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***

A fortnight before the killing of ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi in Syria’s northwest Idlib enclave in a Delta Force raid on Feb. 3, hundreds of heavily armed ISIS militants allegedly attempted an audacious prison break in the Kurdish-held northeastern city al-Hasakah on Jan. 20, ferociously freeing hundreds of prisoners.

High-security al-Sina’a prison is one of several detention centers in Syria’s northeast guarded by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The facility hosted 3,000 ISIS militants who were captured by the Kurds after the fall of the ISIS caliphate in 2019.

The ensuing ten-day manhunt to re-capture the escaped inmates and subdue the insurrection inside the prison lasted until Jan. 30, just two days before the killing of the ISIS leader. The death toll in the clearance operation was 500: 121 fatalities among the SDF, 374 suspected members of the Islamic State and four civilians, according to SDF sources.

Regarding the killing of the ISIS chief in the outskirts of Atmeh across the Turkish border, just 15 miles from Barisha village where his predecessor al-Baghdadi was killed in a similar Special Ops night raid in Oct. 2019, the Washington Post reported [1] on Feb. 10 that the hideout of the ISIS leader was disclosed on a tip-off from Kurdish sources of SDF, which President Biden effusively praised in the official announcement of the killing of al-Qurayshi following the raid.

The information regarding the whereabouts of the ISIS leader was obtained last fall, several months before the raid, the Delta Force commandos began preparing for the operation late Sept., and President Biden authorized the raid on Dec. 20.

The report notes:

“The officials said Qurayshi — distinctive because of the leg, which CIA analysts think was amputated after injuries suffered in a 2015 airstrike — was sometimes spotted outside the house, or when taking brief strolls through the olive trees.

“Word eventually made its way to informants who work for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a mainly Kurdish militia group closely allied to the United States, current and former U.S. officials said. Intensive surveillance began immediately afterward, with Kurdish watchers following the arrivals and departures of armed men who trudged upstairs to meet with Qurayshi.”

Thus, the Kurdish leadership of SDF was frequently consulted by the US forces in Syria during the months-long manhunt for the ISIS chief and was kept informed of the movements of al-Qurayshi’s couriers.

A glaring contradiction in the Kurdish account of the events leading to the jailbreak in al-Hasakah is that if the US claims the ISIS leader remained in operational command via a network of couriers who were closely monitored and their communications intercepted by the CIA, then how is it possible that the fugitive ISIS chief staged a brazen prison break at al-Hasakah, hundreds of miles from his northwestern Idlib hideout, without the knowledge of the US forces tracking him down?

The report adds:

“After a two-year manhunt, the elusive Qurayshi had been spotted, first by informants on the ground, and then that tip was confirmed by the drone’s telescopic lens. For U.S. officials involved in the search, two questions remained. One was how to kill or capture him while minimizing risk to U.S. forces and to the more than a dozen women and children who lived in the same building. The other: whether to strike quickly, or to wait and try to gather more information about Qurayshi’s far-flung network of underground terrorist cells.

“The waiting, which ultimately stretched over several months, proved to be worthwhile […] There was foot traffic: couriers and communication between cells,’ said a former senior intelligence official briefed on the events. ‘They milked it, to collect as much data as they could. They had to see who he was talking to.’

“The picture of Qurayshi that emerged from the surveillance is that of a hands-on commander who was firmly in charge of his organization and harbored ambitions for re-establishing the self-declared Islamist caliphate that once controlled a territory the size of England. His intensive involvement in operational planning made Qurayshi especially dangerous, officials said. But over time, it also made him more vulnerable.

“‘He was very much in command,’ a senior Biden administration official said of Qurayshi, a 45-year-old Iraqi who was born Amir Mohammed al-Mawli al-Salbi […] ‘His lieutenants and couriers were very active,’ the official said, in ‘making sure that his commands and orders were known.’”

Clearly, either there are inaccuracies in the Washington Post report pieced together from insider accounts of the details of operational planning of the raid revealed to the paper by “credible” Biden administration officials on the condition of anonymity and the fugitive ISIS leader wasn’t in command, or if he was actively directing the operational planning of the terrorist organization through a web of couriers tracked by the CIA, then how did the premier intelligence agency overlook his orders to mount an audacious jailbreak in al-Hasakah and didn’t give forewarning to the Kurdish SDF allies of imminent storming of the detention center by hundreds of heavily armed ISIS militants?

According to Syrian sources who refused to divulge identities due to fear of repercussions, what really transpired at the high-security al-Sina’a prison was that the Kurdish guards of the penitentiary incited an insurrection on the night of Jan. 20 and let hundreds of prisoners escape. Then the SDF forces mounted a ten-day manhunt for the fugitives and killed hundreds of unarmed prisoners who were hiding in adjacent areas.

US air support was occasionally requested to mount random airstrikes on indiscriminate targets often hosting the escaped ISIS militants and sometimes civilians. The whole orchestrated show was led by irregular SDF militias while a handful Special Ops units assisting the Kurds were kept at safe distance to avoid unnecessary loss of precious American lives.

Although the SDF might have suffered negligible casualties in skirmishes with the fugitives, majority of the death toll was among the prisoners, which the SDF refused to host in the first place and was asking third countries for their repatriation.

Biden’s abrupt withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan last August and consequent overrunning of the country by the Taliban is indicative of his inclination to disengage from myriad conflicts of the Middle East and bring troops back to the US.

The false-flag prison break by the SDF was a desperate attempt by the Kurds to keep the specter of the ISIS resurgence alive after the fall of the militant group’s caliphate in 2019 and the killing of both the caliphs, and to keep the US forces engaged in the Syrian conflict, the Kurds’ only assurance against overrunning of their newly acquired territories in eastern Syria by organized and well-armed Turkish and Syrian security forces.

After the liberation of the ISIS-held territories in Mosul and Anbar in Iraq and Raqqa and Deir al-Zor in Syria in 2017 and the clearance operations at the Iraq-Syria border that lasted until 2019, the remnants of the militant group are on the run and the rest have already joined the ranks of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by al-Qaeda’s formidable Syrian franchise al-Nusra Front, in Syria’s northwest Idlib enclave controlled by the regional US ally, Turkey.

Thus, the principal rationale for keeping the US forces in Syria is no longer valid. Biden would’ve withdrawn troops long ago, not only from Syria but also from Iraq, whose legislators passed a parliamentary resolution asking the US to withdraw its forces from the country following the killing of venerated commander of IRGC’s Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani who was assassinated in an American airstrike on a tip-off from the Israeli intelligence at the Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020.

Following the dismantling of the ISIS caliphate in 2019, Biden would’ve withdrawn US forces from Iraq, which have repeatedly come under rocket fire from Iran-backed Iraqi militias, as soon as he was inaugurated president in Jan. 2021. The only reason he cannot withdraw troops from Iraq is because the US forces in Iraq have been deployed in support of contingents of American troops stationed across the border in Kurdish-held regions in eastern Syria and at al-Tanf.

Al-Tanf military base is strategically located in southeastern Syria on the border between Syria, Iraq and Jordan, and straddles a critically important Damascus-Baghdad highway, which serves as a lifeline for Damascus. Washington has illegally occupied 55-kilometer area around al-Tanf since 2016, and several hundred US Marines have trained thousands of Syrian militants at the sprawling military base.

Rather than battling the Islamic State, the foremost purpose of continued presence of the US forces at al-Tanf military base is to address Israel’s security concerns regarding the expansion of Iran’s influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Nevertheless, it’s worth pointing out that the orchestrated jailbreak wasn’t the only incident when the Kurdish-led SDF has shown utter disregard for civilian casualties in its all-out war on Syrian Arabs.

Five years following a potentially catastrophic incident that could’ve inundated Islamic State’s former capital Raqqa and many towns downstream Euphrates River in eastern Syria and caused more deaths than the deployment of any weapon of mass destruction, the New York Times reported last month [2] that at the height of US-led international coalition’s war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, US B-52 bombers struck Tabqa Dam with 2,000-pound bombs, including at least one bunker-busting bomb that fortunately didn’t explode.

In March 2017, alternative media was abuzz with reports that the dam was about to collapse and entire civilian population downstream Euphrates River needed to be urgently evacuated to prevent the inevitable catastrophe. But Washington issued a gag order to the corporate media “not to sensationalize the issue.”

The explosive report noted that the dam was contested between the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the Syrian government and the Islamic State. A firefight broke out in which SDF incurred heavy casualties. It was then that a top secret US special operations unit Task Force 9 called for airstrikes on the dam after repeated requests from the Kurdish leadership of the SDF.

“The explosions on March 26, 2017, knocked dam workers to the ground. A fire spread and crucial equipment failed. The flow of the Euphrates River suddenly had no way through, the reservoir began to rise and authorities used loudspeakers to warn people downstream to flee.

“The Islamic State group, the Syrian government and Russia blamed the United States, but the dam was on the US military’s ‘no-strike list’ of protected civilian sites, and the commander of the US offensive at the time, then-Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, said allegations of US involvement were based on ‘crazy reporting.’”

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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.

Notes

[1] With watchers on the ground and spy drones overhead, U.S. zeroed in on Islamic State leader’s hideout

[2] A dam in Syria was on a ‘no-strike’ list. The US bombed it anyway

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse


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Year: 2017
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US Worsens Security Crisis as Its Submarine Violates Russian Waters

February 16th, 2022 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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***

On Saturday, February 12, military tensions between the West and Russia reached a new peak after the Russian Navy confirmed the sighting of an American submarine near the Kuril Islands, sailing in Russian waters without authorization. The submarine was detected by Russian observers during military exercises in the region and led Moscow to release a note discouraging the US government from this type of maneuver and reaffirming the Russian right to self-defense.

The sighting was made on Saturday morning, in the Urup region. The American Virginia-class submarine entered an area where routine military exercises were being operated by the Russian Pacific Fleet. When approached by the Russian Navy, the submarine’s crew ignored requests made in both Russian and English languages to return to the surface, which led the Russian naval command to fire the frigate “Marshall Shaposhnikov” and use appropriate methods to force the submarine to retreat as quickly as possible.

The news of the submarine’s entry into Russian waters quickly spread, generating outrage and demanding responses from Washington. The attitude of the US Navy, however, was only to deny that violation of Russian territorial waters had actually taken place. These were the words of Navy Capt. Kyle Raines, spokesperson for the United States Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM): “There is no truth to the Russian claims of our operations in their territorial waters. I will not comment on the precise location of our submarines but we do fly, sail, and operate safely in international waters”.

Interestingly, the spokesperson did not provide any details about the submarine’s exact location, only stating that the Russian report was false, without any counterargument. No other explanation statement has been made by American officials so far. The Russian Defense Ministry issued a note to the US military attaché in Moscow stating that the Kuril Islands’ submarine incident represents a serious violation of international law that cannot be tolerated, but there has yet been no response.

From a purely realistic point of view, the Russian allegations seem more likely to be true than the American ones, considering that the Russian Navy provided precise details about the incident, while American forces were only concerned with denying the case, without offering any data, explanations, or conclusive answers. As Russia first took the floor in claiming the violation of its territory, it is up to the US to prove, with plausible evidence, that such an episode is really “Russian fake news”.

Obviously, the hypothesis of an involuntary territorial waters violation cannot be ruled out. There are many factors, both technical and natural, that can cause vessels to deviate from their routes and enter unknown or unwanted areas. It is possible that the American submarine entered Russian waters due to an involuntary deviation from its original routes, especially considering the region’s proximity to Japan, a country where the US Navy routinely carries out war exercises. However, the reason for the silence of the crew in the face of the attempted contact made by the Russian ship remains unexplained in this hypothesis.

Ignoring contact attempts by military personnel from other countries is a major breach of decorum among armed forces around the world. It is very unlikely that such a lack of response to Russian contact would occur if the American crew were actually “distracted” from their original route. There seems to have been no good faith on the part of the US Navy, whose attitude was simply to ignore the call and flee.

The real intent of the American submarine is still an unanswered question. It is possible that an espionage mission was taking place, with the US Navy trying to collect data on Russian fleet exercises in the Pacific. But it is unlikely that such an indiscreet method would be used for this type of situation. What seems more plausible, indeed, is that there was a public provocation with the sole purpose to trigger a violent reaction from Russian forces which would be promptly condemned by the US and would “justify” an American response. In the current moment of polarization and tensions between the West and Russia, Washington would try to argue that Moscow maintains an aggressive posture in the Pacific, justifying new sanctions.

However, the Russian attitude has been peaceful, just inducing the invasive submarine to retreat, which makes it clear that the US Navy adopts an aggressive and illegal posture in the Pacific.

It is also necessary to mention that the Virginia is a class of nuclear submarines, which makes the case even more serious.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

Featured image: The USS John Warner, a nuclear-powered submarine of the type Australia will soon be developing. Source: US Navy

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***

With the stroke of a pen and an announcement from a podium, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has essentially declared himself supreme dictator over the nation on our northern border.

We now have a full-on totalitarian regime adjacent to the United States. This is no small development. So let’s break it down.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has condemned Trudeau for invoking the Emergencies Act, claiming in a tweet that the Canadian federal government “has not met the threshold necessary” to do so.

“The Emergencies Act can only be invoked when a situation “seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada” and when the situation “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada,” the Twitter thread continues.

By invoking this Act, the first time it’s ever been done in Canadian history, Trudeau has essentially declared a form of martial law. This petty dictator has apparently made himself available to the global predators and offered up his country to be the first in the formerly Free World to transition from freedom into the grand utopia of the Great Reset.

And we thought it would take a war or an economic collapse to get the Western democracies to implement the Great Reset. No. It can be done with the stroke of a pen under the guise of a fake “emergency.”

This form of martial law targets a select group of Canadians who are exercising their right to peaceful protest under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but now they have been branded as criminals. Bank accounts are being frozen with no due process, licenses suspended, people arrested.

But according to the Civil Liberties Association, Trudeau is illegally invoking the Act because the nation has not met the threshold laid out in the law to qualify as a legitimate national emergency.

Lori Williams, a politics professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, told Reuters that “there’s the danger this could create more problems,” calling the powers “enormous.”

“That’s why this has to be done with the cooperation of premiers and if they don’t want help, then the federal government needs to hang back.”

Leah West, an assistant professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, doubted the move met the standards, posting on Twitter that the country’s sovereignty is not endangered by the largely non-violent protests.

So who is the real criminal here?

This should be a lesson for all Americans and citizens of other Wester nations. Trudeau is obviously not the person in charge of making such drastic decisions, no more than Biden is in charge here in Washington, D.C., or Macron is in charge in Paris or Johnson in London.

Trudeau answers to the Davos elites committed to the agenda of the World Economic Forum.  We have already covered that in our recent three-part series here at LeoHohmann.com and if you haven’t read those yet, I encourage you to do so.

The World Economic Forum globalists play dirty. That’s why we call them global predators. They hire and train politicians who are known psychopaths like Trudeau in Canada and Macron in France, or sell outs like Obama/Biden in the U.S. and Ardern in New Zealand.

None of Trudeau’s actions should be viewed as that of a national leader. He is simply implementing the tactics he learned at WEF founder Klaus Schwab’s Young Global Leaders program, from which he is a graduate.

Hence, any of the other Western nations now being “led” by politicians also committed to the WEF vision of the world would act exactly the same way given the same set of circumstances in their countries.

We know Biden is one of their cronies. He even named his landmark piece of legislation after the WEF slogan, “Build Back Better.”

The global predators knew their forced masking and mandated injections would eventually lead to worldwide uprisings and civil unrest. They predicted it in the Rockefeller Foundation document from 2010 called Lockstep. How to handle these popular uprisings was all discussed and rehearsed ahead of time – label them as criminals and hit them where it hurts, shut down their finances.

This is the Great Reset, in our faces. You obey, you get to keep a semblance of your normal life, though it will be nothing like your pre-Covid life. You disobey your new masters and you get otherized and canceled from society. We’ve been talking about the Great Reset in theory for a year and a half. Now we have a clear example of how it works, right over our northern border.

In some ways, Trudeau’s invoking of the Emergencies Act is worse than a military martial law. This is digital/economic warfare against the Canadian population. At least with the military you can see the enemy. This is worse.

Trudeau didn’t even have to stage a false flag attack like Hitler did with the Reichstag fire. All he had to do was use his state-run media to label his political opponents, who are entirely peaceful, as white nationalist extremists. The state-funded Canadian media happily went along with his game plan. The U.S. media would do the same.

Trudeau has empowered banks to go after his political opponents while releasing these banks from all legal liability for their actions. This man is a traitor to his nation and his people. A monster.

We have the same NWO freaks in every Western capital, ready to follow Trudeau’s example should their people get out of line.

We also have them in the churches.

Bergoglio in the Vatican is another one of their henchmen, willing to advocate any policy, no matter how anti-God and anti-human, if the order is given by the right elitist power broker. We know he’s friends with Schwab.

Lest you think only the Catholics have their players in this realm, think again. On the Protestant side they’ve got preachers like Franklin Graham, Tim Keller, Rick Warren, Robert Jeffress, TD Jakes and many others willing to whore themselves out for the New World Order.

Knowingly or unknowingly, the leaders of almost every 501c3 church, when push comes to shove, will toe the line of the new world order’s Great Reset and Fourth Industrial Revolution. Many are signing up now for Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse church services. Zuck is another graduate of Schwab’s Young Global Leaders program.

Take heed, Patriots. They are coming after your bank account.

Tribulation is here, folks. Whether you want to assign a capital “T” or a small “t” to that word, it’s here. God have mercy. Christ have mercy.

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In the Donbass, the Fuse Is Lit

February 16th, 2022 by Manlio Dinucci

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***

While the situation in the Donbas becomes more and more scorching, on the eve of the talk with Putin, Biden convened on 11 February what is in fact NATO and the European Union war council: the Secretary-General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg, the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the French President Emmanuel Macron, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the Polish President Andrzej Duda, the Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, the Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau, flanked by the President of the European Council Charles Michel and the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. The NATO-EU war council made it clear that “if Russia carries out a further invasion of Ukraine, the United States together with its Allies and partners will respond decisively and impose immediate and severe costs on Russia”.

This is what Biden said the day after to Putin on behalf of the United States but also of NATO and the European Union. It was a total rejection of any negotiation, in fact, a war declaration signed by Italy at the hands of Mario Draghi under the eyes of a silent and consenting Parliament.

Every day, signs of an imminent war intensify. The State Department is evacuating the Embassy in Kyiv leaving behind only a few diplomats and a team of Marines, and is warning US citizens to leave Ukraine because “it would not be able to protect them from the Russian attack.” The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Farnesina, did the same.

The Pentagon is withdrawing 160 military instructors from Ukraine who have trained the forces in Kyiv. However, there remain military advisers and instructors belonging to the US and NATO Special Forces, who are in fact  Kyiv Army and National Guard direction.

In the front row the neo-Nazi Azov battalion, which was already distinguished for its ferocity against the Russian populations of the Donbas, and was promoted for its merits as a special forces mechanized regiment armed and trained by NATO. It has the same insignia as the SS Das Reich Panzer Division, one of the 200 Hitler’s divisions that invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

They were defeated, but the price paid by the Soviet Union was very high: about 27 million deaths, over half of the victims were civilians corresponding to the 15% of the population (compared to 0.3% of  US human losses in the whole  World War Two); about 5 million deportees were sent to Germany; over 1,700 cities and large settlements, 70,000 small villages, 30,000 factories were destroyed.

All this is dangerously forgotten, while Russia continues to uselessly repeat that it does not intend to attack Ukraine, and denounces the growing concentration of troops in Kyiv in front of the Donbas area inhabited by Russian populations. Here, Kyiv has deployed over 150,000 soldiers.

They are equipped with Grad rocket vehicles, each is capable of firing up to 40 kilometers in 20 seconds time, forty 122 mm rockets with high-explosive warheads which deflagrating cover a large area with thousands of sharp metal fragments or small delayed blast bombs. A large-scale attack with weapons of this type against the inhabitants of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions would cause a massacre and could not be stopped by the local forces made of about 35,000 men.

War might break out with a false flag operation.

Moscow denounces the presence in Donbas of US mercenaries with chemical weapons. The fuse could be a provocation such as an attack on a Ukrainian town attributed to the Donbas Russians who would be attacked by the overwhelming Kyiv forces. The Russian Federation has warned that in such a situation it would not stand by and watch, but would intervene in defense of the Donbas Russians destroying the attacking forces.

Thus, a war would explode in the heart of Europe to the benefit of the United States which through NATO – 21 nations out of  27 EU countries belong to NATO – and through the collaboration of the European Union would bring Europe back to a similar but even more dangerous situation than the Cold War, strengthening  US influence and presence in the European region.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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***

The US and its allies have already set the scene for Revolution 2.0 in Syria. The question is whether their plan is to extract concessions from Russia over Ukraine, or to go full out and risk a West Asia-wide conflagration.

With new political, military, and economic tensions escalating between the United States and its NATO allies on the one hand, and China, Russia, North Korea and Iran on the other – including the Taiwan front in East Asia, and Ukraine in central Europe – we are now witnessing accelerated plans to activate new crises in West Asia, from Syria to Iraq to the war on Yemen.

Let us leave the situation in Iraq and Yemen aside, temporarily, and focus on Syria. The country has experienced an atmosphere of relative calm, or rather a ‘stalemate,’ in the past few years, after the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) regained more than 70 percent of its territory.

This period of calm has also seen the decline of the so-called Syrian opposition, both politically and militarily, in the city of Idlib and its vicinity, as well as in other areas in northeastern Syria, currently under the umbrella of US forces.

There are, however, several international and regional indications that the dormant Syrian ‘opposition’ is on its way to being reactivated again.

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It is likely this reactivation may appear in a more ferocious form than the militancy that was unleashed at the beginning of the Syrian crisis in March 2011. Numerous indications of this have already emerged:

First, Russian foreign intelligence on Tuesday unveiled US plans to support armed groups in Syria, and ‘Islamic’ extremists in particular, to intensify their attacks against Syrian, Russian and Iranian forces in Tawaz, while igniting and encouraging ‘peaceful’ protests deep within Syria.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reported that US government agencies are “planning to task extremist ‘sleeper cells’ in Damascus…and Latakia province [by] staging pinpoint attacks against Syrian law enforcers, and Russian and Iranian military personnel.”

Russia’s Deputy Envoy at the UN Gennady Kuzmin told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that

“The problem of terrorist threats in northeastern Syria is pressing. The US troops that are illegally deployed there cannot bring order. Or they don’t want to.”

In what appears as a reference to the mass ISIS jailbreak in Hasakah from a US-controlled area in late-January, Kuzmin added that “the atmosphere of a power void and impunity around the US forces’ deployment areas serves as a nourishing ground for terrorists of all stripes.”

The second indicator points to the statement issued by the Russian Intelligence Service, which says that the US administration is seeking to maintain its military presence in northeastern Syria, prevent the stability of Syria, rehabilitate the leadership of the Syrian opposition, and unite its ranks, Kurdish or Arab.

The US plan will be carried out through the exploitation of the current decline in economic conditions, basic services, and a significant weakening in the price of local currency, due to the suffocating US blockade.

According to the statement, the US will launch a “vast media campaign” on Arabic-speaking social media to incite Syrians to again take to the streets and squares, in the capital Damascus, and the cities of Aleppo, Homs and Latakia to push the regime to use the ‘violent’ iron fist in the face of ‘peaceful’ protests.

In other words, a re-play of the Deraa scenario in early 2011.

The third indicator was the two-day conference that took place last Saturday in Qatar’s capital city, Doha, which re-united various Syrian opposition figures on the subjects of reform and the future of Syria.

The conference – a culmination of a series of workshops held in a selection of European capitals – was launched by the renegade former Syrian prime minister, Riad Hijab, and included the representatives of Qatari, Arab, and international research centers, as well as more than 60 Syrian opposition figures.

Qatari authorities provided full support for this seminar, which Al Jazeera and its sister channels covered with remarkable intensity.

The fourth indicator relates to Algeria’s multiple efforts to hold an Arab summit in which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will participate, and Syria’s seat in the Arab League will be restored. These efforts have failed, in part because Qatar has been the most fierce opponent to the rehabilitation of Syria at the Arab League.

And finally, fifth, is the out-of-the-blue assassination of the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, at the hands of US special forces in Turkish controlled areas in Syria.

Al-Quraishi was attacked in his home, in the north of Idlib, in an attack that has no documented audio or image evidence, similar to the previous assassinations of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and, before him, Osama bin Laden – but entirely unlike the execution of Saddam Hussein and the killing of his two sons.

This ‘assassination’ may, of course, just be a cover for the new US plan to restart covert communications with and support for radical Islamist militants, while publicly suggesting that the US continues to target them as ‘terrorist organizations.’

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Quraishi’s sudden killing in Syria during the dangerous stand-off between NATO and Russia raised some questions in Washington as well. Former US Air Force Special Operations Joint Terminal Attack controller, Ethan Brown, pondered aloud in The Hill about “its “timing and the curious proximity to the crisis in Ukraine.”

Brown asks whether “the execution of a [US] military operation outside of a declared was zone in the Middle East…is somehow a credible deterrent to Russian actions elsewhere.” Then straight-out declares: “Make no mistake, the two unique situations are intertwined.”

On Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Erik Kurilla, tapped to be the next commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), told the Senate Armed Services Committee that if Russia invades Ukraine, it could create broader instability in West Asia, including Syria.

This week, the Israelis struck Syria heavily again, just two weeks after the Russians and Syrians launched their first joint jet patrols over the Syrian-Israel border. This time, Moscow reacted strongly, calling Tel Aviv’s actions “a crude violation of Syria’s sovereignty” that “may trigger a sharp escalation of tensions.”

The escalation in Syria, likely connected to Washington’s Ukraine strategy, has already started. The question is whether the protagonists will merely stage some events as a threat – or go all out.

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The Syrian opposition launched its first ‘movement’ 11 years ago in Doha, and it seems that the attempt to revive it will also take place in the same place.

The official statement of the meeting outlined its “aims to try to find mechanisms of action to promote the performance of the opposition and discuss how to get the political transition out of the current global warming.”

“The Biden administration wants 2022 to be the year of qualifying Syrian opposition forces to be ready to replace the regime in any change that may occur,” Syrian opposition media outlet Orient Net stated in a report broadcast two months ago.

The report also revealed that US Deputy Secretary of State Eitan Goldrich had met with Syrian opposition leaders in Istanbul, Qamishli, and Gaziantep late last year to prepare for the new US scenario in Syria.

Will this new US plan work in Syria? Has the suffocating US blockade on Syria, imposed for this purpose 11 years ago, reap its harvest? Will this attempt fare any better than the first? Will funding come from Gulf financiers themselves? And how will the axis of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Syria respond?

We leave the answer for the coming weeks and months.

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Featured image is from The Cradle

Why Are We Evacuating Diplomats from Ukraine?

February 16th, 2022 by Prof. Anatol Lieven

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How they must be laughing in the Kremlin. Western policy towards Ukraine is evolving from the ridiculous to the positively surreal. Thus the latest demonstration of the West’s unbreakable commitment to Ukraine and to future Ukrainian NATO membership is — to evacuate Western diplomats from Kiev, before a single shot has been fired, and while Russia continues to deny that it has any intention of invading. At this rate, Russia will have no need whatsoever to do so. President Putin can enjoy a quiet cup of coffee while Western governments run around squawking hysterically, and NATO’s credibility collapses along with the Ukrainian economy.

The United States, Canada, and Britain — the countries that have been among the loudest in their calls for a strong line against Russia — have withdrawn their military and civilian officials from the OSCE mission monitoring the ceasefire line between Ukrainian and pro-Russian separatist forces in the Donbas. Military trainers from these countries have also been withdrawn, and airlines are cancelling services.

What sort of signal of Western resolve does this decision send? And much more importantly, what does it say about the present character of Western civilization? NATO is beginning to resemble a confederation of capons — emasculated roosters who in this case have unfortunately retained the ability to strut and crow.

Nobody is suggesting that Western diplomats should fight, let alone give up their lives in some desperate last stand against Russian tanks. What we can ask is that they stay in their embassies and continue to do their duty, in the face of some small amount of risk. Individual diplomats are not to blame for this shameful flight — but the governments and official cultures of their countries most certainly are, especially after the way in which Western embassies fled from Kabul.

Apart from the effect on what is left of the West’s reputation for courage and discipline, the consequences of this route for Ukraine and supposed Western interests there will be severe; for the effect is to undermine still further the already faltering Ukrainian economy and currency. Hence the tragicomic sight of the Ukrainian government, which has spent years talking up the Russian military threat to Ukraine, now desperately trying to talk it down again. On the other hand, this attempt by Kiev to reduce tension does reflect the feelings of the Ukrainian population, most of which seems vastly calmer than Western capitals.

However humiliating and contemptible, the evacuation of the diplomats (and the advice to all other Western citizens to leave Ukraine) could have one good result, assuming that Western political elites, media, and citizens are still capable of occasionally looking at themselves honestly in the mirror. For what it demonstrates beyond all possible remaining doubt is that the Western offer one day to admit Ukraine to NATO is totally empty.

From its very beginning, the expansion of NATO was predicated on the conviction that NATO would never have to fight to defend its new members. To take Ukraine into NATO however means being prepared to fight hard to defend it against Russia — and that is something that NATO is completely, innately incapable of doing.

The Ukrainian government, and Ukrainian citizens should also pay attention. For all that Ukraine’s search for NATO membership is doing, has done, and will continue to do is to create a terribly damaging and dangerous crisis with Russia without strengthening Ukrainian security or real Western commitment to Ukraine in the slightest. To drop this manifestly pointless pursuit would be good for Europe, the world, and above all Ukraine itself.

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

Afghanistan Funds Seized by Biden Administration

February 16th, 2022 by Abayomi Azikiwe

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While the administration of President Joe Biden is consistently escalating tensions between the Russian Federation and the United States over the status of Ukraine, the people of Afghanistan are condemning the expropriation of billions of dollars by the White House in an ongoing attempt to cripple the government in Kabul.

Although it does not appear that the majority of people in Ukraine, both within and outside the government, wants war with Moscow, the international community is reminded of the coup which occurred in February 2014 when the administration of former President Barack Obama engineered a removal of the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych.

The withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, weakened the image of the White House under Biden. Perhaps Biden is attempting to regain a portion of the perceived military prowess of Washington by provoking an incident with Moscow over the independence of Ukraine.

With specific reference to Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Pentagon, State Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) removal, the Biden administration has sought to starve the population. The assets which rightfully belonged to the Afghan people were confiscated by the U.S. at the time of the rapid retreat.

Just recently the Biden administration announced that it will redirect half of the $7 billion of Afghanistan funds being held in U.S. banks to victims of the attacks on September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Yet there has never been any substantiated proof that the Taliban, the ruling organization in Kabul, was directly responsible for these hijackings and crashes.

Moreover, there has never been any mention by Biden of the horrendous crimes committed by the U.S. occupation forces during their 20-year stint in Afghanistan. Thousands of Pentagon troops and contractors were killed along with hundreds of thousands of Afghan fighters and civilians. It was the U.S. which invaded and occupied Afghanistan in an effort to remake the country as an outpost of imperialism in Central Asia.

An article published by Newsweek on February 15 said:

“’[The attacks on] 9/11 had nothing to do with Afghans,’ said one sign at a protest attended by more than 3,000 people. ‘Shame Shame Mr. Biden, you kill us, you bomb us and now you steal our money.’ The legality of such a move has also been questioned by Afghans, including financial adviser Torek Farhadi. ‘These reserves belong to the people of Afghanistan, not the Taliban,’ Farhadi told the Associated Press. ‘Biden’s decision is one-sided and does not match with international law. No other country on Earth makes such confiscation decisions about another country’s reserves.’ This is a belief that many Afghans who have been protesting the reserve split have agreed with. One of the core messages of the recent protests was that Afghanistan, as a country, was not responsible for the September 11 attacks. Thus, they should not have to pay the victims of the attack or their families.”

Such decisions by the Biden White House can only aggravate the existing tensions between Washington, its allies, and Kabul. The withholding of even more Afghan funds from the Taliban government undoubtedly lessens the prospects for normalization of relations.

The Deteriorating Humanitarian Crisis

During the course of the two decades of U.S. occupation in Afghanistan, the people of the country suffered immensely. Even prior to 2001, the U.S. had been involved in destabilizing the former socialist-oriented government since the late 1970s.

Therefore, successive administrations in Washington are responsible for the current humanitarian crisis involving the lack of a functioning monetary system and food insecurity impacting the overwhelming majority of the population. Rather than seizing control of Afghan assets, the U.S., in fact, owes huge sums of money in reparations to the country.

The redeployment of Pentagon troops and all U.S. personnel coincided with the further weakening of Afghanistan’s national infrastructure. The banking system was dislodged by the fleeing U.S. occupation forces while thousands of people employed by the apparatus established to facilitate the war operations, lost their jobs. Existing businesses and public institutions have been left without the ability to deposit and withdraw funds to pay employees.

Estimates suggest that 97% of the Afghan population are living below the poverty line with no immediate hope for a rise in income. 23 million people, more than half of the population of nearly 40 million, are facing extreme food deficits leaving the country on the brink of famine.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) issued a report on February 15 warning of a potentially horrendous situation in Afghanistan. This agency does relief work in some of the most distressed geo-political regions in the world. The organization has been involved in Afghanistan since 1988 during the concluding period of Soviet intervention in support of the former socialist-oriented government.

Since the exit of tens of thousands of U.S. troops, State Department functionaries and assistants from the occupied territory, the Biden administration has literally turned its back on the country. This lack of interest or engagement could be aimed at removing the specter of the Afghan military failure from the political consciousness of the people in the U.S. and their western allies. It could also be a method of punishing the Taliban government for its defeat of the U.S. which had placed enormous resources in what inevitably became a resounding failure.

Afghanistan crisis infographic (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

In a statement issued by IRC Afghanistan country director Vicki Aken in regard to the humanitarian crisis, she emphasized:

“The IRC works across dozens of crisis and conflict settings, but we have not seen an entire country deteriorate this fast in recent years. Since August, the international community has cut off non-humanitarian funding, which amounted to 40 per cent of GDP and propped up 75 percent of public spending, including basic services. This economic crisis is contributing to a catastrophic humanitarian emergency that has left a quarter of the population facing the risk of famine – the largest population experiencing such extreme levels of hunger in the world. Afghan families are being forced into more and more desperate measures of survival. Mothers and their children are sitting in snowfall, begging for money; parents are forced to sell their daughters into early marriage to bring cash for their families.”

Aken believes that the looming famine could result in the deaths of more people than during the twenty years long occupation by the Pentagon and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Unless action is taken in the short term, the outcomes will compound the nature of the war crimes committed by the U.S. in Afghanistan. The IRC says emphatically that the current situation in Afghanistan is a direct result of the foreign policies of the U.S. and its allies.

Britain has announced that it will co-host with the United Nations a donors’ conference to support Afghanistan. The conference will seek to fulfill what is the largest ever UN appeal for a single country, $4.4 billion.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss outlined the purpose of the conference emphasizing:

“The conference is a critical moment for the international community to step up support in an effort to stop the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. The scale of need is unparalleled, and consequences of inaction will be devastating. The UK is determined to lead the global effort. We will bring international allies together to raise vital aid to deliver food, shelter and health services, protect women and girls and support stability in the region.”

The U.S. Should Not Be Allowed to Avoid Responsibility for the Crisis

As the British government makes an announcement of its intentions to support Afghanistan, historically several different Conservative and Labor administrations in London have followed Washington’s lead in waging war in Central Asia. British troops served and died as well in the failed Afghan war that destroyed the country.

However, the major culprit in the decades of war and underdevelopment is the U.S. These interventions, including and by no means limited to Afghanistan, is the major source of much of the instability in the world.

At present the world is experiencing unprecedented levels of dislocation. The number of refugees, internally displaced and stateless persons exceeds 82 million. This figure represents far more than those who were forced from their homes during World War II. (See this)

Over the previous three decades, the U.S., NATO and their allies have deployed millions of troops to destabilize, rob, bomb, maim, kill and occupy peoples from Iraq to Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Haiti, among other states. The only solution to this crisis is the defunding of the Pentagon and the dismantling of Pentagon military bases internationally.

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

Featured image is from OffGuardian

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US President Biden claims Russian troops continue “encircling Ukraine” even as Moscow says they are withdrawing.

The Russian soldiers were never there for the purpose of invading Ukraine. They were in Belarus as part of a training exercise akin to the ones NATO continually conducts on Russia’s borders.  The troops in Ukraine were there to intercede if Ukraine invaded the Donbass republics. 

The accusation of a Russian invasion was an obvious lie from the beginning.  The purpose of the lie was to scare Europeans about Russia in order to keep them on the US reservation.

Biden claims there is no evidence of troop departure, and the presstitutes claim the Russians are not departing but repositioning for an attack. See this.

Western governments and presstitutes are now firm believers of their own lies.  The London Times’ defense editor Larisa Brown cites an “unnamed official” who allegedly claims:  “We have seen reinforcement of combat and other capabilities close to the border. On balance what we have seen is further reinforcement.”

This from the BBC presstitutes:  “A small but politically vocal portion of the American electorate that admires Vladimir Putin’s muscular policies is seeking to undermine US President Joe Biden’s efforts to stand up to the Russian president.” It is Russia encircling Ukraine, not the US encircling Russia.  It is the US standing up to Russia, not Russia standing up to the US.

The British Financial Times reports that “Western intelligence” (an oxymoron) has concluded that the Russians have chosen a former Ukrainian member of parliament, Oleg Tsaryov, to be installed as Ukraine’s president following the Russian invasion. See this. 

The less evidence there is of an invasion, the more we are told it is about to happen.  The latest from the British press is that according to US intelligence (an oxymoron) in the early hours of Wednesday morning Russia will invade with 200,000 soldiers after a massive missile blitz. See this. When Americans arise at 7AM Wednesday, it will be afternoon there.  Have a look to see if Ukraine is still there.

My conclusion is that the West will declare there has been an invasion when there hasn’t, and the presstitutes will turn the lie into the truth. 

How else are Biden, the Western governments, and the presstitute media going to avoid looking like total fools, victims of their own propaganda? 

Putin is taking a somewhat similar risk by holding on to his belief in the Minsk Agreement, when Ukraine, by far the weaker party, demands that the issue with Russia, by far the stronger party, be settled on Ukraine’s terms. 

Will this latest excuse for Ukrainian non-compliance with the Minsk Agreement  result in the Kremlin finally seeing the futility of this approach?  See this.

The United States has been in totally incompetent hands since the ascension of the Clinton regime. The practice of US manufacturers of offshoring the production of the goods and services that they sell in the US has exploded the annual trade deficit of the US to  one trillion dollars. See this. When I was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, the US had a trade deficit only in energy and it was covered by surpluses elsewhere. See this and this.

A country that gives its own jobs to foreigners turns domestic production into imports, an act of extreme idiocy.  

Washington has now matched this act of idiocy with another–making an enemy out of Russia.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Selected Articles: The COVID Mandates Are Leaving Europe

February 16th, 2022 by Global Research News

The COVID Mandates Are Leaving Europe. Is Freedom Winning?

By Joanna Miller, February 16, 2022

Many of the European countries have announced that they will move forward treating Covid as just another endemic disease. Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic have all started lifting Covid-related restrictions, such as limits on gatherings and requiring Covid Passes to enter certain venues. Italy, Finland, Ireland, France, and Lithuania are easing many requirements. 

Western Arms’ Shipment to Ukraine Aimed at Perpetuating Violence in Donbass

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, February 16, 2022

The West increasingly foments violence in Ukraine. Since the end of January, sending Western weapons to Kiev has become an uninterrupted practice. Practically every day, NATO aircraft land tons of military equipment on Ukrainian soil, with most of the material coming from the US and UK.

A National Emergency AGAINST Trudeau’s “Covid Mandates” Which “Seriously Endanger the Lives, Health or Safety of Canadians”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 15, 2022

I have carefully read the Emergencies Act as well as the relevant sections of The Charter of Rights of Freedoms. I doubt Justin Trudeau has an understanding of the implications of his actions, not to mention his baseless accusations directed against Canada’s Freedom Convoy.

Politicized State Medical Boards Are Like Swords of Damocles Over Doctors Everywhere

By Prof. Bill Willers, February 15, 2022

Dr. Nass is, by any standard, a high-profile medical figure. She has written widely, largely on anthrax, and has served as an advisor to members of Congress and state legislatures on matters relating to bioterrorism and Gulf War Syndrome.

“COVID-19 Vaccines” for Children in the UK: A Tale of Establishment Corruption

By David Hughes, February 15, 2022

How and why has it come to pass that children as young as 12 in the UK are being injected with a novel form of mRNA technology that is unlicensed, has no long-term safety data, and remains in clinical trials until May 2023?

“How to Make Turkey Great Again”: The Twists and Turns of Erdogan’s Foreign Policy.

By Pepe Escobar, February 15, 2022

The information dropped like a Hellfire in the middle of a productive discussion with a group of top analysts in Istanbul: Across the Turkish establishment – from politicians to the military – over 90 percent are pro-NATO.

History of World War II: The 80th Anniversary of the Japanese Capture of Singapore, the “Largest Capitulation in British History”

By Shane Quinn, February 15, 2022

The Japanese conquest of Singapore in south-east Asia, on 15 February 1942, is often referred to in Western historical annals as “the Fall of Singapore”, as though a free and unmolested territory had, for the first time, been captured by an imperial power.

Doctor Who Discovered Omicron Variant Was Forced to Lie About Severity

By Martin Armstrong, February 15, 2022

Dr. Angelique Coetzee, head of the South African Medical Association and one of the doctors who discovered omicron, admitted that she was pressured not to reveal the mildness of the variant.

Today’s Crisis Over Ukraine. Former US Ambassador to USSR Jack F. Matlock, Jr

By Jack Matlock, February 15, 2022

We are being told each day that war may be imminent in Ukraine. Russian troops, we are told, are massing at Ukraine’s borders and could attack at any time. American citizens are being advised to leave Ukraine and dependents of the American Embassy staff are being evacuated.

Anti-vaccine Mandate Protesters Occupy Streets Outside Australia Parliament

By TRT World, February 15, 2022

Thousands of people have occupied streets outside the Australian parliament in the capital Canberra as days-long rallies continue against Covid-19 vaccine mandates. Australian police have protesters until the end of Sunday to leave occupied areas.

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The Nazis Globalist Liberals Prefer to Ignore

February 16th, 2022 by Sohrab Ahmari

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Partisans the world over prefer to see no evil on their own side. Yet even by the rock-bottom standards of modern politics, it’s appalling to watch the trans-Atlantic liberals elide, excuse, and obfuscate the presence of neo-Nazis and other ideological ghastlies among their champs in places like Ukraine and Hungary.

Start with embattled Ukraine. On Monday, print and broadcast media across the Anglosphere led with a 79-year-old Ukrainian great grandmother, Valentyna Konstantynovska, receiving small-arms training in the eastern city of Mariupol in preparation for a potential Russian invasion. The event was seemingly readymade for the media: The silver-haired, wrinkly granny vowed, “I will defend my home, my city, my children.”

In Britain, the Times and the Daily Telegraph plastered Konstantynovska above the fold on their front pages, while the Guardian, the Independent and the Financial Times featured other, equally stirring photos from the same civilian training exercise (a well-manicured woman holding a rifle for the Guardian, a child taught to handle ammo clips for the Independent, a camouflaged militant teaching a crouching young woman to shoot for the FT).

U.S. media couldn’t resist, either. NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel quoted Konstantynovska telling him, “Your mother would do it too.” ABC’s New York affiliate aired footage from the same training session, and there was Konstantynovska, again, giving Vladimir Putin a steely look from behind the muzzle of Kalashnikov. Taxpayer-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty likewise followed the script.

The message: Here are the grannies, little kids, and (attractive) young women manning the front lines of democracy against Russian reaction and revanchism.

What Americans and British reporters didn’t report: The training was offered by the Azov Battalion, which has its base in Mariupol. Our own FBI describes Azov as a “paramilitary unit…known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology and the use of Nazi symbolism” and alleges it “participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white-supremacy organizations.” (Defenders of Azov counter that it’s a regular unit, merely “rooted in a volunteer battalion formed by the leadership of a neo-Nazi group,” as if that’s much better than the FBI account.)

In the ABC segment, you could just see Azov’s SS-inspired insignia on the arm of one of the uniformed men training granny. Otherwise, Anglophone media kept mum. It fell to internet sleuths to point out the connection for Brits and Americans. This, even though outlets on the Continent had no trouble straightforwardly reporting the neo-Nazi link. Euro News, for example, ran the story under the headline: “Ukraine Far-Right Group Offers Training to Civilians.”

After the Twitter outcry, Radio Free Europe unaccountably deleted its granny story (see screen captures below); the other outlets moved on.

Are all Ukrainians gearing up to defend their homeland neo-Nazis and racist reactionaries? Of course not. Even so, as Russia hawkism reaches a fever pitch in Washington and Westminster, it’s instructive to see our media erase any fact that might mar an otherwise simple, moralistic narrative—Brave Liberal Democrats Face Down Kremlin. To insist on the inconvenient facts is tantamount to “amplifying Russian propaganda,” as a GOP Hill staffer accused me of doing recently.

Which brings us to Hungary, where Prime Minister Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party will soon face off in a general election against a self-described coalition of liberals, greens, socialists, and neo-Nazis. Yes, you read that right: In an effort to ensure that Fidesz doesn’t face a divided opposition, the left has formed a united block with Jobbik.

That would be the neo-Nazi “Movement for a Better Hungary,” whose leaders have spat on Holocaust memorials, whose website until recently warned of “Zionist Israel’s efforts to dominate Hungary and the world,” and whose foreign policy chief has called on fellow lawmakers to “tally up people of Jewish ancestry who live here, especially in the Hungarian Parliament and the Hungarian government, who, indeed, pose a national-security risk.”

Having twice interviewed Jobbik’s leadership, I can attest that it is one of the most genuinely frightening parties in all of Europe. Yet over the weekend, footage appeared of Péter Márki-Zay, the leader of the opposition bloc and the man who would replace Orbán as premier, campaigning for a Jobbik candidate and acknowledging the membership of “fascists” in his coalition.

Do left- and right-liberal outlets in the United States (and Britain) acknowledge the same fact? Painfully, begrudgingly, if at all. Try searching “Jobbik” on the New York Times website. The most recent hit you’ll get is a transcript of my appearance on the Ezra Klein Podcast, in which I brought up this most inconvenient fact. The next hit is from 2018—before the formation of the united opposition bloc.

Say it, libs: “They may be Nazis, but they’re our Nazis.”

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Sohrab Ahmari is a contributing editor of The American Conservative and a visiting fellow of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University. His books include From Fire, by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith (Ignatius, 2019) and The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos (Convergent/Random House, 2021). He is currently writing a book about privatized tyranny in America.

Featured image: Azov Battalion recruits in Kiev in 2015. (Sovastock/Shutterstock)

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The West increasingly foments violence in Ukraine. Since the end of January, sending Western weapons to Kiev has become an uninterrupted practice. Practically every day, NATO aircraft land tons of military equipment on Ukrainian soil, with most of the material coming from the US and UK. Other countries that adhere to anti-Russian paranoia follow the same path, such as Canada, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, the Baltic States and Turkey, which day after day prepare military aid packages for Kiev.

In the last three months, Kiev has received over 1,000 tons of Western military equipment, totaling over 1.5 billion dollars of weapons and ammunition. The quantity and value of the material received exceeds the levels of recent years, being the peak of arms deliveries from the West to Kiev in the entire post-Maidan period. In the second week of February alone, around 255 tons of weapons and ammunition were landed in Ukraine, including large lots of 7.62mm rifles and cartridges. As if that were not enough, the US and other NATO countries have recently confirmed that the shipment of material to Ukraine will continue to increase in the near future, justifying the measure with the current security crisis.

Obviously, this justification is just an “acceptable” public discourse to hide the real purpose of this militarization: to assist the Ukrainian government in its incursions against the Russian-speaking population in Donbass. The so-called “Russian threat” is an unsubstantiated narrative that is not enough to explain any large-scale military cooperation. It is inconceivable that a potential conflict would be sufficient to justify such a massive mobilization of efforts as the one that is currently taking place. Such a huge shipment of weapons can only be explained by the material existence of a war, as has been happening in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

A proof of this thesis is the fact that the weapons being delivered to Kiev do not have a simple defensive military potential, but an offensive one. The UK has supplied the country with more than 2,200 portable NLAW missile systems, for example, as well as grenade launchers, 338-caliber automatic shooter systems, machine guns and explosive charge munitions. In addition, London also signed an agreement with Kiev to send more than 2.3 billion dollars in financial aid for military projects. Among the projects are the construction of eight missile vessels, the purchase of two British minesweepers and the opening of two new naval bases in the Azov and Black Seas. Obviously, the character of all this planning is offensive, not merely defensive.

Large-scale military training is another indication of the existence of an offensive Ukrainian plan. In recent months, the aggressiveness of joint exercises between Western and Ukrainian forces has increased exponentially. Recently, 100 units of British special forces were deployed on Ukrainian soil in order to “help” local soldiers in the “fight against insurgents and saboteurs”, which constitutes a very suspicious activity and increases tensions and polarizations in the country. Clearly, these maneuvers are an indicative that Ukraine, with Western support, is planning further incursions into the Russian-speaking regions: the “insurgents” that the British special forces want to fight are the people living in these regions.

These data all lead us to the conclusion that Kiev is planning offensive actions on the two fronts with a Russian majority: Donbass and Crimea. The construction of British-funded naval bases in the Black and Azov Seas is indicative of offensive plans in Crimea, while most other activities are focused on incursions in the Donbass. There is a reversal in the naming of the dangerous agent that causes destabilization, which is Ukraine, not Russia.

In addition, there is an attempt to intimidate Russia by force. Kiev, despite its visible military inferiority compared to Moscow, believes it could compel Russia to decline its interest in protecting the population on the western border if it demonstrates military power enough to start a war. The central problem with this is that Ukraine has no such a power, depending on the weapons of NATO, of which Kiev is not even a member. NATO wants Ukraine to be increasingly aggressive and encourages violence against Russia, but it does not give any guarantee of real military support in the event of an outbreak of conflict.

Unfortunately, this more neutral and realistic perspective on the Ukrainian issue does not reach the Western public opinion, which is forced to believe that the arms shipment to Kiev is some kind of defensive plan. The structure of the NATO-Kiev military project is offensive and targets the ethnic Russian population, against which there is an ongoing genocide, as attested in a lawsuit under analysis at the European Court of Human Rights.

More than that, this reality is known by all western governments that support Kiev. Every western government that sends arms to Ukraine is cooperating with the massacres in Donbass and with a possible invasion against Russian Crimea in the near future. Germany is an example of a country that understood this fact and sovereignly denied sending weapons to foment violence in Ukraine, but unfortunately its example is not followed by most European governments, which continue to indiscriminately obey any NATO order.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

Featured image is from Donbass Insider

The COVID Mandates Are Leaving Europe. Is Freedom Winning?

February 16th, 2022 by Joanna Miller

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Joy reigned in my house this past week as one child’s school lifted its mask mandates. At the same time, frustration ensued when another child was uninvited to an event due to her jab status. My little neck of the country can’t seem to decide if it’s going to ditch restrictions or double down. Situational awareness is vital to prepping, and yet it’s hard to tell what’s going on. 

Maybe if we look at which governments are taking what kind of measures around the world, we will see trends that can better inform us in the United States.  

What mandates do we see in Europe?

Many of the European countries have announced that they will move forward treating Covid as just another endemic disease. Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic have all started lifting Covid-related restrictions, such as limits on gatherings and requiring Covid Passes to enter certain venues. Italy, Finland, Ireland, France, and Lithuania are easing many requirements. 

Most of these countries plan to be as close to “normal” as possible by March. The United Kingdom has lifted work-from-home requirements, mandatory masking, and requiring Covid Passes to enter venues.

Let’s look at some of these countries a little more closely.

Denmark was the first country in the European Union to scrap restrictions. Denmark never tried to mandate the jab, though 78% of the population voluntarily received it. Their government officials have stated that they do not want to force their population to do anything because they do not want to lose the trust of the people. 

Considering that they are letting go of their restrictions, the Danish people’s trust seems well-placed.

On February 3, Sweden also announced that they were ending the use of their Covid Passes. Sweden had been notoriously (or inspiringly, depending on how you look at it) reluctant to shut down when the rest of the world did. How did the Swedes fare? Did they all die for their refusal to place their population on house arrest?

Well, as of February 5, 2022, the Swedes have approximately 1592 deaths per million due to Covid, while the Americans have approximately 2707 deaths per million. Yep, our lockdowns that destroyed small businesses everywhere were totally worth it. . .

And, like the Danes, the Swedes never mandated jabs, though their country achieved over 70% compliance voluntarily. Interestingly, Sweden has not recommended jabs for children. They simply decided the experimental jabs were not worth the risk to children. Like the Danish government, the Swedish government gives the impression that it is genuinely trying to do what’s best for its citizens.  

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom had the second-worst Covid-related death toll in Europe, surpassed only by Russia. Like the United States, the UK has its own influential pharmaceutical giant in its Wellcome Trust. Not surprisingly, the Brits were subjected to much of the same fear-mongering and almost comically overblown death projections we Americans have been. 

We’ve got Tony Fauci; they’ve got Neil Ferguson from the Imperial College, whose models in 2020 have been proven wrong by a factor of about ten. And yet, at the end of January, the Brits decided that Omicron had peaked and that they were ready to open up, too.

Are we seeing minor victories with the dropping of mandates?

While watching these European countries back off from becoming techno-fascist dictatorships cheers me up, it’s too soon to declare victory. Other countries seem hell-bent on forcing their citizens into line, regardless of any genuine health concerns.

The Austrians have just signed into law the world’s strictest mandate so far. The government plans to fine people up to $4000 quarterly until they submit to getting jabbed. To enforce this, police officers travel around and randomly stop people to check their papers. People who cannot produce their papers are fined on the spot.

Germany, with a population of about 85 million, is more similar to the United States in its size and diversity. I was born in Berlin and have had numerous friends and relatives living in Germany for years at a time; the cultural differences between Berlin and Munich are comparable to the differences between New York and Houston. And, like the Americans, about half of the Germans are ready to scrap restrictions, and the other half still think it’s too soon. German leaders, such as the Health Minister, Karl Lauterbach, have been proposing mandates similar to Austria’s, but as of February 8, 2022, Germans still cannot come to an agreement.

But, what about Australia?

The Organic Prepper has already posted articles about Australia’s draconian lockdowns. Looking at the rules as of right now, I still can’t help but think of Footloose and the town that banned dancing. Australia has slightly relaxed some of its rules regarding interstate travel, but almost everything requiring public interaction requires proof of the jab. 

As I said above, many of the European countries are ditching their contact tracing and Covid Pass requirements; I can’t find any reference to the Australians ditching their surveillance measures.

Because that’s really what these measures are. It’s not about health.

Omicron was mild, and it’s past its peak. South Africa was the first country to detect Omicron. It was named by the World Health Organization on November 26, 2021. And by the end of December, South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee recommended ditching all of their remaining Covid restrictions, such as quarantining and contact tracing.   

South Africa had an intense spike in cases with Omicron, but their death rate never skyrocketed. The rest of the world should be looking at South Africa as a bellwether. First to have a spike in cases, first to watch the cases drop off, first to end restrictions. We should all be so reasonable.

However, the American mainstream media does not seem to want to admit we’re done with Covid yet. 

What is going on?

There are strange things afoot in the medical world. Death rates have been up. When the head of a life insurance company in Indiana said that claims went up 40% among working-age people, that was big news. There seems to be a wide range of ailments that are suddenly spiking. There’s no one new cause of death for all these young people. It has been clear that the deaths were not from Covid, and insisting on masks and lockdowns (which even Johns Hopkins has admitted didn’t really help anyway) is indefensible at this point.  

So, what do we do? We seem to be at a crossroads. The federal government shows no interest in backing down. On the one hand, even blue states such as New York and New Jersey have grown sick of the constantly changing mandates, all of which have proven useless against Omicron. The health care workers I’ve known that wanted everyone jabbed or else barred from civil society six months ago (and I knew a few of those) have become curiously silent. On the other, Biden and his “experts” still ask people to hang on for “just a few more weeks.”

A similar scene plays out in Canada.

Though governors of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec have all announced ending restrictions, Trudeau, as of February 9, is still trying to convince his public that vaccine mandates are the best way to avoid further restrictions. 

Within the European Union, many countries, most notably the small ones with a great deal of trust and social cohesion, are ready to ditch restrictions. The EU itself wants to extend the use of the Covid Passes for another year.   As Omicron peaks across the Continent, their reasons for this year-long extension are nonexistent.

(If you’re looking to keep your family fed in the event of a lockdown, check out our free QUICKSTART Guide on building a food pantry here.)

What has happened to free speech?

Most tellingly, on February 8, 2022, the United States Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin that equates questioning the Covid narrative with domestic terrorism. No adult capable of critical thinking can possibly think any of these government actions have anything to do with public health anymore. The more time goes by, the more all the events of the last two years point to the United States government, the Canadian government, and the EU attempting to implement surveillance states.   

So, worldwide, we have governments getting more oppressive and populations getting less compliant by the day. This sort of tension has never ended well. If people start getting hungry, which may very well happen with all the supply chain issues, we may begin to see something like the French Revolution start to play out.

The thought that that might happen on American soil turns my stomach, but lots of stomach-turning things have happened throughout history, and we are no different from people living during the times of the Civil War, the French Revolution, or the Bolshevik Revolution. Anything is possible.

People are fed up with these mandates.

And yet it’s not inevitable, either. Peaceful noncompliance may very well force Trudeau’s hand in the end. If you want to be a dictator, you need people willing to enforce your arbitrary rules, and he may not be able to find enough of them. The same goes for the US.

The Canadian trucker rally continues to inspire. Within the next two weeks, truckers around the world from Norway to New Zealand are planning similar protests. This may be the last chance for freedom-lovers to make ourselves heard. I’ve seen signs from protests that say, “Farmers Grow It, Truckers Haul It.” The protestors know that, without them, things fall apart.  

Most of us cannot change policies or influence politicians…

But the little choices we make everyday matter. Do we report heterodox-thinking friends, family, and coworkers the way DHS wants us to? Or do we support each other? Do we “just go with the flow,” or do we continue to speak out about infringements on our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Do we spend our time zoning out in front of a screen or learning skills that will help us become assets to our communities?  

I see no easy way out of the mess we’re in. Either we slide along into what the Davos crowd wants, where we “own nothing and are happy,” or we brace ourselves for shortages as protests continue. Free societies have not been the norm throughout history. The norm, since the time of the ancient Sumerians, has been strongman leaders. The norm is trying really, really hard to reassert itself, and we need to resist it if we want to retain our rights and freedoms. We need to be able to keep our spirits up in the face of shortages, frustrations, and inconveniences. I firmly believe that if we freedom-lovers continue to support each other and keep our communities strong, we may avert sliding into medical-technical tyranny. The time to consciously choose a side is now.

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Joanna has been homeschooling three children since 2012. In 2014, she moved to the High Plains of Colorado. She and her children began a little homestead, gardening and raising chickens for eggs and meat. One animal led to another, and these days they have livestock guardian dogs, chickens, geese, ducks, alpacas, goats, pigs, and one very spoiled cat.

Featured image is from The Organic Prepper

Evento organizado por La Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de Mexico (UACM)

El Centro de Investigación Sobre Globalización (Global Research) extiende a usted la más cordial invitación para asistir a la presentación del libro: 

La presentación del libro tendrá lugar el próximo miércoles 16 de febrero a las 16:00 horas (hora Ciudad de México) a través de la plataforma Zoom en el marco del seminario “Geopolítica Mundial en el Siglo XXI”, Colegio de Humanidades 

 

 

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“La crisis mundial del Coronavirus 2020-2022:

Destruyendo la Sociedad Civil, Ingeniería económica,

Golpe de Estado Global y el Gran Reseteo”,

del Prof. Michel Chossudovsky.

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Para asistir a la presentación sírvase ingresar vía Zoom insertando el ID de la reunión y el Código de acceso, o bien a través del link de acceso directo.

Para cualquier duda sobre el acceso a la reunión, sírvase escribir al siguiente correo electrónico: [email protected]

 

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Link de acceso directo:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86570581882?pwd=N1BYaS9MYm5iWUw1ZjFsVnNrN1ZMZz09 

El 16 de febrero, 2022, 16:00 horas (hora Ciudad de México)

14:00 horas (Los Ángeles, California)

17:00 horas (Nueva York, Montreal)

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Consulte el el Libro de Michel Chossudovsky en Inglés:

The 2020-22 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

Otras referencias bibliográficas en Español:

La Bastilla 2.0: “Cambio de régimen real”:

Construyendo protesta y resistencia contra la Agenda COVID-19


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O poder e a revolta no Cazaquistão

February 16th, 2022 by Pedro Rocha Fleury Curado

Após um mês do início dos protestos no Cazaquistão, que teve por consequência a prisão de centenas de manifestantes, a implementação de reformas na cúpula do poder cazaque e promessas futuras de maior ação estatal contra a pobreza e a extrema desigualdade social, o país centro-asiático parece ter conseguido retomar alguma estabilidade. Embora informações cruciais sobre o desenrolar dos acontecimentos ainda permaneçam pouco claras, o atual cenário torna possível identificar consequências políticas duradouras.

De imediato, verifica-se dois resultados: 1) os presidentes Kassim-Jomart Tokayev e Vladimir Putin saem dos eventos como os grandes vencedores. Enquanto Tokayev consolidou seu poder “de facto” como chefe do Executivo cazaque, Putin reforça o papel da tutela militar russa sobre a Ásia Central e, em particular, o Cazaquistão; 2) há uma inflexão na política multivetorial cazaque, caracterizada nas últimas décadas pela busca de autonomia externa (mediante acenos cordiais a várias potências estratégicas no plano internacional). Vejamos com mais detalhes esses dois pontos.

Breve recuperação dos eventos

No último dia 2 de janeiro, manifestações de rua originalmente mobilizadas contra o aumento do combustível de gás liquefeito tiveram início em Zhanaozen, no Oeste do país, e logo se estenderam para importantes cidades, como Almati. Dois dias depois, quando os protestos já haviam assumido uma amplitude inédita, grupos armados se juntaram às mobilizações de massa com o objetivo de atacar alvos específicos, como edifícios da administração pública, aeroportos e canais de televisão. 

O governo de Tokayev mobilizou então suas forças de segurança para conter a evolução dos protestos e reprimir os atos de violência. A internet e as comunicações foram cortadas por alguns dias, cerca de 10 mil pessoas foram presas, outras 164 foram mortas. De imediato, acusações de uma nova “revolução colorida” começaram a ganhar força nos discursos oficiais de Pequim, Moscou e do próprio poder cazaque. Grupos violentos de manifestantes foram acusados de estarem armados, de serem formados por não-cazaques e de terem sido financiados por agentes estrangeiros, com o objetivo de desestabilizar politicamente o país.

É preciso entender o efeito dessas acusações: a ocorrência de uma ameaça estrangeira respalda o “artigo 4” da Organização do Tratado de Segurança Coletiva (OTSC, aliança militar que além do Cazaquistão reúne Armênia, Bielorrússia, Quirguistão, Rússia e Tadjiquistão), item relacionado à resposta coletiva dos membros do grupo caso um deles seja atacado ou ameaçado por forças militares exteriores, sejam elas de organizações classificadas como “terroristas”, ou de Estados. Tais acusações, portanto, legitimam a convocação da OTSC por Tokayev, mesmo que as provas de participação estrangeira nos protestos não tenham sido apresentadas.

A OTSC atendeu à convocação imediatamente. No dia 6 de janeiro, uma força militar conjunta foi enviada, sendo a maioria dos soldados provenientes da Rússia (cerca de três mil); os outros membros participaram com algumas dezenas de soldados. Poucos dias depois, a situação foi controlada e, no dia 15 de janeiro, a Rússia anunciou o início da retirada das tropas da OTSC.

Uma guerra de facções políticas

Até os conflitos serem controlados, uma ampla disputa pelo controle do Estado estava sendo travada nos subterrâneos da capital Nur-Sultan (antes chamada Astana, renomeada em 2019 como homenagem ao ex-presidente). Tokayev, oficialmente presidente desde 2019, era uma figura menor diante do ex-presidente que governou quase três décadas, Nur-Sultan Nazarbaev. Após a recente passagem do cargo, Nazarbaev havia de fato conservado grande parte do poder através de sua influência política nas diferentes agências do Estado e de cargos oficiais herdados ou criados especialmente para ele. 

Desde sua saída da presidência, Nazarbaev acumulava o cargo simbólico de “líder da nação”, com cargos de efetivo comando – como o de presidente do forte partido governista Nur Otan, o de chefe da Assembleia do Povo (o parlamento), o de presidente do Conselho de Cooperação dos Estados de Língua Túrquica (que além dos cazaques compreende azeris, quiguizes, uzbeques e turcos), e o de chefe do Conselho de Segurança do Cazaquistão (o que, dentre outras incumbências, dava a ele o papel de comandante-em-chefe das Forças Armadas). Em 2021, Nazarbaev, já com oitenta anos, sinalizou ceder parte de seu concentrado poder: em abril, passou o comando do parlamento e, em novembro, da presidência do partido Nur Otan para o atual presidente Tokayev. Entretanto, manteve-se como uma figura central no governo, preservando o posto de chefe do Conselho de Segurança, e o apoio tanto de seus apadrinhados em postos-chave da administração pública, como de influentes oligarcas do setor privado – grupos dominantes que, ao final da Guerra Fria em 1991, ergueram conglomerados capitalistas a partir da pilhagem dos espólios resultantes da derrota econômica e implosão soviética.

Dessa maneira, as manifestações foram percebidas por Tokayev como uma chance para iniciar uma depuração dos homens de confiança de Nazarbaev no poder, tratando de destituí-los de suas funções. Assim, ministros-chave como Beibit Atamkulov, Mugzum Mirzagaliev e Marat Beketayev foram demitidos. Ganhou também repercussão a demissão do chefe do serviço secreto cazaque, Karim Massimov, preso poucos dias depois do início dos protestos, acusado de “alta traição” por uma suposta relação com os ataques armados (embora não tenha havido apresentação de provas ao público). Por fim, o próprio Nazarbaev foi destituído do cargo de chefe do Conselho de Segurança, que foi passado diretamente para as mãos do atual presidente.

O resultado dos protestos foi que Tokayev concentrou funções e poder como nunca antes, mas também sinalizou em favor dos manifestantes, buscando criar para si a imagem de um governo atento às demandas populares, um “governo de escuta” (“listening government”), no jargão da política internacional. Em seus discursos, atacou os oligarcas e homens de confiança do anterior governo Nazarbaev, culpados, segundo ele, pela corrupção e concentração de riqueza em um país profundamente desigual. 

Em suma, Tokayev indicou às massas enfurecidas quem seriam os responsáveis por suas mazelas: o clã Nazarbaev junto ao seu grupo de apadrinhados nos altos escalões do governo. E para acalmar os ânimos populares, propôs soluções práticas: além de cancelar o aumento das tarifas de combustíveis, prometeu criar impostos especiais sobre os ricos para usá-los no combate à pobreza, congelou os salários dos funcionários de alto-escalão do governo, e anunciou para o segundo semestre uma série de medidas econômicas que “ajudem a reduzir a desigualdade social”. Com isto, tentou se desvencilhar da condição de alvo das críticas. 

Desigualdade e riqueza no Cazaquistão

No Cazaquistão, enquanto a imensa maioria da famílias vive em média com o equivalente a 300 dólares mensais, uma elite de super-ricos concentra grande parte das receitas obtidas com as riquezas naturais da nação. Trata-se de um país rico que exporta petróleo, gás e urânio, mas também contém amplas reservas de terras raras, cobre, carvão e outros depósitos não metálicos.

Desde a independência (1991), a política de Nazarbaev buscou atrair investimentos estrangeiros para explorar os recursos do subsolo. Empresas estadunidenses e sobretudo europeias passaram a operar a partir de concessões fornecidas pelo governo. Atuavam em atividades variadas, que iam da exploração dos recursos naturais às grandes redes varejistas e de transportes. Obviamente, o fato do país ser um regime autoritário nunca foi impedimento para que houvesse empresas e capitais do Ocidente interessados em explorar as potencialidades das matérias primas cazaques.

A atração de investimentos estrangeiros esteve em consonância com a adoção de uma política liberal voltada para a abertura comercial e financeira que remonta aos anos noventa. Como resultado, a economia foi impulsionada pelas exportações do setor de hidrocarbonetos, enquanto os setores industrial e agrícola mantiveram-se atrofiados.

Nos últimos dez anos, a China se tornou um dos principais parceiros comerciais e fonte de grandes investimentos nos setores de infraestrutura e matérias primas; o Cazaquistão é percebido como um local geopoliticamente importante para o projeto das “Novas Rotas da Seda”, assim como um país seguro para os investimentos, por conta de sua estabilidade política, especialmente quando comparado com os outros países da Ásia Central.

O cenário de crescimento econômico com estabilidade política foi impulsionado pela alta das comódites nos anos 2000. Com isso, criou-se uma casta de oligarcas ricos apadrinhados pelo governo, que capturavam os recursos do subsolo. No Cazaquistão, cerca de 60% da economia está em poder de empresas sob o comando do Estado (especialmente através de controle acionário majoritário), enquanto as empresas privadas costumam operar como fornecedoras para as empresas estatais. É neste setor privado onde se concentram os oligarcas “criados” pelo presidente Nazarbaev. 

Dentre eles, estão inclusive familiares do ex-presidente. A filha mais velha, Dariga Nazarbaev, fundou a principal rede de televisão do país, a agência Khabar, além de deter participações em diferentes empresas como a Europe Plus Kazakhstan e Alma-Invest-Holding. Das descendentes do presidente, foi a única a ingressar na política, tornando-se deputada e, posteriormente, senadora. Já a filha do meio, Dinara Nazarbaev, junto com seu marido Timur Kulybaev, são donos do Banco do Povo (Halyk Bank), o banco mais importante do país e ligado ao setor petrolífero. Por fim, a filha mais nova, Aliya Nazarbaev, é dona da Elistroy, empresa líder no setor de construção civil cazaque. O clã Nazarbaev, com Nur-Sultan e filhas, figura na revista Forbes (EUA), na lista das pessoas mais ricas do mundo.

A partir de 2015, a economia cazaque começa a desacelerar, dada a queda dos preços de matérias primas, como o petróleo – uma consequência da crise econômica mundial capitalista que explode em 2008, reduzindo a demanda por comódites. Neste contexto, também os investimentos estrangeiros sofreram retrações nos últimos anos. Mais recentemente, com a nova crise provocada pela pandemia da covid-19, houve deterioração dos índices sociais, com aumento da inflação, do desemprego e o crescimento da pobreza. 

O declínio econômico fez com que os acionistas das empresas de hidrocarbonetos pressionassem pelo fim dos subsídios e pela paridade com os preços internacionais. Como resultado, os preços dobraram no início de janeiro deste ano, conformando o gatilho que restava para que manifestações espontâneas – sem lideranças que se destacassem – tomassem as ruas das principais cidades. Junto à revolta pelo súbito aumento dos preços dos combustíveis, se somaram críticas à plutocracia e ao modelo econômico. Diante de um contexto que mesclou uma crise econômica a uma convulsão social, Tokayev percebeu o momento para finalmente assumir o controle pleno do Estado, varrendo para fora a burocracia pró-Nazarbaev.

A tutela militar russa

A afirmação do poder interno de Tokayev não seria possível sem o apoio da Rússia. Ao liderar uma coalizão militar sob a bandeira da OTSC pela primeira vez na história (a organização existe desde 1994), Vladimir Putin enviou um claro sinal ao resto do mundo: naquela região da Ásia Central, antiga periferia soviética, os russos ainda são os donos do jogo. A intervenção rápida e eficiente mostrou a capacidade russa de apoiar regimes aliados dentro de sua zona de influência. Ao mesmo tempo, a retirada gradual das tropas evidenciou que o interesse não é ocupar, mas sim manter uma relação de tutela militar, intervindo para garantir a estabilidade da região como um todo. Putin buscou passar a imagem de um parceiro estratégico confiável, que protege governos aliados intervindo de forma cirúrgica. 

Portanto, se havia alguma real mobilização de tipo “revolução colorida” (até aqui, algo bem duvidoso), ela se mostrou um retumbante fracasso.

Um abandono da política externa multivetorial?

Essa situação, na qual Putin e Tokayev reforçaram a cooperação para a extração de vantagens mútuas, pode ter como primeiro efeito uma inflexão na política externa multivetorial iniciada no governo Nazarbaev. Desde os anos 1990, o Cazaquistão anuncia buscar parcerias comerciais com variados países (os vetores); essa estratégia serviu para afastar um pouco a política externa do país da órbita russa, atrair investimentos estrangeiros (especialmente voltados para a extração e comercialização dos recursos naturais) e projetá-lo como um defensor global dos valores da cooperação multilateral.

Aproximações com países europeus, os Estados Unidos e a China foram feitas tanto no campo militar como na esfera comercial. Entretanto, a Rússia jamais deixou de ter papel central para a política externa cazaque. O Cazaquistão depende do acesso ao território russo para conseguir escoar produtos como petróleo, gás e urânio para os mercados europeus. A elite política e econômica cazaque fala russo, e cerca de 20% da população (algo como 3,5 milhões de pessoas) são consideradas etnicamente russas. O cosmódromo de Baikonur, situado no Sul do país, continua sendo utilizado pela Rússia para lançamento de foguetes. Existem acordos de cooperação em diversos níveis, com destaque especial para o campo militar e econômico. Isso tudo significa que, apesar dos discursos, a Rússia nunca deixou de representar um parceiro estratégico de primeira ordem, desde a independência do país.

Com a intervenção da Rússia através da OTSC, o governo cazaque demonstrou depender bastante do apoio do vizinho do norte: para reforçar suas forças militares, controlar manifestações populares e garantir estabilidade política. Nesse sentido, Tokayev enfraqueceu substancialmente a proposta multivetorial, que através de múltiplas parcerias internacionais buscava maior autonomia externa (sobretudo frente à Rússia). 

Em suma, um impactante efeito das manifestações reprimidas foi explicitar a insustentabilidade da política externa cazaque, encampada pelo discurso multivetorial – afinal, Tokayev demonstrou depender do apoio externo da Rússia para garantir a governabilidade doméstica.

Pedro Rocha Fleury Curado* e Yuri Martins-Fontes**

 

 

*Doutor em Economia Política, professor do Instituto de Relações Internacionais e Defesa da UFRJ.

**Doutor em História Econômica, filósofo e escritor, coordenador do Núcleo Práxis da USP.

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Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de Mexico (UACM)

Colegio de Humanidades

Conferencia, Debate y Presentación de Libro

El 16 de febrero, 2022, 16.00 horas (ZOOM)

Seminario de Geopolitico 

Invitacíon a la communidad universitaria y al publico en general

La Crisis Mundial del Corona Virus 2020-2022

Destruyendo la Sociedad Civil, Ingeniería económica,

Golpe de Estado Global y el “Gran Reseteo” 

Presentación por 

Dr. Michel Chossudovsky,

Profesor de economía, Universidad de Ottawa

Panelistas

Dra. Tania Hogla Rodriguez. Rectora de la UACM
Mtro. Carlos Fazio. Profesor UACM
Mtro. Oscar Gonzáles. Profesor UACM.

Moderador:

Prof. Raul Villegas. Coordinador del seminario de Geopolítica.

El 16 de febrero, 2022, 16.00 horas (ZOOM)

ID de reunión: 865 7058 1882
Código de acceso: 480061

Link de acceso directo:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86570581882?pwd=N1BYaS9MYm5iWUw1ZjFsVnNrN1ZMZz09 

 

ID de reunión: 865 7058 1882
Código de acceso: 480061

Link de acceso directo:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86570581882?pwd=N1BYaS9MYm5iWUw1ZjFsVnNrN1ZMZz09 

Ariel Noyola R. le está invitando a una reunión de Zoom programada.

El 16 de febrero, 2022, 16.00 horas (hora de Mexico)

14.oo horas (Los Angeles)

17.oo horas (Nueva York, Montreal)

***

Detalles sobre el Libro de Michel Chossudovsky

La crisis mundial del coronavirus 2020-22 . Destruyendo la sociedad civil, Depresión económica diseñada Golpe de Estado Global y el “Gran Reinicio”  14 capítulos  (Traducción AI)

The 2020-22 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

¿Golpe de Estado mundial? El “Gran Reinicio”, la Deuda Global y el “Tratamiento de Choque” Neoliberal

La Bastilla 2.0: “Cambio de régimen real”:

Construyendo protesta y resistencia contra la Agenda COVID-19

Archivo de artículos del Michel Chossudovsky  (español)

 

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Nel Donbass la miccia è accesa

February 15th, 2022 by Manlio Dinucci

Mentre la situazione nel Donbass diviene sempre più incandescente, Biden, alla vigilia del colloquio con Putin, ha convocato l’11 febbraio quello che di fatto è il consiglio di guerra della Nato e dell’Unione Europea: il segretario generale della Nato Jens Stoltenberg, il primo ministro britannico Boris Johnson, il presidente francese Emmanuel Macron, il cancelliere tedesco Olaf Scholz, il primo ministro italiano Mario Draghi, il presidente polacco Andrzej Duda, il presidente rumeno Klaus Iohannis, il primo ministro canadese Justin Trudeau, affiancati dal presidente del Consiglio Europeo Charles Michel e dalla presidente della Commissione Europea Ursula von der Leyen. Il consiglio di guerra Nato-UE ha chiarito che «se la Russia effettua una ulteriore invasione dell’Ucraina, gli Stati uniti, insieme con i loro Alleati e partner, risponderanno con decisione e imporranno immediati e pesanti costi alla Russia».

Questo ha detto il giorno dopo Biden a Putin, a nome non solo degli Stati uniti ma della Nato e dell’Unione Europea. Rifiuto totale di ogni trattativa, di fatto una dichiarazione di guerra, sottoscritta dall’Italia per mano di Mario Draghi sotto gli occhi di un Parlamento silente e consenziente. Ogni giorno di più si intensificano i segnali di guerra imminente. Il Dipartimento di Stato sta evacuando l’Ambasciata a Kiev, lasciandovi solo pochi diplomatici e una squadra di Marines, e avverte i cittadini statunitensi di lasciare l’Ucraina perché «non sarebbe in grado di proteggerli dall’attacco russo». Lo stesso ha fatto la Farnesina. Il Pentagono sta ritirando dall’Ucraina 160 istruttori militari, che hanno addestrato le forze di Kiev. Restano però consiglieri e istruttori militari appartenenti alle Forze Speciali Usa e Nato, che hanno di fatto la direzione dell’Esercito e della Guardia nazionale di Kiev. In prima fila il battaglione neonazista Azov, già distintosi per la sua ferocia contro le popolazioni russe del Donbass, promosso per i suoi meriti a reggimento meccanizzato di forze speciali, armato e addestrato dalla Nato.

Ha la stessa insegna della Divisione Panzer SS Das Reich, una delle 200 divisioni hitleriane che nel 1941 invasero l’Unione Sovietica. Furono sconfitte, ma il prezzo pagato dall’Unione Sovietica fu altissimo: circa 27 milioni di morti, per oltre la metà civili, corrispondenti al 15% della popolazione (in rapporto allo 0,3% degli Usa in tutta la Seconda guerra mondiale); circa 5 milioni di deportati in Germania; oltre 1.700 città e grossi abitati, 70 mila piccoli villaggi, 30 mila fabbriche distrutti. Tutto questo viene pericolosamente dimenticato, mentre la Russia continua a ripetere, parlando al vento, che non intende attaccare l’Ucraina e denuncia la crescente concentrazione di truppe di Kiev di fronte all’area del Donbass abitata dalle popolazioni russe.

Qui Kiev ha schierato oltre 150 mila soldati. Sono dotati di veicoli lanciarazzi Grad, ciascuno capace di lanciare fino a 40 km, in una salva di 20 secondi, 40 razzi da 122 mm con testate ad alto esplosivo che, deflagrando, investono una vasta area con migliaia di taglienti frammenti metallici o piccole bombe a scoppio ritardato. Un attacco su vasta scala con armi di questo tipo, contro gli abitanti russi delle regioni di Donetsk e Lugansk, provocherebbe una strage e non potrebbe essere arrestato dalle forze locali costituite da circa 35 mila uomini.

La guerra potrebbe esplodere con una operazione false flag. Mosca denuncia la presenza in Donbass di mercenari Usa con armi chimiche. La miccia potrebbe essere una provocazione, tipo un attacco a un abitato ucraino, attribuito ai russi del Donbass che verrebbero attaccati dalle soverchianti forze di Kiev. La Federazione russa ha avvertito che, in tale situazione, non resterebbe a guardare, ma interverrebbe a difesa dei russi del Donbass, distruggendo le forze attaccanti.

Esploderebbe così, nel cuore d’Europa, una guerra a tutto vantaggio degli Usa che, attraverso la Nato a cui appartengono 21 dei 27 paesi Ue, e con la collaborazione della stessa Unione Europea, riportano l’Europa a una situazione simile, ma più pericolosa, di quella della guerra fredda, rafforzando l’influenza e la presenza statunitensi nella regione europea.

Manlio Dinucci

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I have carefully read the Emergencies Act as well as the relevant sections of The Charter of Rights of Freedoms. I doubt Justin Trudeau has an understanding of the implications of his actions, not to mention his baseless accusations directed against Canada’s Freedom Convoy: 

Were these allegations ratified by the House of Commons?

The nature of the Freedom Convoy is peaceful and non-violent.

See Global Research’s video: The Protesters are Honest and Respectful

 

Who Are the Criminals?

A  law enforcement procedure cannot be instigated by a Prime Minister who has blatantly violated the fundamental rights of Canadians.

Since March 2020, under the jurisdiction of the Trudeau government, entire sectors of our economy have been destabilized.  Small and medium-sized enterprises have been driven into bankruptcy. Unemployment and poverty are rampant. The mental health of millions of Canadians including our children has been affected.

“V the Virus” is said to be responsible for the wave of bankruptcies and unemployment.  That’s a lie. There is no causal relationship between the (microscopic) SARS-CoV-2 virus and economic variables.

We are dealing with a far-reaching and complex crisis which is sustained by a corrupt government, coupled with “fake science” and a relentless 24/7 fear campaign.

The government claims that the mandates are intended to “save lives”. Nonsense.

The Emergencies Act (1985)

According to The Emergencies Act (1985) (Section 3(a))

“a national emergency is an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that … seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians”. 

Section 3(a): Does that Not Describe the Very Nature of the COVID Crisis?

The wording of Section 3 (a) of the Emergencies Act (quoted above, see also Appendix below) describes the chaotic political, social and economic and situation which has affected the lives of Canadians in the course of the last two years.

The corona crisis under the helm of a corrupt government is undermining the structures of civil society as well the democratic foundations of Canada as a Nation State.

At this juncture in our history, on behalf of all Canadians, the formulation of emergency procedures directed against the reckless rule of the Trudeau government should be instigated.  

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms

“protects those basic rights and freedoms of all Canadians that are considered essential to preserving Canada as a free and democratic country. It applies to all governments – federal, provincial and territorial.”

Those rights are being encroached upon by the Trudeau government.

Moreover, Trudeau’s decision to invoke a National Emergency is an encroachment on the jurisdiction of the provinces and territories as outlined in Section 3(b) of the Emergencies Act (emphasis added):

“For the purposes of this Act, a national emergency an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that ….(b)

seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada and that cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada. (emphasis added)

In recent developments, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan have confirmed their intent to withdraw the vaccine passport.


Appendix

Selected excerpts

For full text, click here.

National Emergencies

 For the purposes of this Act, a national emergency is an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that

(a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, or

(b) seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada and that cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.

Construction

 Nothing in this Act shall be construed or applied so as to confer on the Governor in Council the power to make orders or regulations

(a) altering the provisions of this Act; or

(b) providing for the detention, imprisonment or internment of Canadian citizens or permanent residents within the meaning of subsection 2(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

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Dr Meryl Nass, an internist with a sterling resume, practiced medicine for 40 years, but her criticism of the official Covid-19 narrative led to her being charged with spreading medical “misinformation”. She had openly discussed the dangers of the Covid-19 vaccines (well documented by now) and prescribed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, neither of which conform to officially sanctioned protocols for treating Covid-19. Both medicines are safe, have been shown to have antiviral properties and are very inexpensive. But never mind that, governmental bureaucrats have declared them ‘off limits’ in favor of remdesivir at ~$3,000 for a course, despite its being highly injurious to kidneys.

For her departure from the rules, the Maine Medical Board of Licensure in late January 2022 suspended her license to practice medicine. Moreover, to have her license reinstated, the Board required that she undergo a psychological evaluation, something that would necessarily become part of her permanent record. The suggestion of mental imbalance harks back to the oppressive strategy of the old USSR. Such a mark on any doctor’s history would today, with near certainty, end a career.

Dr. Nass is, by any standard, a high-profile medical figure. She has written widely, largely on anthrax, and has served as an advisor to members of Congress and state legislatures on matters relating to bioterrorism and Gulf War Syndrome. I have searched available information on members of the Maine Board, and it is doubtful that anyone sitting there could fill the shoes of a Meryl Nass. But, of course, they have the privilege of power.

In today’s America, doctors need access to hospitals. Having hospital access denied would be crushing for many practices. Atop the hospital hierarchy, like it or not, are the administrators who enforce recommendations of the CDC and NIAID (despite popular perception, recommendations are what they are) as if they were laws chiseled in granite. It is administrators that interpret them as iron-clad laws that must be followed, this effectively canceling the doctor-patient relationship. In such a one-size-fits-all environment, the physician’s treatment is no longer based primarily on understanding each patient as a unique individual and situation, as an official protocol has assumed the power to override that.

As with hospital administrations, so with state medical boards, as Dr. Nass’s experience exemplifies. Wherever you look across the United States, medical boards are seen to hue to the same official protocol that includes, among other factors such as public masking, promoting expensive pharmaceuticals while outlawing medicinals that are cheap and effective.

One might have expected this. Watching Event 201, the “tabletop” exercise of October 2019, one finds that governments, the medical industry and media favored mass coalescing around an explicit narrative for public consumption, should a pandemic arise. And, with the Covid-19 Pandemic that was declared only 20 weeks later, it is the formula to which they all have adhered, literally with a vengeance.

At grassroots, there is growing awareness that a transgression so immense as to overwhelm the imagination is being perpetrated on the human family, because the signs are everywhere. For the aware, therefore, the 40% rise in excess U.S. deaths in 2021 came as no surprise. And this, naturally, has generated the question of why medical doctors and nurses, who certainly have firsthand knowledge of the carnage, are not rebelling out loud by the tens of thousands.

But then, consider the high-profile attack on Dr. Nass, and imagine how doctors and nurses read it as potentially impacting their own careers and livelihoods. Nor is her experience unique, e.g. HEREHEREHEREHERE. When rank and file practitioners see eminent medical figures such Meryl Nass, Peter McCullough and Robert Malone attacked for not adhering to ritual narrative, they get the message. They know that big guns in hospital administrations and state medical boards are firmly in place to ensure that dissident voices are silenced.

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Bill Willers is an Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh.

Featured image: Dr. Meryl Nass [Source: Childrenshealthdefense.org]

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Abstract

How and why has it come to pass that children as young as 12 in the UK are being injected with a novel form of mRNA technology that is unlicensed, has no long-term safety data, and remains in clinical trials until May 2023? This article traces the path by which the unthinkable became an alarming reality between October 2020 and September 2021 and also follows developments since then. Working chronologically, the actions and claims of the manufacturers, the regulators, politicians, and in particular the establishment media in promoting “COVID-19 vaccination” for children are examined. The actions taken by policymakers are juxtaposed to scientific evidence available showing that there has never been any rational justification for the mass rollout of “COVID-19 vaccines” to children. The rollout has been predicated on shifting narratives, obfuscations, faux justifications, outright lies, regulatory captureof supposed guardians of the public interest, and mass propaganda. Evidence of actual and potential injuries to children has accumulated from before the beginning of the rollout, in spite of repeated attempts to cover it up, and yet, the under-12s are now also in the crosshairs and children are being targeted for “booster shots.”

A clear picture emerges of collusion and corruption at the highest levels in forcing through an agenda that runs contrary to public health, democracy, and freedom. It is becoming clear that the rollout to children has nothing to do with “SARS-CoV-2” and everything to do with ongoing efforts to refashion the international monetary system in the image of central bank digital currencies and biometric IDs. In pursuit of that agenda, the transnational ruling class has revealed that it is willing to maim and kill children knowingly, creating enormous potential for a backlash as the public becomes aware of what is being done.

Introduction

Children as young as 12 in the UK are being injected with a novel form of mRNA technology that is unlicensed, has no long-term safety data, and remains in clinical trials until May 2023—despite the fact that children are at virtually no risk from “COVID-19.”1 This article traces the path by which the unthinkable became an alarming reality within the space of 12 short months between October 2020 and September 2021. I also deal with developments since then. My paper highlights the collusion and corruption of the medical establishment, the political establishment, and the establishment media in seeking to force through a “vaccination” agenda that runs contrary to public health, democracy, and medical freedom.

The term “vaccination” appears in inverted commas/scare quotes, because the “COVID-19 vaccines” do not meet the traditional definition of a “vaccine”:

a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease

—this definition being quoted from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2019. With conventional vaccines “protein antigens will be exposed on the surface of the vaccine particles, which can be recognized by antibodies once antibodies have been formed”; the “COVID-19 vaccines” in contrast “are not protein antigens but the genetic blueprint for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein antigen” (Doctors 4 COVID Ethics, 2021). Therefore, the mRNA “vaccines” do not elicit an immune response; rather, protein produced by the body’s own cellular systems working with the mRNA instructions from the “vaccine” produces the immune response. This is much like auto-immune disease, with cells producing proteins to which an immune response is mounted. It therefore comes as no surprise that the mRNA “vaccines” have been linked to a host of auto-immune disease reactions (Seneff &Nigh, 2021; Sangaletti, et. al., 2021).

Because of this problem the CDC in 2021 changed its definition of “vaccination.” Before the change, “vaccination” was defined as “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, it is defined as “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.” Thus, a “vaccine” no longer has to confer “immunity,” only “protection.” The CDC’s definition of “immunity” remains unchanged: “If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.” All that is now required is some specific immune response to the targeted disease agent. Merriam-Webster engaged in similar hedging also changed its definition of a “vaccine” from the one above to “a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease.” As Iain Davis points out, however, this “says nothing about how effective or safe that immune response is. Inflammation is an immune response and it is potentially lethal” (Davis, 2021b). Therefore, by these modified definitions, to qualify as a “vaccine,” the medical procedure known as vaccination does not have to prevent anyone from becoming infected by any particular disease agent, which traditionally was the whole point of vaccination.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office noted the following in 2004, when rejecting Anthony Fauci’s application to patent an HIV “vaccine”:

The immune response by a vaccine must be more than merely some immune response but must be protective. (Martin,2021a, 6)

The “COVID-19 vaccines,” in contrast, guarantee neither protection against infection nor reduced transmission needed to confer a public health benefit; they are merely meant to alleviate symptoms. In that respect, they are at best treatments or drugs. At worst, they confer no measurable benefit but, rather, proven toxicity (Schmidt-Kruger, 2021). The use of the term “vaccine” does allow US manufacturers, however, to “enjoy the protection of a century or more of legal decisions and laws that support their efforts to mandate what they want to do,” including indemnification against liability for harms caused, with monetary damages instead being paid out by taxpayer-funded compensation schemes (Fitts, 2020).

In the argument to follow, the approach is chronological from October 2020, when the issue of giving “COVID-19 vaccines” to children first assumed salience in the UK, to the present. The actions and claims of the manufacturers, the regulators, politicians, and in particular the establishment media in promoting “vaccination” for children are critically examined. Those actions and claims are juxtaposed to scientific evidence available at the time the claims were being made. The record shows that there has never been a sound scientific justification for the mass rollout of “COVID-19 vaccines” to children—or for that matter to anyone else (Fleming, 2021; Kennedy, 2021; Shaw, 2021). Rather, the case for that rollout has been built on shifting narratives, obfuscations, faux justifications, outright lies, regulatory capture of the supposed guardians of the public interest, and nefarious propaganda (cf. Broudy & Arakaki, 2020; Broudy & Hoop, 2021; Broudy, 2021).

The argument begins by examining denials that children will be “vaccinated,” then discusses the narrative shift to children being “vaccinated” after all. It highlights early warning signs from the United States concerning “COVID-19 vaccines” and young people, as well as warnings that were issued before the mass injection of children got underway in the UK and how those warnings were ignored. It explores the transformation of schools into mass “vaccination” sites and the question of “Gillick competence” (see the explanation below on page 218), as well as the compromised role of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) in recommending “vaccination” for children. Accumulating evidence of “vaccine” damage to children and young adults is discussed, as are multiple attempts to cover it up. Notwithstanding that evidence, the “vaccination” rollout in the UK now has the under-12s, and even the under-5s, in its crosshairs, while resistance to injecting children intensifies. It is proposed that the real agenda behind the “vaccine” rollout has nothing to do with a virus but everything to do with attempts to refashion the international monetary system in the image of central bank digital currencies and biometric IDs. In pursuit of that agenda, the transnational ruling class has revealed that it is willing to maim and kill children knowingly, creating enormous potential for a backlash as the public wakes up to that fact.

Initial Denials that Children Will Be “Vaccinated”

In the beginning, British MPs explicitly ruled out “vaccinating” children. On 5 October 2020, the head of the UK’s “vaccine task force”, Kate Bingham claimed: “There’s going to be no vaccination of people under 18. It’s an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable” (cited in Ackerman, 2020). The Health Secretary confirmed in November:

This vaccine will not be used for children. It hasn’t been tested on children. And the reason is that the likelihood of children having significant detriment if they catch COVID-19 is very, very low. So, this is an adult vaccine, for the adult population.(cited in McGinnity, 2021)

UK public health agencies also ruled out “vaccinating” children. The MHRA’s Regulation 174 temporary authorization document for recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech “vaccine” originally stated “not recommended for children under 16 years” (MHRA, 2020). The same document for the AstraZeneca “vaccine” states “not recommended for children aged below 18 years. No data are currently available on the use of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca in children and adolescents younger than 18 years of age” (MHRA, 2022). According to Public Health England on 27 November:

SARS-CoV-2 vaccine trials have only just begun in children and therefore, there are very limited data on safety and immunogenicity in this group. Children and young people have a very low risk of COVID-19, severe disease or death due to SARS-CoV-2 compared to adults and so COVID-19 vaccines are not routinely recommended for children and young people under 16 years of age. (Public Health England, 2020)

In December 2020, the JCVI recommended that

only those children at very high risk of exposure andserious outcomes, such as older children with severe neuro-disabilities that require residential care, should be offered vaccination with either the Pfizer-BioNTech or the AstraZeneca vaccine.(JCVI, 2020)

The JCVI withdrew its advice for the AstraZeneca“vaccine” to be offered to the under-30s on 8 April following reports of blood clots.

For the whole of 2020, “COVID-19” appears on the death certificates of just twenty people aged 19 or under in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, 2021a). The true number is likely to be lower, because the appearance of “COVID-19” on the death certificate does not necessarily mean that “COVID-19” was the cause of death. A Lancet study finds that from March 2020,

In the USA, UK, Italy, Germany, Spain, France, and South Korea, deaths from COVID-19 in children remained rare up to February, 2021, at 0.17 per 100,000 population, comprising 0.48% of the estimated total mortality from all causes in a normal year. (Bhopal et al. 2021)

In Sweden between 1 March and 30 June 2020, “no child with COVID-19 died” (Ludvigsson et al. 2021, p. 669). In Germany, the case fatality rate in children is 0.9 per 100,000 and zero in children aged 5-11 without comorbidities (Sorg et al. 2021). Therefore, there has never been any credible case that “vaccinating” children is necessary to prevent them from dying from “COVID-19.”

The Narrative Changes: Children to Be “Vaccinated” After All

Pfizer’s Protocol C4591001 includes children as young as 12 in the Phase 2/3 trial, which seems hard to explain unless the plan all along were to inject children. Indeed, on 10 February 2021, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam claimed it was “perfectly possible” that the UK would be giving “coronavirus vaccines to children by the end of the year” (cited in Boyd, 2021). This was three days before the Oxford Vaccine Group announced it was recruiting for a “COVID-19 vaccine” trial for children aged 6-17. Funded by AstraZeneca and the National Institute of Health Research, the Oxford study enrolled 300 volunteers, which in the view of former Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Pfizer, Mike Yeadon, is “miniscule for a useful trial” and statistically underpowered (Yeadon, 2021, 27 minutes). The trial’s principal investigator, Andrew Pollard, justified the trial as follows:

While most children are relatively unaffected by coronavirus and are unlikely to become unwell with the infection, it is important to establish the safety and immune response to the vaccine in children and young people as some children may benefit from vaccination. (University of Oxford, 2021)

Pollard’s statement makes it sound as though “vaccination” is intended for just a small minority of children.

The narrative changed again in March 2021, when Moderna began testing out its “COVID-19 vaccine” on babies as young as six months and upward through children aged 11 —an effective statement of intent that all age ranges are to be injected (BBC, 2021a). AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson also announced plans to run trials on children, and Pfizer began experimenting on under 5s in April (Budman, 2021). Now, the BBC claimed:

The inoculation of children and young people is seen as critical to achieving the level of herd immunity necessary to halt the pandemic […and] while the risk of children becoming seriously ill from the virus is smaller than for adults, there is still a risk of transmission —especially among teenagers. (BBC, 2021a)

No evidence was provided for these claims. The logic of “vaccinating” children to attain herd immunity was simultaneously invoked by Anthony Fauci in the United States (Ellis, 2021). Such a claim implies that, far from being reserved for a relatively small number of children, the more children that get “vaccinated,” the better—all of which ignores the role of natural immunity, as per the WHO’s redefinition of herd immunity in 2020 as exclusively a function of vaccination.2 Given the low risk of children becoming seriously ill with the virus, it is unclear how that risk justifies “vaccinating” children on a large scale, or what transmission among teenagers has to do with running experiments on the under-12s.

Despite there being no evidence to justify “vaccinating” children, the Telegraph on 23 March 2021 “leaked” plans from unnamed sources (i.e. put out propaganda) that “children will start getting the COVID vaccine as early as August” (Riley-Smith, 2021). The Mail followed this up the next day by claiming: “Children ‘will be vaccinated from August with up to 11 million under 18s inoculated by the start of the autumn term’ as the government pushes for maximum immunity” (Ibbetson, 2021).The phrasing here hints at mandatory vaccination, subject only to the results from “a major child vaccine study by Oxford University,” i.e. the statistically underpowered study mentioned above. The Mail article freely admits that the infection fatality risk for 5-to 9-year-olds is “just 0.1 per 100,000” (i.e. one in a million) according to Public Health England data. In order to make the case for “vaccinating” children, it instead cites the JCVI’s Adam Finn on herd immunity:

Children constitute close to a quarter of the population, so even if we could achieve 100 percent uptake of vaccines across the adult population, it only gets you to 75 percent coverage.

Again, there is no mention of natural and pre-existing immunity to “SARS-CoV-2.” Propaganda like this is designed, not only to prime the public to accept the mass injection of children with experimental technologies, but also to measure likely compliance levels. The comments section for the article is almost universally hostile.

No later than 2 April, according to Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, informed him that the Commission was “looking at ordering vaccines to vaccinate teenagers and children […T]hey’re ordering millions of more vaccines for 2022 and 2023” (cited in Scallan, 2021). The agenda, it appears, was already set at the supra-national level, with national governments acting as mere implementers.

On 9 April 2021, Pfizer and BioNTech formally requested that emergency use authorization for their “vaccine” in the US be expanded to include the 12-15 age range, based on a “pivotal Phase 3 trial” allegedly demonstrating “100 percent efficacy and robust antibody response after vaccination with the COVID-19 vaccine” (Pfizer and BioNTech, 2021). This was based on a few months’ data to 31 March 2021, with vague reassurances that “all participants in the trial will continue to be monitored for long-term protection and safety for an additional two years after their second dose.” Potential “vaccine” damage manifesting three or more years after administration is excluded. Later in the month, the same request was made to the European Medicines Agency (RTE, 2021). On 10 May, the FDA granted Pfizer-BioNTech their wish, allowing “coronavirus vaccines” to be “offered” to 12-year-olds in the United States, and the EMA followed suit on 28 May. By the time former UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt asked Parliament on 24 May: “Is it time to look at vaccinating the over twelves, as they have done in the United States?” His question was mere political theatre. The MHRA granted Pfizer-BioNTech the same approval on 4 June, uncritically accepting all of Pfizer’s trial data and later admitting that the trial is ongoing until May 2023 (MHRA, 2021b)

When the “vaccine” rollout was extended to 12-to 15-year-olds in the United States, the BBC reported the following reactions among US child recipients: “excited,” “didn’t hurt at all,” “just a little prick,” “I’ve been waiting for 400 something days,” “I rushed [to make an appointment],” “I don’t like getting stabbed, but it’s a good thing and I’m still excited for it,” “didn’t hurt that much,” “future me is going to be really happy” (BBC, 2021d). Amidst the immediate excitement that the injection itself is relatively painless, no consideration is paid here to potential short-and long-term serious adverse reactions. World Economic Forum Young Global Leader Devi Sridhar was allowed to lie on BBC News beat (for children) on 9 June that the “vaccine” is “100 percent safe” (Hugo Talks, 2021a). In its later retraction of this claim, the BBC did not mention Sridhar by name.

A disturbing new “educational resource” appeared in April 2021, fully five months before the “vaccine” rollout began in earnest in British schools, ostensibly produced by Morpeth School (science teacher Edmund Stubbs) and QMUL (Professor Daniel Pennington) but bearing the mark of the Vaccine Confidence Project, the IDEAS Foundation, and the Stephen Hawking Foundation, on whose website it can be found. The resource itself contains a plethora of demonstrably false and deceptive mantras: the “COVID-19 vaccines” have passed “stringent safety tests” (not for children at that point); “overwhelming medical evidence shows negative side effects are rare and minor” (contradicted by MHRA Yellow Card data); the “vaccines” offer “up to 95% protection against COVID” (a relative ratio; the absolute figure is less than 1%); they “significantly reduce transmission” (were only designed to alleviatesymptoms), and so on. Anything that challenges these lies is branded a “conspiracy theory” by the resource, which advertises that a “COVID vaccine” for children should be ready by the autumn. At the end, it gets children to demonstrate commitment in a peer-pressure situation by asking them to raise their hand if they want to get “vaccinated.”

“Vaccine” Unsafety: Early Warning Signs from the United States

In the United States, evidence of potential myocarditis risks to under-30s from the Pfizer-BioNTech injection quickly accumulated. A New York Times headline of 26 May reads: “C.D.C. Is Investigating a Heart Problem in a Few Young Vaccine Recipients” (Mandavilli, 2021). On 10 June, a presentation by the CDC COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force found that for 16-17-year-olds, the observed number of cases of myocarditis/pericarditis (79) was over four times higher than the expected number (2-19); for 18-24-year-olds, the observed number (196) was at least twice the expected number and possibly 24 times higher (8-83). The CDC highlighted both discrepancies in red. On 11 June, the CDC announced it would convene an “emergency meeting” on 18 June—fully one week later —to address those discrepancies, which imply potential “vaccine” damage to young people. On 24 June, the FDA announced it would add a warning to Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna “vaccines” regarding possible risk of heart inflammation in adolescents and young adults, citing CDC data that “a much-higher-than expected number [347 vs. <12] of young men between the ages of 12 and 24 have experienced heart inflammation after their second vaccine dose” (Guardian, 2021).

A search for “myocarditis” on Google Trends shows a dramatic surge in interest in the term from the spring of 2021 forward, corresponding to the start of “vaccination” uptake in young adults, then children. From 2004 until that point, notwithstanding one or two small blips, the level of interest in the term was consistently around five percent of the January 2022 level. If myocarditis was as prevalent before the “vaccine” rollout, as we are told, why was there comparatively so little interest in it? On 28 June 2021, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) held a press conference with former Green Bay Packers player Ken Ruettgers, whose wife was seriously injured by the Moderna injection, for families who want to “be seen, heard and believed by the medical community” after suffering adverse reactions to COVID “vaccines” (Redshaw, 2021b). Of the five such families who spoke at the press conference, perhaps the most heart-wrenching case was that of Maddie de Garay, a previously healthy 12-year-old who, following “vaccination” as part of the Pfizer trial, experienced

gastroparesis, nausea and vomiting, erratic blood pressure, memory loss, brain fog, headaches, dizziness, fainting, seizures, verbal and motor tics, menstrual cycle issues, lost feeling from the waist down, lost bowel and bladder control and had an nasogastric tube placed because she lost her ability to eat. (Redshaw, 2021b)

Pfizer took no responsibility for this case and removed de Garayfrom the trial claiming she had suffered “gastric distress” (stomach ache) only; doctors later told her she was imagining her symptoms.

Analysis of a single week’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data by Children’s Health Defense in late July notes the deaths of three 17-year-olds, three 16-year-olds, three 15-year-olds, and two 13-year-olds shortly after “vaccination.” Additionally that week, there were 2,223 reports of anaphylaxis, 394 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis, and 72 reports of blood clots in 12-to 17-year-olds, nearly all following the Pfizer shot (Redshaw, 2021c). The extremely tight clustering of VAERS deaths in the hours and days following “vaccination”—based on data accumulating from March to August 2021—forms a steeply decelerating smooth curve away from t = 0, the time of the rollout of the COVID-19 “vaccines”. If the deaths were coincidental, completely unrelated to the COVID-19 “vaccines”, the line from t = 0 should be flat moving forward away from t = 0. Spelling it out, if the particular shots received by the deceased were not causing them to die, the VAERS data reporting deaths after vaccination should be unaffected by the time any COVID-19 “vaccine” was administered to anyone. The exponentially decelerating curve implicates causation by the “vaccine”.

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David A. Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool, Lincoln LN6 7TS, England. [email protected]

Featured image is from OffGuardian

The ROK Presidential Election and the Destiny of the Korean Peninsula

February 15th, 2022 by Prof. Joseph H. Chung

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Coming March 9 could be a terribly important day because it is the date for the presidential election in the Republic of Korea (ROK).  The outcome of this election will decide the fate of the Korean peninsula.

There are four parties in the race, but the race is between the pro-Japan conservative party called People Power Party (PPP) and the liberal Democratic Party (DP). The candidate of PPP is Yoon Seok-youl, former prosecutor general, while that of DP is Lee Jae-myung, former mayor of Kyung-gi Province.

What is at stake is the survival fight between two South Koreas, namely the pro-Japan conservative South Korea and the liberal South Korea.

What comes out of this fight will have devastating impacts on the economy, people’s welfare and security, North-South peace dialogues, Korea-Japan relations, Korea-US relations and Korea-China relations. (1)

This paper is intended to discuss the nature and the historical significance of this election. First, I will examine how these two South Koreas have been fighting for the last 74 years. Second, I will discuss the impact of the outcome of this election on the fate of the Korean peninsula.

Historical Fight between Conservative South Korea and Liberal South Korea

The first conservative government was established in 1948 and, since then, it has ruled South Korea for 59 years. It has positive image abroad, especially in Japan, but in Korea they are regarded as a hostile group harming the interests of ordinary Koreans.

In the eyes of the Koreans, they were collaborators with Japan in stealing Koreans’ assets, recruiting girls to be sent to the camps of “comfort women”, sending Korean workers to work as slaves in Japanese mines and factories, sending young men to the most dangerous frontline to defend Japan, forcing Koreans to give up their Korean names and adopt Japanese names and, above all, killing Korean patriots who fought the Japanese armed forces and police.

Koreans believe that they should have been punished for their participation in the Japanese oppression of Koreans, but they were not punished because of the American military government (1945-1948) and the Syngman Rhee government (1948-1960) which hired them in great number and which destroyed the list of those who were traitors in the eyes of Koreans.

In 1948, there was the first post-war presidential election and the fight was between pro-Japan group led by Syngman Rhee backed by Japan as well as the U.S. and Korean nationalists led by Kim Gu. The pro-Japan people knowing that they had no chance to win, they decided to commit two crimes to win the election.

First they assassinated Kim Gu, who was the president of the Provisional Government of Korea in China. Thousand of nationalists were arrested and incarcerated. The murderer of Kim Gu was amply rewarded later by the pro-Japan government.

Second, there was a committee for the production of the list of collaborators. The office was attacked and the list of collaborators was destroyed by the former Japanese police of Korean origin. The pro-Japan group won the election.

It is true that the conservatives have made a major contribution to the economic miracle of Han River. They formed the tripartite collusion composed of business, bureaucrat and politicians. The tripartite collusion was a combination of political will to develop the economy, risk taking entrepreneurship and planned mobilization of financial, human and material resources. There is no doubt that the tripartite collusion was the key factor of the take-off of the Korean economy in the 1970s and the 1980s.

However, the tripartite collusion was accompanied by the exchange of privileges accorded by the government to large businesses in exchange for bribes which are given to government officials. This lucrative exchange became worse as the Korean economy attained the stage of matures economy and eventually led to the formation of corruption community and corruption culture. (2)

When the corruption culture is formed, it is almost impossible to get rid of it. There are two powerful protectors of the corruption community and corruption culture. One is the judicial system and the other is the media.

The conservatives have been able to survive all these decades due to the corrupted police, prosecutors and judges. The role of the judicial regime in the corruption culture is the protection of its community members in exchange for bribes and the punishment of the people of opposition for promotion. The most notorious case was the condemnation for two years in prison of former Prime Minister Han Myong- suk of the Democratic Party (DP) on the basis of purely fabricated witness story by a couple of inmates who later confessed that they had lied under the threat of the prosecutor. This happened in 2015. The prosecutor and the judge involved in the case had big promotion.

The role of media is the marketing of the corruption community. In Korea, three major newspapers are the leading protectors of the corruption community, namely, the Chosun Ilbo, the Joong-ang Ilbo and the Dong-ah Ilbo (Cho-Joong-Dong). The master is the Chosen Ilbo which is the richest and superior in media technology and edition skill. In fact, Western media, especially the Japanese media copy what the Chosen Ilbo reports as if it is the correct and unbiased report.

Money commands public opinion

As the date of the election approached, the number of poll businesses skyrocketed; now there are more than 70 of them; they have been created for the election and to make money; they publish poll results which are in favour of the pro-Japan conservative hoping that the public opinion will follow the trend of the poll results. The conservatives have a lot money, which the liberals do not have.

The pro-Japan corrupted conservatives have been piling hundreds of billions dollars through the embezzlement of public money and bribes. Money has been the chief reason for ruling Korea for 59 years; the money can be mobilized to prevent the liberal Koreans from taking power. The money is very visible; the money talks aloud; the money is threatening the current electoral fight.

The conservatives are not liked by ordinary Koreas for other reasons. To begin with, the conservatives have prepared the list of the Korean patriots and descendents and persecuted them by labelling them as “reds”, “non-desirable” in the name of the National Security Law, by preventing them from having job, by harassing their children at schools and by alienating from the collective life. As a result, most of these people are poor and less educated. Since President Moon Jae-in took over the power in 2017, various measures have been taken to help them.

There is another reason why ordinary Koreans do not like the pro-Japan conservatives. It is the fact that they have been working with Japan to hide the Japanese atrocities committed in Korea.

It is understandable, because they were co-offenders against Koreans. Many academics, religious leaders, politician and bureaucrats are descendents of the collaborators. In particular, there is so called “New Right” movement led by some pro-Japan religious leaders and a large number of academics who have been suspected to be generously funded by Japan. One of the tasks of these people is to make Korean to feel inferior to the Japanese and even to justify Japan’s Korea invasion by arguing that the invasion was for the good of Koreans. Under Lee Myong-bak and Park Geun-hye, the New-Right scholars have re-written the high school text books in which the story of Japan’s war-time crime of sex slavery and labour slavery were taken off.

Now, liberal Koreans represented by the Democratic Party (DP) have been fighting to survive the oppression by the pro-Japan community. They rose up in huge numbers against the pro-Japan government.

There were several huge uprising

  • The uprising against the oppression of the government of Syngman Rhee on April 19, 1960 (Student Revolution 4.19),
  • The huge protest assembly against the plan for permanent presidency of military dictator, General Park Chung-hee on October 16, 1979 in the region Busan-Masan region ( BUMA Democratic Protests 10.16),
  • The uprising of May 18, 1980 against General Chun Doo-hwan, military dictator (Kwangju Democratic Movement 5.18)
  • The huge assembly for the amendment of the constitution on June 10, 1987 (Democratic Protests 6.10)
  • The Candle Light Revolution of 2017-2018.

Each uprising was attended by hundreds of thousands of angry citizens. In the Candle Light Revolution which lasted for six months, 27 million citizens participated. The cost of these protest movement was heavy; several hundreds of thousands of lives were sacrificed. But, they won battles, if not war.

These uprising have succeeded in punishing the heads of the corrupted pro-Japan conservatives. South Korea had six presidents of the pro-Japan governments. Each one of them ended their political career with shame.

  • Syngman Rhee (1948-1960) was chased out in 1960 by students for corruption and abuse of power.
  • Park Chung-hee (1962-1979) was assassinated by his KCIA director in 1979 for Park’s scheme for permanent presidency.
  • Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1987) and Rho Tae-woo (1987-1992) were imprisoned for corruption and abuse of power.
  • Park Geun-hye (2013-2017), daughter of Park Chung-hee, was impeached for her incapacity to govern and imprisoned for corruption and abuse of poser but recently pardoned by President Moon Jae-in for health reason.
  • Finally, Lee Myong-bak (2008-2012) is serving 17-year imprisonment for corruption, embezzlement of public funds and abuse of power.

This shows how the pro-Japan Koreans are corrupted and put South Korea in the danger of weakening democracy and risking decade-long economic depression.

Impact of the Election Results on the Fate of the Korean Peninsula

Now, the presidential election next March will be won either by Mr Lee Jae-myung of the DP, former mayor of Kyong-gi Province, or Mr. Yoon Seok-youl of the PPP, former prosecutor general. Depending on who will win, the future of the Korean peninsula and regional security will go through important changes.

First, the most important stake of this election is the fate of the corruption community and corruption culture. Under the 59-year rule of the pro-Japan conservative governments, the pro-Japan conservatives have been able to build a solid community which has been well protected by the corrupted judicial system and the dishonest media. Since he took power, President Moon Jae-in has done a lot to fight the corruption culture by reforming the judicial system, especially the Bureau of Prosecutors and affiliated institutions such as KCIA and military intelligence services. He was successful in creating the Corruption Investigation Office for High Ranking Officials. But, the reform of the judicial system is far from being over.

If Yoon wins, the corruption culture which has been a little weakened for last five years will be restored and not only Korea’s economic growth but also people’s welfare will be adversely affected. What is frightening is that Korea will become the Republic of Prosecutors and terror will rule the country as it did for 40 years. On the other hand, if Lee wins, the reform of the judicial system will be accelerated.

Second, Moon Jae-in had no means to reform the media, Unless the media is reformed and depoliticized, the corruption culture will prosper and human right violation will be the order of the day with no means to prevent it. And, as long as the corrupted media rules the world of information, the democracy, the justice, the equality will retreat and the economy will stagnate. These will destroy the country of morning calm; the country will become no more calm.

The media reform is urgent. If Yoon wins, the media will remain the press agent of the corruption community. On the other hand, if Lee wins, his first priority will be the media reform.

Third, the macroeconomic policy will have a fundamental change. If Yoon wins, the neo-liberal economic policy will come back and the GDP might increase but the income of the ordinary will not increase and this will weaken the domestic demand and impair long-run GDP growth. On the other hand, Lee’s victory would mean the emphasis put on the “income-based” growth through more equitable income distribution and the growth of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

Fourth, if Lee wins, the inter-Korea peace dialogue will be restored and the basis of eventual reunification will be established. On the other hand, if Yoon wins, the cold dark clouds of hostility will be over the sky of the peninsula and the possibility of unification will retreat.

Fifth, if Yoon wins, the Japan-Korea relations will be easily restored and the Japanese neo-colonialism will return. However, if Lee wins, the Japan-Korea relation will be based on the mutual sovereignty and it will be the relations of equal to equal.

Sixth, as for the US-Korea relations, if Yoon wins, it will be a relation of master-vassal relations and Korea diplomacy will suffer from serious lack of credibility. If Lee wins, the Washington-Seoul relations will be mutually beneficial and Korea can be a good partner in establishing global peace and prosperity. The OPCON is a regime in which the U.S. has the right to command Korean armed forces in war. This treaty was signed by Syngman Rhee in 1950. If Yoon wins, this system will continue (3). If Lee wins, the negotiation of the return of OPCON to Korea will be intensified.

Seventh, if Yoon wins, the China-Korea relations will receive heavy blow, because he is ready to take side with Washington and ignore China. He even promised to bring in more THAADs. He seems to have forgotten China’s trade reprisal when the first THAAD came in 2018. If Lee wins, he will do his best to promote further bilateral trade with China, while cooperating with the U.S. for regional security.

To conclude, Yoon has too many weaknesses to be the head of a country. While he was a prosecutor and, later, prosecutor general, he has abused the authorities of his office to protect the corrupted pro-Japan conservatives, his own ambition and his family interests. He is well known for his ignorance about economics, politics and foreign relation. He is surrounded by fortune-tellers (Mu-dang) who exert influences on his major decisions (4).

Nevertheless, Yoon might win. We cannot ignore this possibility. No less than 30% of Koreans still back him up. This is illogical and tragic. But, these people are those who are benefitting from the corrupted community and they are eager to restore their lost privileges.

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Dr. Joseph H. Chung is professor of Economics at Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM), member of the Study Center for Integration and Globalization (CEIM) of UQAM.

He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

(1) Jung Da-min “No matter who wins, 2020 election will be turning point for Korea. koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2022/01/356_321472.html

(2) Joseph H. Chung. “The Political Economy of Corruption in Korea: Corruption kills people, Ruins the Economy and Violates Human rights” Global Research December 28, 2020. globalresearch.ca/political-economy-corruption-in-Korea-corruptiom-kills-people-corruption-ruins-economy-corruption-violates-human- right/5703558

(3) Victor Cha. “Why South Korea Election Matters the U.S.?” foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/26/south-korea-presidential-election-candidate-biden-administration

4) Ko Dong-hwan. “Fortune Tellers Swirl Around Presidential Election” koreatimes.co.kr/2022/01/113 _323054.html

Featured image is by Tim Meisburger of The Asia Foundation

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The information dropped like a Hellfire in the middle of a productive discussion with a group of top analysts in Istanbul: Across the Turkish establishment – from politicians to the military – over 90 percent are pro-NATO.

Eurasian ‘hopefuls’ in West Asia need to factor in this hard truth about Turkey’s oft-confusing foreign policies. The ‘Erdoganian neo-Ottomanism’ that runs through Turkey’s current ruling system is deeply colonized by a NATO psyche – which implies that any notion of real Turkish sovereignty may be severely overvalued.

And that sheds new light on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s perennial geopolitical waffling between NATO and Eurasia.

Let’s start with the mediation offered by Erdogan on the Russia-Ukraine drama, which for all practical purposes would mean a mediation between Russia and NATO.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu may not be the one dictating Ankara’s policy – my interlocutors stress that the man who really has Erdogan’s ears is his spokesman Ibrahim Kalin. Still, Cavusoglu’s latest talking points were quite intriguing:

  1. “Russian and Belarussian sources” told him there will be no “invasion” of Ukraine.
  1. The West “should be more careful” in making statements “about the allegedly possible ‘invasion’, as they lead to panic in Ukraine.”
  1. “We, as Turkey, are not a part of a conflict, war, problem, however, any tension affects us all, the economy, energy security, tourism.”
  1. “We will have a phone conversation with [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov on Wednesday, [then] with [Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro] Kuleba. We will happily agree to mediate if both parties agree. We gladly agree to host a meeting of the Minsk trio.”
  1. “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin should not close the door. They [the Russians] don’t have a positive or negative answer.”

Ankara’s efforts in positioning itself as a mediator may be laudable, but what Cavusoglu cannot possibly admit in public is their futility.

As much as Ankara enjoys good relations with Kiev – Bayraktar TB2 drone sales included – the heart of the matter is not even between Russia and NATO; it’s between Moscow and Washington.

Moreover, Erdogan’s offer had already been sidelined by notorious opportunist – and totally out of his depth – Emmanuel Macron, via his meme-celebrated visit to Moscow, where he was politely but bluntly dismissed by Putin.

The Kremlin has been making it very clear, even before issuing its demands on security guarantees, that the only interlocutors that matter are the people in charge – as in the Russophobic/neocon/humanitarian-imperialist combo that remote controls the current president of the United States.

How to “Make Turkey Great Again”

It will be a hard slog to “Make Turkey Great Again” in Washington, even if they’re both part of the NATO matrix. It’s one thing to inaugurate the $300 million Turkevi Center – or Turkish House – in Manhattan, near the UN headquarters, complete with a top-floor presidential suite for Erdogan. But entirely another thing for the Americans to allow him real sovereignty.

Still, whenever he’s snubbed, Erdogan always comes up with a thorny counter. If he is prevented from meeting the real players behind ‘Biden’ last September in New York and Washington, he can always announce, as he did, his intention to buy yet another batch of Russian S-400s which, irony of ironies, is a missile system designed to destroy NATO weaponry. As Erdogan then boldly proclaimed: “In the future, nobody will be able to interfere in terms of what kind of defense systems we acquire, from which country, at what level.”

Global South players, from West Asia and beyond, have been following with enormous interest (and trepidation) how Ankara, from a secular, well-behaved NATO semi-colony on the periphery of the EU eager to join the Brussels machine, turned into an Islamist-tinged regional hegemon – complete with supporting and weaponizing “moderate rebels” in Syria, dispatching military advisers to Libya, propelling Azerbaijan with armed drones to defeat Armenia, and last but not least, promoting their own, idiosyncratic version of Eurasian integration.

The trouble is how Turkey is supposed to pay for all this ambitious overreach – considering the dire state of its economy.

Quite a few Justice and Development Party (AKP) politicians in Ankara are avid promoters of a “Turkic world” that would stretch not only from the Caucasus to Central Asia but all the way to Yakutia, in Russia’s far east, and Xinjiang, in China’s far west. It isn’t hard to imagine how this is viewed in Moscow and Beijing.

It was actually Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the ultra-right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), a top Erdogan ally, who presented a revised map of the Turkic world to the Turkish president.

The response by Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, who happens to be a Turkologist, was priceless. At the time, he said that the heart of the Turkic world should be in the Altai mountains. That is, in Russia; not Turkey.

And that brings us to the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), the new denomination of the former Turkic Council, as approved by their 8th summit last November in Istanbul.

The OTS has five members (Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan) and two observers (Hungary and Turkmenistan). The secretary-general is a Kazakh diplomat, Baghdad Amreyev.

An initial visit to their lovely, salmon-colored historical palace in Sultanahmet – prior to an upcoming official conversation – establishes some much needed context. Among the dazzling Byzantine and Ottoman neighboring structures, we find the tomb of the last Ottoman Sultan, Abdulhamid II, who happens to be none other than Erdogan’s role model.

Depending on who you talk to – the largely AKP-controlled media or Kemalist intellectuals – Abdulhamid II is either a venerable religious leader fighting subversives and the Western colonial powers in the late 19th century or a retrograde, fanatical nutcase.

The OTS is an immensely intriguing organization. It brings together a NATO member with the second most-powerful army (Turkey); an EU member (Hungary, yet still an observer); two CSTO members, that is, states very close to Russia (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan); and a supremely idiosyncratic, permanently-neutral gas superpower (Turkmenistan).

Even at OTS headquarters they agree, smiles included, that no one outside Turkey knows about the real aims of the organization, which are loosely framed as investment in connectivity, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), green technologies and smart cities. Most of the investment would be supposed to come from Turkish companies.

Until recently, Erdogan was not exactly focused on the Turkic world in Central Asia – which was considered too secular from an Islamist point of view, or even worse, a bunch of dreaded crypto-Kemalists. The focus was on the US-defined MENA (Middle East/Northern Africa) region – which happened, historically, to include the key Ottoman lands.

The record, of course, shows that these neo-Ottoman incursions did not go down so well in Muslim lands. Hence the spectacular re-entrance of Eurasia into Turkish foreign policy. It may sound swell in theory, but way more complicated in practice.

Crisscrossing Eurasia

The OTS may be unified by language – but you won’t find many people speaking Turkish across Central Asia: they’re all about Russian.

History and culture is a different story, and it goes something like this:

As Peskov correctly pointed out, the Turcophone peoples originally came from the Altai mountains – between Mongolia and Central Asia. Between the 7th and the 17th centuries, they were invested in a conquering migration drive in the opposite direction compared to Alexander The Great and his Hellenistic successors, the Seleucid kings and then the Arabs under Islam.

So, for a long time, we had a few ephemeral empires founded by Turkish dynasties and built essentially over Persian Sassanid structures, with an add-on by Turkmen groups, until the Ottomans, based on Byzantine structures, established an imperial system that lasted for no less than five centuries.

In terms of ancient connectivity, the route of the steppes lay more to the north of Eurasia – and was followed in the 13th century, with spectacular success, by Genghis Khan and his successors. We all know today that the Mongols built the very first, real Eurasia-wide empire. And in the process, they also took the southern route traveled by the Turks and Turkmen.

Just like the Persian, Greek and Arab empires, the Turkic and Mongol empires were bent on continental conquest. The main line of communication across Eurasia was always, in the precise definition by Toynbee, “the steppe and desert chains that cut across the belt of civilizations, from Sahara to Mongolia.”

Much like China’s recent revamp of the Silk Road concept, Erdogan – even as he’s not a reader and much less a historian – also has his own neo-Ottoman interpretation of what makes connectivity run.

Instinctively, to his credit, he seems to have understood how the conquering migration runs of the Turko-Mongols from Central Asia towards West Asia ended up shattering this huge zone of discontinuity, very hard to move around, between East Asia and Europe.

The sun “rises again from the East”

Erdogan himself went no-Eurasia-holds-barred at the November summit of the OTS: “Inshallah, the sun will soon start to rise once again from the East.”

But that ‘East’ was very specific: “The Turkestan region, which had been the cradle of civilization for thousands of years, will once again be a center of attraction and enlightenment for the entirety of humanity.”

The mere mention of ‘Turkestan’ certainly sent shivers all across the Zhongnanhai in Beijing. At the OTS though, they assure the organization has absolutely no designs on Xinjiang: “It’s not a state. We unite Turkic states.”

Much more relevant to the ground is the OTS drive towards “sustainable multimodal connectivity.”

Enter a twin strategy juxtaposing the Trans-Caspian East-West Middle Corridor Initiative – a trans-Eurasia link – and the Zangezur corridor, linking the South Caucasus to both Europe and Central Asia.

Zangezur is absolutely key for Ankara, because it allows for a direct link not only to its key OTS ally Azerbaijan but also to Turkic Central Asia. For the past three decades, this connectivity route happened to be blocked by Armenia. Not anymore. Still, a final agreement with Armenia is pending.

In theory, the Chinese New Silk Roads – or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – and the Turkish Middle Corridor binding the Turkic world are complementary. Yet only (connectivity) facts on the ground will tell, in time.

The fact is, Turkey is already neck deep in a major connectivity drive. Take the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway connecting Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Ankara may not have anything nearly approaching the scale and scope of the BRI master road map, which plans all steps to 2049.

What has been designed is a Turkic World Vision – 2040, adopted at the OTS summit, with the Middle Corridor billed as “the shortest and safest transport link between East and West,” including a new special economic zone (SEZ) called Turan, in Kazakhstan, to be launched in 2022.

This SEZ will be exclusively for OTS members and observers. The Turan steppe, significantly, is also considered by many in Turkey as the original home of Turkic peoples. It remains to be seen how Turan will interact with the Khorgos SEZ, at the Kazakh-Chinese border, an essential node of BRI. As it stands, the view that Ankara will pose a major systemic threat to Beijing in the long run are mere speculations.

The bottom line is that the OTS is part of a larger Erdogan initiative also not well known outside Turkey: Asia Anew. It’s this initiative that will be guiding Ankara’s expanding connections across Asia, with the OTS promoted as one among many “tools of regional cooperation.”

Whether Ankara can leverage this vastly ambitious strategic reading of geography and history to build a new sphere of influence depends on a lot of Turkish lira that the Erdogan coffers sorely lack.

Meanwhile, why not dream of becoming Sultan of Eurasia? Well, Abdulhamid II would never have thought that his future pupil would upstage him by going East – like Alexander The Great – and not West.

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: The ‘Sultan of Eurasia’ is planning a uniquely-Turkic eastward thrust into Asia, one that is unlikely to complement Eurasia-wide integration. Photo Credit: The Cradle

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The Japanese conquest of Singapore in south-east Asia, on 15 February 1942, is often referred to in Western historical annals as “the Fall of Singapore”, as though a free and unmolested territory had, for the first time, been captured by an imperial power. 

In reality, the Japanese takeover of Singapore heralded an exchange from one set of colonial masters (the British Empire) to another (the Empire of Japan). Singapore had long constituted a colony, having been occupied by the British in the early 19th century.

The failure of Britain and its allies, to hold Singapore, was a severe blow to London’s prestige and power in the Far East. Writing in his memoirs Winston Churchill labelled it “the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history”. As Britain’s prime minister and war leader, Churchill was ultimately responsible for military losses.

Yet at the time Churchill tried to absolve his government of blame, saying that the Singapore defeat was due to Britain having to allocate war resources to Soviet Russia, as part of conditions stipulated in US president Franklin Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease Act of March 1941. Scarcely any British or American matériel had been sent to the Soviet Union by early 1942 – when the crucial fighting in the Nazi-Soviet War had already taken place.

The Anglo-American powers, by December 1941, had dispatched half a million dollars worth of military aid to the Russians, which came to “1 per cent of the amount promised” by London and Washington, historian Chris Bellamy noted. In all, British deliveries of commodities to Moscow amounted to £45.6 million, a tiny fraction of what the Russians themselves spent on military production during World War II.

Of the situation in south-east Asia, Bellamy wrote,

“As early as the beginning of 1942, British politicians used the resources diverted to Russia as an excuse for losing Singapore… Churchill and [Anthony] Eden both said they had given to Russia what they had really needed for the defence of the Malay peninsula. This was untrue. British and Australian ground forces had been poorly trained and equipped for jungle warfare, and were simply outmatched and outfought by aggressive Japanese troops, enjoying superior morale”.

The Japanese 25th Army, tasked with capturing British Malaya and the island of Singapore, comprised of about 30,000 men. The 25th Army was led by one of the most formidable commanders of the entire war, Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita; and the force that he commanded was “the best led and equipped army” that Japan had at its disposal, Mark E. Stille stated, a retired US Navy commander. Advancing through difficult terrain including extensive jungle, the 25th Army had captured all of the Malayan mainland against bigger enemy forces in less than 8 weeks, by 31 January 1942.

On that day, 31 January, the last British troops had retreated across the narrow Strait of Johore, traversing the bridge called the Causeway at Johore Bahru, which separated Malaya from Singapore; where Britain’s allies, the Indians and Australians, had now retired to, or at least those who survived the fighting on the Malayan mainland. The British Commonwealth forces still amounted to 85,000 men to defend Singapore, though they were lacking in equipment and training while their morale was not good.

From his position astride the Strait of Johore, Lieutenant-General Yamashita was looking through his binoculars at Singapore and its coastline. He again demonstrated his excellent military brain, by correctly assessing that the most heavily defended part of Singapore was in the north-eastern section of the Strait. Yamashita’s opposite number, Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, had positioned his strongest force there, the British 18th Division.

Yamashita chose instead to attack a weakly-defended portion of the Strait, held by the 22nd Australian Infantry Brigade, between Tanjong Buloh and Tanjong Murai. The Japanese commander decided to amass 16 of his battalions, to be launched in the first wave across an area of land 4.5 miles in breadth, with 5 battalions held back in reserve along with a tank regiment. Yamashita scheduled the assault on Singapore to begin at 8 pm on 8 February 1942.

To mount his attack across the Strait of Johore to Singapore, Yamashita could call upon many scores of collapsible boats, 30 small landing craft, along with numerous pontoons, the latter consisting of floating platforms used to support temporary bridges. Yamashita went to great lengths to disguise where his main thrust would fall. Churchill acknowledged that the Japanese had undertaken “long and careful planning” for their raid on Singapore. The Japanese Imperial Guards built dummy camps in the north-eastern sector, so as to make the British believe they were preparing to attack in that area.

Percival, in overall command of British and Commonwealth forces, was confident that the weight of the Japanese landing would indeed come there, in the north-east. Pre-attack Japanese artillery raids were also concentrated in the north-east, strengthening Percival’s impression that he would be proved right. The Japanese assault troops were not moved forward until the night prior to the landing. About 24 hours before the attack on Singapore had commenced, the Australians detected extensive enemy activity opposite them, but it was too late for Percival to reconstitute his forces.

Churchill wrote, “The preparation of field defences and obstacles, though representing a good deal of local effort, bore no relation to the mortal needs which now arose… The spirit of the Army had been largely reduced by the long retreat and hard fighting on the peninsula. The threatened northern and western shores were protected by the Johore Strait, varying in width from 600 to 2,000 yards, and to some extent by mangrove swamps at the mouths of its several rivers”.

This is what the Japanese faced in front of them. On the morning of 8 February 1942, Japanese planes and artillery started bombarding the positions held by the 22nd Australian Infantry Brigade. The barrage intensified as the day went on, and at around 8:30 pm on 8 February, after nightfall, the Australians sighted Japanese landing craft nearing their area. Regardless of having no artillery support, the Aussies resisted strongly and sank some Japanese vessels but, even so, the enemy soon broke through their thinly spread rearguard.

By 4 am on 9 February, the Australian forces had all been ordered to fall back, a difficult task in the dark, and they suffered debilitating losses. The Japanese had established a toehold on Singapore and they could not be dislodged.

Percival’s command centre was unable to implement operations in Singapore at any level. On 9 February Percival himself admitted that the “situation is undoubtedly serious”. Yamashita sensed the British confusion, and he ordered a full-blooded drive to take Singapore as quickly as possible. Within 2 days, the Japanese had captured 33% of Singapore’s territory. On just the 3rd day of the offensive, during the evening of 10 February the enemy had penetrated British defences, such as the critically important Jurong Line, before Percival had realised the attempt had been made. Stille recognised, “The loss of this line was the last chance to defend Singapore city”.

British-led counterattacks could either not be executed in time, or were poorly organised. On 10 February Churchill wrote of the position at Singapore, “There must at this stage be no thought of saving the troops or sparing the population. The battle must be fought to the bitter end at all costs… The honour of the British Empire and of the British Army is at stake… With the Russians fighting as they are and the Americans so stubborn at Luzon [northern Philippines], the whole reputation of our country and our race is involved”. This would all prove in vain.

At 6 pm on 11 February, day 4 of the Japanese offensive, the landmark British naval base in Singapore had been abandoned, and explosives were deployed, but the base was merely partially destroyed. Yamashita’s soldiers did not let up on 12 February, as they continued moving down the strategically vital Bukit Timah road towards Singapore city.

Beginning at around noon on 12 February, the British and their allies started withdrawing to a final perimeter around Singapore city. By the morning of 13 February, the defenders held a perimeter stretching 28 miles around Singapore. Their forces were depleted. The British Governor in Singapore, Shenton Thomas, gave orders that the broadcasting station be blown up, and the contents of the treasury burned. The supplies of rubber in Singapore were incinerated, while the tin-smelting plants and a number of other factories were liquidated. At some plants, the attempt to demolish them was prevented by its owners and staff. Other facilities were deemed necessary for the island’s inhabitants.

Some troops at the rear fled their positions from the approaching Japanese, and there were reports of armed deserters looting. A few seized small vessels to escape from Singapore, and others tried to board ships exiting the port area. During the early afternoon of 13 February, Percival held a conference with his principal staff and officers. Those present concurred that a counterattack had no hope of succeeding and the situation was desperate. Later that day, Percival confessed that resistance would probably last for another 24 or 48 hours.

On the night of 13 February, the last ships and other craft were ordered to leave the Singapore coastline, and set sail for the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra with 3,000 evacuees on board. Through 14 February, the Japanese pressure on the western part of the Singapore perimeter increased. Late on the 14th, the Japanese 18th Division had advanced to less than 3 kilometres from the southern edge of Singapore city.

In the centre, attacks by the Japanese 5th Division, supported by tanks, made further progress down the Bukit Timah road in central Singapore. They descended on a residential area at the fringes of Singapore city. Compounding Percival’s woes, on the morning of 14 February he had been told, by the Director General of Civil Defence, that the city’s water supplies would be cut off at any moment, with the island’s reservoirs in Japanese hands.

By now, the Japanese artillery and air attacks were raining down at will on the city, leading to widespread civilian casualties and suffering. During a staff meeting that began at 9:30 am on 15 February, Percival was forced to confront the inevitable. There were chronic shortages of fuel and heavy ammunition. At 5:15 pm on 15 February, Percival and his Chief-of-Staff obeyed Japanese instructions to go to the Ford Factory at Bukit Timah, in order to discuss surrender terms with the Japanese officers.

Once the opposing sides had convened at the Ford Factory, Yamashita, as he was entitled to do, repeatedly demanded unconditional surrender from the reluctant Percival, under threat of renewed Japanese attacks. With Yamashita becoming increasingly impatient, Percival at last consented after a 55 minute meeting. The unconditional surrender was signed at 6:10 pm on 15 February 1942, and became effective at 8:30 pm.

Stille wrote, “The 70-day campaign for Malaya and Singapore was over, and the greatest military defeat in British history complete”. Throughout the 10 week fight, the British-led forces suffered 138,708 losses, of which more than 130,000 were prisoners taken by the Japanese, about 80,000 of them in Singapore.

It is seldom mentioned that it was the Indian troops, and not the British, who bore the brunt of fighting. From the total casualties, 67,340 were Indian, 38,496 were British, 18,490 were Australian and the local units suffered 14,382 killed, captured or wounded. Japanese casualties amounted to 9,824, that is just 7% of British Commonwealth losses. Taking into account that the Malayan campaign involved British-led divisions, on paper it entailed the largest surrender of forces in the field in British history; but in the wider context of the world war, especially when compared to casualties at that time in the western Soviet Union, the above losses were inconsequential.

The strategic repercussions for Britain were much more serious than their casualties. The Japanese taking of Malaya and Singapore meant the British Empire was rapidly disintegrating. Japan’s victory on the Malayan peninsula foreshadowed their capture of Burma (Myanmar) and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) in the spring of 1942. The deep natural resources of Malaya, notably its tin and rubber, were now under Tokyo’s command; which the Japanese leadership calculated to be almost as significant as the petroleum rich Dutch East Indies, the world’s 5th big oil producer in 1940.

The above conquests enabled Japan, an otherwise resource poor country, to prosecute a vast war for nearly another 4 years. How could such a disaster have befallen the British in Mayala? Among the most important factors, as Bellamy alluded to earlier, was that the Japanese infantry were better trained, more determined and utilised superior tactics in comparison to the British and Commonwealth forces. The Japanese Army was not famed for its prowess with tanks and armour but, under Yamashita’s leadership, the 25th Army made ample use of such vehicles on the Malayan peninsula.

By evening on the first day (8 December 1941) of the Japanese landings, northern Malaya had been lost to the enemy almost without a fight. On 10 December, the Japanese further wrested control of the nearby seas having on that day destroyed prominent British warships. Also at this time they were winning command of the skies. Stille observed, “The weak British air force was crippled on the first few days, and never became a factor in the campaign. The Japanese enjoyed air superiority, and all the advantages that this confers, for virtually the entire campaign”.

The British-led units were poorly deployed in Malaya, as they were dispersed over too wide an area, and could not concentrate their forces to repel the Japanese advance. The fighting for central Malaya in early January 1942 was pivotal. A successful stand by the defenders there could have enabled them to launch a counteroffensive against the Japanese, which may have knocked the latter off balance and at least delayed their march.

Once central Malaya and the capital city Kuala Lumpur were lost, it was inevitable that the southern portion of the peninsula would thereafter capitulate, along with Singapore. No further British reinforcements could be sent to Singapore, nor was the island prepared for an attack from the north.

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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).

Sources

Mark E. Stille, Malaya and Singapore 1941–42: The Fall of Britain’s empire in the East (Osprey Publishing; Illustrated edition, 20 Oct. 2016)

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

Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (RosettaBooks, 11 May 2014)

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

William Anderson, Japanese Invasion of Malaya & Singapore: History and Significance

Antony Beevor, The Second World War (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012) Chapter 16, Pearl Harbor

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

Featured image: Lieutenant-General Percival and his party carry the Union flag on their way to surrender Singapore to the Japanese. Left to Right: Major Cyril Wild (carrying white flag) interpreter; Brigadier T. K. Newbigging (carrying the Union flag) Chief Administrative Officer, Malaya Command; Lieutenant-Colonel Ichiji Sugita; Brigadier K. S. Torrance, Brigadier General Staff Malaya Command; Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, General Officer Commanding, Malaya Command. (Licensed under the public domain)

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***

The temptation to be flippantly Wildean and evoke the spirit of Oscar is sometimes too tempting for the mortal flesh. For the United States to lose China once is unfortunate; to lose it twice smacks of carelessness. The second time round, it is important not to over exaggerate. China is a powerful country and its transformation over the last four decades has been astonishing. And of course, flippancy aside, China was never anyone’s to lose. But the country is not as powerful as those in power portray it or as those in the West, desperately seeking a new bogey man to boost defense spending, would suggest. Debt is the iceberg waiting to shred any over-confidently navigated economy’s hull. China is no longer going full steam ahead but it is in treacherous, icy waters. Evergrande? Let’s put this in perspective. The construction conglomerate has a debt of about $300 billion.

Local government debt in China at the start of November was about $4.7 trillion, approx $3,300 for every Chinese citizen.

Then there is the debt of what are called local government financing vehicles (unregulated bodies set up to provide non-bank and non-traceable lending). This is estimated to have risen to about $8 trillion at the end of last year, much bigger than the official outstanding government debt.

Much of China’s public finances are shrouded from public scrutiny, especially these vehicles. There is no official data on this debt.

One item rarely measured when estimating gross domestic product is re-inforced steel bars. Yet it can be argued that the market for these is an important measure of economic performance. These bars are meshed in foundations and play a crucial role in reinforcing a building’s structure. In short, no reinforcement bars, no construction. They are falling in price in China and have been for months.

The construction sector represents a quarter of the Chinese economy. About 140 square feet of new housing for every urban resident has been built in the past two decades.

The one-child policy has been scrapped but birth rates have not recovered as couples, legally obliged to look after their parents, reject placing themselves under any further financial strain.

From 2011 to 2020, census data showed stagnating population growth. In 2021, it fell to 12 million, the lowest since the country tackled fallout from the Great Chinese Famine 1959 to 1961.

Civil servants, and China places them on a pedestal as the epitome of a successful life, are experiencing or facing pay cuts.  The base salary for civil servants is low – even top-ranking ministerial officials earn less than $1,400 a month.

Beijing realizes the value of its civil servants. Slashing their salary will not have been an easy decision.

Another key indicator is electricity output.

Year-on-year power demand growth for 2022 will be lower than what it was for 2021, analysts predict.

Of course, all these figures have been impacted by COVID-19. But there is no disputing that these key indicators, to put it mildly and to differing degrees, reflect challenges.   It is important to stress that this does not mean that China’s economy is facing imminent collapse.

But neither can they be discounted, especially local government debt.

Slowing growth, slackening demand and debt at record levels, Xi Jinping is facing challenges not seen since Deng Xiaoping began lifting the country out of its Maoist straitjacket in 1980.

Unlike then, this is not a country in isolation. China was not just the main locomotive of global growth in the last few years, it laid the tracks.

The massive and generous economic stimulus that the government implemented in response to the 2008 financial crisis kept the global economy afloat. It is one of the great ironies that this stimulus helped stabilize the West’s finances by keeping the order books open but it destabilized China’s by rewarding inefficient companies.

Its debt-to-GDP ratio of 159 percent is significantly higher than the global rate of 101 percent and almost twice the 85 percent of the US.

The annual two sessions in March, (the meeting of the parliament and advisory body) will discuss issues of the day. But the big one, in October or November (not decided yet) when the quinquennial party congress convenes, will endorse Xi as lifetime leader and examine long-term policy. A slowing economy should herald a less belligerent foreign policy as new markets are searched for. But diplomacy has not exactly been a hallmark of Xi’s presidency and will be even less so once he establishes lifetime tenure in office.

Icebergs are easy to spot but the real danger is what lies beneath. The Chinese economy still needs to navigate with caution.

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Geopolitical analyst Tom Clifford reporting from Beijing. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Military tensions between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan are escalating. On January 24, Taiwan reported a large-scale Chinese air-force incursion. On February 7, the US approved a $100 million deal for Taiwan Patriot missiles. And, on Friday (11), Washington released its Indo-Pacific strategy – which, among other things, mentions Chinese “growing pressure on Taiwan” and states the US will work with its partners to keep “peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”, in a clear message to Beijing. According to Xinhua News Agency, the document was not well received by the Chinese authorities, as it violates the one-China principle. Besides these tensions, the geopolitical dispute between these two super-powers also involves technological competition.

On February 9, China’s foreign ministry spokesman called the recent American competition bill (America Competes Act) a “product of Cold War mentality”. The bill is about billions of dollars in funding for manufacturing semiconductors (chips). Amid the current supply chain crisis, both countries in fact depend on each other for this technology. Moreover, both depend on Taiwan which in turn stands at the very center of Chinese-US tensions.

There seems to be a chip race unfolding. The EU, for instance, has rolled out a $48 billion plan to turn the bloc into a large semiconductor producer. Japan, India, and South Korea are introducing their own incentives to foster such a strategic industry.

China, in its turn, is also working very hard to counter Washington’s sanction on its chip industry with new incentives. According to a policy document by the Shanghai local government (in China), published in January, Shanghai is subsidizing up to 30 per cent of investment in semiconductor materials as part of its plans to attract companies along the chip supply chain.

Semiconductors’ software projects will also be subsidized. Moreover, Shanghai is also offering allowances and house-support to highly-skilled semiconductors experts.

Additionally, China is advancing a sourcing strategy in Shenzhen (known as the Chinese Silicon Valley), where the country is developing an international sourcing platform for chips, engaging several companies as partners – as announced by its Ministry of Commerce last month.

The Chinese semiconductor industry is strongly supported by the state and is growing very quickly. According to data from the US Semiconductor Industry Association, the Chinese share of chip manufacturing is estimated to grow from 12% (2020) to 28% by 2030. In any case, Chinese companies are still relatively small players on the global stage.

Of the 17 semiconductors firms which generated over US$10 billion (in total revenue) in 2021, none were Chinese. Furthermore, China does not have the capacity to produce chips with the smallest circuits. This is so partly because Washington has consistently blocked it from purchasing the necessary lithography equipment. Regardless of all of its efforts, Mario Morales, group vice president for enabling technologies and semiconductors at the International Data Corporation, goes so far as to say that China is still probably “three or four generations behind” what is considered the cutting edge in semiconductors. On the other hand, one should never ignore Chinese capacity to scale-up its own industries – even against all odds. It did so with lithium-ion batteries, for instance, within a single decade.

Chip technology’s impact has been described as larger than that of the Industrial Revolution itself. Chips are everywhere: be it computers, hypersonic weapons or aircrafts, most technological innovation today depends on them. While the US has been leading this industry, Beijing seeks to decrease its reliance on Washington by means of all kinds of financial incentives. Beyond the current Chinese-American trade war (which was intensified by the previous Trump administration), there is a technological race with profound geopolitical consequences. While China aspires to achieve independent chip manufacturing capabilities within the next decade, the US has been pushing tighter licensing policies aimed at Chinese companies and institutions, as part of its larger strategy to counter Beijing.

Caught in the crossfire, stands the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), which owns 51.5 percent of the foundry market and is a leading manufacturer globally. More importantly, TSMC produces 10 nanometers or smaller chips, which are the world’s most advanced. 90 percent of the most advanced chips are made in Taiwan. TSMC supplied Chinese giant Huawei until May 2020, but because of American restrictions had to sever ties. TSMC supplies American companies such as Qualcomm and Apple.

So, the country which is such a strategic semiconductor hub is also the very focal point of US-China tensions. Semiconductors are the complicating factor amid the US-Chinese dispute, and Washington’s economic policies further aggravate the current supply chain crisis. The truth is that both China and the US would suffer from a technological decoupling between the two of them. More recently, Washington has threatened Moscow too with export control pertaining to semiconductors – in yet another troubling sign that it is becoming harder and harder to insulate industries from geopolitical disputes. In any case, chip routes are complex and taking part of the Chinese (and even Russian) demand off the market (as Washington thinks it can do) would only increase uncertainty. Moreover, it is not clear how the US plans to enforce such a blockade of supply chains that are so hard to trace in the first place.

While Beijing has turned geoeconomics into the core of its geostrategic approaches (deriving political power from economic power with its Belt and Road Initiative),  Washington, in its turn, is dangerously weaponizing economic policies and in fact weaponizing its financial system and the world economy itself – amid a global supply chain crisis. Any escalation of tensions can further disrupt and complicate the bottleneck and also hurt the US itself. Finally, the more Washington seeks to use its economic leverage to coerce other states, the greater the incentive to come up with alternatives against the US.

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

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***

 

On February 4, on the sideline of the Beijing Olympics, Vladimir Putin and Xi Xinping met and issued a joint statement on international relations entering a new era. Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent called it simply, “a landmark document.”

In addition, Sakwa told this author that “it will go down in history as a signal moment” when the Western view of the world and international relations was fundamentally challenged.

Rather than setting out policies couched in direct complaints about the West, this document seemingly represents a confident shift in which Russia and China take the lead and lay out a set of principles and a new, shared worldview.

A clear declaration of principles like this by the two countries has long been anticipated. It is significant that they issued it together, and that it was done on the sidelines of an Olympics under (diplomatic) boycott by the United States, and at a time when a new cold war is emerging and red lines are being drawn by Putin over Ukraine and by Xi over Taiwan.

One of the 5,000-word joint statement’s most intriguing features is the fine-tuning of the characterization of their relationship. The Russia-China relationship is described here as a very close, comprehensive strategic partnership that may be, in Putin’s earlier words, “a relationship that probably cannot be compared with anything in the world.”

The partnership has also been described as based on three do’s and three don’ts: do be good neighbors, good partners, and good friends; don’t enter into an alliance, oppose each other, or take action against a third party. In a paper written in 2021, Igor Denisov and Alexander Lukin report a shift in which China’s foreign minister proposed replacing the three don’ts with three no’s: “no end lines, no forbidden areas, and no upper limits.” Though this formulation is vague, Denisov and Lukin suggest there’s been a degree of removing the limitations and moving closer to an alliance.

The joint statement may be the first official appearance of the three no’s formulation: “Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.” In adding that it is “a new kind of relationship” that is not “aimed against third countries” and is “superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War,” it evokes Xi’s recent statement that the “relationship even exceeds an alliance in its closeness and effectiveness.”

The joint nature of the statement is, as Sakwa told me, itself “an expression of the principles contained in the document.” In substance it is a catalogue of areas in which Russia and China will cooperate, including development, technology, transportation, climate change, health, terrorism, arms control, AI security, and more. They also claim their readiness to work with all international partners in a multipolar world.

The primacy of the Russian-Chinese vision here is clearly demonstrated by its inclusion at the top of the first paragraph. It lists “multipolarity” as the first of the “momentous changes” of the “new era.” The two parties express their desire for the role of the UN in a world order not led by a hegemon that asserts its own standards on a unipolar chess board and poses “serious threats to global and regional peace and stability and undermine[s] the stability of the world order.”

The joint statement also stresses that in the new era, “a trend has emerged towards redistribution of power in the world” so that each country has a voice that “promote[s] more democratic international relations.” And that is where we get to the most remarkable aspect of the joint statement of all: the emphasis on democracy. In the Joint Statement on the International Relations Entering a New Era, Russia and China feel the need to lecture America and the West on democracy.

The lecture has two parts: democratic government within a country, and international democracy between countries in a multipolar world.

The introductory section calls for all nations to “champion such universal human values as peace, development, equality, justice, democracy and freedom.” But it insists that “[t]here is no one-size-fits-all template to guide countries in establishing democracy,” and so all countries must “respect the rights of peoples to independently determine the development paths of their countries.”

Russia and China offer an unconventional definition of democracy, defining it simply as “a means of citizens’ participation in the government of their country with the view to improving the well-being of the population and implementing the principle of popular government.” It has, of course, been pointed out that this is a really low bar that Western democracies would never accept. Furthermore, it is not lost on the reader that the modern Russian and Chinese systems have never been known for adhering to “universal values” of  “equality, justice” or even freedom, and that yes, their “templates” may be very well different. As such, Sakwa says that Russia and China are appealing to a “an underlying principle . . . of ‘multiple modernities’ . . . that there are different ways of being modern — not necessarily Western.”

The document says that each country can choose its fit of democracy, taking into account its social, political, historical and cultural background and that only the people of the country can decide whether their country is a democracy. In this tradition, Sakwa says, “Putin has always considered himself a democrat,” and the document insists that Russia and China are “world powers with rich cultural and historical heritage [that] have long-standing traditions of democracy.”

Russia has always drawn from its own heritage in evolving its system of government. “That is why,” Sakwa says in his book, The Putin Paradox, “Russia’s ‘democratic revolution’ always looked anomalous from the perspective of classic theories of democratisation.”

But the most important part of the joint statement is a poke at American hypocrisy that insists on its own vision of democracy for nations but prohibits democracy between nations. Biden has defined his administration by the generational struggle between democracy and autocracy. The U.S. compels democracy upon countries. Hence, the embargo on Cuba cannot be lifted until Cuba becomes a multi-party democracy. But Washington also insists on maintaining a unipolar world in which democracy is denied between nations and the U.S. rules as an autocrat. “Some actors,” the statement accuses, “representing but the minority on the international scale continue to advocate unilateral approaches to addressing international issues and resort to force.”

Lukin points out that Russia and China have recently begun subscribing to the idea of “democratisation of international relations,” in which all nations have an equal voice. On the contrary, the U.S. has always hypocritically demanded democracy for each nation while insisting on its unique autocratic role at the international level.

It is at this global level that the two nations have staked out out their alternative vision. At a time when crisis is bearing down on Eastern Europe in Russia’s backyard, and tensions escalate in China’s, it’s no small statement when they say their “friendship has no limits.”

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Dr. Angelique Coetzee, head of the South African Medical Association and one of the doctors who discovered omicron, admitted that she was pressured not to reveal the mildness of the variant. “I was told not to publicly state that it was a mild illness. I have been asked to refrain from making such statements and to say that it is a serious illness. I declined,” Dr. Coetzee told Germany’s Welt newspaper.

Coetzee did not reveal which government officials pressured her to lie. However, she revealed that it spanned far beyond the South African government. In an effort to discredit her, Coetzee says that officials from the Netherlands and UK also began to criticize her.

“What I said at one point—because I was just tired of it—was: In South Africa, this is a mild illness, but in Europe, it is a very serious one. That’s what your politicians wanted to hear,” she said.

“The definition of mild COVID-19 disease is clear, and it is a [World Health Organization] definition: patients can be treated at home and oxygen or hospitalization is not required,” Coetzee said, adding, “A serious illness is one in which we see acute pulmonary respiratory infections: people need oxygen, maybe even artificial respiration. We saw that with delta—but not with omicron. So I said to people, ‘I can’t say it like that because it’s not what we’re seeing.’”

Hospitals and Big Pharma would have lost out on profits from omicron had her voice not been stifled. Lockdowns, mandates, and the governments’ grab for power would have potentially lessened had the mainstream media reported the doctor’s findings. Governments worldwide clearly have an agenda (Agenda 2030) and collaborated to LIE to the people in order to retain the powers provided to them by COVID fearmongering. The Great Unwashed eventually discovered the truth after countless people contracted the virus and lived to tell the tale. In fact, omicron proved that the vaccines were a moot point since “the vaccinated” still contracted and transmitted the virus. The truth always reveals itself in the end.

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Today we face an avoidable crisis that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense.

We are being told each day that war may be imminent in Ukraine. Russian troops, we are told, are massing at Ukraine’s borders and could attack at any time. American citizens are being advised to leave Ukraine and dependents of the American Embassy staff are being evacuated. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president has advised against panic and made clear that he does not consider a Russian invasion imminent. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has denied that he has any intention of invading Ukraine. His demand is that the process of adding new members to NATO cease and that in particular, Russia has assurance that Ukraine and Georgia will never be members. President Biden has refused to give such assurance but made clear his willingness to continue discussing questions of strategic stability in Europe. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government has made clear it has no intention of implementing the agreement reached in 2015 for reuniting the Donbas provinces into Ukraine with a large degree of local autonomy—an agreement with Russia, France and Germany which the United States endorsed.

Maybe I am wrong—tragically wrong—but I cannot dismiss the suspicion that we are witnessing an elaborate charade, grossly magnified by prominent elements of the American media, to serve a domestic political end. Facing rising inflation, the ravages of Omicron, blame (for the most part unfair) for the withdrawal from Afghanistan, plus the failure to get the full support of his own party for the Build Back Better legislation, the Biden administration is staggering under sagging approval ratings just as it gears up for this year’s congressional elections. Since clear “victories” on the domestic woes seem increasingly unlikely, why not fabricate one by posing as if he prevented the invasion of Ukraine by “standing up to Vladimir Putin”?  Actually, it seems most likely that President Putin’s goals are what he says they are—and as he has been saying since his speech in Munich in 2007. To simplify and paraphrase, I would sum them up as: “Treat us with at least a modicum of respect. We do not threaten you or your allies, why do you refuse us the security you insist for yourself?”

In 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, many observers, ignoring the rapidly unfolding events that marked the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, considered that the end of the Cold War. They were wrong. The Cold War had ended at least two years earlier. It ended by negotiation and was in the interest of all the parties. President George H.W. Bush hoped that Gorbachev would manage to keep most of the twelve non-Baltic republics in a voluntary federation. On August 1, 1991, he made a speech to the Ukrainian parliament (the Verkhovna Rada) in which he endorsed Gorbachev’s plans for a voluntary federation and warned against “suicidal nationalism.” The latter phrase was inspired by Georgian leader Zviad Gamsakurdia’s attacks on minorities in Soviet Georgia. For reasons I will explain elsewhere, they apply to Ukraine today. Bottom line: Despite the prevalent belief, both among the “blob” in the United States, and most of the Russian public, the United States did not support, much less cause the break-up of the Soviet Union. We supported throughout the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and one of the last acts of the Soviet parliament was to legalize their claim to independence. And—by the way—despite frequently voiced fears—Vladimir Putin has never threatened to re-absorb the Baltic countries or to claim any of their territories, though he has criticized some that denied ethnic Russians the full rights of citizenship, a principle that the European Union is pledged to enforce.

But, let’s move on to the first of the assertions in the subtitle…

Was the crisis avoidable?

Well, since President Putin’s major demand is an assurance that NATO will take no further members, and specifically not Ukraine or Georgia, obviously there would have been no basis for the present crisis if there had been no expansion of the alliance following the end of the Cold War, or if the expansion had occurred in harmony with building a security structure in Europe that included Russia.

Maybe we should look at this question more broadly. How do other countries respond to alien military alliances near their borders?  Since we are talking about American policy, maybe we should pay some attention to the way the United States has reacted to attempts of outsiders to establish alliances with countries nearby. Anybody remember the Monroe Doctrine, a declaration of a sphere of influence that comprised an entire hemisphere? And we meant it! When we learned that Kaiser’s Germany was attempting to enlist Mexico as an ally during the first world war, that was a powerful incentive for the subsequent declaration of war against Germany. Then, of course, in my lifetime, we had the Cuban Missile Crisis—something I remember vividly since I was at the American Embassy in Moscow and translated some of Khrushchev’s messages to Kennedy.

Should we look at events like the Cuban Missile Crisis from the standpoint of some of the principles of international law, or from the standpoint of the likely behavior of a country’s leaders if they feel threatened? What did international law at that time say about the employment of nuclear missiles in Cuba? Cuba was a sovereign state and had the right to seek support for its independence from anywhere it chose. It had been threatened by the United States, even an attempt to invade, using anti-Castro Cubans. It asked the Soviet Union for support. Knowing that the United States had deployed nuclear weapons in Turkey, a U.S. ally actually bordering on the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, decided to station nuclear missiles in Cuba. How could the U.S. legitimately object if the Soviet Union was deploying weapons similar to those deployed against it?

Obviously, it was a mistake. A big mistake! (One is reminded of Talleyrand’s remark..”Worse than a crime …”)  International relations, like it or not, are not determined by debating, interpreting and applying the finer points of “international law”—which in any case is not the same as municipal law, the law within countries. Kennedy had to react to remove the threat. The Joint Chiefs recommended taking out the missiles by bombing. Fortunately, Kennedy stopped short of that, declared a blockade and demanded the removal of the missiles.

At the end of the week of messages back and forth—I translated Khrushchev’s longest—it was agreed that Khrushchev would remove the nuclear missiles from Cuba. What was not announced was that Kennedy also agreed that he would remove the U.S. missiles from Turkey but that this commitment must not be made public.

We American diplomats in Embassy Moscow were delighted at the outcome, of course. We were not even informed of the agreement regarding missiles in Turkey. We had no idea that we had come close to a nuclear exchange. We knew the U.S. had military superiority in the Caribbean and we would have cheered if the U.S. Air Force had bombed the sites. We were wrong. In later meetings with Soviet diplomats and military officers, we learned that, if the sites had been bombed, the officers on the spot could have launched the missiles without orders from Moscow. We could have lost Miami, and then what? We also did not know that a Soviet submarine came close to launching a nuclear-armed torpedo against the destroyer that was preventing its coming up for air.

It was a close call. It is quite dangerous to get involved in military confrontations with countries with nuclear weapons. You don’t need an advanced degree in international law to understand that. You need only common sense.

OK—It was predictable. Was it predicted?

“The most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War”

My words, and my voice was not the only one. In 1997, when the question of adding more members to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), I was asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In my introductory remarks, I made the following statement:

“I consider the Administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.”

The reason I cited was the presence in the Russian Federation of a nuclear arsenal that, in overall effectiveness, matched if not exceeded that of the United States. Either of our arsenals, if actually used in a hot war, was capable of ending the possibility of civilization on earth, possibly even causing the extinction of the human race and much other life on the planet. Though the United States and the Soviet Union had, as a result of arms control agreements concluded by the Reagan and first Bush administrations, negotiations for further reductions stalled during the Clinton Administration. There was not even an effort to negotiate the removal of short-range nuclear weapons from Europe.

That was not the only reason I cited for including rather than excluding Russia from European security. I explained as follows: “The plan to increase the membership of NATO fails to take account of the real international situation following the end of the Cold War, and proceeds in accord with a logic that made sense only during the Cold War. The division of Europe ended before there was any thought of taking new members into NATO. No one is threatening to re-divide Europe. It is therefore absurd to claim, as some have, that it is necessary to take new members into NATO to avoid a future division of Europe; if NATO is to be the principal instrument for unifying the continent, then logically the only way it can do so is by expanding to include all European countries. But that does not appear to be the aim of the Administration, and even if it is, the way to reach it is not by admitting new members piecemeal.”

Then I added,

“All of the purported goals of NATO enlargement are laudable. Of course the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are culturally part of Europe and should be guaranteed a place in European institutions. Of course we have a stake in the development of democracy and stable economies there. But membership in NATO is not the only way to achieve these ends. It is not even the best way in the absence of a clear and identifiable security threat.”

In fact, the decision to expand NATO piecemeal was a reversal of American policies that produced the end of the Cold War and the liberation of Eastern Europe. President George H.W. Bush had proclaimed a goal of a “Europe whole and free.” Soviet President Gorbachev had spoken of “our common European home,” had welcomed representatives of East European governments who threw off their Communist rulers and had ordered radical reductions in Soviet military forces by explaining that for one country to be secure, there must be security for all. The first President Bush also assured Gorbachev during their meeting on Malta in December, 1989, that if the countries of Eastern Europe were allowed to choose their future orientation by democratic processes, the United States would not “take advantage” of that process. (Obviously, bringing countries into NATO that were then in the Warsaw Pact would be “taking advantage.”) The following year, Gorbachev was assured, though not in a formal treaty, that if a unified Germany was allowed to remain in NATO, there would be no movement of NATO jurisdiction to the east, “not one inch.”

These comments were made to President Gorbachev before the Soviet Union broke up. Once it did, the Russian Federation had less than half the population of the Soviet Union and a military establishment demoralized and in total disarray. While there was no reason to enlarge NATO after the Soviet Union recognized and respected the independence of the East European countries, there was even less reason to fear the Russian Federation as a threat.

Willfully precipitated?

Adding countries in Eastern Europe to NATO continued during the George W. Bush administration (2001-2009) but that was not the only thing that stimulated Russian objection. At the same time, the United States began withdrawing from the arms control treaties that had tempered, for a time, an irrational and dangerous arms race and were the foundation agreements for ending the Cold War. The most significant was the decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) which had been the cornerstone treaty for the series of agreements that halted for a time the nuclear arms race. After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia, President Putin was the first foreign leader to call President Bush and offer support. He was as good as his word by facilitating the attack on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which had harbored Osama ben Laden, the Al Qaeda leader who had inspired the attacks. It was clear at that time that Putin aspired to a security partnership with the United States. The jihadist terrorists who were targeting the United States were also targeting Russia. Nevertheless, the U.S. continued its course of ignoring Russian–and also allied–interests by invading Iraq, an act of aggression which was opposed not only by Russia, but also by France and Germany.

As President Putin pulled Russia out of the bankruptcy that took place in the late 1990s, stabilized the economy, paid off Russia’s foreign debts, reduced the activity of organized crime, and even began building a financial nest egg to weather future financial storms, he was subjected to what he perceived as one insult after another to his perception of Russia’s dignity and security. He enumerated them in a speech in Munich in 2007. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates responded that we didn’t need a new Cold War. Quite true, of course, but neither he, nor his superiors, nor his successors seemed to take Putin’s warning seriously. Then Senator Joseph Biden, during his candidacy for the presidential election in 2008, pledged to “stand up to Vladimir Putin!” Huh? What in the world had Putin done to him or to the United States?

Although President Barack Obama initially promised policy changes, in fact his government continued to ignore the most serious Russian concerns and redoubled earlier American efforts to detach former Soviet republics from Russian influence and, indeed, to encourage “regime change” in Russia itself. American actions in Syria and Ukraine were seen by the Russian president, and most Russians, as indirect attacks on them.

President Assad of Syria was a brutal dictator but the only effective bulwark against the Islamic state, a movement that had blossomed in Iraq following the U.S. invasion and was spreading into Syria. Military aid to a supposed “democratic opposition” quickly fell into the hands of jihadists allied with the very Al Qaeda that had organized the 9/11 attacks on the United States! But the threat to nearby Russia was much greater since many of the jihadists hailed from areas of the former Soviet Union including Russia itself. Syria is also Russia’s close neighbor; the U.S. was seen strengthening enemies of both the United States and Russia with its misguided attempt to decapitate the Syrian government.

So far as Ukraine is concerned, U.S. intrusion into its domestic politics was deep—to the point of seeming to select a prime minister. It also, in effect, supported an illegal coup d’etat that changed the Ukrainian government in 2014, a procedure not normally considered consistent with the rule of law or democratic governance. The violence that still simmers in Ukraine started in the “pro-Western” west, not in the Donbas where it was a reaction to what was viewed as the threat of violence against Ukrainians who are ethnic Russian.

During President Obama’s second term, his rhetoric became more personal, joining a rising chorus in the American and British media vilifying the Russian president. Obama spoke of economic sanctions against Russians as “costing” Putin for his “misbehavior” in Ukraine, conveniently forgetting that Putin’s action had been popular in Russia and that Obama’s own predecessor could be credibly accused of being a war criminal. Obama then began to hurl insults at the Russian nation as a whole, with allegations like “Russia makes nothing anybody wants,” conveniently ignoring the fact that the only way we could get American astronauts to the international space station at that time was with Russian rockets and that his government was trying its best to prevent Iran and Turkey from buying Russian anti-aircraft missiles.

I am sure some will say, “What’s the big deal? Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire, but then negotiated an end of the Cold War.”  Right! Reagan condemned the Soviet empire of old—and subsequently gave Gorbachev credit for changing it—but he never publicly castigated the Soviet leaders personally. He treated them with personal respect, and as equals, even treating Foreign Minister Gromyko to formal dinners usually reserved for chiefs of state or government. His first words in private meetings was usually something like, “We hold the peace of the world in our hands. We must act responsibly so the world can live in peace.”

Things got worse during the four years of Donald Trump’s tenure. Accused, without evidence, of being a Russian dupe, Trump made sure he embraced every anti-Russian measure that came along, while at the same time flattered Putin as a great leader. Reciprocal expulsions of diplomats, started by the United States in the final days of Obama’s tenure continued in a grim vicious circle that has resulted in a diplomatic presence so emaciated that for months the United States did not have enough staff in Moscow to issue visas for Russians to visit the United States.

As so many of the other recent developments, the mutual strangulation of diplomatic missions reverses one of the proudest achievements of American diplomacy in latter Cold War years when we worked diligently and successfully to open up the closed society of the Soviet Union, to bring down the iron curtain that separated “East” and “West.” We succeeded, with the cooperation of a Soviet leader who understood that his country desperately needed to join the world.

All right, I rest my case that today’s crisis was “willfully precipitated.” But if that is so, how can I say that it can be…

Easily resolved by the application of common sense?

The short answer is because it can be. What President Putin is demanding, an end to NATO expansion and creation of a security structure in Europe that insures Russia’s security along with that of others is eminently reasonable. He is not demanding the exit of any NATO member and he is threatening none. By any pragmatic, common sense standard it is in the interest of the United States to promote peace, not conflict. To try to detach Ukraine from Russian influence—the avowed aim of those who agitated for the “color revolutions”—was a fool’s errand, and a dangerous one. Have we so soon forgotten the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Now, to say that approving Putin’s demands is in the objective interest of the United States does not mean that it will be easy to do. The leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties have developed such a Russophobic stance (a story requiring a separate study) that it will take great political skill to navigate the treacherous political waters and achieve a rational outcome.

President Biden has made it clear that the United States will not intervene with its own troops if Russia invades Ukraine. So why move them into Eastern Europe? Just to show hawks in Congress that he is standing firm? For what? Nobody is threatening Poland or Bulgaria except waves of refugees fleeing Syria, Afghanistan and the desiccated areas of the African savannah. So what is the 82nd Airborne supposed to do?

Well, as I have suggested earlier, maybe this is just an expensive charade. Maybe the subsequent negotiations between the Biden and Putin governments will find a way to meet the Russian concerns. If so, maybe the charade will have served its purpose. And maybe then our members of congress will start dealing with the growing problems we have at home instead of making them worse.

One can dream, can’t one?

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Jack F. Matlock served as US ambassador to the USSR (1987-1991). A member of the board of director of ACURA, he writes from Singer Island, Florida.

Biden Dials Back Belligerence Toward Russia

February 15th, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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The White House readout of US President Joe Biden’s conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday conveys the impression that its leitmotif was Washington’s threat of  sanctions against Russia if it attacked Ukraine. But it is a hackneyed message that wouldn’t have taken more than a minute or two to convey. Yet, the conversation lasted “a bit over an hour.”

The Kremlin readout is still to be released, but Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov gave a briefing to the media last night itself. Ushakov revealed that the conversation took place at an urgent US request that was conveyed in writing and citing fears of an allegedly imminent “invasion” of Ukraine by Russia. The call was originally scheduled for Monday, but the Kremlin brought it forward.

As Ushakov put it,

“The conversation came amid an atmosphere of unprecedented hysteria by US officials over Russia’s supposedly imminent ‘invasion’ of Ukraine.” 

Indeed, the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had given a special briefing just the previous day where he made the famous apocalyptic prediction, which shook world capitals, that a Russian invasion of Ukraine “could begin during the Olympics, despite a lot of speculation that it would only happen after the Olympics.” 

Ushakov said Putin took exception to such hysterical allegations, which, taken together with the massive quantities of military equipments pouring into Ukraine, would only serve one purpose, namely, “conditions are being created for possible provocative actions by the Ukrainian armed forces.” Putin also spoke about Kiev’s “destructive policies” to “sabotage” the Minsk Agreements and pointed out the West’s failure to put pressure on the Ukraine leadership. 

However, the most interesting part of Ushakov’s briefing was that Biden’s reference to sanctions, etc. was actually not even the main part of the conversation. To quote Ushakov,

“Joe Biden mentioned possible anti-Russian sanctions, which was expected, given the tense situation around Ukraine. At the same time, this issue was not at the centre of the fairly long conversation,” which, all in all was constructive and “businesslike.” 

According to Ushakov,

“The two presidents agreed that Moscow will carefully study the views that Biden expressed and if possible, take them into account when working on a reaction to the documents on the US and NATO’s positions.” 

Putin also informed Biden that Moscow had almost completed the “interagency consultations… on the possible steps and an announcement will be made in the near future. We will soon inform our partners and the public of our reaction.” This was while referring to the US response to Russia’s demands for security guarantee. 

Ushakov said Putin put in perspective the history of Russia’s relations with the US and NATO, pointing out that in the 1990s, “we seemed to be friends, though even then, the policy that the US and NATO pursued towards Russia was far from constructive.” However, since then NATO’s expansion continued and “the alliance came close to Russia’s borders.” As a result, the security situation has “dramatically deteriorated” and NATO expansion now concerns Russia’s security. 

Ushakov said Biden in turn recalled that the American and Soviet leaders did everything in their power to avoid the disaster of a major conflict between the two countries, and although “our two great powers are still rivals now, they must do their best to maintain stability and ensure security throughout the world.”

Biden emphasised that it was necessary to do everything possible to avoid the worst case scenario in the current crisis around Ukraine.

“The presidents agreed on further contacts at different levels on all the issues discussed by the phone today… As Joe Biden said, he wants interstate relations between Russia and the United States to be built on the foundation of mutual respect,” Ushakov said. 

Overall, Ushakov’s briefing conveyed a positive drift. On its part, White House too has since followed up with a background press call highlighting that the discussion between the two presidents was “professional and substantive.” The briefing acknowledged that “the stakes of this are too high not to give Russia every chance to avoid an action that we believe would be catastrophic.” 

Importantly, it eschewed the belligerence that Sullivan had showed just the previous day and his apocalyptic predictions. The senior US official said Biden prefers “a mode of problem solving and finding solutions that are in our interest, the interest of our partners and Allies, and that can address at least some of the concerns that Russia has raised.” 

The senior official admitted that the White House has no information whatsoever that Putin had taken a decision to attack Ukraine. He clarified:

“We are basing this assessment on what we are seeing on the ground with our own eyes, which is a continued Russian build-up… beyond that, that, I don’t think we have any real insights to offer.” 

Plainly put, the White House has distanced itself from Sullivan’s fiery rhetoric and irresponsible allegations on Friday. Something seems amiss here. Of course, there is a long history of wheels within wheels in the US-Russia relations where elements within the US establishment plugged own agenda. 

The infamous Steele Dossier during Hillary Clinton’s campaign against Donald Trump in the 2016 election is a case in point. By the way, Sullivan, as foreign policy advisor to Hillary Clinton was a key figure peddling the Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative. And, Hillary Clinton blames Putin personally for her defeat in 2016.

Can it be a coincidence that the British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told Sunday Times today that there is “a whiff of Munich in the air”? The point is, although it is entirely conceivable that Europe will condemn Russia in the event of any military attack on Ukraine, it does not lend credence to the war hysteria in Washington. 

In fact, French President Emmanuel Macron also spoke to Putin on Saturday and reports from Paris said later that they did not believe that Moscow “is preparing an offensive” against Ukraine. To be sure, there is also the gnawing doubt in the European mind about the consistency of US policies amidst such acute polarisation in its domestic politics. 

Interestingly, Politico reported on Friday — the same day as the release of the White House document “Indo-Pacific Strategy” — that the European Union and Chinese leaders are set to hold a virtual summit on April 1 after repeated delays, which is “a high-stakes diplomatic effort to calm the recently escalating trade and geopolitical tensions between the two… Many in the EU institutions have raised concern about too much focus on systemic rivalry with China in recent months, hoping to give the two other elements in EU-China relations — partnership and economic competition — more attention.” 

Clearly, it is important to note such undercurrents hinting at growing unease about the US’ transatlantic leadership and where all these cascading tensions, especially the haunting spectre of a war in the continent, are leading to at a time when Europe’s economies are struggling. Significantly, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba revealed today that due to opposition from European countries, the delisting of Russia from the SWIFT international payment system is not being considered.

Ushakov’s account of the “constructive and business like” conversation between Putin and Biden does convey the impression that the latter too is conscious of the complexities of the current impasse and the urgent need to rein in the tensions with Russia. 

Thus, the White House readout on Biden’s call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier today steers clear of making any allegations of an imminent Russian invasion as such, in a marked departure from the US pronouncements lately. Zelensky himself has been lately voicing frustration over the contrived war hysteria in Washington.  

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Below is a compilation of excerpts from articles pertaining to the topic.

 

Russian State Duma announces preparation of “serious military provocation in Ukraine”

By 112 Ukraine

February 11, 2022

Following a recent statement by US President Joe Biden urging Americans to leave Ukraine, Vyacheslav Nikonov, First Deputy Chairman of the Committee for International Affairs of the State Duma of Russia, said that “Ukraine is under US external control, it is possible that there is a serious military provocation”.

He wrote about this on his Facebook page.

“An important event today is Biden’s statement urging Americans to leave Ukraine immediately. As Ukraine is under US external control, it is possible that a serious military provocation is being prepared there,” the statement reads.

In addition, Nikonov stressed that there are currently 30,000 Americans in our country.

“This is a very large number. In addition, there are 3,000 American citizens with diplomatic passports in Kyiv. These are the people who run Ukraine. Given the scale of arms supplies that have been going to Ukraine in recent weeks, I admit that some kind of signal for an attack may follow,” the Russian politician wrote.

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Kiev designs plan for military solution of Donbass conflict – Pushilin

By Donetsk News Agency

February 11, 2022

The Ukrainian leadership aims to resolve the Donbass conflict by force, Donetsk People’s Republic Head Denis Pushilin said at a press conference in Donetsk on Friday.

“Ukraine is getting more insolent; probably not for nothing as it is drawing a plan for seizing Donbass by force and military resolution of the conflict,” Pushilin said. “Ukraine has such a plan. If we look at the latest events and the forces and hardware on the contact line, everything becomes clear: Ukraine is preparing for war.”

Tensions in Donbass have been mounting since mid-January. After the New Year and Christmas holidays, Ukrainian forces stepped up strikes in Donbass and began to deploy reinforcements to the region. The DPR militia said that enemy group had been reinforced with radicals, multiple launch rocket systems and NATO weapons. Drills by chemical warfare troops were reported as well.

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Movement of Ukrainian MLRS recorded next to contact line

By Donetsk News Agency

February 11, 2022

The Donetsk People’s Republic intelligence has recorded the movement of Ukrainian army multiple launch rocket system next to the contact line, DPR People’s Militia deputy commander Eduard Basurin said on Friday.

“The movement of enemy MLRS and reload vehicles was recorded in the Konstantinovka, Zhelannoye, Ilyinka, Khlebodarovka and Topolinoye settlement areas in the responsibility zones of 95th, 53rd, and 36th Brigades, at a distance of less than 30 kilometers from the contact line,” Basurin said.

He also said that Ukrainian army units were ready to deliver strikes at vital civil infrastructure facilities in the DPR territory.

Tensions in Donbass have been mounting since mid-January. After the New Year and Christmas holidays, Ukrainian forces stepped up strikes in Donbass and began to deploy reinforcements to the region. Earlier, DPR militia said that enemy group had been reinforced with radicals, multiple launch rocket systems and NATO weapons. Drills by chemical warfare troops were reported as well.

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Kiev army fires 37 ammunition rounds at DPR over 24 hours

By Donetsk News Agency

February 11, 2022

Ukrainian armed formations opened fire at the Donetsk People’s Republic territory three times over the past 24 hours, the DPR Office at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) reported on Friday.

Strikes were delivered at the Vesyoloye village area and the Lozovoye settlement on the Donetsk axis and the Golmovsky settlement area on the Gorlovka axis, the JCCC said. The enemy used grenade launchers and small arms, firing 37 rounds of ammunition of calibre over 12.7mm. There were no reports on civilian casualties or new damage.

In the previous reporting period, Kiev forces violated the ceasefire twice.

No ceasefire violations were recorded on the contact line between Ukraine and the Lugansk People’s Republic over the past 24 hours.

The package of tighter ceasefire control measures has been formally in effect in Donbass since July 27, 2020. The document bans, among other things, the use of weapons, deployment of hardware next to settlements and engineer works at troops’ positions. Tensions in Donbass mounted after the New Year and Christmas holidays.

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Situation in Europe becomes increasingly tense, and Russia not to blame – Shoigu

By TASS

February 11, 2022

The situation on the European continent is becoming increasingly tense, and it is not Russia’s fault, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said during the meeting with his UK counterpart Ben Wallace Friday.

“I am happy to welcome you in Moscow, in the Russian Defense Ministry. The military and political situation in Europe is becoming increasingly tense. And it is not our fault at all. We do not entirely and not always understand the reasons behind the escalation of those tensions. Still, we see that the tensions are growing,” Shoigu said.

He expressed his hope that it would be possible to discuss the “pressing issues on reduction of these tensions” during the meeting.

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Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from Stars and Stripes

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***

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky has demanded the US provide evidence of its claims that Russia plans to invade his country on Wednesday February 16, warning against provoking panic.

He said that he has not seen details regarding Russia’s alleged plans amid claims of a major psy-ops and misinformation campaign being waged through Western media.

“If you have additional, 100 per cent certain information about a Russian invasion of Ukraine, please share it with us. We are aware of all risks and we realise the risks are there,” Mr Zelensky said.

He reiterated previous calls urging the media to stop provoking hysteria and fears of an all-out war.

“Panic is the best friend of our enemy, and all this information only creates panic, it doesn’t help us,” the Ukrainian leader said.

The Ukrainian Communist Party has warned of an “information genocide” with the closure of the opposition NASH TV the latest act of censorship by Kiev.

Its general secretary Petro Symonenko called on journalists and all opposition forces “to unite to fight the political, legal and economic lawlessness of the ruling regime and the neonazi scum…”

“The silence of democratic Europe clearly shows that, together with the United States, they are accomplices and inspirers of the civil war in the Donbass, patrons of neonazis and criminals who seized power in Ukraine,” he said.

The communist leader was referring to the 2014 EU-backed fascist coup which ousted the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych after he rejected a deal with Brussels.

Washington has continued to ratchet up tensions in the region with claims of an imminent Russian invasion drawing comparisons with the confabulated “weapons of mass destruction” used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Ukraine has amassed some 120,000 troops, including British and US-trained fascist militia close to the Donbass contact line with officials in Donetsk and Lugansk saying they fear an imminent invasion.

The US has flooded Ukraine with weapons and mobilised thousands of troops to forward positions in Poland and other countries.

Separatist leaders accused Kiev of breaching a fragile ceasefire on at least three separate occasions over the weekend.

The southern Donetsk village of Kominternovo was struck by four grenades in the latest aggression by armed forces, monitors of the ceasefire said.

Russia continues to deny plans for military intervention, calling on Washington to abide by the 2014 Minsk Accord and promises that Nato would not expand eastwards.

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Featured image: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (centre) attends the drills of the Ministry of Internal Affairs during his working trip to the Kherson region, Ukraine, Saturday, February 12, 2022 (Source: Morning Star)

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***

Farmers in Brazil with a history of deforesting the Amazon have somehow been allowed to receive government-subsidized loans to buy tractors and other equipment to use on their blacklisted farms, an investigation has found. The loans were granted by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), through a program aimed at fostering agriculture and livestock. The program is run by John Deere Bank, through which the farmers can buy equipment from the manufacturer of the same name.

In all, BNDES and John Deere granted 28.6 million reais ($5.4 million) in loans to five farmers who had embargoes issued against them for deforestation by IBAMA, Brazil’s federal environmental protection agency. A resolution by Brazil’s Central Bank bars embargoed farms in the Amazon from accessing credit, but a loophole allows their owners to obtain loans for other farms. This opens the way for maneuvering by so-called ruralists, who declare that the equipment will be used in a legal location, but then use it on lands where it would be banned by IBAMA.

An investigation by Repórter Brasil shows that, in some cases, the farmers don’t even bother using this subterfuge; in these cases, the loans are approved in municipalities where the applicant has only one property, which happens to be embargoed.

A loophole in Central Bank regulations allows environmental violators to purchase John Deere tractorsand other farm equipment. Image by Victor Moriyama/Greenpeace.

Repórter Brasil developed a map of the properties in question, based on the Forests and Finance data platform, which also shows loans given to producers who had failed to pay fines for environmental violations. In all, 11 farmers who bought John Deere machines under the loan program owe 31.4 million reais ($6 million) in unpaid environmental fines. The total amount of BNDES loans issued — 39.7 million reais ($7.6 million) — could have paid for these fines.

“That’s taxpayers’ money for agribusinesses that are deforesting,” Philip Fearnside, a scientist at the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA) and member of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) when it won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

“In addition to paying interest rates that are much lower than any other loan, producers can have their debts pardoned in cases such as pest attacks, droughts or any problem that harms their harvest,” Fearnside said. “It is a risk that should fall on soy farmers, but the public treasury ends up paying for it.”

The loans investigated in this article were of the “automatic indirect” type, in which BNDES provides the money but the contract is signed with another financial institution. That way, the state-owned bank can reduce its exposure to risks and default.

In response to questions from Repórter Brasil, BNDES said it requires borrowers to “sign statements attesting to the absence of environmental violations prior to entering into any contract.” It also said the responsibility for verifying “compliance with such requirements” belongs to the partner bank, in this case John Deere Bank, a Luxembourg-based entity that’s wholly owned by John Deere. On its website, however, BNDES admits its responsibility for approving the loans: “Step 4: BNDES assesses the request, verifies whether it complies with the rules and, if so, authorizes the loan.”

John Deere said in a response that it “strictly complies” with the rules for granting loans, “with careful assessment of the area that will benefit from a given product.” Read the full statements here.

System flaws and lack of transparency

Repórter Brasil was unable to verify the legality of the loans granted by BNDES to deforesters and channeled through John Deere Bank. BNDES declined to provide the Rural Environmental Register (CAR) number used to apply for the loans, which makes it impossible to know whether they complied with the Central Bank resolution. The request for the CAR numbers, which are associated with individual properties, was based on Brazilian legislation ensuring the right to access information produced by federal agencies. BNDES said it was nonetheless “unable to provide them.” Read the full statement here.

Despite the refusal, three cases stand out in which loans were granted for properties in the same Amazonian municipalities where the recipients have embargoed farms — a strong indication that the rules may have been ignored. A previous investigation by Repórter Brasil has already shown that BNDES failed to comply with its own rules when issuing loans to meatpackers caught buying cattle raised in deforested areas or to farms that use slave labor.

Soy farmer Alexandra Perinoto has only one active CAR number, for a property in the municipality of Cláudia, in Mato Grosso state. Between 2016 and 2019, she was granted 4.5 million reais ($856,000) in BNDES loans to buy John Deer tractors and other equipment for that location. In 2021, her property was embargoed after authorities found 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of deforestation “of native forest in the Amazon Biome in a Legal Reserve Area, without proper authorization by the relevant environmental agency.”

According to the Central Bank’s rule, “in case of interdiction after the operation is contracted, payment of installments will cease until the complete environmental regularization of the property.” Nevertheless, loans on Perinoto’s behalf are listed as “assets” on the BNDES Transparency portal.

In a statement, the Central Bank said that nothing “prevents the releases from being suspended based on evidence of an irregularity” and that it will “initiate interactions with the financial institution cited in order to investigate the facts reported.”

The Central Bank prohibition is credited with preventing the devastation of 270,000 hectares (667,000 acres) of forest from 2008-2011 alone, according to an estimate by the Climate Policy Initiative. “This rule is one of the only things that had consequences for illegal deforestation, because fines are rarely paid,” Fearnside said. But Perinoto’s case seems to have gone unnoticed.

“Banks are responsible for monitoring and inspecting rural credit operations, enforcing laws or any regulations applicable to land use and economic activities,” the Central Bank said in a response that can be read in full here.

Alexandra Perinoto, a farmer known for producing in a deforested area, received 11 million reais ($2.1 million) in loans to buy John Deere equipment. Image by Victor Moriyama/Greenpeace.

Perinoto has two other embargoed properties in the municipality of Marcelândia, where BNDES also issued loans for the purchase of John Deere equipment. Among the producers investigated in this report, she was fined the highest amount for environmental violations — 18 million reais ($3.4 million), almost double the 11 million reais ($2.1 million) in loans that she was granted. She has never paid her fines for environmental violations.

A previous investigation by Repórter Brasil showed how Perinoto, despite the problematic nature of her operations, managed to sell soy to companies that are signatories to the Soy Moratorium — an industry pact that bans trade in soy produced in areas of the Amazon that were deforested after 2008. Perinoto’s soy buyers include suppliers to some of the world’s biggest trading companies, such as Cargill, Bunge and Cofco. Perinoto is also a defendant in a pending lawsuit for deforestation in the municipality of Sinop; she’s being investigated in the context of the Amazônia Protege operation carried out by federal prosecutors.

Repórter Brasil attempted unsuccessfully to contact Perinoto for her views on the allegations. In May 2021, she declined to answer questions. “I have nothing to declare. You’ll have to prove whatever you publish,” she said at the time.

‘IBAMA is wrong’

Another farmer with just a single CAR-registered and IBAMA-embargoed property in a municipality where he was approved for a loan is Milton Casari. Between 2018 and 2020, he was granted almost 1 million reais ($190,000) to buy John Deere equipment in Paranaíta, Mato Grosso — the same municipality where his farm has been embargoed by IBAMA since 2012.

The geographic coordinates of the embargo don’t correspond to Casari’s land, although the interdiction was issued against his name. The embargoed area is located about 1.5 kilometers, less than a mile, from his property, according to the boundaries he self-declared to the National System of the Rural Environmental Register (SICAR).

In a statement to Repórter Brasil (read full text here), Casari said he used to lease the area from a neighbor to raise cattle but was not responsible for the illegal deforestation. In his administrative appeal to get the embargo reversed, “the environmental agent’s conclusion about the destruction was based on false reports” from people interested in the land, Casari said. He also characterized IBAMA’s description of the violation as “inaccurate.” “I don’t have any area under interdiction. There is a court decision saying that IBAMA is wrong,” he said.

Casari also received another 3.8 million reais ($723,000) in loans in neighboring Alta Floresta municipality. While the two properties lie in different municipalities, they adjoing each other on the border between Alta Floresta and Paranaíta. That would make it easy to use the John Deere equipment on both properties and even within the embargoed area.

Deforesting a protected area

The second-largest debtor of environmental fines who benefited from the BNDES loans to buy John Deere equipment was Adão Ferreira Sobrinho, who still owes almost 7 million reais ($1.3 million) in unpaid environmental fines. Unlike the other farmers identified in this investigation, he didn’t deforest the Amazon, and therefore the Central Bank’s rule barring him from accessing credit wouldn’t apply to him. John Deere, however, said that “the veto [of financing from its bank] to embargoed areas is applied regardless of the region and/or Biome where it is located.”

Sobrinho has six interdictions against his name for properties in different municipalities for which he obtained loans. He’s responsible for deforesting 2,000 hectares (4,900 acres) of native vegetation in the Cerrado savanna biome, including 192 hectares (474 acres) inside Nascentes do Rio Parnaíba Park, an ostensibly protected area. The park lies in the border of region of the states of Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, known by the acronym Matopiba and considered Brazil’s new agricultural frontier.

In 2020, Sobrinho was sentenced to two years in prison for environmental violations, but this was later waived for a fine and community services. Despite that, he went on to receive new loans from BNDES. Then he repeated the violations and was fined four more times, adding a another 1.7 million reais ($323,000) to his debt to the state for clearing another 457 hectares of native forest in the Cerrado.

Sobrinho said in a statement that he doesn’t recognize the conviction: “IBAMA issued notices of violation but they are not valid, so I presented an administrative defense and a court defense.” He also said that “the property benefiting from the loan is located more than a thousand kilometers away from those to which the notices of violation were issued.” Read his full response here.

Brazilian market is crucial for John Deere

Brazil’s favorable agrarian credit policies reflect the importance of agribusiness to the country’s economy; in 2020, the industry accounted for 26.6% of Brazil’s GDP. This also makes the country the second-biggest market (after its native U.S.) for John Deere, the world’s leading agricultural equipment manufacturer.

The nearly two-century-old company’s investors include Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who owns 9.3% of its shares. Investment management firm BlackRock, which in 2020 announced its withdrawal from environmentally damaging investments, also holds a stake in John Deere.

Most Brazilian contracts for agricultural machinery purchase in Brazil, about 65%, are subsidized by BNDES; effectively, they’re underwritten with public money. According to the BNDES ranking, in the past decade, John Deere Bank was the third-largest lender under its Safra Plan, used mainly to finance equipment purchase and replacement programs.

However, granting loans to known environmental offenders goes against efforts to curb global warming in Brazil, where deforestation is the main driver of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the latest IPCC report. It also contradicts the principles espoused by the president of John Deere in Brazil, Paulo Herrmann, who advocates “locking up the illegals” who burn the forest. Herrmann has said that agribusiness can grow “without deforesting anything.”

Granting loans under these conditions also violates the slogan featured on the BNDES website, which bills the institution as the “national sustainable development bank.”

Technology doesn’t prevent deforestation

John Deere knows down to the inch where its machines are at all times, but hasn’t stopped them from being used in deforested areas. Image courtesy of John Deere.

The machines financed by Brazilian taxpayers for deforesters aren’t simple tractors. They feature state-of-the-art technology, as explained by scientist and sociologist Arilson Favareto, head of sustainability at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) and a researcher in sustainable food systems at the University of São Paulo.

“There is a technological revolution underway with the increase in computerization — that’s Agriculture 4.0,” Favareto said, referring to tractors equipped with GPS, automated harvesters, and pesticide-spraying drones.

John Deere doesn’t downplay its technological prowess in the field. “Today we know where a machine is with 2-centimeter [less than 1 inch] precision,” Herrmann said in an interview with Forbes magazine. But that tracking capability hasn’t stopped the company from selling its equipment to farmers who have a history of environmental crimes.

“Mechanization causes severe environmental impacts because it enables advances in deforestation and production in large areas, so the soil is increasingly destroyed,” said Adriana Charoux, a strategist at Greenpeace Brazil and leader of the NGO’s agriculture and food team.

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This story was first published in Portuguese on Repórter Brasil.

Featured image: Tractors in a soy plantation in Bahia state, in the Brazilian Cerrado. Image by Victor Moriyama/Greenpeace.

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This incisve article by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was first published by From the Trends Journal 8 years ago (Spring 2014)

***

When the Soviet Union collapsed, it cleared the way for the rise of the neoconservatives and their ideology of U.S. world hegemony. The neoconservatives concluded that the Soviet collapse brought the end of history, by which they meant that history had chosen “American democratic capitalism,” which is neither democratic nor capitalist, as history’s final statement. History’s choice gives the government of the “exceptional, indispensable” American people the right to world hegemony. The problem for the neoconservatives is that not all of the world agrees with “history’s choice.” Independent states, such as Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Iran, China, and Russia did not see themselves as provinces in Washington’s empire. Neither do India, Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

The neoconservatives made a concerted and successful effort to take control of U.S. foreign policy and military doctrine. With the Clinton regime’s attack on Serbia, Washington began eliminating governments that are obstacles to its hegemony.

The U.S. government has overthrown the Iraqi and Libyan governments with military force, instigated a military attack by outside Islamist forces on the Syrian government, demonized Iran as a precursor to military attack, captured the former Russian province of Georgia in a U.S.-financed “color revolution,” overthrown the elected Honduran government, unleashed orchestrated protests against the government of Venezuela, threatened Bolivia and Ecuador, routinely attacks with drones and missiles populations in Pakistan and Yemen, and has been at war against the Taliban in Afghanistan for 13 years.

Iran, Russia, and China are being surrounded with U.S. military bases, and now the neoconservatives in Washington have captured Ukraine with a Washington-sponsored coup against a democratically elected government. Washington claims that the Ukraine government was corrupt. Corrupt like who — Washington and the EU?

Washington Confronts Russia with a Strategic Threat

Washington’s coup in Ukraine brought not only a threat to the Russian population in Ukraine but also a direct strategic threat to Russia itself. The Russian government got in the way of Washington’s march to hegemony by, together with the UK parliament, blocking Obama’s military invasion of Syria and by producing a diplomatic solution to Iranian enrichment of uranium for nuclear energy. Washington was much annoyed as Washington had invested much time and money in setting up Syria and Iran for military attack.

Washington concluded that Russia needed to be confronted with, or distracted by, problems that would leave the Russian government less confident or able to counter Washington’s aggression elsewhere.

Ukraine presented the perfect opportunity for Washington to advance its hegemonic agenda. Ina speech at the National Press Club last December, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland boasted that Washington had invested $5 billion in non- governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine. Allegedly, the purpose of NGOs is to “teach democracy.” However, Ukraine already had a democracy. In reality the NGO organizations are U.S. fifth columns that can be used to organize protests and to provide support for Washington’s candidates for the Ukraine government.

Western pressure was applied to the democratically elected government of President Victor Yanukovich to join the EU. The Ukrainian government considered the proposal and decided rationally that the Ukraine economy was integrated with the Russian economy and that the trade, subsidy, and loan advantages of its association with Russia were worth more than EU membership, which would likely bring an IMF adjustment program that would result in the looting of the Ukraine economy. When Ukraine declined EU membership, Washington set in motion its NGO fifth columns. Protests began in Kiev demanding that the elected government change its mind and join the EU.

The protests were nonviolent until well-organized ultra-nationalist organizations, such as the Right Sector introduced violence and took over the protests, changing the demands from joining the EU to overthrowing the democratic government. President Yanukovich had reached an agreement with EU representatives to implement constitutional changes that could result in Ukraine being voted into the EU, but this agreement fell by the wayside with the rise of the Right Sector’s takeover of the protests.

It is unclear whether Washington worked with the Right Sector or overlooked it. The ultra nationalists and Washington’s stooges are at odds. It is unclear how the differences will be resolved.

Washington did overlook important facts about modern day Ukraine. For about 300 years Ukraine was part of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union. The Russian Black Sea naval base is located in Crimea. Crimea, a Russian province for most of the period since the time of Catherine the Great, was added to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine in 1954 by Khrushchev at a time when Russia and Ukraine were parts of the same country. The Crimean population is mainly Russian. Other parts of present day southern and eastern Ukraine are Russian territories included in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine by Lenin. When the Soviet Union dissolved and Russia allowed Ukraine to become independent, these Russian territories remained part of Ukraine. Consequently, Ukraine is an untenable combination of Russian people and Russophobic Ukrainians in the western part of present day Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government confronted the orchestrated protests with unarmed police and followed up this mistake with another — the police were disbanded. Lacking protection, Yanukovich and his party fled or went into hiding. A Washington stooge, Yatseniuk, was appointed, not elected, prime minister. Yatseniuk is the person selected by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine in their telephone conversation in which they choose the members of the stooge government. Transcripts and recordings of the leaked conversation are abundant. See, for example, here and here.

Washington’s stooge government, once installed, either lacked all judgment or went straight to work setting up confrontations with the Russian provinces in Ukraine. The stooge government passed a law outlawing the official use of the Russian language. Proposals were introduced to arrest residents who retained dual Russian/Ukrainian citizenship. Many Russophobic statements were issued. For example, former prime minister Tymoshenko, released by the coup from prison where she was serving time for corruption, declared in an intercepted telephone conversation that “it’s about time we grab our guns and go kill those damn Russians together with their leader.” See this.

The Right Sector destroyed Soviet war memorials dedicated to the memory of the Russian troops who liberated Ukraine from Hitler’s armies. Videos are available online of Right Sector thugs attacking  Russians on the streets in cities in eastern Ukraine.

The violent words and deeds issuing from the Washington-installed government alarmed the Russian speaking populations in Crimea and southern and eastern Ukraine. The elected government in Crimea voted to separate from Ukraine, and the Crimean population in a high vote turnout of 84% voted 97% to rejoin Russia. Washington misrepresented this democratic act of self-determination as a “Russian invasion and annexation.” Washington’s blatant lie was trumpeted by the Western presstitute media worldwide.

A Serious Miscalculation by Washington

On March 10 the U.S. Department of State issued a document listing President Putin’s “10 False Claims about Ukraine.” In fact the document was Washington’s “10 lies about Russian aggression against Ukraine.” The latest lies from the Obama regime, repeated endlessly by the presstitute media, are that Russian troops and tanks are massing on the Ukraine border. This lie has been disputed by NBC News. See this.

Washington’s puppet states in Eastern Europe are calling for US aircraft and NATO troops to protect them from a nonexistent threat of a Russian invasion of Eastern Europe. Washington is pressuring its NATO puppets to spend more on armaments and to speed up forward deployments of troops to Russia’s borders. NATO announced that it has suspended civilian and military cooperation with Russia. See this. NATO member foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels to work out details of a planned military escalation in Eastern Europe. See this. Washington is conducting numerous war games on Russia’s borders and is establishing NATO relationships with Moldova, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. See this. The unelected stooge government in Ukraine has agreed to participating in military exercises with NATO. See this.

No one in Washington or Europe has the wits to consider how all this bellicosity and saber-rattling looks to Putin and the Russian government. The lies are so thick that Putin and the Russian govern- ment have lost all belief in the integrity or word of Washington and the EU. Washington overthrows an elected government in Ukraine and declares an unelected government imposed by Washington to be “legal and legitimate,” but self-determination by Crimeans is “illegal and legitimate” and requires sanctions against Russia. The very governments who organized a coup against the elected Ukrainian government now call on Russia “to take immediate steps to return to compliance with international law.” What this means is that Russia should ignore Crimean self-determination and hand Crimea to Washington’s stooge government in Kiev so Washington can evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base, thereby blocking Russian access to the Mediterranean Sea. Without access to the Mediterranean, Russia cannot defend its naval facility in Tartus, Syria, the only naval base in the Mediterranean Sea not under the control of the U.S. or U.S. puppets.

This arrogance from Washington comes after Russia has observed Washington’s strategic moves against Russian national interests and sovereignty for two decades.

Washington’s promises to Russia that NATO would not be expanded into Eastern Europe were broken and NATO was taken to Russia’s border. Washington withdrew from the ABM treaty, which prohibited escalating the arms race with anti-ballistic missile systems designed to negate an opponent’s strategic nuclear deterrent, thus making nuclear war “winnable.”

Washington arranged with a deranged Polish government to deploy anti-ballistic missile bases on Poland’s border with Russia, thus dooming Poland to annihilation if war breaks out. In 2010 Washington deployed Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles in Morag, Poland, about 35 kilometers from Russian territory. This is the first permanent deployment of land-based interceptor missiles outside the U.S. In 2018 advanced versions of interceptor missiles are to be positioned on Russia’s borders under Phase 3 of the European Phased Adaptive Approach U.S.-NATO Plan. To reassure Russia, Washington has talked about perhaps not going forward with the additional deployments, but certainly will use the crisis that Washington has instigated as justification for going forward with the additional ABM missiles on Russia’s borders. The U.S. and NATO have guided missile destroyers and cruisers equipped with interceptor missiles in the Mediterranean and will complete the surrounding of Russia with deployments to the Black, Baltic, Barents, and Norwegian Seas.

At this point it becomes easy to indwell Putin’s mind:

“The Americans tell us the fantastic lie that the purpose of American missile bases in Poland is to protect Europe from non-existent Iranian ICBMs. The Americans change their war doctrine to elevate their nuclear weapons from a retaliatory deterrent to a pre-emptive first strike force. The Americans pretend that this change in their war doctrine is directed at terrorists, but we know it is directed at Russia. The Americans have financed ‘color revolutions’ in Georgia and Ukraine and hope to do so in the Russian Federation itself. The Americans support the terrorists in Chechnya. The Americans trained and equipped the Georgian military and gave it the green light to attack our peacekeepers in South Ossetia. The Americans have financed the overthrow of the elected government in Ukraine and blame me for the anxiety this caused among Crimeans who on their own volition fled Ukraine and returned to Russia from whence they came. Even Gorbachev said that Khrushchev should never have put Crimea into Ukraine. Solzhenitsyn said that Lenin should not have put Russian provinces into eastern and southern Ukraine. Now I have these Russian provinces agitating to return to Russia, and the Americans are blaming me for the consequences of their own reckless and irresponsible actions.

“The Americans say I want to rebuild the Soviet Empire. Yet, the Americans witnessed me withdraw from Georgia when I had this former Russian province in my hands, thanks to Russia’s victory in the short-lived war instigated by the Americans.

“There is no end to the American lies. I have done everything possible to respond to provocations in a low-key reasonable manner, offering to work things out diplomatically, as has my Foreign Minister Lavrov. But the Americans continue to provoke and to hide their provocations behind lies. The Americans brazenly bring to me a strategic threat in Ukraine, a former Russian province. They intend to put Ukraine in NATO, the purpose of which expired with the Soviet collapse. They intend to put more missile bases on Russia’s borders, and they intended to evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base, our warm water port.

“Americans have no intention of working anything out. They intend to subjugate Russia. Washington wants Russia powerless, surrounded with ABM bases that degrade our strategic deterrent to uselessness. These Americans will not work with me. They will not listen to me or to Russia’s Foreign Minister. They only hear their own call for American hegemony over the world. My only alternative is to prepare for war.”

The government of China, having read Washington’s war plans for war against China and being fully aware of Washington’s “pivot to Asia,” in which the “indispensable nation” announced its “safe-guarding of peace” by surrounding China with naval and air bases, understands that it has the same Washington enemy as does Russia.

Washington, overflowing with hubris and arrogance and filled with confidence from its choice by History as the hegemonic power, is driving the world to the final war.

As this edition of the Trends Journal publishes, pro-Russian separatists are holding fort in Ukrainian communities along the eastern border, as Kiev threatens to intervene. It’s a battle Ukraine cannot win. Washington’s grand scheme to envelope all of Ukraine into EU and NATO embrace backfired because Russian and Russian-speaking Ukrainians would not buy in. Crimea is already lost. Others can easily follow. Washington grossly miscalculated and is incapable of admitting its own miscalculations. As a result, Washington is left with no other choice but to push this conflict further, perhaps even to the brink of war.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Killing the Bill of Rights

February 15th, 2022 by Philip Giraldi

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In 2005, President George W. Bush allegedly addressed a meeting of Republicans discussing whether to renew the Patriot Act due to its possible unconstitutionality by angrily blurting out that the Constitution was “just a goddamned piece of paper!” If the story is true, it partly explains the numerous crimes committed by Bush and his associates, including the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq based on hyped and even fabricated intelligence. It also suggests the unwillingness of proponents of overriding executive authority to accept that the American people are the inheritors of a number of inalienable liberties to include freedom of speech and association, both of which were impacted negatively by the Patriot Act and the other legislation that followed.

I often think of George Bush when I observe the antics of Joe Biden and his claque of Trotskyites at work. To be sure, thanks to the Bill of Rights you can currently say anything you want in the United States, though there are limits on that freedom if one goes so far as to offend those who are powerful. If you do upset the oligarchs who run our country through corruption of public officials, they have a thousand ways to get you. I recently wrote an article on the use of lawfare to block people and views one objects to by taking them to court on some pretext and bankrupting them through legal fees and penalties. The court system hardly represents the people in any country. It is inevitably heavily politicized by the politicians that grant it its authority and ultimately represents the big money interests that the judges consider their real peers in the Establishment.

The United States government has in fact embraced the suppression of unpopular views and the nations and groups that it finds offensive through the use of sanctions, which are essentially punishments doled out arbitrarily as the government can issue a sanction on its own authority without having to provide any evidence or make a case. And when the White House sanctions a foreign government or group, secondary sanctions kick in to prevent anyone from exchanging goods or services with the targeted entity. I recently was on the receiving end of a Department of the Treasury demand that I stop writing for a foreign website which had been sanctioned. I was warned that I might be subject to a $311,562 fine if I failed to comply. Insofar as I could determine, the foreign website was only guilty of having strongly condemned United States foreign policy, as do I and many other Americans, but the threat of the government coming down with its thousands of lawyers meant that I and other US contributors terminated our relationship.

The federal government was telling us that we had a right to free speech and association except in cases where we were interacting with groups that the Treasury Department disapproved of. In a system as hopelessly corrupted as the US federal government, it is inevitable that powerful groups will surface that will be able to dictate what is acceptable and what is not. That very often comes down to what might once have been regarded as free speech and association issues. The Democratic Party might reasonably be described as a group of satrapies representing certain special interests, most visibly homo-and transsexuals, “choice” women, blacks and Jews. The balancing act required to keep all the subsets under control frequently strains credibility. Joe Biden recently made an impassioned speech demanding that the so-called Equal Rights Amendment should immediately become part of the Constitution because it is “the clear will of the American people.” Ironically, Joe heads a government that believes that gender discrimination is okay as long as it is directed against white men. He is also currently pushing for national education reform, which some refer to as either dumbing down or reverse racism, to bring more “diversity” and “equity” into the system. Doing so of course will require Affirmative Action style discrimination based on race and the president is also pledged to nominate a new Supreme Court Justice based solely on skin color and gender, not on qualifications or preparation for the position. Other candidates need not apply even if they are better qualified and “equal rights” depend on who you are in the Democratic Party pecking order. Leondra Kruger, reportedly a leading candidate is black, a woman and also Jewish.

So Joe Biden either understands the meaning of the words and expressions he uses, or he doesn’t. He probably thinks it doesn’t matter as he is speaking to a receptive and not very critical audience, which includes his mainstream media allies. And there is also his Chief of Staff Ron Klain there to poke him in the ribs when he is hesitating and has to say anything or look presidential.

In another speech in Atlanta regarding the so-called “right to vote,” Honest Joe explicitly compared skeptics in the Senate who would prefer to have the states determine who is a legal resident and citizen for voting purposes to historic racists Bull Connors and George Wallace. He then denied that he had been calling the dissidents out as racists. George Orwell’s “newspeak” is definitely on the way as the “right to vote” is little more than a pious slogan that is an invitation to widespread electoral fraud benefiting the Democrats through mail-in voting and registration without documentation.

And there is of course Israel, which has an entire government department dedicated to the propagation of expressions like “holocaust denial, “surging anti-Semitism” and “right to defend oneself.” January 27th was International Holocaust Remembrance Day and some of the antics engaged in by presumably well-educated adult politicians and government officials perhaps offer a glimpse into what is coming in terms of the waning ability to speak one’s mind. The United Nations approved an Israeli motion calling for a crackdown on “holocaust denial,” and the Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan demanded that such content be banned from social networking media worldwide. He claimed that “Holocaust denial has spread like a cancer. It has spread under our watch. It has spread because people have chosen to be irresponsible and to avoid accountability…As you dodge responsibility, evil grows… Social media giants can no longer remain complacent to the hate that spreads on their platforms.”

To be accurate, the “avoiding accountability” claim sounds more reminiscent of Israeli and US behavior than that of those social media sites alleged to be in denial. And the malady appears to have taken hold in “liberal” Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has denounced protesting truckers as “fascists” and “racists.” He is beginning to sound like Joe Biden and Naftali Bennett and I am waiting for the “domestic terrorist” and/or “anti-Semite” label to be applied to quell what is a genuine populist reaction to draconian government policies. To cite Orwell again, what Israel, Canada and the United States understand is that when it comes to establishing the preferred narrative “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past… The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” Labeling opponents as racists or Nazis delegitimizes them so you will not have to deal with their grievances or arguments, which is precisely what is intended.

The irony is that free speech is already a distant memory in many countries. Orwell opined that “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” Constitutions guaranteeing a right to free speech proliferate in the Old World but are ignored or circumvented by governments, particularly if one is addressing almost anything having to do with the Second World War. Witness how in Europe the issue of presumed “holocaust denial,” now sometimes referred to in the US as “holocaust denialism” as if it were a disease, has been widely criminalized. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the negation or revision of “clearly established historical facts — such as the Holocaust — … would be removed from the protection of free speech under the European Convention on Human Rights.”

Bear in mind that “holocaust denial” includes any questioning of any aspect of the standard narrative endorsed by the US and other governments. Interestingly, a bit of pushback against a holocaust exemption for free speech appeared in an issue of Foreign Policy magazine, entitled “First they came for the Holocaust Deniers and I did not speak out”. The author Jacob Mchangama observes how hate speech and similar legislation has an unfortunate tendency to propagate and be used by governments to block all kinds of speech and writing that is actually quite innocent of any agenda but disapproved of by those in power. He cites how in 2014 a Russian blogger named Vladimir Luzgin was arrested and imprisoned after writing quite innocently on social media that Communist Russia and Nazi Germany collaborated to invade Poland in 1939 and thus began World War 2. His account was undoubtedly historically accurate, but the way it was presented offended someone in power and he was found guilty of misrepresenting the accepted narrative relating to the “Great Patriotic War against Germany.”

It is not completely clear what kind of Brave New World the Democrats are intent on creating, but it should be accepted as certain that once free speech goes and the universities go “woke” there will no longer be platforms to challenge the status quo. Conservative or otherwise dissenting publications will come under pressure to toe the line or the arbiters of decorum in Washington will be quick to make sure that the message is received that there will be consequences. We have entered into a strange twilight zone where what really happens and happened in the past will not be subject to examination. Will it be a better or safer world because of that? Undoubtedly no, but living now in what are likely to be the twilight years of our tottering republic we can only hope that somehow sanity will prevail and we will again be able to experience real freedom.

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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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Convoy organizer Tamara Lich and Brian Peckford, Canada’s only surviving signatory of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, hold a press conference on February 14th, 2022 in response to today’s announcement that Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government will be moving to implement the emergency measures act upon peaceful Canadian men, women, children, elderly and disabled protesters.

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Making Sense of the Ukraine Standoff.

February 15th, 2022 by Eric Zuesse

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Someone asked me:

Can you make sense out of the current Ukraine situation/stand-off? You indicated in an earlier note that you didn’t think Putin would invade Ukraine unless Ukraine invaded Donbass. So, what is going on right now?  Why the massive Russian build-up on the borders (assuming the news isn’t exaggerating)?

I answered:

Putin intends to assure that if Ukraine invades Donbass, the residents in Donbass will win. He has armed and trained them how to use the weapons, but if Russian soldiers would need to enter Donbass and fight there against Ukraine, he also will need to defeat the Ukrainian soldiers there. He is waiting for Ukraine to invade Donbass.

Biden wants Zelensky to order the invasion; Zelensky doesn’t want to do it, because then the EU almost certainly will never allow Ukraine into the EU. Ukraine needs the EU because it lost its main trading-partner, Russia, on account of Obama’s 2014 anti-Russian coup in Ukraine.

The EU won’t support Ukraine if Ukraine starts the invasion to occupy Donbass, except if it is responding to a prior Russian entrance into Donbass, in which case Ukraine wouldn’t be blamed for the carnage there. That is the reason why Biden wants Ukraine to set up a false-flag event, so as to make a Ukrainian invasion SEEM to be a defense against Russian aggression.

For a long time, there have been allegations that nazis in Ukraine were preparing a false-flag event and were threatening Zelensky with a coup to overthrow him if he refused to do it, to give the go-ahead. He’s walking a tightrope.

But recently, American media have been reporting that U.S. intelligence shows that Putin has planned a false-flag event in order to ‘justify’ a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The EU’s position is to demand Ukraine to fulfill its promise under the February 2015 Minsk II accord to negotiate with the Donbass government so as to accept Donbass back into Ukraine without hostility and with independence like Crimea had inside Ukraine during 1954-2014 which was when Crimea had been part of Ukraine instead of part of Russia (of which it was a part during 1783-2014). But if Zelensky were to go forward with the Minsk II deal (to which Hollande, Merkel, and Putin had forced both Ukraine and Donbass to sign), then the nazis would almost certainly overthrow him.

I believe that Zelensky is doing all he can to comply with EU and not with U.S. (and Ukraine’s own nazis — whom the U.S. had, essentially, hired and trained, along with others from other countries, in order to carry out the 2014 coup) but still stay alive. However, Ukraine’s and America’s billionaires both are demanding that Ukraine invade Donbass and are the biggest lobbying group in Washington right now; so, almost all members of Congress are backing Biden on this.

As regards whether or not the U.S. Government’s desire to go to war against Russia will be allowed by the rest of the world to succeed, a (typically) masterful analysis has already been posted by the great geostrategic analyst Alexander Mercouris on February 13th, titled “NATO military build up in Slovakia as US takes over airbase”, and it is especially understandable in light of the neoconservative Victoria Nuland (Obama’s organizer of the ultimate 2014 Ukrainian coup) famous “F—k the EU” phone-call that was leaked online on 4 February 2014, in which she selected the leader of Ukraine’s soon-to-be-imposed coup-government, who did become officially appointed only a few weeks thereafter, which led to the new Ukrainian government, which then quickly started their ethniccleansing campaign in Ukraine’s former (now-breakaway) Donbass region, which region had voted 90% for the Ukrainian President (“Janukovych”) whom Obama’s coup had overthrown, this ethnic-cleansing being imposed there in order to get rid of those voters, so that no such (anti-NATO, pro-Russia) voters would be voting in futureUkrainian elections, and thereby America’s control over Ukraine would become virtually permanent.

This ethnic-cleansing was succeeding, but the Minsk II accord, that was arranged between Hollande, Merkel, and Putin, and which they forced both Donbass and Ukraine to sign, greatly reduced the carnage, though Ukraine still refuses to go forward with its main commitments under it — which has led to the present predicament. If Zelensky would try to get Ukraine’s government to comply with it, he might end up not only overthrown by another U.S.-backed coup, but dead. And that is HIS predicament. So: nobody knows what the result will be.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Selected Articles: World Awakening – Freedom Convoys

February 15th, 2022 by Global Research News

Video: World Awakening – Freedom Convoys

By Marcel Irnie, February 15, 2022

Watch this important video on mass movement across the world where people are rising up to mandate freedom and rights.

America’s Cold War on China. Uyghurs: To Put an End to Fake News

By Roger Keeran, February 15, 2022

Xinjiang is the largest province of China, embracing a largely uninhabitable 620,000 square miles, located in the far northwest of China next to central Asia, and  containing 25 million inhabitants of which 45 percent of whom are Uyghurs.

West Exaggerates Russian Invasion Claim as Zelensky Loses Control of Narrative

By Paul Antonopoulos, February 15, 2022

On Friday February 11, perhaps one of the most ridiculous predictions made by the Western campaign to artificially manufacture a crisis in Ukraine was said by the Deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, Melinda Haring.

Ukraine and the Eastern European NATO States Against Russia

By Belgrade Forum, February 14, 2022

The campaign for tough sanctions and further armament of Ukraine and the Eastern European NATO states against Russia is taking on ever tougher forms – also in the media. In view of the current situation, we would like to send you a special issue of magazine Current Concerns with fundamental contributions.

Video: Up to Seven Years in Prison for Four Year-old Facebook Posts?

By Resistance GB, February 14, 2022

Tahra of the Freedom Festival faces trial in the Old Bailey, with up to seven years in prison if declared guilty, over a pair of Facebook posts from four years ago, widely distributed by The Times newspaper six months after being posted.

Worldwide Freedom Movement against Covid Mandates, QR Codes and Restrictions: The Global Elite’s Technological Coup d’État Against Humanity

By Robert J. Burrowes, February 14, 2022

Opposed to vaccine mandates, QR codes and other restrictions on our rights and freedom? Refusing to wear a mask, have the vaccine and stay locked-down when ordered? Attended a number of demonstrations protesting the government-imposed restrictions in your country? Involved in or supporting the truckers convoys?

COVID-19 and Democracy – Nicaragua vs. Canada

By Stephen Sefton, February 14, 2022

From 2018 onwards, Canada’s government has denounced Nicaragua in international forums as a repressive dictatorship and followed the US authorities in imposing illegal unilateral coercive economic measures damaging Nicaragua’s people.

UK Government Data Proves the COVID-19 Injections Cause Damage to the Innate Immune System that Worsens by the Week

By The Daily Expose, February 14, 2022

UK Government data proves that the Covid-19 injections damage the innate immune system to a point where the not-vaccinated populations immune system if far superior to that of the fully vaccinated.

77 Years Ago, U.S. and Russia Signed Historic Agreement at Yalta

By Jeremy Kuzmarov and Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels, February 14, 2022

Today’s deeply Russophobic political climate provides an opportune moment to look back to an era of promise in the U.S.-Russian relationship—when U.S. leaders were more sober minded and rationale.

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

By Colin Todhunter, February 14, 2022

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

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Video: World Awakening – Freedom Convoys

February 15th, 2022 by Marcel Irnie

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People around the world are rising up, mandating freedom and rights. 

Governments hate it when people unite. 

Watch the video below.

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The United States government is ratcheting up a cold war against China. The Biden administration’s  agreement to supply Australia with nuclear submarines, its decision to create a new department in the CIA aimed at countering China, and its recent decision to impose a diplomatic boycott on the Chinese Winter Olympics are just three recent signs of the aggressive posture taken by the U.S. in the new cold war. A key part of the new cold war is a tidal wave of ideological attacks on China aimed at showing that China is a threat—to human rights, democracy, women’s rights, labor rights, and American security.   All of this is geared to justify American belligerence toward China and generate support for this belligerence and a frightened public’s willingness to pay for it. (Recently the Senate passed a bill previously passed by the House calling for $768 billion appropriation of Defense Department, $24 billion more than either Biden or the Pentagon sought.) A centerpiece of this ideological offensive that the mass media amplifies on a daily basis is that China is committing genocide against its Moslem Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang autonomous region.

Even though most politicians, as well as the general population, have no idea who the Uyghurs are, where Xinjiang is on a map, what Chinese policy toward the Uyghurs is, or even how to pronounce Uyghur, they buy the idea of Uyghur genocide. The widespread ignorance makes Maxime Vivas’s book  so valuable. Vivas not only provides a primer on the Uyghurs and Xinjiang, but also explains the Chinese policy in Xinjiang, and makes a forceful argument that the charge of genocide is of apiece with other lies like those about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that serve to justify American imperial belligerence.

Vivas’s book provides an antidote to the anti-Chinese poison. Since Vivas’s book is only available in French, it deserves a summary in English.

Xinjiang is the largest province of China, embracing a largely uninhabitable 620,000 square miles, located in the far northwest of China next to central Asia, and  containing 25 million inhabitants of which 45 percent of whom are Uyghurs. The Uyghurs are largely rural and Moslem. Like many European countries, China has faced a problem of growing Islamic fundamentalism and the repeated terrorist attacks it has fostered. Since 2008 terrorist attacks by Muslim fundamentalists that have taken scores of lives. These included an attack preceding the Chinese Olympics in 2008 that killed sixteen, a 2014 knife attack on passengers in a railroad station that killed thirty-three, and most horrifically a machete attack on Han miners in Xinjiang in 2015 that killed thirty-one.

Since 2015, China has moved forcefully to combat the threats of Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism, and separatism in Xinjiang. Part of this policy has involved increased surveillance and arrests. Between 2014 and 2019, China arrested 12,955 alleged terrorists and confiscated 2,052 explosives. For the most part, however, the policy has been to combat Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism and separatism by raising the cultural, educational, and economic level of the Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples. This has involved investing in factories and mines in Xinjiang, building mosques and museums, and establishing educational centers to teach the Uyghurs vocational skills.

The western media have treated the Chinese policies as if they constituted a nefarious policy to eradicate the Uyghur people and their culture. Sources in the West portray the education centers as concentration camps and the training brainwashing. Vivas catalogues the charges: the Chinese have imprisoned Uyghurs for not eating pork or not drinking alcohol, have herded millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps, have harvested organs from living people to sell abroad, have sterilized women, have raped women and men, have brainwashed people, have made children denounce their parents, have demolished mosques, and so forth.  China has flatly denied these charges.

Vivas demonstrates that some of the most sensational charges are demonstrably false, are contradicted by verifiable facts, or have been dismissed by independent investigators.

Take the case of Adrian Zenz, a Christian fundamentalist, who calls himself an independent German researcher. In 2019, Zenz  claimed that 1.8 million Uyghurs were interned in concentration camps and that the falling number of births among the Uyghurs is evidence of genocide. The birth rate among Uyghurs has fallen, but Vivas points to several benign causes including the growing urbanization, the rising living standards, and the increased educational level of the Uyghur people. Moreover, Vivas points out that the death of Uyghur children has declined dramatically from 420 to 600 per thousand sixty years ago to 10.03 per thousand today. Also, in the past four decades the Uyghur population has grown from 5,550,000 to 12,720,000.  This is hardly what one would expect for a population supposedly undergoing extermination.

In a celebrated case used against the Chinese, a Uyghur woman, Zumret Dawul, claimed that Chinese authorities imprisoned her in a re-education camp and forced her to undergo the surgical removal of her uterus. The Chinese said that she was never enrolled in an educational center, and that after giving birth to her third child, she had had her tubes tied at her own request. Dawul’s brother claimed her story was a lie, and the hospital produced a document that Dawul had signed authorizing the surgery.

In another celebrated case, a Uyghur doctor living in the United States told Radio Free Asia on March 15, 2019 that he and rich Saudi Arabians were involved in an illegal scheme to harvest “halal organs” among Moslems in China. Six days later, he recanted and apologized for promoting a “hoax.” Though, this doctor has confessed criminal activity, no entity has brought criminal charges against him.

As for the charge that the Chinese were destroying mosques, Vivas replies that only mosques that have been demolished were unsuitable or dilapidated, and that in consultation with religious leaders and the congregations, these were replaced by new and often larger mosques. In seventy years, the number of mosques in Xinjiang has increased from 2000 to 24,400. In Xinjiang there is one mosque for every 530 Moslems.

In 2019, the World Bank loaned China $50 million to build five colleges to train professionals. Faced with allegations that the Chinese were using the money to build concentration camps, the World Bank conducted an on-site investigation. The Report of the World Bank published in Washington on November 11, 2019 concluded: “The examination did not corroborate these allegations.”

Most importantly, Vivas points out that in spite of the impression widely spread by the mass media and U.S. officials,  the accusation of Chinese genocide against the Uyghurs has not been supported by the United Nations. The impression that the United Nations backs these charges arose after August 13, 2018 when Gay Johnson McDougall, an American lawyer specializing in human rights who is also a researcher in residence at the Leitner Center of International Law and Justice of Fordham University, made a sensational charge at the UN headquarters in Geneva that China was holding millions of Uyghurs in detention centers or concentration camps. Though McDougall provided no verification other than saying her information came from credible sources, the charges were retailed widely by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and other news outlets. These papers  made no independent effort to substantiate the charges, aside from checking with so-called human rights organizations, such as the World Uighur Congress and  Chinese Human Rights Defenders, groups financed by the National Endowment for Democracy.

Moreover, when the United States tried to have the UN pass a resolution asking China to respect the rights of Uyghurs in Xinjiang only, 39 of the 193 member states of the UN supported it. For the most part the charges of genocide are the product of individuals or groups connected to the CIA, or the National Endowment for Democracy. For example, a major source of attacks on China’s treatment of the Uyghurs comes from the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), a self-proclaimed human rights organization founded in Munich, Germany in 2004, that advocates for the independence of Xinjiang, which it calls East Turkestan. Several leaders of the WUC had posts with Radio Free Asian and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, both CIA creations. Moreover, the WUC is generously financed by the National Endowment for Democracy, the soft arm of the CIA.

Vivas is a former postal worker and former member of the French Communist Party (but not a member of any pro-Chinese party) who made himself a writer after his postal facility closed. Before this book on the Uyghurs, he wrote a book on Tibet and on the Chinese policies there. Though Vivas has visited Tibet and Xinjiang (twice),  his inability to read or speak Mandarin or Uyghur naturally limited his research. Nevertheless, using firsthand observations and sources available to any enterprising journalist, Vivas has produced a valuable book and a convincing argument that the charge of Chinese genocide against the Uyghurs not only is bogus but also has been systematically promoted by groups financed by the U.S. government.

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On Friday February 11, perhaps one of the most ridiculous predictions made by the Western campaign to artificially manufacture a crisis in Ukraine was said by the Deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, Melinda Haring. She tweeted:

“Putin has big weekend plans in Ukraine: 1) he’s going to cut power and heat, knock out Ukrainian navy and air force, kill general staff and hit them with cyber attack; 2) then install pro-Russian president and 3) resort to full-scale military invasion if Ukraine doesn’t give in.”

Of course, the weekend passed and none of these bold predictions occurred, as was obvious. What it does demonstrate though is that Western hysteria regarding the narrative of an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine has reached unprecedented levels. Such an over exaggeration distracts from the fact that it was Kiev, and not Moscow, who abandoned the Minsk agreements.

The Minsk agreements, written in 2014 by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of the Kiev government, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with mediation from France and Germany in the so-called Normandy Format, seeks to end war in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is desperate to stay in power and is afraid that a Maidan-style coup will oust him. To avoid such a situation, he abandoned the Minsk agreements to instead appease the Ukrainian military and its Far-Right militia allies by authorizing in February 2021 the mobilization of troops towards the frontier with Donbass – a fact ignored by Western leaders and commentators.

The Kremlin has repeatedly stressed that it has no intentions of invading Ukraine, but US President Joe Biden has remained unrelenting in pushing this notion. On February 13, Zelensky invited Biden to visit Kiev, saying that such a visit in the coming days would help de-escalate the situation.

Believing Biden’s visit would de-escalate the situation contradicts the American president’s actual actions to date though which are contrary to stability. For example, the Anglo Alliance (US, UK and Australia) began withdrawing diplomats from Kiev in late January, something that the Ukrainian president said “was a mistake.” This not only had a negative consequence on the Ukrainian economy, but was also followed by EU member states Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden urging their nationals to leave Ukraine.

Zelensky cautioned Western leaders on February 12 against stoking “panic” and a day later promised to pursue “diplomacy and deterrence” after speaking with Biden. It is in this conundrum that Zelensky finds himself in an impossible position –  attempting to find a balance between the fear of an impending Russian invasion to serve Western interests and appease the Ukrainian military, and not having this fear mongering affect his country’s economy.

Having 12 of the 27 EU member states, including economic powerhouse Germany, recall their citizens from Ukraine is not conducive for trade and a stable business environment, thus making it impossible to improve Ukraine’s declining economic situation. The economic situation will only become worse as airlines now, such as KLM and SkyUp, are cancelling and/or diverting their flights to-and-from the Eastern European country.

On January 28, Zelensky said that $446 million in investments flowed out of the country due to the manufactured crisis. This number would have at least doubled since then, especially as major EU countries have called for the repatriation of their citizens and airlines are now cancelling/diverting flights from Ukraine.

However, it cannot be overlooked that it was Zelensky who began this impending Russian invasion narrative and allowed Western media and political leaders to latch onto it. The belief of an impending invasion has descended in such a way that Zelensky has now lost control of the narrative as Western leaders, media and commentators become more exaggerated in their claims, just as Melinda Haring.

It is also not lost that the US claims to have picked up intelligence that Russia has February 16 as their target date to begin their invasion of Ukraine. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and did so only on condition of anonymity according to AP, would not say how definitive the intelligence was. None-the-less, despite the unnamed source unwilling to reveal how definitive the intelligence was, the news circulated all across Western media, giving new headlines that the impending invasion will begin on February 16.

Reporting such news, no matter how weak the information might be, ultimately undermines the Ukrainian economy further. The AP report, which broke the news, wrote that “Zelensky has urged against panic that he fears could undermine Ukraine’s economy.” However, it is not a “fear” that an invasion narrative could undermine Ukraine’s economy, but a reality and a fact, as revealed by Zelensky himself on January 28

In this way, the vicious cycle continues. Kiev violates the Minsk agreements, which will be continually ignored by the West, but the Russian invasion story will persist despite its detriment to the Ukrainian economy and people. In this way, Ukraine has not strengthened itself despite gaining some military equipment from NATO, but rather has exposed major vulnerabilities in its economy and uncovered the true nature of alliances it thought it had with much of the West.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Who has the right to make laws? Who has the authority? Who has the right to enforce them?

These questions beg the questions: What does ‘authority’ mean? Who decides what ‘human rights’ are? And what do these terms mean in practice?

And what is a ‘law’? That is to say: differentiating law in the sense of pertaining to the legalities of courts and enforcement of human laws in society, from laws in the sense of observable patterns in phenomena of the natural world belonging to scientific disciplines such as physics.

In the ‘normal’ course of events, before the continuing saga of Covid, the Great Reset, and the ever-variable parade of ‘new’ normals, most people did not give these questions much thought. Normality and morality were more or less taken for granted in our busy day-to-day lives.

Normally ‘the state,’ as usually thought of, has the prerogative, the ‘right’ to make laws, and to enforce them—force being also the prerogative, the right, of the state. The presumably legally, fairly, democratically installed and enthroned apparatus of a state acts, rules, making rulings and laws, with the consent of those it rules over: those it ‘governs.’ The whole collective shebang is, through long and sometimes tedious customary usage, known as ‘The Government.’

Now, it seems, all these customary and usually unquestioned usages are thrown into question. Just as ‘questioning the authorities,’ ironically enough, is being declared an illegality. 

So does not only questioning the legality of state edicts, but also the very legality of the state itself illegal?

The right of the state to ‘rule over us,’ as those brought up in Britain sing of our Queen, has for many of us almost the force, logic and gravitas of the law of gravity. But for many, this ‘right’ every day seemingly becomes more and more illegitimate. 

What is a state without legitimacy in the eyes of the people it purports to govern? Does it become a ‘rogue state’?

Does the state come before the people or do the people come before the state? What is the difference between a nation and a state? Can the term ‘nation state’ be winkled apart into its separate components? And what does that mean?

This is a vital question for historians and legal scholars as, almost unbelievably in Canada, the land of ‘peace, order, and good government’ teeters on the edge of becoming a police state, seemingly about to throw all pretence of democratic process out the window.

Dictators of the past have begun with the mantle of legitimate democratic rule draped over their shoulders, but ended by ruling by decree, by diktats ruled only by the whim of the dictator.

Is this where we find ourselves now? Are we to follow the path, enshrined in infamy, well-trodden by the likes of historical dictators of the tyrannical kind? 

For myself, this is a close encounter devoutly not to be wished.

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S.M. Smyth was a founding member of the 2006 World Peace Forum in Vancouver, and organized a debate about TILMA at the Maple Ridge City Council chambers between Ellen Gould and a representative of the Fraser Institute.

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Considering the fact that the incident took place near Urup and not near any of the Kuril Islands that Japan claims as its own, the US can’t plausibly claim that it was ‘operating safely in international waters’ since Russia’s writ over Urup is universally uncontested even by Tokyo.

The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed on Saturday that it employed “appropriate means” to chase away a US submarine that intruded in the country’s territorial waters near Urup (not to be confused with the island of Iturup that Japan claims as its own alongside several others), which is one of Russia’s Kuril Islands, and refused to surface after being demanded to do so. The US military attaché in Moscow was summoned to the Ministry of Defense where he was handed over a note. The Pentagon officially denied that the incident took place but wouldn’t comment on the location of its submarines, with a representative only saying that “we do fly, sail, and operate safely in international waters.” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov also said that Presidents Putin and Biden didn’t discuss the incident during Saturday’s call.

 

 

The conflicting narratives from each side prompted confusion about what really happened. It’s extremely unlikely that Russia would completely fabricate this incident and even go as far as summoning the US military attaché in Moscow if it was entirely made-up. This very strongly suggests that something really did happen even though the US would prefer to keep mum about it. It’s also a relief that there was no clash between these two nuclear superpowers’ forces, especially considering the extremely tense ties between them brought about by the undeclared USprovoked missile crisis in Europe. It would be inaccurate to describe this as a non-incident but it also wasn’t a crisis either, just a serious scandal. The US was very clearly trying to test the Russian Navy’s defenses in the Northern Pacific.

Considering the fact that the incident took place near Urup and not near any of the Kuril Islands that Japan claims as its own, the US can’t plausibly claim that it was “operating safely in international waters” since Russia’s writ over Urup is universally uncontested even by Tokyo. It’s curious to note that this happened the day after the US unveiled its latest Indo-Pacific strategy, suggesting that America was attempting to flex its muscles in Russia’s part of this bi-oceanic space but was humiliatingly caught doing so and subsequently chased away in shame. Since the incident wasn’t brought up during Saturday’s call between their leaders, it seems as though President Putin understood that it most likely wasn’t linked to their US-provoked tensions in Europe and hence thought not to discuss it.

All told, this scandal is worth discussing even if only to prove that the US will dangerously saber-rattle against Russia’s conventional forces even within its own maritime territory irrespective of the current tensions between them. This speaks to America’s arrogance, which is a holdover from its fading unipolar hegemony that US leaders still cling to in delusion. There is absolutely no way that Russia would ever accept any foreign military forces, let alone a US nuclear-powered submarine, intruding in its territory. The Russian Navy should be commended for promptly responding to this unprecedented provocation in the calmest but most professional way possible that avoided unnecessarily escalating the situation while the US should be harshly condemned for irresponsibly risking World War III.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Ukraine and the Eastern European NATO States Against Russia

February 14th, 2022 by Belgrade Forum

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The campaign for tough sanctions and further armament of Ukraine and the Eastern European NATO states against Russia is taking on ever tougher forms – also in the media.

In view of the current situation, we would like to send you a special issue of magazine Current Concerns with fundamental contributions.

Among the articles in the special issue are the following:

1.  Power and World Order by Professor Dr Dr h.c. mult. Hans Köchler 

“It cannot be the irrevocable fate of the human species to sacrifice reason – which is given to the individual – on the altar of the collective action for the preservation and increase of power of sovereign states that see each other as foes (as threats to their existence).”

2. Who is the aggressor? NATO and Russia with a view to Germany and Ukraine by Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Jochen Scholz, Berlin 

The propaganda in the German mainstream press about aggressive Russia is now adopted by many in German politics and society. At best, this shows complete cluelessness. This also applies to the question of why relations between Germany and the Russian Federation are now so desolate. It is therefore necessary to clarify what to make of the military threat to Ukraine posed by Russian troops, as claimed by NATO – just now again at its meeting in Riga – and as recently expressed by the German Lieutenant General (ret.) Brauss. Brauss was NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Defence Policy and Force Planning from 2013 to July 2018. Today, he is a “Senior Associate Fellow at DGAP (German Council on Foreign Relations), working in the fields of European security and defense, NATO development, and NATO-EU cooperation.”

3. Might makes right – for how much longer? Important research results on the topic of NATO East enlargement by Karl-Jürgen Müller 

The following is recorded from the weeks before the beginning of the NATO war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was contrary to international law: At a meeting in Belgrade, a US general urged a high-ranking Serbian politician to stop listing terrorist attacks on civilians or even police and military emanating from Kosovo. His reasoning: “For Serbian policy, it’s the American perception of reality that matters, not reality as such.” The example expresses very vividly what it means when might makes right in international relations. 

4. What Putin really wants in Ukraine. Russia seeks to stop NATO’s expansion, not to annex territory by Dmitri Trenin, Director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre 

As 2021 came to a close, Russia presented the United States with a list of demands that it said were necessary to stave of the possibility of a large-scale military conflict in Ukraine. In a draft treaty delivered to a US diplomat in Moscow, the Russian government asked for a formal halt to NATO’s eastern enlargement, a permanent freeze on further expansion of the alliance’s military infrastructure (such as bases and weapons systems) in the former Soviet territory, an end to Western military assistance to Ukraine, and a ban on intermediate-range missiles in Europe. The message was unmistakable: if these threats cannot be addressed diplomatically, the Kremlin will have to resort to military action. 

5. NATO expansion to the East is up for discussion after all by Ralph Bosshard 

A few days ago, the eagerly awaited talks on the security guarantees demanded by Russia took place. In the heated atmosphere, the protagonists dampened expectations before the talks. For the Western part, the time pressure to hold comprehensive consultations had indeed been high. The climate for talks was apparently not as bad as occasionally portrayed, even if one apparently did not get beyond an exchange of opinions.1 Those who had expected much more were probably not quite realistic. 

6. Constructive steps for negotiated solutions. Switzerland wants to strengthen the OSCE with its Action Plan 2022–2025 by Eva-Maria Föllmer-Müller 

In the same week that the talks between Russia and the USA in Geneva, the dialogue between Russia and NATO in Brussels and talks with Russia within the framework of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna as well as other talks have taken place, Switzerland is taking constructive steps and offering a hand. This shows once again that Switzerland can go its own independent way. 

Click here to download the Current Concerns Special Edition.

Current Concerns is the English version of Zeit-Fragen monthly magazine based in Switzerland.

Our thanks to Zeit-Fragen.

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Tahra of the Freedom Festival faces trial in the Old Bailey, with up to seven years in prison if declared guilty, over a pair of Facebook posts from four years ago, widely distributed by The Times newspaper six months after being posted.

Whilst the Times has faced no repercussions, despite having spread the posts to thousands of people, Tahra faces prison for sharing to Facebook.

Supporters speak near the Old Bailey and question the ethicacy, implications and motives behind her prosecution.

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Featured image: Tahra Ahmed gestures to her supporters outside the Old Bailey where she was jailed yesterday (TOLGA AKMEN FOR THE TIMES)

What Whipped Up the Latest Round of Russian War Hysteria?

February 14th, 2022 by Andrew Korybko

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The described backdrop to the latest round of Russian war hysteria is especially dangerous since it suggests that President Zelensky has lost control of the situation and that the prerogative for initiating hostilities rests on the shoulders of those mercenary forces that are under foreign control.

PBS national security correspondent Nick Schifrin became the talk of the internet on Friday after tweeting that three Western and defense officials told him that “The US believes Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine, and has communicated that decision to the Russian military”. This added some unverified “certainty” to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s earlier warning about the impending outbreak of hostilities at “any time”, which Bloomberg then reported “could start as soon as Tuesday” in spite of that outlet having already cried wolf after “accidentally” publishing a fake news headline the week prior claiming that “Russia Invades Ukraine”. Politico cited its own sources to also report that US President Joe Biden told American allies that the “attack” will begin on that day.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reacted to this hype and the US’ associated plans to deploy even more forces to Europe by declaring that “The hysteria of the White House is more revealing than ever. The Anglo-Saxons need a war. At any price.” Prior to that, Kremlin Deputy Chief of Staff Dmitry Kozak lamented the nine hours that he wasted on negotiations during the latest Normandy Four talks in Berlin that failed to align the Russian and Ukrainian positions over the UNSC-backed Minsk Accords. Zakharova also warned that the plethora of fake news about Russia hinted at impending anti-Russian provocations. This was preceded by Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressing concern over reports of the US considering Ukraine’s request for THAAD “anti-missile systems”.

It’s important to point out that the undeclared USprovoked missile crisis in Europe was triggered by Russian intelligence’s concerns as expressed by President Vladimir Putin himself that America plans to deploy strike weapons – including hypersonic ones – to the region and potentially even Ukraine on the pretext of “defending” that former Soviet Republic in the event that Kiev initiates a third round of hostilities in Donbass and under the possible cover of being “anti-missile systems”. One of the Donbass militias also earlier warned that Kiev was plotting acts of sabotage and terrorism as part of a false flag provocation against Russia. Additionally, a different Donbass militia claimed that Kiev already deployed S-300s, artillery, and even foreign mercenaries near the front line too.

On the topic of mercenaries, the infamous Machiavelli whose insight is renowned the world over centuries after his passing unforgettably wrote that “Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s disagreements with his American counterpart over the likelihood of a so-called “Russian invasion” are well known and were even reported by passionately pro-government CNN among many other partisan sources that wouldn’t have any motivation to lie about the US’ Democrat administration. This prompts concern that US-backed mercenaries might provoke a conflict with Russia despite Kiev’s disapproval.

The described backdrop to the latest round of Russian war hysteria is especially dangerous since it suggests that President Zelensky has lost control of the situation and that the prerogative for initiating hostilities rests on the shoulders of those mercenary forces that are under foreign control. One spark is all that it could take to trigger a larger conflict that could quickly spiral into a global crisis considering the threat that the strike weapons scenario that Russian intelligence warned about poses to the Eurasian Great Powers’ nuclear second-strike capabilities. Although Ukraine’s S-300s and reportedly desired THAADs aren’t sufficient on their own to undercut Russia’s deterrence, this “anti-missile” trend could rapidly scale to the point where it seriously risks crossing that country’s red lines.

From the presumed Russian perspective, President Zelensky doesn’t want to de-escalate since his government refuses to implement the Minsk Accords that could otherwise remove the pretext for prompting the US’ strike weapons plan that Russian intelligence warned about. He’s also clearly lost control of the military dynamics after allowing American-backed mercenaries to operate near the front line where they could easily engage in acts of sabotage and terrorism for provoking a war with Russia, including through false flag attacks. The latest full-fledged fake news assault against Russia might be interpreted by Moscow as preconditioning the global public for this escalation scenario. Under such circumstances where Russia could regard a conflict as inevitable, it might be tempted to act first.

These speculations, based as they are upon educated conjecture of that country’s grand strategic calculations amidst the worrying American-driven miliary dynamics around Donbass, could explain why the US might have genuinely concluded that Russia is prepared to preemptively defend its national security red lines as early as next week. It might also be the case that the US decided to act first by approving a false flag attack by the mercenaries under its control in Eastern Ukraine, predicting that it’ll be high-profile enough to provoke Russia into responding in one way or another. Even though it would remain unclear what form Moscow’s reaction could take, it might still be deemed sufficiently likely that it would be a kinetic one of some sort to conform to the preconditioned narrative of a “Russian attack”.

For what it’s worth, Israel announced on Friday that it’s evacuating most of its diplomats and all their family members from their embassy in Kiev while continuing to run their operations on a skeleton staff of less than 10 people. Its Foreign Minister told Axios in an exclusive interview earlier this month that “the [Israeli] assessment is that we don’t see a violent confrontation soon. I also don’t think a world war is about to start there” so this abrupt change of policy during the latest round of Russian war hysteria suggests that something serious must have influenced Tel Aviv to reverse its stance. Regardless of one’s feelings towards it, the Mossad is recognized as among the world’s top intelligence agencies, so if its latest implied assessment is that a war might soon begin, then this scenario shouldn’t be dismissed.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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

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***

 

Opposed to vaccine mandates, QR codes and other restrictions on our rights and freedom?

Refusing to wear a mask, have the vaccine and stay locked-down when ordered?

Attended a number of demonstrations protesting the government-imposed restrictions in your country? Involved in or supporting the truckers convoys?

Already celebrating some lifting of restrictions in some countries?

Unfortunately, there is one simple reason why the sorts of actions nominated above cannot win back our rights and our freedom: Our various protests are not integrated parts of a comprehensive strategy designed for the purpose. Moreover, in the case of the truckers convoys, they also complicate one already serious problem: supply chain disruptions that are causing serious food shortages.

See ‘The Global Elite’s “Kill and Control” Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security’.

And, rest assured, there is nothing to celebrate unless you do not understand what is happening beneath the surface.

Which, uniquely in this case, requires a strategy that recognizes, and addresses, the technological coup d’état that is being carried out against us.

As anyone conversant with the history of peoples’ struggles is well aware, that history is littered with the ‘bodies’ of failed social movements and national liberation struggles, even if some of these ‘bodies’ are still twitching rather than dead.

Ever wondered why the anti-war movement goes around in circles?

Or whatever happened to the Occupy Movement? Or why so many environmental and social justice movements go nowhere? Or even why so many national liberation struggles fail, or lose vital gains subsequently to an initial victory.

Well, there are clearcut reasons for their failure and they can be readily identified. I have previously discussed some key reasons in the article Why Activists Fail’.

So let us consider the current freedom movement and analyze why it is on the course to failure at the moment and see if we can turn it around before it is too late. And to do this, we need a sound strategic framework.

Nonviolent Strategy

Sound nonviolent strategy has twelve components – see the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel – and, unfortunately, most social movements and (nonviolent) national liberation struggles are devoid of a comprehensive strategy simply because only the rarest activist has a sense of what strategy really means.

So what is strategy? Very simply, strategy is a planned series of actions (tactics) conducted over an appropriate timeframe that is designed to achieve the two strategic aims that govern the strategy.

You can read more about nonviolent strategy on the Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy website.

For any strategy to be effective, it must be based on a thorough understanding of the conflict in question.

Analysis

Sound strategy in any conflict begins with a deep analysis of what is taking place so that we can identify who is driving it, why they are driving it, how they are driving it, what they intend to implement and what they intend to achieve if successful?

Hence, if we deeply analyze what is taking place around the world at the moment, we can start by observing that we are being told by the World Health Organization, national governments, medical authorities and the corporate media that the human population is at risk of catching a virus (labeled ‘SARS-CoV-2’) that causes a life-threatening disease (labeled ‘Covid-19’) and that we need a long series of restrictions (including lockdowns and QR codes) as well as several injections to protect ourselves from this alleged disease.

So, obviously, any serious analysis must begin with identifying proof that the virus exists, given that it is the supposed cause of everything that follows. Then we can investigate its projected harm.

However, if we seek proof of the isolation of this virus, we quickly discover that there is none.

In fact, since the very beginning of this ‘pandemic’, an increasing number of doctors, scientists and researchers have gone to some trouble to scientifically document for us that, in fact, this ‘virus’ does not exist. See, for example, ‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’ and ‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’.

And for an account of researcher Christine Massey’s search over the course of more than a year to find evidence of an isolated virus, via Freedom of Information requests to health/science institutions all over the world, see

‘169 health/science institutions globally all failed to cite even 1 record of “SARS-COV-2” purification, by anyone, anywhere, ever’.

Of course, beyond this, as is well known in some quarters: ‘there is no original scientific evidence that definitively demonstrates that any virus is the cause of any disease’. See

What Really Makes You Ill? Why everything you thought you knew about disease is wrong.

However, doctors, scientists and researchers who present evidence such as this are all being censored by government and corporate media and social media. In this context, there is very little space for meaningful debate, let alone space for the truth to emerge into wider view.

If there is no virus, of course, there is no need for any of the restrictions that have been imposed and there is no need for any vaccine. So why have all these restrictions and ‘vaccines’ been imposed?

By this point in any serious investigation, research will have exposed the role of the World Economic Forum in promoting the ‘pandemic’ narrative and, under cover of these ‘virus’/‘vaccine’ lies, progressively implementing its ‘Great Reset’ program.

Any careful reading of this documentation quickly reveals that the ‘Great Reset’ is designed to utterly transform human society and even human life in accord with elite wishes, which is why the rest of us have not been consulted. This is because the detail outlined in the ‘Great Reset’ documentation, which anyone can investigate for themselves, clearly identifies intended changes to some 200 areas of human activity, essentially characterized as part of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’.

Beyond this, however, other important components of the elite agenda are easily identified. In essence, these include those related to the elite’s intention to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population (using a variety of measures including the ‘injectables’) and enslave those left alive in a technological prison, as is now happening. See, for example,

‘The Global Elite’s “Kill and Control” Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security’,

‘Taking Control by Destroying Cash: Beware Cyber Polygon as Part of the Elite Coup’ and

The Government’s Kill Switch for Your Car, Your Freedoms and Your Life’.

And any remaining pretense that some of us live in a ‘democracy’ has been finally exposed as the delusion it has long been, with our rights and freedom eviscerated and the assassination of (now) five national presidents who resisted the elite narrative just the most graphic illustrations of this point.

See ‘Killing Democracy Once and for All: The Global Elite’s Coup d’état That Is Destroying Life as We Know It’.

The point is that democratic governance was subverted long ago: it just has many manifestations. As Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum, declared at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2017: ‘What we are very proud of is that we penetrate the global cabinets of countries with our WEF Young Global Leaders… like Justin Trudeau.’

See ‘WEF’s Klaus Schwab Boasts of Young Global Leaders Penetration of Western Cabinets’.

These ‘Young Global Leaders’, which means those, including politicians, who represent the Global Elite rather than the people of their countries, include a range of current (or immediate past) national leaders, such as Emmanuel Macron (France), Angela Merkel (Germany), Vladimir Putin (Russia) and Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand). See

‘World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders’ and ‘World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leaders”’.

So any careful investigation of what is happening globally reveals four fundamental points:

  1. Who? The Global Elite is implementing this technological coup d’état. Hence, what little is left of the sovereignty of governments is being destroyed by the coup, and governments are powerless to restore the fundamental rights and freedom that are stake in this conflict. Of course, governments might be allowed to remove particular mandates in some contexts as the importance of particular mandates is superseded by other components of the Elite agenda. Similarly, legal challenges can bear minimal fruit, and not on the primary program.
  2. Why? The Global Elite, using the World Economic Forum as its vehicle, seeks total control of the human population and the Earth’s resources.
  3. What? This elite agenda, labeled the ‘Great Reset’, encompasses what is called the fourth industrial revolution but includes other components in relation to eugenics and transhumanism as well. The intention is to kill off a substantial proportion of humanity and utterly transform human life and human society for those left alive. See ‘Killing Off Humanity: How the Global Elite is using Eugenics and Transhumanism to Shape Our Future’ and ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.
  4. How? The ‘Great Reset’ is being implemented by using elite agents such as the World Health Organization, national governments, official medical associations, the pharmaceutical industry and the corporate media to promote the Elite’s lies – that the deadly SARS-CoV-2 ‘virus’ exists and that an onerous series of measures ranging from mask-wearing to lockdowns to multiple injections are necessary to address it – while employing heavy-handed censorship to ensure that the truth, and the evidence to explain it, about the deeper elite agenda is suppressed. Meanwhile, unaware people throughout society are playing their part in implementing the ‘Great Reset’ on behalf of the Global Elite.

So what can we do?

If we are to defeat this (fundamentally technological) elite coup against humanity, our strategy must undermine the power of the Global Elite to conduct it. Unfortunately, our protests (whether in person or by blockading with trucks) against particular mandates cannot undermine, in a strategic sense, the foundations that make possible the underlying elite agenda being inflicted upon us. Briefly, this is because they are incorrectly targeted (at governments rather than foundational elements of elite power in this context) and they are the wrong tactics in this circumstance (especially because of their failure to identify and address the technological elements of the coup), among other shortcomings.

So we have two choices: We can keep doing things that don’t work or refocus what we are doing so that it does have strategic impact.

Strangely, this doesn’t mean that we should stop conducting rallies or even cease the convoys. But it does mean that we need to use these events to explain the deeper agenda behind what is happening and to raise awareness of the strategic actions the wider public must take if we are to defeat the elite program.

Otherwise, while they build relationships and even a sense of solidarity, rallies and convoys are, strategically speaking, a waste of time.

So what does ‘strategic impact’ mean in this context?

Once we understand that the Global Elite is driving the ‘Great Reset’ to impose a global order that serves elite interests, we can identify the appropriate set of strategic goals for defending ourselves and then thoughtfully consider what actions we might take to achieve these goals, that is, actions that actually make a difference.

So what does ‘make a difference’ mean in this context? It means designing and taking action that undermines the power of those driving what is happening to achieve what they want. If an action is simply designed to allow us to express our complaint (often expressed as a list of specific demands that particular things be changed) – as the mass rallies and truck convoys are essentially doing – there is no reason for anything to be achieved. Elites have enormous experience of ignoring us and understand how well it works.

As former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig once noted about a massive anti-war demonstration: ‘Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.’ See Alexander Haig. As a four-star general, Haig, not regarded as the most intelligent Secretary of State in US history, certainly understood the importance of tactical choice. Most activists have no idea.

Which is why the history of mass mobilizations in these forms failing to achieve significant change is long. And this list starts with the largest demonstration in human history when, as part of a series of large demonstrations that was occurring, up to 30 million people in 600 cities protested the imminent US invasion of Iraq on 15 February 2003. See ‘The World Says No to War’.

And remember the Occupy Movement in 2011? It was huge, mobilizing people to camp in public places in cities all over the world. It’s focus? The 1% (wealthy individuals who own and control the major corporations and manage the financial system in a way that disproportionately benefits a minority while undermining democracy). Its strategy? Essentially occupying public locations. The movement ended after it had been heavily infiltrated – see ‘FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring’ – and police forcibly removed encampments a few months after it had taken off globally.

So why do these movements fail? It is always the same reason: poor strategy, invariably including inadequate analysis, inaccurate identification of target and wrong tactical choice, and often including failure to deal adequately with infiltrators and provocateurs. Although, it should be emphasized, movements usually make a series of ill-informed decisions so that the details of the poor strategy vary from one movement to the next. The point is that people generally do not understand the concept of strategic resistance; they simply confuse any form of mass mobilization with resisting strategically.

Identifying What We Must Resist

Once we identify who is driving the conflict – in this case, the Global Elite, not governments – as well as why and how they are doing it and what they intend, we can identify those foundational components that make possible what the Elite wants to achieve.

So, as noted above, a careful reading of the key documentation soon exposes that the Global Elite intends to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population (using a variety of measures including the ‘injectables’) and enslave those left alive in a technological prison. And this is now happening.

How, exactly, is the Elite doing this?

In relation to its eugenics program, it is using four primary measures: the injections, the massive redistribution of wealth from poor to rich, the destruction of global supply chains (including those in relation to food) and the deployment of 5G. For explanations of these measures, see ‘The Global Elite’s “Kill and Control” Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security’.

In relation to its program of enslavement, it is using a substantial combination of measures which will make those futuristic films look archaic. For a start, the injection, if you are one of those who survive, is intended to turn you into a transhuman slave. See ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

But even those who resist the injection will be enslaved. Using drones, smart phones, GPS devices, smart TVs, social media, smart meters, surveillance cameras, facial recognition software, online banking, license plate readers and driverless cars, you will live under constant surveillance and be readily controlled whether in your home, car or out in the community. And you will be photographed many times each day. As John and Nisha Whitehead have noted: ‘We’re on the losing end of a technological revolution that has already taken hostage our computers, our phones, our finances, our entertainment, our shopping, our appliances, and now, our cars.’ See ‘The Government’s Kill Switch for Your Car, Your Freedoms and Your Life’.

Beyond even this, remember that Covid-19 test to which you submitted? Do you know what happened to your DNA? It was recorded and can be sold. You do not even own your personal DNA! See ‘The Coronavirus (Retention of Fingerprints and DNA Profiles in the Interests of National Security) (No. 2) Regulations 2020’.

Moreover, as Whitney Webb has explained, plans are well advanced to ‘require a digital ID to access and use the internet as well as eliminate the ability to conduct anonymous financial transactions. Both policies would advance the overarching goal of both the WEF and many corporations and governments to usher in a new age of unprecedented surveillance of ordinary citizens.’

See ‘Ending Anonymity: Why the WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens the Future of Privacy’. Obviously, this would also dramatically advance elite control.

In addition, using a combination of technologies largely dependent on 5G, the intention is to digitize our identity and connect it with our bank, health, legal and other records, and create a social credit score that will determine what we can and cannot do and where we can do it. In short, we will be locked in a technological prison, whether it is our own home, our car or our local community, in a ‘smart city’. Physical prisons won’t matter because everywhere will be the prison. Human volition will be unknowingly surrendered by those unaware of the degree of technological control they accepted each time they purchased the latest gadget.

A vital part of this control is explained by Catherine Austin Fitts in this short video on the ‘financial transaction control grid’ being created.

See ‘Digital Concentration Camps’.

And, as the World Economic Forum has advertised, by 2030, ‘You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.’

See ‘8 predictions for the world in 2030’.

Welcome to your imminent technocratic dystopia. Human freedom? Gone. Human rights? Gone. Human identity? Gone. Privacy? Gone. Free will? Gone. Anything else that makes life worth living? Gone.

So with this briefest of summaries, hopefully you can see why these rallies and convoys, in themselves, cannot achieve anything significant. Powerlessly begging governments to remove certain vaccine mandates and even other now-familiar restrictions, while ignoring the ongoing technological measures being implemented ‘behind the scenes’, is not impeding, in any way, the elite program to entrap you in a technological prison, assuming you survive the death needle.

Hence, if we wish to resist this elite program effectively, we must identify its foundational components; that is, those components that make what the Elite wants to achieve possible. And then resist these components.

Resisting Strategically

So what are the components that give the Global Elite the power to inflict its agenda upon us?

These include the injections; deployment of 5G; the technologies that enable comprehensive (not just mass) surveillance, digitization (of our identity, banking, health, legal and other records to generate our personal social credit score) and robotization of the workforce; measures to restructure the global economy in favour of the mega-corporations and consolidation of ownership and control of agricultural land as well as the production, distribution and even nature of the world’s food supply. It also includes the power to control the narrative by using government and corporate media and social media to promote Elite propaganda while censoring the truth.

Hence, we must resist these if we are to undermine the power of the Global Elite to control us.

As noted above, rallies and convoys are only useful if we use them to educate people about the true nature and full extent of the threat and inform those involved how to effectively resist this threat. To reiterate, while we are focusing on governments, the various lockdown restrictions and ‘vaccine’ mandates, and employing the wrong tactics, people will be mobilized to no avail. This is because there are plenty of tactical options – see ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’ – but understanding what has strategic impact in any context is crucial.

Why? Because the nonviolent actions and the numbers participating, in themselves, are not determinative. It is the strategy that determines the outcome.

In short, we must give people the range of actions that will make a critical strategic difference; that is, the precise actions that will undermine the power of the Global Elite to inflict their overall program on us. Unless we do this, our rallies and convoys (and those people who speak at these events) are simply failing to inform their audiences of the vital information that is necessary for us to be successful.

So mass gatherings of resistance (such as protest demonstrations, truck convoys, religious services…), in whatever variation they take, can be useful because they mobilize people with a shared perspective but they only have strategic impact if these people are then ‘deployed’ to take action that undermines the elite’s power to inflict this coup upon us.

To illustrate this point: What is the value of mobilizing an army in war? So that you can send it out to fight a strategically-chosen series of battles. What activists do not understand is that we need to mobilize our activist ‘army’ – which is the primary value of the mass mobilizations – but we need to use these mobilizations to inform activists what tactics we need them to undertake subsequently.

Otherwise we have simply mobilized rally participants to be told to go home again and do nothing or, in the case of the convoys, to remain until a very limited set of demands, which do not address the fundamental technological agenda, are granted (which is one option the Elite might consider as the simplest means of dissipating the dissent in this instance).

And given clear indications that police are gathering intelligence about the activists – see ‘Ottawa Police announce digital surveillance of Freedom Convoy protesters, supporters, and donors’ – this can later be used to deal with individuals, which is obviously easier than dealing with large crowds. Moreover, this can occur even if the trucks are not removed by the police and military, although this remains in option, particularly in cities where crowds are smaller, even though it would not necessarily be easy.

See ‘Removing trucks could be almost “impossible,” say heavy towing experts’.

Of course, activists can work to build relationships with the police and military as one part of the effort to prevent violent removal.

See ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

Fortunately, this has been happening for some time in some contexts during the past two years, leading to some active police and military officers standing down and encouraging their colleagues to do likewise.

See, for example, ‘Freedom Convoy – Speech by Canadian Army Major Stephen Chledowski’ and ‘Conscientious Resignation of Police Officer in Australia’.

But much more effort could be usefully expended in this direction.

Again, however, in itself, this will not undermine the technological nature of the Elite coup.

Nor will using violence, despite what an occasional author is suggesting will be necessary. See ‘The Elite Gathers Its Forces for a Counterattack on the Truckers’.

What Can We Do?

If you are interested in strategically resisting the Global Elite’s technological agenda and other measures associated with the ‘Great Reset’, you can read how to do so on the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ website which offers further analysis, resources and a list of 29 strategic goals for doing so.

This includes campaigning to cause civilian and military scientists and technologists to refuse to do any research or undertake any work associated with the fourth industrial revolution and/or transhumanism, to cause workers to refuse to do any work (by producing, distributing or installing any technology) associated with the fourth industrial revolution and/or transhumanism, and to cause consumers to refuse to buy or otherwise acquire any product associated with the fourth industrial revolution and/or transhumanism.

That is, to campaign to cause all sectors of society to refuse to develop and make available, or to purchase/use, technologies associated with the fourth industrial revolution and transhumanism (including 5G and 6G, military weapons, artificial intelligence [AI], big data, nanotechnology and biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things [IoT], and quantum computing) because these technologies will subvert human identity, human freedom, human dignity, human volition and/or human privacy.

See ‘Strategic Goals related to resisting the fourth industrial revolution and/or transhumanism’.

In addition and more simply, you can download a one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, now available in 15 languages (Czech, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish & Slovak) with more in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here:

‘The 7 Days Campaign to Resist the Great Reset’.

Notably, these latter actions avoid certain problems. Because they involve actions by people dispersed throughout the population, rather than people concentrated in one location (as with rallies), they are extremely difficult to interrupt. Hence, they virtually eliminate the risk of violent repression.

If strategically resisting the ‘Great Reset’ appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group.

Conclusion

For the first time in history, all of humanity is threatened by a coup d’état that is killing vast numbers of people through a complex series of measures while destroying human liberty and human rights for those not killed outright.

Moreover, for the first time in history, this coup is being implemented by a series of technological measures that promise to imprison those left alive in a hi-tech prison from which there will be no escape.

Hence, given that several foundational elements of this coup are not yet quite fully in place, 2022 will be the most critical year in human history to date.

But to defeat this hi-tech coup we need to be strategically savvy and mobilize enough people to participate. You are welcome to join us.

*

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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COVID-19 and Democracy – Nicaragua vs. Canada

February 14th, 2022 by Stephen Sefton

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***

 

From 2018 onwards, Canada’s government has denounced Nicaragua in international forums as a repressive dictatorship and followed the US authorities in imposing illegal unilateral coercive economic measures damaging Nicaragua’s people. In fact, between April and July 2018, opposition militants in Nicaragua killed over 20 police officers with 400 officers suffering gunshot wounds. Mobs of opposition militants and hired thugs set fire to public buildings, businesses and private homes.

They operated roadblocks and barricades demanding money to allow people to pass, searching and often stealing people’s personal effects, assaulting government supporters, subjecting women and girls to sexual abuse. The roadblocks were used as bases from which opposition thugs marauded and terrorized local people.

They were the front line of an explicit, extremely violent opposition campaign aimed at overthrowing Nicaragua’s elected government. Despite that extremely violent context, Nicaragua’s government agreed to opposition demands to withdraw police from the streets as a condition to start talks to end the crisis.

Only after all efforts at a negotiated settlement of the crisis failed and in response to popular outcry against the widespread serious crimes provoked by the opposition’s terror campaign, did Nicaragua’s government deploy its security forces to clear the roadblocks which they achieved successfully with minimum loss of life. The individuals responsible for those crimes sought to provoke another crisis around last year’s elections. They are now in jail.

Currently, Prime Minister Trudeau is deploying Canada’s security forces to try and suppress demonstrably peaceful protests defending fundamental freedoms which in no way pose any kind of violent threat to Canada’s elected government. Canada is now the scene of the most internationally well known expression of popular resistance to North American and European government attacks on fundamental rights, on children, on working class people and on the millions of people who depend on small businesses. The Canadian authorities, fronted by Prime Minister Trudeau, and supported by Canada’s State and corporate media, allege that the protests led by truckers pose an extreme right wing minority challenge to the government and a major threat to public health because they are resisting vaccine mandates and other repressive measures.

Canada 2022. Truckers protesting peacefully in Ottawa with broad-based support across the country

In reality, the protests and the blockades they involve are overwhelmingly peaceful and supported by people from across Canada’s political spectrum. People in Canada are now experiencing for themselves domestically the cynical deceit and gross hypocrisy their country’s government has deployed consistently in foreign affairs affecting tens of millions of people in countries from Ukraine, Iran and Syria to Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua. But that is not the only stark contrast with the Canadian government’s policies in the context brought about by the authorities’ response to Covid-19.

Nicaragua introduced preventive measures against Covid-19 starting in early February 2020. The authorities started health controls at the country’s borders and airport, identifying people possibly infected with the virus, encouraging voluntary quarantine with close medical supervision and careful contact tracing. The health ministry trained specialist staff, set aside 19 hospitals across the country to treat patients affected by the virus and activated a massive, nationwide education and monitoring campaign involving over 30,000 community health promoters. The health ministry devised effective prophylactic treatment for people with symptoms of the virus and issued effective guidance for the protection of the elderly and patients with chronic illness.

Once the pseudo-vaccines that prevent neither infection nor transmission became available thanks to donations from India, Russia and other countries, the Nicaraguan authorities initiated a staged voluntary campaign for those who wanted to receive the injections. Following UNESCO guidance, Nicaragua did not close its public schools nor did the government apply restrictions to the country’s economic activity. Wearing masks is still required for now in public offices, on some public transport, at some public events and in many business premises, but has never been obligatory for people generally. The introduction and application of these policies addressing Covid-19 in Nicaragua have been much more humane and democratic than those imposed in North America, Europe and most of Latin America.

In addition to needing to address genuine public health concerns while defending their people’s overall well being, Nicaragua’s authorities also faced corporate driven pressure to conform from the Bill Gates dominated World Health Organization and Western governments and from domestic opposition fear campaigns trying to cause widespread panic among the country’s population, as they did in 2018. Despite those pressures, impoverished Nicaragua has been probably the most successful country in the Americas addressing the public health problems caused by Covid-19 in a genuinely democratic way.

By contrast, like practically all the governments of the supposedly democratic Western countries, Prime Minister Trudeau’s government has applied restrictive measures damaging people’s economic well being. The education authorities applied measures ruining children’s education and seriously damaging their emotional development. The health authorities imposed mandatory pseudo-vaccination, as well as inflicting relatively very high levels of serious adverse reactions in comparison with genuine vaccine treatments for other diseases.

Compared to Nicaragua, Canada and all its fellow wealthy OECD member countries have failed abysmally in terms of both public health and democratic governance. In terms of public health, Canada failed to protect people vulnerable to the virus, generally failed to offer effective, timely treatment to those sick with the virus, and failed to protect either the overall economic well-being of its population or the well-being of the country’s children. In terms of democratic governance, the Canadian authorities have sought to suppress and censor dissent. The pseudo-vaccine mandates have caused extreme distress to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, especially workers, who reject them with good reason.

Western governments in general have failed to protect the vulnerable, grossly mismanaging care for the elderly in particular. They failed to offer readily available, timely treatment and care to people sick with the virus, trashing and smearing highly respected doctors advocating cheap and effective drugs for early treatment of symptoms. They failed to introduce rational preventive measures protecting their peoples’ overall well being. Now Canada’s authorities are mobilizing security forces so as to repress widespread peaceful protests resulting directly from their public health failures, their anti-democratic economic measures and their assault on the basic rights of children. The classic fascist union of corporate and State power across North America and Europe has never been more clear.

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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal.

Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image: Nicaragua 2018 – police officer Gabriel de Jesús Vado Ruiz, tortured, murdered and set on fire by opposition thugs in Masaya in 2018 (Photo from opposition social media video)

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***

The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) sought to use podcaster Daniel Dumbrill, a long-time Canadian resident in China, for propagandistic purposes. The media savvy Dumbrill was prepared for this.

Said Dumbrill,

“Today, I’m going to indisputably and unmistakably demonstrate how mainstream media shapes your views and opinions through manipulation, dishonesty, and outright lies.”

Influenced by the late journalist Robert Fisk, I avoid the term “mainstream media” for the simple reason that state/corporate media is not my mainstream. So I call such media what it is “state/corporate media” or “monopoly media” à la Ben Bagdikian or “mass media.” I prefer independent media or independent writers that, is my mainstream. I keep tabs on the monopoly media because it, unfortunately, has an audience and is influential. So an awareness of the content and monopoly media’s message is necessary to reveal and refute its factual inaccuracies and twisted narratives. Dumbrill is finely attuned to the realities of China and acutely aware of the geopolitical intrigues in the world. He is able to intellectually cut through disinformation without difficulty and reframe it into a honest representation.

Steven D’Souza, a senior reporter with CBC interviewed Dumbrill on China and propagandizing. Dumbrill knew to expect dishonesty from the CBC.

When allegations were brought up about Chinese machinations in Xinjiang, Dumbrill revealed the source, the Australian so-called think tank ASPI, as a tool of imperialist disinformation as evidenced by its funders. Despite this, D’Souza ignored what Dumbrill had informed him and used ASPI disproportionately as an information source in his program without informing viewers of ASPI’s affiliations and funding. Dumbrill’s counter-argument about ASPI was omitted.

The biggest offense of the CBC, according to Dumbrill:

“was their desperate attempt to find something they could pull out of context from a near half hour interview with me and ending up with only 3.5 seconds of usable footage to twist into their narrative.”

D’Souza suggested that Dumbrill was participating as a paid influencer to propagandize for the Chinese state. Dumbrill firmly closed the door on that innuendo saying,

“I don’t benefit financially from anything I do. As a matter-of-fact I go through through great expense, both time-wise and financially to do what I do. I’m not belonging to any kind of a state apparatus here. I can travel around freely and see everything for myself as well…”

Nonetheless, in the program aired by CBC, a 3.5-second comment is attached to an unrelated and out-of-context narrative, positioning Dumbrill as a paid influencer of Chinese propaganda.

Dumbrill decries the absence of journalistic integrity, calling such manipulation “unethical, dishonest, and even fraudulent behavior.”

When questioned by Dumbrill why he had done this, D’Souza evaded the question, saying he was too busy.

So Dumbrill gives D’Souza one more time to set the record straight publicly:

After reflecting on our conversation and watching your final product, do you stand by that work — both in a personal and professional capacity? It will be useful if you dare say that you stand by this kind of reporting, and I don’t suspect that you could admit that you are ashamed of this piece without risking your pay check. Therefore, I think your silence, which I think you are inevitably going to go with, will at least give us enough hope that at bare minimum you are self-aware enough to recognize that you are a sell-out and everything you are pretending to look for in this report.

By all means, watch the Dumbrill piece and reach their own conclusions.

Because of his integrity, knowledge, and ethics, Daniel Dumbrill is one trusted source for my mainstream information.

*

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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.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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***

 

The heroic actions performed by the Canadian truckers are having powerful reverberations throughout the world. Inspired by the honesty and sheer determination of these brave citizen’s push- back against a mandatory vaccination programme, suddenly a whole new horizon has been illuminated for where this can go.

No longer is the talk solely about stopping the super dictatorial Justin Trudeau’s forced vaccination programme on truck drivers. Now the rapidly swelling call is for a much larger demand to be met: recovering the freedoms, liberty and basic human rights stolen from people right across the length and breadth of the planet.

We must all seize this moment for it is the expression of a unique confluence of events. Events that could tip the balance in favour of a domino effect collapse of all the stolen power that is being used to hold the human race to ransom. That violent anti-human/anti-life centralised control system which is trying to take fascism into its next dimension of pre-meditated murder.

This is a critical moment. The Canadian authorities have clearly decided to try to starve-out the truckers. They will no doubt use every trick in the trade to break their will and that of the supportive protesters. At a moment like this we must all become part of the battle to vanquish our tormentors.

Source: Children’s Health Defense

Many of us can feel a tingling in our veins when we hear of ordinary (extraordinary) people of Canada sacrificing their working lives and salaries for the sake of a great cry for freedom and truth. It touches a universal collective unconscious link between all of us.  We cannot leave them to carry the full burden of this giant stand for a liberated humanity; we must all rise-up, put our shoulders to the wheel and shove like never before!

While further supportive trucker, farmer, protester convoys also move into action across Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the prospect of a truly dynamic people’s uprising spanning all counties, races, colours, creeds and social standings is on the cards for the first time in human history.

Such an uprising will demand a level of maturity and determination never before fully achieved. It will bring a multidisciplinary factor into the equation that has the potential to unite doctors, lawyers, scientists, human right proponents, social workers, thoughtful academics, police, military personnel, business leaders, artists, working people in general and, dare I say it, even journalists.

Because all these – and many more – know in their hearts that their professions have been corrupted beyond measure by that tiny global anti-human ‘elite’ whose aim is to capture this planet for their own diabolical ends,  and in so doing spread mayhem and grief amongst decent honest people the world over.

As the working people climb to their feet and proceed to throw-off the yoke of intolerable repression, doctors and lawyers are forming unprecedented alliances whose significance is particularly striking and will lead-on to a thorough examination of how these two professions can come back on course (be transformed) to support the true health and welfare of the people; rather than lining their pockets with the wealth of the corporate pharmaceutical behemoths and the soulless tycoons who run the blatantly top-down weighted legal system.

The far sighted action know as ‘Nuremberg 2’ is another vital initiative that is underway as I write.

Its team of leading lawyers, medical experts, whistle blowers and geopolitical specialists, will ensure that the full horror of ‘Covid crimes against humanity’ are pragmatically exposed and documented; so that those responsible for these acts of mass genocide are fully identified and officially held responsible for their indefensible deeds.

This action, while unacceptable to the official legal matrix, therefore impossible to stage in the classical courts of Europe and North America, will clear the way for the actual trials of those indicted  once ‘we the people’ have fully risen to our task and achieved an unstoppable momentum which will sweep aside the intolerable blocks placed upon our God-given freedoms.

Everywhere peoples’ hearts are swelling with a new found sense of pride. A pride inspired by those who are showing what humans can do when faced by the necessity to make a steadfast commitment to ‘hold the line’. Hold the line for freedom, justice, truth and love, at a time when these are right on the brink of being lost forever.

There is nobody who can’t play their part in this extraordinary challenge/opportunity to liberate the planet from the forces of darkness.

Be the first to step out of your dangerously pacifying ‘comfort/safe zone’ so as to defy the fake authorities whose goals count on continued submission to their blind and brutal decrees.

There is a great need for all of us to send energetic positive thought waves to all those at the centre of the storm. There is real power in this form of energy transference and it could just make all the difference. So, if you haven’t already done so – start transmitting today!

We can and we must – without hesitation – step up to the task at hand and keep going until victory is finally secured.

*

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher.  He is President of The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside.

His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is particularly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info  He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by Emilijaknezevic, CC BY-SA 4.0

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

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***

UK Government data proves that the Covid-19 injections damage the innate immune system to a point where the not-vaccinated populations immune system if far superior to that of the fully vaccinated.

The Covid-19 figures for England are produced by the UK Health Security Agency (see here).
Their latest data is available as a downloadable pdf here.

Page 43 contains data on Covid-19 cases in England by vaccination status from 3rd Jan 22 to 30th Jan 22 and reveals that the majority of cases in January were among the triple vaccinated.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-108-1024x828.png

The following chart shows the Covid-19 case-rates per 100,000 by vaccination status for each age group over the age of 18 in England, plus the average case rate per 100,000 for all adults in England –

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-110-1024x756.png

Concerningly the case rights have been highest among the double vaccinated population in every age group, but the triple vaccinated also have a car right far higher than the not-vaccinated population. This isn’t good news.

Now that we know the case-rates, we can use Pfizer’s vaccine effectiveness formula to work out the real-world vaccine effectiveness.

Unvaccinated case rate – Vaccinated case rate / Unvaccinated case rate = Vaccine Effectiveness
e.g. Double Vaccinated 18-80+: 1,846.38 – 5,226.1 / 1,846.38 = minus-183%

Therefore, the average real-world Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness in England for all adults as a whole is MINUS-183%. This means fully vaccinated adults are more likely to catch Covid-19 than unvaccinated adults. This is what vaccination has done to the people of England.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-111-1024x792.png

But vaccine effectiveness isn’t really a measure of a vaccine, it is a measure of a vaccine recipients immune system performance compared to the immune system performance of an unvaccinated person.

Vaccines train the immune system to act and then once they’ve done the training they disappear. If you encounter the Covid-19 virus after being vaccinated then it isn’t the vaccine that springs into action to defend you against it, it’s you vaccine trained immune system that’s meant to spring into action. Therefore,

when authorities tell you that the effectiveness of a vaccine wanes over time, what they really mean is the immune system performance of the vaccinated wanes over time.

But to work out immune system performance we have to alter the calculation used to work out vaccine effectiveness slightly and divide our answer by either the largest of the vaccinated or unvaccinated case rate.

Unvaccinated case rate – Vaccinated case rate / largest of the unvaccinated / vaccinated case rate = Immune System Performancee.g. Double Vaccinated 18-80+: 1,846.38 – 5,226.1 / 5,226.1 = minus-65%

This means on average, fully vaccinated Brits currently have a 65% lower immune response than the unvaccinated have to Covid-19, but the following chart shows the true extent of the damage by age group as well –

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Therefore, the average fully vaccinated person in England is down to the last 35% of their immune system for fighting certain classes of viruses and certain cancers etc.

So now we know for certain from UK Government that the Covid-19 injections damage the innate immune system to the point where a not-vaccinated persons immune system is much better at preventing infection. But what about when it comes to protecting against serious disease and death?

Well unfortunately, the same UK Government data shows the Covid-19 injections also damage the innate immune system to the point where a not-vaccinated persons immune system is much better at protecting a person against death as well.

The following chart shows the Covid-19 death-rates per 100,000 by vaccination status for each age group over the age of 18 in England, calculated from the number of deaths found in the UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance Report and the size of the double vaccinated population –

The double vaccinated population have the highest death rate per 100k in every age group except for the 18-29, and 40-49-year-olds. But we can expect in coming weeks for that rate to switch among the two anomalies based on historical trends that show things get worse for the vaccinated population by the week.

Now that we know the death-rates, we can again use Pfizer’s vaccine effectiveness formula to work out the real-world vaccine effectiveness.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-119-1024x796.png

Real world Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness against death in England between 3rd Jan and 30th Jan 22 was as low as -110.24% in the over 80’s, -97% in people aged 70-79, and -98.14% on average in all adults over age 18.

Here’s what that means in terms of the fully vaccinated populations immune system performance against death –

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-120-1024x795.png

Keeping in line with historical trends that show the Covid-19 vaccines have caused damage to the immune system that worsens by the week we can see that the lowest immune system performance is among those who were vaccinated first, with the over 80’s recording an immune system performance of -52.4%, and then the 70-79 age group recording an immune system performance of -49.2%.

There is however a concerning anomaly in this data in that we should expect to see a positive immune system performance among the 30-39 age group of around 29%, but instead it is currently at -15.4%. There could be several explanations for this but none of them are good.

Either the 30-39 year-olds are genuinely doing worse, or all other age groups are doing much worse than what we are being told.

Either way we can be sure that the data is reliably telling us the Covid-19 injections are not just ineffective, but damage the innate immune system to the point where a not-vaccinated persons immune system is much better at protecting a person against death as well.

But what does this mean?

Well, there could be several possibilities for what’s happening here but again none of them are good.

One possiblilty could be that the Covid-19 injections cause Vaccine-Associated Enhanced Disease leading to conditions such as Antibody-Dependent Enhancement. This is a real possibility because even Pfizer warned about the theoretical risk of this occurring in confidential documents produced in April 2021.

Source – Page 11

Another possibility could be that the vaccinated population are developing some new form of Acquired Immunodeficiency syndrome induced by the Covid-19 injections.

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a condition that leads to the loss of immune cells and leaves individuals susceptible to other infections and the development of certain types of cancers. In other words, it completely decimates the immune system.

This doesn’t mean it’s the same condition that is supposedly induced by the HIV virus, but it’s a very similar condition that has instead been induced by the experimental jabs.

Further evidence to support the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome theory can also be found in the same UK Government data on page 52.

Source

The UKHSA has found the vaccine interferes with the body’s innate ability after infection to produce antibodies against not just the spike protein but other pieces of the virus. Specifically, vaccinated people don’t seem to be producing antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein, the shell of the virus, which are a crucial part of the response in unvaccinated people.

This means vaccinated people will be far more vulnerable to mutations in the spike protein even after infection and recovery.

It’s impossible to say exactly what’s happening because Governments around the world and the Big Pharma scientists are doing their best to sweep all of this under the carpet. But call it what you want, all we know is that UK Government data confirms the Covid-19 vaccines damage the innate immune system, and it is damage that worsens by the week.

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The Plan to Turn You Into a Genetically Edited Human Cyborg

February 14th, 2022 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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The U.K. Ministry of Defense and the German Bundeswehr Office for Defense Planning Human stress that human augmentation needs to be a key area of focus to win future wars

Human augmentation will not be restricted to the military ranks. It’s really a way to further separate classes of humans, with the rich and powerful elite eventually using their augmented “super-human” status as justification to rule everyone else

The goal of The Fourth Industrial Revolution — introduced and pushed by the World Economic Forum — is transhumanism, the merging of man with machine

Human augmentation can directly affect behavior, either positively or to the detriment of that person

In the transhumanist view, the human body is a “platform” that can be augmented in myriad ways, physically, psychologically and socially

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A May 2021 project report by the U.K. Ministry of Defense, created in partnership with the German Bundeswehr Office for Defense Planning, offers shocking highlights of the dystopian cybernetics future that global technocrats are pushing mankind toward.

The report, “Human Augmentation — The Dawn of a New Paradigm, a Strategic Implications Project,1 reviews the scientific goals of the U.K. and German defense ministries, and they are precisely what the title suggests. Human augmentation is stressed as being a key area to focus on in order to win future wars.

But human augmentation will not be restricted to the military ranks. It’s really a way to further separate classes of humans, with the rich and powerful elite being augmented “super-humans.” It’s worth noting that anything released to the public is a decade or more behind current capabilities, so everything in this report can be considered dated news, even though it reads like pure science fiction.

“… the field of human augmentation has the potential to transform society, security and defense over the next 30 years,” the report states. “We must begin to understand the implications of these changes and shape them to our advantage now, before they are thrust upon us.

Technology in warfare has traditionally centered on increasingly sophisticated platforms that people move and fight from, or artefacts that they wear or wield to fight with. Advances in the life sciences and converging developments in related fields are, however, beginning to blur the line between technology and the human …

Many technologies that have the potential to deliver strategic advantage out to 2050 already exist and further advances will undoubtedly occur … Our potential adversaries will not be governed by the same ethical and legal considerations that we are, and they are already developing human augmentation capabilities.

Our key challenge will be establishing advantage in this field without compromising the values and freedoms that underpin our way of life …

When we think of human augmentation it is easy to imagine science fiction inspired suits or wonder drugs that produce super soldiers, but we are on the cusp of realizing the benefits in a range of roles now. Human augmentation will help to understand, optimize and enhance performance leading to incremental, as well as radical, improvements.”

Changing What It Means To Be Human

As noted in the report, “Human augmentation has the potential to … change the meaning of what it means to be a human.” This is precisely what Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), has stated is the goal of The Fourth Industrial Revolution.2

WEF has been at the center of global affairs for more than 40 years, and if you take the time to dive into WEF’s Fourth Industrial Revolution material, you realize that it’s all about transhumanism. It’s about the merger of man and machine. This is a dystopian future WEF and its global allies are actively trying to implement, whether humanity at large agrees with it or not.

Schwab dreams of a world in which humans are connected to the cloud, able to access the internet through their own brains. This, of course, also means that your brain would be accessible to people who might like to tinker with your thoughts, emotions, beliefs and behavior, be they the technocratic elite themselves or random hackers. As noted by history professor Yuval Noah Harari in late 2019, “humans are now hackable animals.”3 As noted in the featured report:4

“Human augmentation will become increasingly relevant, partly because it can directly enhance human capability and behavior and partly because it is the binding agent between people and machines.

Future wars will be won, not by those with the most advanced technology, but by those who can most effectively integrate the unique capabilities of both people and machines. The importance of human-machine teaming is widely acknowledged but it has been viewed from a techno-centric perspective.

Human augmentation is the missing part of this puzzle. Thinking of the person as a platform and understanding our people at an individual level is fundamental to successful human augmentation.”

Key words I’d like to draw your attention to is the affirmation that human augmentation can “directly enhance behavior.” Now, if you can enhance behavior, that means you can change someone’s behavior. And if you can change a person’s behavior in a positive way, you can also control it to the person’s own detriment.

Theoretically, absolutely anyone, any random civilian with a brain-to-cloud connection and the needed biological augmentation (such as strength or speed) could be given wireless instructions to carry out an assassination, for example, and pull it off flawlessly, even without prior training.

Alternatively, their physical body could temporarily be taken over by a remote operator with the prerequisite skills. Proof of concept already exists, and is reviewed by Dr. Charles Morgan, professor in the department of national security at the University of New Haven, in the lecture below. Using the internet and brain implants, thoughts can be transferred from one person to another. The sender can also directly influence the physical movements of the receiver.

The Human Platform

On page 12 of the report, the concept of the human body as a platform is described, and how various parts of the human platform can be augmented. For example:

  • Physical performance such as strength, dexterity, speed and endurance can be enhanced, as well as physical senses. One example given is gene editing for enhanced sight
  • Psychological performance such as cognition, emotion and motivation can be influenced to activate and direct desired behavior. Examples of cognitive augmentation include improving memory, attention, alertness, creativity, understanding, decision-making, intelligence and vigilance
  • Social performance — “the ability to perceive oneself as part of a group and the readiness to act as part of the team” — can be influenced. Communication skills, collaboration and trust are also included here

They list several different ways to influence the physical, psychological and social performance of the “human platform,” including genetics (germ line and somatic modification), the gut microbiome, synthetic biology, invasive (internal) and noninvasive (external) brain interfaces, passive and powered exoskeletons, herbs, drugs and nano technology, neurostimulation, augmented reality technologies such as external holograms or glasses with built-in artificial intelligence, and sensory augmentation technologies such as external sensors or implants. As noted in the report:

“The senses can be extended by translating frequencies beyond the normal human range into frequencies that can been seen, heard or otherwise detected. This could allow the user to ‘see’ through walls, sense vibrations and detect airborne chemicals and changes to magnetic fields.

More invasive options to enhance existing senses have also been demonstrated, for example, coating retinal cells with nanoparticles to enable vision in the infrared spectrum.”

They also point out that, from a defense perspective, methods to de-augment an augmented opponent will be needed. Can you even imagine the battlefield of the future, where soldiers are barraged from both sides with conflicting inputs?

As for ethics, the paper stresses that “we cannot wait for the ethics of human augmentation to be decided for us.” There may even be “moral obligations” to augment people, they say, such as when it would “promote well-being” or protect a population from a “novel threat.”

Interestingly, the paper notes that “It could be argued that treatments involving novel vaccination processes and gene and cell therapies are examples of human augmentation already in the pipeline.” This appears to be a direct reference to mRNA and vector DNA COVID jabs. If so, it’s an open admission that they are a human augmentation strategy in progress.

The Challenge of Unintended Consequences

Of course, there can be any number of side effects and unintended outcomes when you start augmenting an aspect of the human body or mind. As explained in the featured report:

“The relationship between augmentation inputs and outputs is not as simple as it might appear. An augmentation might be used to enhance a person’s endurance but could unintentionally harm their ability to think clearly and decisively in a timely fashion.

In a warfighting context, an augmentation could make a commander more intelligent, but less able to lead due to their reduced ability to socially interact or because they increasingly make unethical decisions. Even a relatively uncontentious enhancement such as an exoskeleton may improve physical performance for specific tasks, but inadvertently result in a loss of balance or reduced coordination when not being worn.

The notion of enhancement is clouded further by the intricacies of the human nervous system where a modifier in one area could have an unintended effect elsewhere. Variation between people makes designing enhancements even more challenging.”

Still, none of that is cause to reconsider or slow down the march toward transhumanism, according to the authors. We just need to understand the human body better, and for that, we need to collect and analyze more data on human performance, behavior, genetics and epigenetics. As noted by the authors:

“Devices that track movement, heart rate, oxygenation levels and location are already commonplace and will become increasingly accurate and sophisticated, making it possible to gather an increasingly wide array of performance data in real time. We can also analyze data in ways that were impossible even five years ago.

Artificial intelligence can analyze massive sets of information almost instantaneously and turn it into products that can inform decision-making. This marriage of data collection and analytics is the foundation of future human augmentation.”

Lab-Grown Designer Babies

As mentioned, by the time a technological advancement is admitted publicly, the research is already a decade or more down the road. Consider, then, the February 1, 2022, article in Futurism,5which announced that Chinese scientists have developed an artificial intelligence nanny robot to care for fetuses grown inside an artificial womb. According to Futurism:6

“The system could theoretically allow parents to grow a baby in a lab, thereby eliminating the need for a human to carry a child. The researchers go so far as to say that this system would be safer than traditional childbearing.”

As of now, the AI robot is only in charge of lab-raised animal embryos, as “experimentation on human embryos is still forbidden under international law.” However, that could change at any time. In May 2021, the International Society for Stem Cell Research went ahead and relaxed the rules7 on human embryonic experimentation.8

Up until then, the rule had been that no human embryo could be grown in a lab environment beyond 14 days. Human embryos may now be grown beyond 14 days if certain conditions are met. In some countries, laws would still need to be changed to go beyond 14 days, but regardless, there’s no doubt that as transhumanism gets underway in earnest, ethical considerations about growing babies in laboratories will be tossed out.

Combine the announcement of an AI robot nanny to care for lab-grown embryos with the 2018 announcement that Chinese scientists were creating CRISPR gene-edited babies. As reported by Technology Review, November 25, 2018,9 “A daring effort is underway to create the first children whose DNA has been tailored using gene editing.”

The embryos were genetically edited to disable a gene called CCR5, to make the babies “resistant to HIV, smallpox and cholera.” The embryos were then implanted into a human mother using in vitro fertilization. At the time, the lead scientist refused to answer whether the undertaking had resulted in a live birth, but shortly thereafter it was confirmed that one trial participant had indeed given birth to gene-edited twins in November 2018.10

In June 2019, Nature magazine published an article11 questioning whether the CRISPR babies might inadvertently have been given a shorter life span, as research had recently discovered that people with two disabled copies of the CCR5 gene were 21% more likely to die before the age of 76 than those with one functioning copy of that gene. The babies might also be more susceptible to influenza and autoimmune conditions, thanks to this genetic tinkering.

Should We Breed Chimeras to Satisfy Need for Organs?

Ethical considerations about animal-human hybrids (chimeras) will probably also fall by the wayside once transhumanism becomes normalized. Already, human-monkey hybrid embryos have been grown by a team of Chinese and American scientists.12

The hybrid embryos are part of an effort to find new ways to produce organs for transplant patients. The idea is to raise monkeys with human-compatible organs that can then be harvested as needed. Here, the embryos were grown in test tubes for as long as 20 days — and this was done before the ISSCR officially agreed to relaxing the 14-day rule.

The question is, if this kind of research ends up being successful, and the creation of animals with human organs is actually feasible, at what point does the chimera become a human?

How do we know that what looks like a monkey doesn’t have a human brain, with the intelligence that goes with it? Taking it a step further, even, what’s to prevent scientists from growing human organ donors? Human clones, even? It’s a slippery slope, for sure.

Privacy in the Age of Transhumanism

Perhaps one of the greatest concerns I (and many others) have is that not only are we moving toward a merger of man and machine, but at the same time we’re also increasingly outsourcing human morality to machines. I cannot imagine the end result being anything but devastating. How did that happen? Timandra Harkness, a BBC Radio presenter and author of “Big Data: Does Size Matter?” writes:13

“As the recent pandemic years have shown, the desire to be free from scrutiny unless there’s a good reason to be scrutinized is widely seen as, at best, eccentric and, at worst, automatic grounds for suspicion.

We simply can’t articulate why a private life is valuable. We have no sense of ourselves as autonomous beings, persons who need a space in which to reflect, to share thoughts with a few others, before venturing into public space with words and actions that we feel ready to defend …

Part of the appeal of technologies like AI is the fantasy that a machine can take the role of wise parent, immune to the emotion and unpredictability of mere humans. But this tells us less about the real capabilities of AI, and more about our disillusionment with ourselves.

The urge to fix COVID, or other social problems, with technology springs from this lack of trust in other people. So does the cavalier disregard for privacy as an expression of moral autonomy.

Technology ethics can’t save us, any more than technology can. Even during a pandemic, how we regard one another is the fundamental question at the root of ethics. So we do need to treat technology as just a tool, after all. Otherwise we risk being made its instruments in a world without morals.”

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Notes

1, 4 Human Augmentation — The Dawn of a New Paradigm, a Strategic Implications Project May 2021

2 WEF The Fourth Industrial Revolution

3 CNN November 26, 2019

5, 6 Futurism February 1, 2022

7 ISSCR Guidelines

8 STAT News May 26, 2021

9 Technology Review November 25, 2018

10 AP News November 26, 2018

11 Nature June 3, 2019

12 Newsweek April 16, 2021

13 Unherd January 2022

Featured image is from Mercola

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Thank you to John Napper, Dean Choma and Perry Thorp who took these photos.

Continue viewing the photos here…

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Video: Coronavirus Investigative Committee Grand Jury

February 14th, 2022 by Grand Jury

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Historical Background

A group of international lawyers and a judge are conducting a criminal investigation modeled after the United States Grand Jury proceedings in order to present to the public all available evidence of COVID-19 Crimes Against Humanity to date against “leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices” who aided, abetted or actively participated in the formulation and execution of a common plan for a pandemic. This investigation is of the people, by the people and for the people, so YOU can be part of the jury.

Through showing a complete picture of what we are facing, including the geopolitical and historical backdrop – the proceeding is meant to create awareness about

  • the factual collapse of the current, hijacked system and its institutions, and, as a consequence
  • the necessity for the people themselves retaking their sovereignty, and
  • the necessity to first stop this plandemic’s measures by refusing to comply, and
  • the necessity to jump-start their own new system of health care, education, economics and judiciary, so that democracy and the rule of law on the basis of our constitutions will be reestablished.

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Embalmer Reveals 93% of Cases Died from the Vaccine

February 14th, 2022 by Steve Kirsch

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Anna Foster is an embalmer with 11 years of experience in Carrollton, MO. In this exclusive interview, she reveals that 93% of her last 30 cases died due to clots from the COVID vaccine.

The big news is that she found the unusual clots in 93% of the last 30 people who she embalmed. This is significant because she isn’t selective about who she embalms.

Not all embalmers will see a 93% clot rate. Richard Hirschman only sees these clots in 65% of his cases.

Either way, we have identified what is the #1 cause of death in America today; a killer that is much bigger than COVID.

This is a massive health issue since it is killing a huge number of people. Her embalmer friends have noticed it as well and have never seen it before in their careers.

The clots are only associated with people who have been vaccinated. They were only observed after the vaccines rolled out.

The clots are life threatening and are almost certainly the root cause of death in all of these cases.

The doctors and coroners in her area are completely unaware of the problem.

When 93% of people who die are killed by a single cause, this merits immediate investigation by the CDC as to the cause.

However, I am certain that the CDC and all legacy media will continue to ignore this story.

I will continue to interview more and more embalmers who will relate the same story as you will learn in this video.

I am hopeful that after over 100 embalmers say similar things, someone in Congress will take action on what is likely the most serious preventable health problem in our nation’s history.

If the vaccine doesn’t kill you, it can rob you of a limb

Will the vaccine also sterilize men?

In other news, attorney Reiner Fuellmich, says that the COVID shots sterilize men for good. I know there has been a drop in births in other countries after the vaccine rollout. I haven’t seen the statistics for new births in the US.

Has anyone looked into validating this?

This was not tested in the clinical trials. We are the clinical trial here, but the doctors forgot to warn us about this.

We will find out very soon whether or not we have just sterilized 80% of our population. This is the biggest clinical trial in history.

One more unexpected side-effect: AIDS

I got a call earlier today from a scientist who wants funding to test people for AIDS. At first I was confused. Why would you want to do that?

Just now, I saw a post which explains everything:

See also this article UK Government data suggests the Fully Vaccinated Elderly & Vulnerable have developed AIDS and the young are not far behind them.

Mathew Crawford finds the same result (massive number of deaths), but using a completely different method

Check out Mathew’s latest article which references this article.

In the comments to this article, he wrote, “We have not seen a crime on this scale anywhere in the world since Mao.”

The bottom line is duh, there is absolutely no question these vaccines are killing massive numbers of people, but everyone in power believes whatever the CDC tells them that the vaccines are “safe and effective” and no amount of facts or science is going to make a damn bit of difference because it will all be written off as coming from “anti-vaxxers.”

We will all be ignored and later arrested by DHS and locked away without a chance for a trial. This sure looks to me to be the way things are heading.

So we wanted to let you all know that before we just “disappear.”

Summary

The COVID vaccines are the largest clinical trial in world history.

What we have learned so far from the embalmers is troubling: it appears the vaccines have overtaken heart disease as the #1 leading cause of death in America today.

The CDC doesn’t have a clue it is happening. They still think that nobody has died from the vaccine. They refuse to look at the safety signals in VAERS and DMED. They don’t want to see any safety signals and they will not meet with anyone who challenges their point of view.

Death is one of many symptoms. Other side effects are a wide variety of cardiovascular, neurological, and autoimmune diseases, paralysis, loss of limbs, and potentially sterilization and AIDS. After a 90 day honeymoon period, vaccine efficacy turns negative. They also are known to increase cancers.

Stay tuned as we learn more in this clinical trial of the vaccines. I’m sure this isn’t the end of the story.

The California legislature is expected to mandate soon that everyone who works in California get vaccinated (AB 1993). This will increase the numbers and allow us to get the test results sooner. California is literally sacrificing its residents for the benefit of the rest of the country.

Although I live in California, I am self-employed. I suspect I will need to fire myself soon. I will not willingly comply with their law

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Two recent articles from PolitiFact, a purported fact-checking organization, suggest that the message of the organization regarding experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots that the United States government has been pushing people to take for over a year is this: Just trust the US government claim that the shots are safe irrespective of the fact that two of the US government’s own systems for tracking health data are flashing major warning signals regarding danger from the shots.

On December 10, Samantha Putterman wrote at PolitiFact that the reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) managed Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) of much higher rates of adverse events including death and major health problems among people who took the experimental coronavirus shots than among people who took other vaccines should be totally disregarded. You read that right. The “fact checker” says, to know if the shots are safe, it is best to totally disregard the US government system that was created to track such adverse events in order to alert people to potential dangers from vaccines.

The “fact check” concludes that it is a “pants on fire” falsehood to suggest that the extraordinarily high rate of adverse events reports to VAERS for coronavirus shots indicates any danger whatsoever from the shots. Why? Putterman writes: “Health officials and experts said that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and comparable to others, and that they would have been discontinued if they had caused many deaths.”

In other words, Putterman is saying, ignore the dire signals from the data and instead just nod your head in agreement with the “health officials and experts” that endorse the “the shots are safe” narrative. Of course, other people with expertise in health matters strongly disagree with this narrative and see the VAERS numbers as indicative of serious problems with the experimental coronavirus shots. But, the “fact checker” disregards these experts along with the incriminating government data.

The preposterousness of this propagandizing disguised as fact checking is well captured in the abbreviated version of the “fact check” presented in the PolitiFact article for people whose “time is short.” Here it is:

  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines are the most deadly, citing deaths reported in the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, an open database where anyone can report anything.
  • Health officials say that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and comparable to other vaccines.

The abbreviated version, and the long version, of the “fact check” is better described as for people who are short on willingness to exercise critical thinking.

The pattern of telling people in a so-called fact check to disregard damning government data suggesting danger from coronavirus shots and to, instead, just trust the hand-picked shots-pushing experts’ claims the shots are safe continued with a January 31 article by Jeff Cercone at PolitiFact. Here is the conclusion of that purported fact check:

An Instagram post said that miscarriages among military members were up 300% in 2021 over a five-year average, and that cancer diagnoses were up 300% and neurological disorders were up 1000%.

However, the numbers used to compute the five-year average were greatly underreported, giving the false impression of a significant increase in 2021, a spokesperson for the Armed Forces Surveillance Division said.

The database has been taken down to identify and correct the problem.

We rate this claim False.

The “false” rating is very deceptive even if you accept every assertion in this PolitiFact article that supposedly supports the “false” rating. The Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) that records billing codes associated with military members and their family members receiving different medical diagnoses and services from the military did indicate that there were huge spikes in the occurrence of these and many other medical problems in 2021 compared to the average of the previous five years. That is a fact that PolitiFact presents no information to dispute. Yet, PolitiFact announced its “false” rating for reporting what the data indicated because it turns out that, after whistleblowers made this DMED information public and people reported on it, the US military reacted by one of its spokespersons stating the military’s major medical tracking system, while working fine last year, had major snafus in the previous five years. These snafus supposedly made the DMED data entirely unreliable, and remained unfixed, over those five years. However, no one, including PolitiFact, is disputing that the actual DMED data was as revealed by the whistleblowers.

PolitiFact’s DMED data “fact checking” is devoid of basic reasoning. But it does bend over backward to promote the government line, as did PolitiFact’s “fact checking” regarding the VAERS data, that the experimental coronavirus shots are safe. Move along, there’s nothing to see here, asserts PolitiFact deceptively.

The US military’s sudden assertion of its huge failure that just so happens to advance the high priority “the shots are safe” narrative sure seems odd. But, hey, maybe things could be that screwed up. The military is a big government bureaucracy. It is not immune to incompetence.

So what is actually true? Daniel Horowitz, who has written extensively at The Blaze about the DMED data and its relation to the safety of the shots, concludes the following:

One of two things is true: Either there was mass vaccine injury in the military, or our military has been very unhealthy and the Pentagon completely lost control over epidemiological surveillance of these health issues for years. Either way, this is the story of the year.

But you won’t see any real investigation into a story like that at PolitiFact. To report that story would require searching for and communicating actual facts instead of just parroting the US government’s line.

If you want the facts regarding the VAERS data or the DMED data, PolitiFact appears to be of little use, unless you start with the assumption that what PolitiFact terms false is worth looking into further as likely true.

Fortunately, some people are providing helpful information regarding the VAERS and DMED data and its relationship to the experimental coronavirus shots.

Megan Redshaw wrote Friday regarding the latest developments in adverse events associated with experimental coronavirus shots being reported to VAERS. Her article is at the website of Children’s Health Defense, an organization that has done great work in exposing the ineffectiveness and dangerousness of coronavirus shots. PolitiFact target Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is the organization’s chairman.

Daniel Horowitz has written several fascinating articles regarding the disturbing DMED data and the US military’s actions in response to whistleblowers revealing the data. You can read his articles at The Blaze here, here, and here. Also, Robert Malone, who is an expert in matters related to the coronavirus shots but who we cannot expect the writers at PolitiFact to defer to as an authority for the truth given that he challenges US government assertions regarding the shots, wrote an interesting article regarding the matter. You can read his article, posted on Monday at the Independent Institute website, here.

Regarding the experimental coronavirus shots, PolitiFact can be expected to keep pushing US government propaganda instead of providing real fact checking. To find the truth, instead of the “political truth,” people will need to look elsewhere.

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President Biden on Friday took steps to take half of the $7 billion of Afghan funds held by the US Federal Reserve and give it to the relatives of victims of the September 11th, 2001, attacks as millions of Afghans are facing starvation.

Biden signed an executive order that will make $3.5 billion available for 9/11 families through lawsuits. The other half will be put into a trust with the intent of being used for humanitarian aid for Afghanistan.

The US seized the $7 billion as the Taliban took over Afghanistan, and another $2 billion in Afghan reserves held in other countries was frozen. In the wake of the US withdrawal, Afghans are facing a dire humanitarian crisis. The UN’s World Food Program estimates more than half of Afghanistan’s population, about 23 million people, are facing extreme hunger.

On top of the frozen funds, the US still maintains sanctions on Taliban leaders who are now part of the Afghan government. The sanctions discourage international companies and banks from doing business in Afghanistan, making it harder for Afghans to find relief.

History shows that sanctions and other economic pressure do little to change the target government and only hurt the civilian population. The Afghan people also had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks, Osama bin Laden just happened to be in Afghanistan when they happened, and the Taliban had offered to hand him over.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Featured image: Kathy Kelly and Maya Evans walk with children at the Chamin-E-Babrak refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan, January 2014. (Abdulhai Darya)

US Steals Billions in Afghan Bank Funds

February 14th, 2022 by Patrick Martin

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In an action that combines brazen theft, imperialist brutality and unlimited hypocrisy, the Biden administration announced Friday that it will seize control of $7 billion in Afghanistan financial assets, held largely at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, rather than return them to the Afghanistan central bank.

Media attention has largely been devoted to Biden’s splitting of the $7 billion, with $3.5 billion set aside to meet the legal claims of survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and $3.5 billion to be used for “humanitarian aid” to the people of Afghanistan. Both actions are cynical diversions from what is an effort to starve the country and avenge the humiliating defeat which US imperialism suffered last summer.

The $3.5 billion supposedly to be used for aid will not be available for many months, if ever, as State Department officials acknowledged over the weekend, ensuring that nothing will reach the starving population of Afghanistan during the winter months. According to the UN World Food Program, some 23 million Afghans face hunger and malnutrition this year, while UNICEF warns that as many as one million Afghan children could die of severe malnutrition and outright starvation.

The delay is due to the administration’s decision to allow legal claims against the Taliban amounting to $7 billion, awarded by default in a court proceeding nearly a decade ago, to go forward. Some of the plaintiffs are likely to challenge the 50-50 split in Afghan bank funds, which could tie up any allocation more or less indefinitely.

That appears to be the real purpose of the Biden decision: to allow millions to suffer and starve in Afghanistan, while claiming to be above the battle. “It’s all up to the courts,” Biden will declare, washing his hands of the spectacle of mass death in Central Asia, just as he has facilitated mass death in the COVID pandemic.

In addition, by refusing to return any portion of the $7 billion to the central bank of Afghanistan, the Biden administration intensifies its vengeful wrecking operation against the Afghan economy. Without a functioning central bank—and outright collapse is now a distinct possibility now that its main reserves have been confiscated—Afghan banks and businesses cannot function, workers cannot be paid, no international corporation will do business with the country, and few aid organizations will be able to operate.

Afghan-American groups and aid groups overwhelmingly condemned the action, pointing particularly to the impact on the overall economy. It is not the lack of aid, in itself, but the inability of the economy to function which is the principal cause of mass suffering in Afghanistan.

The message to the Afghan people is clear. As long as you are ruled by the Taliban, you will starve. It is not necessary for American imperialism to bomb the country back to the Stone Age, as military warmongers threatened in Vietnam. They can do so by cutting off all credit and international commerce to a country they have already bombed for 20 years.

The Biden action is illegal on a number of levels. Even the Washington Post, which published an editorial enthusiastically supporting the decision, had to acknowledge that the White House position is self-contradictory: The Biden administration refuses to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan; at the same time, it authorizes the use of Afghan national bank resources to pay off a legal judgment against the Taliban.

The invocation of 9/11 is particularly monstrous and cynical. As numerous commentators in Afghanistan, Pakistan and internationally have pointed out, none of the 9/11 hijackers hailed from Afghanistan. Most were Saudis, citizens of a country that is the closest US Arab ally and the recipient of hundreds of billions in US arms sales.

Even if one accepts, for the sake of argument, the claim that the Taliban protected Osama bin Laden against US government demands for his surrender, there is no evidence that the Taliban had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. More fundamentally, why should the people of Afghanistan be punished for this, on top of 20 years of US conquest and occupation, which have left their country in ruins?

It is particularly cynical to suggest that Afghan children not even born on September 11, 2001 should suffer because of the actions of terrorists like bin Laden, a Saudi multi-millionaire who began his career fighting in the CIA-backed mujahadeen war against Soviet troops. The US military-intelligence apparatus had far closer connections to Al Qaeda than anyone in Afghanistan, and these connections resumed in 2011 when the Islamists served as the CIA’s ground troops in Libya and Syria.

The Taliban government in Kabul denounced the Biden decision. “The theft and seizure of money held/frozen by the United States of the Afghan people represents the lowest level of human and moral decay of a country and a nation,” Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem said on Twitter.

Faiz Mohammad, a Kabul resident, made another critical point in an interview with Iran’s Press TV. “First, I don’t think the US has the right to use Afghanistan’s money to compensate 9/11 victims,” he said. “The US had no reason when it attacked us, but a lot of people died in the past 20 years. So, it’s the US that should compensate us, and they should not spend our money.”

There is no doubt an additional consideration in the White House action: the pressure of the fascist right, which is uppermost in Biden’s political calculations. Releasing even a small portion of Afghanistan’s assets will come under fire from Fox News, Breitbart, Donald Trump, and the bulk of the Republican Party. “After the surrender to the Taliban, comes the payment of tribute”: the script for know-nothings like Tucker Carlson almost writes itself.

Similar charges were made about the Iran nuclear pact, where the release of a fraction of Iran’s own assets, held in foreign bank accounts that handle payments for oil exports, was portrayed as “paying tribute to the ayatollahs.”

So, to protect his right flank, Biden invokes the scarecrow of 9/11. White House officials claimed that a lawsuit by 9/11 survivors and relatives required action on Afghan assets by February 11 because of a court-imposed deadline, but this is a transparent pretext.

More than 20 years after 9/11, a tragedy that has never been fully investigated because connections with the Saudi monarchy and the US military-intelligence apparatus had to be covered up, the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans is still utilized to serve the interests of the American ruling class.

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Featured image: US President Biden enters Roosevelt Room in the White House to give a statement on US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Aug 24, 2021

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On the latest episode of The Hill’s “Rising,” political commentator Kim Iversen broke down concerning new language in a U..S. Department of Homeland Security bulletin about domestic terrorism that could have potential ramifications for anyone questioning government institutions.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Feb. 7 released a “Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. Homeland” bulletin.

According to journalist and political commentator Kim Iversen, the bulletin “actually labels what is typically considered free speech as terrorism.”

The bulletin reads:

“The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors.”

“Remember, this is a bulletin about domestic terrorism threats to the homeland and they’re saying that we’re in a heightened threat environment because of what they label mis- or disinformation,” Iversen said. “Which they’re saying could be spread by American citizens — so that’s you and me.”

We could all be in “hot terrorism water,” Iversen said, for either knowingly or unknowingly spreading misinformation, disinformation or malinformation (MDM) — even though the definitions of those terms keep changing.

Throughout the pandemic, many people accused of spreading disinformation or conspiracy theories turned out to be right all along.

“It was originally a conspiracy theory that there would be vaccine mandates. It was misinformation to say the vaccine doesn’t prevent spread,” Iversen said.

According to the DHS bulletin, people who spread MDM, “are possibly threat actors seeking to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence.”

“So they’re saying that if you spread information that undermines public trust in a government institution like the Centers for Disease Control, or Federal Drug Administration, or the Pentagon or Congress it could lead to violence,” Iversen said.

To prevent these “theoretical” acts of violence that stem from engaging in speech that undermines public trust in government institutions “you could be labeled a terrorist threat,” she argued.

“By issuing this bulletin they’ve effectively given themselves the freedom to halt any dissent they don’t like under the guise of ‘it could lead to violence,’” Iversen said.

The DHS bulletin also states:

“The primary terrorism-related threat to the United States continues to stem from lone offenders or small cells of individuals who are motivated by a range of foreign and/or domestic grievances often cultivated through the consumption of certain online content.”

“So they’re saying it could just be you,” Iversen argued. “You don’t need to be affiliated with a known neo-nazi group or some other flagged organization. If you acting alone to air grievances against the government they deem to be potentially threatening, you could be flagged as a domestic terrorist.”

The bulletin referenced “widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives” regarding COVID, stating:

“COVID-19 mitigation measures — particularly COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates — have been used by domestic violent extremists to justify violence since 2020 and could continue to inspire these extremists to target government, healthcare, and academic institutions that they associate with those measures.”

“Besides angry parents at school board meetings and angry airline passengers I don’t remember any violent extremist attacks due to COVID,” Iversen said.

She described the bulletin as “pretty alarming” as it labels any speech or government dissent, “or sowing any sort of discord amongst a government institution is potentially domestic terrorism.”

Watch the full segment here:

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Obtuseness on Iran

February 14th, 2022 by Jacob G. Hornberger

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An op-ed in the Washington Post this week shows how obtuse some people can be when it comes to Iran. The article was written by a man named Barry Rosen, who is a former U.S. diplomat who was taken hostage in Iran during the Iranian revolution in 1979 and held in captivity for 444 days. Rosen recounts that during his captivity, he was “beaten, tortured, forced to endure mock executions, starved and used as a political pawn” and that “the experience left [him] with deep scars, but gave [him] a platform to advocate policies that put people over politics.” 

Rosen says that Iran is still taking and holding hostages. Last month, he traveled to Vienna to deliver a message to U.S. diplomats who are negotiating a restoration of the Iran nuclear deal, which would presumably involve a lifting of the brutal economic sanctions that the U.S. has imposed on the Iranian people. His message is: Don’t enter into any deal until those hostages are released. He’s also gone on a hunger strike to emphasize his message.

As with other U.S. officials and many members of the U.S. mainstream press, Rosen’s history begins with the Iranian revolution. Based on his article, he apparently blocks out of his mind the events that took place prior to the revolution. 

In 1953, the CIA engineered a coup in Iran that succeeded in destroying Iran’s experiment with democracy. In an operation that ended up killing hundreds of innocent people, the CIA’s coup ousted from power Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, a man named Mohammad Mossadegh, who was widely admired and respected in Iran as well as in other parts of the world. In fact, he had been named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.”

What was the CIA’s justification for committing this act of aggression against another country, one that had never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so? The CIA said that Mossadegh was leaning toward communism and the Soviet Union. In the minds of CIA officials, that gave them the authority to oust him from power. 

How did the CIA conclude that Mossadegh was leaning toward communism and the Soviet Union? Mossadegh had nationalized British oil interests in the country, much like President Franklin Roosevelt had nationalized people’s gold holdings in the United States in the 1930s. In the minds of CIA officials, that meant that Mossadegh was leaning toward communism and the Soviet Union. It’s probably worth mentioning that British oil companies had asked the CIA to help them get their oil wells and oil refineries back.

But the more important question is: So what if Mossadegh was leaning toward communism and the Soviet Union. Why didn’t he have the right to do that? What moral and legal authority did the CIA have to oust from power a foreign political leader who was leaning toward communism or the Soviet Union?

The fact is that the CIA had no such authority. Its coup against Mossadegh and its destruction of Iran’s democratic system were the epitome of evil, especially since they involved the deaths of hundreds of innocent people.

Adding insult to injury, the CIA then restored to power the Shah of Iran, who turned out to be one of the world’s cruelest and most brutal dictators. It’s didn’t help that the CIA helped turn his regime into one of the world’s most tyrannical. In fact, the CIA helped the Shah to establish his domestic police force, which was a combination Pentagon, CIA, NSA, FBI, Gestapo, and KGB and then helped the Shah to train it in the arts of dark-side practices and procedures that ensured a totally tyrannical regime.

Then, for the next 25 years, the U.S. government funneled large amounts of U.S. taxpayer money into the coffers of this dictatorial regime to ensure that it maintained its iron dictatorial control over the Iranian people. 

By the time 1979 rolled around, the Iranian people had had enough of this brutal U.S.-supported tyranny. The only way to oust the Shah from power was through violence. That’s usually the nature of revolutions. 

Any person who went to work for the U.S. government knew — or should have known — of this evil history on the part of the U.S. government. This is especially true for people who agreed to work in the U.S. embassy in Iran. After all, what did they expect — that the Iranian people, who had been suffering under this U.S.-installed brute for a quarter-century, would welcome them with open arms? 

When a person goes to work for a regime that engages in evil, that person should know that there exists the distinct possibility that the people who are the victims of that evil are going to respond. We can talk all day long about how the Iranian revolutionaries had no right to take U.S. diplomats hostage but that doesn’t get to the practicality of the situation, which is that when a person goes to work for a regime that is engaged in evil against a foreign populace, he is knowingly taking a very dangerous risk, especially when he chooses to work within the country in which the evil is taking place.

Rather than working as a U.S. diplomat in Iran, Rosen could have (and should have) resigned his position as a federal bureaucrat and gone to work in the private sector. That would have been the moral thing to do rather than go to work in the diplomatic corps of a regime that had inflicted horror and brutality on the Iranian people. 

Why did the Iranian people take those diplomats hostage? The Shah had come to the United States for medical treatment. The revolutionaries were convinced that U.S. officials, including those in the CIA, intended to squelch their revolution and restore the Shah or some other U.S. stooge to power. Their taking of hostages was intended to prevent that from happening. 

Their actions were obviously not justified under international law or under basic moral principles, but there can be no reasonable doubt that that is precisely what U.S. officials would have done. For 25 years, they had controlled the Iranian populace through their brutal puppet, the Shah. They were not ready to surrender that control so easily to the Iranian revolutionaries.

In fact, U.S. officials have never lost the urge to continue that control. That’s what the brutal economic sanctions that U.S. officials continue to enforce against the Iranian people are all about. Their aim is to force the Iranian people, through death and impoverishment, to initiate another violent revolution, one that will put another pro-U.S. dictator back into power. 

Unfortunately, the Iranian revolution was unable to restore the democratic system that the CIA succeeded in destroyed in 1953. They ended up with a theocratic dictatorship that is arguably as tyrannical as that of the Shah, if not worse. But that’s the fault of the CIA, not the Iranian people. 

Barry Rosen should be calling on the U.S. government to lift its deadly and destructive sanctions against the Iranian people and to finally leave Iran alone. That’s the best way to secure the release of any hostages being held by Iran. It would go a long way toward restoring a semblance of morality to U.S. foreign policy. It would also enable Rosen to demonstrate his philosophy of putting “people over politics.”

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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NATO’s Joint Force Command is based in Norfolk, Virginia which also hosts NATO’s Allied Command Transformation and the world’s largest naval base, Naval Station Norfolk. The command was inaugurated last year in conjunction with NATO’s Joint Support and Enabling Command in Ulm, Germany. The first expedites the shipment of troops, arms and equipment across the Atlantic, the second accelerates their transit from Western to Eastern Europe, NATO’s Eastern Flank, the current war zone.

Also see: Battle of the Atlantic: Citing Nazi Germany as model, U.S. military chief hails new NATO command

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Joint Force Command Norfolk and Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation sign Technical Arrangement

By NATO, Joint Force Command

February 12, 2022

A Technical Arrangement between Joint Force Command (JFC) Norfolk and the Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation (NDLO) was signed on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022 during a virtual ceremony.

“Today marks an important milestone for Joint Force Command Norfolk as this Technical Arrangement both solidifies the strong transatlantic bond between us and the Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation, and enhances our logistical network between North America and Europe,” said JFC Norfolk Commander, Vice Admiral Daniel Dwyer.

JFC Norfolk serves as NATO’s operational bridge between Europe and North America. It relies on a command network to coordinate Allied activity in the North Atlantic and High North, from seabed to space. Norway, as a signatory of the Memorandum of Understanding that established JFC Norfolk, has been heavily involved in the Alliance’s newest operational command.

The role of the NDLO is to ensure that the Norwegian Armed Forces’ equipment is maintained and available….The signing of this Technical Arrangement will enable JFC Norfolk to establish a Joint Logistic Support Network (JLSN) with NOR JLSG that will strengthen the logistics required to execute NATO activity in the High North. The JLSN will consist of, but not be limited to: points of debarkation, lines of communication, logistic bases, convoy support centres, staging areas and forward logistics sites.

Vice Admiral Dwyer welcomed the Norwegian Defence Attaché to the United States and Canada, Major General Odd-Harald Hagen, to witness the signing in Norfolk. Across the Atlantic Major General Lars Aamodt, Commander of the NDLO, put pen to paper in Oslo completing the ceremony.

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Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from the US Navy

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