazakhstan, that it’s able to act against Western interventions and regime changes. Russia has proven to be very patient with all the Ukrainian provocations in the course of the last years, when the Ukrainian army was shelling civilians in Donbass. Since Ukraine bombarded civilian housing in Donbass yesterday on an unprecedented scale and President Putin promised to protect Russian people living there in case of an attack, I assume that there will be war. Enough is enough. But if God wills, peace talks in the last minute could prevent the situation from escalating into full scale war.
SS: Russia sent strategic jets and sophisticated weapons to their army base in Latakia, Syria. In your opinion, is this a military and political message to the US, and is it part of the political tension with Washington?
AM: Since the US is destabilizing and occupying parts of Syria this is a necessary show of force by Russia in order to further deter the Globalist ambitions of Washington, similar to Russian talks with Cuba and Venezuela on stationing more Russian military inside these countries. Unfortunately, the fierce defence of unipolar chaos by the US shows us, that the upcoming states fighting for a multipolar order must show strength in order to secure peace and sovereignty to their region. As long as the West is pushing its globalist and Universalist agenda, the rest of the world has to stay on alert.
SS: The Western media has launched a hysterical propaganda war on Russia. How will Moscow reply to this provocation?
AM: I think that Moscow will continue to reply in the typical calm, ready to negotiate and sometimes cynical fashion. Diplomats like Liz Truss, who didn’t know Voronezh and Rostov oblast are a part of Russia, are no match for their Russian counterparts and only good for repeating aggressive propaganda against Russia. In easily refuting Western propaganda, calling out the West’s crimes in the past and drawing red lines Russia skilfully counters the current propaganda campaign. But if the West calls its Ukrainian puppet to full scale war, Moscow will answer accordingly.
SS: Moscow has demanded from the US and the EU several requests to protect its National Security. In your opinion, which of the requests are most important?
AM: The most important demand is definitely the withdrawal of all NATO troops from all positions who joined the alliance after 1997. This would de facto mean a reversal of NATO’s eastern enlargement in 1999 and a demilitarization of Eastern Europe. Such a measure would be an important step in the normalization of European-Russian relations, an end of the encirclement of Russia by NATO and therefore the starting point for a new European-Eurasian security architecture. Further this measure can help Europe in liberating itself from NATO and US-American occupation. In the end the fulfillment of this Russian demand would mean peace and sovereignty for Europe.
SS: Several European countries don’t want a military conflict with Russia and they want to buy the Russian gas through Nord Stream 2. Is the NATO member’s unity absolute, or are there some cracks in the pact?
AM: NATO countries are definitely divided on this topic. Whereas USA and Great Britain definitely want an end to Nord Stream 2 and would even be ready to risk a war, Germany has a different position. Since Germany is dependent on Russian gas, especially because of its disastrous green “Energiewende”/energy turn and wants of its geopolitical position good relations with Russia, they don’t want Nord Stream 2 to end. But since Germany is an US-puppet since 1945 and especially 1991, they’re not really able to decide this measure. Furthermore, Bulgaria and Croatia already said they will not join a war against Russia. Also Hungary is very critical of the current Anti-Russian propaganda. Eastern European countries like Poland and the Baltic states on the other hand are part of the warmonger faction in the EU due to their NATO-Nationalist propaganda and historical trauma. However, since NATO is already divided on the topic, a direct intervention in the conflict seems not plausible, also since the moral of these countries is severely weakened by the current Corona measures and Gender policies. Or in order to paraphrase Otto von Bismarck: The fate of Ukraine isn’t worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier, from a European point of view.
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FDA Executive Officer Chris Cole: “The drug companies, the food companies, the vaccine companies. So, they pay us hundreds of millions of dollars a year to hire and keep the reviewers to approve their products.”
Cole on FDA fees: “Congress approved user fees for [the] FDA. Basically, we charge the industry millions of dollars in order to hire more drug reviewers and vaccine reviewers which will speed up the approval process. So, they [pharmaceutical companies] make more money.”
Cole: “They [FDA] tone down the impact of the user fees on their operations because they know they’re dependent on the drug companies, and the vaccine companies, and these other companies for their agency to operate.”
Cole on blowing the whistle: “There’s not an incentive to speak out in government, surprisingly. You would think there would be, but there’s not. It’s better just to just not say anything and just ignore it.”
Cole on retaliation in government: “You’ll be marked from getting other jobs because another office is not going to want to hire you if you’ve spoken out about something, right or wrong. They don’t look at what you’ve spoken out about. They’re just not willing to- government’s about rocking the boat and they don’t want to- which is the problem I have with- one of the problems I have with government is, like, they don’t like people rocking the boat, for right or wrong, at all costs. They want to hire a safe person that can do the job, but doesn’t necessarily- is a great hire.”
FDA OFFICIAL STATEMENT: “The person purportedly in the video does not work on vaccine matters and does not represent the views of the FDA nor does he speak on behalf of the agency. User fees provide instrumental funding for the FDA’s independent review of medical products that make a difference in the lives of all Americans, without compromising the agency’s commitment to scientific integrity, public health and regulatory standards, patient safety, and transparency.”
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Project Veritas published Part Two of its series on the FDA on Wednesday night which featured FDA Executive Officer, Christopher Cole, speaking about the inner workings of the agency including the FDA’s conflicts of interest, overspending, and why it’s hard for those within the agency to speak out on such abuses.
In the footage, Cole talks about the impact that pharmaceutical companies have on the agency including the process for approving drugs.
“A long time ago, Congress approved user fees for [the] FDA. Basically, we charge the industry millions of dollars in order to hire more drug reviewers and vaccine reviewers, which will speed up the approval process, so they make more money,” Cole says in the hidden camera footage.
He then reveals that the FDA tones down the impact that these user fees have on the agency’s operations because, “they’re dependent on the drug companies, and the vaccine companies and these other companies for their agency to operate.”
The incendiary footage, which features Cole talking about how the additional money the FDA brings in “gets banked” to be spent on “whatever you can, whether it’s right or wrong,’’ also features Cole discussing reasons why it’s difficult for anyone in government to speak out about practices he sees as “probably excessive.”
“I don’t think there’s enough people saying they’re, like, ‘Look, that’s fine, but that’s not right. So, we’re not going to charge that.’ You don’t want to be that person. You’re not going to have a long shelf life in the agency if you’re always that person,” Cole said.
“There’s not an incentive to speak out in government, surprisingly. You would think there would be, but there’s not. It’s better just to just not say anything and just ignore it. The whistleblower, well, it’s high-profile whistleblower statutes and everything, that’s kind of ridiculous,” Cole said before adding “it’s better to just stay quiet and accept.”
Cole’s LinkedIn page lists him as an Executive Officer within the agency’s Countermeasures Initiatives, which plays a critical role in ensuring that drugs, vaccines, and other measures to counter infectious diseases and viruses are safe. He made these revelations on a hidden camera to an undercover Project Veritas reporter.
A spokesperson for FDA issued a statement yesterday saying,
“The person purportedly in the video does not work on vaccine matters and does not represent the views of the FDA.”
This statement appears to contradict a phone call released Wednesday afternoon by Project Veritas wherein Cole reiterated, during the conversation with Project Veritas Founder and CEO, James O’Keefe, that he is “a manager in the office that helps oversee the approval of the COVID vaccines for emergency approval.”
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Comments Off on FDA Executive Officer Exposes Close Ties Between Agency and Pharmaceutical Companies: ‘Almost a Billion Dollars a Year Going into FDA’s Budget from the People we Regulate’
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On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as sovereign entities.
An emergency meeting of the National Security and Defence Council was called in Kiev on this occasion. While the politicians were meeting in Kiev, the Ukrainian military equipment was seen moving towards Kharkiv.
Four civilians have been killed so far in Eastern Ukraine.
Since the morning of February 22, the territory of the LDPR has been under heavy artillery fire. Ukraine continued shelling despite the Russia’s decision to support the People’s Republics.
At noon only, the following UAF attacks were recorded in the DPR:
80 mines with 120 mm caliber were fired at the village of Dolomitnoye;
160 mines with 120 mm caliber were fired on the village of Sakhanka;
120 mines with 120 mm caliber were fired on the village of Ozyanovka;
130 mines with 120 mm caliber were fired on the village of Dokuchaevsk.
The Ukrainian armed forces carried out overnight shelling in the direction of the village of Leninskoye in the DPR. Twenty-eight mines of were fired in violation of the ceasefire agreement, the DPR representative to the JCCC reported.
Seven civilian houses in the village of Aleksandrovsk were damaged as a result of the UAF shelling. This was reported by the LPR representative to the JCCC. A local gas pipeline was destroyed as a result of fire by the UAF, according to the press service of the LPR Emergencies Ministry.
The first footage of the aftermath of the shelling of Aleksandrovsk was published.
On the morning of February 22, an explosion took place on the Donetsk-Gorlovka road. Three civilians were killed.
The target of the Ukrainian armed forces’ sabotage group on the Donetsk-Gorlovka highway was a military vehicle in which one of the DPR military commanders was travelling. According to a correspondent of the «DONBASS RESHAET» channel, the military vehicle managed to get through the explosive device. As a result, Ukrainian saboteurs blew up the civilian car that was following.
Special services are working on the scene. The explosive device on the highway had defeat elements and was wired.
Russian Investigations Committee Chairman Aleksandr Bastrykin has ordered an investigation of the incident.
On February 22, the Lugansk TPP located in the village of Shchastya, which is under the UAF control, was hit with a shell. A fire broke out. It is not clear yet who was behind the strike. According to local sources, the shelling was carried out by the UAF, who are destroy the infrastructure before retreating.
As a result of the recorded violation of the ceasefire regime by the Ukrainian armed forces in the direction of Sloavyanoserbsk, a civilian was wounded and one house was damaged. This was reported by the Luhansk people’s republic’s mission to the JCCC.
On February 22, the UAF also shelled the villages of Ozeryanivka, Dzerzhynske and Staromykhailivka, using prohibited weapons.
According to the head of the DPR Denys Pushylin, the UAF continue to prepare for an offensive operation in the Donbass region. There is no information that the Kiev regime has abandoned the military option of resolving the crisis.
According to available information, Ukrainian Nazis from the Freikorps paramilitary nationalist organization were outraged by the behavior of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and announced their full mobilization.
In his turn, President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky claimed that Kiev will not consider the request of the DPR and the LPR to withdraw Ukrainian troops from the East of the country.
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The current flare-up in the ongoing political stand-off between Russia and the US/ NATO over Ukraine occupies much of the current public conversation regarding Russia and its geopolitical objectives. The recent unrest in Kazakhstan, and Russia’s involvement in that theatre, came in at a distant second. Given the preeminence of these crises (and Western media’s understandable need to spill ink about them), Russia’s ongoing ambitions in the Arctic are being overlooked. By examining the cooperation – and competition – between Russia and China in the Arctic, NATO members and their allies can learn a great deal about interacting with Russia elsewhere in the world.
Much has been written about Russia’s Arctic interests and ambitions, and for the most part, it appears that Russia is transparent about them. An active participant in the Arctic Council (which consists of the eight Arctic States – Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US – as well as thirteen non-Arctic observer states, including China), Russia assumed its two-year Chairmanship in May of 2021.
The public program of the Russian Chairmanship of the Arctic Council involves multilateral cooperation in the following priority areas: People of the Arctic, including Indigenous Peoples; Environmental Protection, including Climate Change; Socio-Economic Development; and, Strengthening of the Arctic Council [1]. Under the leadership of Ambassador at Large for Arctic Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia and Senior Arctic Official of Russia to the Arctic Council, Nikolay Korchunov, Russia’s Chairmanship team has been putting their best foot forward during their two-year tenure to showcase Russia’s willingness to cooperate with the other Arctic states on various multilateral issues. This is not at all surprising: of all the Arctic Council member states, Russia has (arguably) the most to gain in the region, and the most at stake to defend the interests of its people residing there; with the longest Arctic coastline, as well as the greatest population and the highest levels of development in the North of any other nation, any conflict over Arctic issues would impact Russia (and the well-being of its people residing in the North) the most.
As a result, the figurative Chair of the Arctic Council is currently occupied by what’s been described as a “friendly bear” – but however friendly, it nevertheless remains a “bear in the chair” [2]: Russia is further ahead than any other nation in militarizing its Arctic territories, and it hasn’t hesitated in the past to vociferously defend potential encroachments on its Arctic sovereignty.
Enter China and its self-declared status as a “near-Arctic state”, along with its unveiling of what it calls the “Polar Silk Road” component of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in a 2018 White Paper on the country’s Arctic strategy.
Russia was initially resistant to China receiving permanent observer status in the Arctic Council in 2013, and previously prevented Chinese research vessels from entering its Exclusive Economic Zone and navigating in the Northern Sea Route (NSR). Russia rightly considers the NSR part of its internal waters, similar to Canada’s position on the Northwest Passage, and imposes rules and regulations (to include an escort by Russian icebreakers) on foreign vessels wishing to transit through the NSR.
However, as Russia has become increasingly alienated from the West amid escalating sanctions following the events in Ukraine in 2014, and against the backdrop of NATO’s encroachment on the NSR, with some countries taking their vessels to the very limit of the sea route (in what they maintain is international waters, but which Russia is arguably justified in defending), it appears that there has been a rapprochement between Russia and China in relation to Arctic issues.
Strategic agreements and lofty declarations by politicians aside, concrete actions signal that Russia and China are willing to cooperate in the Arctic. The most tangible example is the Yamal liquefied natural gas (LNG) project: Chinese ownership in the project totals nearly 30%, with Chinese investors having provided up to 60% of the total capital, which has allowed China to receive millions of metric tons of LNG a year, transported from the Yamal plant in northwest Siberia through the NSR to Chinese markets [3, 4].
It remains to be seen how much further Russia becomes integrated into China’s “Polar Silk Road”, and whether additional projects of a scale similar to Yamal will concretize. However, what has become clear is that Russia was willing to soften its position when it had to: as sanctions forced Russia to pivot away from Western investors and court Chinese capital for the Yamal LNG project, the NSR was effectively opened up to China, allowing the latter to diversify its energy supply chain (a critical requirement in meeting its seemingly insatiable energy needs). This apparent compromise on Russia’s part may well open the door to Chinese vessels eventually transporting commodities through the NSR (for example, from Chinese ports to European markets).
This is not to say that the relationship does not still have its sticking points. For example, China continues to promote the notion of internationalizing the Arctic, viewing the region as neutral territory similar to Antarctica and arguing that its use should not be the exclusive domain of the littoral states. China promotes this view ostensibly in the name of scientific research, but neither Russia nor the other Arctic States support this argument, primarily due to the obvious economic and sovereignty implications. However, despite inevitable disagreements, the geopolitical factors that unite Russia and China – and how those factors influence their cooperation, and competition, in the Arctic – may be more compelling than those that push them apart. As noted by Dr. Christopher Weidacher Hsiung, senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS)/Norwegian Defence University College (NDUC) and associate research fellow at the Swedish Institute for International Affairs (UI) [4]:
“Sino-Russian cooperation in the Arctic is, so far, mostly economically focused. On a general level, there is growing interdependence between the two economies with Russia providing commodities that China needs (notably oil and gas) and China contributing capital and increasingly advanced industrial technologies – all components of relevance to the Arctic and its development. More broadly, the impact of intensified global strategic rivalry between China and the US, which also affects the Arctic, coupled with persistent US/NATO- Russia tensions in Europe, are pushing Beijing and Moscow even closer together – which is underpinned further by an apparently close, or at least, mutually respectful personal relationship between China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.”
So what does all of this signal to NATO and the US about dealing with Russia on other issues, such as the situation in Ukraine? Quite simply, Russia’s dealings with China in the Arctic show us that, given the right set of conditions, Russia may be incentivized to give something up in order to get what it wants. While this might be true in any negotiation (after all, it’s been said that a good compromise leaves everyone unhappy), it might not always be obvious when dealing with Russia, whose President has shown that he’s willing to use every lever at his disposal to accomplish his goals. What it also shows us is that despite Russia’s various rivalries in the region, it understands that there is room (and a need) to cooperate, with benefits to all partners.
Even if its amassing of troops and equipment on Ukraine’s eastern border is mere posturing, Russia’s actions in Crimea in 2014 demonstrated that Putin is willing to go all in when he believes the gamble will pay off. What remains to be seen is whether NATO and the US will call Russia’s (perceived) bluff, or whether they might instead raise the stakes to keep Russia at the table. What is certain is that, as in its dealings with China over Arctic issues, Russia will play its hand with care and cunning in dealing with NATO and the US over Ukraine. And if the Alliance is not on its game, Russia may well walk away with all the chips.
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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].
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Going to war and using expensive war machinery and missiles can be enticing and perversely exhilarating, but the lethality and devastation of war must not be downplayed as a game. The latest political maneuver by Russian president Vladimir Putin was a game-changing masterstroke to avoid the American war trap. At every step in the build-up of tensions surrounding Ukraine, Russia has foiled US enticements to attack. To understand it all, one needs to start further back in time.
9 February 1990 — US Secretary of State James Baker promised USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would “not [move] one inch eastward” in exchange for allowing German unification.
1999 — Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland join NATO and move several inches nearer the dissolved USSR.
February 2014 — A US-backed coup in Ukraine results in a Nazi-friendly government coming to power.
March 2014 — Crimeans vote overwhelmingly in a referendum to secede from Ukraine and become part of Russia.
September 2014 — The Minsk I Agreement is signed by Ukraine, Russia, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) calling for an immediate ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons, and prisoner exchanges.
February 2015 — The Minsk II Agreement calls again for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of weapons, ceasefire monitoring by the OSCE, and the holding of local elections in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics on their future status in Ukraine. Differing interpretations have led to major disagreements over Minsk II.
2017 — Montenegro joins NATO.
2020 — North Macedonia joins NATO. It is apparent that there is an increasing eastward crawl, and Ukraine is also seeking membership.
18 November 2021 — Russia reiterates its red lines.
17 December 2021 — Russia presents its concerns about security in proposals to the US.cember 2021 — Russia presents its concern about security in proposals to the US.
16 January 2022 — Putin identifies Ukraine’s membership in NATO as a red line in Russia-NATO relations that impinge upon Russian security. US secretary-of-state Antony Blinken dismissed Russian security concerns: “I can’t be more clear — NATO’s door is open, remains open, and that is our commitment.”
26 January 2022 — Russia received a written response from the US to its security proposals. Russia would not be pleased.
16 February 2022 — According to national-security adviser Jake Sullivan, based on credible US intelligence, this was the date that Russia would invade Ukraine. The date came and went without any invasion.
17 February 2022 — Russia responds to US and NATO proposals about Ukraine and European security.
There have been many provocations leading up to the Russian recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Among them are NATO expansion, not taking Russian security concerns seriously, the arming of Ukraine, and demonizing Russia via the western monopoly media. The final nail was the shelling from Ukraine into Donbass causing the evacuation of its civilians into Russia.
It appears to be a foolhardy act by Ukraine. If Ukraine had adhered to the Minsk Agreements, Donetsk and Luhansk would still be a part of Ukraine, autonomous though they may be. Autonomy is not uncommon within countries. Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Tibet, Xinjiang are autonomous provinces in China. Russia also has one autonomous region and 10 autonomous areas. Nonetheless, the lure of war and playing with fire has caused Ukraine to shrink a little bit more.
Russia, for its part, did not take the bait and invade Ukraine. It has instead sent peacekeepers into Donbass. It would seem highly unlikely that Ukraine would attack the powerful state-of-the-art Russian military.
So Joe Biden does not get his Russian invasion. Biden’s planners have been foiled again. Biden made the right call to withdraw the US forces from Afghanistan, but that withdrawal was badly botched, evoking memories of the tail-between-the-legs escape from rooftops in Viet Nam by US troops. Then to compound the fiasco of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden had the shamelessness and heartlessness to steal the poor Afghan peoples’ monies. He follows in the footsteps of his predecessor Donald Trump who openly stole Syrian oil — a theft that continues under Biden.
Meanwhile, the situation in and around Ukraine and the breakaway republics will continue to evolve. It is hoped that saner heads will deescalate the tensions and avoid war.
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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Twitter: @kimpetersen. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Democracies around the world “don’t seem to be caring” about the “scandal” of the Trudeau government’s treatment of a “peaceful protest,” according to author Douglas Murray.
“I mean, the Prime Minister has used laws which are meant to be used in wartime and he’s used them against a peaceful protest,” Mr Murray said.
“He slandered the truckers; he slandered the supporters of the truckers … And now he’s moved to the next phase, not just sending in the police to very brutally end the protest in Ottawa.
“This is absolutely totalitarian behaviour that has been going on from the Trudeau government.”
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His public safety minister Marco Mendocino stated that such extraordinary measures were necessary due to “intimidation, harassment, and expressions of hate.” Perhaps he doesn’t realize that none of these are listed in the law as valid reasons to invoke it.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces started intensive firing on residential buildings in the settlement of Horlivka. Shells hit in the courtyard during February 21. The blast blew out the windows. Residents had been evacuated in case the house collapses.
One can frequently disagree with government policies without necessarily regarding them with disgust, but the Joe Biden Administration has turned that corner, first with its senseless promotion of a new Cold War that could turn hot with Russia and, more recently, with its actions undertaken to undermine and punish Afghanistan.
Kiev’s continued shelling of those newly independent republics as part of its ongoing genocide against their indigenous Russian people and its occupation of their territory that the Kremlin officially recognizes as falling within their sovereign borders could very likely provoke Moscow to militarily respond in self-defense.
During the period of the enslavement of African people by Britain and the United States, violence was a key instrument in the maintenance of the exploitative and oppressive system. African people between the 17th and 19th centuries prior to the eruption of the Civil War (1861-1865), were largely prohibited from owning and carrying firearms.
In a new low for democracy, the Ottawa By-law enforcement agency made it clear that they are not above confiscating pets to quell to the protests. “Attention animal owners at [the] demonstration: If you are unable to care for your animal as a result of enforcement actions, your animal will [be] placed into protective care for 8 days, at your cost. After 8 days, if arrangements are not made, your animal will be considered relinquished,” the tweet read.
When our so-called western leaders tell you that Russia will invade the Ukraine and that they know exactly what day Russia will invade the Ukraine, without providing any evidence, you know that the western powers are up to something very sinister.
Participants decorated their cars with slogans in Hebrew and some in English. “Freedom”, “I want my country back”, “Green pass = black stain” and “end the coercion” were some of what was seen plastered along the vehicles in the convoy.
A little-known aspect of the disastrous Western occupation of Afghanistan was that UK and Australian companies sought to access the country’s $3 trillion worth of untapped minerals – with little regard for the welfare of Afghans.
The fact that prices remain at historically high levels shows that inflation is far from “transitory,” as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had described it. The continuing inflation has led the Federal Reserve Board to suggest the Fed will start increasing interest rates earlier than previously announced.
Business is booming at funeral homes across the U.S., as death rates creep up, particularly among young, working-age individuals.1 Ex-Blackrock fund manager Ed Dowd has been analyzing data about mortality rates before and after COVID-19 shots became widespread, and found that death rates worsened in 2021 — after the shots became prevalent — compared to 2020.
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The Ukrainian Armed Forces started intensive firing on residential buildings in the settlement of Horlivka. Shells hit in the courtyard during February 21. The blast blew out the windows. Residents had been evacuated in case the house collapses.
According to the local sources, a shell hit a residential building in the city of Donetsk.
The wreckage blocked a woman from leaving the rubbles. It was confirmed by specialists from the Emergencies’ Ministry, that a gas pipeline had been damaged. Thirty-five houses in the private sector at the outskirts of Donetsk were left without gas supplies.
The videos below were undertaken by the the residents. They are not professional. Scroll down for text.
Also in Luhansk, a car exploded near the Luhansk representative office of the JCCC. The car belonging to the head of the representation, Mikhail Filiponenko, was damaged. The leader himself is alive. There is no information about the driver’s condition at the moment.
All LNR residents are in shelters. Luhansk is deserted. Reports of bomb attacks on Donetsk were heard on the streets of the city via an alarm system
Right after the news of the recognition of the LPR and DPR by Russia, the information about the deteriorating situation on the southern front received. People’s Militia forces were fighting with AFU units near Horlivka, DPR. There are casualties among recently conscripted DPR citizens.
However, the situation began to change after Russia signed an international treaty “on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance between the Russian Federation and the Donetsk People’s Republic” on the evening of February 21, 2022 (Moscow time), a similar treaty was signed at the same time with the Lugansk People’s Republic.
The treaties include clauses on:
joint defense;
joint protection of borders;
the right of the parties to use military infrastructure and military – bases on each other’s territory;
recognition of documents issued by the government agencies of the parties.
Immediately after the signing of these treaties, Russian President Putin signed a Decree instructing the Russian armed forces to provide peacekeeping functions in the DPR and LPR.
Now units of the 8th Field Army of the Russian Armed Forces have begun to enter the territory of the LDPR.
Amid these developments, the activity of Ukrainian shelling of residential buildings on the territory of the Republics began to decrease and practically stopped after Ukrainian President Zelensky did not want to take any decisions following a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
His previously announced pompous address to the nation did not take place today either.
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Comments Off on Intensive Shelling of Donbass Residential Areas by Ukrainian Armed Forces Prior to Russia’s Recognition Lugansk and Donesk as Independent States
Crisi Ucraina. Stoltenberg: «Bene, più di 270 miliardi di dollari di spese militari degli alleati europei dal 2014». Al via negli Usa la la produzione delle nuove atomiche B61-12: andranno in Europa e in Italia
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«L’allargamento della Nato negli ultimi decenni è stato un grande successo e ha anche aperto la strada a un ulteriore allargamento della Ue»: lo ha ribadito sabato scorso alla Conferenza di Monaco sulla Sicurezza il segretario della Nato Jens Stoltenberg. Per comprendere appieno le sue parole, occorre ricostruire in termini essenziali questa storia di «grande successo».
ESSA INIZIA NELLO STESSO anno, il 1999, in cui la Nato demolisce con la guerra la Jugoslavia e, al vertice di Washington, annuncia di voler «condurre operazioni di risposta alle crisi, non previste dall’articolo 5, al di fuori del territorio dell’Alleanza». Dimenticando di essersi impegnata con la Russia a «non allargarsi neppure di un pollice a Est», la Nato inizia la sua espansione ad Est. Ingloba i primi tre paesi dell’ex Patto di Varsavia: Polonia, Repubblica Ceca e Ungheria. Quindi, nel 2004, si estende ad altri sette: Estonia, Lettonia, Lituania (già parte dell’Urss); Bulgaria, Romania, Slovacchia (già parte del Patto di Varsavia); Slovenia (già parte della Federazione Jugoslava). Nel 2009, la Nato ingloba l’Albania (un tempo membro del Patto di Varsavia) e la Croazia (già parte della Federazione Jugoslava); nel 2017, il Montenegro (già parte della Jugoslavia); nel 2020 la Macedonia del Nord (già parte della Jugoslavia) In vent’anni, la Nato si estende da 16 a 30 paesi. In tal modo Washington ottiene un triplice risultato. Estende a ridosso della Russia, fin dentro il territorio dell’ex Urss, l’Alleanza militare di cui mantiene le leve di comando: il Comandante Supremo Alleato in Europa è, «per tradizione», sempre un generale Usa nominato dal presidente degli Stati Uniti e appartengono agli Usa anche gli altri comandi chiave.
ALLO STESSO TEMPO, Washington lega i paesi dell’Est non tanto all’Alleanza, quanto direttamente agli Usa. Romania e Bulgaria, appena entrate, mettono subito a disposizione degli Stati Uniti le importanti basi militari di Costanza e Burgas sul Mar Nero. Il terzo risultato ottenuto da Washington con l’allargamento della Nato a Est è il rafforzamento della propria influenza in Europa. Sui dieci paesi dell’Europa centro-orientale che entrano nella Nato tra il 1999 e il 2004, sette entrano nell’Unione Europea tra il 2004 e il 2007: alla Ue che si allarga a Est, gli Stati Uniti sovrappongono la Nato che si allarga a Est sull’Europa. Oggi 21 dei 27 paesi dell’Unione Europea appartengono alla Nato sotto comando Usa. Il Consiglio Nord Atlantico, l’organo politico dell’Alleanza, secondo le norme Nato decide non a maggioranza ma sempre «all’unanimità e di comune accordo», ossia d’accordo con quanto deciso a Washington.
LA PARTECIPAZIONE delle maggiori potenze europee a tali decisioni (esclusa l’Italia che finora ubbidisce in genere tacendo) avviene in genere attraverso trattative segrete con Washington sul dare e avere. Ciò comporta un ulteriore indebolimento dei parlamenti europei, in particolare di quello italiano, già oggi privati di reali poteri decisionali su politica estera e militare. In tale quadro, l’Europa si ritrova oggi in una situazione ancora più pericolosa della guerra fredda. Altri tre paesi – Bosnia Erzegovina (già parte della Jugoslavia), Georgia e Ucraina (già parte dell’Urss) – sono candidati a entrare nella Nato. Stoltenberg, portavoce Usa prima che della Nato, dichiara che «teniamo la porta aperta e, se l’obiettivo del Cremlino è quello di avere meno Nato ai confini della Russia, otterrà solo più Nato».
NELLA ESCALATION Usa-Nato, che ci porta sul baratro di una guerra su larga scala nel cuore dell’Europa, entrano in gioco le armi nucleari. Fra tre mesi inizia negli Usa la produzione in serie delle nuove bombe nucleari B61-12, che saranno schierate sotto comando Usa in Italia e altri paesi europei, probabilmente anche dell’Est ancora più a ridosso della Russia. Oltre a queste, gli Usa hanno in Europa due basi terrestri in Romania e Polonia e quattro navi da guerra dotate del sistema missilistico Aegis, in grado di lanciare non solo missili anti-missile ma anche missili Cruise a testata nucleare. Stanno inoltre preparando missili nucleari a raggio intermedio, da schierare in Europa contro la Russia, il nemico inventato che può però rispondere in maniera distruttiva se attaccato.
A TUTTO QUESTO si aggiunge l’impatto economico e sociale della crescente spesa militare. Alla riunione dei ministri della Difesa, Stoltenberg ha annunciato trionfante che «questo è il settimo anno consecutivo di aumento della spesa della Difesa degli Alleati europei, accresciuta di 270 miliardi di dollari dal 2014». Altro denaro pubblico sottratto alle spese sociali e agli investimenti produttivi, mentre i paesi europei devono ancora riprendersi dal lockdown economico del 2020-21. La spesa militare italiana ha superato i 70 milioni di euro al giorno, ma non bastano. Il premier Draghi ha già annunciato «Ci dobbiamo dotare di una difesa più significativa: è chiarissimo che bisognerà spendere molto di più di quanto fatto finora». Chiarissimo: stringiamo la cinghia perché la Nato possa allargarsi.
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One can frequently disagree with government policies without necessarily regarding them with disgust, but the Joe Biden Administration has turned that corner, first with its senseless promotion of a new Cold War that could turn hot with Russia and, more recently, with its actions undertaken to undermine and punish Afghanistan. The fact that the White House wraps itself in the sanctimonious, self-righteous twaddle that is so much the hallmark of the political left is bad enough, but when the government goes out of its way to harm and even kill people around the world in pursuit of an elusive global dominance it is time for the American people to rise up and say “Stop!”
As a former CIA operations officer, I departed government service in 2002 in part due to the impending invasion of Iraq, which I knew was completely unjustified by the web of largely fabricated information that was flowing out of the Pentagon to justify the attack. In the years since I have been appalled by the Obama era attacks on Syria and Libya as well as by the assassinations and cruise missile strikes carried out under Donald Trump. But all of that was a Sunday in the park compared to the hideous nonsense being pursued by Biden and his crew of reprobates.
Trifling with the use of force as part of negotiations intended to go nowhere over Ukraine could well by misstep, false flag or even design escalate into nuclear war ending much of the life on this planet as we know it, and we are now also witnessing the cold, calculated slaughter of possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians just because we have the tools at hand and believe that we can get away with it. What we are seeing unfold right in front of us goes beyond appalling and it is time to demand a change of course on the part of a runaway federal government that is drunk on its own self-assumed unbridled right to exercise total executive authority over vital issues of war and peace.
I am most particularly shocked and dismayed over what the Biden Administration did to Afghanistan on February 11th, which is unambiguously a crime against humanity. On that day the President of the United States Joe Biden, still smarting from the botched departure from Afghanistan and low approval ratings, issued an executive order invoking emergency powers stipulating that the $7 billion in Afghan government money being held and frozen in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York would be retained by the US and divided in two.
Half of the $7 billion would be placed in a US government administered trust fund. The money would in theory go to fund humanitarian relief in Afghanistan to be carried out by agencies unidentified but presumed to be acting in coordination with the barracudas at the Treasury Department while the other half would go to benefit the victims of 9/11. This money is not just “frozen assets,” it is the entire reserve of the Afghan central bank, and its appropriation by the US will destroy whatever remains of the formal Afghan economy, making Afghanistan entirely reliant on small rations of foreign aid that come through channels unconnected with the Afghan government.
The other half of the story is that Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11 but instead became a victim of the US lust for revenge. After 9/11, the Taliban government offered to turn over Osama bin Laden to the United States if Washington were able to provide evidence that he was somehow involved in the attacks in New York and Virginia. The George W. Bush Administration was unable to do so, but chose to invade instead.
Afghanistan now has a government that is recognized by the United Nations and many other countries, though not by Washington, which insists that the Taliban are terrorists. Sanctions pressure being exerted by Washington on the new Taliban dominated regime has inter alia brought about a major humanitarian disaster, with various international agencies predicting that many thousands of Afghan civilians will die of starvation because there is no money available to provide relief. The United Nations has reported that three-quarters of Afghanistan’s population has plunged into acute poverty, with 4.7 million people likely to suffer severe or even fatal malnutrition this year.
The money in New York unambiguously belongs to the Afghan government and the country’s central bank. It is not money that came from the United States, which means that what Biden, who is already stealing Syria’s oil, is engaging in yet one more large scale theft, this time from people dying from famine and disease. Furthermore, as the US was de facto an occupying military power in Afghanistan, the responsibility to protect the civilian population is explicitly required under the articles of the Geneva Convention, to which the US is a signatory. That Washington will watch many thousands of civilians die because it has used its position as an occupying power to steal money that might alleviate the suffering is unconscionable and amounts to a war crime.
Undoubtedly the half of the money allegedly allocated for humanitarian relief will be directed to organizations that will do Washington’s bidding in terms of how the aid is distributed and who gets it. It is being reported that it will take months to set up the aid network, by which time thousands will die. That is to be expected and may have been intentional. And as for the other half of the money directed towards 9/11 “victims,” just watch how that plays out. There are undoubtedly instances of Americans who lost multiple and even cross generational family members at 9/11 and are still in need of assistance. Fine, that is a given, but why punish the Afghans to deal with that? And as soon as the money is on the table you know exactly what will happen. All the shyster lawyers working on a percentage of the payoffs will come out of the woodwork and the major beneficiaries of all the loot will be people who know how to manipulate and game the system. That is what happened to the billions that came raining down as a consequence of the insurance claims on the World Trade Center and also in the distribution of other monies that followed. You can bank on it.
Washington has become adept at lying to cover up its crimes overseas, but foreigners, who are not likely inclined to read the Washington Post and are directly affected by the deception, frequently have a more facts-based understanding of what exactly is going on. And it is why no one any longer trusts the United States. And, it is interesting to note how inevitably the lying by the US government is both bipartisan and inclined to blame the victim as a fallback position. This was seen in Donald Trump’s assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani over two years ago. Soleimani was in Baghdad for peace talks and was falsely accused by the White House of preparing to attack American soldiers. There is also the more recent assassination of alleged ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and killing of 13 additional women and children in Syria where accounts of villagers don’t quite square with the Pentagon version of what allegedly took place.
And then there is a long-concealed atrocity also in Syria which took place in the town of Baghuz in March 2019. At least 80 mostly women and children died in an attack by American F-15 fighter bombers, which was only reported in the media in November 2021. Reportedly, a large crowd of women and children were seen by photographic drones seeking shelter huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American attack jet dropped a 500-pound bomb on the group. When the smoke cleared, another jet tracked the running survivors and dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of them. Military personnel at the Udeid Airbase in Qatar watching the attack by way of the drone camera reportedly reacted in “stunned disbelief” at what they were witnessing. A Pentagon cover-up followed and to this day the official comment on the attack is that it was “justified.”
So, by all means go and listen to lying Jen Psaki and pencil neck Ned Price or to Secretary of State Tony Blinken and possibly to the ultimate nitwit himself, President Honest Joe Biden. Or you can just pick up a New York Times or Washington Postwhere deliberately leaked government lies are backed up by what the newspapers pretend to be editorial integrity. These folks just might drop us into a nuclear war or could possibly continue in their larcenous ways to rob the world. Sooner or later the chickens will be coming home to roost and accountability for America’s war crimes will be demanded. Stay tuned.
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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].
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As relations between Syria and its neighbours warm again a decade after the Syrian war first broke out, Damascus has become a popular destination for Arab dignitaries.
OmaniForeign Minister Sayyid Badr al-Busaidi was not only the most recent top official to meet President Bashar al-Assad in January, the visit represented the leading role his country is playing in Arab normalisation with Syria.
Syria’s days of long isolation and regional disfavour are starting to shift – albeit gradually – and much of this reintegration is down to the critical role of Muscat and its gamble on keeping clear lines of communication and ties with Damascus at the worst of times.
In implementing a non-interventionist foreign policy that has enabled Oman to play a prominent role in the Syrian diplomatic scene, the sultanate will likely reap rewards going forward as more Arab states return to Damascus, however long or difficult that process may be.
However, wider regional rapprochement with Assad is a highly complicated process, not least due to US and European warnings. Saudi Arabia’s refusal to commit to engagement under current circumstances makes things even trickier.
Nonetheless, the fact the Syrian government has achieved such significant progress with reintegration after the war made it a pariah in the region and much of the world, is fundamentally down to the efforts of Oman.
And Syria is certainly grateful.
“It is no secret that our bilateral relations with Oman are very good and have always been, this will continue for the foreseeable future,” one Syrian diplomatic source told Middle East Eye.
Muscat leads the way
Oman has long had a reputation for rarely arguing or taking sides when it comes to diplomatic relations and political disputes, preferring a peacemaker role rather than confrontation.
Much of this Swiss-like neutrality emanates from the core policy principles of Oman’s late leader Sultan Qaboos, who sought to always administer a pragmatic doctrine when dealing with volatile and bickering neighbours in a turbulent region.
Oman refused to enter the Saudi-led group seeking regime change in Syria that emerged in 2011. In fact, it went in the opposite direction, and even sent its foreign minister to Damascus in 2015 at the very height of the military conflict.
Yusuf bin Alawi, then Omani foreign minister, at the time was engineering a return for Syria to the Arab fold, and even seven years ago said he was seeking “ideas proposed at the regional and international levels aiming to help resolve the crisis in Syria”.
Aron Lund, an analyst with the Century Foundation think tank, told MEE that “Oman has a talk-to-everyone attitude to diplomacy, and it is deliberately standing a little bit aloof from its Gulf Cooperation Council neighbours”, adding that they “kept the relationship alive and fished for mediation opportunities”.
Oman has consistently led the way for Arab normalisation.
Sultan Haitham bin Tariq was the first Gulf leader to congratulate Assad on his re-election in 2021. His cable of congratulations expressed best wishes to the president in leading the Syrian people towards further aspirations of stability, progress and prosperity.
The sultanate was also the first Gulf state to reinstate its ambassador in Syria, and it greeted Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad on a three-day trip to Oman back in March, where the Syrians expressed renewed hope for readmission into the Arab League.
In paving the way for other countries such as the UAE, which has recently aggressively sought to normalise relations with Assad, Oman has been a trendsetter.
During Busaidi’s January visit, the Syrian Parliament Speaker Hammoud Sabbagh described Oman as a crucial ally, saying: “The brotherly sultanate has stood by Syria in its war against terrorism.” This type of praise is usually only reserved for Iran or Russia, Assad’s two greatest backers.
Roadmap for the future
From here, Oman seeks ever further cooperation. Busaidi has intimated that mutual visits will step up as ties grow.
While other Arab countries are following Oman’s lead, there are still limitations to overcome.
Much of the Arab world is still wary of Syria’s close ties to Iran, and Damascus doesn’t have much to offer economically, as it is heavily sanctioned. Reintegration with the Arab League would be significant, but it really rests on creating a better relationship with Saudi Arabia, which is yet to be convinced.
However, this hasn’t prevented states such as Egypt from actively trying to facilitate Syria’s return to the regional body. Last month, Egypt’s foreign minister said:
“We hope that conditions will be available for Syria to return to the Arab domain and become an element supporting Arab national security. We will continue to communicate with Arab countries to achieve this purpose.”
It is no coincidence that he said this standing alongside Busaidi in Muscat.
Ultimately, Oman has gambled on the situation in Syria and won. “Although several Arab countries kept their Damascus embassies operational, Oman was ahead of the rest in engaging on high levels with the Syrian government,” Lund explains.
But with Syria devastated economically and yet to be united, what can the war-torn country offer Oman? Lund doesn’t see much current benefit.
“Syria itself seems to have little to offer Oman at the moment. Should Western sanctions be withdrawn or significantly lightened, and if Syria begins to recover economically, it may turn out that Omani investors have a leg up on the competition,” he tells MEE.
“But that’s hypothetical at this point, and I doubt Oman pursued this policy thinking it could score big economically.”
Moreover, Syria’s readmission into the Arab League is not a certainty at this point, and will require some concessions from Damascus, as well as Saudi Arabia’s approval. Also, other countries such as Qatar and Morocco have been vehemently against Syria’s re-entry. Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheitsaid recently that the “necessary procedures” for Syria’s return were not yet fulfilled.
This hasn’t prevented a flurry of activity towards Damascus.
Jordan, for instance, fully reopened its main Nassib border crossing with Syria last September, a move that acts as a boost to both the Jordanian and Syrian economies, not to mention serving as a marker for the reintegration of Damascus into the Arab economy.
Bahrain also followed the trend and appointed its first ambassador to Syria in almost a decade.
Ultimately, the role of Oman in cultivating a positive relationship with Syria was in Muscat’s view vindicated by Assad emerging victorious in the war.
With that cultivated link already in place, Muscat can take much credit for reintegrating Syria back into the Arab fold, and in return it will have an enormous line of thankful credit in Damascus – and not least a prominent role in brokering Syria’s Gulf relations in the future.
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Last summer, I warned readers of Common Sense that financial deplatforming would be the next wave of online censorship. Big Tech companies like PayPal were already working with groups like the ADL and SPLC to define lists of individuals and groups who should be denied service. As more and more similarly minded tech companies followed suit (as happened with social media censorship), these deplorables would be deplatformed, debanked, and eventually denied access to the modern economy altogether, as punishment for their unacceptable views.
That prediction has become reality.
What I could not have anticipated is that it would occur first in our mild-mannered neighbor to the north, with the Canadian government itself directing the reprisals. It remains to be seen whether Canada will be a bellwether for the U.S. But anyone who cares about the future of America as a place where citizens are free to protest their government needs to understand what has just occurred and work to stop it from taking root here.
For the past three weeks, thousands of truckers have gathered in Ottawa and along the Canada-America border in protest of Covid restrictions and mandates. Rather than engage with them or listen to their concerns, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first denounced them as having “unacceptable views.” Then he demonized them as white supremacists, racists, and “swastika wavers.”
On Monday (February 14), the rhetoric turned to action when Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act. This heretofore-unused 1988 law gives the government virtually unlimited power for 30 days to deal with a crisis. Invoking the law under the present circumstance would require the threat or use of “serious violence,” yet the vast majority of protesters have been entirely peaceful—playing “We Are the World” and waving Maple Leaf flags. Indeed, the government has made little attempt to justify the need for emergency powers beyond Trudeau’s frequent bemoaning of the truckers’ alleged “hateful rhetoric.”
His public safety minister Marco Mendocino stated that such extraordinary measures were necessary due to “intimidation, harassment, and expressions of hate.” Perhaps he doesn’t realize that none of these are listed in the law as valid reasons to invoke it.
Trudeau escalated things further on Tuesday night, when he issued a new directive called the Emergency Economic Measures Order. Invoking a War on Terror law called the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act, the order requires financial institutions—including banks, credit unions, co-ops, loan companies, trusts, and even cryptocurrency wallets—to stop “providing any financial or related services” to anyone associated with the protests (a “designated person”). This has resulted, according to the CBC, in “frozen accounts, stranded money and canceled credit cards.”
Banks, according to this new order, have a “duty to determine” if one of their customers is a “designated person.” A “designated person” can refer to anyone who “directly or indirectly” participates in the protest, including donors who “provide property to facilitate” the protests through crowdfunding sites. In other words, a designated person can just as easily be a grandmother who donated $25 to support the truckers as one of the organizers of the convoy.
Because the donor data to the crowdfunding site GiveSendGo was hacked—and the leaked data shows that Canadians donated most of the $8 million raised—many thousands of law-abiding Canadians now face the prospect of financial retaliation and ruin merely for supporting an anti-government protest.
Already, a low-level government official in Ontario was fired after her $100 donation came to light. A gelato shop was forced to close when it received threats after its owner was revealed to have donated to the protest. On Wednesday, Justice Minister David Lametti went on Canadian television to say the quiet part aloud, namely that anyone contributing to “a pro-Trump movement” should be “worried” about their bank accounts and other financial assets being frozen.
When these protestors or those that supported them end up in financial hardship because they lose their job, business, or bank account, what will happen to those who try to help them? Will Canadian financial institutions be forced to play Six Degrees of Deplorables? The fear of being ensnared in the dragnet will surely have a chilling effect on the commercial prospects of those suspected of “unacceptable views,” creating a caste of untouchables whom no one will dare to transact with or help.
B.J. Dichter, one of the protest organizers who has had all of his bank accounts and credit cards frozen, expressed the sense of desperation: “It feels like being banished from the medieval village left to die.”
How did things get to this point?
For years, ideologues have used accusations of bigotry to hound people from their jobs, kick them off social media, and rescind their right to participate in the online economy.
However, many observers shrugged off these cases as outliers—fringe examples that could be ignored because they affected unsympathetic individuals. But now we have a wide-ranging group of working-class people and their supporters who are being financially deplatformed for civil disobedience.
The Canadian truckers have been so thoroughly defamed as racists and bigots by the media on both sides of the border that few are thinking about the nightmarish implications for ordinary citizens.
For the most part, the CBC, CNN, MSNBC, and the major newspapers in both countries have cheered and egged Trudeau on as he descends into authoritarianism—even as various Canadian provinces rescind the vaccine mandates that originally inspired the protests.
Perhaps no one has been more enthusiastic than CNN contributor Juliette Kayyem. She took to Twitter to encourage Trudeau’s government to first “slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers” and later to “cancel their insurance, suspend their driver’s licenses, prohibit any future regulatory verification for truckers,” and other ideas that seemed extreme until Trudeau adopted several of them. “Trust me,” declared Kayyem, “I will not run out of ways to make this hurt.” One suspects Trudeau won’t either, even as the coming end of the pandemic renders this entire dispute irrelevant. Funny, it’s almost as if “the cruelty is the point.”
The self-conception of these pundits and politicians could not be more at odds with reality. They pose as defenders of democracy while invoking emergency powers without legislative or public debate, or without an emergency for that matter. They claim that diversity and tolerance are their highest values while insisting that only one political point of view is acceptable and censoring the alternatives. Above all, progressive elites see themselves as the champions of the disadvantaged while demonizing working-class men and women whose economic livelihoods have been devastated by their draconian Covid policies.
These elites will soon move on to the next Twitter outrage, but the people of Canada will be living with the consequences of Trudeau’s actions long after every last truck has been towed and the last of the protesters has been cleared by tear gas, stun grenades, and mounted police on horseback. Indeed, over the weekend, the Ottawa police chief told reporters that they will be pursuing protestors for weeks and months to come: “If you are involved in this protest, we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges. Absolutely.”
While the emergency order only authorizes the freezing of assets for 30 days, banks and financial institutions will be wary of resuming business relationships with any “designated person”—or anyone they think could be one in the future. Confident that these private businesses will do their dirty work for them, the government will likely back off, but the chilling effect on political dissent will remain. It’s a Western version of China’s social credit system that does not altogether prohibit political dissent but makes it so costly that it becomes impractical to the ordinary citizen.
How do we stop this dystopian policy from taking root here in the United States? Some of my friends in the tech world say that decentralized blockchain and cryptocurrency offer an answer—and that might be true for pseudonymous computer programmers who can do gig work from anywhere in the world. But it won’t help truck drivers who operate in the real world under the supervision of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The real answer lies in politics and the law. Policy makers need to build safeguards into our laws that protect citizens’ financial rights against some future emergency that would be used as the excuse to take them away. Just as University of Chicago professor Richard Epstein proposed that the largest social media companies should be treated as common carriers to prohibit them from restricting speech, we may need to prohibit the largest financial institutions from denying citizens access to the financial system because they dislike their politics. In order to prevent discrimination on the basis of creed, political beliefs may need to become a protected class.
We must also stop the definition creep around “terrorism,” a term whose use has become so elastic that it now even includes angry moms fighting school boards. Just this month, the Department of Homeland Security made a little-noticed change in its definition of domestic terrorism, citing “widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19” as a key driver of what it deemed a heightened domestic terror threat environment. As we have seen for over 20 years, “terrorism” is the magic word by which any curtailment of rights and expansion of government power can be justified.
American citizens must never be labeled terrorists simply for exercising their constitutional rights to speak freely, to worship freely, or to assemble peaceably in protest. Of course, an act of violence committed in service to a radical cause is terrorism, whether committed in Baghdad or Brooklyn, but constitutionally protected speech alone is not. Contrary to the safetyism practiced by university administrators and HR departments, speech is not violence. A citizen posting on social media, even if she is questioning vaccines or railing against mask mandates, is not fomenting terrorism.
Those of us in the free world have been asked to suspend many of our freedoms for the sake of our collective health during this pandemic. But asking us to compromise our right to peaceful protest, or to have our finances seized without due process of law in the name of a fake emergency, can never be made normal. In the words of Justice Gorsuch, “Even if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical.”
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David Sacks is Founder who backs founders through Craft Ventures. Previously: Founder/CEO of Yammer and founding COO of PayPal.
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Kiev’s continued shelling of those newly independent republics as part of its ongoing genocide against their indigenous Russian people and its occupation of their territory that the Kremlin officially recognizes as falling within their sovereign borders could very likely provoke Moscow to militarily respond in self-defense.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskypredicted on the day after Russia’s recognition of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) as independent states that “We believe there will be no war against Ukraine, and there will be no broad escalation on the part of the Russian Federation.” This suggests that he’s trying to avert the war that his forces provoked after complying with their American patron’s pressure to initiate a third round of civil war hostilities in Donbass last weekend, which is what directly led to the immediate humanitarian reason behind President Putin’s dramatic decision. If Zelensky truly wants to avert war, however, then Kiev must immediately withdraw from the territories of the DPR and LPR that it’s presently occupying.
Source: OneWorld
That’s because Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskovannounced that his country recognized the DPR and LPR within the borders in which they initially proclaimed their independence. These encompass the entirety of their eponymous “oblasts” as they’re referred to by Ukraine but are therefore now considered by Moscow to be their sovereignty territory. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovconfirmed that the treaties of friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance that were just agreed to between them and Russia saw Moscow “promise to safeguard their security.” This very strongly suggests that Kiev’s continued shelling of those newly independent republics as part of its ongoing genocide against their indigenous Russian people could very likely provoke Moscow to militarily respond in self-defense.
Nevertheless, Kiev – or rather, its American masters –might be reluctant to do that out of fear that such a pragmatic de-escalation that essentially amounts to its tacit recognition of those republics’ independence might trigger an uncontrollable chain reaction of devolution across the rest of rump Ukraine among its similarly indigenous Hungarian, Polish, and other Russian populations. The author explained these strategic dynamics in his recent analysis about whether the end of Lenin’s mini-empire is drawing near. From Kiev’s perspective, the feared scenario that was just described is already a fait accompli in one way or another. It can either peacefully withdraw from the DPR and LPR or potentially be forced to do so in order to stop its genocidal aggression against their people.
Regardless of how it happens, the Donbass dimension of Lenin’s mini-empire will inevitably collapse, after which the only question is whether (or perhaps when?) its other regions that have historically been inhabited by non-Ukrainian indigenous people will eventually follow suit. That could take the form of their own militant separatist struggles against Kiev’s (fascist)-“nationalist” US-backed post-coup authorities inspired by Donbass’ successful example or a genuinely grassroots Color Revolution aimed at ensuring that their human rights as minorities are finally respected in full. Had Kiev simply complied with its international legal obligations under the UNSC-backed Minsk Accords, it could have already peacefully reincorporated Donbass, albeit after granting it a constitutionally enshrined ‘special status”.
Since President Putin and the rest of the Russian government officially regards Ukraine as an American puppet state per his national address yesterday and the statements from members of his Security Council just hours prior, the choice is essentially America’s and not Kiev’s over whether the situation continues to escalate or not. If Zelensky truly wants to avert war and preserve what’s left of his communist zombie construct of a state, though following seemingly inevitable far-reaching administrative-political reforms aimed at finally ensuring the rights of his country’s indigenous minorities, then he must immediately order the withdrawal of his forces from the DPR and LPR lest he risk provoking the “full-blown war” that he earlier claimed to fear even if he has to defy his US patrons.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.
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AFRICOM is ready to begin this year’s annual special operations training for African military leaders, dubbed ‘Flintlock.’ The program is labeled as part of America’s counter-terrorism strategy on the continent, yet its graduates often have goals other than fighting jihadists.
Most recently, two-time Flintlock grad Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba seized power in Burkina Faso, ousting President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré in January. Reporting on Damiba’s deep ties to the US military establishment, journalist Nick Turse writes,
“In 2010 and 2020, he participated in an annual special operations training program known as the Flintlock exercise. In 2013, Damiba was accepted into an Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance course, which is a State Department-funded peacekeeping training program. In 2013 and 2014, Damiba attended the U.S.-sponsored Military Intelligence Basic Officer Course-Africa. And in 2018 and 2019, he participated in engagements with a U.S. Defense Department Civil Military Support Element in Burkina Faso.”
Another Flintlock grad and coup plotter isCol. Assimi Goïta, leader of Mali’s military junta government. Using skills gained from his US advisers, the colonel has now led two successful coups. A recent decision to delay elections and accept Russian military assistance has split Goïta from his French and American partners, with French President Emmanuel Macron even declaring an end to its nine-year counter-terror mission in Mali, Operation Barkhane.
Flintlock 2022 will be held in the Ivory Coast and include participation from three other African nations – Cameroon, Ghana, and Niger. Six Western states will also take part, among them the US, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK. A total of 400 soldiers will participate, according to AFRICOM.
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Will Porter contributed to this article.
Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, assistant editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter.
Featured image: Tunisian navy personnels aboard USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB 4) on May 23 when the Phoenix Express 2021 was underway. Photo: AFRICOM
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During the period of the enslavement of African people by Britain and the United States, violence was a key instrument in the maintenance of the exploitative and oppressive system.
African people between the 17th and 19th centuries prior to the eruption of the Civil War (1861-1865), were largely prohibited from owning and carrying firearms.
Of course, there were exceptions during the war of separation from Britain during the 1770s and 1780s, when Africans fought on both sides of the conflict over who would control the 13 colonies located in the eastern region of what would become the U.S. Also, the War of 1812, when the British attempted to retake their colonies in North America, Africans participated again in both the U.S. and English military campaigns.
However, within these contexts, the enslaved and free Africans were objectively fighting on behalf of European colonial regimes and not for their own freedom. Although the British and the Americans told the Africans that their service in the war of independence and 1812 would lead to emancipation, slavery and national oppression continued leading up to the beginning of the Civil War.
Approximately 200,000 African men and women served in the army and navy during the war between the states. There was extreme resistance among the ruling class to the enlistment of African soldiers in the Union army. Nonetheless, the failure of the administration of then President Abraham Lincoln to quell the rebellion during the first year-and-a-half of the war, by late 1862, a decision had been made to arm Blacks to fight the Confederacy.
Image on the right: White supremacist overthrow Reconstruction
Many African enslaved people had already fled from plantations and cities to take refuge among the Union troops. W.E.B. Du Bois in his pioneering book entitled “Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880), described the movement away from plantations in a chapter entitled “The General Strike.”
However, after the defeat of the Confederacy in April 1865 and the assassination of Lincoln just days after the end of the Civil War, the successor President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee opposed any meaningful Reconstruction as advocated by the Radicals within the Republican Party of the time. Eventually the Reconstruction Act of 1867 provided for the organization of militias which were supportive of the building of a democratic existence in the former antebellum South.
These militias composed of African Americans and some whites were vilified by the Democratic Party press, southern politicians and former slave owners. Eventually, when the federal government withdrew its support for Reconstruction after the elections of 1876, the Black militias were subjected to harsh treatment by the white vigilante groupings such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White Leagues.
In a book published by the white southern-born historian, Otis A. Singletary, in 1957, the hostility towards the armed Black militias empowered to defend the Reconstruction state governments in the South is clearly enunciated. Singletary attributes much of the violence in opposition to Reconstruction to the Radicals and the arming of Black men in militia groups in several southern states including Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, among others.
“Governor Brownlow (Tennessee), for instance, expressed his displeasure at both the freedom with which Negro militiamen used their guns and their general attitude toward whites. However, the main deterrent was fear. Haunted by the specter of race war, governors temporized and satisfied themselves with half-measures. In Alabama, numerous applications from ‘colored fellow citizens from Mobile, Selma, and Montgomery’ requesting permission to organize militia companies were turned down by the adjutant general on explicit orders from Governor Lewis. Ames hesitated a long while before finally calling up his Negro troops in Mississippi, and, by his own admission, the delay was prompted by his fear that arming militia would cause that state ‘to drift into a war of races.’”
New Orleans Race Terror: 1874 and 1900
Two examples of the fear and hatred generated by the arming of African Americans in their own self-defense along with solidifying the policies of Reconstruction, were reflected in the outbreaks of violence in New Orleans, Louisiana during 1874 and again at the turn of the century. A dispute over the outcome of the 1872 elections generated protracted disputes which lasted well into 1874.
On September 14, 1874, an estimated 5,000-armed members of the White Leagues, many of whom being former Confederate soldiers, attacked the Capitol with the aim of overthrowing the Reconstruction state government of Republican Governor William Pitt Kellogg. Initially, the White Leagues outnumbered the New Orleans Metropolitan Police and the Black militiamen, inflicting serious casualties including deaths. The reactionaries held out for three days until the then President Ulysses Grant sent in federal troops to restore order in New Orleans.
“At 4:00pm, former Confederate general James Longstreet led a force of Metropolitan Police and mostly Black militia to disperse the White Leaguers. The pitched ‘Battle of Liberty Place’ ensued. Many in the League militia were Confederate veterans and they successfully resisted Longstreet’s outnumbered men. While the White League would secure a temporary victory, the arrival of Federal troops in the following days cut short the coup. While the South had experienced riots, race massacres, and terror raids, the Battle of Liberty Place was a sustained mass armed mobilization of a white supremacist militia intent on wresting power away from the bi-racial Republicans. The fighting took the lives of sixteen White Leaguers, thirteen Metropolitan Police officers, and six bystanders.”
Just two years later the federal troops were withdrawn from New Orleans as a by-product of the historic Hayes-Tillman Compromise of 1876. The remaining decades of the 19th century witnessed the forced removal of African Americans from political offices at the local, state and federal levels. There were the repeals of Reconstruction-era laws mandating the enforcement of due process and equal protection under the law. By 1896, a Louisiana African American, Homer Plessy, sought to challenge the Jim Crow laws of the period as it related to public accommodations. Plessy was ruled against before the Supreme Court which upheld legalized segregation lasting well into the 1950s and 1960s.
Yet another outbreak of racial violence against African Americans erupted in New Orleans on July 24, 1900. The disturbance began when several white police officers sought to harass and then arrest two African American men, Leonard Pierce and Robert Charles, who were sitting outside a building talking. Pierce submitted himself for arrest while Charles, being armed, resisted the assault by the police. A gun battle ensued and one of the policemen was gunned down.
Charles then fled for his own survival from the police. News of the shooting of a white policeman by an African American spread prompting a manhunt by law-enforcement and racist mobs. Three days of arbitrary arrests, beating and killings continued until the economic consequences of the violence led the New Orleans mayor to deploy a 1,000 law-enforcement personnel and volunteers to restore order.
After Charles was discovered on July 27, he continued to resist killing seven police officers and other white vigilantes. Once cornered and captured, the white police shot him over one hundred times. In death his character and motivations were maligned by the white press in New Orleans and across the U.S. Altogether it was said that 50 people died in the violence with the majority being African Americans.
According to reports from the period, Robert Charles had been a proponent of civil rights, self-defense and repatriation to West Africa. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the journalist, women’s rights activist and anti-lynching campaigner, investigated the circumstances surrounding the Louisiana race terror of July 1900. She would publish a pamphlet entitled: “Mob Rule in New Orleans.”
“Men and women of America, are you proud of this record which the Anglo-Saxon race has made for itself? Your silence seems to say that you are. Your silence encourages a continuance of this sort of horror. Only by earnest, active, united endeavor to arouse public sentiment can we hope to put a stop to these demonstrations of American barbarism.”
Lessons for the 21st Century
In the U.S. today racial and class divisions are becoming more pronounced as the government and wealthy rulers seek to continue their undemocratic and exploitative rule. During the period of the 1950s to the 1970s, numerous tendencies arose in the African American community which upheld the right to self-defense against law-enforcement and vigilante mob violence.
The U.S. government has sought to crush all of these efforts by criminalizing the oppressed and their struggle for liberation. Nevertheless, the potential for a renewed civil war remains as the right-wing neo-fascist movement grows more desperate and emboldened in their stated objectives of maintaining and strengthening white supremacy.
Arming the African American masses in their own defense is a legitimate response to increasing repression. These armed militias should also take on a political character, realizing that the overall system of racism and class exploitation must be eliminated to ensure security for the oppressed and working majority.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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In a new low for democracy, the Ottawa By-law enforcement agency made it clear that they are not above confiscating pets to quell to the protests. “Attention animal owners at [the] demonstration: If you are unable to care for your animal as a result of enforcement actions, your animal will [be] placed into protective care for 8 days, at your cost. After 8 days, if arrangements are not made, your animal will be considered relinquished,” the tweet read.
This means that if a Canadian is arrested for exercising their legal right to protest, the government could seize their pet as they await trial behind bars. The internet is ablaze with angry questions demanding to know what “relinquished” entails. Do they plan to kill these innocent pets? First, Fauci tortured beagle puppies, and now Ottawa is ready to confiscate pets. Did Klaus seek out the cruelest people humanity has to offer to push his agenda forward?
Pets become part of the family. Truckers on long-haul commutes often have a dog for companionship, and once the Canadian government is facing a mob of irate truckers whose beloved pets were seized, they’re going to have a much bigger problem on their hands.
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When our so-called western leaders tell you that Russia will invade the Ukraine and that they know exactly what day Russia will invade the Ukraine, without providing any evidence, you know that the western powers are up to something very sinister.
The latest chapter in the American propaganda show went to a new level of insanity on Feb 3rd 2022 when the U.S. State Department’s Ned Price announced that the US government had evidence that Russia was fabricating a “false flag attack”[01] to make it look like Ukraine will attack the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. However, when Ned Price was confronted on providing that evidence by AP reporter Matt Lee, the conversation became a “Who’s on First” Abbot and Costello monolog of “where’s the evidence”, “I just told you” “No you didn’t”… “Well, where is it then?” “I just delivered it”…
Outside of this comedy show, there hasn’t been much else in the way of questioning the US government, as mainstream media just echo’s whatever the government states.
What our western governments and mainstream media are not telling you is that the Neo-Nazi forces that western NATO countries are supporting in Ukraine have amassed 125,000 soldiers (for over a year), and are preparing to launch a blitzkrieg invasion and genocide in the Donbass region where 4.6 million Russian speaking people live.
For those that are unaware or geographically challenged, Donetsk and Lugansk are independent republics that broke away from Ukraine and share a border with Russia…
And for those that are Historically challenged, Russia fought for its very survival, losing 27 million people during World War II against the very same anti-Russian Nazi mind set that NATO supports in Ukraine today.
So, when Western leaders say they know the date that Russia might intervene in Ukraine, it is because western leaders are partners with the fascist regime in Kiev and privy to information through violent elements they support within the Ukrainian regime, where it is more than evident that the Neo-Nazi Ukrainian forces will unleash their belligerence (Azov Brigades) on the communities they’ve sworn to obliterate.
Let’s be clear here, the Neo-Nazi power structure that still remains in Ukraine, was put in place by a 2014 coup funded and supported by the USA, Britain, Canada and many European nations. The western political leaders and their blood thirsty shouts of glee when the elected Yanukovich Ukraine government was toppled, was all that the western mainstream media showed to its viewers.
The western mainstream media did not investigate what was really going on in the region nor did they present a historical overview to its viewers, and they certainly did not show that our western governments supported the obliteration and genocidal operation by the elements within the Ukrainian regime on the Russian speaking Ukrainians by the fascists and neo Nazi’s they supported in Ukraine. However, for those who did not see what really happened during that time, I took the liberty of making a Video playlist [06] for historical purposes of all the events that unfolded in Ukraine during that time. For those who would like to learn the truth about recent history, this playlist is for you.
Western Support of Neo-Nazism
The American, Canadian and European leaders that support these fascists and Neo-Nazi’s in Ukraine, confirm what our western leaders are…I mean, who could support fascism but a fascist.
Even though the political parties or leaders in charge of our western governments have changed since 2014, government positions remain exactly the same as their predecessors. They support the successively violent fascist regime and the genocide of millions of Russian speaking people in the Ukraine.
For a clear picture of western fascism, all one needs to do is to look at what has been going on in Ottawa Ontario Canada from the end of January through February 2022, to see the totalitarian policies of the Canadian Liberal minority government as they unleashed the “War Measures Act” now known as the “Emergencies Act” [07], to destroy, break up and punish peaceful Canadian protesters for daring to defy government mask mandates, mandatory inoculations, and the absolute removal of our Rights and Freedoms.
The Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, the minority Liberal government and all those supporting him, including the N.D.P. under Jagmeet Singh are attacking and labeling Canadians as terrorists. In reality, the protesters are peaceful and exercising their constitutional rights by calling for an end to the two years of totalitarian Covid government measures, restrictions and unnecessary obliteration of our rights and freedoms.
Canadians from across the country, from different political spectrums want an end to the insane mandates but the government answered them by labeling them terrorists and invoking the “War Measures Act”. The government did not even attempt to talk to the protesters, instead they unleashed hell upon them.
The Canadian government is viewed, by peace loving Canadians, as an out-of-control tyranny, but to fascists, this is normal government behavior that didn’t go far enough or act fast enough.
Canada has fallen and outed itself as a “totalitarian democracy”, and there is no mainstream political party that is untouched by this totalitarian mentality, they are all authoritarian that fall in line with foreign economic interests as those in Ukraine do. It’s hard to even call our politicians and mainstream media Canadian anymore because they do not represent Canadian interests or ideals, they represent totalitarian dictatorship.
The same thing can be said about all western governments that support the belligerent elements in Ukraine over the people of the Donbass region. They’ve all ganged up using their NATO fist on the people of the Donbass region and more specifically, Russia, while also supressing their own populations with totalitarian suppression and human rights violations under the guise of health and security mandates.
In the past few weeks, NATO and U.S. government officials have stated that they have intelligence that Russia will invade Ukraine. American president and “leader of the free world…” I mean, the leader of the “Totalitarian World”, Joe Biden, initially gave Feb 16th as the invasion date, but then corrected himself after the day came and went two days later to then give Feb 20th, 2022 as the new date for the imminent Russian invasion.
We all know that Joe Biden is suffering from dementia (most likely Alzheimer’s), so it’s possible he got the date wrong, or simply screwed up on what is clearly being orchestrated by others behind the scenes.
“We have reason to believe that Russian forces are planning to and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week — in the coming days,” – American President Joe Biden said [08].
When pressed about what evidence the White House might have on Moscow’s decision to invade Ukraine, Biden declined to elaborate, saying only that “We have a significant intelligence capability.”
To add fuel to their propaganda fire, the US, UK, NATO and others, evacuated their embassies and offices in Kiev stating that the Russians were planning an attack.
At some point, Russia will have no choice but to get involved to protect the 4.6 million Russian speaking people living in the region if the shelling of Lugansk and Donetsk continues to escalate.
So, this is not a Russian invasion, but a dangerous provocation being played out by belligerent elements in the Ukraine which of course are supported by our fascist western politicians.
Dmitry Orlov wrote a very good analysis of the Ukraine / Russia situation last year titled “Putin’s Ukrainian Judo Revisited” [14], and concluded that Russia doesn’t have to invade Ukraine to protect the people of the Donbass, they could simply absorb the population by giving them Russian passports as they’ve already done for half a million people from the region already. He also mentioned, correctly I might add, that Russia also has weapons with sufficient range to launch from within Russian soil if they are needed to help protect the people of the Donbass without crossing the border.
I would add that the Russians also have satellite and drone surveillance while also possessing more superior weapons than the Americans and Europeans.
Final Word
As a Canadian citizen, no matter which western country I look at these days, be it Canada, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Britain, France, Germany, Austria or Ukraine, I see a consolidated totalitarian mindset that includes mainstream media who promotes the fascist totalitarian ideology of our governments over their own people, while also stoking the flames of war on citizens of the Donbass.
If anything, the invocation of the “War Measures Act” and violent, dystopian police crackdown on peaceful people in Ottawa has certainly opened the eyes of millions of Canadians but also billions of people around the world who are watching fascism unfold in Canada and their own nations.
The propaganda and buildup of hostilities against Russia and the Donbass region, by the same western nations, is also in plain view right now and so we have reached a crossroads that surely must help change the direction of where we’ve all been heading. These events are a serious wake up call to people around the world and hopefully begins the changes needed to reverse course.
I could talk about the old Russian gas pipelines that run through a belligerent Ukraine, the new Nord Stream II gas pipeline to Germany that the American occupied Germans refuse to certify under pressure from the Americans, and the severe energy crisis the American’s have caused throughout Europe by their hostile economic position on Russia, but that will be a topic for another day.
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Stewart Brennan is a Geo-political and economic analyst, activist, blogger and author. He’s worked in the Aviation, Packaging, Transportation and Logistics Industries and is the author of “The Activist Poet”, two books of political activism and poetry. (See Here and Here) He’s also the author of several blogs including World United News and World United Music and a contributor on Global Research.
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Starting in the early hours last Monday morning, convoys departed from over 40 locations across the small country, from as far as the southern vacation city of Eilat, and the northern town of Metula.
Participants decorated their cars with slogans in Hebrew and some in English. “Freedom”, “I want my country back”, “Green pass = black stain” and “end the coercion” were some of what was seen plastered along the vehicles in the convoy.
Their destination was Jerusalem, the holy city from where, according to the bible the court is to “proclaim liberty throughout all the land for all its inhabitants,” and is now the seat of government of the State of Israel.
The demand was a “repeal of all the COVID and anti-democratic legislation enacted over the past two years, according to their press release.
In particular:
A total termination of all COVID restrictions and the return to normal life. Including complete cancellation of the Knesset’s “Enabling Act” which facilitates the state of emergency in Israel,
Return to a normal routine for all Israel’s children without any further school closures, quarantine periods, medical procedures on school grounds or mandatory mask wearing,
Complete opening of the economy and a ban on harassment of employees based on vaccination or testing or masking,
Full disclosure of contracts and protocols which to date have been withheld from public review,
Ending the violation of the individual’s privacy through street cameras or other illegal surveillance,
Each individual’s dignity and human rights should be respected unconditionally by the government regardless of vaccination status.
With excitement, the convoy was greeted by a few supporters at the entrance to the city.
There were hundreds of cars and trucks that entered the city and made their way to the Knesset, where police blocked the one access road. With horns blasting catchy tunes, usually reserved for sporting events, the convoy circled around the government district. Some stopped on the side arguing with police to be allowed past the barricades to no avail.
Source: David DW
With the street access to the Knesset closed, many parked and walked up to as close as they could get to the government building. Police took extra precautions after having seen what was happening in Ottawa, where dozens of trucks parked directly in front of the Canadian parliament, refusing to move until the government eliminated all regulations that were put in place ostensibly to fight COVID.
The Canadian experience empowered thousands of people across the world to stand up to their own governments and demand their freedoms be restored. Citizens in New Zealand, Australia, across Europe, and North America, after nearly two years, tolerating massive government encroachment into nearly every aspect of their lives, and after seeing how these policies were not even effective at reducing the spread of COVID, finally had enough.
A crowd of hundreds of people were making their voices heard on the closed street in front of the Knesset. The atmosphere was defiant, friendly, and somewhat festive. Many people were just happy to see and interact with other people who shared their views. Religious, secular, old, young, Jew, and Arab, there were people from every cross-section of Israeli society. Live music was played at times, and passersby handed out fruits and treats to support the group of protesters.
Source: David DW
Frontline News interviewed some of the English-speaking participants, “It is immoral. People have rights and there are things that other people can’t do to them,” said Shmuel Zuckerman, originally from Baltimore.
Shawn Eracner’s parents immigrated from Soviet Russia, where, he explains, “they let the government trample all over them, and many people ended up dying, and here people are letting it happen without even putting up a fight.”
Yael Yarmish, in speaking directly to the Jewish population, reminded them how the events of the Holocaust started – when the population gave up their rights, “we are not going to allow that to happen again. Never again.”
Ber Lazarus, and his daughter Sophia, both originally from Canada spoke with Frontline News saying that while they thought they lived in a free country, through this “non-emergency” they have had even fewer rights than they thought, and that even those rights were being trampled. “The primary right is that we decide what goes into our bodies,” they said.
As the day wore on, more protesters arrived and set up tents along the side of the road, while others called it a day and went home. The protesters maintained a presence on-site in front of the Knesset until Friday when another convoy was planned.
Starting from Latrun, about halfway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a smaller convoy began a slow roll up to the Capital.
Friday afternoon saw a reinvigorated protest, and festival-like atmosphere, with people joining with tents to settle in for the Sabbath starting later that evening.
The songs and prayers that mark the start of the Sabbath were conducted among the tents, reminiscent of the days at overnight camp, for some.
After a restful Sabbath on the surrounding grounds of the Knesset, without incident or violence, all of a sudden, police and municipal contractors arrived unannounced with trucks and significant personnel, to evict the protesters and seize their property. And that’s what happened.
Avi Barak, compiled a video documenting the events:
Valentina Neilin, an attorney for land use law, told Frontline News that according to Israeli law, the government must give at least 30 days’ notice before removing people or property off public lands.
Source: Noam Kampf
Even cabinet Minister Eli Avidar described the protest’s eviction as against the law, “violent and brutal” in a Tweet the following day.
The movement that started in Canada and spread across the world also galvanized thousands in Israel. The same Israel, where the green pass and invasive population monitoring in the name of fighting COVID started, is the same Israel where citizens are standing up and demanding change.
While the police succeeded in removing the protesters, they did not succeed in removing the experience of unity, or the resolve in their hearts to take back the basic human liberties that still remain a distant memory, but also a determined hope for the future.
Video montage to the soundtrack “Jerusalem of Gold”
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Featured image: Boy waves as the convoy enters Jerusalem. The sign on the truck reads “Enough with the restrictions! We’re returning to life” (Source: AFLD)
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A little-known aspect of the disastrous Western occupation of Afghanistan was that UK and Australian companies sought to access the country’s $3 trillion worth of untapped minerals – with little regard for the welfare of Afghans.
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August last year has caused the country to implode. It was already on life support after more than 40 years of war but the swift removal of most foreign aid has led to millions of Afghans being on the brink of starvation.
Women’s rights are highly reduced. The United Nations says that only two percent of the population is getting enough to eat. Tens of millions of people can’t support themselves or their families. The harshest drought in 30 years is worsening an already disastrous winter.
However, the humanitarian crisis is just one of the disturbing elements of this long-running catastrophe.
A Declassified U.K. and Declassified Australia investigation has found that British and Australian resource companies tried to access the war-torn nation’s estimated US$3 trillion of untapped minerals in the years after the US-led invasion in 2001.
One huge mining company, owned by an Australian billionaire, had controversially stood to gain exclusive access to billions of dollars of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, in a deal that seemingly evaporated with the fall of the government last year.
Now with the Taliban back in charge, these resources are still up for grabs and yet Western corporations are mostly not in the race to secure them.
Wealth of minerals
When occupying Afghanistan after its 1979 invasion, the Soviet Union discovered a wealth of copper, iron, lithium, uranium, natural gas and rare earths under the ground but was never able to exploit them.
The post 9/11 occupation saw a new generation of powers aiming to complete what Moscow never could. Washington, London, Canberra, Beijing and private players all vied for influence in the race to discover, mine and export a range of resources.
A US surveillance blimp hovers over Kabul 24/7 to monitor the entire population in 2015. (Photo: Antony Loewenstein)
The Afghan ministry of mines was a notoriously corrupt government department. Ironically, the Taliban were one of the very few actors who made money from the mining sector.
I investigated these issues on the ground in Afghanistan in 2012 and 2015 for my book and film, Disaster Capitalism. I found little more than violence and scared civilians in the middle of the Taliban, government forces and militants.
The culpability of the US under successive presidents in promoting the mining sector has been well documented, including the role of Erik Prince, the founder of the Blackwater private military company.
But what about Britain and Australia, two junior partners in the Afghan war?
Britain’s Afghan goals dashed
The British Geographical Survey (BGS) worked in Afghanistan from at least 2004 to “develop a viable minerals industry”. It said that “as the project progressed, the emphasis of the work moved to promote the potential of Afghanistan’s mineral resources to the outside world.”
A 2007 report, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), tackled “the need to alleviate poverty in Afghanistan by encouraging inward investment, commercial and infrastructure development”.
A part of this was providing “an alternative source of income to poppy cultivation” in the mining sector. It claimed that a successful resources industry could net “at least US$300 million a year”.
But it didn’t state for whom: local Afghans or international mining interests?
BGS proudly wrote that it had helped prepare a new mining law in 2005 that would “enable it to effectively and efficiently manage an emerging mining industry.” There’s no evidence that this law prevented corruption. In fact, details prove the opposite.
BGS explained how it had helped the Afghan government prepare to take tenders to develop the copper deposits at Mes Aynak in Logar province of eastern Afghanistan. Beijing was eventually granted the contract but the project has been beset by violence and corruption.
When I visited the area near the proposed mine in 2015, locals were on the verge of joining the insurgency because they’d received nothing in return for their land being stolen.
Village elders in Logar province near the failed, Chinese-owned Mes Aynak copper mine in 2015. (Photo: Antony Loewenstein)
London didn’t give up
Despite a litany of failures, London didn’t give up. British prime minister David Cameron pledged £10 million in 2013 to exploit Afghan minerals, and Downing Street hosted mining interests.
But the wining and dining didn’t get far.
The free-market consultancy Adam Smith International (ASI) had a large presence in Afghanistan, and was one of the UK’s largest foreign aid contractors, but its record in the country was desultory.
ASI helped draft the 2014 Minerals Law which left Afghanistan open to vast corruption.
One person who played an oversized role in the Afghan mining sector is British investment banker Ian Hannan. Perhaps the most notorious was a failed attempt in 2018, through his company Centar, to secure massive contracts for copper in Balkhab, in north-central Afghanistan, and gold in Badakhshan, in the northeast.
Hannan thanked then US President Donald Trump for assisting with his bid. But the plans soon fell apart with serious allegations of corruption surrounding the deal. President Ashraf Ghani eventually cancelled the contracts entirely.
A former senior official in the Ghani government told me that he attended a meeting about these mining contracts at the German embassy in Kabul. Representatives from the US, UK, Canada, World Bank and Germany “all said that they would not help the mining sector unless the government signed these two controversial contracts. They eventually forced Ghani to sign them.”
Although Centar’s plans were dashed in Afghanistan, Hannan’s former role as a captain in the British SAS gave him high-level access to the US government. He’d convincedGeneral David Petraeus, then in charge of US forces in Afghanistan, to exploit Afghan resources supposedly to benefit the people of the country.
Centar’s chief executive fit the bill; The Financial Times reported that the company selected Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Williams of the 22nd SAS regiment. It wrote that Hannam used his establishment contacts to briefly win mining contracts in Afghanistan.
This included hiring the law firm founded by Cherie Blair, Omnia Strategy, which planned to start legal action against the Kabul government, and pressuring Washington to push Kabul to the company’s will.
Australia pushes for influence
Australia’s second richest person, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, made his A$23-billion fortune with iron-ore mining in Australia. His company, Fortescue Metals Group, now claims it’s transitioning to green energy and his ambition is vast.
After visiting countless countries in recent years, Forrest announced in late 2020 that his vision for Fortescue was to become one of the world’s biggest energy providers, one day beating Total and Chevron. He hopes to exploit green hydrogen on a global scale and Afghanistan was part of the picture.
Forrest visited Kabul in 2020 and his company Fortescue signed a secret memorandum of understanding with the Afghan government.
Declassified has obtained a copy of this document, originally published by Afghan news outlet Pajhwok, signed on 10 September 2020, that outlines the terms of the agreement.
The agreement would have given Fortescue mining rights over a range of minerals in 17 provinces for five years. In return during exploration, the company would have had to grant 15 percent of the project budget to the government as a guarantee, an amount totalling billions of dollars.
The deal came as a surprise to many, as over the past 20 years, the Afghan Ministry of Mines had not signed any successful contracts in the mining sector, according to the National Resources Commission.
Fortescue was guaranteed exclusive access to vast swathes of the country to explore “mineral deposits [and] mine sites”. It pledged to establish a “vocational training and employment plan that provides equal opportunities between women and men with an explicit equal employment target”.
There was no discussion of the potentially negative impact on the climate in Afghanistan by harmful extractive practises.
Fortescue deal
Furthermore, nowhere in the document did it explain how the mining areas could be secured in the middle of a war zone.
My own reporting in Afghanistan, including on the proposed mineral exploration plans by Erik Prince, revealed that the only way Fortescue’s plans would ever have materialised would have been to pay for militias and warlords to keep militants at bay and wrestle control of resources from the Taliban and Islamic State.
This wasn’t mentioned by Fortescue or in the Australian media coverage of the deal. It was only Pajhwok that critically assessed the agreement and wondered if it was even legal, since it was signed without a bidding process.
After the Taliban seized power, Forrest told the militants that, “we would meaningfully engage with anybody, including the Taliban, if they guaranteed equal education outcomes for girls and boys”.
Fortescue’s work in the nation is currently “on hold”, a company spokesperson told me. Declassified UK understands that Fortescue had only one employee based in Afghanistan who departed before the Taliban retook Kabul.
The Taliban ignored my request for comment on its mining policies.
Australian safe haven
Australia evacuated around 4,100 people from Kabul in August and now claims to be offering 15,000 places for Afghans under a humanitarian short-term protection visa. But human rights activists and immigration lawyers claim that this number is misleading.
At the time of writing, Australia hasn’t granted one protection visa – but it has granted safe haven to a number of Afghan officials.
One of the Afghan signatories on the agreement signed by Andrew Forrest in Kabul in 2020 was Mohammad Haroon Chakhansuri, former minister of mines under Ghani.
Declassified Australia can reveal that he has been living in Sydney with his family since the fall of Kabul, and is receiving Australian government assistance. When Chakhansuri was approached in Sydney for comment on this article, his brother Humayoon explained he was “not yet ready to discuss anything.”
Another new arrival in Australia is Mohammad Ateeq Zaki, a former Deputy Minister at the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum.
General Murad Ali Murad, a military figure who rose to the position of chief of army staff, is also now in Australia. He was no doubt helped by positive comments he made in Kabul in 2018 to Australian forces in Afghanistan: “Afghanistan will never forget the help Australia has given.”
Diaspora Afghans have expressed disquiet to Declassified Australia about Western nations providing safe haven to former Afghan government officials. There have been many serious allegations of corruption against the Ghani regime. Declassified Australia is not making any allegation about people mentioned in this article.
The New Zealand government is facing a similar crisis over vetting of Afghans it brought into the country after the Taliban takeover.
“The regime collapsed because of the corruption in the government and not because the Taliban were strong”, Afghan mining expert, Javed Noorani, told me.
For the Western media, which was briefly enamoured with Afghans when the Taliban regained control, Afghanistan has largely disappeared from the US news cycle.
The humanitarian crisis currently engulfing the country is mostly framed around how it impacts the Western nations that lost the war rather than on the civilians on the brink of starvation.
US-led sanctions are suffocating and some Afghans are using cryptocurrencies to survive. Drug use is soaring while the Taliban are making money from the ephedra shrub, a key ingredient in the hugely expanding methamphetamine industry.
The only way to credibly address the country’s plight is to engage with and recognise the Taliban with certain conditions around human rights. The fact that there’s no discussion in London, Washington or Canberra about reparations for a failed, 20-year war speaks volumes about how the West views Afghanistan.
A former senior Afghan government official who used to advise President Ghani tells me that following the withdrawal of all Western forces, China and Pakistani army officers are currently leading the charge to secure Afghan minerals with the Taliban auctioning mines for quick financial return.
Talc, coal and cat’s eye nephite are the three resources being prioritised.
The country’s resources are a precious asset that must never again be the plaything of corrupt locals and foreigners.
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Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist, author, film-maker and co-founder of Declassified Australia. His next book, out in 2023, is on how Israel’s occupation has gone global.
Featured image: Archeologists excavating Buddhist relics in 2011 before the Mes Aynak copper mine was due to open (Photo: Jerome Starkey / Creative Commons)
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According to numbers released by the US government, consumer prices have increased by 7.5 percent in the past year, the steepest increase since 1982. The actual price increases are even worse than the government numbers suggest, given that the “official” statistics are manipulated to understate the real rate of price increases. According to John Williams of ShadowStats, prices have actually increased by around 15 percent over the past year.
The fact that prices remain at historically high levels shows that inflation is far from “transitory,” as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had described it. The continuing inflation has led the Federal Reserve Board to suggest the Fed will start increasing interest rates earlier than previously announced. The Fed may also break with its practice of only raising rates by 25 basis points at a time and increase rates by increments of up to 50 basis points. However, the increases the Fed is discussing would still leave interest rates at historic lows. Thus, such interest rate increases would do little or nothing to ease the pain rising prices cause for average consumers.
Most policy “experts” and politicians, including President Biden, support interest rate increases to deal with inflation. However, some progressives oppose raising rates. Opponents of rate increases fear that increasing interest rates will slow economic growth, increase unemployment, and depress wages. These progressives believe the old fallacy that workers benefit from easy money. The truth is workers are inflation’s main victims.
Workers may see their nominal pay (pay unadjusted for inflation) increase while the Fed-produced price increases cause real wages to plummet. That is certainly the case today. In contrast, the Federal Reserve’s money creation benefits crony capitalists who receive the new money created by the Fed before the injection of new money causes prices to rise. This increases the elite’s purchasing power, furthering income inequality.
The Federal Reserve’s creation of new money does more than erode the value of the currency. It also artificially lowers interest rates, which are the price of money. This distorts the signals sent to market actors, leading to investment decisions that do not reflect the real condition of the market. The result is a temporary boom, followed by a bust. Workers who find new jobs in the boom lose those jobs in the bust. These workers are then not just unemployed. They are also often saddled with unmanageable debt incurred during the low interest rate, easy money phase of the business cycle.
Progressives could help workers by joining the movement for market-based money. Free-market money will be safe from government manipulation, and thus its value will remain stable. A step toward restoring a free-market monetary system is letting the people know the truth about the Federal Reserve by passing Audit the Fed. Another step is legalizing alternative currencies by repealing legal tender laws and ending all capital gains taxes on precious metals and cryptocurrencies. Congress must also begin to cut spending, starting by making major cuts in our 750 billion dollars military budget and ending all corporate welfare.
Fiat money benefits financial and political elites at the expense of working people whose standard of living is eroded by Federal Reserve actions. As a Texas labor leader once told me, “Gold has always been the working man’s friend.” I would add that fiat money is the worker’s foe.
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Business is booming at funeral homes across the U.S. as death rates creep up, particularly among young, working-age individuals
Ex-Blackrock fund manager Ed Dowd has been analyzing data about mortality rates before and after COVID-19 shots became widespread, and found that death rates worsened in 2021 — after the shots became prevalent — compared to 2020
Insurance companies are seeing increases in payouts for death and disability; Lincoln National stated death claims have increased 13.7% year over year and 54% in quarter 4 compared to 2019
Scott Davison, the CEO of insurance company OneAmerica, reported the death rate for 18- to 64-year-olds has risen 40% compared to before the pandemic
A study by Dr. Peter McCullough and colleagues suggests people who’ve received COVID-19 shots may have damage to their innate immune system that’s leading to a form of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
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Business is booming at funeral homes across the U.S., as death rates creep up, particularly among young, working-age individuals.1 Ex-Blackrock fund manager Ed Dowd has been analyzing data about mortality rates before and after COVID-19 shots became widespread, and found that death rates worsened in 2021 — after the shots became prevalent — compared to 2020.
As reported by Zero Hedge, Dowd pointed out “a spike in mortality among younger, working-age individuals coincided with vaccine mandates. The spike in younger deaths peaked in Q3 2021 when COVID deaths were extremely low (but rising into the end of September).”2
Dowd also reported data from public funeral home company Carriage Services, which announced a 28% increase in September 2021 compared to September 2020, while August had a 13% increase. He tweeted:3,4
“Business has been quite good since the introduction of the vaccines & the stock was up 106% in 2021. Curious no? Guys this is shocking as 89% of Funeral homes are private in US. We are seeing the tip of the iceberg.”
Life Insurance Payouts on the Rise
Insurance companies are also seeing increases in payouts for death and disability. Dowd tweeted February 1, 2022, that financial insurance company Unum reported a 9% increase in their benefit ratio (payouts versus premiums) in their life segment.5 Dowd tweeted:6
“In 2021 they saw a 17.4% increase vs 2020. This is higher than the 13.3% increase vs 2019. So the higher payouts in 21 are occurring with a miracle vaccine & less virulent strains … In 2019 the unit had $266 million profit, last year a profit of $82 million & this year a loss of -$192 million. A swing of $458 million lower over 2 years. Important to remember these are employed working age folks.”
Scott Davison, the CEO of Indiana-based insurance company OneAmerica, also reported disturbing statistics — the death rate for 18- to 64-year-olds has risen 40% compared to before the pandemic.7
“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” Davison said, adding, “Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic. So 40% is just unheard of.” Further, most of the deaths are not due to COVID-19. He said:8
“What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.”
Disability Claims and Hospital Death Rates Rise
Disability claims, initially short-term claims and now long-term claims, have also seen an “uptick.” At a news conference where Davison spoke, Brian Tabor, president of the Indiana Hospital Association, confirmed that hospitals are also seeing widespread ill health and rising death rates. Zero Hedge reported:9
“Brian Tabor, the president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said that hospitals across the state are being flooded with patients ‘with many different conditions,’ saying ‘unfortunately, the average Hoosiers’ health has declined during the pandemic.’
In a follow-up call, he said he did not have a breakdown showing why so many people in the state are being hospitalized — for what conditions or ailments. But he said the extraordinarily high death rate quoted by Davison matched what hospitals in the state are seeing. ‘What it confirmed for me is it bore out what we’re seeing on the front end …’ he said.”
Other insurance companies citing higher mortality rates include Hartford Insurance Group, which announced mortality increased 32% from 2019 and 20% from 2020 prior to the shots. Lincoln National also stated death claims have increased 13.7% year over year and 54% in quarter 4 compared to 2019.10 Dowd tweeted:11
“Randy Frietag CFO just explained that in 2021 the share of young people dying from covid doubled in the back half of the year & that’s driven the result for Lincoln & its peers. He cited 40% in 3Q and 35% in 4Q were below the age of 65 … Mandates are killing folks … This shouldn’t be happening with miracle vaccines in a working age population period and a mild Omicron.”
As ZeroHedge noted, what we need to know from the insurance companies is what the leading causes of death were for 2020 and 2021, as well as how many received COVID-19 shots among those who died.
It continued, “Reinsurance Group of America, for example, reported a profit in Q4 2020 when the most of the population was unvaccinated and amid a deadlier strain of Covid-19, yet they registered a loss in Q4 2021 with more than 60% of the country fully vaccinated (and around 75% who have received at least one dose).”12
In other words, they paid out more in death and disability benefits in late 2021, after the shots became widespread, then they did at the peak of the pandemic, when no shots (or only a small number) had been issued.
Deaths Keep Rising Despite Mass Injection Campaign
Around the globe, it’s become clear that excess deaths continue to explode, despite the mass injection campaign that was supposed to save us. In the week ending November 12, 2021, the U.K. reported 2,047 more deaths than occurred during the same period between 2015 and 2019.
However, COVID-19 cannot be entirely to blame, as it was listed on the death certificates for only 1,197 people.13 Further, since July, non-COVID deaths in the U.K. have been higher than the weekly average in the five years prior to the pandemic.
Heart disease and strokes appear to be behind many of the excess deaths, with Financial Times reporting, “The new phase of excess deaths raises the possibility that since the summer more people have been losing their lives as a result of strains on the NHS or lack of early diagnosis of serious illness …”14
On Twitter, Silicon Valley software engineer Ben M. (@USMortality) similarly revealed that in a 13-week period alone, about 107,700 seniors died above the normal rate, despite a 98.7% vaccination rate.15 In another example, he used data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, census.gov and his own calculations to show excess deaths rising in Vermont even as the majority of adults have been injected.
“Vermont had 71% of their entire population vaccinated by June 1, 2021,” he tweeted. “That’s 83% of their adult population, yet they are seeing the most excess deaths now since the pandemic!”16
An investigation by The Exposé, using official data from NHS and the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), also found that deaths among teenagers increased 47% since they started getting COVID-19 shots.17 Not only that, but deaths from COVID-19 also went up among 15- to 19-year-olds after the shots were rolled out for this age group.
A study by board-certified internist and cardiologist, and editor of two medical journals, Dr. Peter McCullough and colleagues suggests people who’ve received COVID-19 shots may have damage to their innate immune system that’s leading to a form of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.18
The mRNA COVID-19 shots use genetically modified mRNA encoding spike proteins. This results in mRNA being hidden from cellular defenses, “promote[s] a longer biological half-life for the proteins, and provoke[s] higher overall spike protein production,” the study suggests.19
The researchers state that experimental and observational evidence show that the human immune response to COVID-19 shots is very different than the response induced by exposure to SARS-CoV-2:20
“[T]he genetic modifications introduced by the vaccine are likely the source of these differential responses. In this paper, we present the evidence that vaccination, unlike natural infection, induces a profound impairment in type I interferon signaling, which has diverse adverse consequences to human health.
We explain the mechanism by which immune cells release into the circulation large quantities of exosomes containing spike protein along with critical microRNAs that induce a signaling response in recipient cells at distant sites.
We also identify potential profound disturbances in regulatory control of protein synthesis and cancer surveillance. These disturbances are shown to have a potentially direct causal link to neurodegenerative disease, myocarditis, immune thrombocytopenia, Bell’s palsy, liver disease, impaired adaptive immunity, increased tumorigenesis, and DNA damage.”
The study includes evidence from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to support its hypothesis. While health officials refuse to acknowledge that COVID-19 shots have caused deaths, clinically trained reviewers analyzed a sample of COVID-19 vaccine deaths reported in VAERS and found that only 14% of them were certainly not due to the vaccine.21
This means that the remaining 86% may have been related to the shots. Further, while it’s often stated that VAERS reports are made by laypeople, and therefore suggested to be unreliable, the review found that at least 67% of the COVID-19 vaccine death reports they analyzed were made by health service employees.22
Overall, McCullough and colleagues warn that COVID-19 shots subvert innate immunity, which could reduce the ability to combat future infections. Further, once damaged by the shots, the immune system may be less able to detect and prevent malignant transformation within cells.
They also suggest that exposure to spike protein-containing exosomes and mRNAs may induce an inflammatory cascade that further leads to disease. In concluding that COVID-19 shots are not positive contributors to public health, the study notes:23
“In the end, we are not exaggerating to say that billions of lives are at stake. We call on the public health institutions to demonstrate, with evidence, why the issues discussed in this paper are not relevant to public health, or to acknowledge that they are and to act accordingly.
Until our public health institutions do what is right in this regard, we encourage all individuals to make their own health care decisions with this information as a contributing factor in those decisions.”
Can You Lessen the Potential Damage?
Those considering COVID-19 shots must carefully weigh the evidence of risks before making a decision. But if you’ve already been injected and want to reduce your risk of any potential complications, there are a few basic strategies I recommend:
Measure your vitamin D level and take enough vitamin D orally (typically about 8,000 units/day for most adults) and/or get sensible sun exposure to make sure your level is 60 to 80 ng/ml (150 to 2000 nmol/l).
Eliminate all vegetable (seed) oils in your diet, which involves eliminating nearly all processed foods and most meals in restaurants unless you can be sure the chef is cooking only with butter. Avoid any sauces or salad dressings in restaurants, as they are loaded with seed oils. Also avoid chicken and pork, as they are rich in linoleic acid, the omega-6 fat that nearly everyone consumes far too much of and contributes to oxidative stress.
Consider taking around 500 milligrams a day of NAC, as it helps prevent blood clots and is a precursor for your body to produce the important antioxidant glutathione.
Consider taking fibrinolytic enzymes, which digest the fibrin that leads to blood clots, strokes and pulmonary embolisms. The dose is typically two, twice a day, but must be taken on an empty stomach, either an hour before or two hours after a meal. Otherwise, the enzymes will digest your food and not the fibrin in the blood clot.
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As the United States weighs more involvement in the growing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, some of the largest weapons companies in the world — Raytheon and Lockheed Martin — are openly telling their investors that tensions between the countries are good for business. And General Dynamics, meanwhile, is boasting about the past returns the company has seen as a result of such disputes.
The statements come as the U.S. government escalates arms shipments to Ukraine, among them the Javelin missiles that are a joint venture between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. House Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to quickly push through a bill that would significantly increase U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, and impose new sanctions on Russia.
Anti-war campaigners warn that U.S. escalation, amid renewed tensions between Ukraine and Russia, could bring dire consequences, and spill into a much larger and more protracted war. “As we are shipping advanced weaponry to the Ukrainian military, the Biden administration has signaled that U.S. military advisors will continue to stay in the country,” Cavan Kharrazian, progressive foreign policy campaigner for the advocacy organization Demand Progress, tells In These Times. “Who will most likely set up and teach the Ukrainian army how to use these weapons systems? The U.S. military.”
Among those openly discussing the boon to profits is Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes. During a January 25appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” he was asked, “Do we have anything that would make it so if you inserted 8,000 American soldiers into Ukraine, they can stop 103,000 Russian soldiers?”
In his reply, Hayes touted the role the company could play in arming U.S. allies.
“Obviously we have some defensive weapons systems that we could supply which could be helpful, like the patriot missile system.” He went on to add, “We’ve got the technologies to help in these engagements, whether it’s patriot systems, some of the radar systems.”
Hayes suggested that Raytheon’s arms could offer a deterrent that helps prevent war.
“So at the end of the day, we have a strong defense as a deterrent to try to prevent things like this from spinning out of control. So the hope is that we don’t end up with a hot war, and if we do, it will be costly on both sides.”
If it sounds like Hayes is using mounting tensions as an advertising opportunity for his company, this may not be far fetched. On a January 25 earnings call (which was noted on Twitter by Nick Cleveland-Stout of the Quincy Institute), Hayes included “tensions in Eastern Europe” among the factors that Raytheon stands to benefit from. He said:
“We just have to look to last week where we saw the drone attack in the UAE, which have attacked some of their other facilities. And of course, the tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.”
Raytheon isn’t alone in its projections. Among those noting the likely boost to profits is Jim Taiclet, the chairman, president and CEO of Lockheed Martin. In a January 25earnings call, he told investors,
“If you look at the evolving threat level and the approach that some countries are taking, including North Korea, Iran and through some of its proxies in Yemen and elsewhere, and especially Russia today, these days, and China, there’s renewed great power competition that does include national defense and threats to it.”
This “great power competition,” he suggested to investors, bodes more business for the company. Taiclet says,
“And the history of the United States is when those environments evolve, that we do not sit by and just watch it happen. So I can’t talk to a number, but I do think, and I’m concerned personally that the threat is advancing, and we need to be able to meet it.”
The statements come from leaders of an industry that exerts tremendous influence in Washington, employing an average of 700 lobbyists per year over the past five years, or more than one lobbyist per member of Congress, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project.
Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics are also funders of the influential think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies, which has been encouraging the United States to take immediate action, including militarily, in the event of a Russian invasion.
“Everyone in D.C. knows that weapons manufacturers are helping skew U.S. policy towards militarism, but they usually try to be less obvious,” Erik Sperling, executive director of Just Foreign Policy, an anti-war organization, told In These Times. “They are cashing in on tensions over Ukraine as the U.S. pours weapons into the region.”
General Dynamics, meanwhile, has noted that past tensions have increased demand for the company’s products. On a January 26earnings call, the company was asked,
“The Ukraine and everything going on with Russia has been in the headlines. What does that mean for your international Land Systems business, particularly in Eastern Europe?”
CEO Phebe Novakovic replied,
“Well, for some time now, the Eastern European demand for combat vehicles has been at elevated level.”
Novakovic declined, at least explicitly, to speculate about future profits:
“But,” she continued, “I have to tell you that speculation about the considerable tension in Eastern Europe and any subsequent impact on budgets is just till advised given the high threat environment. So, we are hopeful for a peaceful resolution.”
While Boeing did not directly reference Ukraine and Russia, in a January 26 earnings call, Brian West, executive vice president and chief financial officer, said that support among both Republicans and Democrats for high levels of military spending are helping the company’s profits.
“In the defense and space markets, we’re seeing stable demand,” West said. “We continue to monitor the federal budget process in the U.S. and see strong bipartisan support for national security, including Boeing products and services. While governments around the world remain focused on Covid-19, security spending remains a priority given global threats.”
But Kharrazian warns,
“While it may not be profitable for arms manufacturers, engagement in good-faith, realistic diplomacy is what will benefit the region as a whole and mitigate unnecessary and potentially catastrophic conflict.”
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When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.
When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government’s use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging (articles about identical tactics from regimes supported by the West — from Riyadh to Cairo — are much rarer). That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable.
But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression. Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West’s official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even vaguely treasonous.
The implicit guarantor of this comforting framework is democracy. Western countries, according to this mythology, can never be as repressive as their enemies because Western governments are at least elected democratically. This assurance, superficially appealing though it may be, completely collapses with the slightest critical scrutiny. The premise of the U.S. Constitution and others like it is that majoritarian despotism is dangerous in the extreme; the Bill of Rights consists of little more than limitations imposed on the tyrannical measures majorities might seek to democratically enact (the expression of ideas cannot be criminalized even if majorities want them to be; religious freedom cannot be abolished even if large majorities demand it; life and liberty cannot be deprived without due process even if nine of out ten citizens favor doing so, etc.). More inconveniently still, many of the foreign leaders we are instructed to view as despots are popularor even every bit as democratically elected as our own beloved freedom-safeguarding officials.
As potent as this mythological framework is, reinforced by large media corporations over so many decades, it cannot withstand the increasingly glaring use of precisely these despotic tactics in the West. Watching Justin Trudeau — the sweet, well-mannered, well-raised good-boy prince of one of the West’s nicest countries featuring such a pretty visage (even on the numerous occasions when marred by blackface) — invoke and then harshly impose dubious emergency, civil-liberties-denying powers is just the latest swing of the hammer causing this Western sculpture to crumble. In sum, you are required by Western propaganda to treat the two images below as fundamentally different; indeed, huge numbers of people in the West vehemently denounce the one on the left while enthusiastically applauding the one on the right. Such brittle mythology can be sustained only for so long:
Reuters, Aug. 8, 2019 (left); BBC, Feb. 15, 2022 (right)
The decade-long repression of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, standing alone, demonstrates how grave neoliberal attacks on dissent have become. Many are aware of key parts of this repression — particularly the decade-long effective detention of Assange — but have forgotten or, due to media malfeasance, never knew several of the most extreme aspects.
While the Obama DOJ under Attorney General Eric Holderfailed to find evidence of criminality after convening a years-long Grand Jury investigation, the then-Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), succeeded in pressuring financial services companies such as MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and Bank of America to terminate WikiLeaks’ accounts and thus banish them from the financial system, choking off their ability to receive funds from supporters or pay their bills. Lieberman and his neocon allies also pressured Amazon to remove WikiLeaks from its hosting services, causing the whistleblower group to be temporarily offline. All of that succeeded in crippling WikiLeaks’ ability to operate despite being charged with no crime: indeed, as the DOJ admitted, it could not prove that the group committed any crimes, yet this extra-legal punishment was nonetheless meted out.
Those tactics pioneered against WikiLeaks — excluding dissenters from the financial system and coercing tech companies to deny them internet access without a whiff of due process — have now become standard weapons. Trudeau’s government seizes and freezes bank accounts with no judicial process. The “charity” fundraising site GoFundMe first blocked the millions of dollars raised for the truckers and announced it would redirect those funds to other charities, then refunded the donations when people pointed out, rightly, that their original plan amounted to a form of stealing. When an alternative fundraising site, GiveSendGo, raised millions more for the truckers, Canadian courts blocked its distribution. And it was just over a year ago when Democratic politicians such as Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) successfully pressured tech monopolies Google and Apple to remove Parler from its stores and then pressured Amazon to remove the social media site from its servers, at exactly the time the social media alternative became the single most-downloaded app in America. (This morning we published a new video report on Rumble that traces the emergence of this new anti-dissent tactic first pioneered on WikiLeaks and now widely used against dissent generally: “Banishment from the Financial System: the War on Dissent”).
That the U.S. and UK Governments have kept Assange himself — one of the most effective dissidents in the West in decades — in a cage for years with no end in sight by itself highlights how repressive they are. But the precipitating cause of Assange’s apprehension from the Ecuadorian Embassy has been forgotten by many and it, too, illustrates the same disturbing trend.
In 2017, mass protests erupted in Barcelona as part of a movement in Catalonia for more autonomy from the Madrid-based Spanish government, culminating in a referendum for autonomy on October 1. In 2019, even larger and more intense protests materialized. The methods used to crush the protests shocked many, as such domestic aggression had been rarely seen for years in western Europe. Spain treated the activists not as domestic protesters exercising their civic rights but as terrorists, seditionists and insurrectionists. Violence was used to sweep up Catalans in mass arrests, and their leaders were charged with terrorism and sedition and given lengthy prison sentences.
About the crackdown, a protest video proclaimed that Spain had just witnessed “a degree of force never seen before in a European member state.” While a fact-check by the BBC failed to affirm that maximalist claim, it documented multiple grave attacks by the police on protesters in Catalonia. Meanwhile, “Spanish police engaged in excessive force when confronting demonstrators in Catalonia during a disputed referendum, using batons to hit non-threatening protesters and causing multiple injuries,” Human Rights Watched concluded, adding that though the protesters were “largely peaceful,” some “hundreds were left injured, some seriously. Catalonia’s Health Department estimated on October 2 that 893 people had reported injuries to the authorities.”
From the Ecuadorian Embassy, Assange, in both 2017 and then again in 2019, used WikiLeaks’ platforms to vocally publicize and denounce the actions of the Spanish government — not to express support for Catalonian independence but to denounce the civil liberties assaults used to crush the protest movement. Assange made multiple media appearances to object to the use of violence by the state police, and WikiLeaks’ Twitter account, virtually on a daily basis, was publicizing videos and other testimonial evidence of the crackdown.
It was Assange’s reporting on and denouncing of violence by the Spanish government against its own citizens that was the final cause of Ecuador’s decision to rescind its asylum. The Spanish government made clear to Ecuador how indignant they were that Assange was publicizing their abuses. It was just several months after the first protest movement that Ecuador announced it was cutting off Assange’s internet access, claiming the WikiLeaks founder had been “interfer[ing] with other states” — meaning speaking out on the civil liberties abuses by Madrid. And it was the following year that Ecuador, pressured by the U.S., UK and Spain, withdrew its asylum protection and allowed the London police to enter its embassy, arrest Assange, and then put him in the high-security Belmarsh prison where he has remained ever since despite being convicted of no crime other than a misdemeanor count of bail-jumping. All of this reflects, and stems from, a clear and growing Western intolerance for dissent.
This last decade of history is crucial to understand the dissent-eliminating framework that has been constructed and implemented in the West. This framework has culminated, thus far, with the stunning multi-pronged attacks on Canadian truckers by the Trudeau government. But it has been a long time in the making, and it is inevitable that it will find still-more extreme expressions.
It is, after all, based in the central recognition that there is mass, widespread anger and even hatred toward the neoliberal ruling class throughout the West. Trump, Brexit and the rise of far-right parties in places where their empowerment was previously unthinkable — including Germany and France — is unmistakable proof of that. Rather than sacrifice some of the benefits of inequality that have generated much of that rage or placate or appease it with symbolic concessions, Western neoliberal elites have instead opted for force, a system that crushes all forms of dissent as soon as they emerge in anything resembling an effective, meaningful or potent form.
So many of the controversies over the last decade, often analyzed in isolation, have been devoted to this goal. The pervasive surveillance systems constructed by the West — revealed during the Snowden reporting but only partially reined in at best since then — are crucial tools, as surveillance powers always are, for monitoring and thus stifling dissent. We have now arrived at the point where the U.S. Government and its security state is officially and explicitly clear that it regards the greatest national security threat not as a foreign power such as China or Russia, and not as non-state actors such as Al Qaeda or ISIS, but rather “domestic extremists.” For years, this has been the unyielding message of the DHS, FBI, CIA, NSA and DOJ: our primary enemies are not foreign but are our fellow citizens who have embraced ideologies we regard as extremist.
This new escalation of repression depends upon a narrative framework. Those who harbor dissenting ideologies — and particularly those who do not embrace that dissent passively but instead take action to advocate, promote and spread it — are not merely dissenters. The term “dissent,” in Western democracies, connotes legitimacy, so that label must be denied them. They are instead domestic extremists, domestic terrorists, seditionists, traitors, insurrections. Applying terms of criminality renders justifiable any subsequent acts of repression: we are trained to accept that core liberties are forfeited upon the commission of crimes.
What is most notable, though, is that this alleged criminality is not adjudicated through judicial proceedings — with all the accompanying protections of judges, juries, rules of evidence and requirements of due process — but simply by decree. When financial services companies “choked” WikiLeaks back in 2010, they justified it by pointing to the government’s claim that the group was engaged in crimes and therefore in violation of the rules of the platforms (“‘MasterCard rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal,’ spokesman Chris Monteiro said” when explaining its shutting of WikiLeaks’ account). The same was done to 1/6 protesters who have been punished in countless ways prior to conviction. And now Canadian truckers have been magically transformed into criminals without the inconvenience of a trial; “‘we now have evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation, with police reports of violence and other unlawful activity,’ GoFundMe said” when explaining why it shut down fund-raising accounts.
Last June, PayPal announced a new partnership with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), whereby the liberal activist group would identify individuals and groups whose ideology is, in the eyes of the ADL, “extremist.” This would enable not only PayPal but financial services companies around the world to then terminate their accounts and exclude them from the financial system. Clearly, once the ADL declares a person or group to be “extremist” and PayPal banishes them, no other mainstream corporation will want to be accused of hosting them. As PayPal’s founding Chief Operating Officer David Sacks warned at the time the partnership was announced, the purpose of this program is “shutting down people and organizations that express views that are entirely lawful, even if they are unpopular in Silicon Valley.” Comparing this to the spate of unified Silicon Valley censorship that has erupted over the last several years, Sacks explained why this power is so alarming:
As for the notion of building your own PayPal or Facebook: because of their gigantic network effects and economies of scale, there is no viable alternative when the whole industry works together to deny you access.
Kicking people off social media deprives them of the right to speak in our increasingly online world. Locking them out of the financial economy is worse: It deprives them of the right to make a living. We have seen how cancel culture can obliterate one’s ability to earn an income, but now the cancelled may find themselves without a way to pay for goods and services. Previously, cancelled employees who would never again have the opportunity to work for a Fortune 500 company at least had the option to go into business for themselves. But if they cannot purchase equipment, pay employees, or receive payment from clients and customers, that door closes on them, too.
This is why it is so imperative for the Democratic Party and their media allies to describe the four-hour riot at the Capitol on January 6 as an insurrection and attempted coup. If those are mere protesters or even just rioters, then all the standard protections and legal safeguards apply to them, as liberals demanded be applied to protect BLM and Antifa protesters, even ones who used violence. If, however, they are part of a broader insurrectionary movement — an ongoing attempt to overthrow the U.S. Government — then they are elevated from ordinary political adversaries into a faction of sustained criminality, and anything and everything, from censorship and detention to extra-legal means of banishment such as no-fly lists and exclusion from the financial system, becomes justified, even necessary. (Note that such repressive tactics, cheered by liberals and even many on the left, have often swept up anti-establishment voices on the left, such as when PayPal banned Antifa-linked individuals along with Proud Boys members, and when animal rights activists are targeted for persecution by the FBI along with Oath Keepers, but such is the inevitable outcome of censorship and dissent-repressive schemes).
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Russian President Vladimir Putin officially announced on February 21 Moscow’s recognition of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). This was to the shock, annoyance and frustration of the Western bloc as the move once again divided their reactions and responses to the Ukraine crisis. For now, though, there has been no self-reflection as to why Putin was left with no other choice but to recognize the LPR and DPR.
Following Putin’s announcement, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and President of the European Council Charles Michel sent out near identical tweets claiming that the recognition of the LPR and DPR “is a blatant violation of international law, the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the Minsk agreement.” Both tweets added that “the EU and its partners will react with unity, firmness and with determination in solidarity with Ukraine.”
However, shortly after these tweets were made, the EU announced that it will not immediately impose sanctions on Russia as it would rather wait and see if there is any invasion. This was in stark contrast to a seething French President Emmanuel Macron, who immediately demanded targeted sanctions as he likely feels embarrassed and frustrated that Moscow’s recognition occurred a day after it was announced he had, in principle at least, secured a meeting between Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden.
None-the-less, the current impasse regarding Ukraine and the recognition of the Donbas republics is a crisis that the EU never made a serious attempt of resolving. Not wanting a repeat of the Cyprus debacle which remains unresolved nearly half a century after Turkey’s invasion, Moscow was left with no choice but to recognize the republics to ensure security for civilians in the face of an ever-increasing Ukrainian military threat.
In fact, even the disjointed European response to Putin’s action once again demonstrates that the EU is not a serious institution in foreign policy matters. Although Macron was certainly furious, it is noted that he specifically called for “targeted” sanctions, whilst his Italian and German colleagues are already lobbing for potential sanctions to exempt the energy sector. This suggests that the EU will impose sanctions mostly out of “principle” (according to their Western liberal ideology) to show tokenistic support for Kiev, and not because they actually want to. If this is the case, it can be expected that any sanctions will be weak.
Washington, despite its never-ending rhetoric of an imminent Russian invasion, had a Biden administration official meekly say that the presence of Russian troops in Donestsk and Lugansk alone may not lead to the “swift and severe” sanctions that the White House has been warning about for months now. As much as it can be officially denied, US officials know that Ukrainian forces have refused to end their violence and extremism. It is recalled that an ethnic Greek was killed only last week by Ukrainian soldiers for speaking Russian – this is just one example of thousands of non-Ukrainians being persecuted, tortured or killed by Kiev’s racist forces.
The reluctance so far to apply sanctions has also brought forward a new debate in the West. POLITICO quoted a US official saying: “Russian troops moving into Donbas would not itself be a new step. Russia has had forces in the Donbas for the past eight years.” According to the outlet, the British government and foreign policy analysts (i.e. war hawks) view this idea with contempt.
In effect, even the US with all its bombastic and aggressive rhetoric against Russia is hesitant to apply sanctions in the current situation. This is the appropriate course of action since it was the West that failed to push and demand Ukrainian President Volodimyr Zelensky to implement the Minsk agreement to resolve the crisis in Donbas. Rather, the EU as an institution enabled Ukraine’s provocations despite calls from individual member states like Greece to include Russia in the European security architecture (correction to here) and resolve the Donbas crisis on the basis of the Minsk agreement.
Had the Minsk agreement been implemented by Ukraine, Zelensky would not be in a position where Lugansk and Donetsk have been permanently lost from Kiev’s authority. Instead, Zelensky opted to continue with the aggressive Ukrainization of all minority groups in the country (with European silence). This left Putin no choice but to recognize the republics to ensure the security of all Russian-speakers, which are of all ethnic backgrounds. If Putin had not made this step, non-Ukrainian minorities would continue to be targeted by Kiev’s racist military and paramilitary forces without recourse.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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Russia is unwaveringly committed to its humanitarian, political, and security principles, which indicates that it just drew a red line in Donbass that neither the US nor its Ukrainian proxies should dare to cross.
Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya defended his country’s recognition of Donbass’ breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) as independent states in a speech before the Security Council on Monday. It concisely summarized the reasons that President Putin gave in his nearly hour-long address to the Russian people. In short, he explained that Russia gave post-“Maidan” Ukraine’s US-supported coup authorities the benefit of the doubt that they’d implement the UNSC-backed Minsk Accords, only to be proven wrong after Kiev once again recently initiated another round of civil war hostilities last weekend.
This position wasn’t naïve like some critics claimed at the time but was driven by the principled desire to encourage dialogue between the warring sides in accordance with Russia’s position towards all other conflicts across the world like in Syria, Yemen, etc. Ambassador Nebenzya also drew attention to the fact that the DPR and LPR already declared independence prior to the Minsk Accords so Russia’s recognition thereof doesn’t change the fact that Kiev is still obligated to implement them since Moscow isn’t officially regarded as a party to that conflict. This hints at a grander strategic end game for Ukraine than what Russia had previously envisioned as explained by the author in his latest analysis here.
It’s beyond the scope of the present piece that discuss it so intrepid readers should review it if they’re interested. Moving along, Russia’s top representative to the UN then touched upon the US’ destructive role in sabotaging the Ukrainian peace process. Ambassador Nebenzya blamed it for encouraging Kiev to eschew its international legal obligations to enter into talks with the separatists aimed at eventually granting their regions a constitutionally enshrined “special status” per the Minsk Accords. The influx of foreign arms and instructors emboldened Kiev to dispatch 120,000 troops along the line of contact and ultimately initiate last week’s third round of civil war hostilities that prompted Russia’s recognition.
Nevertheless, Ambassador Nebenzya is still cautiously optimistic that everything can be pulled back from the brink of a wider war so long as the US-led West finally deters Kiev from continuing its aggression against the Donbass Republics whose security is now guaranteed by Russia following the new military pact between them and Moscow. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seems to have already realized the hopelessness of directly attacking Russian forces in his country’s former territories after telling the nation on Tuesday that he considers a “full-blown war” between the neighboring countries to be unlikely.
Should he actually be sincere, which remains to be seen, then that would strongly suggest that his American patrons ordered their proxies to stand down, at least for the time being. In his final remarks, Ambassador Nebenzya reaffirmed the immediate humanitarian motivations behind Russia’s decision to recognize the Donbass Republics, defiantly telling the US-led West that Moscow’s “desire to save those lives…is more important than all threats of yours.” This confirms that Russia is unwaveringly committed to its humanitarian, political, and security principles, which indicates that it just drew a red line in Donbass that neither the US nor its Ukrainian proxies should dare to cross.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new federal decree this Monday, February 22, recognizing the independence of the People’s Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk, which since 2014 have been fighting against the ethnic persecution promoted by the Ukrainian armed forces in the region of Donbass. With this attitude, the Russian Federation changes its way of seeing the conflict, no longer analyzing it as a civil war, but as a confrontation between different national states.
“I give it necessary to make a decision that should have been made long ago – to immediately recognize the sovereignty and independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic”. These were the words of Vladimir Putin when he signed the decree recognizing Lugansk and Donetsk as sovereign states. The move was applauded by the population in the Donbass region, which for eight years have been waiting for international recognition of their freedom. As expected, the measure was immediately supported and followed by other non-aligned countries, such as Cuba, Serbia, Venezuela, among others, which significantly expands the possibilities of insertion of the sovereign republics of the Donbass in the international scenario, both from a political and diplomatic perspective as well as from a commercial one.
During his speech, Putin emphasized that Ukraine is part of Russian history and that the formation of the Ukrainian state was due to a political initiative by Moscow during Soviet times, which makes it unjustifiable for Ukraine to promote any kind of persecution against Russians in its territory, making legitimate the revolt of the Russian-speaking population, for which political separation from the post-Maidan genocidal government became the only possible option. These were some of his words in this regard:
“Ukraine is not just a neighbor to us, but an inherent part of our history, culture and spiritual space. These are our comrades…our family, people we have blood and family ties with (…) Modern Ukraine was completely created by Russia, more precisely by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process was started immediately after the 1917 Revolution (…) As a result of Bolshevik policy, Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine’. He is its author and architect. This is fully confirmed in archival documents, including hard Leninist directives on the Donbass, which was literally squeezed into Ukraine”.
In addition, the president also commented on the rumors that Ukraine would be resuming a military nuclear program and reaffirmed Moscow’s official position that an integration of Kiev to the western military alliance (NATO) means a frontal threat to the Russian state, which cannot be accepted without reaction. In this sense, it is possible to understand that there is a central political reason for the late recognition of the Lugansk and Donetsk republics: the initial plan was to keep them integrated into Ukraine, but the situation became intolerable, and the recognition of independence became inevitable, being a reaction to the endless maneuvers of Ukrainian forces.
It is a major change in strategy on the part of Russia, but which still preserves the country’s initial focus, that is to avoid any military incursion into Ukrainian territory. Until now, Russia had dealt with the war in Donbass as a civil conflict, supporting popular militias only through diplomatic means. This was due to a view of Lugansk and Donetsk as parts of the Ukrainian territory, which needed to be integrated into Kiev under basic rules of coexistence and guarantee of humanitarian protection.
As the situation escalated, Russian aid to the republics became an unavoidable necessity, but sending troops to the region would promote an “invasion” of Ukrainian sovereign space. So, Moscow acted strategically to maintain the legality of its actions and benefit the population of Donbass: it recognized both republics, which also allowed the deployment of peacekeeping troops with the consent of local governments. In other words, Russia found a way to intervene in the conflict without promoting an invasion of Ukraine. The local militias, who until now had few resources to face the violence of the Ukrainian state, will have the support of the Russian armed forces to prevent further attacks and protect the civilian population.
Russia has not committed any illegal act under international law. The United Nations permits the use of military force for the self-defense of others. With the recognition of the new states, Moscow has the right to protect them from any aggression.
In fact, Ukraine, influenced by NATO and the US, believed that it would provoke an invasion of its territory with its aggressions in the Donbass, starting a war with Russia in which it hoped to receive Western support. But this did not happen, as Russia found a way to help the republics legally and without territorial invasion. And, of course, NATO will not intervene to prevent this mission from taking place. So once again Ukraine has been deluded and will now deal alone with its own mistakes.
On Russia’s part, despite the apparent change in plans, the central focus of Russian strategy for the Donbass remains the same: to neutralize the conflict without incursions against Ukraine.
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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
